The loot system, in a pirate game!

[Shepard_Fury 54]

Hello guys,

It's been a while since i played but i am back and i was interested to see what is new. There are a lot of things that have changed for the better but i think some things got missed and i want to talk about the loot system in this game..

First, let me describe what i understand what this game is supposed to be. In reality or in this world, you are either a empire guy, a privater or a bit of both. You sail the sea as a navy protecting your cargo ships or you hunt for fat loot as a pirate. You also have Marauders who just do hit and runs on players to see stuff explode, hehe. In all those instances you need a loot system that can support those activity's at and on land.

The current system is this.. You drop a box on death that last 15 min or you can drop individual boxes the last 2 min. The box or "little briefcase" you drop on death is brown and not that big, so it's difficult to see. The individual boxes are light brown and even more difficult to see. The decay rate of 15 min and 2 min is also really low and difficult to in the world. Having individual boxes laying around also creates lag on the server.

This brings me to the problem. Loot can be easily despawned and there by preventing any reward for the attacker that has invested resources in the attack. What people usually do is to drop everything on the ground when they know they have lost and de spawn the loot. The attacker has no indication that this is happening and finding the boxes can be really difficult in the world mesh or bushes and among trees. In the sea it even worse as boxes and briefcases look smaller and are hidden under the water.

My suggestion to solve this problem is to introduce two systems that are perfect for this type of game. For the sea create a loot gathering box that gathers loot as a float some on the surface of the sea and on the ground create a loot chest that gathers loot around it. The more loot stacks that are in the box the longer it will last in the world, the bigger it is and the more it will glow.
  
This is an example: one player drops a stack of gold, it lands on the ground and creates a small chest(gold decay timer could be 1 h). Then another player drops another stack of gold a few meter away and the first chest collect the gold, grows in size and increases the timer for decay. The chest now starts to have a slight yellow glow, showing it's location and showing you that something valuable is in side of it.

I am sure you could build a lot on a system like this, the color could be different depending on what is inside and the looks of the chest/float some could change depending on the content. I believe that this type of system is needed in a pirate/navy survival game and it is something that is expected in 2021. I know a lot of other games that have similar loot systems. If made right it should also improve server performance.

It's a win win guys, please make it so!