Basic changes that would make the game fun

[PikaTheChu 7]

There's a lot of wasted potential in this game and design decisions that are not thought through, which however could be easily changed. So here are my suggestions:

 

- Ghost ships

They are not fun. A feature ought to be fun for the player and to make sense. Making the game artificially harder for the sake of making it harder has never made it more fun. Ghost ships shouldn't be something you encounter every single time you set sail, they should be something that makes you go "WoW, Cooool" or "Shit, lets get out of here" when you spot one of them. Right now they are nothing but annoying and nothing in a game should ever feel annoying, challenging yes but never annoying. Best limit them to 2-4 per zone and only make them come out at night but make them significantly stronger.

 

- Claims

 

Limit it to 1 free claim per player, every further claim should require gold to make and have a gold upkeep, rising exponentially the more claims you want to have at the same time. People can't progress if all territories are claimed and you require nothing to upkeep the claims but running around the island.

 

- Wind

 

Great mechanic but it is too punishing, nobody wants to wait hours for the wind direction to change to sail where he wants to sail. Make wind give the ships a good speed boost but they should move at a slow rate even without the wind. The wind currently is just not friendly towards the majority of players who are not able to invest half the day into a game and such players are the majority of players without doubt. I'm not one of them, I've got lots of time to play games but I understand that for a game to be sucessfull it must appeal to a wide range of people, most without the time I have.

 

- Skills

 

They are too expensive, too punishing for single-players. I understand that you want t force people to band together to achieve the most in this game but many people do not want to deal with others at all times. No skill should cost more than 4 points and players should be able to craft a sloop, a cannon, some decent armor and a sword on their own without having to respec by level 12-14.

 

- Chests, Ship ownership, Companies

 

Here's the deal, people like sharing but they also like having things on their own, that's just human nature. A player should be able to decided which of his chests, doors and ships should also be accessible by his company. I don't want my company to have access to absolutely everything I build and collect but I also wanna share, but share on my terms.

 

- Suicide command

 

The game is full of bugs and there will always be bugs, there's no way on making a game in 2018 bug free. So people are going to get stuck in rocks, in trees, in ships, in a shark, etc. Give us an option to kill our character without having to wait for 20mins for him to starve or not at all as if you are stuck in a falling animation the water/food/vitamins won't even decrease. Maybe add an option to the family compass to kill yourself by clicking it (should apply to the character if he is falling as well).

 

- XP

 

Crafting should give XP, harvesting should give xp, travelling on a ship should give xp. Just killing things to get significantly more xp is just a very lazy game-design that forces you to play a so called "sandbox game" very linear.

Edited December 30, 2018 by PikaTheChu