Poisonous troop upgrades: the problem and a fix

Small team, so I doubt they have time, but I bet if they'd make a spreadsheet of those numbers available, a few people here would gladly plug them in.

 

+1 I support this proposal. Anyway it would still be very much appreciated to have Midoki actually implement the "roll back updates" function (with modifications to how this function will work as they see fit).

 

I Like the idea to be able to select the skill level you want for each pirate at a retro price. One issue I see with this "fix" is mixing skill levels of pirates. For example if you have pirate x spawned at skill level 10 and send him sailing away then you spawn pirate x again at skill level 5. What happens when the boat returns and all pirates are mixed in with different skill levels? What skill level is honoured because I don't see it feasible to have a mix of skill levels at the same time. For example what happens when you hit the special ability for pirate x when it only applies to half of your pirates if a mix is allowed.

What the answer would probably be is when a mix happens all pirates go to the lowest level which is going to be a bit of a raw deal but if it's not that way there is going to be abuse. Another option would be locking in the skill level until it is not possible to mix anymore (ie. all pirates of that type are dead). So if you choose skill level 5 it is locked until that pirate is no more. The more complicated option would be to allow different skill levels at the same time And each pirate fights to his own skill level.

In any case it seems like the logic around it can get a little messy and programmers don't like.

 

@DamianWars that's a good point. I wonder what happens now when you finish upgrading a pirate while you have some trained. I would guess they get upgraded for "free" but there is very little room for abuse there.

The worst case scenario for abuse of the skill-toggling idea would be if you could deselect all skills, train some really cheap pirates, and then turn on all their upgrades and get them immediately upgraded. So however the system works would have to guard against that case in particular.

It could work for each pirate to carry around knowledge of its own skill levels. Indeed, though, this would be weird if an ability then only affected some of the troops of that type in a raid. Another complication in this case is, the player might want to have control over which version of his troops he is deploying. For example if you have cheap WDs and expensive WDs in the same raid, you could theoretically hope there would be two different buttons to select them. But that creates UI headaches where you could potentially need 65 different buttons on the screen because every pirate has slightly different skills. So maybe you'd have to just live with a random WD when you spawn one. Or maybe you'd spawn the strongest ones first.

I think the simpler fix for this problem is just to ensure that each skill is undeniably an upgrade from a cost/performance perspective. The recent cost reductions get us closer. But the +3 and +5 defenses are still bad deals at 10k each. I think it would be better for each ability to have an inherent grog/recruit time cost increase, rather than basing it on the total level of the pirate. So the +3 defense would always increase the cost by 500, say. The only downside to this that I can think of is that costs would no longer always be "nice round numbers" like 50k, 60k...you'd often have troops that cost 49,500 or something like that. A small price to pay, methinks, for removing the perverse incentives we are currently faced with.

 

At the higher levels, every little hitpoint makes a huge difference. The ridiculous price increase, though, is just stupid.

 

So yeah, I finally got my witch doctor up to level 13, completing Guardian II, just a few minutes ago. The three new PH8 upgrades increased the hire cost up 10k each, to 80k total. But I am sad to report that the next level...which would be +3 or +5 defense...has raised the cost increase to 20k. If that's true for level 15 as well then the total cost would be 120k each, can someone who already has all the skills confirm?

Just to take stock of our current situation with respect to the original post, at least it's improved. Previously buying those two skills would result in a 100% increase in hire cost (from 50k to 100k) once you have all the other skills. Now it's only a 50% increase (if they now increase from 80k to 120k).

In summary I'd say these two upgrades are still poisonous, but less so. Say, instead of nerve gas, we now have mustard gas. Still a bummer and certainly enough to make people want to quit the game, but not as quickly as before. I think the game would be improved if each skill carried its own grog/recruit time increase, instead of that being tied to level of the unit. Or toggle-able skills would solve the problem if all the other issues brought up with that idea in this thread can be handled.

 

Yes I can confirm it's true.

Maybe the toggling feature would make sense. The new guild ship allows mixed pirate levels so whatever system they use with it they could use with the toggling which could potentially have mixed pirates as well.

 

+1 to this suggestion.

To the main idea raised in this thread, i.e. toggling on/off certain stats/skills your Pirate has learnt, now with the new matchmaking system and loot reduction for high PH level/PR players I would say that PP needs this main idea implemented more so than ever!

 

To Midoki's credit they did reduce the cost of fully upgraded wd sans Academy 6.
Call it a second chance if you will and if you fully upgrade AC7 after this shame on you.

 

Fully updated WD Rocks, but i do think its a great idea that you would be able to choose wich lvl you want to use when attacking

 

I dunno...I think, if you already have the +3 and +5 defense (meaning your costs would be 70k per unit, I think), it might actually be a good deal to upgrade the AC7 skills. The +1 range and +20% protection both seem like must-haves, even though it would mean increasing your costs by 50k per unit to 120k.

 

My WD is 80k, and I frequently fat finger an extra WD or two. It's expensive and I'm very disappointed that Midoki still refuses to give us a full refund for accidental queue ups.

 

I'm amazed this has not been fixed yet (also its VH4 not AC7, silly posters)

There is a VERY EASY solution to this: make the increase in cost/recruit time not tied to the level, but the specific upgrades. So the +3 toughness could add 1000 grog regardless of whether you do it after doing everything else or not. Each upgrade should have a fixed increase for that specific upgrade, rather than an overall cost per level. Then everyones on an identical playing field.

80/100/120k cost depending on how suckered a player got before learning not to take them is unfair. Either just make them all 120k at max level, minus like 1k grog each for the useless upgrades, or just remove them altogether. Or, worst case, buff them extremely so instead of +3/+5 its like +30/+50. For 20k grog, they deserve that big of an increase. But I personally prefer the cost tied to specific upgrade rather than overall level option, as this levels the playing field for every troop, past present and future, and avoids any other issues that may ever come up. Removing them is second best.

I think just levelling it so all WD so at max level they're all 100k grog, and those two specific upgrades are the difference between 95k, 97.5k, and 100k would be a lot more fair.