Background:
I am encouraged with the implementation of the guild quests and rivalries, and the continued balancing and matchmaking refinements. Since it seems like the developers are listening to their players, I am excited to offer my feedback.
Game Progress:
Previously, with weekly seasons and global rankings, the system encouraged players to advance as quickly as possible by specializing in one ship and tailoring their crew training choices and items upgrades to complement that specific ship.
However, with the introduction of guild quests, players are now being encouraged to branch and try new ships and items. I applaud this shift in focus. The more variety of items and ships that are available to players, the longer the players will remained interested and the longer the game will continue to grow. Since Battlebay progress is already defined by crew and battle experience and item acquisition, rather than ship and item variety, I believe there is no harm in increasing player access to the full variety of ships and items.
The following is a list of the issues that yellowocean and others have brought up, and a few suggestions that might be easier to implement:
Issue 1: Lack of Ship Variety
Currently, many players feel stuck with 1 or 2 different ships and small range of properly leveled items for their infamy level due to the inventory space limitations, resources required, and crew training choices. For these players, the only option to complete guild quests is to use under-leveled and unoptimized ships and items. Obviously, this greatly reduces the quality of Battlebay's match play.
As a personal example, I currently have one MK5 ship, but the rest are MK3. In order to upgrade each ship to MK5, it would take approximately 900 battles with my VIP subscription (averaging 20k gold per battle between wins and losses), or about 60 hours of battle time. Of course, that cost is purely for the ship upgrades. Once each ship is upgraded, the same amount of time or more would be required to level items to the proper level for my infamy. The amount of time spent would not increase my infamy, nor would it advance my progress in the game in any meaningful way.
Suggestions 1: Ship Upgrade Cost Reduction
Rather than creating and managing an entirely new infamy system and item cap level based on league for each player ship, I suggest that greatly reducing the cost to upgrade each ship would be a more simple and effective solution. By "greatly reducing" the cost, I believe a reduction in cost of 75% or more for each ship upgrade would allow players to begin experiencing all 5 ships.
The variety of the your game experience shouldn't be hindered by barriers preventing the exploration of other ships and items. This solution should give players more variety without reducing the length of time it takes to become an elite player (or time it takes to acquire elite items).
Issue 2: Crew Talent Selection
The current system encourages the player to specialize all crew talents for the benefit of one ship and set of items. If a player wants to optimize crew talents for another ship or different items, it could take 10 to 12 hours or more to switch those talents (or a considerable investment of pearls). This system discourages the player from using a variety of ships and items.
Solutions 2: Modify Crew Training System
This system could be changed in one of two ways:
a) The easiest solution would be to allow the player to switch the talents instantly, for free, regardless of whether they currently have another crew member training. As a side note, the trainings with two options could be broken into separate trainings (at half the time and cost for each one), where both trainings would need to be completed before allowing the player to switch talents.
b) The second solution, as yellowocean suggested, would be to allow each individual ship to have their own crew training presets. While this is an improvement over the current system, this suggestion does not give the player the variety and option to freely switch between different item combinations.
Issue 3: Lack of Item Variety
As I stated above, part of the player's progress through the game is measured through their acquisition of higher rarity items. I do not want to take away this part of the the game. However, I believe that there is a two-fold issue that prevents players from truly experiment with the full variety of items offered in Battlebay: Inventory size and the cost of upgrading uncommon items.
In my opinion, the cost of increasing my inventory size was extraordinarily irritating. I begrudgingly extended it to 60 slots even though the pearl cost of doing so was ridiculously steep. This inventory space limitations often forces players to scrap items that they would like to use in the future, which further prevents varied use of items.
Solution 3: Increase Inventory Space & Reduce the Cost of Upgrading Certain Items
The simplest solution would be to increase the player inventory capacity for free, or greatly reduce the cost of purchasing more space. I personally do not like scrolling through 10 pages of inventory items, so tabs might be another solution.
Alternatively, a more effective (and more labor-intensive) solution would be to allow players to evolve duplicates before they reach the level that they normally evolve at (L10, 20, 30, 40, 50). Instead of each player keeping 6 duplicates of an item that they plan to use eventually, they could combine all of the items together immediately (or to the level their crew training allows for). For example, a player could have a tier 4, level 1 rare cannon that they can level up when they have the spare parts.
Similarly, the cost in parts of upgrading uncommon items could be greatly reduced. If uncommon items were much less expensive to level up, in combination with the player having space to store them in their inventory, the player would be able to experiment with more items. Currently, between the shop and star quests, it takes several days to a week and becomes very expensive to level up an uncommon item; an uncommon item that is already 30-70% less effective than higher rarity versions.
Obviously, the player would want to eventually upgrade to rares and epics, at the same cost that it is now, but reduced priced uncommons would allow them the opportunity to experience more of what battlebay has to offer.
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