Hitmarkers, Chase mechanics, Skeleton aim, Curse balls, Hotkey rebinding, Default pointer position/Window selection in barrels & Sensitivity

  • Faithspeed
    Master
    Insider
    • #1

    Hitmarkers are extremely inconsistent both versus players and skeletons. The best example I can think of is shooting the skeletons in fort cannontowers. You get a hit marker just for hitting somewhere close to the skeleton, be it the wall or the cannon. Also getting a hitmarker when fighting a player when the shot actually did not connect can be very distracting and can completely ruin the way you interpret what the best follow up play is. This is what grinds my gears most about this game currently. Inconsistency when fighting is never fun.

    • #2

    Chase mechanics. By this I mean chasing enemy ships who are trying their best to escape you. Usually every ship has their advantages and disadvantages, but if the main goal of the enemy ship is to just get away they will usually play to their advantages in such a way that you can never catch them (assuming all players are playing properly). This is especially true in mirror chases (galleon vs galleon etc).

    The way this mechanic currently works, the crew being chased has almost all the options for making plays while the chasers only really have cutting the fleeing ship off and gaining minimal advantages from that.

    These chases can usually last anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on the crews. The chasing crew usually ending up just playing a ship observing simulator as you adjust sails, watch for boarders/barrels and dont really do much else. Its exciting for maybe 15-20 minutes before the chase just gets extremely boring.

    Im sure there are plenty of ways to adress this issue, but I thought of a few suggestions involving a front faced cannon (think Flying Dutchman triple cannons from Pirates of the Caribbean). The front faced cannon could have reduced range compared to the normal cannons so once the chasing ship starts edging closer you have an option to fight against them while the fleeing ship can still attempt boarding your ship / drop barrels.

    • A)
      Front facing cannon shoots 2 cannonballs (making it resource intensive to attempt) at once that can only connect with the enemy ships masts, breaking it slightly if connecting causing the fleeing ship to slow down. This could be fixed by the fleeing crew repairing the mast with planks (maybe having to raise sails first or something to fix, not sure)
      It could also be a special cannonball akin to the cursed balls that you have to find to use.

    • B)
      The front facing cannon can only shoot harpoons with rope attached. If you hit with the harpoon it stays connected for a certain period of time, pulling on the fleeing ship and slowing it down. It could potentially also be used to climb over to the fleeing ship from the chasing ship. Could work similarly to curse balls that harpoons are found in the world.

    • C)
      Front facing cannon can only shoot cursed balls.

    • D)
      Front facing cannon can only be used to shoot crewmates (so both fleeing and chasing ship has an option to attempt boarding eachother)

    • E)
      Some combination of above examples.

    • #3

    Skeleton aimbot is not fun to play against. The way they lock to your character and sometimes hit you through walls or through other skeletons when you try to avoid them doesn't feel good. You can jump around corners, jump over the skeletons or hide behind rocks and you still get hit. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth after dying to it.

    • #4

    Currently when you fight skeleton ships they knock you out of whatever you are interacting with even when you don't take any damage. I believe this is caused by cursed cannonballs hitting your ship. This is a very annoying mechanic to deal with as you can end up getting forcibly removed from the object you are interacting with over and over and over again.

    Another annoying feature of the curse balls is there being no diminishing returns on any of them so be it versus skele ships or enemy players you can end up getting hit by the same curse ball for the same duration 3-5 times in a row. If you are on a sloop with your friend and you both get hit by a sleep / grog ball several times in a row and you have any holes you usually sink. Especially when it's combined with getting hit by the sail raising ball or anchorball. Not a fun experience at all.

    • #5

    Currently you can't rebind Q and E for switching between tabs in barrels. Would be nice to be able to rebind these as well as Tab for opening the resources etc menu.

    • #6
      The way looting barrels currently works on PC it can be quite wonky to loot efficiently if you prefer using the mouse pointer for it. This is mainly because the mouse pointer stays where you last put it and if you go a while without looting its hard to remember exactly where it was last time. Either having one inventory window always be selected by default when you open a new barrel or having the mouse pointer default to the middle of the screen would be a very welcome change. For the maximum quality of life you could even be able to select which inventory window you want always selected opening a new barrel in options.

    • #7
      Eye of Reach, Pistol and Blunderbuss sensitivities, even when on the maximum of 10 ingame can feel a bit slow compared to your normal sensitivity running around. It would be very nice if you could raise these sensitivities even higher than 10.

    • #8

    Some sort of delayed regen mechanic after taking chip damage when your health is above a certain threshold ( 80-90%) so you dont have to waste bananas.

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  • gaseousxihro

    Going to resonate with a few of your points here:

    #1 ) I'm not sure if hit markers are processed client-side, but there have been many times where I've fired 3 EOR shots into an enemy player before they died, with each shot registering a hit. They did not eat any bananas. Player combat is already pretty limited and constrictive, so this is a major annoyance that's keeping friends of mine away from the game.

    #2 ) My one biggest suggestion for chase scenarios would be damageable sails. Similar to using planks on the ship, we should be able to use cloth to repair our sails. We deliver cloth, after all. The addition of cursed cannonballs to offer some sort of dynamic combat is really just an obnoxious, shoe-horned approach that needs some serious revisiting (particularly when fighting skeleton ships). There is NO reason any multi-use item should incapacitate an entire ship for 7-10 seconds and prevent repair. It's easy enough to hit ships with cannonballs, and it's pretty darn hard to watch your character sleep through 10 cannon shots penetrating your hull.

    #6 ) At first I hated the new looting system on PC, but if you're using the key combinations correctly it's pretty fast. FQF will deposit all items, FEF will withdraw.

    I agree with your other points here.

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    Hitmarkers, skelleton hitscan, cursed cannonball knockoff effect, sensitivity, mouse pointer location. That stuff kinda grinds my gears, I hope sometime in the future we adress that. Although it's not really that big a deal.

  • Faithspeed
    Master
    Insider

    Appriciate the input. Hopefully more people see the topic and can chime in if they experience the same and have any suggestions!

  • Faithspeed
    Master
    Insider

    Updated post with a couple more points

  • Zormis
    Marauder
    Insider

    @faithspeed I'm on board with you except for chasing ships. Only a good crew will out maneuver another good crew. I have no problem chasing a ship for 30 min, and I have been chased for 30 min, even have a video on it lol. I love the cat and mouse game...

  • Dormant God

    @zormis I think the objective of his post isn't to make the attacker be at an advantage more of them being on an even playing ground because most of the time it's a keg and you have to cannon (turning right or left) then anchor but with the current mechanics (Getting hit by sword kills all momentum, double gun, bad hitmarkers, sometimes weird server lag, ETC.) can make that not feel worth it I've been in a cat and mouse chase for hours before for nothing but just because me and my crew wanted to sink the ship and what ended up happening each time is, Enemy Ship would get to the red sea, anchor turn we would turn and cannon someone over, the other person died to double gun, and swords, when the player got to the anchor, either they instantly catched it or, he grabbed onto cannon/sails with the way interacting works right now (I don't even understand it, is it based on proximity or something) you can interact with something that you aren't even looking at which can get quite annoying when you are in situations where you have to bring it in for your team and you fail because instead of dropping the anchor your dropped the enemy's sails. I think a system like launching yourself forward (with a 15 Degree field of adjustment) Would mean it would require the running ship to account for the player launching forward while it would also take some communication and skill required from the attacking side, and I think this cannon should also only allow you to shoot green balls, and players, another good way to fix this would be to add catch up mechanics instead so that the eventually the cat and mouse will have to end, (I use to play SC1 C&M and some of the mice were really good but the Cat would also get upgrades every so often) one way of doing is that if the game detects 2 ships that aren't alliance'd (And are the same ship) then after X amount of time of being unanchor'd or with being hit by a ball the game will start to suddenly make the sea's unsteady and make it hard to steer making it hard to turn and slows down both ships this would be randomly determined and will make it fair for both crews as they have are both at a disadvantage.

  • Faithspeed
    Master
    Insider

    @zormis On a galleon chasing other ships Ive been in chases that lasted up to 2 hours a couple of times. The suggestions I mentioned is mainly to make the playingfield a bit more even. Only adjusting sails and cutting small corners gets real boring once you've been chasing for a while and both ships are making a minimal amount of mistakes.

  • NoFears Fun
    Master
    Insider

    @faithspeed Some good ideas with the only one I want to talk about being the chasing one. Sorry, but no. I don't enjoy PvP 90% of the time I play, so I usually sail away. I am not running because of loot, I am running because I spent time stocking a ship for a purpose and don't want to see it go to waste. I am usually solo when this happens and because I know that most of the time when you board my ship, the fight is over with, no matter how much I try to learn better tactics in direct PvP. So you would pigeon whole a lot of players that don't want the PvP experience into having a PvP experience.

    To be honest, there have been many times where I did everything right on my ship to get away, and still ended up getting caught for various reasons, the biggest frustration is when I am clearly the better sailor (actually setting sails correctly) and still end up getting caught.

    I also sometimes enjoy letting would be attackers waste their time trying to force their game play style on me by simply outrunning them, without completely losing them. Sorry, but if you want PvP, find a willing target. If you keep the chase going past 20 minutes then really it is your own fault for wasting your time at that point. Clearly the other party wants no part in it and all you are doing by continuing the chase is ruining someone else's game.

    Thankfully, if you want PvP, you can always go after more forts or wait for the Arena. Generally, on those occasions when I do want PvP, I go to a fort.

    I agree with most of your other suggestions, I just can't agree to something that forces one play style on another. Yes, this is a PvEvP game which means there is a potential for PvP. But that does not mean it is mandatory.

  • NoFears Fun
    Master
    Insider

    @faithspeed said in Hitmarkers, Chase mechanics, Skeleton aim, Curse balls, Hotkey rebinding, Default pointer position/Window selection in barrels & Sensitivity:

    @zormis On a galleon chasing other ships Ive been in chases that lasted up to 2 hours a couple of times. The suggestions I mentioned is mainly to make the playingfield a bit more even. Only adjusting sails and cutting small corners gets real boring once you've been chasing for a while and both ships are making a minimal amount of mistakes.

    Then give up, why force your play style on someone that determined not to give in?

  • Faithspeed
    Master
    Insider

    Bumping this in hopes of getting more discussion going

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