Dang I actually like this lead designer. Sounds like well thought out plans and multiple approaches to achieving a better game. That is what any good design strives for, better game play. With better game play and more accessible game play I personally think this will be more profitable for the company than trying to squeeze the mega coiner. By making tech more usable and accessible will give us the incentive to spend. Or at least me anyway. I've resisted spending for a long time do to the out of balance game play. This game use to be about skill and I hope one day to see the balance of quality game play return. Then we can separate the pirates from the swabbies.
I bet you know him personality .
Not at all man, I'm on the east coast they are on the west. I'm just trying to be optimistic, I'm sure they will prove me wrong. lol
Dang I actually like this lead designer. Sounds like well thought out plans and multiple approaches to achieving a better game. That is what any good design strives for, better game play. With better game play and more accessible game play I personally think this will be more profitable for the company than trying to squeeze the mega coiner. By making tech more usable and accessible will give us the incentive to spend. Or at least me anyway. I've resisted spending for a long time do to the out of balance game play. This game use to be about skill and I hope one day to see the balance of quality game play return. Then we can separate the pirates from the swabbies.
To me it sounded like a bunch of regurgitated half-plans. Nothing personal against the designer, or any Kixeye staff member. Don't know them, any more than that they provide me a service, and on occasion I provide them some money.
Re-read the missive... Its a bunch of what we already have, with some added chores, and Uranium for quicker refits. Nothing new. Nothing for the community. If this statement made you rethink your spending habits, then you obviously didn't have that much of a problem with the game in the first place. Since the days we first saw the MCX - This game has not known balance.. or required skill. Just time and coin.
We were promised vxp specialist, and an equipment balance before.. we got half an effort, and then forgotten. Sorry If I come of as a little skeptical.. but if people are really buying in to this... this game only has one path to walk.... and that is a painful, steep decline.
Actually you nailed one thing on the head there, I didn't have much of a problem with the game in the first place, as I was not addicted to the game like so many players. Nor did I ever feel the need to prove anything with pixels by coining every raid to stay viable in the game. I simply played other things, if they don't fix it right then I will continue to play other games. I do not need BP to have a fun gaming experience in the least. There are so many other quality titles out there to have to worry about if BP is playable or not to be honest.
With that being said I will give them the benefit of doubt though, about all I can do. Now I'm off to play Hearthstone, have a goodern'
It seems to me that the proposed changes are just too complicated and aren't going to solve the problems the players are having with the game. I think the designers could just work with what is already in the game to start addressing those problems, Specifically:
1. VXP is finally working for the players. Why change it now? If you keep having "VXP weekends" and especially if you keep the 85 holdouts in those weekends, everyone has a legitimate chance to rank ships more quickly than before.
2. Now that VXP is working, go ahead and release the VXP repair specialists for all the hulls.
3. Once all repair specialists are out, the bonus repair modifier needs to be increased. I think doubling the current bonuses is required (so that skulled ships get 50% reduction).
4. For hull build times you just need to discount the build times for hulls over time. Say a 10% reduction every 3 months. That still allows whale coiners to have the latest and greatest immediately, but eventually older hulls become more affordable for new players and low/no coiners. It is obvious that older hulls are too expensive. Why do mastodons have longer build times than rhinos? Mercuries should have build times of just a few hours.
5. Specials never seem to be talked about in relation to build times. They are a huge problem, I think. I have been refitting interception system onto missile hulls. It is taking over two days to refit each hull (depending on what I am replacing). that is ridiculous. A new Zoe's rhino with the latest and best specials is going to be about two weeks, without armor or weapons. Just roll back those build times and don't start some screwy system based on weights. It shouldn't take more than a day to add any component, whether it is a weapon, an armor or a special.
6. Put a drydock in the game. If you are worried about the coin loss, then just restrict it to older hulls and less than top line tech. If you keep out the hulls released in the last six months and the major weapons like blades, antipodes and arbelests you will still allow newer players to catch up. I would love to be able to do something with the dozens of obsolete ships I have that never leave my base.
7. Refits needed to be repriced. If I am upgrading from speed III to speed IV there should be a discount. Refitting any item that is included in a retrofit group to another item in that group should be discounted.
8. Fix the FM. Seriously, are that many people coining the elite tier that you can't reduce this chore? Reducing the task to 5 85's from 8 would create a huge amount of goodwill and can't cost you that much. And stop putting crap in the elite tier. Elite should be elite. About half of the prizes in their really belong. If you add something to the elite tier and then from community feedback learn it isn't elite, than do the right thing and drop it into a lower tier. By lowering the bar to reach elite and reducing the non-elite items you are making the build tokens more available. that is another win.
9. Fix the raids. The last one was really not fair to the players without top tech. The B and C tiers were not balanced properly and even if they were doable, there was very little tech available to be won that would do anything to help lower tiers advance their game.
10. Put more tokens in the game. Make them a random drop (with a reasonable chance to win) from normal activities - hitting an elite salvage, destroying a drac base, leveling a player base. That would add an element of fun to normal activity that isn't currently present and would make many of the pve chores less like chores.
11. Please don't make BP into another War Commander. I quit that game over thorium. I know many others did as well. Now you are heading down the same path here. I can't understand wanting to replicate a bad model into all of your games. If you use uranium as a substitute for real actions on reducing build and repair times, it will just be another failure.
Finally, can't you form a focus group and get some good feedback from them? Get some guys from both the shows, blogs or websites and major alliance leaders on a conference call. They all know what real players are saying. I don't think you are hearing that real feedback, at least it doesn't seem to me like you have heard us much at all.
Again its the same old song an dance, no offense to the coiners of the game but it seems only the money they spend on the game is what is important. Us non coiners are treated like trash and apparently not worthy of anything useful in the game. I have been out for about 7 months and came back to a crap storm, my fleets are no longer even worth using and dont even last 1 minute in new raids or uranium fleets. And the mini is a joke now as I cant get past 10 mil using my best fleets let alone 50.....so no top prizes for me anymore. Have very little hope of being able to win anything in dec raid, but do you think kixeye really cares?......No is the answer plain an simple
2015 has seen extreme jumps in the power of weapons, most notably the Arbalest, Antipode Launcher, and Blade Missile. This has left many weapons well behind the power-curve, causing many players to have larger than intended repair times from more recent targets. We’re conducting a game-wide weapon rebalance to bring more weapons and weapon categories back into use, so that the targets we build for don’t feel impossible for those with less recent weapon tech. Basically, if you don’t have the hottest new weapon, you can still be competitive in the game.
its about **** time. kixeye has been missing this for a very long time. any fleet should be viable in a raid, NOT just one acute batch of elite hulls. in the last year i have only had about 3 fleets out of 14 that were able to do raids. thats really sad. good luck on these new releases, just make sure they actually WORK before you release them. do more testing, if it doesnt work, then dont release it.
Repair Times
Arguably, the largest pain point from the community has been the cost of repair in the game. We have been exploring this problem from every angle and have several proposals for how to tackle it. All of our data confirms what you already know: the cost of repair is too **** high!
We are looking at this data to formulate a specific and actionable plan to reduce the cost of repair in the game. There are a number of different approaches we are looking at for this topic. Here are some examples:
Reducing the time cost for armors
Purchasable reductions to repair
Increasing VXP specialist packs and reductions
how about this
1. make base hull armor the only stat that needs repairing, you know, kinda like base defense turrets. extra armor plates dont add more rep time.
2. make the VXP bonuses worth the chair time it takes to get to those lvls.
I like the idea of getting more for hitting a base then what we get now. But I dont know how many "dead" bases Ive hit, wasting a lot of my time trying to find a "live" base. Would like to see us getting something for those dead bases and the time spent hitting them
or just move all the non active and banned bases to a sector that we do not have access to.. that way only active live bases are around and you can know what is around you instead of i have 30 bases around my base and only 4 are active
Well yes it would be the easy way to go, simple and fast.
Why doesnt kix do it simple ?
Becasue of a simple word included in each and everyone of there Jobs description: Monetization.
In order to give us a reduction in cost, they need to find a way to replace the money lost by created a way for players to play in money or time to get that reductions. Why VXP was created adn why tokens were created and why Rogue crew were made more expansive. You want to reduce your repair times (Grease Monkey crew or vxp specialist) or you builds/research(token), you ahve to work or pay for it. That at the center of everything they do, hence why everyhting they come up with is complicated that way, since they cant give us A without creating a B feature. Exec wont approve it otherwise.
Agreed. But if Kixeye even reads these posts, they need to get a clue.
If Kixeye management does not change their money grabbing mentality and instead provide an AFFORDABLE way to play....they will all be in the unemployment line soon.
If they think they can go else where....they better be clever. I for one will not sign on for ANY new Kixeye product and I will look to see who is running any new game I consider before I get involved. It just takes a little googling. Reputations need to be repaired first before one can expect to move on.
Arguably, the largest pain point from the community has been the cost of repair in the game. We have been exploring this problem from every angle and have several proposals for how to tackle it. All of our data confirms what you already know: the cost of repair is too **** high!
We are looking at this data to formulate a specific and actionable plan to reduce the cost of repair in the game. There are a number of different approaches we are looking at for this topic. Here are some examples:
Reducing the time cost for armors
Purchasable reductions to repair
Increasing VXP specialist packs and reductions
how about this
1. make base hull armor the only stat that needs repairing, you know, kinda like base defense turrets. extra armor plates dont add more rep time.
2. make the VXP bonuses worth the chair time it takes to get to those lvls.
as for the repair time i see they have a small start with reducing armor repair time and cost but then they want you to buy reductions.. that is already in the game it is called gold you get with cash.. VXP packs and reductions i think are a joke to talk about.
now for making VXP worthwhile for the seat time. are you joking. the big coiners coin it to begin with so if you make the VXP better then it is worse on players like me that put in the seat time trying to get it. so they would have to make it so that no one can coin VXP then they can put new settings on it
@Carlo DeNauw said:
Sounds cool... and yet... Kixeye has a very long history of over-complication.
Really, we will always have more powerful hulls and weapons. Why try and mess with this. This has not been the issue, it has been the quick turnover of them. MCX v Hellhounds longevity. 'Nuff siad.
Why mess with the VXP system now that you have solved it?!? Reaver 85's quarterly will make everyone happy.
Weapons build time... meh, they rarely have been an issue. Charons might be a bit high... but armor has been the things.
Changing the basis of the ship/f;eets power is also really rather full bore for something that needs some specific pellet shots instead.
Look, overall it is really simple. The 'fun' part of the game was being able to do many aspects of the game while still being viable in pve and having fun doing things like sector wars. 100+ ships sailing at each other all at once. You know why that worked?? Because it didn't take a week to repair a dock full of dead fleets. It still boils down to one simple overview...
It now costs, minimum 3x-4x or more to do the same things we used to be able to do. Go lad the first few betas and compare build and repair times and stop trying to find some fantastically convoluted way to do a simple thing. K.I.S.S
I am very excited about 2016. Kixeye has spent a lot of time / money actually listening to us. I dont think everyone will get exactly what they want, and will complain about it. I like this "state of the game" posts. it gives us an idea of where the game is going and we wont be so suprised at the newer content, as it is in line with the yearly plan.
looking forward to this 2016 battle Pirates year, great job guys
There are players on here older then me Game wise but I have seen promises and words but not completed. There are many things that are not completed. Some things still left in the game and not removed to assist. I'm one for less "chores" and giving us a chore for reducing chores is dumb. Nerfing the hulls on reload is not cool as there are effects that reduce our reloads or firerate which reload helps off set it. Do note the they did address the issues that does not mean they had to fix it right away.
Most notable is the max and now figures on the left side....very telling IMHO.
And yes even post black water days there were sector swarms where 100's of ships were sent to attack. Sometimes it took 20 mins to get there, no towers, and attack range of 1 sector each way. Then the 20 mins wait while your fleet did the sail of shame home.
Funny part is there was one day I got farmed hard & kept a guy pinned in his base using 3 fleets of preds for 8 hrs till we both gave up. He rarely plays now but ended up in a sector where his base was. His ally mates got him on thru Facebook and we had a good laugh for about an hour reminiscing about those days.
Sigh Kixeye you have gone down a path so wrong........
They're calling in Greenpeace...to save the vanishing whales. Greenpeace showed up, looked around, shook their heads sadly, and said it's hopeless....
EASYEST way to reply to this thread ive never know so much bull from a company befor in my life you send tickets and nothing gets done you report hack nothing gets done you report bugs and you know what yes your right **** all gets done well how about all you from kixeye either go to school or get some training to deal with true problems from your game and stop talking bullshit like the tickets the mods the customer **** service and sort out what the real customers are saying listen to them solve a problem instead of telling your customers a load of bullshit ( now think or you all to stupid ) you pushing your customers away you pushing your paying customers away so whats that meen your profit margine is going to go down then your maintenance is going to get worse your updates raids getting worse TRY LISTENING TO WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS WANT more players you lose kixeye more profit you lose ( your survey I did would I recommend your game NO wo0uld I recommend your customer service NO ) so now kixeye and all you dog body crack smoking workers leave the girls in the office alone and stop grabbing there behinds and listen to your costomers sort your ticket system out reply faster not like 10 days later takes the piss bugs fix them glitches sort them your team sort them I think ive covered about all see how long a ticket takes to answer im still waiting and waiting for the bugs to be fixed get on with it OUT FOR NOW
Why do they make solutions sounds more complicated then they have to be?
Is it really that difficult to just reduce repair times 50% permanently and reduce build times by 50% across the board?
Why bother with this "build time as a factor of weight added" crap?
this. end of story. kixeye is trying to make everyone excited and wait AND WAIT AND WAIT and the fools will continue to buy coins and pay and pay and pay yet nothing will change for the better as long as people are addicted fools who pay huge amounts that this game isnt really worth.
as a free player i will just wait and see what happens, but i highly doubt kix will solve the problems this game has, mainly because ... ... well, mainly because whats in the quoted part above ;> JUST REDUCE BUILD / REPAIR BY 50% FLAT, win!
back then you could relocate your base while under attack if you did it right and it would take the attackers fleet to your new sector.. lol it may take him days to get back to his sector lol them was the good days from what i hear it was a little before my time but it was still fun when i joined
72k players online as an average....70k are just repairing lol
You do realize when you log into this site the 60,000 to 72,000 average is not only for battle pirates its for all there games and the people that are only logged into forums as well. A little while back when you logged in threw facebook it gave you a read out for about a month and there was ever only 4,000 to 8,000 people actually logged into battle pirates.
So the three main, enduring, crippling issues killing this game; Build time, Repair time and cost, Refit time (BRR), are to be addressed (possibly) with "Purchasable reductions?" Oh, and a whopping 2% build time reduction? After we collect 10 Shards? The hits just keep on coming, don't they? Would any of you honestly look twice at a retailer advertising a 2% Sale?
Base hits, medals, alliances, Raids and other events - none of these matter if we simply can't afford to build and use the crap we already have. And please, PLEASE, stop writing these updates as if you are shoulder-to-shoulder with the players, concerned with the issues but not...quite...sure...what to do about them.
The ignored reality is that if the game were made affordable, and players were able to use the prizes they earn, then revenue would pour into Kixeye because players would be ENJOYING the game and LOOKING FORWARD to upcoming content. Players with more toys would play more, which means more battles, damage, and repairs.
Why do they make solutions sounds more complicated then they have to be?
Is it really that difficult to just reduce repair times 50% permanently and reduce build times by 50% across the board?
Why bother with this "build time as a factor of weight added" crap?
this. end of story. kixeye is trying to make everyone excited and wait AND WAIT AND WAIT and the fools will continue to buy coins and pay and pay and pay yet nothing will change for the better as long as people are addicted fools who pay huge amounts that this game isnt really worth.
as a free player i will just wait and see what happens, but i highly doubt kix will solve the problems this game has, mainly because ... ... well, mainly because whats in the quoted part above ;> JUST REDUCE BUILD / REPAIR BY 50% FLAT, win!
Quite true. Nothing will get better if players continue to coin in a significant way.
To the heavy coiners out there...you are not going to get much of an advantage for very long...maybe a month or two. And it will costs you more than makes intelligent sense, no matter how rich you are. It's just pixels.
I'm not going to coin very much until Kixeye makes a simple and significant reduction across the board in build and repair times. I am not telling others what to do, but I think Kixeye would be compelled to make the game more affordable for more players if others followed suite.
I could be wrong. There might be a large enough group of players willing to spends hundreds each month and thousands each year on pixels that don't do much soon after you get them, but that's not me. Kixeye seems to be betting that there are enough players like that to keep the lights on. Hell, there used to be more than enough. However I think even those players got tired of being soaked.
ye keep saying coming out with a plan, there is stuff in that letter that is being delivered in december.... other stuff will take time, its not a quick fix that everyone normally complains about. This looks like a detailed design that going by this is already in development.... so it will come in drops not in 1 big bang. the research and design phase alone is a couple of months work
as long as i have been playing there has been the same argument and now theres a plan",,,, i think if kix would not have ignored the players and acted sooner the fixes could have been implemented months and months ago.... all i would hear in forums is mods defending kix telling players its there builds or join an ally for help moving ahead or with old ships and tech raids are still possible use this.... etc" and now you turn tails admit theres major problems ask us who have "paid" for your mistakes in game design to wait around for the big miracle kix and continue coining and supporting kix while you turn around and readjust ships we built and paid or waited for to be built .... ridiculous..... make new lower lvl hulls that are easier to obtain and can compete dont mess with the ships and weaponry already afforded... that would be a huge mistake if you would just fix repair and build times without trying to make that coin up by adding other ridiculous angles
Cut repair times and build times in half simple fix, we as customers are tired of hearing we are going to in the future...etc. You have lost most of you large coiners and my only recommendations to the loyal ones like myself still playing the game is cut our coin spending in half until you fulfill your promises. I surely hope this wonderful game gets fixed. It is a habit I wish not to give up however soon I will be forced to find an affordable habit like CRACK COCAINE.
Kixeye, here is my assessment, of your State of the game. uranium is here to stay, so get used to it. We will make it difficult to obtain, so why bother? Why would i say that? Look at the latest retro's, 30k to 60K U for early stage retro's? That's worse than when U was intro'ed for retro's
I also learned to read between the lines, whenever you guys post something. When the DEV posted that vid on the first scourge raid, What did i see? We need coins, so spend. So what did i see this month? We are going to do, our best David Copperfield impression and do some misdirection. We hope you don't see, that we in fact didn't do **** but add more cost (more uranium chore) on you.
OK so the drac shards are supposed to give 2% boost to build time speed? You do realize, the last ship is a 30 day per ship build right? At dock 12 that's 4 month (4 hulls), or 120 says. So 2% reduction is about 2.4 days, Whoop-de-do, Officer does more.
If the realignment adjusts weapons to match weight, the siege Z should get a massive weight reduction, or become the most powerful weapon we got. Otherwise this is a **** statement.
You want to address build times with armor build times? Fine and dandy, But have you thought it's the specials that cost the most? Most modern specials are 2-3 days to build, and new ships have 5, count them, 5 specials. That is up to 10-15 days of added build time on a 5 day hull build.
Ok so you are going to adjust builds on regularly changed to lower res and U required, So U will be Implemented on everything eventually? Sorry i did not sign in for three years, to play a variant of War Commander.
Between the State of the game and the WIP, I'll give you my report card early. IC, or incomplete. That does not mean, you got a ways to go. That means you did not even try. When i was in school, that was the lowest grade you could get, Pre No child left behind program.
Yesterday was my turning point, I downloaded World of Warships, I played all day and had fun. It's not my style of play, BP in it's prime was perfect. But i played more Yesterday, than i have BP in three months.
What i don't get is this, Wargaming can do that much in beta. Why can't you? I have not seen the first glitch yet, in over 70 battles. The graphics are better, the game is smoother. They are making you look like, the hackers that are ruining your game.
With the uranium requirement i have decided Me and BP will part ways in 2016, This month is my last, actually playing the game. This is someone that has stuck with this game since October 2012. Played everyday for over 2.5 (December), years when i got burned out. Came back in April of 2015, hoping you saw a need to change. Looked like maybe you did, open campaigns in July and august raids, the rhino at 2 days build. But yesterday i saw that was part of the smokescreen, so i will be walking away from the burning pile of dung this game has become.
When you make a meaningful change to the fundamentals of the game, call me i might come back. Otherwise, we part ways December 31st.
OK so the drac shards are supposed to give 2% boost to build time speed? You do realize, the last ship is a 30 day per ship build right? At dock 12 that's 4 month (4 hulls), or 120 says. So 2% reduction is about 2.4 days, Whoop-de-do, Officer does more.
If the realignment adjusts weapons to match weight, the siege Z should get a massive weight reduction, or become the most powerful weapon we got. Otherwise this is a **** statement.
You want to address build times with armor build times? Fine and dandy, But have you thought it's the specials that cost the most? Most modern specials are 2-3 days to build, and new ships have 5, count them, 5 specials. That is up to 10-15 days of added build time on a 5 day hull build.
Ok so you are going to adjust builds on regularly changed to lower res and U required, So U will be Implemented on everything eventually? Sorry i did not sign in for three years, to play a variant of War Commander.
man you cry a lot.
my first HC was on the water with a 10 day build time. 3 days elapsed time after tokens, and was built well enough to get skulled on the VXP weekend.
And when mixed with my other ships is instant repair against 85s in the FM.
So your example 120 days. Mine 3 days.
Adjust your strategy. Stop building crap and you'll probably do a lot better.
In our ongoing effort to improve transparency and improve the game itself, we plan on presenting quarterly state of the game posts to open up a discussion about the direction of Battle Pirates. This is the first of these missives and we have a lot to talk about. We’re excited to share with you our plans for next year and discuss what you’ll be seeing in the future, starting right now, in December.
We are most excited about the future of Battle Pirates, and the features coming in 2016. In preparation, and in response to the community, it is essential the game is in a healthy state. This is true now, more than ever. The team is embarking on this essential mission right now.
Here’s what we want to focus on, moving into the new year.
Overpriced Builds and Refits
Because of the increased fleet size, increases to costs per component, as well as an increase in the number of slots on ships, build and refit costs have become inflated. Since no one singular feature will fix this problem in the short-term, we’ve come up with a solution that we believe will reduce costs and see to it that they never get wildly out-of-control again. Here are the changes:
Weapons, armors, specials, and tacticals are assigned build time based on the weight they add to the ship (no more Negotiator Mortar problem).
Components that are often refit will be given a lower time cost and a Uranium cost.
This is intended to lower refit costs and allow for more active refits.
Includes light weapons, specific resist specials, countermeasures, armors, and role-centric specials (including sonar)
Hull build costs will be based on ship weight capacity with two exceptions:
Some older ships have higher-than-normal capacity and will be discounted
Ships with unique effects (such as the Aegis) will have the hidden value of that effect factored into its build cost
The new research system will offer multiple opportunities to lower shipyard build costs with the intention that build costs fluctuate around a current standard cost while also lowering the cost of old hulls and tech automatically.
Return of Research
Starting at Outpost 6, players will have the opportunity to complete new in-game objectives provided by Harlock, Brennus, and Zoey. These new objectives unlock research options that provide permanent global bonuses. Here’s an example:
Critical Technology: Draconian Shipyard
“The Dracs seem to have an endless supply of new ships. Raid their bases and destroy their shipyards. Bring back enough salvage and steal their tech.” - Brennus
Salvage Draconian Shipyard Shards: 0/10
Research Time: 24 hours
Effect: Shipyard Build Times Reduced by 2%
Most objectives will come out in December with additional objectives to follow quarterly. Each permanent effect will stack, helping to stop escalating costs and reduce costs as hulls and components age.
Overpowered Weapons
2015 has seen extreme jumps in the power of weapons, most notably the Arbalest, Antipode Launcher, and Blade Missile. This has left many weapons well behind the power-curve, causing many players to have larger than intended repair times from more recent targets. We’re conducting a game-wide weapon rebalance to bring more weapons and weapon categories back into use, so that the targets we build for don’t feel impossible for those with less recent weapon tech. Basically, if you don’t have the hottest new weapon, you can still be competitive in the game.
We will not be nerfing any weapons!
Top tier weapons will still be at the top.
Weapon weight will be more important to understanding the power of a weapon than it is today (especially on older components).
Damage and reload will be structured so that weapon categories exist for roles such as:
Weapons that are not as dependant on VXP
Weapons that can penetrate high defenses
Weapons that overload countermeasures
Cheaters and Exploits
We’re continuing to identify and solve cheats and exploits within Battle Pirates. While some of these cases are design related (such as the use of multiple rockets to kill an outpost), many are due to the nature of BP’s code base and may take longer to solve. Creating a fair playing field is critical as it allows us to better tune the experience for all players. We’re committed to identifying and making fixes as efficiently as possible.
Most recently, this includes a remedy to prevent players from using illegitimate ships and illegitimately overpowered ships.
Sector Threat
One of our goals is to reduce the need to schedule your life around Battle Pirates and create more dynamic gameplay based around player activity and interest rather than creating “chores”. With Reavers leaving the sectors and a return of Draconian control, we’ve taken the opportunity to replace scheduled Dredge fleets with player trigger-able Draconian Armadas and the soon-to-be released Uranium Bases.
Sector threat will also be a gateway to new blueprints, including a new line of Draconian Mega-Hulls that players will be able to unlock and build.
VXP
The original goal of VXP was to reward players for playing with their ships, but it has become one of the most important stats in the game. In the short term, we plan to run VXP events more frequently to allow players access to the much-needed veterancy experience. We’re also working on new ideas for VXP including:
Reducing the power gained by new hulls from VXP, while providing them a default reload bonus
Allowing newly built hulls to start at a higher VXP level based on objectives
Altering the bonuses that VXP provides to be per hull
With these changes our goal is to return VXP to being a bonus rather than a necessity.
Repair Times
Arguably, the largest pain point from the community has been the cost of repair in the game. We have been exploring this problem from every angle and have several proposals for how to tackle it. All of our data confirms what you already know: the cost of repair is too **** high!
We are looking at this data to formulate a specific and actionable plan to reduce the cost of repair in the game. There are a number of different approaches we are looking at for this topic. Here are some examples:
Reducing the time cost for armors
Purchasable reductions to repair
Increasing VXP specialist packs and reductions
These are just a sample of some of the directions we are considering at this time. We want to make sure that we are addressing all concerns regarding this topic. We are currently discussing how best to implement these changes and hope to have more specifics on this announcement very, very soon.
Base Attacking Rewards
The cost of base hitting is too high and the rewards for base attacking are too low and it often feels unfair to lower level players. We plan to use the new research system to motivate competitive base attacks and competitive base defenses while lowering the cost of both. More details soon.
This State of the Game is focused primarily on core balance issues and system improvements for the health of the game. Currently, this is the most important priority for us. This missive focuses on what we know needs the most work, hence its size and scope. Future State of the Game updates will shift to a focus on upcoming features and roadmap discussions, but this message, we wanted to let you know that we are working very hard to get Battle Pirates to a balanced state. Again, this is what we are most excited about as we prepare to go into 2016 and we think these changes will bring Battle Pirates to a whole new level.
Your feedback is crucial to the design process and we always appreciate the feedback you provide. We’ll continue to update you on our progress towards a renewed, more exciting, and more fun Battle Pirates and keep you in the loop through the forums and previews moving forward.
Thanks for reading and good luck, Captains!
-Battle Pirates Team
you say wepons , i got hulls to build , i do weekly ,at my cost , and you give me every thing that i dont need ,i been after the arblast for weeks and weeks , you give me dam up to datye stuff i carnt use , i have huls to build , and even if i get it now its out dated , so are the hulls ,IVE lose time and money , we need to refit aS WELL AS BUILD , SORT THAT OUT
my first HC was on the water with a 10 day build time. 3 days elapsed time after tokens, and was built well enough to get skulled on the VXP weekend.
And when mixed with my other ships is instant repair against 85s in the FM.
So your example 120 days. Mine 3 days.
Adjust your strategy. Stop building crap and you'll probably do a lot better.
you really need to stop.
stop putting players down and stop telling players that they are crying. not everyone has your play style and yes for most we have long build times. you built yours with no armor and only a couple weapons and at that build not even sure you put scatter gun on it. for a build with scatter gun and up to weight it is a long build and not all of us have all the prizes so we do not get all the extra build time tokens. QUIT ACTING LIKE A BULLY AND BE CIVIL THIS IS A GAME WE ALL WANT TO HAVE FUN ......
my first HC was on the water with a 10 day build time. 3 days elapsed time after tokens, and was built well enough to get skulled on the VXP weekend.
And when mixed with my other ships is instant repair against 85s in the FM.
So your example 120 days. Mine 3 days.
Adjust your strategy. Stop building crap and you'll probably do a lot better.
you really need to stop.
stop putting players down and stop telling players that they are crying. not everyone has your play style and yes for most we have long build times. you built yours with no armor and only a couple weapons and at that build not even sure you put scatter gun on it. for a build with scatter gun and up to weight it is a long build and not all of us have all the prizes so we do not get all the extra build time tokens. QUIT ACTING LIKE A BULLY AND BE CIVIL THIS IS A GAME WE ALL WANT TO HAVE FUN ......
you need to know what you're talking about.
crazy was spendin his shipyard building and refitting BCs. when he had mastadons available. if you're going to do stuff like that, you're never ever going to be able to remotely compete with anything, no matter what changes are made by kixeye.
he has also been threatening to quit for the last few months on every second post. And complaining about stuff that has not been implemented, and 30 day builds that he will never do himself.
yes my HC doesnt have full weapons or armor yet. but its the results that are important - i can instant repair an 85, and its also pretty useful in my base. People throwing out that they have to have a whole fleet of the latest and greatest to do anything are badly mistaken. I don't know when people got so greedy to be honest.
I have enjoyed the game through its ups and downs right from day one and will play whatever happens. These changes all look good, maybe they will be maybe they wont but at the end of the day its the same for all of us and no one is twisting anyones arm to play.
OK so the drac shards are supposed to give 2% boost to build time speed? You do realize, the last ship is a 30 day per ship build right? At dock 12 that's 4 month (4 hulls), or 120 says. So 2% reduction is about 2.4 days, Whoop-de-do, Officer does more.
If the realignment adjusts weapons to match weight, the siege Z should get a massive weight reduction, or become the most powerful weapon we got. Otherwise this is a **** statement.
You want to address build times with armor build times? Fine and dandy, But have you thought it's the specials that cost the most? Most modern specials are 2-3 days to build, and new ships have 5, count them, 5 specials. That is up to 10-15 days of added build time on a 5 day hull build.
Ok so you are going to adjust builds on regularly changed to lower res and U required, So U will be Implemented on everything eventually? Sorry i did not sign in for three years, to play a variant of War Commander.
man you cry a lot.
my first HC was on the water with a 10 day build time. 3 days elapsed time after tokens, and was built well enough to get skulled on the VXP weekend.
And when mixed with my other ships is instant repair against 85s in the FM.
So your example 120 days. Mine 3 days.
Adjust your strategy. Stop building crap and you'll probably do a lot better.
It's not crying, it's my opinion. That is what this thread is about isn't it? BTW not all of us get the good toys, and not all of us see the value you see. I see a game in ruins, getting worse thanks to uranium, like WC with thorium. If you had played that game, you'd be fighting it as well. Because you know full well how bad this will, and it WILL get bad.
But fan boys, will be fan boys, till there is nothing to fan i guess.
That 120 days is without coining and without jokens, fully armored. I didn't do last months raid, same for the two before that. because i saw no value in the C tiered target giving more damage than the B or A. I'm not able to do either, but from what i saw, the C tiered was worse then either.
I will continue to give my opinion, till i quit the end of this month. You can look forward to 2016, without one low coiner bothering you. But what happens when the others leave as well? That will happen, Be it when the U is removed from the Missions, or when looting of U is brought in. Either way, it'll be a hackers and whales game, just like War Commander is currently. Good luck with that, you'll need it
With that being said I will give them the benefit of doubt though, about all I can do. Now I'm off to play Hearthstone, have a goodern'
1. VXP is finally working for the players. Why change it now? If you keep having "VXP weekends" and especially if you keep the 85 holdouts in those weekends, everyone has a legitimate chance to rank ships more quickly than before.
2. Now that VXP is working, go ahead and release the VXP repair specialists for all the hulls.
3. Once all repair specialists are out, the bonus repair modifier needs to be increased. I think doubling the current bonuses is required (so that skulled ships get 50% reduction).
4. For hull build times you just need to discount the build times for hulls over time. Say a 10% reduction every 3 months. That still allows whale coiners to have the latest and greatest immediately, but eventually older hulls become more affordable for new players and low/no coiners. It is obvious that older hulls are too expensive. Why do mastodons have longer build times than rhinos? Mercuries should have build times of just a few hours.
5. Specials never seem to be talked about in relation to build times. They are a huge problem, I think. I have been refitting interception system onto missile hulls. It is taking over two days to refit each hull (depending on what I am replacing). that is ridiculous. A new Zoe's rhino with the latest and best specials is going to be about two weeks, without armor or weapons. Just roll back those build times and don't start some screwy system based on weights. It shouldn't take more than a day to add any component, whether it is a weapon, an armor or a special.
6. Put a drydock in the game. If you are worried about the coin loss, then just restrict it to older hulls and less than top line tech. If you keep out the hulls released in the last six months and the major weapons like blades, antipodes and arbelests you will still allow newer players to catch up. I would love to be able to do something with the dozens of obsolete ships I have that never leave my base.
7. Refits needed to be repriced. If I am upgrading from speed III to speed IV there should be a discount. Refitting any item that is included in a retrofit group to another item in that group should be discounted.
8. Fix the FM. Seriously, are that many people coining the elite tier that you can't reduce this chore? Reducing the task to 5 85's from 8 would create a huge amount of goodwill and can't cost you that much. And stop putting crap in the elite tier. Elite should be elite. About half of the prizes in their really belong. If you add something to the elite tier and then from community feedback learn it isn't elite, than do the right thing and drop it into a lower tier. By lowering the bar to reach elite and reducing the non-elite items you are making the build tokens more available. that is another win.
9. Fix the raids. The last one was really not fair to the players without top tech. The B and C tiers were not balanced properly and even if they were doable, there was very little tech available to be won that would do anything to help lower tiers advance their game.
10. Put more tokens in the game. Make them a random drop (with a reasonable chance to win) from normal activities - hitting an elite salvage, destroying a drac base, leveling a player base. That would add an element of fun to normal activity that isn't currently present and would make many of the pve chores less like chores.
11. Please don't make BP into another War Commander. I quit that game over thorium. I know many others did as well. Now you are heading down the same path here. I can't understand wanting to replicate a bad model into all of your games. If you use uranium as a substitute for real actions on reducing build and repair times, it will just be another failure.
Finally, can't you form a focus group and get some good feedback from them? Get some guys from both the shows, blogs or websites and major alliance leaders on a conference call. They all know what real players are saying. I don't think you are hearing that real feedback, at least it doesn't seem to me like you have heard us much at all.
Overpowered Weapons
2015 has seen extreme jumps in the power of weapons, most notably the Arbalest, Antipode Launcher, and Blade Missile. This has left many weapons well behind the power-curve, causing many players to have larger than intended repair times from more recent targets. We’re conducting a game-wide weapon rebalance to bring more weapons and weapon categories back into use, so that the targets we build for don’t feel impossible for those with less recent weapon tech. Basically, if you don’t have the hottest new weapon, you can still be competitive in the game.
its about **** time. kixeye has been missing this for a very long time. any fleet should be viable in a raid, NOT just one acute batch of elite hulls. in the last year i have only had about 3 fleets out of 14 that were able to do raids. thats really sad. good luck on these new releases, just make sure they actually WORK before you release them. do more testing, if it doesnt work, then dont release it.
Repair Times
Arguably, the largest pain point from the community has been the cost of repair in the game. We have been exploring this problem from every angle and have several proposals for how to tackle it. All of our data confirms what you already know: the cost of repair is too **** high!
We are looking at this data to formulate a specific and actionable plan to reduce the cost of repair in the game. There are a number of different approaches we are looking at for this topic. Here are some examples:
Reducing the time cost for armors
Purchasable reductions to repair
Increasing VXP specialist packs and reductions
how about this
1. make base hull armor the only stat that needs repairing, you know, kinda like base defense turrets. extra armor plates dont add more rep time.
2. make the VXP bonuses worth the chair time it takes to get to those lvls.
If Kixeye management does not change their money grabbing mentality and instead provide an AFFORDABLE way to play....they will all be in the unemployment line soon.
If they think they can go else where....they better be clever. I for one will not sign on for ANY new Kixeye product and I will look to see who is running any new game I consider before I get involved. It just takes a little googling. Reputations need to be repaired first before one can expect to move on.
now for making VXP worthwhile for the seat time. are you joking. the big coiners coin it to begin with so if you make the VXP better then it is worse on players like me that put in the seat time trying to get it. so they would have to make it so that no one can coin VXP then they can put new settings on it
We're there really that many players back then??
looking forward to this 2016 battle Pirates year, great job guys
http://metricsmonk.com/devs/facebook/1014517-kixeye?since=Nov+3,+2015&until=Dec+3,+2015#detail_tabs
Most notable is the max and now figures on the left side....very telling IMHO.
And yes even post black water days there were sector swarms where 100's of ships were sent to attack. Sometimes it took 20 mins to get there, no towers, and attack range of 1 sector each way. Then the 20 mins wait while your fleet did the sail of shame home.
Funny part is there was one day I got farmed hard & kept a guy pinned in his base using 3 fleets of preds for 8 hrs till we both gave up.
He rarely plays now but ended up in a sector where his base was. His ally mates got him on thru Facebook and we had a good laugh for about an hour reminiscing about those days.
Sigh Kixeye you have gone down a path so wrong........
end of story.
kixeye is trying to make everyone excited and wait AND WAIT AND WAIT and the fools will continue to buy coins and pay and pay and pay yet nothing will change for the better as long as people are addicted fools who pay huge amounts that this game isnt really worth.
as a free player i will just wait and see what happens, but i highly doubt kix will solve the problems this game has, mainly because ...
... well, mainly because whats in the quoted part above ;> JUST REDUCE BUILD / REPAIR BY 50% FLAT, win!
Reducing the time cost for armors
Purchasable reductions to repair
Increasing VXP specialist packs and reductions
So the three main, enduring, crippling issues killing this game; Build time, Repair time and cost, Refit time (BRR), are to be addressed (possibly) with "Purchasable reductions?" Oh, and a whopping 2% build time reduction? After we collect 10 Shards? The hits just keep on coming, don't they? Would any of you honestly look twice at a retailer advertising a 2% Sale?
Base hits, medals, alliances, Raids and other events - none of these matter if we simply can't afford to build and use the crap we already have. And please, PLEASE, stop writing these updates as if you are shoulder-to-shoulder with the players, concerned with the issues but not...quite...sure...what to do about them.
The ignored reality is that if the game were made affordable, and players were able to use the prizes they earn, then revenue would pour into Kixeye because players would be ENJOYING the game and LOOKING FORWARD to upcoming content. Players with more toys would play more, which means more battles, damage, and repairs.
To the heavy coiners out there...you are not going to get much of an advantage for very long...maybe a month or two.
And it will costs you more than makes intelligent sense, no matter how rich you are. It's just pixels.
I'm not going to coin very much until Kixeye makes a simple and significant reduction across the board in build and repair times.
I am not telling others what to do, but I think Kixeye would be compelled to make the game more affordable for more players if others followed suite.
I could be wrong. There might be a large enough group of players willing to spends hundreds each month and thousands each year on pixels that don't do much soon after you get them, but that's not me. Kixeye seems to be betting that there are enough players like that to keep the lights on.
Hell, there used to be more than enough. However I think even those players got tired of being soaked.
I also learned to read between the lines, whenever you guys post something. When the DEV posted that vid on the first scourge raid, What did i see? We need coins, so spend. So what did i see this month? We are going to do, our best David Copperfield impression and do some misdirection. We hope you don't see, that we in fact didn't do **** but add more cost (more uranium chore) on you.
OK so the drac shards are supposed to give 2% boost to build time speed? You do realize, the last ship is a 30 day per ship build right? At dock 12 that's 4 month (4 hulls), or 120 says. So 2% reduction is about 2.4 days, Whoop-de-do, Officer does more.
If the realignment adjusts weapons to match weight, the siege Z should get a massive weight reduction, or become the most powerful weapon we got. Otherwise this is a **** statement.
You want to address build times with armor build times? Fine and dandy, But have you thought it's the specials that cost the most? Most modern specials are 2-3 days to build, and new ships have 5, count them, 5 specials. That is up to 10-15 days of added build time on a 5 day hull build.
Ok so you are going to adjust builds on regularly changed to lower res and U required, So U will be Implemented on everything eventually? Sorry i did not sign in for three years, to play a variant of War Commander.
Between the State of the game and the WIP, I'll give you my report card early. IC, or incomplete. That does not mean, you got a ways to go. That means you did not even try. When i was in school, that was the lowest grade you could get, Pre No child left behind program.
Yesterday was my turning point, I downloaded World of Warships, I played all day and had fun. It's not my style of play, BP in it's prime was perfect. But i played more Yesterday, than i have BP in three months.
What i don't get is this, Wargaming can do that much in beta. Why can't you? I have not seen the first glitch yet, in over 70 battles. The graphics are better, the game is smoother. They are making you look like, the hackers that are ruining your game.
With the uranium requirement i have decided Me and BP will part ways in 2016, This month is my last, actually playing the game. This is someone that has stuck with this game since October 2012. Played everyday for over 2.5 (December), years when i got burned out. Came back in April of 2015, hoping you saw a need to change. Looked like maybe you did, open campaigns in July and august raids, the rhino at 2 days build. But yesterday i saw that was part of the smokescreen, so i will be walking away from the burning pile of dung this game has become.
When you make a meaningful change to the fundamentals of the game, call me i might come back. Otherwise, we part ways December 31st.
man you cry a lot.
my first HC was on the water with a 10 day build time. 3 days elapsed time after tokens, and was built well enough to get skulled on the VXP weekend.
And when mixed with my other ships is instant repair against 85s in the FM.
So your example 120 days. Mine 3 days.
Adjust your strategy. Stop building crap and you'll probably do a lot better.
stop putting players down and stop telling players that they are crying.
not everyone has your play style and yes for most we have long build times.
you built yours with no armor and only a couple weapons and at that build not even sure you put scatter gun on it.
for a build with scatter gun and up to weight it is a long build and not all of us have all the prizes so we do not get all the extra build time tokens.
QUIT ACTING LIKE A BULLY AND BE CIVIL THIS IS A GAME WE ALL WANT TO HAVE FUN ......
crazy was spendin his shipyard building and refitting BCs. when he had mastadons available. if you're going to do stuff like that, you're never ever going to be able to remotely compete with anything, no matter what changes are made by kixeye.
he has also been threatening to quit for the last few months on every second post. And complaining about stuff that has not been implemented, and 30 day builds that he will never do himself.
yes my HC doesnt have full weapons or armor yet. but its the results that are important - i can instant repair an 85, and its also pretty useful in my base. People throwing out that they have to have a whole fleet of the latest and greatest to do anything are badly mistaken. I don't know when people got so greedy to be honest.
But fan boys, will be fan boys, till there is nothing to fan i guess.
That 120 days is without coining and without jokens, fully armored. I didn't do last months raid, same for the two before that. because i saw no value in the C tiered target giving more damage than the B or A. I'm not able to do either, but from what i saw, the C tiered was worse then either.
I will continue to give my opinion, till i quit the end of this month. You can look forward to 2016, without one low coiner bothering you. But what happens when the others leave as well? That will happen, Be it when the U is removed from the Missions, or when looting of U is brought in. Either way, it'll be a hackers and whales game, just like War Commander is currently. Good luck with that, you'll need it