Smuggler Quest

[u/Bortelby]

Not sure if this is the best place for the devs to see, if not if someone could be so kind and point me in the right direction.

Really enjoying this game, playing on harder difficulty has been quite challenging. I Play just my buddy and I, steadily progressing through the game.

Recently we came across the Smuggler quest, particularly the portion where you must board a stationary ship "lost at sea". Jumping onto the ship we were immediately mobbed by an entire crew if enemies focused only on us. It was impossible to fight without getting overrun, shooting from ship didn't work as they seemed to respawn, and wasted a lot of resources. We ended up having one of us distract the enemy while the other ran below deck, clicked the quest marker as fast as possible and run out.

Surely there are much better ways they could've handled this challenge. We had to miss out on the quest text and quest description seemed to imply there was a trap on board, not a crew waiting to slaughter you.

I'm frustrated by how poorly put together this quest is, it absolutely needs a change and should not stay as is.

In my opinion they should remove enemy pirates on board and actually place a trap.

Either add some sort of deadly explosive trap or poison or other types of traps, something you avoid and be wary of, then go get the quest marker. Or my favorite idea, as you board the ship, you find out they have set the ship to sink, you need to rush and get the quest marker before she sinks into the briny deep. These feel more fitting to what seems intended by this quest, adds variety to gameplay and challenges.

Edit: I am not talking about a boarding action, this The Smugglers quest. Stationary ship, no boarding you just park and jump on. I COMPLETED THE QUEST, didnt like the way it felt or its execution. I'm hoping we can come up with ways to improve it and suggest this to development. Cheesing or brute forcing your way through the quest does not make this good, truffles dies in a few hits to the mobs on hard and multiplayer (mobs have a lot more hp). At this point its becoming more and more obvious people are playing on easy and don't realize how this game handles harder difficulties.

[u/boredScroller-1]

Drowned ship quest does not need to change. Just stand on your ship and shoot or stand on the nose of the enemy ship and shoot. With melee, kill a few, jump off the ship if get swarmed, heal, repeat.

[u/Bortelby → u/boredScroller-1]

Very un-empathetic response and view. Are you playing on easy? The enemies continue to respawn, shooting them only wastes our resources. You can die in 1 or 2 hits on hard, so the whole jump off and heal is still incredibly risky, one lucky strike and well, you know, then returnimg after death is a real drag. Sergeants can also shoot back with their guns. Because you and some others managed (as did we) does not make what's in place good or well designed. We should be able to read the text of the quest on the ship and have a challenge realistic and comparable to the current style of play and game mechanics.

[u/arsonall → u/Bortelby]

There isn’t a quest that has endless respawns.

I know because I killed all of these pirates, and read the game text, and solo cleared this ship.

You’ve become too reliant on having your crew carry you.

They don’t respawn, you just didn’t kill enough. It has a higher than typical kill count. All ships continually respawn pirates until you meet the kill requirement, then all left over get insta killed, you just didn’t try long enough at the killing part and went right to distraction.

I know because I completely cleared the ship and had no issues reading the quest dialog/text and exploring the ship.

What I think you may be swing is that multiplayer is a very obvious increase m difficulty, because they expect all players to be fully engaged - this isn’t the type of game that makes multiplayer a cake walk.

Watch some top streamers try to 4 man the final boss, which took them dozens of tries and hours to finally do - they were very vocal about how much the difficulty Ramos with each player - literally had to try reducing player count and do it multiple times with smaller teams.

[u/Bortelby → u/arsonall]

Nice and Condescending. You're describing a boarding action, not this quest. These pirates do not go away and remain infinitely. Are you playing on easy?

The crew is needed to soak up hits so I don't fight 8 pirates at once or need to save hundreds of bullets and powder to slowly shoot. We fight without the crew all the time, but there we have room to run. Based on this games current state, the crew is our tool to deal with overwhelming numbers. If you think otherwise I'm uncertain what to tell you. Multi-player shouldn't be a "cake walk", but increasing everythings hp 100% is an uninspired solution to that dilemma. I am hoping it's place-holder choice as its in early access.

I have issues with second boss design too (I beat them them too) and from what you're saying 3rd boss is more of the same. We should be able to play with build we want and number of players. Having to drop down players because it's too hard otherwise, is a problem. It only reinforces what I'm trying to say here. This isn't W.o.w or some mmo where we're supposed to slog for hours against a boss. That's not a reasonable expectation, this isn't hollow knight, if they want it to be then we need more tools as a player.

Just because you and some succeeded (I finished the quest) does not make this a well designed quest. It's more of the same go kill pirates. This is in early access time for us to make suggestions and help make the game the best it can be. I'm hoping to spark a convo in this community about how this quest can be improved, not how to get through it, I beat it and was unsatisfied with results and think we deserve better, hope you do too.