New Skill Trees

Good afternoon all,

Since my last suggestion, implementing skill presets, a great suggestion in the comments from @Bayleaf was the idea of brand new skill pathways, which could bring benefits to many aspects of the game that are untouched in skills.

There are four main aspects to an account’s strength: Gems, Castles, Cannons and Skills. Of course there are buffs and the sort but these four are your permanent aspects that will forever effect your account. In recent years we have had major updates to designs with the implementation of the Gem system, Cannon are being constantly renovated and new levels and cannons introduced, and castles have been updated from a basic 6 castles between 3 sections to soon 18 castles across 3 sections. The only updates that skills have had since they were first introduced is the maximum number of skills increased from 50 to 70, and the levels increased from 5 to 6.

There have been a number of features implemented t the game since we first saw the skills and I feel that they could do with an overhaul to help boost some of these features. As of current we have three pathways to choose from (excluding the basic skills). These are as you will all know Ogoun, Agwe and Legba, which represent Offensive, Defensive and Passive skills respectively. My suggestion is two additional pathways for players to invest in; a Voodoo-based Pathway and a General pathway. They would both follow the same structure of progressed investment to reach the most valuable skills at the end of each tree, and would be laid out in the same manor as the current ones. My recommendations for these are below. (Obviously names will need to be mustered up somewhere, but that’s not something I am too concerned about):
Voodoo Skills:

Skill	Description	Increase Per Level	Maximum Value	Requirements
VP Increase	Increases the players maximum Voodoo Points.	5,000 VP per Level, 10,000 for 6th Skill.	35,000 VP	6 Skills in Basic
Occult Damage	Increases Occult, Soul Steal and Impact Damage	2%	14% (Start at 4%)	6 Skills in Basic
Fortified Amulets	Increases the healing value of your amulets.	5%	30%	6 Skills in Voodoo, including 1 in VP Increase
Voodoo Bomb Increase	Increases the effectiveness of all Area of Effect items on enemies (Excluding Plague/Contagion Curse).	10%	60%	6 Skills in Voodoo including 1 in Occult Damage
VP Repair	Increases the repair speed of your voodoo shield.	2%	14% (Start a 4%)	10 Skills in Voodoo including 1 in Fortified Amulets
Voodoo Cannon Booster	Your voodoo cannons’ elite ammunition damage is increased.	4 Points	24 Points	10 Skills in Voodoo including 1 Voodoo Bomb Increase
Recharge	Increases the recharge time of all action items	2%	14% (start at 4%)	15 Skills in Voodoo including 1 in Voodoo Cannon Booster and VP Repair

These skills I feel add both an offensive and defensive pathway within the Voodoo Tree, offering various voodoo related buffs that skills have been lacking for some time. With the increases in damage from the Occult Damage and Voodoo Cannon Booster then the playing field may be evened out between Voodoo Cannons with Voodoo Ammunition and Doomhammers with Burning Ice Ammunition.
The second set, General Skills (Name to be revised) is below:

Skill	Description	Increase Per Level	Maximum Value	Requirements
Boarding Bonus	Increases your boarding Bonus	2%	12%	6 Skills in Basic
Low Rep Speed Boost	Increases your speed whilst in a damaged state	15 Speed	90 Speed	6 Skills in Basic
Critical Damage	Increases the damage of your critical hits	2%	14% (Start at 4%)	6 Skills in General including 1 skill in Boarding Bonus
Healing Item Increase	Increases the effectiveness of healing items used on you	5%	30%	6 Skills in General including 1 skill in Low Rep Speed Boost
Reload Speed	Reduces the total time taken to reload	-0.05 Seconds	-0.3 Seconds	10 Skills in General including 1 skill in Critical Damage
Dodge Chance	Increases your Dodge Chance	1%	6%	10 Skills in General including 1 skill in Healing Item Increase
Battle Points	Increases your Battle Points gained per sink	10%	60%	15 Skills in General including 1 skill in Dodge Chance and Reload Speed

Again, I have opted for both an offensive and defensive side to this tree, meaning players can focus on whichever path they prefer to suit their playstyle.

These skill trees I feel bring a balance of items and mechanics in the game that currently sit in the shadow of other cannons. Some examples of this are the skills to buff voodoo cannons and impact damage as currently they are laughed at by Doomhammers and Burning Ice.

Of course, with increasing the number of different skills in which to place your Skill Points, the total number of Skill Points should be increased to 90, with the additional 20 purchasable for crowns. With the two new trees, this would actually encourage players to branch out into different trees and select those that work best for their playstyle, rather than everybody having the same setup as it currently stands.

I hope you enjoy this post and be sure to cast your vote in the poll at the top, and leave any feedback!!

Thanks,

~Des

 

Yes yes, I like your skills Des, especially the reload speed

 

No disrespect towards your idea mate but it sounds like a money grab. If any presets are to be made then they should be done with the current skill tree and not with new editions; and if new editions are added, then the cost of further skills should be lowered as the max cap of skills are increased, because i seriously doubt that the developers would make it so skills can be purchasable with crowns as they are fairly easy to obtain. I can not even imagine a skill costing more than 7'000 crystals, that is what like 70 USD for a new skill point? I mean come on laddie this game is pricey enough

 

But who buys pearls? When you can make £200-300 worth of pearls every day in raid map, who in their right mind would actually buy them? You may or may not have seen that they are bringing out the new castles in the coming days with this same idea. A whole new set of castles, with the view to see more variation between players and the castles that best fit their play-style. The castles are all obtainable with pearls so not a money grab at all, as it can be done completely free. I understand there are players building up still, but there are also players who have been maxed out since the beginning of this game, always on the max skills or castles as soon as they are released, and the pearls just keep rising for those players. Players in my guild with upwards of 75m pearls, and we've been desperate for something new top spend them on.

 

I do not agree with your update. You probably play on a small server, you have the lion and all the npcs of event on your account, and in addition, unlike many other players you play almost all day.
The update of the castles will already be very expensive (several hundred euros) and still a few months ago left the new levels that so much war still generate by Revenge II.
I play in MS1 where there are 3 major war coalitions (each with 200 players online every day) plus guilds naps. It is very difficult to make pearls in the lion and the npcs of event hardly come.

 

Hi Alvaro,

Your assumptions around me playing on a smaller server and owning the Lion Map would be correct, but not about playing all day. People go on about it being so expensive and money-grabbing but pearls are free... I appreciate your feedback and that for larger servers it is more difficult to farm, but I also feel like there needs to be some innovation and variation. There is very little that is new in this game in the sense of a new concept. New castles are great as they add a whole new range of abilities to customise, just like the gem system. By introducing these extra skills for crowns then all players on all servers could work towards them just by doing their daily quests. 20 minutes a day and you'll be sorted in time!

 

I do not fully agree with your claims. Let's see something.
The updates of cannons, castles, talents, jewels only serve to spend more money. You talk about customise ships to be interesting and diversified among the various players, but in fact all the players converge in the same direction with the same types of jewels, with the same types of active castles, ...
For example, in my coalition 80% of players opted for hammer cannons and almost all of us have the same types of jewelry on both the ship and the mascot for war.

These updates do not bring anything new, we are only "forced" to acquire them so that we can continue to fight competitively.

 

While I do understand your points, and I agree that there is little variation, I am hoping that these skills will help to balance that. By introducing new skills but not increasing the level cap to accommodate them all, players will have to choose carefully as to which skills they need. For example, a player that really plays for Battle Points would enjoy the BP, Voodoo Cannon Damage and Occult Damage skills in the voodoo skills tree, to fully utilize their Level 5 Voodoos and achieve maximum battle points. Other players might be more focussed on pure damage, therefore they would be using Level 4 Doomhammers and could substitute these skills for more investment in the general skill tree, increasing their recharge times.

I would agree with you that implementing too many skills will just end up with the same lack of variation but more expensive, but by limiting the total skills so as not to allow full allocation, it really means players have to pick and choose.

 

lag glitch`s and the general play atm is as I'm sure many would agree rubbish .theres way to much clutter without anymore plus I think we spend enough money playing a 2d computer game so my vote was ... no thanks ill pass .

 

Personally I believe any expansion to the skills tree only complicates the game, adding way too many factors into the game and making it more harder then it necessarily has to be.

It may help the top tier players with the pearls to burn or those who exploit the game, but it does nothing to help the players at the bottom or that are new to the game. Seeing all this stuff they would need to be "good" likely would cause the impact of them going to other games after seeing how difficult it is to progress.

We need to expand the player base not kill it off even more with features that would be considered money grabs, as I imagine it would be more crown and crystal based nonsense.

***As I've mentioned to several players who've asked me for advice, crowding the game with all these new features has a very negative effect on explaining what would be considered good investments for these free to play players to get. With so many *valued* features that are an eventual must buy, how do they know which to get first or in which order to upgrade as each *important features* are often behind several *worthless features*

 

Very well said. I think that BP has demonstrated in the past that they no longer care about attracting new players. They may say that they do as part of a propaganda campaign, but previous actions show otherwise. For quite some time, they have catered to the credit card players specifically.
When I started playing in July of 2009, Maps 4/1 and below were all designated PvE. Then it was modified to just Maps 1/1 through 1/4. I have "howled" for this to be changed for a long time, We now have 68 Maps and we *still* have only 4 PvE maps?
And as to this game being free to play? Forget about it if you are just starting the game. Now some brilliant veteran will state:"Oh yes...you can still farm a boat without spending money!" (But keep in mind - "time is money" - especially when spending most of your life playing Seafight). This f-2-p idea is nothing but a pipe-dream. You can play 24/7/365 and *still* the pearls won't buy you the very best cannons. That takes cash. And this sudden rush to make previously difficult items (doomhammers, devastators, etc,) suddenly available for purchase in large quantities smells fishy. I, like many other players, fear that an 11-year old game hemorrhaging players at an increasing rate is falling victim to one last "money grab" before we log-in one day and the Seafight URL "can't be found". When that happens, all the time and money you have spent has gone "poof"!

 

a voodoo skill tree is a great idear as at present voodoos are worthless when vs dooms and devs so why not give us a choice to upgrade them make the voodoo priest a real defence item maybe do not increase the amount of skills by many however to make ships select their setups , i agree making pearls is not that easy the new castle would me around 800 bucks so thats a big catch up already so just a voodoo skill tree would suit me