Feedback on the Weekender / Doubloons Event

  • DANK JIMB0
    Captain
    Insider

    The firework display, great addition to the game. To my fellow sotters who have never been to disneyland, it reminded me of that which is a good thing. The festival of fishing was a fun addition and added more hunters call flags / steals to get done.

    On the bilge rats checklist and having other crews to participate. It wasn't that bad, but I had to pretty much sabotage an open crew and a random solo through lying to them to get the "play music with Flameheart" one. My plan was to do a solo gally, park at Reapers, and then flip hourglass while spamming "I need help with a challenge." However, a solo rolled up and I told him yeah I totally have a doubloon quest to trade you (lied, more on this later). I made the gally open crew and we got it done. I said sorry I lied to him I just needed the music with 4 other pirates and just left.

    Getting more doubloons through lying to other crews (which is fine to an extent) or highly encouraging alliance server / trading plays is pretty much the only way to do it since most players can easily just complete the smuggler voyage. Oh did you do the doubloon voyage 3x already? Too bad, you can only steal it now but good luck finding anyone actually doing it too.

    I just watched a streamer pretty much take over a duo noob boat, get them to vote up the voyage, drive there, all while pretty much locking their boat down to make sure they were compliant. This reminded me of when a lot of us would convince noobs to flip their hourglass for an easy sink.

    The alternative is to alliance server and trade the crates / moving crewmembers around which is ridiculous. The only real steals is if you are lucky that someone is already doing it and can be there at the same time since it is a small route. Alternatively, you manipulate a swabbie crew to just give it to you or you just alliance server trade. Was this your intention? I think not.

    My recommendations for the next weekender is to let people do however how many doubloon voyages they want. The first 3 successfully sold are worth 200 each still, after that they are worth (just picking a number here) only 50 each. If you steal it or trade it, still only worth 50. This will ensure a lot of people are still just spamming the new voyage and increase the likelihood of an actual steal to occur. Yes, people will still just trade them (which is a great idea!) and alliance servers will have an advantage but this makes it a fair encounter now for everyone.

    TL;DR: The limited voyages for doubloons encourages people to pick on swabbies which is reminiscent of "hey vote on your hourglass" and should be discouraged. Allowing unlimited voyages but with either in the beginning paying less going forward or eventually paying out less doubloons would encourage people doing them all weekend versus turning to trading in alliance servers or manipulating swabbies to give up a voyage. It would encourage the actual stealing part of the event since everyone can just keep doing them all weekend versus only doing 3 and then good luck finding it legitimately (region dependent, pc vs console, etc.).

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  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
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    The limited voyages for doubloons encourages people to pick on swabbies which is reminiscent of "hey vote on your hourglass" and should be discouraged.

    Someone tells me to vote on hourglass, I leave when I have other things I want to do. Nobody is forced.

    Allowing unlimited voyages but with either in the beginning paying less going forward or eventually paying out less doubloons would encourage people doing them all weekend

    And once again the thing that happens is players reaching the max limit within the first day, buying EVERYTHING, which is not something they want to see.

    It would encourage the actual stealing part of the event

    Not really. People would be wanting to do there own thing first, hit the limit, buy the shop out and...stop.

  • Europa4033
    Commander
    Insider

    @dank-jimb0

    My experience has been vastly different than yours.

    The first day, we sailed around and every single ship we asked, the player/crew had no idea what we were talking about--playing a shanty to Flameheart, what?? Why would we do this? What's the point? This is clearly a trap. We dove to a number of servers. No one had a clue what we were talking about, and/or frankly weren't interested. We even waited at Daggertooth for 3hrs or so for the fireworks event. Not a single player came by. As we sailed around later on we finally had a brig sail over to us which filled me with so much hope. I got on the loudspeaker and asked them to please join us in completing the challenge, to include typing the message to them in case they couldn't hear me, but they opened fire and kept firing at us. We had no choice but to sink them.....my heart aching with every cannonball I shot at their ship. We weren't interested in sinking them or their seafort loot, and they left the server.

    Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we spent hours on each server, and never saw a single ship sailing to turn in/pick up chests. It would've been difficult to do anyway, since if they cancel the voyage, the chest vanishes. Waiting for over 2hrs at Crescent wasn't fun. Mobs kept spawning on us, there wasn't a ship in sight all that time, so we finally threw in the towel. It just wasn't worth 200 doubloons to us. I read somewhere that we'd need to steal 26 chests to purchase everything. I hadn't even seen 15 ships in all the combined servers, let alone the amount of players doing this for us to attempt to steal (which was at risk of vanishing anyway if they voted it down).

    The 3 voyages I had on me, were useless to me since I'd already gotten credit from another friend who wanted to try these out (he couldn't stand how mind-numbingly boring it was, and logged out to play Windrose). In the end, after hours of hoping, trying, camping and asking, we just hopped on a galleon, allianced with another galleon, and just kept exchanging the crates to each other. In the 2 hours or so that we did this, sailing back and forth between the 2 islands ad-nauseum, only a sloop came by to try and sink us but failed (no idea what they were thinking but ok). They didn't even try to steal the doubloon chest (it's been our experience they probably had no idea we even had it). There simply weren't enough ships or players doing this to steal from, and everyone we asked had no idea about the event or just weren't interested.

    Fun. Can't wait to do it again next month.

  • DrBensei
    Master
    Insider

    We started out on Thursday with the plan of doing the skeleton lord challenge, but chased two sloops to get them to do the challenge. The first avoided us, the second were obviously swabbies, but really nice people. It also helped that we were already on their boat before they even spotted us and didn't do anything harmful to them, so I guess that made it clear we aren't trying to hurt them, even if they weren't sure what we wanted. We just told them they get 65 Doubloons for just doing what we tell them.

    We also secretly burnt Grubs on their stove, but put out the fire and then told them to burn grubs on our stove too so they also get the Grubs.

    I was a bit unsure what to do with the firework commendation at first, but we figured it out at some point.

    The other two challenges where clear in what to do, and had the right balance between complexity and being clear what we have to do. I'm glad it was switched from ashen lord and curse ball to skeleton lord and firework, as both are easier to achieve. Getting a specific curseball is way to annyoing for a timegated challenge.
    My crewmate was a bit annoyed about the Harpoon challenge, but I call that a skill issue tbh, as me and two other crewmates managed to get up there with ease.

    Didn't feel like people wanted to steal the crate or had it. We did encounter two alliance Galleons were one had the crate (they were too stu... i mean, confident enough to challenge us on a Burning Blade while still having the crate), but this only happened because they challenged us... we would have stacked rituals and never even bothered them if they didn't feel threatened by us claiming the BB.

  • Dark Master JMK
    Lord
    Insider

    I still think event rewards should generally unlock for all pirate profiles instead of having to do events on every single character.

  • DANK JIMB0
    Captain
    Insider

    @europa4033 said in Feedback on the Weekender / Doubloons Event:

    @dank-jimb0

    My experience has been vastly different than yours.

    The first day, we sailed around and every single ship we asked, the player/crew had no idea what we were talking about--playing a shanty to Flameheart, what?? Why would we do this? What's the point? This is clearly a trap. We dove to a number of servers. No one had a clue what we were talking about, and/or frankly weren't interested. We even waited at Daggertooth for 3hrs or so for the fireworks event. Not a single player came by. As we sailed around later on we finally had a brig sail over to us which filled me with so much hope. I got on the loudspeaker and asked them to please join us in completing the challenge, to include typing the message to them in case they couldn't hear me, but they opened fire and kept firing at us. We had no choice but to sink them.....my heart aching with every cannonball I shot at their ship. We weren't interested in sinking them or their seafort loot, and they left the server.

    Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we spent hours on each server, and never saw a single ship sailing to turn in/pick up chests. It would've been difficult to do anyway, since if they cancel the voyage, the chest vanishes. Waiting for over 2hrs at Crescent wasn't fun. Mobs kept spawning on us, there wasn't a ship in sight all that time, so we finally threw in the towel. It just wasn't worth 200 doubloons to us. I read somewhere that we'd need to steal 26 chests to purchase everything. I hadn't even seen 15 ships in all the combined servers, let alone the amount of players doing this for us to attempt to steal (which was at risk of vanishing anyway if they voted it down).

    The 3 voyages I had on me, were useless to me since I'd already gotten credit from another friend who wanted to try these out (he couldn't stand how mind-numbingly boring it was, and logged out to play Windrose). In the end, after hours of hoping, trying, camping and asking, we just hopped on a galleon, allianced with another galleon, and just kept exchanging the crates to each other. In the 2 hours or so that we did this, sailing back and forth between the 2 islands ad-nauseum, only a sloop came by to try and sink us but failed (no idea what they were thinking but ok). They didn't even try to steal the doubloon chest (it's been our experience they probably had no idea we even had it). There simply weren't enough ships or players doing this to steal from, and everyone we asked had no idea about the event or just weren't interested.

    Fun. Can't wait to do it again next month.

    I forgot about the chest disappearing if the other crew ragequits or just cancels the voyage. It reminds me of the veils where you could get a steal but don't you dare go to early to that big green tornado in the sky because they other crew can just cancel it.

    I had a steal at a shipwreck, the other crew got sunk and left the game. The shipwreck was not able to progress further and I could see the doubloon chest in the captain's quarters.

    The weekender portions were not that bad in my experience and I mostly played solo this weekend. It was the doubloon progression that I think needs some work from what I experienced.

    Hopefully it is further improved over the next month for all of us.

  • D3ADST1CK
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    I did 4 out of 5 challenges. The Flameheart one is one I didn't bother with because I knew it would just be a big time waster trying to collect 4 other people. The other ones were fine, but they could probably have removed the Grubs one since it seems a bit predatory towards new players but it was easy enough.

    I did the fishing voyages. Those were always good, so glad they returned. I wish the recipe one was permanent. 300 doubloon reward for these would have been great if it wasn't for the price of the items in the store (more on that later).

    I did all 3 doubloon runs back to back on Sunday night. They're OK. I did see an emissary sailing from Crescent to Mermaids and then to Merrick, but they didn't make a move towards me at all. Having these capped at 3 voyages seems unnecessary. If you do more than 3 you don't get doubloons anyways, and capping them makes it worse when you get a crate stolen - however I can also understand why they are capped, because it would create an alliance server loophole for unlimited doubloons. The way this is set up is not ideal.

    I was only able to play the one day for 2 separate sessions of about 4-5 hours total (I did complete the Grubs challenge on Thursday night in a quick 20-30 min session). I did have to "waste" a bit of time to also make sure I completed the Act 2 deeds, but this might not apply to future seasons since they are removing the Act system.

    I collected roughly 1200 doubloons. This is a pitiful amount compared to what is available at Duke's and luckily I have played long enough to not have to worry about Larinna's store. During non-weekenders I guess the only option is to turn in Reaper Chests at 10 doubloons a pop. If they're adding new stuff every month or season, it's going to quickly become insurmountable to keep up and I can see a lot of players just not bothering.

    I was all for resetting the doubloons and rebooting the currency with something fun. I don't know if this is a worthwhile replacement.

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