A Promotion Conundrum

Scott Hardie | January 26, 2013
Pirate Paradise has been broken from the beginning. A small oversight in the code has had a very large and detrimental effect on the game. I'm very sorry for this error, and for not noticing its effect on the game until now.

I have just programmed a fix, which will take effect on February 1. In some ways, this is bad news, because a lot of players (myself included) have grown more powerful than they should have as a result of the error, and they're about to experience an awkward, possibly difficult adjustment to the way things are supposed to be. But the good news is that the game is about to become much more fair and balanced, which benefits us all in the long run. Hopefully it will make the game more fun and engaging as well. Plus, you have a special opportunity for the rest of January to help you make the adjustment. Please bear with me through what will have to be a long explanation.

To be clear up front, these are the players affected: Aaron 11, Justin 4, Matthew 7, Russ 32, Samir 6, Steve Dunn 23, Steve West 18, Tony 10, and myself 4. I'll explain what those numbers mean further below, but I wanted you to know while reading this if you were one of the players affected. Chris, Erik, Richard, and inactive players are not.

Some background: I've mentioned before that the game is supposed to have a promotion cap. Besides each promotion costing you a certain amount of gold coins (R*10000 where R is the rank you're promoting to), the game is only supposed to let you promote another pirate after a certain number of victories in battle, a number that keeps rising the longer you play. You're supposed to have a few easy promotions in the early days of the game, but will need to win more and more battles later on in order to keep promoting. The primary intention is to keep relatively new players from amassing a small army too early, since you're not supposed to wield that kind of power until late in your pirate career. (It's also to keep players from spending all of their money on promotions, developing crews that are ever more ridiculously overpowered, without ever winning. The game ends at 10 million gold coins because it needs to end for some players; too much power breaks the game.)

The problem is, that promotion cap never worked. As long as they had the gold to afford it, players have been able to promote endlessly. As you've probably noticed, some players have put together some very powerful crews, enough to defeat Circe and generally be unstoppable, except against a few other super-crews. Looking back, I can't believe I didn't notice the problem sooner, but I guess it just happened so slowly that it felt normal.

I have fixed the promotion cap, and it will take effect on February 1. From that point on, you'll need to win a certain number of battles in order to make each promotion. If you have reached the limit, a line of text at the top of My Crew will tell you how many more battles you'll need to win in order to promote again. This would normally be between 5 and 25 battles, depending on how accomplished you are. But the fix is retroactive, so those players who have promoted way beyond their normal ability will have a long wait before they can promote again. In the worst case that I see, one player would have to win 850 more battles to promote again! Remember, it's supposed to take years to amass the powerful crews that some players have now, so in effect, you may be playing with a five-year veteran's crew instead of a one-year veteran's crew. This kind of problem should take a few years to correct itself.

However, that kind of adjustment would be very painful for the players affected most. I consider myself a patient player with games like this, and there's no way I would want to wait years to promote again, so I can't imagine anybody else being fine with it. So, I'm introducing a new feature to the game today, and I'm allowing some special manipulations of crews for the rest of January.

I've been meaning to allow demotions for a while now. I don't mean the Demote technique in battle; I mean letting you permanently drop your R4 down to an R3 and get some money back, similar to how you can currently promote your R3 to R4 by paying some money. As of this morning, this feature is now fully functional on My Crew: You can demote any crew member except R1, and reduce any skill to a minimum of 1. You will get back half-value for this: If you paid 40,000 gold coins to promote R3 to R4, then you would get a refund of 20,000 gold coins by demoting R4 back down to R3. More importantly than getting the money back, demotions let you tweak your crew member's skills: Maybe six months ago you needed crew members who were high in Cannon and promoted accordingly, but now having an all-Cannon crew is limiting your strategies in battle and you'd rather spread those points around. Demoting and re-promoting is a good way to do that.

Additionally, for the rest of January, there are two special conditions in effect:

1) You can continue to promote freely, as long as you can afford the gold coins. You may wind up even deeper in the hole come February 1, but if you're fine with that, you have the option. The gates have been left open for so long that I don't want to close them suddenly.

2) Demotions will restore the full amount (R*10000) instead of the half amount (R*5000). This allows you to undo those extra promotions if you like, getting a full refund on them as if they never happened, and bringing yourself back down to the level you're supposed to be at, so that you can resume promoting on a proper schedule instead of waiting years. Alternatively, it lets you freely customize your crew: Maybe you always wanted the kind of all-Cannon crew that I described above, and it was just too expensive before. This week is your chance: By conducting a series of demotions and re-promotions, you can freely shift around all existing skill points in your crew to whatever combinations you prefer, at no net cost. But you'll be locked into it after February 1 if you choose that.

I hope that players choose to take the full refund and bring their crews back down to Earth. It's good for you, because a promotion (or demotion-and-repromotion) spree now may mean waiting a long time to promote again. Taking full refunds is also good for the game, because a fairer balance of crews will give some relatively weaker players more of a fighting chance, and restore some challenge and thus strategy and thus fun to the game. We all enjoy it more when the game is more fair and engaging of our attention, right? But to be clear, if you have grown accustomed to your super-crew and don't want to give it up, then by all means, keep it! I'm not taking it away from you; I'm just preventing you from making it any more "super" until the game can bear that kind of power.

If I mentioned your name in the third paragraph above, that number is how many more promotions you've made than the promotion cap would allow based on your victories to date. If you do nothing by February 1, then the higher that number, the longer you'll have to wait before you can promote again. If you opt for full refunds, that number is how many demotions you should make in order to bring yourself into alignment with the game. Some players are about to have a lot more cash in their coffers!

Today's changes in the game will mean a shift in how you think about your overall strategy. If you've been spending all of your winnings on your crew, engaged in what Steve Dunn called an "arms race" with other players to build the most powerful mini-army, then this should bring your primary focus back to amassing ten million gold coins toward victory, because what are you going to spend the money on, hiring a bunch of R1s? That's true whether you opt for full refunds or prefer to stick with your super-powered crew.

All that said, I know that this news will be disappointing for some players who never thought there was anything wrong with the heights that some crews reached and who liked things the way they were. I hate to lose any players over this, especially now when the game needs every player it has, but I understand if that's how some players feel about it. I'm making this fix because I think it's the best thing for the game long-term. I just wish that the code had worked from the start so that we wouldn't have gotten into this mess. Once again, I'm very sorry that it happened. Hopefully by restoring it, Pirate Paradise will become an even better game. Thanks for hearing me out.

Two more little things:

- I mentioned that overall strategies will have to shift because of this. If your strategy involved hiring lots of new R1s that you wouldn't have otherwise, and you'd prefer to be rid of them, please let me know asap. I hadn't given a lot of thought to some kind of ability to "sell back" your R1s, but I can fast-track that kind of feature now if people want it.

- Before you ask, yes, I see potential for someone to act like a munchkin and take advantage of the full refunds this week to re-align all of their skill points in an especially game-warping manner, like having combat skills of 32-1-1-1. I don't fear that outcome because it only hurts a player who tries that (they're doomed in any battle without Parry), but if it does happens and does break the game, then I'll just have to evolve the rules again in another change to restore fairness. In other words, we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

Steve Dunn | January 26, 2013
I would love to cash in some R1s at $10k apiece. At least a couple of them I'd hired accidentally in the first place.

Steve West | January 26, 2013
Oh, this is painful but kinda fun. The decisions to be made! It's all good.

Chris Lemler | January 27, 2013
That sounds like a fair idea Scott. I have No problem with that at all

Scott Hardie | January 27, 2013
Thanks for the support! I think it's a tough adjustment but a good thing to do.

You can now "sell back" any R1 pirate, as long as you have at least six in your crew. For the rest of January, you'll get 10,000 gold coins for doing so; after February 1, you'll get 5000 gold coins. The fired pirate will become available on the Hire a Pirate page.

Scott Hardie | January 27, 2013
If anybody has made a bunch of demotions and wants to confirm how they now stand against the cap, please ask me any time. It only takes me a moment to look it up.

Steve Dunn | January 28, 2013
I've been playing around with this.

Currently I've got kind of a crazy crew with only six pirates - all very powerful. It's clear from your post, Scott, that this is not the way the game is supposed to be played. I assume it also makes it difficult or impossible to have a fair battle.

So... what exactly are we supposed to be doing? I want to be a good sport but I'm struggling to wrap my head around a strategy for this - particularly one that accounts for future events (each one so far has favored a particular crew mix) and/or rule changes.

I gather the major goal here is for players to have weaker crews and more cash. Beyond that are there aspects of crew mix that, in your view, are optimal for the game as it is intended to be played?

Scott Hardie | January 28, 2013
I would strongly advise against having a crew that is incompatible with others in a fair fight. Looking over all other players in the game, I see exactly no one who can take on the Cameron crew in a fair battle, mathematically speaking. Assuming that no one would voluntarily take on the Cameron crew in a dirty or random battle, because why would they, then you would be limiting yourself to events where the rules compelled other people to play against you in dirty or random battles, which is maybe half of them. At all other times, Pirate Paradise would be unplayable. (The secret method for defeating Circe, which will become a permanent part of Pirate Paradise when she's defeated, could have some effect on this. Speaking of Circe, you literally can't finish the event with the crew you have now, because the site won't be able to put you into fair fights against whoever else has the map pieces you need.)

15 is the golden number. Ideally, you want a crew capable of entering a fair battle where each side's ranks add up to 15. That's what new players start with, and nearly every player sticks close to that baseline with new hires even while promoting some veterans, so having that combination will allow you to play almost everybody.

Another way to wrap your head around this might be to ask yourself first, what makes for a good crew? Perhaps it's a strong offense without regard to defense. Perhaps it's both in harmony. Perhaps it's a couple of super-strong pirates and a bunch of weak ones. Perhaps it's every pirate high in a single skill and weak in all others. There are lots of different ways to approach crew-building, and no one right answer; there's just what you personally favor. Me, I like to have one high-ranking and one low-ranking pirate specializing in each of the four skills, plus a couple of well-rounded jacks of all trades. This works great in most circumstances, but it does limit me sometimes; for instance, I can rarely take advantage of Stack.

Anyway, once you have thought about what kind of crew you think is best (and hopefully it's not "all R10s"), then approach the crew you have now like a sculptor. Chip away with your Demote button until your ideal crew takes shape. Keep going until you are at or below the cap, even if that means some skills being lower than you'd prefer. If you have the time, it may help to map out the numbers that you want on a sheet of paper first, because once the pirates start transforming in front of you, it can get hard to remember how to get to where you were going ("wait, was that one supposed to have high Sword and low Pistol or the other way around?" etc).

Does anybody else want to weigh in with advice for Steve? We could all benefit.

Scott Hardie | January 28, 2013
Someone asked if selling back a pirate counts as a demotion. Sorry, no, it doesn't.

Steve Dunn | January 30, 2013
Circe just cleaned the clock of my freshly demoted crew. She didn't get any money, though. Haha!

Gotta admit, it's more fun fighting Circe with nuclear weapons. On retrospect, I should have promoted a super-crew, defeated Circe again, then re-demoted before the Feb 1 deadline. Thought of it too late...

Scott Hardie | February 1, 2013
A couple of players didn't see this announcement in time, so I've extended the deadline until February 6.