[Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles

  • I saw some very constructive ideas here only in the first few comments.
    I saw the idea of shortening an ingame day. Just shortening it by 25% would result in 10 days as 3 RL hours. You'd have an ever-rotating cycle of hours every day. Also you'd have ~3 time slots per day. Something that should come with that is that ships don't despawn the second the time runs out but only despawn once everyone leaves or a certain overtime is met.

  • @demonstrife1 said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    I would like to see the times of the ships more frequent, Since the release I have only been able to do the same battle due to the times the battles occur.

    This is due to real world commitments and I am worried that by the weekend when I may have the opportunity for a different timed battle, there will be no ships to help me.

    My suggestion is to make them occur every 5 in-game days. 1-5 golden sands area, 6-10 plunders area, 11-15 daggertooth. Then repeat, 16-20 golden sands, 21-25 plunders area, 26-30 daggertooth area

    Thanks

    The Problem with that again is that Ships currently despawn once the time is over. I believe the timespan would be too short.

  • Well this is ridiculous...

    Was forced to do the EXACT same battle as I did yesterday because of the way the battles are limited to specific points during the day. I already did the wilds battle yesterday but I am forced again to do it today as I missed out on the timing for the shores a plenty battle.

    I cannot play in the evenings due to work meaning that instantly locks me out of 1/3 battles already and because of the above now 2/3 battles.

    Why stupidly lock it behind these limitations?

    It's already a time limited event (1 week for 3 battles) so why put even further stupid limitations on.

    EDIT:

    On top of this our crew got sunk by the dancing cannonballs as whilst attempting to bail all of the crew got hit by the effect...

    What a fun event this is boys.

  • @mattdeduck How do you think this might be resolved?

  • @cradac said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    I saw some very constructive ideas here only in the first few comments.
    I saw the idea of shortening an ingame day. Just shortening it by 25% would result in 10 days as 3 RL hours. You'd have an ever-rotating cycle of hours every day. Also you'd have ~3 time slots per day. Something that should come with that is that ships don't despawn the second the time runs out but only despawn once everyone leaves or a certain overtime is met.

    Shortening the ingame time wasn't even something that I thought of :) That might actually be the most elegant solution as it's probably just a number stored somewhere on the server. It would result in the battles slowly moving to different timeslots over the days.

  • @katttruewalker said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    @mattdeduck How do you think this might be resolved?

    They could either make the slots available for each battle is 2 hours so there is more frequency in the rotation. Meaning there would be more chances within an irl day to gain the commendations and get the doubloons.

    Or they could allow for 1 full irl day for each crew meaning there would be 2 chances within the week allowing a full day of playing time to gain the commendations and doubloons.

  • Yeah something really has to change. I understand why they did it. If everyone has on this hour the same skeleton ship, it would be easier to find others to do it with. Like others have said however, if you can't play during these hours, you simply won't be able to do it.

    This is not an easy encounter either. Just because you were able to play during this time, doesn't mean that you will always win the fight. Furthermore, you only have a week to defeat these crews.

    *Edit: Add to that the commendations where your alliance needs to have the right sail.

    I had no problem completing all the previous events but this one simply prevents me from doing it.

    Not sure how good this suggestion is, but maybe they can change it so the moment you defeat a crew, the next one will spawn within a day or two in the next location.
    All the outposts will direct you to the current active battle instead.

    I really hope they do something about it before time runs out. I mean, it's not possible for me to play all day.

  • @nebenkuh said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    Thanks!

    In general, it seems like a nice idea and is probably very practical to have all servers running the same time and date. However, as has been stated, it's a big problem for this otherwise awesome event.

    Possible solutions:

    1. Make servers have different times and dates. Idk how difficult this would be to setup, and it would sometimes require for people to server hop until they find a server with the right date, which isn't that elegant. However, it seems like the fix with no changes needed to other aspects of the game.

    Promoting server hopping is definitely not an elegant solution, from all 4 this would be my least favorable.

    1. Speed up ingame time. Probably not a feasible solution because a ton of systems must be connected to this. Merchant voyages, day and night cycle etc..

    You're right that it might cause issues on certain MA voyages and add more annoyance for shadow skeletons as it'll be night more often. However I think that increasing the ingame time for like 25% as @Cradac suggested might be doable. It would slowly move the ship battle timeslots around and could probably be done serverside. Maybe even only adjust it for the three weeks.

    1. Change the skeleton shedules so they appear more frequent. Instead of 10 days, have them spawn every 3 days or something. Make it so commendations will still be received even if the crew is defeated after their shedules end.

    This would mean that instead of 1 days on each post, it has 3 dates on there. Which might make it a lot more confusing. It would also mean you have a lot less time to do each battle, they last quite long and once the set date ends the ships stop spawning.

    1. Just make skeleton ships available independent of date. They're the scourge of the seas. Why do they only open on business hours?

    I think this will make it harder to find other crews if everyone could be spread out over 3 locations and I'm not sure how this will be performance wise with AI ships active on 3 different locations, although I guess that should be fine.

  • @fishst1ck said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    @cradac said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    I saw some very constructive ideas here only in the first few comments.
    I saw the idea of shortening an ingame day. Just shortening it by 25% would result in 10 days as 3 RL hours. You'd have an ever-rotating cycle of hours every day. Also you'd have ~3 time slots per day. Something that should come with that is that ships don't despawn the second the time runs out but only despawn once everyone leaves or a certain overtime is met.

    Shortening the ingame time wasn't even something that I thought of :) That might actually be the most elegant solution as it's probably just a number stored somewhere on the server. It would result in the battles slowly moving to different timeslots over the days.

    I think the issue there is that it would make the timing a lot more complicated to work out in general, and even more so if you're aiming to get a particular ship. Also there's a nice elegance to having one real time second equal one in game minute.

    As for ships not despawning as soon as the last day ends, I'm all for it, but my worry is that it may cause performance issues if a server ends up with 2 battles happening at the same time. If the server can cope with it though, then you could overlap them and increase the window for each battle to 15 days, giving an extra 2 hours for each. Of course that may make alliances more difficult as ships on the same server sail off to different areas, but I don't think there's going to be a solution that's perfect for everyone.

  • Or make the in-game day time longer, say 30 minutes real time so the days slide sideways accommodating more people over time.

  • I am in agreement with @daantjebNL

    Won’t go any further than that.

  • @nebenkuh a dit dans [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles :

    Thanks!

    In general, it seems like a nice idea and is probably very practical to have all servers running the same time and date. However, as has been stated, it's a big problem for this otherwise awesome event.

    Possible solutions:

    1. Make servers have different times and dates. Idk how difficult this would be to setup, and it would sometimes require for people to server hop until they find a server with the right date, which isn't that elegant. However, it seems like the fix with no changes needed to other aspects of the game.

    2. Speed up ingame time. Probably not a feasible solution because a ton of systems must be connected to this. Merchant voyages, day and night cycle etc..

    3. Change the skeleton shedules so they appear more frequent. Instead of 10 days, have them spawn every 3 days or something. Make it so commendations will still be received even if the crew is defeated after their shedules end.

    4. Just make skeleton ships available independent of date. They're the scourge of the seas. Why do they only open on business hours?

    knowing that a fight can last 5-6 days, the solution 3 is impossible, just like the 1, the 2 and the 4, well yes the goal is that we are all on the same fight, already that regularly we are only one ship if you have more fights available all the time ...

  • @jejesasa
    They could make it so the ships don't dissapear when their time slot is up, but stay until defeated or no more players are in the area.

    With solution 4, you could still ally with others and rally them to a specific battle.

  • @katttruewalker Great to see that im not alone. I have all the commendations so far, but i really have difficulty to get The Battle for The Shores of Plenty done:/ I live in Norway and the time is 02.00-06.00 in the morning and 02.00-06.00 in the evening. I have a child and my playtime are after 9 in the evening. Hehe im a little stressed that i will not get this done:/ And i really like to play sea and complete those commendations. Hope there will be a fix for this. befor it ends:/

  • Such a shame they went this way but the consensus is, they made a mistake. Let's hope they fix it.

    I too am frustrated at this issue as I work all day and have responsibilities. For parents with children who have things to do, this decision will really create headaches.

    Whenever Rare do something good, and I personally think Cursed Sails is absolutely fantastic (but should have been in the game from the start), they let themselves down by having a horrible structure.

    It’s mostly annoying because they’re not a new company. Clearly they need someone at Rare who thinks outside the gaming box because at the moment, they keep letting fans and newcomers down.

  • @fishst1ck said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    I think most can agree with the following:

    Timed events
    Cursed Sails is timed for 3 weeks, but with an added special timed commendation which limits each of the three battles to 1 week. Up to this point everyone will probably agree that this is all fine and by doing this chances are higher that people will still be doing the battles at week 3.

    The problem some people have is that this timed event isn't only timed to 1 week, but also to 6 specific timeslots within that week. Which means that if you want to finish all commendations, or if you even want to experience all battles, you HAVE to play at different real world times.

    Investing time isn't the problem, forcing timeslots is
    People here aren't asking Rare to make the fights easier or change anything about them, the only thing they want is to experience them at the only time they can spend on the game. At the moment if I could only play for 40 hours a week, I might still only be able to see 1 or 2 battles if I play at the same time each day. It's like Rare is saying "Thanks for playing our game, but you're playing it at the wrong times".

    Possible solution:
    Rotate the ingame dates several times a week, maybe even daily, so everyone that plays at the same times can actually experience all the battles.

    I haven't really got anything to add that @FishSt1ck hasn't already put more eloquently than I would have.

    On a basic level it comes down to being respectful of the amount of free time you demand from your user base. Pirate Legend was a lengthy time investment but at least you could do it at your own pace. Requiring people to be on at specific RL times just isn't user friendly for a globally available product. In RL I have to do things at specific times (I get paid/rewarded for those things). In my leisure time I need to be able to set my own timetable.

  • @vexed-anemone
    It seems like they lack some sort of playtesting or QA. A lot of really weird decisions lately, like removing Duke for no reason and now this.
    Things were I would really like to know the reasoning process because from the outside they just don't make sense, and an integral part of designing something is asking yourself: does this make sense?

  • The only other solition I can think of might be to scrap the specific dates altogether and just have it so that there is only one active region at a time but the skeleton fleet can be summoned by players (like the meg). Obviously the ships have loot so there'd need to be a cooldown once a region had been defeated before another region could be spawned, maybe 3 hours like a skullfort?

    I dunno what impact that would have on getting fleets together but in the last 2 nights every time my ship starts the fight more ships show up to join in.

  • @winglessthomas said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    @katttruewalker Great to see that im not alone. I have all the commendations so far, but i really have difficulty to get The Battle for The Shores of Plenty done:/ I live in Norway and the time is 02.00-06.00 in the morning and 02.00-06.00 in the evening. I have a child and my playtime are after 9 in the evening. Hehe im a little stressed that i will not get this done:/ And i really like to play sea and complete those commendations. Hope there will be a fix for this. befor it ends:/

    I'm on a similar situation, but in UK times. My play times are normally 21:00 to 0:00, so I can really only do the Wilds during the week. With any luck I'll get the other two this weekend.

  • @vexed-anemone said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    I too am frustrated at this issue as I work all day and have responsibilities. For parents with children who have things to do, this decision will really create headaches.

    This. So much this. I have limited play time (job + kid + general life stuff). I really don't understand why Rare make it difficult to enjoy the content they create.

    I was looking forward to cursed sails but upon seeing the structures I'll probably just skip it and play more Defiance 2050. I might just do the warm-up quest for the sails and then skip the rest. Come back for the next round of DLC and see if it's any better.

    IMO they should not take away quests and stories that they add (maybe change them slightly so they make sense after the event window has passed).

    They should also be flexible to allow people to play the game when they can. If something is time limited then make sure it's very easy to complete (log in between the following dates and talk to a shopkeeper for example).

    I mean they can be as difficult to take part in as Rare wants to make them but it's gotten to the point that if something seems to difficult in SoT now I just skip it. I'm tired of bending over backwards to miss rewards anyway. Maybe if I was still in uni I'd have a different attitude, but now if I can't play a game when I want to play then it's just not for me.

    I like the concept behind SoT, but the implementation is just too exclusionary. For a game that has the biggest complaint being "lacks content" you'd think they'd try make the content more accessible, not less accessible.

  • I'd vote for either a shortening of or extending of the day, this would allow for a slip in times and so eventually would rotate enough around so everyone can take on the event!

  • @nebenkuh said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    @vexed-anemone
    It seems like they lack some sort of playtesting or QA. A lot of really weird decisions lately, like removing Duke for no reason and now this.
    Things were I would really like to know the reasoning process because from the outside they just don't make sense, and an integral part of designing something is asking yourself: does this make sense?

    It's not just Rare. Sadly, it seems all the larger gaming companies act like this.

    When I look at how FIFA and PES has worked, with promotions announced on twitter, at stupid times and for different regions, I am increasingly of the belief that gaming companies do not have the real world in their focus and too often, marketing sorts make decisions that reject inclusiveness in order to prove their job is worthwhile.

  • Another idea and just an idea.

    Why don't we summon the pirates. Why the specific days/times?

    However, they can be summoned with one crew, or solo, if you're a tough guy ^^
    I don't think there are any problems with the server, even if all three skeleton ships are summoned.

  • @musicmee
    Shortening or lengthening the days would mess up merchant voyages and general day and night cycles. I don't think it's a good idea tbh.

    @Vexed-Anemone
    yea the gaming industry as a whole is a total mess, especially the big publishers.
    In case of SoT, it seems more like some sort of stupid oversight issues tho.

    @Shagkul
    I wish they would just beef up the servers a bit. It's ridiculous that Kraken and Skullforts are being deactivated for the sake of an event. It's like someone said in another thread: they add new content, but have to take out existing content so the servers remain stable. So in total, the amount of content doesn't even change.
    Now I was never one to complain about lack of content, I always enjoyed the game. But it starts to feel like they're being cheap on the servers and I don't like that.

  • I think the best solution is to have the battles times for each region rotate daily.

  • @quixoticrocket I love the way you have made your conclusions while you didn't even try the DLC. I'm in a discord where someone said: "The DLC is bad. I haven't tried it yet". I mean come on...

  • @galactic-geek i would call it progress, when HD got released it took(my case) like 4h to find 5th crew m8 to summon meg. Fair enough we actually do something(fight is epic in my opinion) for 4 hours instead of sailing seas to find openminded player.

  • Hey all,

    even tho this doesn't affect me that much, as I have very flexible work hours and can mostly manage my free time however i want to, I have to agree that something has to change.

    I've seen people, who really love and support this game, frustrated about it. As was already stated by others before, if nothing changes, some of us won't be able to finish this event, just because people can't play at specific time of day. And that's really not ok.

    My guess is, that randomizing server times would probably be the easiest and fastest solution to this. Changing the speed in which time flows in-game would affect other things, like MA voyages and would require a lot more tweaks. And giving us less in-game days for beating each battle could get frustrating as you'd have a bigger chance to miss out just by sailing out of the battle area at the wrong time. (which does happen)

  • @musicmee said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    I'd vote for either a shortening of or extending of the day, this would allow for a slip in times and so eventually would rotate enough around so everyone can take on the event!

    How long would that take to rotate the days around? Like in a week how much would they change? What would then new potential spawn timeframes be from this solution?

    If they were making the days longer it wouldn't make MA voyages/athenas any harder so that's the solution I'm leaning towards but I'd like to hear from a maths wizard what specific outcome such a change would result in.

  • @fishst1ck said in [Mega Thread] Real world timings of Cursed Sails Battles:

    Possible solutions:

    Good post here, thanks for putting all these ideas in one place!

    I've just added a few thoughts that sprang to mind as I was reading. Sorry if a lot of them sound quite negative. Not meaning to put down people's suggestions, just trying to think through all the possible implications.

    • Rotate the ingame days on a daily basis

    Pro: Rotating the ingame dates, would make sure that people that play on the same time would actually be able to see all three battles.
    Con: People would have to check the post constantly to see what battle would be where

    Would also mean resetting the day/time once every day, which would affect everyone playing at that point. At worst it could mean booting everyone out of the game, at best it could be very confusing, especially for people on MA voyages unless there was some kind of pop up message and voyage deadline adjustment.

    Pro: By either lengthening or shortening the ingame days, the dates will no longer be tied to real time and the battles will slowly move.
    Con: Changing gametime affects all timed systems, like Merchant Alliance voyages and the day/night cycle.

    I don't think this would make a huge difference to MA voyages and the day/night cycle as these could be adjusted to accommodate the change, but it would make it much more difficult to predict when a particular battle is going to occur, so planning your gaming time to suit could be tricky.

    • Shorten the battles to less than 10 days (Suggested by @Nebenkuh, @DemonStrife1, @Aarghmaargho)

    Pro: By shortening the battles to 5 or even 3 days, the battles will happen much more other.
    Con: This would however also mean, there will be much more dates on each of the regional skeleton posts.

    I was going to suggest a 5 day window myself, but then I realised that only gives players a 2 hour window (or 1hr 12mins for 3 days) to complete each battle, which would make them even harder, especially if you log in part way through that time or spawn on the other side of the map.

    • Keep ships active at all three locations (Suggested by @Nebenkuh)

    Pro: Everyone can always do the ships they need.
    Con: No focus, so it'll be harder to find other players if they are spread over three locations. Possible performance issues of having all ships active at once.

    I think a compromise to this one (assuming the servers can handle it) is to extend each window by 2 hours and have 2 battles overlapping, although that would still create the issue of ships spreading out to fight different battles, unless the algorithm that moves players across servers to keep player encounters at the right level could be adapted to cater for this.

    • Have different dates on each server (Suggested by @Nebenkuh)

    Pro: If you're on a server that doesn't have the skeleton ship active you need, you can switch servers until you find one.
    Con: Actively promotes server hopping.

    This would also reduce the number of servers available to move players to when trying to keep encounters at the peak level, and might make that whole process more difficult.

  • As someone who lives in Germany, the shores of plenty timeframe is pretty difficult for us to do. One of them ends at 17:00 CET, where many are still at work. The next one begins at 01:00, which if you are working the next day makes it pretty difficult as well.

  • My proposed solution that makes one single change is to rotate the areas every game month by moving the next location up one slot

    So currently we have:
    1-10: BST(GMT+1) 1:00-5:00 The Shores of Plenty
    11-20: BST(GMT+1) 5:00-9:00 Ancient Isles
    21-30: BST(GMT+1) 9:00-1:00 The Wilds

    Move it, so that every new month is
    a) Shores, Isles, Wilds (current)
    b) Isles, Wilds, Shores
    c) Wilds, Shores, Isles

    If you only have one game slot to play during the week per day, every day it will be a different area and you'll have at least two chances to do the same area.

    For example, I normally play 9PM to 12 BST, so it would look to me as:
    Tue: Shores
    Wed: Wilds
    Thu: Isles
    Fri: Shores
    Sat: Wilds
    Sun: Isles
    Mon: Shores

    The one disadvantage that you'll have the same area in one 12 hours period. This would affect players that want to do this in one long game session and don't start at the beginning of the month.

    It's even predictable what is all the areas will be after you log in and check what is the area and dates on the outpost you are.

  • The solution to this is super simple.

    The skeleton ships will be in these areas all the time while this even lasts. The skeleton signs on the outposts stays but it tells where they are in that region.

    No more waiting for the right time nonsense and everyone can play and have fun. Because why not? What is the benefit for the players and the game to have them at a timed schedule?

    I'll tell you. None. Zero. Nada.

  • @hynieth Fo you know off the top of your head the difference for Eastern Time Zone?

  • @iviister-z Nope, sorry. I'm European so things like the Imperial system and the US timezones are completely alien to me :-S

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