Legendary Pirates - Release Date!

I'm so sorry to beat a dead horse but this horse deserves a beating.

Lynsey, mini using guilds NEED to be addressed. The current rumble environment is.....unacceptable. I love gems, I love gemming recruitment, heck, I don't even mind the higher cost for recruitment. What I can NOT stand is being paired with guilds like this. My guild emptied ourselves of the two minis we kept as backup for rumbles like this, because we placed faith in at minimum, better matchmaking. But today we were placed with these people. Now, I understand you don't want to necessarily lower the BP rewards for lower level player (I understand fully, it could be discouraging). However it is FAR MORE DISCOURAGING to be paired with a guild that has no less that 5 mini accounts (likely, given one has the same name as a PH9 player) and having to pay twice as many gems to keep up with their lower recruitment cost. My guild, our sister guild, and I would like to think plenty of other active members of the PP community just.....can't keep doing this.

I hate to complain. I recognize this is complaining (boo hoo, you cant keep up, you dont want to spend money etc etc etc) but i PROMISE that isn't the case. I understand the honor in losing to a team more committed (wealthy, I don't care what you call it). Good for them. But having to fight tooth and nail to hold onto a position against a team knowingly gaming the system just can't continue. If it comes to a cheesy petition or something I am more than willing to create one. If I have to pledge a 50$ donation, I'd do that even. I don't care. Midoki, this is a 200+ day player who has dropped ---- money and -------- time on an amazing and creative creation by what I'd like to think is an amazing and creative team. Please, don't alienate the folks who just want a reasonable playing field. I would like to imagine that isn't too much to ask.


On a happier note, this update is phenomenal. I love the LPs and the hours of additional gameplay they've added. It was a literal dream come true, too, when you added outfits (I'm weird like that). The fact exploration has new purpose is WONDERFUL, and the additional strategy all around the game has received will keep us entertained for ages.

Hope I wasn't too long winded, and I wish all the best. Happy Plundering!

 

This update has been great mostly, love the outfits so well done Midoki

i was really happy when I read that, we were all looking forward to a better matchmaking system.
Agree with @Capt Drowns that it is indeed quite dissapointing to find out that "should generally" & "far less likely" actually means "still pretty often"

 

unfortunately, I believe they stated they tuned the system to try to avoid minis, but to also try to keep rumble matchup times reasonable at 30-60 minutes, and I have a feeling that after 60 minutes of waiting for a match, with no one able to match them, it just pulled in another guild to speed things up. I understand your want to please players regardless of their position on using them. But I'd rather wait five days for my rumble to start if I could guarantee it was a fair rumble. And those minis gaming the system, if they can't find a match in five weeks because no one else continues to use them, then they deserve that as well. Make them wait indefinitely if they have to, rather than timing out on matchmaking and pulling in a fair-playing guild so they don't have to wait forever. If they're using minis, they don't deserve to get quick matches.

Minis are causing you lost revenue. They are attacking constantly, putting overhead and bandwidth costs that cut into your profits directly, and they obviously discourage players who were planning to buy gems from doing so, because its not worth paying to lose to someone that doesn't have to pay to outdo you, costing you money that way. You should always defer on the side of making it harder for these leaches to match up with opponents. Its less strain they put on your servers and saves you money - because these players certainly are not paying; and they're frequently doing it to generate free gems for their other account, which can now reduce how much it purchases!

You could make a tweak right now, server side, that applied during the next maintenance, that refused to ever match up a guild that had any PH below 6 mixed in with high level PH bases, just by comparing the highest and lowest levels in the guild with a quick script - this would quickly hemorrhage all of these undesirable players. Its an extreme method, but it would work.

There is a more level headed option, which I promise any one of your coding staff could do in a couple hours and roll out during server maintenance in a night or two (remember, all matchmaking should be happening serverside, so there is no reason to make us wait for an update to fix these things! Don't even bother QAing this stuff, anything is better than what we have, and your QA company deserves to be fired and blacklisted after the last couple travesties - in any other industry they would have been a long time ago). To do this, you don't look at the average PH level or rank of the guild; even guild size is a much less important factor at this moment. You only need to look at the minimum PH level and maximum PH level, and only allow matchups where all five guilds have identical min and max levels, no matter how long it takes to find a match. This is a quick filter. You're essentially doing a double set intersection on guild a and b where a.minPH = b.minPH and a.maxPH = b.maxPH. To handle guild sizing issues, just add an and (b.size > .8 * a.size && b.size < 1.2*a.size) to allow only guilds with within a 20% size difference. Filtering these things is very simple, and I promise, people won't mind taking three hours to match up if it guarantees there won't be any minis.

 

Its the only logical thing to do, Mr. Scott.

 

My apologies.

 

In the interest of being more lighthearted, hijacking IS theoretically our professions.

You guys have me anxiously waiting for that trade ship to return. WEEKLY HYPE!!!!

 

I also apologize for my follow up gripes following Drowns post. I wasn't paying close enough attention to the thread title and thought it applied to the entire legendary updates release, which included matchmaking tweaks.

Also super excited for the trade ship to return I *almost* wish I could gem it to come faster/refresh its inventory, but forcing us to wait it out is just making the excitement twice as intense.

 

yeah skye i thought it pertained enough too, sorry to rope you in lol.

I've been pleasantly surprised with how useful mack is becoming. I actually used him to mop up a few buildings to 3 star a rumble opponent, which he did admirably. Very excited to get some more copper....

 

Yes Mack is brilliant at hitting buildings quickly at the end of a raid! Can't wait to get him better trained

 

Oh yea. Mack will be a killer once his swinging claw is beefed up. AND he gets speed increases. making him zip around the island faster. I'm enjoying him, but trying to get too attached. I mean. There are 11 other LP ..

 

Mines at lv 5 I believe, and he will claw his way into a base to get to a store - I hit Chaos Claw, and it takes all the max level mortars and GP in the base down to 50%; I'm guessing at max level he will really screw them up. I've also seen him blatantly just walk through a wall to get to a collector; I know he can claw over the wall, but it seemed like he just wedged his way through the seem between two walls without grappling.

 

Future note: don't place Gold/Grog Stores near main defensive weapons

 

The walking through walls is a bug and is fixed in a coming update.

 

I love using him...he rapels into the base and I immediately hit the claw button. He sure speeds up taking out those inner defenses.

 

So who's got Blackbeard?! I see some lucky people got him I got Annabelle and Cornelius this time, already training to level....4? So excited to try them.

 

I got Blackbeard, along with some guild mates.

 

I hope the six legendary pirate release is Ceasar. Man I really want to use that flamethrower. Beside his character does look amazing.