Balance PVP Boarding easily

You realise if you sufficiently pressure their ship with cannons, they can't board you

I don't get this narrative of acting the victim

@hiradc Im not, im pointing out a glaring issue. Our boarders use the same tactic when we play. pummel the ship with cannon fire to make sure they cant do anything.

@jdge439 yes but they can't board if you have pressured them enough, and if they haven't pressured you enough then you should be able to fully guard against any boarders. Defenders have the advantage by default.
There doesn't need to be further balancing in favour of defenders, people only board because bilging is so powerful that its difficult to sink with naval alone.

Changes to boarding would need naval to be changed. Unless this is another veiled request to just make running more viable and not actually wanting definitive ending to naval battles

@hiradc Thats not even close to true. Boarders are very often the first shot in PVP matches. No one has put ay pressure on at all yet.

Im not saying boarding needs to go, Im saying when I board your ship and my team mate shoots the ladder Im climbing and it kills you on top of it even though it landed 2 inches from my head is unblanaced.

Secondly, to go even further, outside of hourglass, firing a boarder at a ship thats not prepared. Anchoring it before the crew even knows whats happening, then WE unload cannon fire at that ship while they try to board and cant board their OWN ship because our cannonfire knocks them off their own ladders while our guy is perfectly safe guarding the ladders is unbalanced.

@scheneighnay if they have enough holes they can't go for boards, and if someone is instantly going for board then that's a skill diff in them being able to juke your crew

Great improvement,

I'm going to go a STEP FURTHER friendly fire from all weapons needs to happen I mean blunder bombs and firebombs already do. So why not include it all just make sense should have happened long ago. Walking through your team should not happen unless you sword dodge. I mean make it even across the board.

Honestly this stop the spamming so much makes it more tactful.

@hiradc I can say that at least for a duo sloop, you can send a boarder and have the other person bucket and repair just fine without any trouble from the enemy cannons. I dont play brig or galle enough to say for sure.

@goldsmen I just edited the main post to point out how much this would benefit the sloop vs a galleon. It's completely ridiculous a guy can stand on a sloop deck as his buddies obliterate the sloop while he stays untouched

@goldsmen so with a duo sloop, you should be returning fire to their cannon line to pressure, if there's 1 boarder the helm can defend this, if you're not confident of ladder guarding then just blunderbomb them a couple times.

It takes them winning initial naval or getting an early one ball to get a good setup for board, and aiming for ladders to support your crewmates boarding is a skill and tactical play so I fundamentally disagree with punishing this. For them to be in a position where they're freely applying pressure for a boarder means you've already lost first naval.
Crewmates do actually get knockback from direct hits just not damage so they can be screwed by their own cannons, and inexperienced crews sabotage their own crew by sending blunderbombs so anything that requires skill like this I don't think should be punished.

The term 'balance' implies that the advantage wrongly lies with boarders here, that's just not true, might not feel nice to be boarded and pressured from cannons but that means you're being outplayed. Other crews playing better than you doesn't mean that there is balance needed

Remember that you have one life going for board (can't be ressed) so it's def not the easy safe place implied by op

@hiradc there is, in no way, I should stand on a deck and a cannonball land at my feet and kill the guy who almost has me dead, and I walk away fine, balance. thats the biggest imbalance in the game. I got my glorious sea dogs, Ive been only pvpping through this game. The obvious tactic of us waltzing up to a sloop, firing a boarder and firing cannbals to make sure he is fine to get on and then fine to take control, is beyond unbalanced.

@hiradc I would argue that what ever strategy works to get you a win is good, if as a duo you can send 1 boarder and still have some one be able to fix and work the cannons without issue, and that works for you, then its valid!

@jdge439 so in the example of duo vs duo sloop, what is your crew doing while they have one less person on board. In theory you have better angle, so potential for more consistent cannon pressure. There's so many things someone has to get right in order to board, I know there's a lot of good players out there so we take it for granted but they could miss judge their boarding shot, you could turn away, you could harpoon blunder them out of water, you could defend the ladder, their crewmate has to specifically aim at an area of your ship.
Like I said there's a lot of skill and precision involved in them not only getting to that point but pulling it off, I don't think it should be punished for playing better.

Fact is if it was overpowered and unbalanced, then everyone would be doing this yes. I've only ever been pressured by cannon fire while someone is attempting a board when I've gotten into a position where they have the upper hand already in the fight. This is not a massively common play.

One other thing to consider is trolling, there is quite limited crew interaction at the moment, can friendly fire with blunders, firebombs and kegs etc and some people go out of their way to grief in open crew etc. Adding this in would add another factor to toxic crew mates to abuse.

Your default stance on this being unbalanced just feels wrong to me, is it unrealistic? Yes but then the balance between realism and fun is the factor here. It wouldn't actually feel fun to have your own crew killing you often.

@hiradc Im never in a sloop, Im always in a galleon and use the cannon fire as suppressive fire on the deck to maintain control of there ship while our guy hippity hops up there. Easy.

As I said, its unbalanced in my favor.

@jdge439 gally vs sloop the imbalance is just pure numbers though, sloop shouldn't be getting close enough that you can be accurately pressuring their ladder guards, and likewise if its gally vs gally if you have the aim to do that at normal engagement distance then fair play you.

Yes boarders can be a problem, but as others have said ladder guarding isn’t that hard and if the boarder stays on then it’s a matter of skill with fighting on ship that prevents you from getting them off the ship. Let’s face it, if you have gotten that close to a galleon in a sloop then it was a helming mistake and you’re definitely gonna pay dearly for it.

My touch on this is simple: Remove option to remove pulling gun out animation with the sprint. If someone is good enough with boarding to be a nuisance and spawn camp you in a normal fight - I'm fine with it. But ability to remove other player in less than a second (and not even from that close) is stupid.

Boarding is necessary, maybe if reparing took a little longer it wouldn't be the case?

Edit: I do agree that cannons having friendly fire would change a lot and for the better (when it comes to pvp). Maybe not full damage, but at least 50%. Sadly, it would allow for trolling - literally noone would go open crew after this change. I still am waiting for captains to be able to kick annoying crew members.

@adara-haze said in Balance PVP Boarding easily:

My touch on this is simple: Remove option to remove pulling gun out animation with the sprint. If someone is good enough with boarding to be a nuisance and spawn camp you in a normal fight - I'm fine with it. But ability to remove other player in less than a second (and not even from that close) is stupid.

Sprint cancelling exists due to sprinting automatically holstering your weapon while running, if you have to do the normal pull out animation, and then slowly walk to your enemy to then fire at them, it would be extremely clunky, and feature no flow, or close calls for that matter. Making PvP operate worse than it currently does.

The backfiring effect is that this necessary feature for a pinch can be used to fire two weapons quickly, which, with good movement and awareness, can be partially outplayed.

Boarding is necessary, maybe if reparing took a little longer it wouldn't be the case?

Repairing already takes long.

• Tier 1 holes take 3 seconds to repair.
• Tier 2 holes (normally caused by a single cannonball hit) take 6 seconds to repair.
• Tier 3 holes (normally caused by multiple cannonball hits in the same spot) take 9 seconds to repair.

You can get boarded, anchored, and killed in one shot with a blunderbuss within 10 seconds of an enemy attempting a board on a sloop. All the enemy needs to do is put a ton of pressure on you, which you likely won't let them do since you're trying to repair all the damage they do to you, leaving you distracted for them to board (in context to sloop of course).

Edit: I do agree that cannons having friendly fire would change a lot and for the better (when it comes to pvp). Maybe not full damage, but at least 50%. Sadly, it would allow for trolling - literally noone would go open crew after this change. I still am waiting for captains to be able to kick annoying crew members.

You have concerns for crew trolling with this suggestion, and then wish for another method for crews to troll with (and don't give me the "but you have to be captain!" bit, it's not that difficult to get 500K gold with a reliable crew, or a bunch of hours solo'ing multiple Devil's Roar vaults.)

Look it’s an interesting idea. I wouldn’t mind playing around with it. Perhaps it could be employed in just one mode for a while.

@hiradc that’s an absurd generalisation dude. And simply not true.

@hiradc said in Balance PVP Boarding easily:

Fact is if it was overpowered and unbalanced, then everyone would be doing this yes. I've only ever been pressured by cannon fire while someone is attempting a board when I've gotten into a position where they have the upper hand already in the fight. This is not a massively common play.

But it is a massively common play though. The reason you might not have seen it that often is because there's alot of kids in the game, and alot of players who aren't really good in pvp, it's not rocket science to know that this makes defending a boarder near impossible, especially when the boarding team is playing galleon and has a 4 man crew + 3 guys that can be on cannons. My team uses this strat all the time and i know a ton of players who do it too. I agree with OP that friendly fire with cannons should be a thing. Coming from a player that uses this tactic to keep them from defending a boarder A LOT.

@adara-haze said in Balance PVP Boarding easily:

My touch on this is simple: Remove option to remove pulling gun out animation with the sprint. If someone is good enough with boarding to be a nuisance and spawn camp you in a normal fight - I'm fine with it. But ability to remove other player in less than a second (and not even from that close) is stupid.

AMEN. I'm fine with double gunning but being able to sprint swap weapons to bypass an animation and kill that fast is borderline exploiting the game's mechanics imo. I feel like it shouldn't be that way because you basically have no chance if the player's aim is good. What they could do is make the sword able to dodge 1 bullet while blocking at the expense of being stuck for a second, not being able to do anything like the animation after sword dashing, this would spice things up and counter the removal of the double gun sprint swap thing.

@vahnkiljoy Thats why its the safest place to be when cannonballs are flying!