There has been a severe lack of forethought put in to the combat mechanics surrounding a player’s ability to run away once engaged in combat. Today I’ve spent over 1.5 hours combined simply chasing people once engaged with them. That’s 1.5 hours of wasted gameplay spent trying to catch Mediator and Bermuda MC’s that skirt through these pvp zones as though they own the place. Why? Because they can’t be caught. I’ve witnessed FT’s, NO’s and Priv’s all in these small zippy ships using them to almost taunt anyone in a bigger ship.
So why attack them? Firstly they are the ones doing the attacking most the time. I believe it’s become a form of griefing to attack slower ships and then just run away from them causing them to lose 2 minutes time or more if you keep them in combat and keep outrunning them. An example of griefing was earlier today when a faster ship was able to shoot, dump guns, zip away, shoot, dump guns, and kept us in combat for 15+ minutes. Ridiculous. Completely stupid. Then there’s the option of not attacking the ones who aren’t aggressive. Those are the ones carrying the SOL parts and the goodies you can’t afford NOT to attack.
People deserve the opportunity to run but where it crosses the line for me is absolutely when running is claimed as a tactic. The mechanics need to be changed. If you fire a shot you should be locked in to the encounter permanently because it means you want to fight. No more of this run and gun griefing No more of the lvl 50 Naval Officers who should be in frigates skating around in bermudas.
As it stands right the only viable solution is to join them. I certainly can’t beat them.
I was one of the PotBS Beta players who canceled his pre-order. What beta taught me was that PotBS is an addictive game, with no reason to stay addicted.
While I understand your frustration at the PvP chase, I have to admit that I think the solution of “once-fired-locked-in-combat” is a bit flawed. I found myself, as a FT’er, accidentally in PvP a few times, but I had speced to use grapeshot, fired a few times, decimated their sails, and fled.
The real problem with PotBS is not the FT’ers being able to flee, but the fact that their whole game is not very balanced.
PotBS has one of the best economies I have ever seen, stunningly accurate ship specs and physics, beautiful graphics. But not much more… This game needs more than just a FT nerf.
I’m not sure what you expect to happen if you have a group of slow ships. Every 6 man group absolutely 100% needs a tackler, who is fast enough to close and bar shot a fast attacker. Superior agility and speed determine fights.
Some of the best solo pirates are driving Sleek Packet Boats, MC Bermudas, or Sleek Xebecs, specifically so they can catch the ultrafast boats. It’s essential, and it’s playing to win.
Personally, i’m currently driving a Sleek Packet (as a FT doing solo PvP) have been doing extremely well (not sunk yet in about 15 1v1 fights)
Unfortunately my group usually does run with a tackler. While it helps against the faster frigates like the Triton it doesn’t seem to be helping any against those who who bring out Xebecs and Mediators. I’ll talk more on Mediators later and how they are actually broken or unbalanced.
Hi Keen, first I want to say that I really enjoy your posts about PotBS. Second, I want to let you know that I find it funny that you are complaining about something that you would do if you were not a pirate 🙂
My lvl 8 NO was running a “Marrie” lvl4 ship( sorry do not have money for antying better) with parts to creat an Iron mine and was attacked twice by pirates on the way through red cirlce zone. The first time it was attacked by lvl 12 Ketch piloted by Jack Simple (yes he is infamouse on PotBS boards for his relentless pvping). I tried to run away but he ran me down, shot my sails and I lost my first ever mining components 🙁 It sucked to be robbed like that, but it taught me a lesson about speed and pirates.
Next time I was attacked again by 2 lvl 30 something pirates and I ran like a wind and they did not catch me 🙂
One of them was MC bermuda sloop, but I managed to out run even him, by running very close to the edge of red cirlce and then just exiting it once he was trying to pull me into battle.
Did I feel sorry for those lvl 30s trying to pick on my lowbie, not at all. So stop crying about peeps running, while you trying to rob them,lol. I bet you do not attack lvl 50s with your lvl 40, you probably are trying to catch thos lvl 10s and 20s with it. You would probably run away too if you did not have a chance.
Lowbies in those ships I absolutely understand. They are the BEST ships at that level and are even unbalanced in use later on with mods on them. I’m not crying about the lowbies running in them. I’m crying about the level 40-50 Naval Officers and Privateers in them using their skills to make those ships basically invulnerable and uncatchable. From there I’m crying about them being used not for combat but to grief people by jumping slower ships then running away causing nothing but loss of time.
I’m doing a lot of crying but I feel it’s justifiable. 😉
Pro Tip: Get in a lowbie ship yourself. And stop naming your ships “The Black Pearl”. Those big boats are find for port battles but will fail to catch prey 9 out of 10 times.
My Mediator MC hits 26-27 knots with skills/mods. I usually get surrender offers within 30 seconds of the battle starting because I’ve already caught up to 100y behind them. As far as the “griefing” by taking you out of play for a few minutes, that’s a valid tactic. That’s what we call “creating a diversion”. All those movie heroes are griefers by your definition.
Oh, and in case you forgot, there’s no crying in the red circle. Yarrr.
I would never name my ship “The Black Pearl”. I name all my ships “Pwnzor111!!!1eleven”, of course.
Call it whatever you need to justify abusing broken mechanics. Hardly legitimate to call it a distraction though when there is nothing to distract someone from within 2,000 miles.
Example: St. John’s is already set into conquest mode for Spain and England. Pirates in the area are looking for some good fights. SoloPlayerA in a Mediator MC Cutter jumps a Pirate or group of pirates and strings them along for anywhere from 2-15 minutes. Yeah okay… “distraction tactics”… right.
There is no crying in the red circle about legitimate gameplay. Borderline exploits, to me, are an exception.
Keen, you’re looking for the MMO down the street. In these waters, you don’t out-level good equipment. You don’t stop using equipment just because you’re new level gives you access to something new.
If you’re tackler can’t catch them, or at least buy you 2 minutes to get away (consequently, then rejoin the battle with better wind if you want), then your tackler is broken. No one taking the game seriously should be getting “griefed” like you are.
@Hotan: You can’t rejoin pvp battles. They lock after a minute. Our Tackler can catch them, but with the Privateer and Naval Officer repair and skills they can easily evade and get away. Regardless of how much time we are grief – we are still griefed.
Is the problem that the act of engaging you in PVP drops all your party into a PVP instance, and then can’t see the rest of the world, thus allowing other enemy convoys to sail past unharassed?
That sounds like broken game design -you’re reaping the bounty of FLS’s decision to Instance all sea combat. Great for scaling, very bad for coherent world interaction.
Well, yes and no Michael. It’s a problem because it takes you out of the world and throws you in to an instance thus isolating you from any other opportunities. As for allowing ships to sail by unharassed – I don’t know. I just know that my group and I are engaged in a combat instance – designed for combat – against someone who has no intention on fighting us.
So yes, instancing causes this problem. If there were no instances then it would be just like any other game. People would attack or they wouldn’t. Instancing allows these players to whisk an entire group of 6 away from the rest of the game. It’s a very frustrating predicament.
@Keen: Yup, that sounds like what I understood.
But how would locking them into the encounter permanently help? Wouldn’t that just extend the timers on the time-wasting for everyone indefinitely?
The easy(tm) resolution would be to persuade FLS to remove the instancing of red zone adhoc sea combat. Then you can just ignore time-wasters, and engage more interesting targets.
(Unlikely to be popular – I expect their server infrastructure costs would explode…)
I agree. Locking them in to the encounter would only slightly deter people from griefing. In order to do what these people do they need to buy expensive fittings. If locked in to an encounter suddenly the risk of losing those fittings goes from .01% to 99.9999%.
It doesn’t solve the problem completely though. People will still be griefers and those rich enough to afford it will pick and choose their fights. Double edge sword though. It hurts both the griefer and griefee to be locked in combat.
Another solution is to remove instancing but that would never happen. Their entire game is built around the instancing model and changing it now would be… too much. This is solution that solves the problem completely though.
An easier solution would be to nerf the ships they are using. Perhaps they are slightly too fast or the other ships are slightly too slow. Balancing is a pita but it could be effective here.
Sadly I don’t have a solution yet that is guaranteed to solve the problem. I’m giving it a ton of thought though so that I can provide solutions to the problems instead of just pointing them out.
[…] from Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog recently wrote about his experiences in Pirates of the Burning Sea with PvPing against small, quick ships. He said […]
Most of the PvP groups that I have encountered or been in have had a chaser. It runs down the fast ship and either cuts it off or takes out the sails so the other ships can catch up.
See if one of the people in your group is willing to take up that role. If not, you’re not going to be catching many fast ships.