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boomervoncannon

Post your idea for how to make sailing less dull.

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1. Remove 90% of tames, you can gather yourself with tools.

2. Add in more crafting hardcore mode to make special items for your ship.

3. Remove 90% of the stupid things like Torpedos

4. Add more NPC, AI driven random boats around the waters. 1-2 per zone is all that is needed.

5. fIX THE GAME TO GET RETURNING PLAYERS.

6. Its a hopeless issue at this point because they moved away from the pirate theme and made it more ARK clone, with water.

Remember i was the first one in ARK to build a castle and a ship on the water. Back in alpha release. I wanted ship pirate games to come out.

 

But this one had potential and now its a mess... and the steam reviews are just a small faction of what we warned devs about.

 

But whatever, its their baby and it will die their baby, sadly it will happen.

 

 

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1 hour ago, boomervoncannon said:

Are you aware that weight doesn’t affect movement at all until about 60% of max weight? The approach I take is to try to stay at or below that point.

Sure, the difference between 60% and can barely move is about 10k of weight on a galleon and that’s nothing to sneeze at, but I can’t think of any situation where I had to load my tally down beyond 60%, Just ones where I was tempted to, but to me the movement is worth it.

Are you sure about that? For me it Feels like every bit of weight slows you down

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21 minutes ago, zottel said:

Are you sure about that? For me it Feels like every bit of weight slows you down

Here is the link to the article by the guy who did actual extensive testing. I gave you a somewhat oversimplified answer but a more accurate statement would be to say that how weight affects speed is a curve that is pretty much linear until around 60% and then weight begins to affect speed almost exponentially.

Always ask for my sources when it comes to math. Math is not my strong suit so if I’m making math oriented claims it’s almost invariably somebody else’s work.

Edited by boomervoncannon

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3 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

Here is the link to the article by the guy who did actual extensive testing. I gave you a somewhat oversimplified answer but a more accurate statement would be to say that how weight affects speed is a curve that is pretty much linear until around 60% and then weight begins to affect speed almost exponentially.

Always ask for my sources when it comes to math. Math is not my strong suit so if I’m making math oriented claims it’s almost invariably somebody else’s work.

Thought math stuff had the boomer garantue 😄

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Make  it so you can sail backwards at the same speed you can sail forwards. Yes i know it ridiculous but can you imaging reverse 180s and pivot turning or just sailing bavkwards in general.

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21 hours ago, Chucksteak said:

Are you aware you can go to any freeport whenever now? Just like using a bed, die and spawn there. You can even port from island to island inside of that grid.

I like your other ideas. I do feel fast travel should be far less than it is now though. Its already absurd.

But I'm talking about taking your ship with you. Logistics wise there's really no difference in zoning and fast travel and just takes a bit of coding. When we enter different zones, the server has to download you and your ship and upload it to the new zone (server).

Right now, if I am in D5 (where our Company's main base is) and I get a quality 20+ map down in L14 (which happens A LOT!), I have to sail through approximately 9 full zones sailing diagonally. On average sailing across a zone is 10 minutes. That's 90 minutes! 

With a fast travel system where you could also take your ship, I could sail to E4, talk to an NPC at the docks about chartering a voyage to L12 Freeport, and fast travel with my ship to that Freeport. Instead of sailing through 9 zones, I only need to sail through 4. Their should be a fee to do this. I'd gladly pay 100 gold to save myself 50 minutes of time doing nothing but sailing and playing dodge the SoTD while I work on my flotsam grappling skills or playing shoot my friend out of the crows nest. 

Hell, right now if I run out of silver, I have to travel across 5 zones to get more. With the Freeport ship travel, it would be 3. That's like 20 minutes of time saved. 

This is one of the reasons I started playing No Man's Sky again. I can travel ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEMS in the blink of an eye and fly planet to planet within 10 to 30 seconds and once I'm there, there's still plenty of travel and exploring. Don't give me the shit about well that's a space game and they have hyper drives and shit. They ADDED those into the game so you weren't spending all your damned time flying. I know they want to make Atlas realistic but I don't want to spend 90% of my time sailing between islands. I've spent 900+ hours in Atlas so far and my duty in my company was to explore and find resource outposts and mark discoveries. That's what a majority of my time was spent doing since the wipe. In all that time I've personally sailed to only about 25% of the islands. I'd say adding some Fast travel between Freeports will not diminish the game for the average player whatsoever. 

 

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Some of my thoughts:
 

Flotsam - more rewards - a random armor piece with random quality based on quality of the flotsam. Random weapon with same chances. Random building/ship structure. better percentages for gold based on quality of the flotsam.

Random NPC ships - some can be boardable, others just to distract SoTD.

Wind - I'm cool with the way it works so far... but Please please make it SoTD need to deal with it too.

SoTD -  Give them Sails! - instead of spawning and going in circles, have them spawn and go in a direction. If they run into land, have them turn 90 degrees and continue moving. If they get close to you, then fight on. 

Cyclones - great idea but instead of packs of them, just make one big one (they are supposed to be like hurricanes) instead of water spouts. maybe give them levels like real hurricanes. the stronger they are the more damage they'll do to your ship.

helmsman - Big ships like this, the captain wouldn't always be on the helm. Helmsman would take a course to steer and continues until releived. 

lookouts - have NPC's be able to take crows nest and other lookout spots. Lookout could call out and mark locations of land and SotD. Lookout could work with the Helmsman and turn to avoid the SoTD.

Sextant - I like the mini game but find it hard to find stars. then the buff doesn't seem to last very long, but I do like to have the compass at the top of the screen to let me know when I'm spinning in the storms. though I'd like it to be the ships heading not where I'm looking, that's what the map/compass are for

Vendors in Freeports - someone mentioned it before, buy and sell items like foods and parts as well as animal sellers. If the freeports are to keep the same four islands, put different vendors on each island. gives more reasons to head to freeports besides trying to buy npcs

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5 hours ago, Sydhart said:

But I'm talking about taking your ship with you.

Boomer said the solution cant be faster sailing......

So, no, absolutely not. That's not good juju. Fast travel as it is now is out of control. You can die, spawn anywhere, and setup camp and make a bed. As a solo I could, without trying very hard, maintain 3 independent bases with tames, ships, and modest defenses. Need crystal? NP just port on over and schooner some back in minutes. That's only if I decided to NOT fly back, because that is at least harder to do.

You would make any meaningful sense of distance, or the grandness of the size of the map account for fuck all. You would undermine a core mechanic and function of the game just to make it easier, and thus less fulfilling. As it is now, you can max level with very little effort. As it is now, with tames, you can build anything you want with very little effort.

Your saying you would prefer to sail anywhere, regardless of distance with very little effort. 

- Leveling should be harder. It would give it more meaning.

- Not every skill tree should be accessible at all times. It gives them, and other people more meaning and value.

- You should not be able to port anywhere at any time. In PvP,  it ruins strategy and it makes building defenses too easy. (OMG were being attacked, and aren't at base! Good thing we can INSTANTLY port in, put on gear and defend.......HOW, FUCKING, LAME!) Its just a gigantic win win mechanic for bigger companies. You cannot surprise attack someone when it doesn't matter if they are there or not.

Look I understand, a lot of you like WOW, and Tera, and ESO. You can go anywhere with anything, see all the sights and ride all the rides real quick and easy like. They are called theme park MMOs, because at the end of the day you are left with Mickey Mouse. It was never immersing, never got your blood pumping because it was all fake and meant nothing with no consequences. Just there to entertain you for a short amount of time. That's what your asking for when you advocate for more fast travel. To make this a shity play for an hour or 2 a week game. 

I hold Atlas to a deeper vision. I want a game that is challenging and offers growth and progression over multiple years. Please, lets not theme park this one.

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21 minutes ago, Chucksteak said:

Boomer said the solution cant be faster sailing......

So, no, absolutely not. That's not good juju. Fast travel as it is now is out of control. You can die, spawn anywhere, and setup camp and make a bed. As a solo I could, without trying very hard, maintain 3 independent bases with tames, ships, and modest defenses. Need crystal? NP just port on over and schooner some back in minutes. That's only if I decided to NOT fly back, because that is at least harder to do.

You would make any meaningful sense of distance, or the grandness of the size of the map account for fuck all. You would undermine a core mechanic and function of the game just to make it easier, and thus less fulfilling. As it is now, you can max level with very little effort. As it is now, with tames, you can build anything you want with very little effort.

Your saying you would prefer to sail anywhere, regardless of distance with very little effort. 

- Leveling should be harder. It would give it more meaning.

- Not every skill tree should be accessible at all times. It gives them, and other people more meaning and value.

- You should not be able to port anywhere at any time. In PvP,  it ruins strategy and it makes building defenses too easy. (OMG were being attacked, and aren't at base! Good thing we can INSTANTLY port in, put on gear and defend.......HOW, FUCKING, LAME!) Its just a gigantic win win mechanic for bigger companies. You cannot surprise attack someone when it doesn't matter if they are there or not.

Look I understand, a lot of you like WOW, and Tera, and ESO. You can go anywhere with anything, see all the sights and ride all the rides real quick and easy like. They are called theme park MMOs, because at the end of the day you are left with Mickey Mouse. It was never immersing, never got your blood pumping because it was all fake and meant nothing with no consequences. Just there to entertain you for a short amount of time. That's what your asking for when you advocate for more fast travel. To make this a shity play for an hour or 2 a week game. 

I hold Atlas to a deeper vision. I want a game that is challenging and offers growth and progression over multiple years. Please, lets not theme park this one.

Those "Theme Park MMO's" are still going FYI and there's still content to do. The way Atlas is going it won't make it to release. 

Also, at no point did I say fast travel to anywhere. I said remove the 2 hour sailing times by being able to go from Freeport to Freeport. Hell, I don't even care if you make less Freeports and break the map up into sixths or something. But if you want to waste 2 hours doing nothing but navigating a ship to get 1 powerstone or go help people kill the Kraken or kill the yeti, be my guest. I'd rather play a different game where I don't have to waste a shit ton of time doing absolutely nothing and go spend more time outside or with my family. 

 

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Well they could make it so you could harpoon a whale and steer him with your ship attached and increase your speed, if it has to stay with the fishy side of the game.  personally I want airships. I don't think teleporting is a bad thing either, there are loadsa mmo's with teleport systems and it works out fine. And mosta them have a smaller map than atlas too. But it doesn't look like the devs are too bothered about it, although they might be trying to work something out and just not said anything yet.

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I'm holding out for the thread suggesting sailing should be more dull.

 

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, no breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship 

Upon a painted ocean.

 

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5 hours ago, Chucksteak said:

Boomer said the solution cant be faster sailing......

So, no, absolutely not. That's not good juju. Fast travel as it is now is out of control. You can die, spawn anywhere, and setup camp and make a bed. As a solo I could, without trying very hard, maintain 3 independent bases with tames, ships, and modest defenses. Need crystal? NP just port on over and schooner some back in minutes. That's only if I decided to NOT fly back, because that is at least harder to do.

You would make any meaningful sense of distance, or the grandness of the size of the map account for fuck all. You would undermine a core mechanic and function of the game just to make it easier, and thus less fulfilling. As it is now, you can max level with very little effort. As it is now, with tames, you can build anything you want with very little effort.

Your saying you would prefer to sail anywhere, regardless of distance with very little effort. 

- Leveling should be harder. It would give it more meaning.

- Not every skill tree should be accessible at all times. It gives them, and other people more meaning and value.

- You should not be able to port anywhere at any time. In PvP,  it ruins strategy and it makes building defenses too easy. (OMG were being attacked, and aren't at base! Good thing we can INSTANTLY port in, put on gear and defend.......HOW, FUCKING, LAME!) Its just a gigantic win win mechanic for bigger companies. You cannot surprise attack someone when it doesn't matter if they are there or not.

Look I understand, a lot of you like WOW, and Tera, and ESO. You can go anywhere with anything, see all the sights and ride all the rides real quick and easy like. They are called theme park MMOs, because at the end of the day you are left with Mickey Mouse. It was never immersing, never got your blood pumping because it was all fake and meant nothing with no consequences. Just there to entertain you for a short amount of time. That's what your asking for when you advocate for more fast travel. To make this a shity play for an hour or 2 a week game. 

I hold Atlas to a deeper vision. I want a game that is challenging and offers growth and progression over multiple years. Please, lets not theme park this one.

Interesting post. I think Atlas is supposed to be a somewhat 'hardcore' game. The challenge and offer of growth and progression over multiple years is a key part of the game. Comparing atlas to ark, however, shows that the difference is basically the time spent in sailing. In ark, the maps are much smaller, it's possible to teleport from one server to another with animals and items, and once the end game is reached, you get access to buildings which allow you to place a teleport wherever you want.

I think what I'm trying to say is that the sailing time does not necessarily a requirement for the game to be 'hardcore'. Ark is a challenging, growing, progressive game over multiple years, and it doesn't have 5 hour sailing trips.

When I first played atlas, I really enjoyed the change of pace/angle, and it was a bit of a shock as the first thing I see is that my ark buddies are happy to just sit on the schooner basically doing nothing while sailing. I logged in and sat on the ship with them, in a few minutes time I was taught the very few things that are needed to know in order to sail, then i just stared at the ocean. I thought, wtf, did the ark guys really make a simulator of a sailing simulator? Is this a microsoft sailing simulator 2018 mod? A shallow 'exploration' game, like NMS was at it's launch? Am I supposed to get enjoyment from pretending that I'm actually sailing, taking in the atmosphere, and being immersed so much in a real life activity? I still have not been able to think of a mechanic which would be fun in the more conventional way, instead of sailing simulator.

This reminds me of the argument when the flyers in ark were nerfed. The devs said that they wanted us to 'experience' the environment that they had lovingly crafted for us, instead of just zoom by on our flyers. The nerf made it so that you had to land for stamina 2-3x more often. This increased travel time up to the point where people on one side of the map would now just do their best to avoid flying to the other side of the map. Instead of having an active map full of people flying around on their dinos, visiting each others bases, creating community, everybody avoided the dullness and time sink of flying. The devs ignored people when they pointed out that, ironically perhaps, in practice they were able to experience the environment much better when they could fly around with less restrictions, and had previously already experienced plenty of the environment as landing 2-3x less than what is now normal is still a significant amount of landing.

People pleaded with the devs by saying please, we don't want to spend 1 hour flying around the map when it previously used to take 15 minutes, for no apparent reason, we don't see any added benefit. The real reason for the flyer nerf was because the flyers were too fast for the auto turrets to shoot, which is legitimate reason, however the devs never offered that reasoning.

I think what is needed is emergent gameplay, but also the 'time thing' and 'make fast travel better' is a thing to consider.

I will keep thinking strictly about gameplay "ideas to make sailing less dull" so that I can contribute to the thread.

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On 8/17/2019 at 4:24 AM, boomervoncannon said:

1. Have card games or other games of chance that company members can play together from action stations at the helm, cannons or manning sails, just stuff to pass the time. 

This reminds me of building morale within the crew. How about with the NPCs also? Knife tricks with the crew? If everybody is having fun and losing fingers, the crew morale is increased or something. It would be nice to have more interaction with the crew, but at the same time I do like how they will just do as they are told and don't need anything other than food and gold.

2. Further develop the music and dance tree with an eye towards buffs that are meaningful when sailing, not just fighting. Maybe an anti rain dance to reduce the chances of storms, or weaken the storms that do spring up. A song that increases the chances of seeing things like mermaids, whales, or giant turtles.

Yes! Music is my favourite thing in the game nearly.

3. Make the dolphin buff something that is more likely to be useful while sailing. I know of no one that hops into their galleon and sets out for the horizon thinking "Well, now's the time to craft, let's hope a dolphin shows up and buffs my intelligence while I'm doing it."

Dolphin wake boarding pls

4. Consider a jetstream mechanic that creates channels of ideal wind through which to traverse each zone or even across multiple zones. These would obviously change over time and could create an interesting risk reward scenario in pvp. Perhaps the sextant or the right song or dance would give the ability to see where the jetstream lies up to a certain range. Just brainstorming here.

Sailing into a jetstream or some kind of tunnel/teleport, not knowing exactly where it will end up, might be fun. Would also possibly reduce excessive time sink. I hope, eventually, in end game we can create our own

5. Make flotsam more rewarding by having a small random percentage of flotsam containers recovered have significantly bigger rewards. As it stands I think most players tend to ignore flotsam as largely not worth it. Hence one thing that could help pass the time largely gets ignored.

Yes please. I never ignore flotsam, I spyglass all flotsam, and I wish there was some rare stuff in them. It's a really good feeling to grapple a good quality flotsam while going full speed in a gally, and if there was very high quality flotsams, or just unique flotsams with prebuilt/unique gear in them, that would be great. I don't understand why loot drops aren't like this already - in ark the loot drops either give blueprints or prebuilt items that are made from similar quality blueprint, and both types of loot have their advantages.

 

 sorry, cbf formatting 😞

 

Edited by eeeceee

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Id say sailing is boring because it is a single repetitive task of staring out at the sea and running to the helm as soon as a SotD appears in sight to drive around it. You cant do anything else cause if you take your eyes of the water you run into SotD immediatly. With empty ships you can speedrush past them as well but thats as boring and doesnt make an enjoyable sailing experience.

Some things that could improve this:

1. Allow NPC crew in the crows nest to expand vision range to free players stuck in the crows nest.
2. Allow NPCs to sound a ship alarm or notify you when there is an enemy ship or npc or dangerous weather in sight, let us take our eyes off the water to do other stuff.
3. SotD only appear at night and in fewer but smaller and larger groups to give us different sailing experiences -> during day we can do cooking, dancing, chatting with players, organizing cargo, manual repair our ship or even change its layout while sailing. during night we need to be more careful if we run into a large group of SotD we need to dodge them and its more of a challenge but happens more rarely. (SotD for farming can still be in Golden Age 24/7)
4. Different weather phenomena like a random moving giant watercylone that can sink our ship if we dont dodge it, heavy storms and giant waves we need to turn the ship right into to not take damage and stuff to also give us different experiences while out at the sea. Even no wind that can make us stuck could be a challenge but it need to be super rare to not get annoying.
5. We should meet real NPC ships that spawn in higher numbers on servers with low player counts from traders we can robb or steal their ship to pirates that attack us and we need to fend off or surrender our cargo etc. -> since the pirate encampments are said to have ships guarding the waters around them lets hope they will also have trade and travel routes to send ships out on the sea and lets hope they are real ships not like SotD. This would also allow to have different areas where you can meet more traders, more small ships or more pirates or sea monsters to have different experiences while sailing across several grids and they are not all the exact same.
6. Rare events with rewards that happen randomly, small ones like finding someone shipwrecked to get a reward for rescuing them or a trader ship with a special offer to bigger ones like npc fleets or giant monsters with special rewards for everyone that helps defeat them - like the dynamic event from other mmos where all can take part and drop in anytime.
7. The phases with low wind should be shortened it happens to much, rather have more weather with randomly changing wind.
8. Add more activities that can be done on ships more interactive objects and even more RP stuff so we can socialize and gather on ships while traveling.
9. since it affects sailing as well, let vitamins have the same modifier like hunger from doing heavy or light work or idle around its impossible to balance otherwise when your hunger depletes much slower while sailing and your Vitamines do not so you cant eat enough to keep them up.
10. ship combat, is part of the sailing
what i think players would want to do with ship combat -> manage crew, ammo, weapons, maneuver your ship fight the enemy ships, and board them sometimes to steal cargo or the ship. plus visual damage when ship parts are damaged to give a better feel of actual combat and allow you to easily see where you need to repair and how damaged the enemy ship is.
what i think players would not want to do with ship combat -> keep your ship from sinking 24/7 as it will start to sink as soon as anything hit it. planks break super easily and you only work to replace missing planks and bucket water from a swimming frame during combat. thats not fun its really repetitive as every battle you are doing the same instead of all the stuff above that is actual fun. repairing and keeping your ship from sinking can be part of combat it shouldnt be the main part taking more than 90% of your combat experience.
11. more ships types and models would also improve the experience a lot since we dont sail or meet the same 3 ships over and over.

Edited by Linea
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Here might be an unpopular opinion. But as  most people sail their own ships as CORPSE said, maybe dont let NPCs make everything on the ship. Back when I used to play it was fun to sail around with 3-5 guys on the same schooner or brig, having them handle sails and cannons. before our company had NPCs. after we got NPCs it became Boring. only the guy on the helm would get all the fun. And when you're alone on the ship... well, it's both scary and boring.

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+1 normalize wind patterns. wind is a global thing not a regional thing.

fishing similar to black flag. along with flotsam, sextant shows schools of fish. 

new mmo city npc vendors pay well for "trophy" fish/whales/sharks/etc..

dancing / music duels? lots of work went into a music system that is more annoying than fun.

friends and i used to have drunken races around ship deck, but the GPS equiped psycho killer sharks spoiled the fun of accidentally falling overboard.

love the new roadmap. hope restored!

cheers

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I'd like to see more variance in the open water environment that's not just islands. For example, in the tropics - more small sandy islands/atols to explore. In the south - things like icebergs.

I'd like to see ruined forts to explore - or those populated with pirate npcs that require clearing.. Dynamic shipwrecks that haven't yet submerged and have keeled over - possibly in the process of sinking. More by way of NPC ships that are non combatative including an improved merchant ship, or possibly a merchant ship that's being guarded by several friendly npc ships where you can get good loot but have to deal with the escorts.

I'd like to see way more variety of sealife - including more very large creature types. Things like seals, schooling dolphins, giant turtles, giant squids/octopus (but not neccessarily aggressive), different varieties of whale, different varieties of seabirds like albatross which can be hunted for buffs/risk of curses.

NPC submarines which may either attack or flee underwater in which case you can chase them in your own submarine. Stranded sailors in life rafts being rescuable and returned to a freeport/base for reward. Pirate ships - or perhaps pirate ships fighting other npc ships where you can become involved on either side. 

More by way of air options for transport such as zepplins, or small scouting zepplins usable from the ship. Perhaps docking stations on ship masts to interact with player zepps. 

I'd like to see much more wave variety - from giant waves and storms that dont automatically mean cyclones (which i find very annoying ingame). Random whirlpool encounters, giant megalodon encounters etc. Patches of 'magic water (i know i know) that when sailed through drastically improve speed - maybe mermaid spew has speed boosting properties. 

Water in tropical areas that's crystal clear blue and beautiful and full of tropical fish and coral reefs, where exploring in better scuba gear is a thing. 

Literally anything that adds life, personality and interest to the water - it doesnt always neccessarily have to be a game mechanic. Having diversity and interesting water biomes by itself makes the game much more enjoyable to be in.

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Here are my suggestions. Not in any order or rank btw.

1) I would like to see currents into the game. These could serve as speedways for your ship irrespective of the wind. The wind will still impact your speed, but the current will increase speed for all movements that allign with the current. We could have several currents going from North to South and East to West across multiple zones. The benefit and placement of currents should be as such that you should want to take them if you want to travel at least 5 zones in a direction. These could serve as a great way to tunnel players in a smallish area/route so that they will encounter each other more often. Risk versus reward. 

2) Card, dice and drinking games. Just some silly entertainment for the long travels.

3) More NPC ship (but not ships of the damned) encounters. Hostile and friendly ones.

4) NPC convoys, merchant convoys that travel across multiple zones with powerful escorts. Sinking or more ideally boarding (you retain more resources) these will allow you to get major rewards in terms of gold and blueprints. Perhaps the should also contain resources from various origins (not zone bound) to entice companies to plunder them to completing advanced blueprints as well.

5) NPC pirates that hunt and run down your ship. These should never stop following you while you remain in their sight. Only breaking visual contact should allow you to escape them. So, these should be a lot smarter/persistent than your regular SotD. These should come in varieties, from powerful Galleons to speedy Schooners. They should focus on shooting at your sails to slow you down followed by boarding action. If you hurt them too much, they should switch to either kill mode or flee (in case of them suffering too much damage).

6) Merchant NPC ports. A bit like Freeports, but more resource focussed. You should be able to buy resources with gold or sell non local resources (so for example you can sell resources found in tropic zones there when the port is located in a temperate zone) for some gold there.

7) Mission boards. Like someone already suggested. Having mission boards to collect and bring a resource for certain rewards. These could be located at the NPC merchant ports and/or Freeports.

I would love to hear want you all think of my suggestions.

Edited by Tycondero

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13 hours ago, Avius said:

Here might be an unpopular opinion... maybe dont let NPCs make everything on the ship.

So that the Solo-Bob can never handle anything bigger than a sloop...?!?!
So he has to join a company to get Bobs for the other tasks on the bigger ships...
So he no longer is Solo-Bob...

I like it... not...!

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17 hours ago, Avius said:

Here might be an unpopular opinion. But as  most people sail their own ships as CORPSE said, maybe dont let NPCs make everything on the ship. Back when I used to play it was fun to sail around with 3-5 guys on the same schooner or brig, having them handle sails and cannons. before our company had NPCs. after we got NPCs it became Boring. only the guy on the helm would get all the fun. And when you're alone on the ship... well, it's both scary and boring.

I'm inclined to say don't force the playstyle of needing more players to run a ship, but incentivize it. You may have found sailing a ship solo boring, but some players are solo players at heart, and while they may enjoy interacting with others in a massive game world, they may not want to team up with them. This is a long established and perfectly acceptable playstyle in MMO's going back decades. This player should still have the ability to use NPC's to solo their ships if they wish, but you make a good point that most things are more fun for most people if done together, so in some way it should be advantageous to have actual human players as crew.

This incentive exists already for at least one person other than the captain if the ship intends to engage in combat because at least one person is needed to do damage control. This is the role I fill when playing with my gaming buddy while she captains the ship and I enjoy it a great deal. Others might not enjoy it so much and there should be other roles for when the ship is merely sailing for other reasons than looking to fight. I think part of the inherent challenge from a developers point of view here is that on a sailing ship there are many tasks that need doing, the vast majority of them are tedious from a gamer's perspective. Do you as a player really want to spend hours swabbing the deck? On a real ship it would need to be done, but in a game this is the type of thing best left for NPC's.

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On 8/16/2019 at 7:41 PM, Sleepinator2000 said:

 

Two ideas to improve maps:

  1. Make them chain - Instead of always having every masterwork send you 8 zones of pure boredom away, have it send you up to 2 zones for a lesser treasure with an additional reward of the next map up the difficulty chain to the grand prize. Map quality could simply be an indicator of how many links there are built into the map chain, and boosted maps always add one more link to the chain, and always end on a Golden Age Ruin.

Love this idea.  Makes it more of a real treasure hunt.

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Well we've already got torpedoes and a submarine, why not just add steam power and be done with it. After all steam power was in production by the 1780's.

Edited by Whitehawk

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