Balancing Emissaries

The funny thing is, you can still chain Grade V Athena voyages with relative ease. So they didn't even manage to fix what they went out to fix. The flag value was reduced for no reason. The only thing I agree with is the reduction in reputation, which was too much.

@d3adst1ck

Having a set target is definitely better in my mind than chasing a moving figure set forth by players who have the time to play 24/7.
The 24/7 players aren't setting this target. You are fundamentally misunderstanding how the tier system works.

No I don't believe I am.
I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding how big of an impact these 24/7 players will have by months end when the rewards start to roll out.

I think Reaper's got nerf'd a bit too hard/ in the wrong direction. Either of these solutions could have worked in the same way but kept Reaper's more fun and less of a grind / server hopping fest to hope to find emissarys:

1. Only have Reaper's Bones accept STOLEN standard loot from voyages or forts (the game can easily track this considering the amount of stolen loot commendations there are). Also, return this loot to original rep values.

Re-balance emissary flags back to original value thus removing the incentive for attacking non-emissary ships as much on servers devoid of any emissary ships. The only other alternative I could think is to have a Reaper's emissary get server merged to an active emissary server in those cases since after the recent balance patch, emissary flags are truly the only reliable way of getting rep or just going absolutely nuts on farming non-emissary ships (as my regular crew is strongly thinking to do).

OR

2. Make other ship's emissary flags the ONLY thing to turn into Reaper's Bones (besides the two Reaper's chests) and make those flags really worth something! (with equivalent rep for the gold values)

5k - Grade 1
10k - Grade 2
20k - Grade 3
35k - Grade 4
50k - Grade 5

Not completely on topic, but why is the reaper's bones minimum requirement for top tier is going down?
Yesterday it was 533,928 to get to Master and today it is 524,722. Are people getting kicked? I don't see how this could go down otherwise..

@cptkerman because more people are playing, you have to be in the top 25% of all players who have sold something as that faction, as the more people try reapers the easier it becomes. It’s hilarious just how easy it is to get top rewards.

@cptkerman

Not completely on topic, but why is the reaper's bones minimum requirement for top tier is going down?
Yesterday it was 533,928 to get to Master and today it is 524,722. Are people getting kicked? I don't see how this could go down otherwise..

That is entirely possible. Each tier consists of the 25% of the players that have raised the Reaper's Bone flag in the current month. If a bunch more people raised the flag and entered the lower tiers, there will be more people in the top (Master) tier. That is simply because 25% of all this month's Reapers is bigger number.

If you had noticed the Position (rank) of the person at the top of the "Keeper" tier, both yesterday and today, you should have seen that number get bigger. As I write this, A1phaPh0enix is at Position 49,874 at the top of the "Keeper" tier (with an "emissary value" of 524,268). That means that 4 x 49,874 or 199,496 people have raised the Reaper's Emmisary flag. If another 504 people become Reaper's Emmisaries, the position at the top of the "Keeper" tier will become 50,000; and the "emissary value" may be lower again. As the month progresses, and fewer people try out the new emissary stuff, the "emissary values" representing to the top of each tier will likely rise.

Maths!

Yesterday i was trying with a friend the new nerf of the reaper's and, let me say: Its horrendous. We started at 23PM and finished at 4 AM, with 3 servers hops and just gettin one time to V grade Reaper's. I know that Pvping with a Sloop is hard, basically because you need way too much skills to take on a Galleon, but even with taking on the sloops, we didn't get anything, just because they didn't have the emmy flag on.
In the end, we went grinding some chets until we reach the 5 grade to, basically see 2 boats in the DR minding their own bussines. We sell the loot to get basically less of a level, after spend so much time.
I get it, its a pvp rep, i should just go and get some flags/get some reaper's chest intead of grinding, but as i said, only gets levels for the grade by taking things, and sinking boats with flags, and, i just basically enter in a servers with 0 flags up, what im supossed to do?, reset?, just wait 'till the bell sound and, a flugs up, hoping its not a galleon with full crew?
Im just whinning at this moment, but this nerf makes the reaper's faction just unavailable to any sloopers, and requiring a high skills in pvp and a ungodly amount of hours to get a limited boost of rep, and making this less enjoyable in my opinion.

@musicmee it still didn't deter me from playing haha.. that fantastic to hear.. well done 👍

@marc4815 I agree they probably nerfed it because Xbox players were catching up to pc players and streamers.The devs seem to cater to streamers and pc players anyway most of the time.

@dutchdeadschot Cheers this is correct.They stack the deck against solo players. I’m sorry I can’t be social but most of the time I have to play late night and nobody wants to play with someone not using a mic. So I solo .Gotta love them 4 man Galleons attacking low hanging fruit us solo sloopers.

@kommodoreyenser
I don't think your first solution will do anything against some of the current practices of how people were going too fast- crews in an alliance or in an alliance server will just turn in each other's loot.

@lem0n-curry said in Balancing Emissaries:

@kommodoreyenser
I don't think your first solution will do anything against some of the current practices of how people were going too fast- crews in an alliance or in an alliance server will just turn in each other's loot.

The same can be said for any situation for alliances and alliance servers though, even before the emissary introduction.

My solution to THAT issue was to make all alliance members equally share the turn in and limit alliances to a max of 3 ships.

I came back to this game after been away since FoTD because of this update. The reapers missions were fun as hell, levelling and earning money at a respectable highly enjoyable rate especially as I have family commitments and cannot play 15 hours a day.

Now Rare has done what it does best, and that is make everything into a boring grind fest. Goodbye game once again. Also the leaderboard for this event has been completely compromised by this nerf, well done Rare.

Haha thanks for fixing the athena one especially got to 15 in 3 days and got 50 in reapers too but tbh I’m not complaining my crew mates are though one of them was lucky and got 10 yesterday but the other ones are fuming

Wait you can still do the athena loop it just take athena run and 1/4 to do it haha

@nidzan2820 I mean... you do get 2.5 times the value for all the loot you turn in. That’s also part of the reward for the risk.

@satanicnemesis DR Athena’s are a horrible way to level up Athena now. It takes about two full voyages to get to Grade V - unless you happen to get a few emergent ships or Megs. And Three DR Athena’s got me about half a level from just under 15 1/2 to just under 16. I think DR Athena’s could use a little bit of love (not a lot, but a little) considering the additional difficulty - especially since it appears that someone turned the Roar back up to 11.

@mikethemutinous why is the amount of gold and reputation you get from lowering the flag SO low? I understand reducing it a bit but it seems like too small of a reward for a lot of work.

@nidzan2820 @MikeTheMutinous The point of Reaper's is to Reap. The value of flags has increased for lower grades and has been balanced for higher grades.

Personally, I think they should get rid of the whole minimap idea - it's the one major issue with this update, IMO. Neither Reapers nor TC Emissaries should appear on the map. This will get more people flying Emissary flags when Reapers are playing. I agree that right now, as soon as an Emissary is on the map, those flags drop or never go up. But, that's my two cents on the map.

@danqrl I see where you're coming from, but I just don't think it has had the impact people are claiming. There is enough leeway in the tiers that it remains possible to reach the top one. It seems to be based on a curve. The folks in the top 100 are not going to have an impact on who gets in to that top tier, it's the other 60k players in that top tier (using GH as an example). And, if you think those 60k players are all streamers or play the game 8 hours a day every day, I think you're mistaken.

(Clarification, I have NOT read through every post on this thread, I am simply providing my thoughts to this update, as well as some feedback after playing on it, last night - so I am not sure how much if any of my feedback has or has not been addressed)

So am fully aware of the loop and the speed at which people were getting to grade 5, and especially how Reapers and Athena were being "boosted" beyond what was intended. Of that I fully acknowledge and can attest to its legitimacy.

However I also played through 1 Athena Run and part of of a standard Athena, and I can tell you; You can still do the Loop with the Emissary. Granted, you have added that "do more things longer" aspect and perhaps we just achieved that in a shorter time, but I can tell you, my crew had no issue still being able to loop Athena Emissary Voyage. (3 times before I logged off as a matter of fact) Sure the gold payout and reputation gain was not as high as it could have been but, the loop remained doable.

The "Loop" issue aside, (which for the record, if you want to prevent I say go for it, does not stop me from playing the game) - what I do disagree with in this update is just how it affect solo sloopers and the ledger as it currently stands regarding emissary reputation and value.

While the rewards for the Ledger are not going away (as they are permanent and achievable each month) the issue is that with this month, anyone new or who was lower in the rank, now has less of a chance of getting to top tier positions to obtain the rewards at the end of the month. Reapers especially has such a high tier ledger position I cannot even fathom what it would take for an out of the gate player to to (time wise) to achieve it and maintain it for 1 full month! (let alone the other factions).

2 core issues I currently have after this update, is that, I do not know what the cut off of each ledger tier is and I am not sure how easily is for those NOT working in larger crews to fairly obtain the tier value they want moving forward. Player Position in the Ledger aside, the reward tiers are inconsistent across each ledger. Currently (I am in game now so these are the current numbers):

Reaper Bones Top ledger Value is - 53,121,183
Athena Top Ledger Value is -9,118,980
GH Top Ledger Value is - 8,047,350
OoS Top Ledger Value is - 12,723,618
MA Top Ledger Value is - 15,437,655

Now the Next tier down for each Respectively is:

RB - 522,099
A - 297,000
GH -231,525
OoS - 246,270
MA - 246,513

Those are not small gaps! Again position on the ledger aside, the value of each of the 4 tiers is now spread apart by a wide margin and this update potentially causes that gap to be much higher, especially those with less time, less skill, or even value to begin with. Again I understand trying to vie for a top tier position, but unless you can tell me that everyone above a certain value is automatically within a specific tier (regardless of position) then it makes those in the lower tier have that much more of a challenge to level up their emissary value now that they are getting lower bursts of value with each turn in now. Especially those on solo sloops

Take me for instance, my value in Athena is just under 600k putting me at Legend Tier, so I am at top tier in Athena Ledger Value. I dont care about my position on the ledger, only the value and earning the cosmetics. But how far down in the tier of Legend am I? Can that top tier Guardian player push me out of it? Can that player even catch up to reach Legend status? Is it based on value or based on Position in the ledger? Does the top tier player in each one, essentially set the gap? If they keep earning more, could they set the gap so high that I might be pushed out of Legend in to guardian? If so is that fair considering how high they have set the gap PRE-patch? And again this does not even consider how it might look after this first months ledger resets.

IMO Valid question with no clear answer (unless provided).

@jadedragon00 you only need to beat the second tier score to get into top tier, and the value is not based only on gold but your grade, it’s VERY easy to get into top tier. It shouldn’t be any concern to regular players at all.

@c4ptaincharisma "You finally had a really fun game, instead of a decent/grind slog game. Now you risk screwing it all up." I can agree the Severs were really dead before the update and after the update the servers were full ppl were doing FOTDs and having fun, now with this nuff the servers will be dead again I get why they did it but they took the fun out of the game Now its back to back hours of grinding Rare better becareful as this game is now over two years old and new ppl that start playing will stop after a few weeks, those of us who been playing since day one do enjoy it but we have alot of time invested in it, the nuff was terrible now there really isnt a point to put up a flag just grind like when the game came out as the flag gives little coins and little rep its just not worth the risk as it was