8.24 Summer State of the Game: Players First
State of the Game: Players First
Summer 2018 Edition
The summer is upon us and it’s time to cover the State of the Game for Battle Pirates!
Quality Improvements
The team’s most important task is to improve the quality of your experience in Battle Pirates. We will do a better job to prioritize the most impactful bugs first, as well as to keep the community informed.
To start with, one of the most common complaints for the last year has been lag and game performance. Battle Pirates is a Flash game. Flash does not natively support using a graphics processor unit to load images. The first attempt to solve this graphics problem was reducing the number of projectiles was not well received because it affected your experience in battle. The upcoming solution includes an update to the game to split the processing power to run the game between your CPU and GPU. By reducing the demands on your CPU, many players will see an improvement in their frames per second as well as their loading times.
Another problem is is the discrepancy between what stats indicate and how items behave in game. We understand these can be large and scary changes, as you have invested in this content to control the outcome of your battles. Therefore we are correcting these discrepancies gradually as we identify them.
Currently the most impactful issue is in PvP. The Tier 7 Turret group bonus should be additive as stats indicated but it’s being calculated multiplicatively. Since the releases of new Tier 7 turrets, the PvP balance largely has swinged to defender side. Players felt ineffective attacking bases using any latest conquer hulls. We are on it.
The second is how countermeasure should behave. As a very well known mechanic in Battle Pirates, the countermeasures have behaved inconsistently towards missile, mortar and rockets. We are working on making it behave in a uniform fashion.
Those corrections will have various impact to individual players because everyone uses these content differently. We are doing our best to communicate our plan as early as possible, collect feedback and roll out carefully. We have no intention to make players take more damage than stats indicated and we welcome your feedback after the fixes.
For more to come, please pay attention to weekly update notes and continue to provide your top bugs through forum, facebook pages and CS tickets.
Forsaken Missions
The Forsaken missions will continue to have a dual purpose in the game, of getting new tech as well as a catch up mechanic for players returning to the game. Every month you will continue to have access to new components. We are also making improvements to FM as catch up mechanic.
The goal is that when a player returns to Battle Pirates and does not have all of the most recent tech, The Forsaken Missions is the place to pick up a hull to hit the ground running.
In May as example, as the end of Siege cycle, the Ironclad and Cannoneer were added to prize pool 3 for players who have not got Buccaneer and Hydra in past few Events. Those hulls would help participate in some TLCs and get base parts from world map targets.
As the beginning of Assault cycle, we’ve also included the Apollo and Zoe’s Apollo to help players who’ve missed Phoenix and Skyfire from last year. It’s the entry hull to participate in the Monthly Event for the Assault Cycle.
We’ve also added the flagships for both the Icebreaker and Monolith to the prize pools so you could improve the performance of your FM fleets.
We would like to get to a regular cadence to distribute catch-up hulls as well as the new components in Forsaken Missions each month, with other venues to get more recent hulls such as TLCs and offers.
Player vs Player
A fun PvP experience is built on a balanced economy. There are short term problems we need resolve to get there.
The short term fixes have largely been announced to you. We’re addressing a serious bug causing turrets to deal radically increased damage. We’re addressing an accuracy bug that was affecting all hulls, but was having it’s most profound effect on countermeasures effectiveness (making Defenders too strong). We’re improving the consistency of countermeasures. We’re releasing a Explosive Turret to help balance out base defenses. PvP has swung way, way too far in favor of defense and these changes swing the pendulum in the other direction. In long term, we will reveal content release plan that continues to serve the balanced economy of PvP space.
While PvE will always remain a big part of Battle Pirates, PvP is also where fun could be. Over the years, PvP has become a exclusive and niche experience. In the coming months we’re going to be working to make PvP more engaging, more rewarding and more exciting. Eventually it would be the experience for broader players.
BPHQ - Companion App
The most recent addition to the Battle Pirates family is Battle Pirates HQ, the new mobile companion app. Which is available on from the Google Play and iOS App Store.
Download here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kixeye.BPCompanion&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/battle-pirates-hq/id1349995023?ls=1&mt=8
Currently the BP HQ allows you to launch fleets and auto targets. This is especially useful for hitting target while on the go. You can earn Uranium, Titanium, Base Parts, even Event and FM points. You can also access your repair queue at anytime.
In the next update will be adding a new option where you will be able to manage your fleet from the app. We have a number of additional features currently planned:
World Map Repair and the ability rehit targets
Speedup ship build and ship refits
Opt-in notifications for completion of ship build and ship refits
Base actions (speedup repair, upgrade, etc.)
Opt-in notifications completion of build repair, upgrade, etc.
Opt-in notifications of your base being attacked
Blitz support
Conclusion
Battle Pirates deeply appreciates having a enthusiastic player community. Please continue to provide feedback and we will devote our efforts to put “Player First”.
Discuss Below
if you wanted to help the players you would make the chores(like fm) easier for players so we can play the pvp part of the game too
also how can we trust you, every time you say you wanna help us players you make it worse for us players
Okay am not feeling that PvP has swung way... way... to "defense" look at returning
players... players who are coming up from low end into mid end... you are not accounting
for those players.. who does not have proper turrets for "defense"...
You want the players to come up from low end to mid end to high end you must first start by
making a way to earn old base turrets for "base defenses". I feel as the "base defenses" are not
zoned in for a balanced game play.
Player a has level 300+ fleet... Player b has level 50 base... zero "defense".. so where is the balance?
If your looking at only Top End "defense" players you are cutting out the low end and mid end players
from ever having a "defense" balance.
The thing that makes correcting the display discrepancies scary is simple: It is the fact that other components that are not affected by the discrepancy have been balanced around how things actually work, not how they have been said to work in the official statblocks. Despite this, Kixeye has made no mention at all about rebalancing them to compensate.
As for the rest... Nothing that hasn't been said before.
Actions speak louder than words.
"Best of luck, Captains! And may the odds be ever in your favour..."
Raids Boycotted: Hellstrike, Lightning Carrier, Enforcer, Neptune- and at this rate, the entire upcoming Reaver raid series.
First played: Shortly After Revenge Raid 2
The big swing toward defence was entirely caused by bugs in the multiplier and bugs in the way CM worked. Just fixing those bugs should move the pendulum towards center, actually, given the power of the top hulls (MSC, OnSlot...) it sounds like just fixing the bugs will swing things back to favouring the attacker.
It sounds like you're going to plan on more attacker-favouring releases to counter the defensive advantage that you're now taking away.
The correct response is that you're going to be moving toward NO pendulum swings at all!!!
If you really were interested in balancing PvP for bases, then your plan is to always release a defensive upgrade and a counter-balancing upgrade at the same time. Never again should you release tech that favours attacker or defender without corresponding tech to keep the pendulum firmly set in the middle.
Yeah, attempting to release balanced tech won't always be right, but if you're as committed to PvP as you say, balanced tech release is the only proper plan.
If you meant any of what the company has said in these string of releases, would you make the protoCent so expensive a raid prize? If it is going to be critical to getting resources from bases, shouldn't you make it easily available to most players? Instead, you're doing the same old thing you've always done, make a "must have" hull a very hard to get prize
-- and not just the #of points --- the last raid showed us that you've really dialed up the damage, you've totally nerfed charged armour - and we have every reason to expect the targets to be even more formidable this time around.
So business as usual -- make a critical prize very expensive to get so that only the top-spending players will be able to get it.
How can we trust you?
Zoe's Apollo/Apollo may be the entree for RAID however; let's pick this apart the problem is we now have
no (Tier 4/T4) targets. (Tier 5/T5) targets can be done with Skyfire or Phoenix however, at a cost even with
having charged armors on.
Here is what needs to happen on the current RAID and future raids, it needs to go back to basics of allowing
all players to join in. All tiers should return for the purpose of allowing low end players to be apart of the event
and to win at least one prize from the list.
Go back to the first few years of Battle Pirates it was tailored made for not just high end players but, for any level
of player who wanted to be able to get a prize. The second thing that needs to be done is T5 reduction of damage
dealt to players who have T6 hulls. The reason would be due to newly created Sky/Phoenix hulls will not have top
end equips or armors.
Here is what you have done for past RAID's that make the player "opt out" or even start them is by making it where
we as the player can not earn one prize. When you have newly created hulls your team expects the player to "just"
play with them. However, that should not be the case they should be able to do something with hulls created with
some elbow grease.
Meaning put the work in for the reward as the player progresses they are able to get into the higher tiers, however;
as it is now it is hard for even mid level players to get into high end tiers because of the process of damage and the
hulls not being as useful as the past year.
Here is something that should return (T1-T7) and release of old hulls during the RAID for players to really sink teeth
into that specific RAID. The problem is that Kixeye has strayed away from the old way of RAID to tailor it to Top End
players and coiners. This should not be happening all players want to play the RAID for a prize that is where players
will return if able to get a prize. Then they feel that they accomplished something instead of not being able to get any
prizes during the RAID.
Your solution to PVP is still completely insufficient. You are going to 'correct' your own error on these turrets, after all, you program the damage we don't. You are going to penalize the player group for your own mistake and by doing so in the manner you are, you will effectively turn the game into farmville again. With no adjustments to the deflection on the ships, all you are doing is going back to turrets that do minimum damage and are basically useless due to reload and projectile on target count during an encounter. Introducing a mortar turret is not going to help off-set that at all, again, that stupid and idiotic deflection is going to bite you in the arse. Unless the damage we can create is going to exceed the deflection, which by a quick look at the stats, it won't even come close to doing, all you are doing is adding more peas to pepper at ships which we can do with existing mortar turrets. You release something new, we expect a benefit to upgrading. Where is the benefit? Evens with tier 7 bonuses etc we come nowhere near deflection limits.
Again.... this is all smoke and mirrors. You KNOW there is a problem, you put your best people on solving it and have again come up dramatically short of a real solution. You are just wasting your programming time and our time implementing and changing our setups.
Reduce or eliminate deflection on hulls, increase passthrough or overdamage dramatically or put in a deflection bypass numbers that do more than a 1000 or so damage per hit on a hull that has millions of damage points. That is your solution to balance out the PVP issues.
Also you better look at how you are going to compensate or reduce costs of adjusting to your mistakes. If I have to redo my turret and base setup because you are FIXING YOUR MISTAKES, you better make it cheap and easy for me to do or worth my while, or we continue to become disinterested in your game and only doing the bare minimum to have what little fun is left to wring out of this abortion of a game system you have put into place.
How about a reduction on older tech/hull build times. This would allow players to get into the game faster. As ships require ~14 days per to build, requiring four ships, and a flagship that takes ~20 days to build. This covers apollos, irons, all the ships you mentioned above as "entry" hulls. This seems punishing on lower level players. Perhaps something tangible for players, other than the hardcore, would go a long way to support your "Player First" buzzword slogan.
-Cuttlefish