• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

Mods and Game Difficulty

O

OddjobXL

Landlubber
I wonder just how playtested all the modules are in how they work together. Each on its own, for the most part, seems to do some interesting things but taken together - this game just seems far too easy. If I make use of all my officers and crew (via the landing party mod) I'm hard to beat if not impossible - even in dungeons where it's just my officers and I. My ship (a corvette), playing at the second hardest difficulty, can rush into fairly big battles and only get slightly dinged up as I overpower ship after ship with my boarding parties. I seem to have seriously outlevelled the competition. My men are so well equipped, via the weapons locker, and usually outnumber any opposition and are always bribed up into a much higher morale state that boarding is far safer and more effective than ever slugging it out with cannons. The only reason I have to shoot a ship is to slow it down. I spend as much time telling my escorting ship(s) to sail away as to do anything useful so they don't shoot up a ship more than I want it shot up.

Am I doing this wrong somehow? I'm not even sure the highest difficulty will be an issue once I get to the point I've got a few hundred thousand gold and a Class 2 vessel or two around again.

I'm thinking I may need to disable looting corpses all together. The money I can get for the loot, plus the ease of overstocking the weapons locker with uber goods, seems radically unbalancing. I may disable the weapons decay/blacksmithing mods too. Not sure they add a whole lot to things other than a little extra busy work. If I'm looting I almost always have a good enough weapon around. With looting off it'll still be more of a pain than it might be worth. Disabling looting will also restrict how many healing, antidote and mixture potions I have on hand.

I love the extra crew in a landing party but they're also seriously unbalancing. Even the new land encounters don't seem to be a match for them if I've fitted them out with good weapons and armor. The old land encounters don't have a prayer when my horde trundles by. Gonna keep using this because I like it so much. But there might be a need to look into additional adjustments here so the opposition can cause some trouble or, maybe, they should have default weapons and no armor that can't be changed (as opposed to Officers). Need to think on that, myself.

Just thinking out loud. Am I off here? Missing something?
 
No, you´re not off or missing something. Your post is indeed a very interesting read!

I need to be around the archipelago in no time to check out a bug here and there, or spend 2 hours changing the game environment in my console, in order to isolate the circumstances around a problem. I have actually never thought of playing this game on a harder level, in order to "just play and have fun". In short: I never gave the game balancing a thought <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />
 
well, i like easy games, so i've never really been bothered about it, but boarding is indeed pretty easy.
 
For me it's not so much about "difficulty" as it is immersion. I'm not exactly a crackerjack player at anything really, outside of strategy games and turn-based ones at that, but I need some threat out there to keep me on my toes. I need things to go wrong, malfunction, backfire and otherwise singe my grubby little fingers when I get too cocky.

Otherwise, well, I'm not really a pirate anymore if I'm not even slightly afraid of the hangman's noose or a rebellious crew marooning me for my incompetance!
 
well, you could try turning fully pirate, meaning hostile with everyone and not going into any port. you should be able to survive for pretty long actually. i, for instance, managed to survive on looted goods for a very long time, fixing the ship at khael roa cave once in a while and blowing up everything in sight. however, the endless battles and not actually having to go anywhere got a bit too boring. if i try it again, i'll see if i can blend in the main quest and keep my reputation as low as possilbe to prevent myself from cheating in towns by buying stuff when things go bad. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" />
 
That's one way to go about it. But one should be able to play the default mode of a fully modded game as intended and still find game balance there. Adjustable, sure, but generally speaking the average fellow shouldn't find it either too hard or a cakewalk if they play it through in a fairly predictable way. Do the quest, maybe grind a little on the side by hunting ships or exploring dungeons but not find one's self totally outclassing everything short of field fortifications.

The way games like Pirates! and Cutthroats balanced this was the whole crew morale issue, which put you on a timer and created a framework of decreasing returns - the bigger your force the bigger the gamble it'd all blow up in your face, and the overall goal of getting a high score. PoTC is about completing a quest and grinding up levels.

That tension isn't really there to start with and the mods only make life easier. A little too easy. But it should be fixable.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227003:date=Dec 21 2007, 11:52 AM:name=OddjobXL)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OddjobXL @ Dec 21 2007, 11:52 AM) [snapback]227003[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...I love the extra crew in a landing party but they're also seriously unbalancing. Even the new land encounters don't seem to be a match for them if I've fitted them out with good weapons and armor. The old land encounters don't have a prayer when my horde trundles by. Gonna keep using this because I like it so much. But there might be a need to look into additional adjustments here so the opposition can cause some trouble or, maybe, they should have default weapons and no armor that can't be changed (as opposed to Officers). Need to think on that, myself.

Just thinking out loud. Am I off here? Missing something?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You give them armor and good weapons, and then find it too easy, but will still continue using it because you like it? But you want to make it harder for everyone else.

So what is your problem?
Don't use the landing party!

I don't, unless I going after a treasure map.
Then you get mauled by a dozen high level Pirates and I don't like loosing my officers.

If you insist on using the landing party, take only a few, not all of them.
Or don't give them armor. Don't give them high end swords.


As far as making too much money, I assume you pay your crew salary, right.
Start dividing the plunder instead.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227031:date=Dec 22 2007, 08:13 AM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Dec 22 2007, 08:13 AM) [snapback]227031[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=227003:date=Dec 21 2007, 11:52 AM:name=OddjobXL)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OddjobXL @ Dec 21 2007, 11:52 AM) [snapback]227003[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...I love the extra crew in a landing party but they're also seriously unbalancing. Even the new land encounters don't seem to be a match for them if I've fitted them out with good weapons and armor. The old land encounters don't have a prayer when my horde trundles by. Gonna keep using this because I like it so much. But there might be a need to look into additional adjustments here so the opposition can cause some trouble or, maybe, they should have default weapons and no armor that can't be changed (as opposed to Officers). Need to think on that, myself.

Just thinking out loud. Am I off here? Missing something?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You give them armor and good weapons, and then find it too easy, but will still continue using it because you like it? But you want to make it harder for everyone else.

So what is your problem?
Don't use the landing party!

I don't, unless I going after a treasure map.
Then you get mauled by a dozen high level Pirates and I don't like loosing my officers.

If you insist on using the landing party, take only a few, not all of them.
Or don't give them armor. Don't give them high end swords.


As far as making too much money, I assume you pay your crew salary, right.
Start dividing the plunder instead.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I support this post
 
While a convenient argument it does overlook the obvious - if this is what works, and I need to test it first, shouldn't that be the default setting of the mod?
 
Look, I like this game and I like this mod. I'm really trying to help out here. When someone walks in off the street they're not necessarily going to know about the secret handshakes. They're going to play what's put before them. If they see no caveats, no warnings, they'll just forge merrily ahead and play with all the toys available. Because they'll assume the game's balanced. That's what makes a game, a game. There's a goal to pursue and there are challenges along the path. At first this works fine here but someone, about midway through the game, playing the default build mod becomes a fairly unstoppable juggernaut if they make use (as we players do) of all the toys.

Anyhow, started a new game. I'm going to keep using "all the toys" with two changes. I'm playing swashbucker and I'm playing with articles signed. Ideally, those should compensate for all the other advantages. I'm playing the straight campaign like a total newbie would. Now if I still end up way ahead of the powercurve (and I'm not any kind of uber l33t gamer, believe me) there's a deeper balance issue going on. If this fixes the problem it makes for an easy solution.

Two things I've noticed so far, one's old and one's new (to me at least). In the tutorial, after assigning your attributes the bo'sun acts like you haven't completed the task yet. This has happened every time I've played and I think exists in the vanilla game too. Easy solution is to tell him not to worry about it and move on. But...it'd be nice to fix this if that's possible. You don't want players wondering why things don't seem to be working right out of the gate.

The other, and this is big, is that every building in town seems to be locked including the store we need to go to so I can sell my cargo (still in the tutorial). It's broad daylight. Even all night establishments like the tavern are locked tight as a drum. I'm going to restart and reload now.
 
Reloading seemed to fix the second problem. I think it's related to the buildings staying locked until the bo'sun enters. For some odd reason it just didn't unlock that time. The other buildings worked fine afterwards too.
 
I'm sorry to say that I agree with OddjobXL. This game is tremendously unballanced ; partly because of looting. Looting would be nice if you couldn't carry thousands of swords and pistols with you, and if any character wouldn't have so much money with them. Playing in Swashbuckling difficulty make it even worst as ennemies are then carrying very expensives weapons. Of course the problem is that sometimes you do need to carry several weapons to give them to crewmen or officers.

However, I do get all my crewmen & officers killed in some attacks. Like when my CCC buildings are attacked by sauvage Akellani Natives, and that just after the rioted slaves, the unhappy apprentices, the bandits that were wandering here, the military and pirate raids.
 
What you can do is instead of giving enemy's the better and expensive swords, give them alle the same weapons as in apprentice, but give those swords a big bonus.
 
I think that the gamebalancing issue is a pretty valid remark. It most definitly could be better. Much better. The question is how to do it?

Playing on "divide the plunder" should make the game a bit more challenging. I think that Build 12.1 was balanced on the assumption that players should play in devide the plunder mode. Then Build 13 never really was balanced.

Some balancing things I'd like to see:
- Swordfights made harder by making the blocking ineffective if you do it too long, forcing you to actually <i>time</i> your blocks.
- Add interesting shipboard events to add both challenge and interest to the game.
- Making "healing" a lot more difficult by making potions even more rare than ever before and having their purpose mainly replaced by the much less effective bandages and such.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227062:date=Dec 22 2007, 09:24 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Dec 22 2007, 09:24 AM) [snapback]227062[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think that the gamebalancing issue is a pretty valid remark. It most definitly could be better. Much better. The question is how to do it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Swashbuckler doesn't seem all that hard to me at this point. It does definitely do a better job of punishing a newbie character but once you get over the hump you're The Hulk again. I've been raking in a sick amount of wealth just from looted items (hit the dungeon just once to level and all the goodies from just one boarding action - and assorted random hostile encounters on land). I agree with virtual sailor - there are alot of great items worth far too much out there.

It seems the mod turns each corpse into a temporary "chest" so you get the same loot from either (though the model does display the correct weapons). I'd say the balance fixes could be several but each should be tested individually before they're tried together. One, reduce the chance and amount of items being looted from a corpse if not eliminating them entirely. You can always buy stuff from merchants and vendors, loot them from chests and enemy ships (captain's chest and weapon's locker) or find them aboard a vessel (visit Deck and Crew's Quarters - look there's loot!). Also reduce the <i>sale</i>value of anything other than cargo and ships starting at 90 percent and maybe consider increasing costs to buy personal items and weapons (maybe even double - before Skill based discounts). Designate some weapons as common, some as uncommon and some as rare. Adjust the probabilities of them showing up appropriately. (Prices could also be adjusted for rarity but right now we need to cure inflation first and foremost so one thing at a time).

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Playing on "divide the plunder" should make the game a bit more challenging. I think that Build 12.1 was balanced on the assumption that players should play in devide the plunder mode. Then Build 13 never really was balanced.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

So far, divide the plunder mode hasn't cropped up yet but I'm so flush with gold that I doubt my crew will be anything less than bug-eyed ecstatic when I divide the loot. I just hope the ship's dog doesn't start humping my wooden peg leg!

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Some balancing things I'd like to see:
- Swordfights made harder by making the blocking ineffective if you do it too long, forcing you to actually <i>time</i> your blocks.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Worth an experiment. But when I say I'm not an uber gamer I mean it. Could be too challenging for me but I'm up to see how it would work.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->- Add interesting shipboard events to add both challenge and interest to the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

My crew likes this! Uh oh...is that the ship's dog sneaking this way?

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->- Making "healing" a lot more difficult by making potions even more rare than ever before and having their purpose mainly replaced by the much less effective bandages and such.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Definitely in the right direction. Would take some playtesting to see how it works (and over the length of a conventional campaign). Nothing operates in a void so if duelling gets hard <i>and</i> potions get rarer we'd need to take a close look.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
Comments on the other thread about sword stats could have some impact on this. If there were actually different tactics associated with different weapons, then at least nominal concentration could be required to keep from walking into a bad hit. You couldn't just pick up a "good" weapon and be uber ... your good weapon would be good for one thing, but quite average or worse in another.

Also, the suggested changes to fire, and other issues of damage model, could put a little more life into the ship battles. If taking a hit that starts a fire will require your crew to drop what they're doing and fight fire, an enemy numeric advantage becomes a lot more troublesome ... the smaller enemy boats could be quite the damage control issue, instead of just a few plinks. Even if the actual damage was minor, they could prevent you from responding effectively by keeping your crew busy on damage control.

(I'm assuming that, since you want to capture some of the enemy ships, you are going in with less than 4 ships ... probably quite a few less. That means there is a fair chance you will be outnumbered, if not out-gunned.)

Increased range at onset of the battle could also help ... at least it would make boarding more complicated, since you would have a much longer approach under fire. If your ship was much faster, it would also probably be less damage-resistant ... if heavier, your target would have time to get away.

The option of having men wounded instead of just either healthy or killed might help too. Getting harassed by several volleys of small-caliber shot would be unlikely to do much hull damage to a heavier ship, but the number of people lightly wounded or worse and therefore not on call for the boarding party could be substantial. That would make the boardings a little tougher, if you were not assured such a huge numeric advantage. Might force you to keep extra manpower on board as well, which would add to food and other costs, and so put more stress on your boarding party tactics.

And those things would not involve creating any unreasonable work-arounds or obscure quirks that will backfire later. They're solid additions to the overall experience.

I certainly agree that there are some balance issues. Question, though, is where the real issue lies, not just how to work around it. If the real issue lies in certain weaknesses of the overall game, we want to look for that rather than just patching the obvious.
 
I'd like that, Ron. Sounds realy quite cool if we could get it done. In theory it's possible. It just, again, requires somebody to do it. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />
 
Too bad I'm not much of a programmer. But honestly, I can't make heads or tails of the POTC code. So it's going to take somebody a LOT sharper than me to make any of that happen. I can advise, but actually writing code is beyond me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top