@super-poopsy (with regaurds to mermaids only dpawning if a ship has sunk) the added bonus of this being the option to maroon people instead of just throw them in the brig.
Granted, you could die to respawn but in open ocean thats 30s+ferry time+loading time
Pull up them Ladders!
@super-poopsy
The game should allow using the mermaid ONLY when your ship is sunk, no other circumstances allowed.Yeah 100% agree with this, NO EXCEPTIONS.
The mermaid should only be there to respawn your ship, not transport you back to it.@rokuavalanche Right now there is no END fight mechanic. Ships battling on the seas until one runs out of supplies would be the only way a fight would end. It would get boring very quickly.
With ladders always down, it can force an end to the fight more quickly. It prevents players from just unloading all weapons on a ship. It makes them be less emersed on the cannon and pay attention to their surroundings. If a ship can be boarded it requires people to be cautious and when played well it can prevent them from repairing their ship. It forces people to make strategic choices.
For galleons - can we run a battle with 2-3 people as the other 1-2 attempt to board? That gives us NO steering and one person repairing while one fire? Or do they choose to steer and ignore the repairing?
For Sloops - do I just keep unloading this cannon and forget about repairs? Do I try to keep an eye out and outmaneuver them?
So I think removing ladders would take a huge amount away from the game and cause sloops more problems than full galleon teams.
@nightmare247365 But there would be an end.... just sail up to them and board them... whats wrong with that?
I'm just sick of the incessant barrage of swimmers.
@mostlyjustokay no, but its just that. For an enemy to board at long distance your ship needs to have a predictable trajectory. So to stop boarders have your crew change the trajectory of the ship while swiveling the sails to maintain speed. Then as you chase the ship who cant rotate their sails as fast or fire cannons as fast you catch up and lay into them.
Again how about the no climbing at full sail compromise though?
@super-poopsy said in Pull up them Ladders!:
Nothing wrong with boarding itself, it's a legit mechanic and it's quite fun when pulled off. What's terrible tho is how the game doesn't punish you at all for failing. You miscalculated your totally legit sword lunge, cannon throw or even swimming? No problem, get the mermaid and you're back to your ship again, ready to try other 28349 times if necessary, till eventually you succeed. No skill involved whatsoever, no punishment for failing.
The game should allow using the mermaid ONLY when your ship is sunk, no other circumstances allowed. In that case boarding would require some actual skill and planning, since failing to board would translate into losing a crew member for longer than the 5 secs it takes to spawn a mermaid and get back to the ship.
That's pretty much my point - the problem is that it's so destructive (it's incredibly easy if you manage to get on to pop the anchor, and then that ship is toast) that it should be a very specialized tactic that is either very difficult to do solo or require focused coordination to accomplish.
So, either a skill shot (like the cannons) or a ship maneuver (get close enough to jump on), is my opinion. I like what you're saying about the mermaids, I just think that along with being punished it needs to be more difficult to begin with, considering the damage it does.
Personally, I'd like to see different kinds of cannon ammunition. Regular cannon balls for hull damage. Chains for sails and masts (renders a ship immoveable or very slow for a time, like falling from a cliff and limping). Grapeshot for targeting groups of enemies, like a giant blunderbuss.
All of those would give cannons a bigger role in the combat and are 100% based on real cannon usage.
@rattlyfob said in Pull up them Ladders!:
@mostlyjustokay no, but its just that. For an enemy to board at long distance your ship needs to have a predictable trajectory. So to stop boarders have your crew change the trajectory of the ship while swiveling the sails to maintain speed. Then as you chase the ship who cant rotate their sails as fast or fire cannons as fast you catch up and lay into them.
Again how about the no climbing at full sail compromise though?
No climbing at full sail would be a great compromise for me! could we move that to half sail or more? ;)
"Lower the ladder! Lower the ladder!" While the boat sails by. And then they lower it on the wrong side.
@elentar
Not sure about different kinds of ammo for cannons but I would like to see masts knocked down and holes blown through sails with cannon balls.@rokuavalanche 3/4ths sail or no deal!
But actually they could just base it on a speed. So as you decelerate they can climb faster and at a dead stop you climb at normal speed. (The faster you go the slower they climb)
"Oh we are slowing down, ill check the ladders for stow aways"
This means if you want to board long distance the enemy crew would have to not check their sides when they slow down, and you would have to wait for them to slow down. This chamge could be coupled with the proposed ball and chain cannon ammo which takes out enemy sails and slows down the ship making boarding easier.
@MostlyJustOkay I get what you're saying, boarding should be a skillful tactic, not something that people can spam cause there are very little to no consequences.
In many situations a very tiny change can deeply alter the balance of a fight. As it is now, people exploit the mermaid bus in so many obviously broken ways that's become annoying, i'm fairly sure that if there were consequence for failing to board, people would think twice before recklessly doing it or at least they would wait for a more opportune moment, which in turn would make naval battles themselves slightly more tactic.
At the moment it's so absurd that the best case scenario one can hope for is when someone actually boards you and you kill him, cause that will take him out of the game for more than 30secs.
@rattlyfob said in Pull up them Ladders!:
@mostlyjustokay no, but its just that. For an enemy to board at long distance your ship needs to have a predictable trajectory. So to stop boarders have your crew change the trajectory of the ship while swiveling the sails to maintain speed. Then as you chase the ship who cant rotate their sails as fast or fire cannons as fast you catch up and lay into them.
Again how about the no climbing at full sail compromise though?
That's the point - I have to dodge an incessant minefield of overboard pirates and have a crew member virtually staring at the ladders in order to not outright immediately lose.
Yes, I can manage. Yes, there's counterplay. The problem is that boarding from distance is so effective and so braindead easy that it's how every fight goes. Strategy and tactics are out the window.
Plot your course and line primarily to avoid swimmers, blunderbuss anybody who sticks to the ladder. Slowly (since one or more of your crew is on ladder duty) make your way over to the other ship. Fire cannons when you have a person available. Either wait for them to run out of planks or send a swimmer of your own.
It's not hard, it's not strategic, there's no real tactic but that. And that is virtually every fight.
I thought up a solution right here and now:
- The ladder gets pulled up, and lies in a coil on your deck. One piece of rope hangs over the side and down towards the water. To pull down the ladder, you have to click and hold on it for about half a second, similar to dropping the anchor. This would make it possible to always get it back down, but at the same time players would not have enough time to both drop the ladder AND climb up as you sail past them. Also visual and audible clues when it is lowered, making it easier to spot boarders.
Yes please. Right now 90%, at least, of ship battles consist of boarding action. If you are chasing a galleon, it is very common that at least 2 people consistently jump overboard to try and climb up your ladders. If they miss, they mermaid back to their ship and instantly retry. It is very tedious.
Even a system where you activate the ladder remotely would be preferable to this.
@rokuavalanche Let's say this. You are in the middle of a battle, someone boards your ship, by a ramming or a boarding action and they drop anchor on your ship. You trying to PVP your way out of it, jump and accidentally jump off the side of your ship. Now you are screwed. You have to either let them sink your ship or sail/swim far enough away from your area to get a mermaid to return. You cannot get back on because you have no ladders or the invaders raise your ladders.
It also takes away from game strategy. Again if you are a sloop you can try to outmaneuver outrun the Galleon, but if they have the wind at their back there is going to be little to no escape. So now you have a team of 4 players 2 on cannons, 1 underneath repairing, 1 steering the ship. To you and possibly your 1 crew member trying to repair/shoot while the other steers.
At least right now, how it is, and how it should remain. The Galleon will probably attempt to board you via the ladder. This takes at least 1 maybe 2 out of the battle. So now it is a 2 - 2 and gives the sloop a better advantage.
People complain in this game that they get taken out while at port or on an island. That is mainly their own fault for not paying attention to their surroundings. Ladder adjustments are a way for people to not need to pay attention to their surroundings which is not realistic.
Besides lets face it, this is a game with Krakens, Mermaids, Skeletons, and a group that is focusing on collecting magic items. There are ghost pirates, and shanties that open secret caves. THIS GAME IS NOT REALISTIC. So Having ladders does not hurt the realism it is well within the possibility of this game and should not be changed.
@super-poopsy Maybe you're right and a change to the mermaid issue will alleviate some of this issue.
I still think you'd get a lot of people sailing in circles and doing the same swim tactic?
@nightmare247365 said in Pull up them Ladders!:
@rokuavalanche Let's say this. You are in the middle of a battle, someone boards your ship, by a ramming or a boarding action and they drop anchor on your ship. You trying to PVP your way out of it, jump and accidentally jump off the side of your ship. Now you are screwed. You have to either let them sink your ship or sail/swim far enough away from your area to get a mermaid to return. You cannot get back on because you have no ladders or the invaders raise your ladders.
It also takes away from game strategy. Again if you are a sloop you can try to outmaneuver outrun the Galleon, but if they have the wind at their back there is going to be little to no escape. So now you have a team of 4 players 2 on cannons, 1 underneath repairing, 1 steering the ship. To you and possibly your 1 crew member trying to repair/shoot while the other steers.
At least right now, how it is, and how it should remain. The Galleon will probably attempt to board you via the ladder. This takes at least 1 maybe 2 out of the battle. So now it is a 2 - 2 and gives the sloop a better advantage.
People complain in this game that they get taken out while at port or on an island. That is mainly their own fault for not paying attention to their surroundings. Ladder adjustments are a way for people to not need to pay attention to their surroundings which is not realistic.
Besides lets face it, this is a game with Krakens, Mermaids, Skeletons, and a group that is focusing on collecting magic items. There are ghost pirates, and shanties that open secret caves. THIS GAME IS NOT REALISTIC. So Having ladders does not hurt the realism it is well within the possibility of this game and should not be changed.
There's zero point to trying to outmaneuver a galleon with a sloop if they commit to boarding cheese.
If the sloop didn't have to worry about that, it would be a risky but not impossible fight.
What happens when everybody jumps off the ship to go to an island and no one lowered the ladder?
@nightmare247365 In the event that they have boarded and managed to knock you off your ship and pull up the ladders... good on them. They win that fight and they have now stolen your ship. They now have a fleet of ships.
@mostlyjustokay "Again how about the no climbing at full sail compromise though?"
And again, there is no issue with this player minefield as it reduces the operating capacity of the enemy ship.
Furthermore, its not that braindead as the combat is still better than fps games like cod. Aim, shoot, kill/be killed, and repeat
With respect to shooting them until they are out of planks, sure that is one option, however, you can also shoot them faster than they repair as long as you dont over saturate one area of their ship with damage. You can also aim your cannons to kill the repairers. Or board them late fight and force them to fight you while their ship sinks. The gameplay isn't as cut and dry as you think, it just demands creativity and the battle dynamic you described is currently the meta. (As in what people tend to do not necessarily the best course of action)
@rokuavalanche Use snakes in baskets near your ladders. They'll poison and temporarily blind the enemies on your ladders making them easier to dispatch.
@thebostonbean said in Pull up them Ladders!:
What happens when everybody jumps off the ship to go to an island and no one lowered the ladder?
You have a funny story.
And then you swim to a mermaid or suicide.
@RokuAvalanche The change to how mermaid works is something i believe can be done with very little resource/investment from the devs, much like what they did with the respawn distance fix in the latest patch (and that's probably why they did it so swiftly in the first place).
In very practical terms, I strongly believe people should try to adjust existing mechanics, rather than proposing completely new ones, if they want those changes to be actually put in the game.
@thebostonbean Honestly they should blame themselves. But I’m not sure what you mean? If they do that now with the current ladder and with sails up, they have to take the mermaid back anyway. If the sails are down, the ship will eventually stop and they have to swim back. And then you activate the rope ladder from the sea.
So I really don’t see what kind of problem you imagined?
@shadowstrider-7 said in Pull up them Ladders!:
@rokuavalanche Use snakes in baskets near your ladders. They'll poison and temporarily blind the enemies on your ladders making them easier to dispatch.
It's not a question of whether or not someone stays on the ship it's about the near immediate and catastrophic damage they can do in less than two seconds if they manage to get on.
I can find the anchor no problem while poisoned; in fact it's such an automatic route now I could probably do it with my eyes completely closed. After the anchor is dropped it doesn't matter what happens to me on that life - their ship is done for.
@rokuavalanche I also find this the favorite tactic of inferior crews who can't maneuver or aim cannons properly.
@mostlyjustokay if they commit to boarding cheese, the entire point becomes outmanuevering.... at this point I think youre more salty than actually open to realistic suggestions
@rokuavalanche And you as a player are helpless to do anything about it. Except for wait for a mermaid, drown, or get eaten by sharks. Then what? You respawn to someone standing on your boat waiting for you to come back and they kill you again?
I understand your point, but there are bigger battles to fight, like content and cosmetics. If you want a real-world pirate battle game BlackWake seems to be great for that. If you want a casual game you can play for fun, SoT it is.
While I disagree entirely with your thoughts on pulling up the ladder and do not want it to change (btw this was discussed in a dev video I believe) they found that the ladder was best as is. I agree with that.
@super-poopsy said in Pull up them Ladders!:
@RokuAvalanche The change to how mermaid works is something i believe can be done with very little resource/investment from the devs, much like what they did with the respawn distance fix in the latest patch (and that's probably why they did it so swiftly in the first place).
In very practical terms, I strongly believe people should try to adjust existing mechanics, rather than proposing completely new ones, if they want those changes to be actually put in the game.
Except you used to be able to raise the ladders in a previous internal build. They said they took it out because it didn't feel right - but like many things about this game what feels right with a small internal testing crew isn't necessarily going to translate well after release.
Cause don't get me wrong, the first few times it's pretty exhilarating and nerve wracking. But it stales quick once you realize how simple and easy it is - and PvP is pretty boring right now because it's every single fight.
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