Balancing Emissaries

Rare need to give level 75 players access to voyages that are more lucrative than the level 50 voyages they continue to give you.

@jetorchidee97 who said I wanted to reap from it? I play with a lot of players and I play on open crew a lot. I would like to be able to slap down a high level voyage to help others. Why would they not make voyages increase in level?

@jetorchidee97 I don’t play with dedicated players. I play with casual players a lot. Level 50 voyages are all well and good for them, but Rare should increase the voyages level as expected. It doesn’t have to be much, maybe 10 cargo instead of 8 for example.

You get barley any do for lowering a grade 5 flag now, probs the worst nerf ever introduced into this game.

@bovafett512 Now this i can get behind. Dont get me wrong I do not entirely agree with all aspects of this patch, but if the goal was to prevent loops, removing the Emissary Voyage after the flag has been lowered would have solved it.

Two hours to get two grade 2 emissary flags as Reaper's today after server hopping like made to find ANY...

Could of had a 3rd but they quickly lowered and quit out when they saw us coming.

Loot worth more to toss it overboard as an offering to the great Shrouded Ghost.

Yep, check, check, and check. No more Reaper's bones for quite some time.

Balancing Reaper's Bones loot rep based off of 0.01% of the player-base was a terrible idea. Whoever was working with this data really doesn't understand making decisions based on GOOD data.

@kommodoreyenser said in Balancing Emissaries:

Balancing Reaper's Bones loot rep based off of 0.01% of the player-base was a terrible idea. Whoever was working with this data really doesn't understand making decisions based on GOOD data.

I played 3/4 hours everyday since the patch came out, only did PvE forts, AI ships, etc and got level 75 reapers 5 days after the patch. It isnt based on 0.01%. It was way to easy to level reaper bones faction and that has been fixed now. I wouldn't mind if they would revert players that are already 75 to a lower level because of it.

But this change was needed and its a good one :)

@mentimjojo said in Balancing Emissaries:

@kommodoreyenser said in Balancing Emissaries:

Balancing Reaper's Bones loot rep based off of 0.01% of the player-base was a terrible idea. Whoever was working with this data really doesn't understand making decisions based on GOOD data.

I played 3/4 hours everyday since the patch came out, only did PvE forts, AI ships, etc and got level 75 reapers 5 days after the patch. It isnt based on 0.01%. It was way to easy to level reaper bones faction and that has been fixed now. I wouldn't mind if they would revert players that are already 75 to a lower level because of it.

But this change was needed and its a good one :)

According to the only stats I can see, 0.01% of players have achieved lvl 75 Reaper’s.

I would be on board with the change if everyone went back to lvl 1. Since that won’t happen, my suggestion is stolen loot is the only loot being able to be turned in and rep returns to what it was for those items.

The way it stands now, the faction just isn’t worth the time after Wednesday’s patch

@kenokunai said in Balancing Emissaries:

I can't help but notice that it seems that no one actually raises emissary flags after the nerf. It might just be my luck in servers, but it definitely seems that for people primarily focused on PvE, the risk of running a flag no longer seems to be worth the reward for them. Unfortunately, this means that the seas have become far less dangerous and the life of a Reaper far more dull. Again, this might just be a case of rotten luck, but my post-patch experiences have been completely consistent so far.

In addition, do these nerfs affect the points gained towards the leaderboard? If so, were previous points adjusted retroactively to not punish the people who didn't play it in the first week?

I've raised the emissary flags for Order of Souls today twice; saw at least three others.

@kenokunai said in Balancing Emissaries:

I can't help but notice that it seems that no one actually raises emissary flags after the nerf. It might just be my luck in servers, but it definitely seems that for people primarily focused on PvE, the risk of running a flag no longer seems to be worth the reward for them. Unfortunately, this means that the seas have become far less dangerous and the life of a Reaper far more dull. Again, this might just be a case of rotten luck, but my post-patch experiences have been completely consistent so far.

In addition, do these nerfs affect the points gained towards the leaderboard? If so, were previous points adjusted retroactively to not punish the people who didn't play it in the first week?

You still get insane gold with grade V reapers, just less rep / less fast leveling for reapers faction, which i think its a good thing. Ive seen a lot of reapers tonight so might be just bad luck

@jadedragon00 To explain the ledger for a moment, each tier is 25% of the players who’ve turned in for that Emissary regardless of Emissary Points.

Example, 20 people do the Bilge Rat Emissary (just made that up.)

The top Tier 1 player has 53,000,000 points, the top Tier 2 player has 100,000 points. This means that there are 3 people with points between 53,000,000 and 100,001. But it could be that those other 3 are 100,002 and 100,003 and 100,004. That’s how it works.

The top of the highest tier has zero impact on anyone’s ability to reach that tier. What impacts it is the total number of players in the pool and where Emissary Point Values are at the 25% player count cutoffs.

@mikethemutinous I REALLY HATE this ‘tweak’. I’ve been Athena 10 for 18 months, and because I didn’t have all day to grind and cheese the system I’m now behind much newer pirate legends in the Athena faction. Don’t do anything for pirate legends for ages, then screw over the long time casual players who have stuck by you when you continually failed to deliver end game content. Feels really bad. If Rare insists on keeping this ridiculous nerf, reset everyone PL11+ to PL 10, you don’t seem to mind wasting people’s time, so do it some more to make it FAIR, and put everyone back on a level playing field.

So I guess the way TTV ShowDor is farming all of the Emissaries by running multiple ships on the same server at the same time and switching between them when turning in while everyone else is doing all of the work is cool. Keep up the good work Devs. I am sure that is what you guys intended for this campaign.

@grimlord-nikon said in Balancing Emissaries:

@d3adst1ck go to twitch and look for ShowDoR the current 1 place in gold and merchant. he is server jumping and using his followers to grind fort of the damed. on alliance servers.

Lol, TTV ShowDoR is a joke. Another hollow pirate. In all honesty these ledger rewards are easy to get regardless. The Reaper's progress above level 40 is definitely in the toilet though barring exceptional servers with emissary ships which are less than 2% of my experiences thus far.

@mikethemutinous I totally agree that the balancing needed to be brought in (with some pirates getting max levels on the first day). However, I feel this nerf has been WAY TOO heavy/severe. I spent 4 hours grinding with a galleon crew, completing a fleet, fort and sunk multiple players and skelly ships here and there. After these 4 hours, we turned everything in with a grade 5 reaper flag up and yet I barely got 1 level of rep (Reaper level 46 after selling loot). As I said, balance needed to be brought into place, but I genuinely feel that after 4 hours of grinding and hard work, 1 level of rep is really saddening. I would really appreciate if you could perhaps re-balance some stuff out making our time on the sea feel more rewarding for our dedication and effort. Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,
Jonah Joseph

@MikeTheMutinous and response?

@sonicsonic3 i agree with that. it was fun progressing in a shorter intervall of time. the long time you had to play and wait to see progress was often kind of boring. i think the adjustment is a bad decision and it will not lead to the intended goal

@satanicnemesis said in Balancing Emissaries:

I can solo sloop an athena in the roar in under an hour. If it takes your whole crew 4 hours, you were always gonna be slow at getting to athena 20, with or without the nerf. This isn’t anything against how you play, we clearly play very differently and that’s the beauty of the sandbox.

Remember that Athena's voyages scale with the size of the crew, so the challenges are greater for a brigantine than for a sloop. I also specifically noted that that four hours is from log-in to log-out, allowing for stocking up, selling, and distractions like other ships and AI threats. We dig up and sell all loot, although we seldom bother with the cargo. There is absolutely no way you can routinely do all of that in "under an hour." On a very good day, if you don't bother stocking your ship, tap and leave all the loot, get lucky on killing the captains, ditch all the cargo, avoid erupting volcanos, and have absolutely no distractions along the way, you might be able to dig up and sell an Ashen Chest of Legends in under an hour. Maybe.

But I never said anything about getting to Athena 20. Where did that come from? This was about making it harder getting to Grade V emissary.

No one did anything wrong

That is a matter of opinion. People were "looping" the Athena's emissary voyages, which is basically an exploit. Rare stated they didn't expect this and that's why changes were needed.

no one cheated the system by playing faster than you. Rare went back and adjusted values based on data, they miscalculated during development.

I never said "playing faster" was cheating. Don't be absurd. This has nothing to do with the relative playing "speed" of various crews. Actually, my comment was pretty clear and concise, so I shouldn't need to explain this. Some people were gaming the system, and as a result Rare has made it take longer to reach Grade V Athena's emissary. That negatively impacts a crew like mine that doesn't have hours to spare, and doesn't want to "speed" through the game. Believe it or not, we actually enjoy playing Sea of Thieves. We've played since launch, so we know what we're doing. We're just not interested in exploiting game mechanics. Go figure.

@genuine-heather

The voyages don’t scale, the only thing that scales is the amount of digs it takes to get a chest. In fact a bigger crew is quicker and easier with revive. Completing a roar Athena while getting all items and selling the them can very well be done in around an hour. Including stocking as you go.

I said before, people play and enjoy the game differently, the fact you like to play slower and take your time on one voyage is fine, it wasn’t an attack and you don’t need to be on the defensive about it. There is no right way to enjoy the game.

No one gamed or exploited anything, again, people were playing the games as initially released. No one was doing anything crazy, they were playing as intended. Rare admitted they miscalculated numbers and have since fixed it, now if one was to find a way around their changes in order to get pre patch rep speed etc, that would be exploiting and gaming the systems.

Nice to see that you are letting us know what is happening out on the seas!

@satanicnemesis said in Balancing Emissaries:

@genuine-heather

The voyages don’t scale, the only thing that scales is the amount of digs it takes to get a chest. In fact a bigger crew is quicker and easier with revive. Completing a roar Athena while getting all items and selling the them can very well be done in around an hour. Including stocking as you go.

You said "under an hour." Now you're backtracking, saying "around" an hour. But what you really mean is closer to an hour and a half. If you'd simply said that, you'd be fine. But you're full of it if you claim you can do a full Ashen Athena's voyage, including digging and selling all the loot, in under an hour. This isn't about being defensive, it's about being honest. If you'd like to prove me wrong, feel free to post a video of you completing an entire Ashen Athena's in less than an hour. I'd sincerely like to see that.

Guys, they make decisions based on metrics. How many players are playing as "X" emissary and how many "X" levels they are advancing per "X" many hours of game time.

If you guys don't like the changes or feel like the nerf went too far, stop playing as those emissary factions to show them. Enough players do it and they will most certainly notice. If business continues as usual, they will just assume that the nerfs were all perfect and move on to a different issue.

That is how you make the data work for you and thus make a buff come to the faction to balance it back out.