Care to answer a bunch of questions from a noob?

I have been playing the game for 3 weeks. Have not spent any money on game yet. Game is not perfect but I have been having a lot of fun. I'm Level 15, Infamy 405, MK2 Shooter and Fixer (other ships MK1). Best items are:
- Rare Cannon Level 10
- Uncommon Sniper Cannon Level 20
- Uncommon Repair Pulse Level 10

Having played a few weeks I see now I made a bunch of early mistakes. I didn't know what to spend resources on and was overwhelmed by all the items, rarity levels, ship types and crew. So I made purchases/scraps/upgrades/training that I see in hindsight were poor choices. No big deal, it won't affect me long term but would like to avoid future mistakes. This leads to some questions:

1 SUGAR. I always seem to have more sugar than I can spend. I started not collecting sugar rewards until I must and don't collect sugar from achievements. Any other advice? Does sugar become a more rare resource at later stages of the game?

2 MATCH END. If I die in match I can watch other players finish or click the "X" to end immediately. If I click the "X" do I still get rewards (minus ad watching bonus)? Do I still gain/lose infamy based on match result?

3 INFAMY/SEASON. In the upper left of the main screen it says "405" under a skull & cross-bone. This is my Infamy right? When I click the Season tab, there is an Infamy column, it list my Infamy as 694. Why the discrepancies? Is this my max value this season? I don't remember being that high, is this value considering other factors?

4 SEASON. On the same tab, it says I'm #1 in my league(!). It says I will receive a reward of 150k gold and 77 "things" (blue 6-sided symbol) when the season ends in 9 days. What are these 77 "things"?

5 SEASON. Can I reasonably expect to finish my league in 1st if I play fairly hard but don't spend real $$$? I noticed the player at #2 (among others) has better items than me and suspect they will push hard as the season closes to pass me. Is this expected? Any advice to stay number 1 when the season ends so I can collect the largest possible reward?

6 ITEM EVOLUTION. I have the needed things to Evolve several items except an additional item of same type. I figured I could buy one with Gold from the shop but the shop seems to only let you buy items you don't own. Am I missing something? Advice on how to get a specific item (even with pearls)? What if I buy the same item but a higher level (i.e. Epic instead of Rare), could that be used to upgrade my Rare item?

7 PERKS. I added a Perk (Weapon Damage +0.5%) to my Rare Level 10 Cannon. At first this seemed to put a "I" in a diamond by my name in matches. I have seen a similar symbol on other player names. Is this symbol related to the perks like I assume? I ask because now the symbol is gone. I checked and my cannon still has the perk in the Item Info menu. But in matches I don't have the diamond "I" by my name. How can I tell if the perk is applied or not?

OTHER ADVICE. Again, I am just starting out. There are probably things I should be asking but don't even know to ask. What do you wish you knew when you started out?

Sorry this went longer than intended. Thanks for reading. Hope you have some answers even if they do not address each question.
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NO QUESTIONS, JUST FEEDBACK FOR DEVS... The game is great. Thanks for making it. Hope it makes you rich. But I have some constructive criticism...
The game "snowballs" really hard. It seems whoever gets an early advantage (like first kill) is going to win. I don't see a lot of strategy/tatics to help when playing from behind. Maybe I don't see it because I'm new. Maybe at higher levels this does not exist. But that is my experience.

I also feel like the matchmaker needs improvement. It is not terrible. I say that because a good matchmaker will result in about 50% wins/losses for most players. My profile shows I am at 51.51%. I look at other players and they are also a few points +/- 50%. So clearly the matchmaker is doing a lot right.

However, I still don't get the best possible matches. About 4 out of 10 matches I play is a massive slaughter of my team, we are totally outgunned. The situation feels hopeless from start to finish. Not very fun at all.

Another 4 out of 10 matches is a slaughter of the enemy team. We take them out in under 2 minutes without losing a boat. Honestly, this is not all that fun either.

That leaves the 2 matches out of 10 that are a whole lot of fun. These fights are evenly matched, a battle to the end, usually with 4 kills on one side and 5 on the other. I win/lose these matches equally. But whether I win or lose these games are fun. These are the matches that keep me playing the game again and again.

But it is notable that I only enjoy the game in about 20% of matches. That 20% is great and it keeps me coming back but what can be done to increase that number? From my point of view the lopsided un-fun games (80%) are caused by players who AFK or flaws in matchmaking. I hope you are working to fix these things.

My suggestion is to make a way to report AFK players and then either ban them or match them to each other. Frankly, I think it is ridiculous that a great game like this made it to wide release without this basic, critical feature.

Matchmaking is another critical feature. It looks like this is hampered by players who drop Infamy. Please find a way to structure rewards, etc so there is not an incentive to drop Infamy. Without this being done, I don't see how the matchmaker can build even matches. As stated above, matches that are not even are not fun.

I'll play a flawed game casually but if I'm going to spend money on a game, AFK prevention and intelligent matchmaking are required features.

I don't have other suggestions here and am fairly certain you are working on it already. I just want to stress how important even matches are to me enjoying the game and actually spending money on the game in the future. Thanks again!

 

Here are the answers to the questions directly.

1. It becomes harder to collect lots of sugar later when captain levels get higher. 1mil each at bare minimum for me right now(level 36). You can always re-roll the quest when it's not completed for 8 hours for a chance for gold or sugar.

2. "X" doesn't forfeit either resources or infamy(it does forfeit your chance to view the Advertising for Bonus+Pearls though, ignore if you have VIP Status). It just doesn't update immediately til the game is over.

3. Infamy and Season experience is 2 separate things.

4. 77 things is badge / season experience (see above), which goes towards the shiny metal thing under your level. Y ou'll notice some high level guys with silver or gold badges. Purely cosmetic, most players don't care about this thing to be honest.

5. Seasons. You can push any time now. the highest level will mark in the leaderboards. you can drop afterwards or try again later to beat it. As for higher level players, you're competing against them. So try your best!

6. You need duplicate item of the exact rarity to level to the next tier. You also have to have the required captain level/crew level to do so.

7. Perks only apply to weapons. The gold and black diamond is the VIP program which you can find in the Shop tab. The green diamond <!> is actually indicate fleets; who's is fleeted together on the player matchup / scorecard screen.

I'll try and respond to the other issues the next post.

 

I'm not a dev, but i can take a crack at answering the issues and feedback.

The lower infamy parts of the game, "snowball" effect is definitely more apparent. Simply because players a that infamy lack experience in the game, and no offense; they are not very good(yet). Everyone is on training wheels, and granted that some people are simply bad and some are good. This throws off the balance very easily. As you move up, the players slowly get better in this regard but once one ship is destroyed, it's essentially 5vs4 so the odds that the team with most ship wins, this is also true in high level. Not always the case tho! Really depends on the skill level and the strength of the player's items/ship.

Matchmaker is adequate. You already agree. but it does suffer from the infamy dropping players and the AFK players. There is honestly nothing you can do now. If these players are doing it excessively, you can report it to Rovio directly and capture a screenshot. There's no in game mechanism because that would be easily abused.

Infamy is your bane. Actually, both winning percentage and infamy is insignificant for players who are starting out. It's meaningless and pointless to take these numbers literally as measurement of a "great" player. I know people will argue with me on this(infact even some guildmates have), and i tell them that both unit of measurements are flawed(infamy is more accurate at high levels however).

1. Infamy is a measurement of total number of wins based on who you played with/your skill level your captain levels / your item levels / and your ship level. The higher of all these factors, the higher your infamy. As much as we all want to believe that skill is some magnificent ability, there's a limit on how effective skill can be based on the tools he has and who he's playing with. Ie; a very good nightmare player given a MK1 and Level 1 non-legendary items would probably lose to a MK3. It's completely relative, and again it's all of these things/factors as a package.

2. Winning percentage. It's only based on the last 30 days. So the number initially will be above 50% because the initial stages of sub 1500 infamy is relatively easier for relatively good players to Win Games. The longer you play and the higher you get in this game, the slower leveling it becomes. Which means to gain resources, defeat quests, level items, raise captain levels, upgrade ships the more games you have to play(unless you buy pearls constantly). If you're not a whale, you'll soon rack up a lot of games and since you hit a peak infamy, you will end up winning only 50% the games or less(what about draws?). To better illustrate this as a free-to-play player; at the beginning it probably takes about 10-15 games to get to Level 2, probably 75 games to get to Level 5, 200 Games to get to level 10. 500 Games to Level 15, 1200 games to level 20 ,2500 games to level 25, 5000 games to level 30, 10,000 for level 40... so on and so forth... (these numbers are at the top my head, I hope I'm fairly accurate, don't take my word for it). So by the time you rack up 2000 games in 3.5 months, it only counts the last 30 days. What number would that be and would it matter?

So ignore those two figures and slowly work at improving your items, captain levels, ships etc. The higher those are the easier to gain infamy. Honestly, the only time infamy really matters is at the end of the season where you get your rewards.

 

@D3X I really appreciate your replies, thank you for taking the time to respond. Your answers/comments are very useful.

I suspected the game would stabilize a bit as I move up to higher skill tiers, you confirmed that. So I will keep pushing/upgrading.

 

Not a problem! I made some minor edits and typos I made. I hope it made sense.