I personally think that the PvP battles with the spyglass are too long when you're on a solo sloop. I would reccomend shrinking the fight zone to make sure more combat is had or have a tie. With a tie, both opposing ships would have to vote to have a tie, if say the battle was taking 1 hour, by voting on the war map. I think this would get people more into the action and personally... I don't want to have a battle last 1 hour as it gets really boring and repetative
Solo Slooping PvP taking too long
It's just that it's really too easy for solo sloops to run and reset whenever they want, since it's very hard to apply constant pressure when you also have to set the whell, the sails, and patch holes...
Also the sloop is unstoppable. Maybe revert the mast buff only when fighting another sloop ? Or make the sloop chainshots deal 3 hp ?
I began to stop repairing my ship (unless my win condition is boarding and driving them out of bounds (I try to avoid doing that as they don't have any rep but sometimes there's no other way)) in order to keep pressuring and pursuing my opponent. Lost a few battles because of that but I still preffer that over fights that would have lasted hours otherwise.
Another issue in solo slooping meta is that people just don't give up (and I'm sometimes guilty of this too). It is too easy to reset, even in dire straits situations. For example, many times I was or I put my opponent in this situation : You board a ship, kill its pirate, put wheel and sails straight ahead into a big rock, put ship on fire, and then proceeds to spawn-kill opponent until the ship sinks. You can kill him 2, 3 times..... If you miss the 4th spawn-kill and you get killed, the time for you to get back to your ship and back into battle, the other guy has reset, even if the ship had no mast, was full on fire and about to sink. It happened to me, and I did it too, too many times....
And I'm not saying anything about those who run across the map once they have a tier 1 hole....
Worst part of all of this is I'm sure this is all because we're not good enough (me and my opponent) to land all our shots and boards.....
@maximusarael020 said in Solo Slooping PvP taking too long:
I think a shrinking zone will only exacerbate the problem, in that instead of attempting to fight and apply pressure, people will just run until the circle is fairly small and then spam boards to try to drive them out of the now much smaller circle.
Oooooh I didn't think of this.... this would suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Yea, no shrinking circle.
@sweetsandman said in Solo Slooping PvP taking too long:
Solution to 1v1 battles (and even 2v2 battles)....get rid of the sloop mast buff.
The only reason the sloop mast buff ever made sense was to balance against the other ship types...
But that buff literally made sloop vs sloop battles SO much worse.
2v2 battles are very different to 1v1, simply because boarding is so much more of an option.
And making ships work differently in different situations is BAD game design, as its counter intuitive.
You also forget that other ships can also come in to the battle, so what then if another sloop comes in?Ships have to always work the same.
Maybe making a solo ship would be the solution, but I am not even sure I like that.@kakaroto9766 oh that was a general solution not specific to these faction battles, I should have made that clear. It's not feasible to have the ship perform differently based on the situation.
That idea was more to point out that the mast buff portion of the "small crew balancing" that they did back in Season 7 was kind of rubbish.
So many better ways they could have addressed balancing as it pertained to the chainshot... But... Here we are now with annoyingly long, tedious, sigh-inducing sloop vs sloop battles.
Once again I disagree with chainshot being the issue.
By its very definition solo pvp is going to take long because both players cant take too many risks, boarding safely can only be done under very specific circumstances, and big part of any SoT battle is boarding.One thing I suggested ages ago was to give solo players an optional NPC ally that did MINOR things.
- Repair holes (Much slower than a player)
- Bail water (Much slower than a player)
- Steer the ship
And where you can give it basic orders via chat wheel. Steer ship could be just not to crash, or have slightly more specific commands (try and keep enemy ship in cannon range and stuff)
It could initially be a skeleton and perhaps you could even buy skins for it.
It can be killed as any regular skeleton and will respawn in 20 seconds or somethingThat was a suggestion to balance solos vs larger crews, but it could definitively help in 1v1 to make matches more agressive.
@kakaroto9766 Boarding was usually a "finishing move" before the mast buff. Sure, elite deck fighters used it differently, but it was largely something that was done (against sloops) after the mast was down.
Post mast buff, boarding has become a much different tactic.
And now in Season 8, when you've got equally matched crews, the mast buff has only served to extend fights between sloops. It's unquestionably more challenging to lock down a sloop vs sloop fight now because of the mast buff. It allows for more resets. IMO, it's proving to have been the wrong way to have handled balancing across the sandbox.
_
As a side, I'm not sure how an NPC would help speed up sloop battles. While it might allow solos to play more aggressively, it would also allow for more fight resets...so I think the net would still be long fights. All speculation as I doubt there's any reality for an NPC to be added.An NPC also doesn't fix duo sloop battles...I know that's not the thread topic, but I'd argue that duo sloop battles are now just as long and annoying as solo sloop battles because of the mast buff.
@sweetsandman said in Solo Slooping PvP taking too long:
the mast buff has only served to extend fights between sloops.
AND to prevent larger crews from just easily knocking down sloop's mast, boarding and gg. It improved every other matchup but solo. Due sloops is not bad at all.
As a side, I'm not sure how an NPC would help speed up sloop battles. While it might allow solos to play more aggressively
Its an opinion, but I do think the effect of allowing more aggressive playstyle would totally overcome any minor effects the opposite way. RN its almost suicide to leave your ship in a board. (Except in very specific circumstances)
If it's taking too long need to try different approaches ie I've had people play very defensively so I've had to go for more boards.
I'm not completely against this idea as an hour fight does sound harsh but you always have to consider how could this be abused and how can you mitigate it. Ie could this create a new meta of people farming instant draws
@kakaroto9766 said in Solo Slooping PvP taking too long:
@sweetsandman said in Solo Slooping PvP taking too long:
the mast buff has only served to extend fights between sloops.
AND to prevent larger crews from just easily knocking down sloop's mast, boarding and gg. It improved every other matchup but solo. Due sloops is not bad at all.
My point is that the buff was the wrong approach to balance IMO. It didn't really fix much of anything. It only made sloop vs sloop battles longer.
The problem was (and still is) the spammabaility of chainshots. They didn't address that. A galleon crew can still rip off 20 chainshots in ~7 seconds. A brig can still rip off 10 chainshots in ~7 seconds. And a sloop can still only fire 5 chainshots in ~7 seconds.
Their approach to balance may have helped against large crews that have absolutely terrible cannon aim, but in a Sloop vs Galleon battle where the galleon is even halfway decent on cannons, the mast buff fixed nothing.
They buffed the sloop when they should have instead nerfed the chainshot.
Imagine this... Imagine if each ship type could only fire 5 chainshots every 20 seconds. You could still fire at the current rate of 1 shot per 1.5 seconds, but if you shot all 5 of your ship's chainshots in that 7 seconds, you've got a 13 second cool-down before another chainshot could be fired.
Then, every ship would be balanced as far as how spammable the chainshot is.
There's plenty of other ways they could have addressed the problem that would have been better than the mast buff.
The mast buff didn't fix the problem...it put band-aid on one problem while simultaneously creating another problem.
@sweetsandman said in Solo Slooping PvP taking too long:
They buffed the sloop when they should have instead nerfed the chainshot.
No. You are talking about a broadside battle, where you have to be a very dumb player to go sloop vs galleon broadside. If as a sloop you are in full range of 4 cannons with 0 distractions for the enemy team where all 4 can shoot at you...The problem is your skill, not the chainshot.
Forget about the chainshot, in that dumb example/situation any half decent galleon would be able to sink you with almost any kind of ammunition. Normal cannon balls would just overwhelm and/or kill even 2 repairing. Blunders would kill or knock you out, even normal firebombs would be able to lit your entire ship in seconds X).
I think the buff for the sloop's mast was great.
However I personally feel galley needs nerfing. Sloop vs galley used to be much more balanced before the introduction of :
- Reviving (Which benefits you more the larger your crew is)
- Chainshots and knocking down mast (which they partially addressed now)
- Harpoons (Which reduce A LOT the advantage of a sloop to maneuver, as galleys cannot only hook and pull you for boarding, but also they can use it for maneuvers which negates a lot of the advantage of a smaller ship.
The problem for sloop VS galley was never dodging 4 cannons shooting at once. The problem with it is that all galley needed to screw you was to get you in range of 1 cannon and get 1 lucky or good shot.
Nerfs I would think are 3:
1- Add 1-2 boarding ladders, make them easier to board. Feels kinda silly a sloop is as vulnerable as a galleon in that regards. Sloop is even EASIER as you can board via harpoons or existing rowboat if the waves are high enough.
2- Let ships use hook to turn around, but add drag the bigger the ship is, currently you can perform WWWWAAAY too sharp turns with a galley using the hook
3- Let players cut the rope of the harpoon with sword or a shot.@jolly-ol-yep same thing happened to me. I set the entire enemy ship ablaze by constantly killing the enemy and I unloaded my 5 firebombs plus his 15 firebombs all o er the ship in a lot of point, especially behind the table to create a bunch of quick holes. It was an inferno. The enemy comes back, shoot me with the blunder, I get off the ship and I immediately take the mermaid. 3 seconds later his ship is in pristine conditions without even fire. How?
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