Demo feedback

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Throwing out my own feedback here.

Overall I really like the direction this is taking - I could definitely see this being another game I spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours in. The mini-games are pretty fun, I like the world map, I'm not sure if I like the mechanics of it more than the first game but I don't dislike it. The lack of AoE having to click in a space seems to be better overall for fun too, for me at least but I always liked corvettes and those things could be my bane..

More specific subjects...

Questing / Region control: A coupe of things I really noticed here that were a bit of a downer on the gameplay - There rarely seems to be a lot of quests for the faction that controls a region, so I'm finding that things flip super fast in single player. Quite often it'll be the case that I go and do a couple of quests in a region that's owned by my faction, there'll be no more quests so I'll work on supplying the needs. By the time I get back from a couple of supply runs the region is in danger of flipping. It just seems way too fast and frustrating.

Cargo / Goods crafting: Linked to above - Supplying towns with needs is really difficult, at least in my single player game, mostly due to what facilities have been built. Regions don't seem to build many of the basic resource collecting buildings, and there doesn't seem to be a way to influence that. There is tons of basic drink resources in the regions on my solo game, but there's no buildings to collect them so I can't engage with that production at all (edit: Thought I should add I am aware that you can influence the way that regions you found develop, this is in relation to the starting regions' setup)

Pirate difficulty scaling: I've noticed that, in the demo anyway, there seems to be a real issue with pirates being either super over-tuned or really squishy. There's no real middle ground. Whenever I go into a pirate encounter I'm either having all my armour and a bit of my hull blown away in the opening salvos, or I'm blapping them in seconds. This is a bit of an issue when it comes to setting up new regions; Having a bunch of pirates spawn who you have no real chance of killing is frustrating. You can work around it, but it isn't fun and feels cheesy.

Diving RNG: This one is really specific. It's just at the start of the game, the fishing and treasure hunting mini-games and mechanics are really rewarding. There's no real downers to the treasure hunting, and the fishing RNG with the (?) bubbles doesn't impact the ability to catch the fish. But in the diving one, you'll often find yourself just restarting a dive because you get to the bottom and you get the ARRR on the first, even second bubble. It seems to be far less of an issue as my crew has levelled, but I found that really annoying at the start.

UI: The UI in the towns is really bad. Juggling between the screens to try and move things between inventories is a bit of a nightmare. UI scaling would be really nice if the UI layout is set in stone.

Apart from all that, I'm loving the new look and feel. I really do like that the region travel has some interaction with it, and it's not just sailing across a dozen maps to get where you want to go. I really like the addition of sides for the armour and the way the heal skill interacts with that. That has been really fun.

[Edwyndham]

RE: questing/regions:

You can actually pack provinces in a lot closer than you initially suspect. Using the Look Around ability while on the map with a province quest, you can settle literally anywhere with land ('We've spotted land, but there doesn't seem to be anything interesting here...' still means you can settle). Before the spheres of influence balloon out too far, you can pack them pretty close.

There is a brand new (like a few days before demo landed) 'Pressure' system that will affect how quickly provinces might flip. You can see your province's rating by typing /pressure in chat (even in SP). The more friendly provinces are nearby (as in, their sphere's of influence overlap/collide), the more quickly that faction earns local influence, and they lose it more slowly too.

Additionally, with provinces that are super close together, AI traders will do a much better job of dispersing local commodities. This is hidden away in the 'Growth' tooltip, but it's important to realize that probably the major factor of provinces flipping is this: 'If a province doesn't have it's basic needs met [food/beverage/clothing], this could lead to the current governor being ousted from power.' Meaning it's a steady drain on Influence if those needs aren't met. Closely knit-together provinces can combat that significantly, as even basic workshops without a resource to harvest can meet some needs (farm produces vegetables and water, for example), which AI traders will disperse.


RE: founding provinces / selecting workshops
Workshops will become available to select at province levels 1-4-8-12-16-20, so try to be present for the provinces you found for those levels. This is a lot easier to manage in SP than in MP.

Additionally, selling Town Supplies is a handy way to fast-track the province growth. It should be a standard practice to adopt for you, but when you settle a new province that you want to have a specific workshop, immediately sell it 3 Town Supplies - this will force the province to upgrade to (at least) level 1, at which point you can then immediately select the first workshop.

RE: pirate difficulty
Generally speaking, quest-enemies will be on your level. Local Bounties will be easiest, and Pirate Hunts. Distress Signal will be significantly harder but still kinda within your capabilities. The random pirates that spawn on the worldmap to interdict you will also be your level.

However, random pirates that spawn on the worldmap to interdict NPC merchants will be scaled to that NPC merchant. If they are higher level than you, it can be a very tough fight.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Thank you for the reply, I appreciate the information a lot. A lot of this could be down to my lack of experience in the game, so thank you for that. I just wanted to reply to some of your points about what I've seen.

Originally posted by Edwyndham:

RE: questing/regions:

I just went on and did that command in all of the provinces that were flipping in the way I described and they all have 0% from the other factions. But they've regularly flipped while I'm in the process of questing and getting supplies for them. It goes both ways too, sometimes I look at the map and suddenly a ton of stuff have flipped to my faction out of the blue. Similarly no pressure in those areas.

I don't think it's the pressure doing that. I am trying to get trading going with the provinces I'm setting up.

Originally posted by Edwyndham:

RE: founding provinces / selecting workshops

I understand that I can do that, but the main issue I was highlighting with this is the pre-generated towns. There was just no way for me to even engage with some parts of the trade goods crafting.

I did edit my comment to make that clear after I posted, so that might be my bad. I do know you can influence the regions you found, but that's a pretty long process. The only place I could occasionally buy drinks would also regularly get trade-embargoed, and there was nowhere I could even get the raw materials for it.

Originally posted by Edwyndham:

RE: pirate difficulty

That really hasn't been my experience at all. The local fights are always a blap-fest, I'll grant that, but when I've been sent out to hunt pirates it's always been all or nothing. I haven't seen that scale you're talking about, it has been the following:

Local fights - Not a problem
Rescue fights - Either unwinnable or no contest.
Hunt down pirates - Either unwinnable or no contest.
Co-op capture the flag - Hard, but doable if the AI co-operates. Unwinnable otherwise.

There's been times when I've done 2 hunt down pirates quests from the same town, for the same faction. First one I sneeze on them and they pop, second one a single volley almost ends me, and I lose in short succession.

There are some times that there's a decent fight in the quests that send you onto the world map, but most of the time that's been my experience. This could be a function of it being a demo, I'm assuming tech is limited, or it's something that eases as you level up, but I'm just giving my feedback on the experience.

Cheers again for the reply :) I appreciate it!

[Dat Zorro]

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

That really hasn't been my experience at all. The local fights are always a blap-fest, I'll grant that, but when I've been sent out to hunt pirates it's always been all or nothing. I haven't seen that scale you're talking about, it has been the following:

I generally have the impression that there doesn't seem to be a middle ground. The enemy is either very squishy, or a literal brickwall with impenetrable defense that two-shots you. For some reason, the ally you can summon sometimes will somehow make short work of that.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by Dat Scharger:

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

That really hasn't been my experience at all. The local fights are always a blap-fest, I'll grant that, but when I've been sent out to hunt pirates it's always been all or nothing. I haven't seen that scale you're talking about, it has been the following:

I generally have the impression that there doesn't seem to be a middle ground. The enemy is either very squishy, or a literal brickwall with impenetrable defense that two-shots you. For some reason, the ally you can summon sometimes will somehow make short work of that.

I wonder if it's just a case of rock/paper/scissors; The demo stops at level 10, which really only lets you get significantly into one tree, or a little bit into two, so you're either coming up against something you're the right counter for, or vice versa.

I remember that being a real struggle for me in the first one and I wonder if it's just been replicated here.

[Edwyndham]

Short answer, yes; long answer, it depends...

For demo purposes, I've found a general mortar/grog build with Reset Cooldowns + Lucky Coin on the Cap'n to do well, basically one-shotting just about everything.

[Dat Zorro]

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

I wonder if it's just a case of rock/paper/scissors; The demo stops at level 10, which really only lets you get significantly into one tree, or a little bit into two, so you're either coming up against something you're the right counter for, or vice versa.

I remember that being a real struggle for me in the first one and I wonder if it's just been replicated here.

What rock/paper/scissors, and what counters?

I fully specced into DMG, and still could only scratch them, while they annihilated me. I don't remember that at all in the first game.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by Edwyndham:

Short answer, yes; long answer, it depends...

For demo purposes, I've found a general mortar/grog build with Reset Cooldowns + Lucky Coin on the Cap'n to do well, basically one-shotting just about everything.

Cheers for the advice, I'll give that a crack.

Originally posted by Dat Scharger:

What rock/paper/scissors, and what counters?

I fully specced into DMG, and still could only scratch them, while they annihilated me. I don't remember that at all in the first game.

Well, I always remember in the first one, once you got to the point where you were either going into full pirate regions, or you were doing the generated ones, I'd find a similar thing happened. Around about the max level of the demo.

Like, you'd spec into the DPS tree a bit, but then you'd come up against one that had some sort of DoT attack, and because you didn't have any of the defensive abilities it'd just nuke you every time, even though you would kill anything else pretty easily. Or you'd come up against a new ship type that could soak up your damage, etc.

But that was also a point in the game where you'd level up super fast and quickly adapt. It feels like the demo stops right at that point, where you'd be in these fights where anything on your level could be the perfect counter to you but you'd get tons of experience from fighting things at that difficulty.

That's what it feels like is happening. At least the way I'm playing anyway.