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Old 07-25-2013, 06:49 AM
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Tiberius Fireskull Tiberius Fireskull is offline
Bring me that horizon!
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Tiberius Fireskull is a buccaneerTiberius Fireskull is a buccaneer
Well stated points, CT, as always!

As far as I know, the cutscene's dialogue has been out of sync for years. And aye, I agree. They should make (The) Goliath a lot more intimidating in the cutscene. A few closeup shots to emphasize her 18 guns and tall masts would be quite intimidating...

In my opinion, the most effective way to deal with the difficulty problems is by allowing players to choose the level of difficulty that they play at. For instance, there could be four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane (or perhaps with more piratey names: Swabby, Buccaneer, Captain, and Admiral). The differences in difficulty could look something like this:

Swabby: About four to six navy officers, all are around or slightly lower than the average level of the crew. Navy Panthers surround the ship in the next phase, which do damage as they do now. The forts only fire round shots. The Goliath has strength somewhere between a Man-O-War and a Dreadnought. Overall, this difficulty would be soloable by someone of a reasonable level.

Buccaneer: About five to seven navy officers appear, with their levels varying within one or two levels of the average of the crew. The ship is surrounded by Navy Centurions, which do slightly more damage than the Navy Panthers. The forts shoot round shots and cannons as they do now (but pack slightly more punch). The Goliath's strength is about that of a Dreadnought with heavier armor and more cannon range. More or less, this difficulty level is designed for a good soloist or a small crew.

Captain: About six to eight navy officers appear, with their levels being one to four levels higher than the players'. The ship is surrounded by Man-O-Wars (strength being increased accordingly). The forts all shoot firebrand shots. The Goliath's strength matches that of a Navy Elite. This difficulty is designed for moderately sized crews, and would be very difficult to solo.

Admiral: Eight to ten navy officers appear, with their levels up to six higher than the players'. The ship is surrounded by Navy Dreadnoughts. The forts shoot either firebrand or explosive shots. The Goliath has the strength of a Fleet Ship of the Line. This difficulty is designed to require a skilled and sizable crew. Almost impossible to solo.

If you are doing the Boss Battle for completion (i.e., the story quest), you must do it on normal difficulty. Thus, the boss battle is challenging enough to possibly take more than one try, and you can challenge yourself to do it again. It could be made so that even the best crew would struggle with Admiral difficulty (and maybe a special reward for clearing it). Perhaps there could even be a higher difficulty reserved only for level 50s that brings the challenge to a new level.

Anywho, that's my suggestion... I've always felt that that would improve the boss battle ten-fold.