There are a few things that seem to be oversights, and not necessarily bugs, so I would like to bring up an idea and then go through a few detailed issues. First, it seems that in many cases, us players are the beta testers for new content. This tends to get people pretty riled up, so here is something that would be fun: a second PP app! Perhaps it could be "Plunder Pirates Sandbox". It would be almost entirely the same as plunder pirates, but it would allow users to test content, prerelease, and give feedback for bugs and other issues before it would be rolled out in Plunder Pirates. Ideally, in this scenario, there is no limit on time, resources, upgrades, ect. You would build a base of any kind or level, and then attack that, instead of other user's bases. This would certainly prevent things like invincible witch doctors from happening. Now a little more detailed items. The legendary pirates are fun, but they are a bit of a mess. They seem to operate under a different "range" system than regular pirates. Please standardize this. The legendary pirates need to have their abilities tested to show that they do indeed reach the range that they are expected to. Case in point: Boomer. At lvl 5 his ability range should increase by 20, to a total of 44. However, his ability range is maxxed at 24. Please test this and fix it. Then check all the other legendary pirates. The mines are a bit off, particularly mystic mines. The trigger range and the effect range are not the same. The trigger range is wider than the effect range. Case in point, my range 5 gunner approaches a target at it's max range and stops to begin attacking. Then the mystic mine is set off, but the mine has no effect on the gunner. The trigger range and effect range ought to be the same. At some point the mystic mine range was increased but the effect range has remained the same. Was this intentional, or an oversight? Legendary pirates have some odd issues interacting with mines. McKraken can use his special ability as soon as a mine is triggered and the mine will have no effect. Yesterday someone attacked me with Boomer, and Boomer ran up to a target, triggered a mystic mine, started attacking before the mine effect triggered, then he got ZZZzzzZZZ symbols over him - but he kept attacking still. It seemed to only keep him from moving, but not from attacking. Please check how each LP interacts with both kinds of mines. Blackbeard's special is completely without purpose. It stuns him and your regular troops for WAY too long. No one has a good idea for how this was intended to operate effectively. If you won't change/adjust this effect, then please let Juggs with splash armor and skellies with stun reduction, to not be effected by the special. Okay, so let's stop being bean counters and just have all the island traps rearm after being attacked automatically ... and .... wait for it ... for FREE! Let's just get over this and move on. Ching - geesh, if you had a gem for everytime someone whined on the forum about not having Ching ... anyhow, Ching isn't very good because she commands troops to rush after defenses as a high priority. Ching would be great if she would target the Pirate Hall, but as half of your force is taking down that monster of toughness, ching's pack rolls right by. All too common ching's pack gets knocked down by the remaining defenses, and your remaining pirates struggle to finish the base, then get knocked down over ching's exhausted body. Is it intentional that ching's group won't attack the PH, or an oversight? Help me @Lynsey [Midoki], you're my only hope ; )
I think a the testing app would be a great idea! I would keep BBs ability tho, I use it as a victory cry when I get 100%(which is not often). I think 1 thing deffinitly is fix it so Ching can command juggs.
I agree that ranges seem messed up on a lot of things, these should probably partly be filed as bug reports, and things aren't always clear. I also agree that lots of other bugs you mentioned, like romeo attacking while stunned, mack negating mine effect, etc need to be addressed. Blackbeard's special's damage should be improved, since it is way too weak to justify the stuntime. I'm not sure any amount of damage will ever make up for it, but it should certainly be considerably stronger than boomer's given the stun that boomer's doesn't have. But at a minimum they should be equalized. I'm sure Midoki designers will be able to better commentate on their intended use-case for it. I'd love traps to rearm for free. The cost on max lv mines is prohibitive, and I doubt many players have bothered with them - most of us wish we could downgrade to lv1! I don't mind having to log in to do it, but the cost should definitely get re-evaluated, as it would take 3 attacks at leaderboard rank to be able to rearm after one defensive loss with max defenses, as I believe its over 750k for a full rearm, and one jugg can easily set everything off. Even if the cost was cut to 300k to fully rearm every max defense, that would be much more balanced, as it would generally only take one attack to win back. As it stands at leaderboard ranks, you cannot break shield if you don't want to gem a couple battles. I'm fairly certain they're evaluating the economy at higher levels (especially grog shortage on the leaderboard, which hopefully streak bonuses help with), so I'm praying will be followed up with a bit more evaluation of the gold economy with regards to rearming costs vs loot per battle. As for Ching, I'd find her special to be garbage if it targetted PH. You can rally a group of 6 HG or so with her, and they can snipe every single defense before getting anywhere near firing range, completely clearing out the base's defenses, making it safe for the rest of your troops - not a single thing left firing at them! It makes taking out mortars and GP significantly easier, and as soon as those are dead, any base is trivialized. They absolutely mow down anything else. Even bunkers, which are very high hp compared to the others, I've successfully killed before they've spun up, and Ching just makes wiping out all the defenses a cakewalk since they don't get stuck on random storages between destroying them. With most of the defenses gone, the rest of the base is a pushover. If instead they targetted PH, your troops would all get stuck trying to take down a monstrous building for 15+ seconds while defenses shot away at them. It would make it significantly harder to kill the PH, since now everythings grouped up trying to attack it, and the mortar that now has no fear of being attacked can take everything out very easily.
Guild ranking still shows 45 members per guild that also wasn't fixed last update. Midoki it's about time you allowed some of us players to beta test because it's clear you can't check your own game for bugs
Just a couple of other things that I've noticed over the last weekend: Ching will not command thieves. Really? I'm not sure what other limitations she has on her special. FYI, you have to deploy Ching first, then the thieves, then push command button. If you deploy theives first, they will be long gone before you can command them. I wanted to have a pack of theives target defenses instead of resources, just to see what happens. Mines are still messed up. A lvl 1 or lvl 2 mine took out a near max thief with training ground 2, but a lvl 4 mine vs a gunner did not break the training ground 2 bonus and he showed no damage (he was right next to the darn thing). That lvl 4 mine should do 500 dmg, and no gunner should be able to take that without a scratch. Annabelle's ability range does not represent her special ability range - it represents her range for healing. This is not standard with the other LP's "ability range". The economy of resource mines are terrible. I'm not even complaining about the low output. A lvl 12 mine upgrade costs 1.2M res, takes 6 days to upgrade, and adds 750 res/hr. During the upgrade time, the mine does not produce, which is a hidden cost. 6 days of mine production at 6500 res/hr (lvl 11 mine) is 936,000 res. After the upgrade to lvl 12, adding 750 res/hr, it takes 52 days (1248 hours) of the extra output to make up for the 6 days lost of res production during the upgrade. This is to say that after upgrading mines to lvl 12, it takes 52 days to break even on your investment. This math might seem a little strange, but you have to consider, do I upgrade my mines to get a little more production per day at the cost of losing production for 6 days, or do I keep my mines at lvl 11 and have no downtime in production? In reality, mines don't do much other than offer a means to easily acquire the res to rearm traps. However, the economy of the mines are not balanced. At least let the mines produce res during upgrading. *Edited to correct lvl 4 trap mine (original post had it at lvl3). This effect has happened on multiple occasions, during multiple players attacks and defenses. Perhaps the actual damage from the mine is not as listed in the mine's description?
The bonus of the higher level gold mines is partially extra hp (the gun tower behind them can kill gunners slightly easier now!), and partially the higher capacity. Even if they don't make much more loot, they can hold significantly more at max level. You don't have to collect quite as often, and when you have maxed capacity in your stores, you can stockpile a bit extra over the previous level. There have been plenty of times farming my grog stores AND distilleries were completely full, and now that my walls are done, I sometimes run into the same issue with gold. Thats a little bit extra you can refill the next time you're raided, or a little bit extra you still have next time you start an upgrade. Plus, what is probably the best part of it, is when a maxed out player finally quits, those max level collectors provide an extra 70k resources to a farmer, making farming that much easier for other players You don't need to break even on investment from actual production to get a benefit. Lynsey has posted in the past that they intend to clarify the ability range UI.
