Balancing Emissaries

  • @xultanis-dragon said in Balancing Emissaries:

    @danqrl

    Actually what I think they should do is just delete the ledger for this month, give everyone the high reward in all factions, and then just restart the ledger next month.

    It's the same reward each month, so just giving it to everyone would completely defeat the purpose of doing follow-up ledgers, because once you have the top-tier sails, there's no real point in continuing to do it except for self-gratification. This means after month 1, the only pirates left doing it would be new ones, and inherently would make the point of the ledger, well, pointless.

  • I do not agree with this change. I admit the payout for a Grade 5 Emissary was a bit ludicrous at first, but only 5,000 gold for our long voyages now?!? I would set it around 10,000 for balancing purposes.

  • @mikethemutinous

    I think these changes are good, overall. It is a shame about needing to decrease the rewards for lowering your own flag - although, I do understand why.
    A question about the loop for Grade V Athena's and lowering the emissary flag and all that - would it be possible to make it so that lowering your emissary flag removes the Grade V voyages/maps from the inventory?
    That way, you might be able to keep high rewards for ending the session with the flag lowering, but prevent the loop.
    I imagine this may be more difficult and perhaps wasn't feasible, but I just thought I'd mention it.

  • @mikethemutinous this is a seriously unfair nurf. I mean you literally doubled the amount of time it'll take to get to max level, the same tedious loop is now twice as long.

    This just shows you give too much at the start and simply take away. You should always do the reverse, start with less and give more.

  • I agree with many of the sentiments expressed against the changes...

    It takes a whole play session for me to get to grade 5 and complete the special voyage. A normal player would normally have to get off after that point.

    Athena sessions just got doubley extended, taking more time to get to 5 and now more time sailing to finish that final voyage. Not to mention making 10k less at the end of a session. Doubt I'll be able to do a bonus voyage before getting off now.

    I'm tired of balances catering to the 1% of people who stream for 12 hours at a time or alliance servers who never truly leave a session. Both are going to fly through any new content no matter what Rare does. Who cares? Just let them ruin their own fun. Don't punish the 99% of people who can only play for 2-4 hours at a time.

  • @musicmee said in Balancing Emissaries:

    @xultanis-dragon You are right with that one, I do know the team are actively investigating that issue as it isn't the intended behaviour at all.

    Dang. I was hoping that was silent fixed. I've had that happen too many times. Now more than ever the flag is important since loot has been devalued.

  • TLDR: grind harder for our drip feed slaves

  • Wohoo so people who are Athena 20 only needed to grind for a few days while the rest needs to grind for weeks now, great.
    At least the Reapers reward change is understandable since it was supposed to be pvp.

  • @mr-shatango I grinder Athena 10the old way, and I hate these emissary changes. Don’t presume to speak for anyone but yourself.

  • @sonicsonic3 I completely agree.

    I personally solo alot. I grinded most of my rep solo all the way to legend.
    Don't get me wrong, I have some friends I occasionally play with. These guys have taken to alliance server's since the update. Gaining reputation at unprecedented rates going into the top 100 fast.
    I managed to get into the top tier soloing 90% of the time. Planning meticulously my route and strategy for each session.
    Frankly, after this update. I will focus on alliance server's. No longer will so many solo sloops run around with tons of loot. As more and more people realize that they can be carried to the top tier by sitting on a galleon and letting others do the work.

  • @mikethemutinous are you still convinced about that Mike?

  • So basically, the streamers that have nothing to do all day but play have had enough time to get everything to show to their armies of pre teens. The rest of us are stuck with the grind when we do find time. Awesome!!!

  • I understand the need to break the Grade V loop, and I suspect this was likely the most practical way to quickly apply a band-aid to the problem. I hope the team will continue to look at it, though, because these changes introduce a new issue for a lot of "mid-core" players: simply, they make an Athena's Emissary "session" (get to V, get emissary quest, get back to V, cash out) take longer.

    I've had time for two sessions since the update went live, and both took about 3-3.5 hours of sailing, which is about the limit of what my crew can generally commit to. Pretty much every session ends with "let's cash in and then I really need to go to bed." We don't even get to the "loop" part of the process; it ends up being a natural stopping point with a solid reward for us. I don't know how long "Grade V - Emissary - Grade V" takes post-patch, but I suspect it will be longer than my crew can commit to.

    Meanwhile, the V-Emissary-V loop is still very much intact for the other trading companies. So here's a suggestion: break the loop in a different place. Instead of making it take longer, what if players had to keep their Grade V flag for the duration of their Emissary voyage? We already have the ability to remove voyages from the player's wheel (timed-out merchant deliveries), so this would be similar - a warning on the Emissary voyage maps that "this can only be completed by a Grade V Emissary of [trading co]", and a warning if you choose to lower your flag that you still have outstanding emissary voyages that will be canceled.

    Double win: it encourages players to sail around at Grade V, making more tempting targets for Reapers and other ships, instead of immediately cashing out.

    This is a much better idea than what the devs have recently introduced. This is how I originally understood emissaries and I think all emissaries should have to leave their flags up if they want to do their gilded, jmo

  • @burnbacon There is less incentive to hunt a ship without a flag. Always put your flag up right as you're leaving the outpost.

  • Reaching athena grade 5 second time in a session my friend and I could not interact with the mysterious stranger and collect the voyage. Please fix it.

  • @musicmee said in Balancing Emissaries:

    @dutchdeadschot I see the point, however...

    A benefit for solo sloopers here is that ships will make Reapers Bones Grave V much slower than they did previously, meaning you can go about your business should you wish!

    The way I see it, solo sloops are an easy target for most bigger crews. I have never been pursued harder playing solo then I have since the update. Now that reaper ships progress more slowly with chest collection, they will hunt sloops unmercifully. As it only makes since.

    Just because they can't instantly find you on the chart won't make it easier to sloop.
    Once the reaper ship does see you on the horizon, they will either sink you or be sunk. Gone are the days of sailing into the wind until the aggressive ship turns away. Now, you will be forced to fight the bigger crews or try to sell and scuttle. Since the update, I have never been attacked so much as a solo player. Running from galleons until I run out of sea and am forced to turn into a direction that gives advantage to the bigger ship.
    Fighting bigger crews I have learned that the ladders hanging off of my ship are my biggest weakness. I normally win the confrontation unless a couple of players find their way onto my ship. Once I get killed, may as well scuttle or be spawn killed before I can move.
    I am sure that I will run solo from time to time still. However, I personally will opt for alliance server's in order to progress my levels. The people running alliance server's level up in a couple of days where running solo takes weeks.
    My plan now is to run alliance until I am bored. The first time I fall asleep sitting in a server alliance, I will likely move on to a different game.

  • @MikeTheMutinous

    I hope you are doing well and staying healthy. Regarding Athena's, an easy solution to stop the gilded exploit would have been to make gilded voyages not give any progress to an emissary flag's rank. Everything else makes sense.

    Edit: I shortened the length of my post hoping it will actually get seen.

  • This was way overtuned. My crew played for 2 hours, sunk 2 emissaries & did a Skeleton Galleon event and after all was said and done we didn't even get a whole level on 45. Needs to be adjusted back up a good chunk in my opinion.

  • Thanks for killing an otherwise awesome patch.

  • @djcoil said in Balancing Emissaries:

    @mikethemutinous said in Balancing Emissaries:

    Athena’s Fortune Reputation

    The biggest issue to callout with Athena’s Fortune was that we unfortunately introduced a loop where players could progress through Athena’s Fortune grade progression, claim their Grade V quest, lower their flag, and use the quest to get back to Grade V again. This has massively decreased the intended time for players to increase their Reputation level.

    While we didn’t want to reduce the value of the Athena’s Fortune Emissary quest, this balancing issue has now been addressed as part of the below:

    The grade progression for Athena’s Fortune has been adjusted to ensure that to takes more actions to advance, preventing the Grade V quest loop.

    There is a small increase in sailing times for the Emissary quest, which was quite small anyway, requiring players to sail and carry loot further distances.

    Hi Mike and Rare, thanks for the quick turnaround on some of these changes.

    I understand the need to break the Grade V loop, and I suspect this was likely the most practical way to quickly apply a band-aid to the problem. I hope the team will continue to look at it, though, because these changes introduce a new issue for a lot of "mid-core" players: simply, they make an Athena's Emissary "session" (get to V, get emissary quest, get back to V, cash out) take longer.

    I've had time for two sessions since the update went live, and both took about 3-3.5 hours of sailing, which is about the limit of what my crew can generally commit to. Pretty much every session ends with "let's cash in and then I really need to go to bed." We don't even get to the "loop" part of the process; it ends up being a natural stopping point with a solid reward for us. I don't know how long "Grade V - Emissary - Grade V" takes post-patch, but I suspect it will be longer than my crew can commit to.

    Meanwhile, the V-Emissary-V loop is still very much intact for the other trading companies. So here's a suggestion: break the loop in a different place. Instead of making it take longer, what if players had to keep their Grade V flag for the duration of their Emissary voyage? We already have the ability to remove voyages from the player's wheel (timed-out merchant deliveries), so this would be similar - a warning on the Emissary voyage maps that "this can only be completed by a Grade V Emissary of [trading co]", and a warning if you choose to lower your flag that you still have outstanding emissary voyages that will be canceled.

    Double win: it encourages players to sail around at Grade V, making more tempting targets for Reapers and other ships, instead of immediately cashing out.

    Agree with this sentiment entirely. Progress did not seem too fast for most of us mid-core casual players and this solution seems sensible in mechanics and lore, of course the company only wants you to complete this high level quest with their flag on your boat.

  • @aftannebonny said in Balancing Emissaries:

    So basically, the streamers that have nothing to do all day but play have had enough time to get everything to show to their armies of pre teens. The rest of us are stuck with the grind when we do find time. Awesome!!!

    This

  • @captgraykid I agree that, prior to this patch, any ships were being targeted by Reapers if they were in render distance. As a solo slooper, I did my best to keep out of render distance or use the terrain to hide if a Reaper was coming my way.

    Post-patch, we'll see if they still go after non-Emissary ships as much given the pretty drastic reduction in loot value and refocus on Emissary hunting as the means of progression.

  • @aftannebonny This is the way. It has always been the way.

  • Further pandering to the popularity of PvP thanks to streamers and ruining the game forcing players to take part in PvP whether they want too ot not. I'm quite close to deleting this for the better of my mental health and turning Rare into the better business bureau. I'm tired of being constantly harassed every time I get on Sea of Thieves and this new b s update had made it 20 times worse than before.

  • @aftannebonny a dit dans Balancing Emissaries :

    So basically, the streamers that have nothing to do all day but play have had enough time to get everything to show to their armies of pre teens. The rest of us are stuck with the grind when we do find time. Awesome!!!

    I don't know what you have against Streamer's, but they must represent 0,1% of the players base, It is not a problem. The problem in the main update bring was the leveling was way too fast. It is not normal to be able to level 75 in 3-5 days, not normal to be able to get 10 Athena levels in the 3-5 days too.

    Ever for player that play less, with the original update, it would take what 1-2 weeks, 3 max ? This is not what is suppose to be. Been Athena 20 must be something we proud of, not something achieve without effort.

    The last patch achieve that balance. I play it, and it still easy, even solo, to get Grade V.

  • The nerf based on people leveling to fast is ridiculous.

    If speed leveling is the problem why not get rid of alliance loot rewards, or nerf those rewards. Everyone I know that has been in the top 500 use alliance server's to speed up the grind.

    People who have played the game less than a month are maxed out in reputation because they are being carried on alliance server's. Server's where the game is not being played as intended. I know players who take turns sinking one another to level extremely fast. I played with a new player, 10 year's old. Who maxed out reaper rep in two afternoons of doing this kinda stuff.
    Personally, I have refused to get into alliance server's as it's not a real SoT experience. However, I am about to scroll the group boards looking for a player alliance server now. The extended times needed for Athena runs is the straw that broke the camel's back.

  • @dutchdeadschot keep in mind this game is meant for crews. Solo slipping is hard mode. Always has been. And I say that as I split my time evenly between soloing and playing with a group

  • @mentimjojo said in Balancing Emissaries:

    Getting grade V is still very easy, 1 fort + AI ship.

    You keep saying this. I did a fort (before the nerf) as a GH and it only gave me like 1 level of emissary rep from grade 2 to 3.

  • hi my name is paolo, i am 37 years old, dad and gym manager. I am a legendary pirate from day one, and an insider member. I just started playing again because you raised the level to 75.

    I have to tell you two things:

    1. it is not fair that to become a legendary pirate it took me 9 months playing with many people or alone, and now many people have succeeded in a week ...

    2. I tried to make some trips alone, but it is impossible to go in search of treasures for example, since millions of skeletons appear on the island every 30 seconds!

    3. the appearance rate of the skeleton ships or the megalondote too high, when I am about to finish a mission after 5 hours they kill me or some other opposing crew. guys do something, you are making many people hate the game like this, because many people like me can't play 8 hours straight. being an online game there is no rescue, and it is not fair that after 5 hours like today, I lose everything for a skeleton ship.

    4. Many people use the jump server function to do farming, since alone is like I said before whipping ... why not directly insert the closed servers so as to give everyone the opportunity not to take half an hour to find each other?

    5. please enter a PVE mode to play two hours to make a level and turn off?

    6. In these years I have played skipping a few months, have you introduced the new levels, where did all the experience points recovered in these years after obtaining the pirate legend honor go? thrown in the trash? at least for those who were pirate legend you could count those too instead we are "equal" to the others. moreover now you have also lowered the reputation gained by doing athena and other things ..

    Please make this game playable and not frustrating

    I can't afford to stay stuck like today for 5 hours straight and not bring home anything, it's not fair for the whole community.

  • Lower level Emissary Flags are worth more Reputation and Gold compared to their original value, while the Grade IV and Grade V flags have been reduced, as while we still want these to be the most rewarding, they were excessively high given how we’re seeing players play at scale.

    I feel like the reputation for turning in Grade IV and V flags should have stayed the same or increased, seeing as you decreased the rep for everything else... (and half the time when I am Reaper's Grade V there are almost no other emissaries because they are scared or something, even after the game forces me to switch servers, I can go hours without seeing another emissary).

  • @entspeak the two times I've played since the update we signed up for reapers, and aside from a few ships we caught in the first 15 minutes of play there were no emissaries on the server, despite playing for around 4 hours each time. So non emissary ships were what we had to go after.

    A big part of the problem with non emissary ships getting attacked is that Rare was incapable of coming up with a better idea for a risk factor for reapers than letting everyone on the map see that they are there, or a better idea for their benefit than letting reapers see every emissary on the map at grade 5. Which means anyone already on a server when a reaper signs on is going to lower their flag and switch servers as soon as they cash in, and anyone just getting on is going to get off and find a different server. Which leaves the people who don't want the extra risk of being an emissary as the only prey on.the server.

  • @william-flint said in Balancing Emissaries:

    @entspeak the two times I've played since the update we signed up for reapers, and aside from a few ships we caught in the first 15 minutes of play there were no emissaries on the server, despite playing for around 4 hours each time. So non emissary ships were what we had to go after.

    A big part of the problem with non emissary ships getting attacked is that Rare was incapable of coming up with a better idea for a risk factor for reapers than letting everyone on the map see that they are there, or a better idea for their benefit than letting reapers see every emissary on the map at grade 5. Which means anyone already on a server when a reaper signs on is going to lower their flag and switch servers as soon as they cash in, and anyone just getting on is going to get off and find a different server. Which leaves the people who don't want the extra risk of being an emissary as the only prey on.the server.

    This^

  • @mikethemutinous We definitely needed this rebalance as it was far too easy reaching PL20. However the fairness of these changes will only come in effect after the emissary reset in a month, as those who did not take advantage of the early will now have a harder job getting the emissary season rewards. This always happens in a lot of games and sadly the discouragement always drives away lots of new players that were finding the increased loot fun enough to keep playing the game. However if you do nothing then you will have players that have half a billion gold by the next season and can buy all future content with their savings.

  • @mikethemutinous

    I think everyone is overreacting just a bit.

    Everyone seems to think that power leveling and bathing in copious amounts of gold and reputation is what makes this update fun.

    There's clearly a vision and an intended method of progression when you play as an Emissary, especially as an Emissary to Reaper's Bones. It is absolutely not unreasonable for them to nerf the hell out of loot turn ins and buff Emissary flag turn-ins - it just makes sense. As Mike said, playing as an Emissary to Reapers is about sinking other Emissaries. How can that possibly be the focus of the company when all of the gold and rep is coming from doing forts instead of sinking ships?

    They took the money and rep from where it was out of place (PvE) and moved it to where it makes sense (PvP) - my only problem is that sometimes servers are dead with no Emissaries, which can make for a very unfortunate session if your plan to play as a Reaper Emissary.

    As for Athenas? Well that was just clearly broken.

  • Huh, no notes on respawn improvement? Mermain spawning near enemy ships never seemed to change. Can you guys please address some of these as it has a very negative effect on solo players passive and aggressive.

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