Feats

Scott Hardie | October 8, 2012
How goes your progress in accomplishing every feat in Pirate Paradise? We're up to ten of them now:

- Defeat every active player.
- Defeat ten different opponents.
- Hire five pirates.
- Lose to a merchant.
- Play a battle on January 1, the game's anniversary.
- Play one battle to completion.
- Promote five different pirates.
- Win 50,000 gold coins or more in a single battle.
- Win three battles.
- Win twenty battles.

I've talked to a couple of players who didn't realize that accomplishing feats is the way to get ghost pirates to attack you. Once you achieve an item on the list above, the site records that you've done so, and ghost pirates will begin attacking you with the corresponding technique over and over (slowly) until you defeat them and learn the technique.

Even if the terms of the feat change before you're done defeating the ghost pirates, like a brand new player joins the game and invalidates your "defeat every active player" feat, you will still get credit for having achieved it already. Almost all new feats are retroactive, so your accomplishments today will give you credit for new feats later.

Have a favorite? Or one that you've been struggling with? The floor is open to suggest more any time.

Samir Mehta | October 8, 2012
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Steve West | October 8, 2012
How do you actually lose to a merchant? My pirates are chosen for me and none can be beaten without play rules the merchant does not use. How do you commit sepuku against an unarmed opponent?

Scott Hardie | October 8, 2012
There are several ways to see who's left to defeat. The easiest is to compare the list of active players against your profile (click your name anywhere in PP), which lists the opponents you have defeated. In your case, Samir, you have already defeated all eleven current players, not counting yourself of course. It's only a matter of time until you beat the ghost pirate.

This brings up one of the limitations of the site, which is the way that the Techniques page lumps together the feats that you haven't accomplished yet with the ones where you're still trying to beat the ghost pirate. Sometimes you're still trying to accomplish a feat without realizing that you've already done it! The reason why this was set up this way is that in some cases, there's a great deal of number-crunching that must happen to calculate whether a feat is accomplished, and that processing is done quietly by the server on a schedule so that the site doesn't get super-slow for you every time it checks. Thus, you might accomplish a feat and go to the Techniques page to confirm that it's done, but the server might not run its process for another half-hour, so you're left wondering (and asking me) why it doesn't show the change yet. This was confusing in RB and it's no less confusing now, but I think having the page not distinguish between feats is even more confusing. So, I've just now edited the page so that it will mention which techniques you've already achieved.



Hopefully this will lead to less confusion, if people notice the part that says, "When you accomplish a new feat, please allow one hour for this page to reflect the change."

Matthew Preston | October 9, 2012
Isn't forfeit available against a merchant?

Steve Dunn | October 9, 2012
Why yes, forfeit is indeed available. Thanks Matthew.

Matthew Preston | October 9, 2012
You are welcome.

Scott - Will merchants become more difficult as the game progresses? I do enjoy getting free gold, but they are so easy it's almost a nuisance. I'd love to take on some ghost pirates for a fat wad of cash. Or even sneak attack the royal navy when they're not looking for a big score.

Random ideas:

How about the option of fighting ghost pirates for gold instead of a technique? The first time they attack you for every technique, but only the first time. Regardless if you win or lose, the odds of a future challenge for the technique goes down. The amount of gold depends on the difficulty of the technique.

What about the concept of special items? One use items that give a big benefit. Similar to using a gold record in RB. Other items could increase/decrease your odds for a period of time of coming across merchants/navy. There are limitless ideas here.

I know the concept of swapping out a pirate during battle exists, but how about the ability to swap out a pirate for one of your opponent's pirates? Designed to even the playing field if a really deadly crew issues a challenge.

Sit-and-go tournaments similar to online poker? Players can start their own tournaments of even number participants and wager gold. Could be winner take all or distributed prize levels. This would likely get easier with more players in the game.

Pirate trading? Pirate kidnapping? Pirate selling? Pirate wagering instead of gold?

Steve West | October 9, 2012
Sweet. Forfeit. And timeout, duh.

Erik Bates | October 9, 2012
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Scott Hardie | October 9, 2012
Erik: It was. I forgot that the forfeit link was available with AI opponents, but I figured players would be willing to let a merchant battle time out, especially since it only takes 24 hours. The trick is figuring out to forfeit in the first place.

Matthew: I'm looking forward to improving the artificial intelligence someday, but that's the only way in which merchants will get tougher. Ghost pirates scale proportionately to your crew, but merchants and the navy are always the same. I've thought about creating an option for players who want to see fewer merchants or none at all, but I guess it doesn't seem worthwhile: You see merchants frequently when you're broke or near broke, but once your treasury climbs into the six figures, you start seeing them less and less. They're designed to help a player build up an initial base of cash to play with; thereafter, the primary way to make money is supposed to be by defeating other players. If you want to win big, bet big.

Of course, events are the other way to win big. I'm currently having a great time programming the extended winter event, to begin the day after Thanksgiving. The game needs a merciless new villain, and I'm programming some wicked tactics for her now.



How about the option of fighting ghost pirates for gold instead of a technique? Let me think about it. I could also have varying levels of merchants, like all-R5 merchant crews who carry around much more money. But like I said, merchants are just a way to get some seed money; you should get out there and take on other players for more. I'm not in love with the idea of someone winning the game someday with 10 million gold coins without playing human opponents, doing it all against merchants.

What about the concept of special items? Working on it. I have lots of ideas for future events along these lines.

How about the ability to swap out a pirate for one of your opponent's pirates? That could work. Someone else suggested a technique that lets you swap crews with your opponent. I'm not sure how that well would work if you both had the technique, but it's on my mind.

Sit-and-go tournaments similar to online poker? I love it! This is genius! I could create a few templates, like brackets, round robin, ordered elimination, most-wins-in-X-days, and so on. Then I could let players generate their own mini-events with whatever terms they like, against whatever opponents they like. This would be strictly funded by the participants' own gold, as in, you each chip in 10k gold coins to play and the winner gets the pot at the end. It's a great way to spawn lots of battles with minimal work, have more people coming up with events besides just me, add more variety to the game... Brilliant! Now if only I had time to work on this too. :-) Count on it in 2013.

Pirate trading? Pirate kidnapping? Pirate selling? Pirate wagering instead of gold? We're getting there. Stealing another player's bands after a victorious concert was a major aspect of RB, but I intentionally held it back from the debut of PP because the game was already complex. Now that we're nearly a year into it and have our feet wet, you can look forward to the return of that aspect of the game sometime in 2013, possibly 2014.

Aaron Shurtleff | November 9, 2012
Hmm...I may have already asked this (brain=swiss cheese), but, to go along with the pirate "moving", what about the idea of a tournament where at the end, the winner gets a new pirate added to his crew. That pirate brings with it some new Technique which the captain can use while that pirate is in his/her crew. And then, maybe, you have to keep risking the pirate to get it to "stay" with you (maybe they have a taste for adventure, and if you don't keep him/her satisfied, he/she moves on?).

I don't know if you want to say that once you have had the rogue pirate, you always keep the technique (like you learned it from them in their time on the ship?) or if you have to have the pirate to have the technique (which would lead to only one person ever having it at any time).

I don't know. Just thinkin'

Aaron Shurtleff | November 9, 2012
Also, as far as telling you who have or haven't beaten for the beat all active players technique, I like to go to the challenge page, because it lists all the active captains, and your percent of victories again them. If you see a 0% victories, you need to beat that captain.

Scott Hardie | November 10, 2012
I like it! Along the same lines as the special items that Matthew mentioned, I have considered whether a large game event, which has more of a plot than just a plain bracketed tournament, could result in some kind of mystical or otherwise special pirate joining your crew, conferring extraordinary advantages, and players would fight over that crew member. But first I need to build the whole system for stealing pirates from other players, something that I look forward to for its own sake.

Scott Hardie | November 11, 2012
Holy crap did I underestimate the number of hours it would take to program the winter event. I'm skeptical that it can be done by the day after Thanksgiving. I'll launch it as soon as possible thereafter.

Aaron Shurtleff | November 11, 2012
Out of curiosity (and if you can say without giving too much away), how time sensitive is the event going to be? With working Black Friday, I am likely to forget to check on things, so is that looking to be a killer, or would missing a day be not too serious? Of course, if it's not up right away, that helps too, but I was just curious.

Looking forward to it!!

Scott Hardie | November 11, 2012
It's not terribly time-sensitive. Ideally you would want to play at least once daily, but if you miss a day, it wouldn't affect you too much.

Scott Hardie | November 24, 2012
A new feat has been added: "Have 500,000 gold coins." Aaron, Chris, and Justin have already accomplished this. My thanks to several players for suggesting this feat, and to Matthew for suggesting the technique that it unlocks.

Scott Hardie | December 31, 2012
Two new feats have been added, one for December and another for January:

- Defeat the Royal Navy.
- Win an event.

We've been playing Pirate Paradise for a year now, and it's time for the game to grow in complexity. Having either of the two techniques unlocked by these feats can transform your strategy, especially when paired with some of the previous eleven techniques to produce whole new effects. Any player gifted enough at Pirate Paradise to earn both of these techniques will become a tremendous threat in the game. Go get 'em!

Speaking of our anniversary, there's something you might want to make a mental note to do tomorrow if you missed the game's original launch day.

Steve Dunn | December 31, 2012
Do Aaron and I get the event technique?

Scott Hardie | December 31, 2012
Yes. It's retroactive for anyone who has already accomplished the feat.

Scott Hardie | February 26, 2013
Another feat has been added to the game: Win one hundred battles. There's a new ability waiting to be unlocked at that milestone that has interesting potential for unprecedented strategies in battle, and I look forward to playing with it. Justin, Matthew, Steve Dunn, Steve West, and I are lucky enough to have crossed that threshold already.

Scott Hardie | March 30, 2013
Another feat has been added: Win five consecutive battles.

The technique that you get from it is one of the slippery kind that may take several battles to grasp the finer points of, as it doesn't apply in certain cases that aren't immediately obvious.

Scott Hardie | April 27, 2013
This month's feat and technique are intended as an extention of last month's. This time, you must win ten consecutive battles, something that no player has yet accomplished. It's a great technique, so get started on that goal. :-)

Matthew Preston | April 27, 2013
Do draws count as an interruption of a winning streak?

Scott Hardie | April 27, 2013
Yes.

Scott Hardie | May 14, 2013
For anybody pursuing that streak of ten victories: Battles are ordered by their ending date. For comparison, check the list of battles on your profile, which is shown in the same order. (Your profile displays still-active battles on the list, whereas the feat counts only completed battles, but the order of completed battles is the same.)

Battles against computer opponents do not affect the streak in any way.

If you do win ten in a row, it may take the site a few minutes to credit you. Rest easy: The site will credit you for ten in a row even if a subsequent battle ends in a loss in those few minutes before the site notices your accomplishment.

Is anybody actively pursuing ten in a row? Care to share any war stories? I know of one player who has done it and two others who are still working at it and coming close.

Erik Bates | May 16, 2013
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Steve West | May 16, 2013
He ain't kiddin'.

Erik Bates | May 16, 2013
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Scott Hardie | May 18, 2013
Congrats on one hundred. The associated technique is one of my favorites. :-)

May's new feat: Win a battle with 5 pirates remaining to your opponent's 1 pirate. The technique that comes from it is an old favorite from Rock Block, with some changes to make it compatible with Pirate Paradise. Several players have asked to see it in the new game.

So far, five players have managed to win 5-to-1: Aaron, Chris, Steve Dunn, Steve West, and me.

Scott Hardie | May 19, 2013
If you are pursuing ten victories in a row, I have added a "streak" section to your profile that may help you keep count.

Erik Bates | May 24, 2013
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Scott Hardie | May 24, 2013
Your overall win-loss-draw totals (against human opponents only) are stated at the top of your profile next to the flag. There isn't a display for "batting average" or % wins or anything like that, but it's easy to calculate from the totals.

Erik Bates | May 28, 2013
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Scott Hardie | June 30, 2013
June's new feat is pretty simple: "Win a battle without losing any pirates." All currently active players have accomplished this at least once, so we should all see the corresponding technique soon. The new technique is intended as the opposite of Stack: You can bring both to battle, but you can't use both on the same pirate at the same time.

Scott Hardie | July 31, 2013
July's new feat: "Challenge every active player."

Five of us have done this already: Chris, Erik, Russ, Steve West, and me.

If you haven't done it yet, it's pretty easy. Go for it. :-)

Scott Hardie | September 2, 2013
The August feat will have to wait a few weeks. I plan to launch a twinned pair of feats and techniques in September.

I start a new job next week and hopefully a big freelance gig the subsequent weekend, so I'm spending every free minute now to wrap up some of the projects on my plate while I can. One of those projects will be a relief to see done at last: A redesign of Funeratic that optimizes the site for mobile devices and tablets, as well as adding other features like cross-section navigation on every page and new-content subscription data on every page. This project has ballooned well beyond its original spring timeline, and even now, I'm still setting aside chunks of it to do later so that I can launch it next weekend. With this overarching project done, what time I will have for Funeratic can at last be spent on other smaller projects that it was holding up, like a new format for the goo game, not to mention boosting plain old activity that has been lacking lately.

So in the interest of no surprises, here's advance notice that a site redesign is coming up soon. Most pages will behave the same as they did; just with a few graphical enhancements, so it should be an easy transition. For those of you who have struggled to use this site on your phones, this is good news. :-)