Latest batch of seafaring changes!

Morthif

Eleusis is kinda screwed with seafaring being split between the Mariners Guild and the Meropis Trading Company. 

Saeva

I don't see how this changes anything about regular folks getting out or being restricted. The only restrictions that ever happened were caused by the first batch of changes that forced people to rely on each other to create a full crew, some who couldn't do essential things for captaining or offensive/defensive sailing. Kinilan didn't say anything that wasn't already on the update files and it still doesn't make sense to me yet how this is ... Streamlined I guess? Mostly it feels like we are leaning on two systems (SSP and Auras) that don't mesh particularly nicely. 

Not or trying to sound like the naysayer and I'm not saying change it back either. It just feels really... Clunky

Saeva

I should clarify my ? A little more.

for instance.. I have grabbed helm and command to full five ranks. Great. They seem interesting to test out. Now, why do I have a rank in weapons and a rank in deckhand? I'm never, ever going to tune to an aura I have one rank in. Does that make sense? What's the point?

Morthif

It seems obvious that to get the most out of Seafaring you are going to want to go out as a team with different max Aura's. The way each spec is setup now I agree that I don't see a point in bothering with my last 2 SPPs. Perhaps instead of SPPs at transcendent Seafaring everyone could just pick 2,5 specs. The full benefit of 2 specs and some minor but meaningful bonus of a third?

Kiet

The other shitty change is that someone with just a little seafaring has nothing to contribute now that I can see? Before, you could get 1 spp in weapons and contribute, now the little guys have nothing to do since fireweapon is a few lessons in.

Aerek

So the main complaint is that you end up with one or two SPPs left over? As far as problems go, that seems like a pretty good one to have. I guess they could reduce SPPs at Transcendent to a rounded 30 and that would solve that issue, (two specs at 15 each) but I personally like having Spyglass despite being Weapon/Helm focused, so I hope not.

I don't think a spec is going to need to be maxed just to be useful. It's fine (and obviously encouraged) to go that route, but I'm probably going to end up with 1 spec at V, 1 at IV, and two at II, so I can have some of the low-level utilities along with my focuses. Sure, my rank IV aura won't have its end-game perk, but I hardly think someone's going to tell me "Only IV? You're a penalty to the team." I don't think the end-game perks are so good as to require that sort of thinking. (Except Command. If Command is ship-wide and we can all cast spells, that's pretty f'n good.)

Nicola

Remote casting of seaspells is not a ship-wide buff. That's a bonus for that Rank 5 sailor.

Krypton

Isn't a Lvl1 Deckhand aura still better than nothing for fleet maintenance?

Aerek

Nicola said:

Remote casting of seaspells is not a ship-wide buff. That's a bonus for that Rank 5 sailor.

Dislike'd.

Saeva

It's not that I hate left overs, it's that everything but that one or two useful things I attain from having to fully rank out a few specs (and let's be real, unless you max them they are mildly useless from what I see) is useless to even know. And now more lackluster and pigeonholed than ever. 

This is is coming from someone who expressly stated that you never take out a naval ship alone. And tells all the Mariners that sailing alone is up to them on their personal ships and it's completely stupid - not only from a one player game perspective but safety wise. I'm not averse on -any- level to teamwork. 

Kiet

Krypton said:

Isn't a Lvl1 Deckhand aura still better than nothing for fleet maintenance?

Yeah, but just sitting there being a passive aura bot doesn't really feel very engaging. Also, I'm wondering if providing an aura will give seamonster xp now?

Kiet

Also re: the leftover spp's: I think just adding 1 spp to seafaring would help a lot, then you can actually get rank 2 in a third spec if you max two.

Also just to clarify, these are minor gripes, the overall changes are pretty good imo.

Krypton

^^^ I mean for solo maintenance of your docked ships. The Deckhand aura is the only useful aura for docked ships.

Saeva said:

It's not that I hate left overs, it's that everything but that one or two useful things I attain from having to fully rank out a few specs (and let's be real, unless you max them they are mildly useless from what I see) is useless to even know. And now more lackluster and pigeonholed than ever. 

I can see picking up Spyglass and Salvageops (6SPPs) over getting the 2nd RankV as being useful to some people.

Ahmet

It seems like the changes made the Seafaring skillset more centralized, with less emphasis on the spps themselves. Makes it so people don't -have- to weigh spp abilities like shipwarn/wavecall/emergencies/shield against one another and miss out on super-important functionality at sea. Post-change, Seafaring is more well-rounded, and the specialisations actually -feel- like you're specialising and gaining bonuses in those different specialisations, instead of learning a quarter of what you might be able to do with a full crew. It actually seems to add a bit of forethought into each sailing trip and makes you a bit more well-rounded, instead of having to completely respec those spps if you want to change your function at sea. 

As far as the few extra spps leftover, there's really no reason to complain about having 2 extra auras. I mean, sure they could give you one more spp to get you to rank 2 in something instead, but compared to the 30 it takes to max 2 specs, there's no detriment in having those two extra rank 1 auras for the 1 time in a thousand that you'll ever use the rank 1.

The only real complaint I've heard is that certain skills aren't available to people with fewer lessons in the skillset, but that's not really now any of the skillsets are balanced, from what I can tell. Class skillsets have the absolute bare necessities at the beginning and then as you move up you get the utility and other stuff everyone wants. I could be wrong, but I really don't see any reason for the admins to balance any particular skillset around the people with the least invested in it. 

Anyway, I'm sure someone's ninja'd me by now, but yolo.

Kiet

Right, but the problem is it's not difficult to get people to invest in their class skills. Class skills are fun, always there, and add utility or the ability to bash or pvp. Convincing people with no seafaring experience 'well just dump a bunch of lessons into this so you can be useful' when they've never tried it and they usually have other priorities for lessons seems like an uphill battle we shouldn't have to fight. Someone with just an attested marque and 0/tiny amount of lessons should at least be able to do something so they can get a good taste of seafaring and decide if they want to invest more later.

Greys

Now that its shield or rainstorm, always need people on buckets. 

I definitely feel a lot of quality of life things and am glad that plundering replaces theft. I don't know where each ability lies in terms of lessons but I'm liking it over. I think what will happen is most people will have a single rank 5 for their aura then dabble a bit as with only a single aura per person, less incentive to get 2 level 5's.

Kresslack

Kinilan said:

Old pit and ship to ship Thurisaz FTW.

Since we're being nostalgic, being able to track people on ships with your falcon and find out exactly where they were by the chop patterns around them. Really pissed Delphinus off when we found him once, all the way up in the northern chops, apparently mapping.

Krypton

Kresslack said:

Since we're being nostalgic, being able to Metamorphosis/Dragonform track people on ships

Kiet

Obliterate across ships

Aerek

Greys said:

Now that its shield or rainstorm, always need people on buckets. 

I definitely feel a lot of quality of life things and am glad that plundering replaces theft. I don't know where each ability lies in terms of lessons but I'm liking it over. I think what will happen is most people will have a single rank 5 for their aura then dabble a bit as with only a single aura per person, less incentive to get 2 level 5's.

Yeah, and now that I know you can only switch auras every 30 minutes, it's not like you can hot swap back and forth between 2 max rank specs on the fly. Looking pretty reasonable to get your favorite spec up to 5 and then investing to get whatever other abilities you actually want. Having 2 max ranks would be useful if you want to accomodate someone else who might have the same spec as you do, but you'd probably not get a lot of use out of one of them.

Jinsun

Eh, I've been frustrated trying to build a dedicated crew. I really liked that with a cutter, one person could stand some chance against a galley or strider if you could board and kick ass. Getting people in Ashtan to do anything but raid and mindlessly shopkeep has seemed like such a chore. I like the tether change, I'll just miss the unique experience I'd get from popping on someone's ship and chatting. Also, just really want there to be less need to have 5 people on a ship. 

Greys

@Jinsun 5 people? Unless you have a galley, I don't see much use past 4 much less a need for 5.

Anaria

Some issues I've encountered so far:

Syntax:

   SHIP MANOEUVRE NORMAL|STEADY|STATIONHOLD|EVASIVES|EMERGENCIES

Stationhold no longer exists. Steadygoing and emergencies work, but attempting to use normal, underweigh or evasives gives me the message that I don't have the skill to do that. My ship is effectively locked into either steady or emergencies. Even disembarking does not clear this.

SHIPSCAN appears to be broken in harbour. It only shows the last ship on the list of docked ships instead of all ships docked.

The Grapple/tether system has all kinds of issues. Yesterday morning ships were getting stuck together, unable to disengage. One ship sank another and was then stuck in place as if it was still grappling, unable to break free. Someone told me this may have been fixed already.

It was reported on MTC and MG channel that the 3x plunder limitation is broken and that a ship can be plundered an unlimited number of times, with victorious swashbucklers gaining insane amounts of xp each time.

There really needs to be a way to level up your swashbucklers other than plundering people. Sure, if your lubber swashies survive a plunder attempt they get xp, but they aren't going to survive against elite XIII pirate swashies who plunder people on a regular basis. The defense against piracy should not be piracy

Skye

Anaria said:

It was reported on MTC and MG channel that the 3x plunder limitation is broken and that a ship can be plundered an unlimited number of times, with victorious swashbucklers gaining insane amounts of xp each time.

Y'know it's funny because it became very quickly and blatantly obvious that this was broken but the person who attacked me continued to do it on the upwards of what appeared to be over a dozen times. I'm not sure if this was repeated to any other ships that were subsequently attacked, but Clementius (bless His soul) often liked to remind us that 'if it's too good to be true'...

Kinilan

Anaria said:

There really needs to be a way to level up your swashbucklers other than plundering people. Sure, if your lubber swashies survive a plunder attempt they get xp, but they aren't going to survive against elite XIII pirate swashies who plunder people on a regular basis. The defense against piracy should not be piracy

Crew XP trades and killing monsters monsters.

Marisella

Daeir said:

Okay, this might be unpopular but:

Why not remove the lesson cost from Seafaring basic skills completely?

Allow full access to the skillset based on time spent at sea (once a marque is obtained), or character level. Allow lessons to be invested into SPPs at the same rate that they currently are. That way, lesson investment in Seafaring actually and purely dictates your ability to specialize.

The system is arguably one of Achaea's chief draws, but it is stifled VERY heavily by its lesson investment requirement which with the new changes, became significantly higher. I can't advocate a novice spending a hundred lessons on a system that they may only use infrequently.

I can see people idling and hanging out on the sea for hours on end just to get full access to the entire basic skillset. Also, do you mean people should be able to invest lessons into the specialisations they want to rank up in Seafaring? In that case, it seems mighty difficult for the current SPP system to allow for fluid re-specialisation.

Also, @Skye, that happened to the Scions ship and Ellodin's ship. I think he issued and got the admin to help out. They shifted my ship and said to wait until the fixes are in. From the message I received about bug fixes and looking at the ship that was bugged, the hook and tether system seems fixed. 

Anaria

Kinilan said:

Anaria said:

There really needs to be a way to level up your swashbucklers other than plundering people. Sure, if your lubber swashies survive a plunder attempt they get xp, but they aren't going to survive against elite XIII pirate swashies who plunder people on a regular basis. The defense against piracy should not be piracy

Crew XP trades and killing monsters monsters.

I don't think they get XP for killing seamonsters. I'm not sure about this though. I'll re-post when I know for certain. If they DO, that is fine then.

Crew XP trades though... is a terrible idea. That would require a stupidly high investment of gold and time, making swashbucklers too valuable to lose. Nobody ever does those crew xp trades anyway. Given a choice between circumnavigating the globe 36,000 times and spending hundreds of thousands of gold on cargo, or losing a little cargo and a couple thousand gold when I get plundered, I'll chose to just put up with being plundered if I lose the fight. It is cheaper and far less tedious.

Kresslack

Anaria said:

There really needs to be a way to level up your swashbucklers other than plundering people. Sure, if your lubber swashies survive a plunder attempt they get xp, but they aren't going to survive against elite XIII pirate swashies who plunder people on a regular basis. The defense against piracy should not be piracy

Swashbucklers should get XP for defending a ship as well as attacking one, if they don't already. Especially considering the whole reason they were introduced was for ship defense.

Kinilan

Kresslack said:

Anaria said:

There really needs to be a way to level up your swashbucklers other than plundering people. Sure, if your lubber swashies survive a plunder attempt they get xp, but they aren't going to survive against elite XIII pirate swashies who plunder people on a regular basis. The defense against piracy should not be piracy

Swashbucklers should get XP for defending a ship as well as attacking one, if they don't already. Especially considering the whole reason they were introduced was for ship defense.

They do, not as much iirc.

Oh and attacking swashies have a chance to die. So Piratey types might gain more swashie xp as they do what they do but they will also lose some of it.

Tahquil

Anyone else find it kinda ironic that fresh faces to sailing are going to hurt more from plundering mechanic and will be fatter, juicier targets then those who have a bit of experience under their belts?

Its theft, but you want/are encourage to hunt the green and naive.