Armed Combat- This seems to have gotten much harder. I have gotten to the point that I go out of
my way to avoid sword fights, as I die in them more often than not. This in spite of my 6 score in mele,
level 14 and a good sword in perfect shape. In Build 13 I rarely died from sword fights unless I was
taking on ludicrous odds, so I would like to think I am at least nominally competent in that area.
Note that we have now set default difficulty levels for various storylines.
If you don't make any changes, the Standard storyline is still on Apprentice.
But the other storylines are usually set to harder.
You can manually decrease the difficulty before you start though
with the Difficulty setting in the Select Storyline interface.
You might want to try doing that.
You should also be able to decrease the difficulty WHILE in your current game.
Talk to a tavern-hired officer and say "About me" and "I don't seem to fit in quite right in this world..."
Also, Hook changed the block/pierce code so that these values actually get meaning.
If you find your blocks are pierced too frequently, try getting a blade with a higher block value.
That could also help.
Officers- The officer system is somewhat awkward in at least one respect. If I go to board an enemy (which I rarely do anymore because of the above)I have to remember to go into my Passenger screen first and change out my Gunner and my Carpenter as neither of them have anything in the way of mele skills, and no apparent way of changing that. I have to have two "Masters at Arms" on my crew just for boardings. While this may be somewhat realistic, it definitely breaks immersion. And if I get boarded before I swap them out, I lose a perfectly good gunner that I have invested time in training. Why can't I teach them mele skills anymore? My gunner, carpenter and bosun have always been my companions, but now I don't even dare keep two of them with me when I go to town, for fear they will get killed in a brawl.
I guess I would have to say in my opinion the system has reduced the officers to interchangeable tools in a toolbox rather than characters you can allow yourself to become attached to.
That sounds really quite bizarre, because those are the kind of things that the new system is supposed to AVOID.
ANY officer that you have with you will contribute the skills that are appropriate for his current assignment.
This means that you do NOT need to have your gunner and carpenter in your "Active" officer party anymore.
So you can put only good fighters in your three officer slots and they will follow you on shore and on boardings.
These can be assigned officers, such as a Navigator who is also a good fighter,
but could also be fighters who are not assigned to other duties.
This means that you should NOT need to swap around officers anymore.
If there are any officers that you never want to get involved in boardings,
you can also talk with them, select "About you" and tell him to "Sit out the next boarding".
In this case, he will still follow you ashore, but will not be there on boardings.
Storylines- I have not played any of the new storylines yet, but my son has started all of them. My impression from helping him when he gets stuck is they all seem to be still works in process, but I will reserve judgement until I actually play them through for myself.
Most of them should be really quite playable by now.
There might be some issues occasionally and they are indeed still being worked on,
but most of what is already there should be working too.
My only quibble is that a number of them either have incorrect or generic pictures as portraits, which is probably fairly easy to correct.
It is easy, but a lot of work. I would like to have somebody do this one day.
But since everybody is busy with other things, I don't know who could do it.
Unless you can find somebody to convince to do it. We'll help him figure out how.
Graphics- I dunno, I keep hearing Pieter brag about how great the new water looks, but I just don't see it. Most the time I am sailing over a checkerboard of tiles. Around port, and even at sea sometimes I get these oilslick prismatic color schemes. The light sparkling off the water just look like little white squares. Maybe I'm spoiled from the AOPCT and COAS water, but to my eyes, this is really bad. Ship details and some of the new outfits are really good on the other hand.
The only REAL improvement with the water is that it turns light Caribbean blue near shores.
As far as I'm concerned, that DOES look very good.
But other than that, there's not much changed over the original game.
And not being able to train carpenter & gunner in figthing skills, is that a side effect from the autoskill system?
It probably is, yes. They won't be good fighters until they actually gain experience in fighting.
So if you want to train them in fighting, you'll have to take them with you,
give them lots of bandages and potions and protect them if they're in danger of dying.
You could also try to find some items that can increase their fighting skills a bit.
That should help.
I saw in the feature list "kraken attack". How does it work?
At the moment, it's not a part of actual gameplay yet apart from that Pre-DMC part that Captain Maggee mentions.
It can only be triggered manually through code.
However, I do intend to add random Kraken attacks to the DirectSail encounters.
This should be pretty simple to do, but I don't know when I'll have time to actually DO it.
