What's Wrong With Capn Blackheart's Quest

[timber_dude]

What's the JC score? As long as it isn't above, say, 55K, I should be able to do it. >_o

45K

 

[Blackfaer]

The quest itself is not the problem. The inability of the servers and system to handle the load of people in Pirates is. They shouldn't have put out a quest like this without having upgraded the system to have a significantly higher number of lobbies and games going - particularly lobbies.

With a group of eight getting together and working together, the POTC score is tough but not overly tough - but you have to have a group to work together. Since everyone's trying to get their groups together, people end up waiting in the lobbies for long times, creating more of a backup, which creates longer lines to get into the lobbies, which makes the people waiting for their friends wait longer... it's a cyclical issue and should have been foreseen by the staff.

It's not like the POTC and HM lobbies and games aren't backed up and lag-filled anytime a quest includes them, so I'm not sure why they keep doing it. I kind of like the idea of a really tough quest with amazing treasure and all; I just hate that you might wait an hour to get your group together only to have half of them crash when you start the game.

I realize this is a free game and survives only on the Disney Marketing budget so it's not exactly easy for them to just add bandwidth, but if they're going to be limited like that they should keep themselves within the limits and not keep pushing quests out there that require bandwidth they don't have. They're a victim of their own success.

 

[FleaCircusAcrobat]

Since everyone's trying to get their groups together, people end up waiting in the lobbies for long times, creating more of a backup, which creates longer lines to get into the lobbies, which makes the people waiting for their friends wait longer... it's a cyclical issue and should have been foreseen by the staff.

It's not like the POTC and HM lobbies and games aren't backed up and lag-filled anytime a quest includes them, so I'm not sure why they keep doing it. I kind of like the idea of a really tough quest with amazing treasure and all; I just hate that you might wait an hour to get your group together only to have half of them crash when you start the game.

I realize this is a free game and survives only on the Disney Marketing budget so it's not exactly easy for them to just add bandwidth, but if they're going to be limited like that they should keep themselves within the limits and not keep pushing quests out there that require bandwidth they don't have. They're a victim of their own success.

As a veteran flag snatcher who's played nearly 2500 times, I am accustomed to speeding through 3 - 5 games in a ten minute block. Yesterday I bungled a total of four games despite logging in several hours earlier and stumbling out of my final disaster 25 minutes before closing time. I knocked out for two hours when lobby queues climbed up to 30. Between the server issues and the lobby standoffs, it's amazing that a handful of people finished the quest.

In terms of access, it's like showing up to a marathon and discovering that you must leap over lava pits and flaming catapults to reach the refreshment stand. Sure, I expected to pull a hamstring after months of training, but not this!

Congratulations to those lucky few who survived a game without crashing. Ye Champions of Monster Lag deserve an award for that feat!

 

[Belle1997]

This quest can be done but the issue is the crashing and lobbies are too full.

If you take this out the quest improves to 75% in my book. I helped people all day at pirates and will continue to do so.

What I did was ask a friend to my team and she got her hubby and son to play. I got my family to play telling them it would only be 10 minutes After 3 attemps yes I am one of the worst pirate players in VMK with 2 1/2 hours of waiting I got through. We also set a time for 9:00 first attempt to get in an hour. After than the wait got slower

Even if my family want to muntiny see hubby hardly plays VMK and son never

Then I prompty went to help my other friends.

What I feel bad for are the kids that do no use outside boards to commicate. And for the rude people that join saying they are helping and go about to destroy the game.

To get a team organized and use stratedgy.

Also load all your character funiture clothing ect. Once we did this no one crashed. We also put no trade and ignore chat on most of the players.

If though I got through pirates my heart is aching for the players who are still trying and trying

 

[LuvN~Travel]

This quest can be done but the issue is the crashing and lobbies are too full.

If you take this out the quest improves to 75% in my book. I helped people all day at pirates and will continue to do so.

What I did was ask a friend to my team and she got her hubby and son to play. I got my family to play telling them it would only be 10 minutes After 3 attemps yes I am one of the worst pirate players in VMK with 2 1/2 hours of waiting I got through. We also set a time for 9:00 first attempt to get in an hour. After than the wait got slower

Even if my family want to muntiny see hubby hardly plays VMK and son never

Then I prompty went to help my other friends.

What I feel bad for are the kids that do no use outside boards to commicate. And for the rude people that join saying they are helping and go about to destroy the game.

To get a team organized and use stratedgy.

Also load all your character funiture clothing ect. Once we did this no one crashed. We also put no trade and ignore chat on most of the players.

If though I got through pirates my heart is aching for the players who are still trying and trying

For real!
I think there are enough good and great players out there who would even be able to help the young and the newbies. Helping each other seems to really come out nicely in situations like this. But, that AWFUL lag and crashes and long room lines are what is truly making it impossible to get anything done.
Kim

 

[Max_Power]

I am very disappointed with this quest.

This quest, along with Dream's Month, convinces me that there is some sick, sadistic, twisted individual in VMK who must really hate people. This person is doing something unbelieveable cruel by taunting and teasing and torturing people with visions of silver mickey ears and unlimited Treasure Detector Magic - items most people will never get at the conclusion of this quest.

Even the concept of cooperation in the ship battle game is perverse because only one person can make the required 575 score, and not the entire group, which goes against the Game Logic Theory, where everybody wins when everybody cooperates.

I can understand making a particular game or quest difficult in order to make it more challenging and ultimately rewarding and satisfying when you complete that game or quest. But in doing so, you take away from the popularity and fun of that game or quest. And from a marketing standpoint, popularity sells a lot more units than difficulty.

I joined VMK because I love all things Disney, and to me, it is fun. Having to play pirates ship battle over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, with no results, is not fun. I will try to complete the quest, or at least task #16, but at a certain point I will stop, because this quest is no longer fun for me.

And that makes me sad, because I don't want to feel that way about VMK.

 

[Max_Power]

Double Post

 

[Yurty]

I wonder if ever VMK thinks about the bad effects this may cause in the game. First problem is the monsterous lag this promotes for many reasons, mostly people with donkeys logged on. The second is how this will push the mind of the VMK player to learn how to set up games in both Battle and Ghosts. Now on a normal day I call this cheating, but maybe they want us all to learn to be true pirates. I mean a real pirate never got a thing honestly, so now with a little thought we can all turn out to be the worst scalliwags ever produced. From this point on the POTC Hall of Fame will be nothing more than set up games once VMK has a full promotion now on how to get 800 credits a game in battle. Besides the only real difficult task so far I have found on this quest is getting to the POTC lobby. I think I was logged on for about 12 hours yesterday and I'm pretty sure I got to play in 10 games of battle, which produced about 4 successfull set ups and the people got to move on in the quest, my time to cheat my way through is today. I would just like to say thanks to all VMK staff that promoted this quest, and for making me a really great cheater in both POTC battle, and Haunted Mansion. I can't wait to try my luck in the real world one day, maybe I should try Las Vegas first thing.

 

[SimbaCub63]

First of all, let me say that I don't so much "hate" this quest as I am frustrated by it. I understand that Disney wanted to make a difficult quest and they wanted something that not everybody could win easily. I'm fine with that. Also, the prizes they are offering are truly the best I have ever seen VMK offer and so it's understandable if they decided to up the ante on what you have to do to win.

What bugs me is that, at least in the case of the 575 POTC score is that it asks us to play the game in ways that NOBODY plays it normally. If the goal is to reward the best players, that's fine, but a score of 575 is just unreasonable even for experts, I believe. Witness the various "rules" posts in which we have all had to reteach ourselves strategy for Pirates. "8 players go into a game but only 2 are allowed to shoot" "Winner doesn't shoot until all the ammo turns gold" "Destroy all but one ship and then wait for the Kraken to eat you." WHO PLAYS PIRATES LIKE THIS ON A REGULAR DAY? If you want to reward the best players, fine, but come up with a score they can hit without reinventing the entire game.

If VMK meant for us to work in teams and develop our friendship and social skills to accomplish the above task, that's fine as well, but again, it's not how the game was designed. If we were meant to do that, we should be able to get an entire team of 8 people onto the docks easily. Unfortunately, what I often saw was two teams with one or two members stuck in the queue while a sad group of people not connected to any team tried to get a game started and begged the rest of the room to join them. Of course, nobody would join them because they were waiting for these people to get out of the way so their team could arrive.

I don't want to discourage VMK from having difficult quests with great rewards in the future, but I do wish they would do so without expecting us to change the way VMK is played.

just my two cents in case anybody from VMK is actually reading and cares.

 

[SharkMeal]

I looked at the spoilers and I can do EVERYTHING except for pirates on there,
easy as pie. But the pirates is just impossible!!!! All the rooms are full, some
have 45+ queues to get in! Then after waiting HALF AN HOUR to get in,
you crash right when you start the game.

And I don't think the average kid on a kids game would be able to have 8 friends
ready to go and a really big strategy...

I'm very, very disappointed by this quest. So many people will be left unhappy.

I love the prizes, I'll never get them from crashing, dcing, lag...

VMK is supposed to be for everyone, not just the really experienced people
in the game that just happen to be good at pirates...

I'm very stressed out.