Stop punishing high levels

[Squidslinger Gilder]

New achievements are insane. Not only did you people force us to redo Flayed but you are also making finishing others almost impossible. I have never seen entire opposing teams made of level 7+ let alone 10+. Even 4+ is very tough to find sometimes. These are all very rare situations and require players to be committed to this game as much as we are which does not happen. So you're literally punishing us for loving this game by forcing us to wait for some extreme rare chance of getting these players on. Then in most cases we have to literally pub stomp them which is near impossible unless we too are running with a stacked team. All in all this promotes matches where high levels bully newbies into leaving so they can get all the vet players in.

If these achievements are changed so that there only needs to be 1 player of this level on the opposing side then that would work a lot better. But still, your forcing a situation where no one will be able to get to 15, or to get there, they have to find some way to cheat to do it. If we are reaching level cap too fast then don't punish us for it. Some of us want to be able to cap all 3 classes. So we work hard on each one to get there. That isn't going to happen at this rate.

[Captain Smollett]

I posted a thought similar to yours Gilder on another recent forum thread but I agree that many of the new achievements are simply cruel.

[Pickle]

Muse could publish the stats of how many players are at each level for each profession.  I wouldn't expect more than a handful are currently at L11/12 so the very last achievements for each profession are currently impossible.

Matches with everyone at L7 or greater are possible at the moment, but only if those of us that qualify decide to abandon the lower level players and set-up private matches amongst ourselves.  I don't think Muse intend to force this level of exclusivity and division amongst the player population.  But I do realise just how far some players have pushed the achievement system by actively farming achievements for levels (and I don't think anyone L10 or higher can deny this) and Muse have probably hoped to buy some breathing space and slow the pace of level inflation at the top.  The problem with the current situation us that it's going to create a small pool of players sitting either side of the L13/14 threshold growing in their frustration whilst waiting for others to catch up.  Which for casual players like myself will probably never happen.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I caught a comment I never thought I'd see today. Captain Phil stating he had given up.

If that doesn't sum up there is something wrong then I dunno what does...

[Clara Skyborn]

Hey, everyone,

I understand that the new achievements came as a bit of a shock. The enemy level caps were introduced to a few of the categories to make achievements more meaningful by ensuring that victory was earned against a worthy opponent, rather than farmed from helpless newbies. While I know our top players are generally more scrupulous than that, the existing achievements with no level requirements would encourage a real min-maxing achievement farmer to rack up those wins as quickly as possible by looking for the lowest-level players possible to win against, and dominate (perfect victory, no hull damage, etc.). That's tedious for the high-level player, and absolutely no fun for the lowbie. And the only way to make it take longer than a few matches to accomplish would be to require you to do it over and over again, which is even worse.

Yes, the top-level achievements aren't achievable right now because there's no one at those levels yet, because they were just released. I realize that the game's population and the number of high-level players are currently quite small, but we're planning for growth. Only a handful of categories use the level cap constraint, so it's still perfectly possible to continue to make progress. The numbers are large because this isn't a linear scale -- it takes longer to get from level 14 to 15 than from 4 to 5. There's nothing at stake here but glory, so we've planned for a very long curve to give the top players something to always be working toward. We would rather have a long progression with very lofty goals to strive toward than a quick, short curve that everyone can complete in a couple hundred hours and a lobby full of Elites.

I know it's the hardest on those of you who have been consistently hovering at or near the level cap as we release content, and your hours played to reach max level are going to exceed those of a player who joins today and plays to level 15. As the pioneers, you're the ones who get the roughest time of it as we work out the kinks. I'm also sorry for anyone who was caught out by some of the shuffles that were done in response to your feedback -- like moving Flayed back, since it was too tough to complete and slowing down progress at the lower levels. If you already completed that achievement once and would like a pass on it for the second time, email us at feedback and we'll try to figure out a way to let you skip it. (Although the real solution here is to make Flayed feel like a fun map that people enjoy playing, rather than a death sentence. We are working on it.)

I also appreciate that the caps seem punitive at the highest levels and are excessive for the current population of the game, so they've been lowered to 7+ for most high-level achievements. That should be going live in a patch soon (I don't know the exact timing, sorry -- on the other hand, I don't think anyone is actually at any of the affected achievements yet).

On a largely unrelated note, this patch will also change all capture point objectives to a simple "capture" while we rework our capture point event system to be a little more sensible and consistent. Sorry for the ongoing confusion on that one.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Flayed wouldn't be bad if it wasn't near impossible to get players to join it. It has already developed a heavy stigma against it and literally you can only play it on weekends because people have an adverse reaction to playing it mid week and there are more players online who don't know well enough yet to hate it. The change to crazy king did not help it much because a lot of lowbies play it and they have no idea what crazy king means even after you tell them. To get Flayed done the first time I had made lobbies for it and sat in them up to 2hrs at times trying to get people.

If you want 4v4 content played more, then you need to bring in a deathmatch variant. Mix it with the CP version so it is an option and we'll start seeing more 4v4s.

Thank you for the reply, you can bet once Firnfeld is done, I will be sending a message in to get Flayed back.

As far as the level stuff. I can see the reasoning but to get perfect victories against high levels, which some require, is likely only going to happen if they private match and then arrange to trade losses. Players like us are too well coordinated to expect to push into meat grind situations, specially outside 3v3. You are looking at long drawn out sniper battles to get perfects and pub matches just don't have the time nor patience to put up with it.

[Captain Smollett]

Thanks for the quick reply and consideration on these issues.  You guys are consistently the most responsive dev team I have ever seen.

[Enjix]

One thing to consider when going for a logarithmic leveling scheme like this is that while it takes longer to complete 150 matches than 50 matches, it also takes much longer to beat level 10s 50 times than it does to beat level 4s 50 times. If you use both of these leveling systems at the same time, the time required multiplies by a very large amount, taking something that might be considered extremely challenging and pushing it to the realm of never ending.

I like that you must now fly against people of equal level to advance, I'm just not too thrilled that it requires an ever-escalating number of victories to advance to the next level... in a way, missions should get harder, not longer?

Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Yeah I think I'm just going to cut back play time now. I don't really see it as possible to reach the end. It would take all level 1s getting instant turned into 10s to do it. Just not feasible. I'm close to 13 so I'll hit that but I see no point in continuing on. Congrads Muse...at 670 hrs into the game, you actually found a way to make me want to cut back time playing. Guess its time to revisit my long neglected Steam list and see what I've been forgoing to play for more Guns.

[Pickle]

Gilder.. you're just going to have to start working on your Gunner and Engineer paths again.  Whilst you work up from Gunner L8 to L12 and Engineer L9 to L12 you can help a few of us currently around Pilot L8-10 to get up towards L11-12.

Whilst I do see and agree with your complaints (and support you in making them), I can also see that a small group of players have contributed to making this problem arise by farming the achievements and breaking away to race ahead of the peloton.  You're going to have to scale back a bit on the race for Pilot levels and help the next bunch farm their missing achievements.

Part of the problem is some of the silly achievements that don't reflect standard gameplay.  I'm sat with two achievement streams blocked requiring "defend point with Galleon", one of them being the Scrap one (and that comes really early on the Maps stream).  It forces you to farm them if you want to achieve them in a reasonable space of time.  Now, if five other Captains who need this want to join me I'll be happy to form a non-shooting queue to capture, defend, rinse'n'repeat and we'll all clear the relevant achievements within two or three games.  I'm not saying that this is how all the "high level" players have achieved all of their levels, but I've participated in mutual achievement farming games with most of them.

On a largely unrelated note, this patch will also change all capture point objectives to a simple "capture" while we rework our capture point event system to be a little more sensible and consistent. Sorry for the ongoing confusion on that one.

There's nothing wrong with defend achievements.  What's wrong is having to use a ****ing Galleon to do it (no apologies for implied language, I do feel strongly about this).  Thinking that the "defend" part is the larger part of the problem fails to address the masochistic decision to force players to use the least appropriate ship for a CP game.  It implies you're fiddling with the system without making an effort to understand the player perceived problem.  And TWO achievements specify Galleon and Defend.  Remove the Galleon requirement, it's easy to rack up Defends with any other ship.  Change it to Junker if you want to specify ship type, it's far more suitable than Galleon for that role.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

The Galleon one is bad but not impossible. In an ideal situation the enemy has started capping and the galleon comes barreling in. Block is triggered and boom you get it. Unfortunately the game is very finicky on blocks. Sometimes it says a block, sometimes it says contest. If the achievement was changed to be contest with a galleon it would be much easier. In fact, a bit too easy. Personally I think defend should mean you sink a ship contesting while you are on a point. That is entirely doable with a galleon and not always easy since junkers/pyras will have the armor pen/dps advantage.

Honestly I only got my other two classes up to 8 just for the costume unlock. Really don't have a lot of incentive to go beyond that. Some of their achievements are just as nightmarish if not worse than pilot at those high ranks. I do eventually play them but I like to get pilot out of the way first. I was just starting on that when I hit 10, then again at 11. Muse keeps adding ranks so I can't get back to it.

Think 14 may be possible. Looked through it again. Some bad ones, but not all restrictive. If I can get past Firnfeld's 4+ restriction, then petition for Flayed to be reinstated, maybe. But 15...think 15 will take private game farming and maybe another year of gameplay. I cannot see enough low levels reaching the ranks needed to complete it. Maybe when Adventure mode comes out we'll have a 15 or two.

I still will play but I do think I will cut back game time. Knowing there is just an impassable wall in the way just doesn't make me want to beat my head against it. Think Muse will eventually roll some of this silliness back once they see it just not working.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Something I'm not grasping is why you feel the need to "cut back on play-time" because you can't get to lvl 15 in a manner of days/weeks. For something that means nothing apart from a big number next to your name, I don't know why you guys fixate so much on levels.

Maybe that's me though and it's really an opinion. I haven't looked too far into them as I just get mine as I go. The only issue I see with achievements is how they (relatively) stay the same while the maps evolve. Defending on Flayed was much easier before it was a crazy king. Same on Scrap. Any defending on a crazy king or koth is going to take awhile.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

If you were less focused of chasing levels instead of having fun, then you'd have... you know more fun. I fully agree that a lot of hight level achievments are nightmare (literaly thousands of buffs ove cousre of several achievments for example - with the changes to firefighting, fire fighting tools are even more important to have, or extinguish 200 hull fire with chem spray, with reduced effectiveness this takes waay too long to extinguish fire with it ), and I'm up for complaining. The only issues with some of the complaints is that it's getting longer and longer to level up. So what? It's no as if there were any actual benefits to leveling.

[Kyren]

I'm a level 6 Engineer and Pilot since some months already, and it doesn't look at all like I'm going to reach level 7 with any of those. Because the current, comparatively low, achievements require things of me that don't fit my playstyle. I hardly ever play on "professional" ships that would require me to bring a buff hammer, with the newbie crews I'm usually with I can't go away from Spanner and Mallet.

I've got the Achievements up to this level because they reflect my playstyle up to a point. Ships I fly with, tools I use, maps I play on. Now they're mostly about ramming, buffing, flying galleons. I'm not going to let my loadout or ship be dictated by some achievement that only gives me a higher number in front of my name - I consider that fancy number much too insignificant for that. I don't get any benefit other than clothing (and I can obtain clothing in a much funnier way trough Dev battles, Tournaments, etc.)

For something that in the end only gives you a number in front of your name, achievements are really overrated here. I understand it can be interesting and catching to get them, but when playing comes down to achievement farming something's going very wrong.

Also, I think that the progression with levels isn't all that imbalanced. Yeah, the numbers look fantastically high, but being, for example, a level 12 Pilot should require a very long playing time. If that's the case, then the levels at least have a meaning in showing how long someone's been playing for.

[Surette]

Yeah I think I'm just going to cut back play time now. I don't really see it as possible to reach the end. It would take all level 1s getting instant turned into 10s to do it. Just not feasible. I'm close to 13 so I'll hit that but I see no point in continuing on. Congrads Muse...at 670 hrs into the game, you actually found a way to make me want to cut back time playing. Guess its time to revisit my long neglected Steam list and see what I've been forgoing to play for more Guns.

I'm sorry but this sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. Are there people out there who actually feel this way? Are you honestly only playing right now so that you can reach the level cap? That sounds miserable. I can't fathom why anyone would play a game for the sole reason of reaching the max level. If I ever cut back my playtime, it'll be because the game gets boring. Realistically, I'm never going to max my levels anyway (or if I do, it'll be quite a while). I just play for fun and try for a few achievements here and there, because they add a different element of challenge. I can't imagine the achievements being anyone's sole focus of playing.

I also don't mean to attack you Gilder, you're a good guy but playing the game just to reach the level cap sounds more like work than play to me.