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additions and rework Suggestions for content to improve the game in the long term

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Some suggestions on things that could be add during Early Access besides balancing and bug fixing.
Update: I integrated all ideas into the first post for better readability.

 

Ships

Brig
The current brig is just an expensive schooner. It needs a bit more gunports, there are still planks left that could fit a gunport and maybe they can be moved a bit closer together to at least have 10 gunports per side. Also the ships rail need to be lower so the deck guns don’t stick through it.

Frigate
A medium ship to fill the Gap between Schooner/Brig and Galleon. Having one or two gundecks with a total of 20 gunports per side.

Ship of the Line
A Flagship having about 3 or 4 complete gundecks and are extremely expensive even compared to the Galleon. Large companies need some kind of flagships as the normal galleon have become quiet common.

Huge Sails
The Large sails in the game are the right size for a brig but they are way too small for galleons and look rather stupid on them. The mast above the deck should atleast have a height of about the length of the ship.

Sail Crew
Ability to have more crew assigned to a sail. Open/close and turn much slower with one crew and faster with multiple crew, also having a speed buff for multiple crew on the sails or player manning the sail.

Multiple Sails
You should be at least able to add different sails to the same mast, like a handling sail and a speed sail on one mast.

Ship details
Besides planks and gunports there should be windows and balconies to design your ship especially at the stern like the real ships.
Also when placing walls inside a ship hull they should fill the gap to the hull.


Man stations by demand
Option to set npc crew to man stations by demand. If you anchor they should unman stations and repair if you issue orders to an unmanned sail or cannon they will man the station or switch from another station that has no orders issued right now.

Weather forecast
Give a warning a few minutes before the weather changes and add skills that increase the warning period.




Ship sinking

Besides removing ways a ship should not sink. Ships should be more resistant to sinking, so you can shoot them to pieces and loot them more often than sinking them.
For this there should be a general resistance for planks so you don’t sink by a single plank been hit two times.
If a plank looses hp it will gain damage resistance. If it lost 50% hp it will have 50% resistance if it lost 99% hp it will have 99% resistance. But resistance will be reduced by a modifier resembling your ships condititon. All planks hp together will be the ships condition and if you lost for example 50% of the overall hp on all planks your ships condition will be 50% which will reduce all resistances your planks have by 50%. So the more damage your ship has taken the more easier it is to break a plank or damage it further but if your ship is in perfect condition planks will be very resistant to breaking. (would also require to adjust repair speed)

Suggestion: (All ideas need to be applied together to work correctly, given numbers are not set in stone and need to be tested and balanced)

Planks
Planks need to take more damage they are destroyed far too easy by any means. Planks should be able to take a lot more shots including all sources be it from player weapons or SoD. Considering a wooden wall taking 80 wood having 8.000 hp it wouldnt be wrong if a large plank taking 1500 wood would have 150.000 hp. So atleast bit more hp on planks would make a lot of sense.

Ship Health / Resistance
The ship health will no longer resemble the amount of water the ship has taken in but the ships condition (The sum of all planks HP). The ships condition grants a resistance buff to planks and reduces when damage to planks is taken.

Resistance Buff / Sturdiness
Planks have a damage resistance with the following formula: Ship HP% - Plank HP% + Sturdiness Bonus
  - Example: Ships Condition at 100%, Plank at 100%, Sturdiness 0% = Resistance 0%
  - Example: Ships Condition at 90%, Plank at 10%, Sturdiness 0% = Resistance 80%
  - Example: Ships Condition at 10%, Plank at 100%, Sturdiness 10% = Resistance -80%
  - Example: Ships Condition at 80%, Plank at 40%, Sturdiness 10% = Resistance 50%

Ship Weight / Water Weight
If a ship takes in water the water will be added to the weight. Also the weight will have more influence how fast a ship can turn, accelerate and move.

Draught / Load Draft
The weight of the ship no matter if it is from resources, cannons or water will make the ship go deeper and raise the water line. Obviously the ship will sink when the waterline raises above the bulwark.

Water Leaks
The ship can only take in water from leaks below the water line. If a plank is partially below the water line the inflow of water will be slower.

Bulkhead
You should be able to build bulkheads that divide the ship into sections and prevent water inflow from the front section to reach the mid or aft sections. Also a fully closed deck will prevent water from reaching the upper deck. To have water inflow on the mid deck the waterline need to be high enough to reach said deck and leaks need to be present on the planks.

Repairing Planks
Planks can no longer be destroyed. If a plank reaches 0 HP it will be turned into a burst plank. A burst plank will take 3 successful hits with the repair hammer to start repairing again and will take a reasonable amount of resources with every try.  Only fully repaired planks can be replaced with a new plank or demolished. Burst planks will make a damaged ship look a lot better and act like a missing plank in case of shots going through them and water leaking in but dont allow a new plank to be placed for easy repair.

Visible Damage
If bulkheads and decks stopping water inflow planks can have more conditions to make combat look better and easily tell the their condition:
<50% light visible damage and tiny water leak
<25% visible damage and small water leak
<10% heavy visible damage and medium water leak
0% visible burst plank with large water leak

Ship Sails
Once a mast gets destroyed it gets replaced with a broken mast that has like a 10 minute cooldown before it can be repaired. Same if a sail gets completely ripped it will have a 5 minute cooldown before it can be repaired again to allow boarding actions. The same applies as to planks and it takes 3 successful repair hammer hits to start repairing once the cooldown is over and you cannot demolish or replace a sail/mast until it is fully repaired.

Wind
Sails do take damage from strong winds, starting at 50% of the max wind strength they will have a tiny wear effect and at 100% it will be quit noticeable. Cyclones of course deal a lot damage to sails but less to planks so you can lower sails if you cannot avoid them.

Cannon Balls
Since battles last longer now they should be a bit cheaper and reasonably lighter to carry enough.

Avoiding abuse of the weight mechanic
On anchored ships the weight that a player can add to a ship is limited to two times his carry weight. Should the ship lift the anchor the full weight is applied.
On PVE you can remove sleeping players if you own the ship, they will be moved to the end of the emergency ladder if selecting to remove some overweight sleeper that tries to stall your ship indefinitely.


Repair All
Add an option for ships to repair everything at a very low speed using materials from the ship inventory if you hit it with a hammer it will increase the speed.

 

World

Island diversity
Additional Island to expand the world and give more room and options for players.

Free Islands
Civilian Islands with a neutral NPC claim for everyone to live on and maybe a NPC settlement for trading etc.
Exploration Islands
Islands you cant build on, just for exploring and the real pirate feeling.
Claimable Islands
Normal Islands to fight for.
Pirate Nest
Starter Islands for Pirates no protection and no limitations.


Map rearrangement or special server (PVP/PVE Merge)
All starter areas are on the west side. The farther you move east the higher level the enemies and the better the rewards and the rarer the resources get. First rows are lawless areas, next rows are PVE, then some rows with PVP with offline protection and last full PVP sectors. Could also add an exploration sector where you cannot build and find rarest stuff on expeditions to truly uninhabited islands. Golden Age Islands are mixed into this map with different difficulties as well.


NPC Factions
Having some factions to liven up the world. (All using real ships/versions of the playerships)

Civilian
NPC Trader ships and Settlements. Offering buildspots in the city or free building on the rest of the island.
Navy
Having forts and military ports. Guarding the sea from pirates and ships of the damned.
Pirates
NPC pirates attacking players and traders. You can yield and they take your wares or a bribe and don’t sink your ship for no reason, unless you fight back. Having pirate nests where player pirates can get services and stuff also sell slaves or stolen goods.
Damnation
Ships of the damned turned into real ships and only appearing during night time



Faction Areas and settlements
Factions have areas in which they are more numerous and the farther away from their area the rarer they appear. Ships of the damned for example only appear in certain areas at night while in the other areas there are npc pirates and in some areas there are only few hostile ships and a strong navy presence.


Underwater “Islands” (Additional world layers)
There should be natural air bubbles(caves) and player made domes under water where you can live. Also ancient cultures could have left artificial or magic domes that provide a place to live.

Similar to an island with resource spawns and wildlife etc. these will expand the space to live in the game and bring more life to the sea bed as well as base of operation for the upcoming subs.
There could be bigger subs (comparable to the surface ships) for traveling and transporting that launch the mini subs for resource collection and other under water tasks.

Should airships be added some day the same could be done with floating islands to expand the space to live into the sky.

The battlefields and playfields should be mainly separated so that sea, air, land and underwater battles not significantly interfere with each other:
Surface Ships – strong hull, can carry heavy weapons and lots of resources, get new weapons like basic depth charges that are very effective against submarines and basic anti-air cannons that easily down airships. Of course more ship types here is a primary goal.
Land – large fortifications and heavy weapons also can use anti-air cannons
Submerged – have weak hulls and can only carry light weapons that cause little damage to surface ships planks but good damage to other subs. Can also use small deck guns when not diving to participate in surface battles but still way weaker than surface ships.
Floating – lightweight airships, cannot carry much stuff and only lighter weapons good for air combat and reaching floating islands but with low effect on surface ships.

4 different experiences and battlefields to master and expand the game content and many more cool places to visit.




Quests and World Tasks

Add NPC in Towns that give Quests for a Gold reward. As well as quests on the fly you can find in the world.

Exploration Quest
Visit a certain island and cartograph it. Return to Questgiver for reward.

Exploration Tasks
World tasks, pieces of a (exploration) treasure maps are appearing on one island. If you explore the island you will randomly find the pieces if you have enough pieces to combine into a map it will lead to a treasure chest on this island. If you picked up the treasure chest it will have a long cooldown but you can do the same on every island to encourage exploration.

Trading Quest
Deliver certain materials to a faraway NPC town for a Gold reward.

Special Trading Quest
Transport a certain item or person from one Port to another.

Salvage Quest
Bring certain item found on a shipwreck to questgiver.

Salvage Task
Find a treasure Map that points toward a shipwreck for salvage.

Rescue Task
Find shipwrecked npcs and bring them to any town for a small reward, or enslave them and sell them in a pirate nest.

And many more like combat quests, creature hunt, boarding trader ships or capturing civilian/navy ships…




Dungeons:

Player limit for dungeons. The game has everything from single players up to 400ppl tribes, its impossible to balance so there should be dungeons for different team sizes.
The limit allows only so many people inside the dungeon at the same time and the content inside is balanced on that number.

(max 2) Tiny dungeon - small with basic loot and suitable for one or two persons. Low chance for specials like fountain of youth, gold or rare stuff (including all mechanics of the game so everyone can take part and is not excluded). Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 4) Small dungeon - normal dungeon for a small group, hard but doable alone. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 😎 Normal dungeon - normal dungeon for a medium group. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 16) Large dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.
(max 32) Huge dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.
(max 64) Raid dungeon - large dungeon with world bosses for huge crews. Very high chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.

More versatile dungeons (instances)

 

Different Caves (like in game already)
Under Water Caves (having air to breath once inside but also parts that are under water)
Shipwreck (in shallow water or deep in the ocean)
Ghostship (once disabled you can go inside or drifting ships with enemies)
Tempel or other buildings
Hostile Settlements or island counting as open dungeon
Under water city inside an air bubble
...




Law System

If you kill other players outside of company wars (add company wars of course) you will get a bounty on your head depending on what you did, a little for killing a player and more for sinking a ship or stealing a claim. If you live like a pirate you will be flagged as one.
Bounties can be collected by players that capture you and hand you to the navy or you get attacked by navy ships. Bounty will only decline if you are imprisoned but not from dying and respawning. Of course you can escape relatively easy if you don’t want to stay imprisoned for a long time but you keep your bounty that way.
Also include special starter islands/ pirate nests for players with a high bounty on their head.


Player condition

Green - Everyone is a green player from the start.
Yellow - When you attack a green or yellow player you will turn into a yellow player. Yellow players turn green again a few minutes after they last did damage to other players.
Red - When you have a significant bounty by a npc faction on your head you will turn red. Only by loosing the bounty you can turn green again. Red players can only use Homeservers in pirate territory.
Note that player bounties alone will not make a player turn red. So player bounties on green players can only be turned in by red players, pirates.
 

Bounty (What is a bounty)
Bounty is a gold amount on your head set by either the npc faction in which territory you commit a crime or by a player. Different factions do consider different things a crime.


Crime (What gives you a bounty)
- Killing green player, tiny bounty. (Except pirate territory)
- Destroying building parts of others, tiny bounty. (Except pirate territory)
- Stealing from locked containers, small bounty. (Except pirate territory)
- Attacking ship, small bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Trader faction territory)
- Sinking ship, huge bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Navy faction territory)
- Taking green or yellow players as prisoner, large bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Navy faction territory)
- Player placing bounty on your head.
- Killing yellow and red players, no bounty
- Attacking red ships (ships of red players), no bounty
- Sinking red ships, small bounty (Only in pirate territory)
- Escaping a cage, small bounty (Except pirate territory)


Jail & Debuff (How to loose bounties)
A bounty will reduce when the player is online and sitting in a cage owned by the npc faction, player or company that placed the bounty. You can relatively easy escape a cage after a short while if you don’t want to sit idle but your bounty will no longer decline and you get a small amount added on top of it for escaping. You have to flee the area as well so your company rescuing you would be an option.
If their head is delivered instead and the bounty is paid they will receive a debuff that reduces xp, damage the player deals, harvest and taming rates significantly. The debuff will contain the amount of bounty that got paid doubled and every goldcoin the player picks up will automatically be used to pay of the debuff until it is gone. Players remain red while they have the debuff.
Bounties will also reduce naturally with time but very slow.


Payment (How to get paid)
Obviously the debuff or jail time must hit significantly harder than the bounty is worth to prevent misuse.
Deliver the head or the player alive to a npc faction headquarter to receive the bounty placed by the npc faction. Bonus money for alive players.
Deliver the head or player alive to the player or company that placed a bounty on its head. Be aware that players or companies can refuse to pay the bounty, so skilled bounty hunters need some measures to bargain 😉

 

That’s about the basic bounty system for players.


I like the idea of company or ship bounties.
On top of this there could be more bounty systems:

Company bounty
The company bounty is the cumulated bounty of its players and will decide if a company will turn red as a whole including all members. If player looses its bounty or is removed from the company it will also be removed from the company bounty.

Ship bounty
If you earn a bounty while a ship owned by you or your company is close by the ship will earn the same bounty, plus players can also add bounties on a ship directly. If a ship with a bounty is sunk you will earn this bounty. Again the owner of the ship will receive a debuff that will take gold from ship boxes the player owns to pay off the debuff. The amount of gold to pay of the debuff is always twice the amount of the bounty that is paid to prevent companies to profit from bounties set on them. Unlike player bounties, ship bounties can be paid off with the normal gold cost at the npc factions.




Flags (Yield mechanic)

Flag Basic
You can raise a flag on your ship that also influences faction and pvp. It’s especially handy for pvp but also for pve server or areas. Flags have a cooldown before they can be changed again. Flags can also be applied to npc settlements and player claims and have the same rules.
Available flags are:

Trader Flag
Is a neutral flag and has no special effect. Hostiles like pirates or factions you have a bad reputation will target you.

Company Flag
You represent your company and your deeds will affect its reputation and the standing towards other companies, factions and players and their reputation towards your company if they that take actions against you. You can take actions against hostile companies (declared company war) without earning a bounty on your head.

Faction Flag
You represent an NPC faction and can sail their waters and use their ports but are hunted by their enemies. Flags of factions are only available if you have a good enough standing with that faction. (Your reputations with said faction will increase from doing quests for npcs in ports and your reputation will decline if attacking faction ships or npcs.)

Pirate Flag
You will go hostile to all around you including unallied pirates and can take pirate actions but will earn a bounty on your head if you do so. No one will get a bounty for attacking a pirate, you cannot lower the flag for a while after raising it. The pirate flag will be forced if your bounty is too high making you a well-known pirate.


Navy Flag
You will be hostile to pirates and players with bounties, while everyone can attack pirates without a penalty, pirates can fight of navy ships without a penalty. Navy ships have an escape blocking aura. If you die within the aura around a hostile navy ship you will be forced to respawn in a bed that is also within this aura if you don’t have a bed in range you will pass out and can be taken prisoner.

White Flag
Raising the white flag will yield to enemies, npcs and players alike. Your sails will be closed and all abroad will be forced to kneel down so you cannot fight. Attacking a ship or npc that has yielded and sinking it will have very high bounty penalty excluding pirate ships. A yielded ship will unlock all containers and doors and can be looted by player pirates as much as they like to. Hostile NPCs will come alongside yielded ships and transfer a part or all content of boxes and inventories depending on reputation and faction, npc pirates and the legion of the damned will also take your crew. Player pirates can take over yielded ships and enslave the crew but it will earn them a very high bounty that’s not worth the gain unless you are among the few most famous pirates that can keep fighting of everything that will be after you. (Ships should not be sunk for no reason, that very important to make the world evolve)

Reputation
You should be able to trade even with a neutral standing and earn a bit of reputation depending on the faction. Trader factions give more reputation for trading but another source of reputation are the quest npc in towns that can give you trade runs but also combat, salvage or exploration missions which earn you a bigger reputation and gold reward on completing. The local market in npc towns having different prices allows to play as a trader if you want and earn gold if you reach a port with the right wares to sell with a bargain.

Unlike civil flags of course a combat faction like the navy or pirates do require you to fight their enemies to earn their flag and makes you enemies with the other faction from sinking their ships.


 

Upkeep & Decay & Taxes

 

New item resource-stack (like the ship resource-box). Repair hammer will automatically use resources from the resource-stack in the building. Like ships every building can have one resource-stack.
Ships and buildings will now decay very fast. The resource-box and resource-stack will automatically use resources to counter that decay (upkeep). There is a minimum upkeep for every box or stack to maintain itself, additional it will charge a cost for the amount of pieces the ship or building has attached.

Zones mechanics:
Freeport – No building, cannot anchor ships in the port area. No de-spawn timer or faster decay needed.
Lawless – Upkeep cost will keep buildings from decaying.
Claimed Citizen – The upkeep cost will go towards the taxes and the ship or building stays in shape. No or low taxes on basic resource collection, normal taxes on gold treasures.
Claimed Owner – No building and ship decay or upkeep for the owner and allies. Significant gold upkeep for the claim itself.
Exploration Zones – No building, ships upkeep like in lawless.

This will allow the server to get cleared fast from abandoned stuff including ships.
It will also allow player that want to go on vacation to put enough resources into the box for whatever time frame they will be away.
Foundation spamming is effectively countered as they will decay fast and it is costly to put a resource-stack for every foundation and keep it filled with the minimum upkeep.

This versatile system, will allow to avoid bad experiences with de-spawn timers, foundation spamming, too expensive, cheap, long or short upkeep phases. And allows new players easy access as in all Zones the same system applies, upkeep & decay always at the same rates.




Trading, crafting and resources

Quality
Crafting stuff will result in different quality. Better skill and higher tier resources will produce better results -> a ship plank from strong wood is better than one from soft wood.

Crafting skills
Add crafting skills that slightly reduce the required mats. Maybe different skills for every kind of material like metal or wood.

Containers
Containers have a maximum weight limit so you actually cant throw everything into one container.
Containers can be moved, smalls ones by hand and carts and big ones with cranes(add cranes for this) and large carts.


Trader counter
A build and placeable counter where you can place items and set a price on them to buy or sell works when manned by player or npc crew.

Freight Box
When you access a player shop or trade hub you will have access and can select all inventories of your freight boxes in the vicinity of the shop to trade the wares or buy them. For example your ship needs to be in the harbor and every trade will take a while to commence (unloading).
Trade Hub/Port
The trade hub/port is a central coastal building that will show all offers of player shops in the vicinity and will also allow players to put their wares up for sale without upkeep but paying a tax when it is sold.  The sales tax can be set by the owner and is limited to 30%. Every day the offer is not sold the tax will increase by 5% when it reaches 100% the offer is taken down and the wares belong to the owner of the trade hub.
The trade hub has a reasonable upkeep for the owner. While the player shops/shacks will have far less upkeep, preferable they should decay and need to be repaired with resources not gold.

Renting and Trading
Allow to rent rooms or buy content of chests by asking a gold amount to unlock a door or chest.
Npc settlements
Liven up trade buy having npc cities with traders that buy and sell
with different prices and demand and might give trade requests to players that are rewarded with extra gold upon delivery.

Workstations

A new basic workstation that is easily build and move most none primitive part from inventory crafting to this station and the smithy.

Crafting stations now take more time to produce parts and do not manufacture until manned by a player or npc crew. Faster crafting skills affecting crafting tasks set by the player with the skill, npc manufacture much slower than the player when using the stations.

NPC workforce
Possibility to set hired npcs to slowly collect resources independently in a certain area around a collection box.
As long as you can protect them you will be able to skip on the most boring part of the game and get mats for a new ship with enough time.



Backpacks and stuff

Craftable backpacks that increase carry capacity. Items in backpacks have their weight reduced.

Bags to be placed in inventories reducing weight of items inside. Can also be placed on the ground, carts...

Saddlebags increasing carry capacity and reduce weight of items inside.

Normal inventory reduced carry capacity but include very basic bags and backpacks that can already be crafted on starter islands and boost it to about the current basic level.





Creatures
Normal Creatures

- Reduced Size to real size
- Normal wildlife, plentiful, less aggressive
- normal behavior, wolves hunt at night rest during the day etc.
- tameable, some smaller versions like wolves are not rideable, can be tamed faster than the current taming speed
- levelrange, every creature can spawn at levels considering their strength and size:
  chicken lv 1-20
  wolf lv 20-60
  tiger lv 50-100
  elephant lv 50-80


Alpha Creatures
- using the current size(oversized) of creatures
- tameable, but take more time to be tamed
- rideable, for example alpha wolves are rideable unlike the normal sized ones
- creatures picked to spawn as alpha will double their level and receive a health buff (health buff does not carry over to tamed ones)
- alphas can be accompanied by a pack of normal creatures, for example a pack of wolves following an alpha wolf
- only appropriate alphas, no alpha chickens and stuff


Omega Creatures
- rare and strong monsters of large size like dragons and other beasts. if you come across one while exploring the jungle you be running for your life
- only hunt them in groups (introduce a tracking skill so they can remain rare sights)
- if one is found trigger an local event everyone can join in to fight together (separate loot for all participants)
 

Titan Creatures
- like the kraken, only for massive groups
- big monsters or large group of enemies like an undead army
- unlike the kraken they also appear randomly triggering world events for everyone to attend
- can attack islands and all need to band together to fend them off, will disappear after a while if not defeated (there will be a warning a few days before the creature attacks like dead fish on the beach, bubbles in the water, strange weather or an undead armada on the horizon...)
- is a natural replacement for decay, instead of buildings and ships getting deleted after a while they will get damaged or destroyed by titan attacks and are more likely to happen on heavily inhabited islands but no more than once a month per island


Behavior
- attack delay, for example a shark will not attack as soon as you contact the water surface but start circling you for a bit bevor attacking, a wolf will tail you and team up with nearby wolves and is more likely to attack when turning your back on it, etc.


General
- need more creatures to liven up the world in the long term
- tameable LotD with tarot skills, give us undead breeding, be the first 😉




Taming

New taming mechanic optional or replacement however you see fit.

Activate taming skill and hold out the food. This will prevent creatures you look at from getting aggro on you or fleeing from you, does only work if they dont reacted to you already so you have to start from far away with agressive creatures and always look at them to keep them from reacting in the normal way(aggro/flee).
Creatures will also flee or attack with a certain chance that depends on your sneaking skill and how fast you move towards them. Once you reach them there is a chance they will eat the food depending on its quality and what kind of food you are offering. Agressive creatures will attack when rejecting the food.
You have to repeat until the taming bar is full, if attacked you have to flee and loose aggro to continue taming or if it stays in the game you continue with the bola method.





Weapons and Armor

Dual Wield

Dual wield swords and daggers and add daggers. Cant do something wrong with this its an always welcomed feature.

You should also be able to dual wield every one handed item. Like a grappling hock in one hand and a sword in the other so you can attack when you swing over to an enemy ship. Also it would make guns more viable as you are not defenseless against meele while holding one.

Maybe with a meele rebalance that does allow for less slashing and more parrying it will feel even more authentic and fun.

Unarmed
/martial arts

Add kicks and combo moves to make unarmed fighting more viable with knockbacks and combos for some additional effects like stunning or knock down. + Ability to disarm enemies.


Job armor and clothes

Every job should have appropriate clothing, light and warm version.
For example dancers shouldn’t be dancing around in fur armor or ship builders in metal armor.
Outfits give bonuses to the corresponding profession and liven up the world.



 

Magic

 

Since magic will be added some ideas for magic types and purposes

Necromancy – Recruiting/summoning and controlling an army of the dead crew. Transforming into an undead yourself -> undead don’t need air and can live under water. Able to resurrect dead players and npc crew as undead crew. Turn your ship into a ghost ship, able to dive (cannons don’t work under water thou but good for surprise appearance)
Voodoo – Cursing weapons, ships, players and animals and lifting curses, changing the weather/wind (bad)
Divine – Blessing weapons, ships, players, animals or harvest, changing the weather/wind (good)




Skilltree

As a long time goal a rework of the xp system would be preferable.

There will be different XP for the different skill trees.
For example building a ship gives you seamanship xp and sailing a ship gives captaineering xp or hitting with a meele weapon gives meele weaponry xp…
-> If you build ships you become a better ship builder, if you fight a lot you become a better fighter and so on.
This comes along with a rework of xp amounts so you make some worthy progress with each action, where building a ship for 8 hours gives you as much progress with seamanship as killing creatures for 8 hours gives weapon xp.
Also the skill-trees are expanded to give more passive bonuses and active skills with every tree for a more in depth specialization above the basics.




Player Conditions

Player wounds and weight

Introduce heavy wounds, heavy overweight - both force you to crawl so you cannot interact with for example ladders with heavy overweighting and stuff.

Limb damage effects - reducing meele damage (a
rms), accuracy (head), stamina (chest) or walking/dodging (legs).


Aging

 

When you die of old age you will have to make a new character but keep your progress level and exploration and ships etc. and get to respect your character once. (No respect on level up anymore)

When you die of old age and have a child you can choose to play as the child and will also keep levels, exploration and ships etc. with a free respect. Depending on how well the child was raised you will get a permanent stat bonus to your lineage like more health or stamina.

When using the fountain of youth you will get a free respect and are young again.

Edited by Linea
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Amazing ideas. They should look into how blackwake handles ship combat in my opinion. That could also probably improve the performance, as it has a similar damage system to the one you mentioned and less less individual parts at work. If it's even possible to merge all the hull parts into one after creation.

Cities should have lots for construction, maybe a gridded road section with roads separating them. Could possible 10×10 for cheap houses and 30x30 for expensive ones. If these areas were made 100% grief proof, it would let peoples store away some of their stuff and always able to get back on their feat with out having to start 100% from scratch if ever griefed (pve) or sieged (pvp) people could also store their most valuable items there. But! If they ever want them over at their main base, They of course have to sail across the sea, this could make for quite intense voyages.

Love the ideas, but!

probably not the right/competent company to implement it, considering their framework and general game patching and balancing.

 

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I tottaly agree and LOVE your post, is just amazing the mechanics that you published, many people already though about the same ideas, so yes THANK you for posting them, and so well done, its true that the game lack indeed an economic system, and it wouldnt hurt if existed, its necessary that it does!

Atm i play in  EU PVP server, and i can tell you that the game isnt fun for small groups, as per there is no proper protection, we're easily raided by larger groups, or simply are forced to join bigger companies to actually do something, then there's the companies interests of PVP that forces you to either farm like a slave or get kicked and back to square one, the game is meant to have fun, and with so many skill trees and so much freedom, there's players that likes to play on piracy, but there's also people that likes to farm, and cook, and just build a house, have just dont do that much pvp, i cant believe that a PVP server must be only made to pvp things, its just not fair, not balanced and that's not fun at all.

 

So yeah i tottaly agree with your ideas, and i hope Devs can actually see this post, and gather most of your ideas and put it into the game :DD

 

Still we all know this is an alpha game, and it will take a time to make this really happen, but im up for that!

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Thanks for commending the ideas.

So far i have some small additions:

Docks:
Possible to dock ships into drydocks again.
Water docks, having the same protection like a drydock. Ships in water docks cannot sink.

Destroyed Planks:
Planks should not disappear when reaching 0 health (looks kinda stupid). Instead they should be replaced with burst planks that can still be repaired but need multiple repair hammer hits (fill a repair bar) to start repairing again.

Npc repair:
There should be a minimum threshold for npcs repairing ship parts. Npcs are wasting quit a lot of metal repairing planks that just lost 1hp. Npcs should also be able to slowly repair while not anchored.


Universal Trade counter:
Trade Counter as buildable item so you can set up a shop everywhere and start your own harbor/city with trade.
Simple place items, set gold price and assign npc to make it active.

 

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Workstations:

A new basic workstation that is easily build and move most none primitive part from inventory crafting to this station and the smithy.

Crafting stations now take more time to produce parts and do not manufacture until manned by a player or npc crew. Faster crafting skills affecting crafting tasks set by the player with the skill, npc manufacture much slower than the player when using the stations.
 

 

Sails:

Ability to have more crew assigned to a sail. Open/close and turn much slower with one crew and faster with multiple crew, also speed buff for multiple crew on the sails or player manning the sail.


 

Backpacks and stuff:

Craftable backpacks that increase carry capacity. Items in backpacks have their weight reduced.

Bags to be placed in inventories reducing weight of items inside. Can also be placed on the ground, carts...

Saddlebags increasing carry capacity and reduce weight of items inside.

Normal inventory reduced carry capacity but include very basic bags and backpacks that can already be crafted on starter islands and boost it to about the current basic level.


 

Player wounds and condition:

Introduce heavy wounds, heavy overweight - both force you to crawl so you cannot interact with for example ladders with heavy overweighting and stuff.

Limb damage effects - reducing meele damage (arms), accuracy (head), stamina (chest) or walking/dodging (legs).
 

 

Unarmed/martial arts:

Add kicks and combo moves to make unarmed fighting more viable with knockbacks and combos for some additional effects like stunning or knock down. + Ability to disarm enemies.
 

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Taming:

New taming mechanic optional or replacement however you see fit.

Activate taming skill and hold out the food. This will prevent creatures you look at from getting aggro on you or fleeing from you, does only work if they dont reacted to you already so you have to start from far away with agressive creatures and always look at them to keep them from reacting in the normal way(aggro/flee).
Creatures will also flee or attack with a certain chance that depends on your sneaking skill and how fast you move towards them. Once you reach them there is a chance they will eat the food depending on its quality and what kind of food you are offering. Agressive creatures will attack when rejecting the food.
You have to repeat until the taming bar is full, if attacked you have to flee and loose aggro to continue taming or if it stays in the game you continue with the bola method.

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Dungeons:

Player limit for dungeons. The game has everything from single players up to 400ppl tribes, its impossible to balance so there should be dungeons for different team sizes.
The limit allows only so many people inside the dungeon at the same time and the content inside is balanced on that number.

(max 2) Tiny dungeon - small with basic loot and suitable for one or two persons. Low chance for specials like fountain of youth, gold or rare stuff (including all mechanics of the game so everyone can take part and is not excluded). Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 4) Small dungeon - normal dungeon for a small group, hard but doable alone. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 8) Normal dungeon - normal dungeon for a medium group. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 16) Large dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.
(max 32) Huge dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.
(max 64) Raid dungeon - large dungeon with world bosses for huge crews. Very high chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.

More versatile dungeons:

A Cave (yea for sure)
Under Water Cave (having air to breath once inside but also part under water)
Shipwreck (in shallow water or deep in the ocean)
Ghostship (once disabled you can go inside or drifting ships with enemies)
Tempel or other buildings
Hostile Settlements or island counting as open dungeon
under water city inside an air bubble

...
 

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Oh i would love to see all this in the game making it a exciting and living world.

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I wanna add to your dual wielding idea. Can we get a way to dual wield sword and pistol? I think it's very iconic as portrayed in media.

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1 hour ago, Eversalt said:

I wanna add to your dual wielding idea. Can we get a way to dual wield sword and pistol? I think it's very iconic as portrayed in media.

thats a great idea, you should be able to dual wield every one handed item. like a grappling hock in one hand and a sword in the other so you can attack when you swing over to an enemy ship. also it would make guns more viable as you are not defenseless against meele while holding one.

maybe with a meele rebalance that does allow for less slashing and more parrying it will feel even more authentic and fun.

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Underwater “Islands”

There should be natural air bubbles(caves) and player made domes under water where you can live. Also ancient cultures could have left artificial or magic domes that provide a place to live.
Similar to an island with resource spawns and wildlife etc. these will expand the space to live in the game and bring more life to the sea bed as well as base of operation for the upcoming subs.

Should airships be added some day the same could be done with floating islands to expand the space to live into the sky.

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+1

I love almost everything in here and totally reminds me of the only other "next-gen" MMO that I play/follow, Star Citizen. The only thing that I hope the devs don't eventually do on your extensive list is the NPC workforce. I would much rather see people who like gathering resources (me) be able to sell those resources to traders and other players. This would also be a boon for people who like taming and breeding since tames can improve the efficiency of gathering resources. The people who don't like gathering materials should be able to fund their ship upgrades in other ways (quests, jobs, treasure maps, bounties) and the traders can make money as the middle man with their profit margin justified by the threat of the pirates that roam the seas. 

Star Citizen is trying to create a universe where anyone can live out their dream of flying a space ship and filling any role that a sci-fi universe holds (pirates, outlaws, marines, navy, trader, industry, exploring, science, bounty hunters and the list goes on. I hope that Atlas can create a pirate world where we can live out a pirate/privateer life. We can trade, steal, dig up buried treasure, and grow our infamy which is exactly the type of variety that caused me to play through Sid Meier's Pirates game back in the day so many times. Every replay of S.M. Pirates was a different adventure. Are you going to reunite your long lost family? Are you going to challenge the legendary pirates to become the biggest and baddest pirate in the Caribean? Are you going to try to find all of the legendary pirate's buried treasure? Are you going to try to become the most successful, richest, most land-owning privateer for the Royal ____ Navy? If Atlas can come even halfway to realizing what S.M. Pirates did back in 1987 but with modern graphics and in a multiplayer environment I would easily call this the greatest pirate game ever made. 

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Linea, It might be worth taking some of the most important (to you) ideas, and breaking them out in to their own posts... this way (singular) ideas can be up-voted by the community, and allow the ones that resonate with people to get the appropriate attention. Use the system to it's full potential! 🙂

Working on a project this large is time consuming and complicated -- a monolithic list like yours would be daunting (from a Dev perspective),  individually some of your ideas have merit, and I know many players are probably thinking the same thing. It's easier to hit the up vote on something you like, than writing a whole new post.

Cheers! 

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I have never seen such a comprehensive rework suggestion, that I completely and utterly agreed with. My only question; am I right in assuming, the idea would be to use a trading flag to go to an NPC port, get your reputation up enough with them, to get the faction flag?

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On 1/25/2019 at 11:32 PM, Dazlarus said:

+1

I love almost everything in here and totally reminds me of the only other "next-gen" MMO that I play/follow, Star Citizen. The only thing that I hope the devs don't eventually do on your extensive list is the NPC workforce. I would much rather see people who like gathering resources (me) be able to sell those resources to traders and other players. This would also be a boon for people who like taming and breeding since tames can improve the efficiency of gathering resources. The people who don't like gathering materials should be able to fund their ship upgrades in other ways (quests, jobs, treasure maps, bounties) and the traders can make money as the middle man with their profit margin justified by the threat of the pirates that roam the seas. 

Star Citizen is trying to create a universe where anyone can live out their dream of flying a space ship and filling any role that a sci-fi universe holds (pirates, outlaws, marines, navy, trader, industry, exploring, science, bounty hunters and the list goes on. I hope that Atlas can create a pirate world where we can live out a pirate/privateer life. We can trade, steal, dig up buried treasure, and grow our infamy which is exactly the type of variety that caused me to play through Sid Meier's Pirates game back in the day so many times. Every replay of S.M. Pirates was a different adventure. Are you going to reunite your long lost family? Are you going to challenge the legendary pirates to become the biggest and baddest pirate in the Caribean? Are you going to try to find all of the legendary pirate's buried treasure? Are you going to try to become the most successful, richest, most land-owning privateer for the Royal ____ Navy? If Atlas can come even halfway to realizing what S.M. Pirates did back in 1987 but with modern graphics and in a multiplayer environment I would easily call this the greatest pirate game ever made. 

I agree to value player trading over NPC workforce. As NPC workforce does cost gold and should be gathering very slow it would be better to buy from players or to gather resources yourself, it can easily be balanced with the gathering speed to not harm trading. The idea is for those that venture out on their ships and are mainly rewarded with gold coins and when they loose their ship one day they still need to gather all basic material since the issue is not trading but transporting the resources to the place where you build your ship especially when you dont have a ship. Its kind of a reward for not loosing your ship for a while. The main trading will come from big wars and companies that need vast amounts of resources and take in deliveries from traders as well as NPC markets to keep trading alive at all times. I also had in mind the unofficial servers that often lack in trading and could set the npc workforce values however the specific server needs it once the system is implemented.

On a side note, traders and gatherers can use the npcs as well to build a trade empire and focus more on running the trade shop, making deals or delivering wares to customers, there might even be npc captains transporting your wares between ports thou they would need a somewhat guarded route ;)

 

On 1/25/2019 at 11:49 PM, Argh! said:

Linea, It might be worth taking some of the most important (to you) ideas, and breaking them out in to their own posts... this way (singular) ideas can be up-voted by the community, and allow the ones that resonate with people to get the appropriate attention. Use the system to it's full potential! 🙂

Working on a project this large is time consuming and complicated -- a monolithic list like yours would be daunting (from a Dev perspective),  individually some of your ideas have merit, and I know many players are probably thinking the same thing. It's easier to hit the up vote on something you like, than writing a whole new post.

Cheers! 


Yes you are right about the voting system but i didnt want to make like 20 threads. The ideas are a complete rework of the game mechanics and are dependent on each other. Picking just one would not work so well and could turn out confusing when references to other ideas are set. Its more a long term goal to work towards rather than a hotfix for some issues. I hope the devs read it and see if it fits with their long term goals either reassuring their plan or bringing in some additions that might still be open. I do plan to post balancing suggestions in separate threads thou.
 

On 1/29/2019 at 7:30 AM, Mansler said:

I have never seen such a comprehensive rework suggestion, that I completely and utterly agreed with. My only question; am I right in assuming, the idea would be to use a trading flag to go to an NPC port, get your reputation up enough with them, to get the faction flag?

I would say you should be able to trade even with a neutral standing and earn a bit of reputation depending on the faction. Trader factions give more reputation for trading but another source of reputation are the quest npc in towns that can give you trade runs but also combat, salvage or exploration missions which earn you a bigger reputation and gold reward on completing. The local market in npc towns having different prices allows to play as a trader if you want and earn gold if you reach a port with the right wares to sell with a bargain.

Unlike civil flags of course a combat faction like the navy or pirates do require you to fight their enemies to earn their flag and makes you enemies with the other faction from sinking their ships.

-------------------------------

Thank you all for liking the ideas, i hope it helps and can inspire the devs.

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About the law system:
Bounties should work otherwise in my opinion. Instead of being a predefined added value, it should be player added. For example if i was raided, and lost a mythical recipe, and the automated system put 100 gold fee due to just one box was destructed it doesn't represent a true value of that crime. Also one could just log on and afk on jailtime, so it also need some mechanic that makes them spend their time in jail, not just afk their time through it. I mean, imagine someone shooting peoples to generate a gold bounty on their own head, then make his friend jail him, and generate more income to a friend, while he goes on a long weekend holiday away from computer. That's literally rewarding not punishing.


Alternative suggestions:
Let players put their own gold as bounties.
Let destuction of assets be the decay measurement of bounties.

The bounty declines with lost assets (unretrievable lose). For example, i pay 1000 gold bounty on a criminal. A galleon worth 5000 gold, a schooner 500 gold, a sloop 100 gold for example (not equal to their real value, just a small fraction of it). If someone sinks a ship, they get a payment equal to that ship cost into their nearest ship resource box in range (just put one near if you for example bombard a ship with a weight harness cannon).
Even with the reclaimed assets, the whole payout would be just a little part of the ship's worth so it couldn't be abused (cleared intentionally) material effectively. The following numbers are just relative numbers, not optimal calculated values.
If someone sinks a sloop on an 1000 bounty criminal they get 100 gold, and 900 bounty left on the criminal.
If someone sinks a schooner instead, they get 500 and 500 bounty leaves on the criminal.
If someone sinks a galleon, they still get only 1000 gold, and the criminal's bounty is nullified.
Also, the ship itself have to be some times old (for example 10 minute old at least). This is a check to make sure that the ship itself can float, and someone doesnt throw just skeletons into the water with some weird glitch that counts it as enemy sinking, and prevent players to rapidly sink their bounty with an invidual company friend.
Since every asset of a sunk ship can be plundered, and since a well armed criminal should be threatening the bounty shall only depend on the ship class, nothing else (sinking a well armed ship worth more, since you can plunder it better, but its the same bounty as a minimalistic ship). Stolen ships doesn't count, only sunk one (since it could be retraded and abused).
Also there should be 2 types of bounty: 1: Company bounty, 2: personal bounty.
The difference is, that if someone have a personal bounty, it still affects company bounty, but if you kick that person, the person inherit the bounty, and the company is cleared of it. However with company bounty, company assets inherit the bounty, for example, if you claim a brig from a company, you inherit a brig's worth of bounty with it (so a company with bounty can't save their ships to a brother company, or sell out threatened ships). Also, if everybody leaves a company, the last person to leave inherits the company bounty as personal bounty (if a notorious pirate group have like 10000000 gold bounty they could easily clear it by reforming the company).
Jail time:
To prevent people just afk their time through jailtime, i would suggest to have a fixated amount of bounty cost on bringing a criminal to freeport jail. For example one people is caged for 2 hours, and remove 200 gold. After that time, the cage opens, and there is two ways to go: Left side is a courtyard, where you'll be hanged. Right side is a yard, where you can work to further decrease your bounty. If you go for the hanging, you are free of the jail, but all your other bounty stays. If you go for the right, you'll be suited with with a black and white stripped cloth, and you can mine in a pistol reload like minigame. Whenever you succeed in the minigame you remove a bit of bounty from you (like 1-2 golds). Those golds go to the one who captured you (you cant enter prison without someone bringing you there).
Why?
1: One who goes to a long weekend holiday, can not just afk through they bounty like that. People spent effort on that bounty cost, so jailed mates should do the same bringing it down
2: Some people literally overdo jailing... They go torturing, shaming, etc on caged person. Some others are respectful, and well... not about being the torturer, they just do the necessary bad to prevent bad guys to do bad stuff. Criminals could make a choice, that that person was a dck, so they won't give them any more payment, and hang themselves. Or they should think, that "well... he was kinda fair, doing his job, i'm either lost another ship, or spend some time here to clear my bounty, so i clear it, i don't mind that guy getting some extra".

Conclusion:
Pro:
+As you can see, if players pays for bounties, you can have a better price on bounties according to the victim's esteem of his own damage, instead of an automatic system
+One can hardly skip their jailtime afking, thats a way more ineffective way to decay your bounty (only 200gold/2 hours removed). Since in jail you don't lose assets, you must lose time that you could spend on making those assets, not just afk time. Or lose time getting jailed.
+People tend to shoot at criminals like this. The whole bounty system is to make other people get revenge in your place. If it's a hard "capture him, transfer him to prison,etc" kind of complicated thing, lesser people will take the time to do so, so it won't be as significant to have a bounty on someone
+One "fair" company should have a kind of CV of a player. Traders don't hire pirates or griefers, they see the bounty there. However pirates would hire criminals, since they want that extra thrill of bounties and being engaged in pvp more
Cons:
- Well, it's not really a con, but it need to have a good balance. Since players pay the bounty, they want something for it. If too much gold is removed by the jail minigame, it'll be a gold sink. If too little, noone would take the jailtime. If too much gold goes on ship sinking, pirates may just sink his own ships with a friend, to profit on their own bounty. If too little, since the costs on ships are fixated it would not worth the risk/reward of attacking an armed galleon.
- It's only ships, not buildings, or tames. From law side, the bounty is about prevenging crime. And crime is about bad people moving around doing bad stuff. Since criminals are just players, and not real criminals, in my opinion criminal movement should be hindered, not their character's existence, so their main hindrance should be the constant paranoia of driving any kind of ship, and not about getting offline raided from time to time. However that would mean, that grounded pirate groups are not really affected by this. But to be honest, these kind of pirates are territorial fighters, and they are reachable, not the folk that goes around and cause harm to multiple regions then vanish, so in my opinion its okay. But since its just a point of view, i should mention it in cons

EDIT:
I found out another con, but i have a solution for it:
- Innocent people can be bountied.
Solution: To be able to bounty someone you must have a log of that people/company doing wrong. They should have a "criminal ID", which only appears on hostile actions and only in event logs. If you clear your bounties your criminal ID changes, and you have to commit another crime to have a new one. This means people who don't know you don't know your criminal ID so you cant recieve bounty, since they can't target you. And one mistake doesn't gonna provide you a permanent id, so if you clear your name, you have a new id, so you can't be targeted until you "share" your new id with crimes.

Edited by Deadbones

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On 2/5/2019 at 5:01 PM, Deadbones said:

About the law system:
Bounties should work otherwise in my opinion. Instead of being a predefined added value, it should be player added. For example if i was raided, and lost a mythical recipe, and the automated system put 100 gold fee due to just one box was destructed it doesn't represent a true value of that crime. Also one could just log on and afk on jailtime, so it also need some mechanic that makes them spend their time in jail, not just afk their time through it. I mean, imagine someone shooting peoples to generate a gold bounty on their own head, then make his friend jail him, and generate more income to a friend, while he goes on a long weekend holiday away from computer. That's literally rewarding not punishing.


Alternative suggestions:
...

Hi, i like your ideas, there are a few things to consider as the victim might be unable to pay a bounty or the criminal might go unpunished by picking said weaker players. Also rich players could misuse the system to harass players with their abundant amount of gold.
Should avoid situations like this, passive player get his only ship sunk by aggressive player and cant place a bounty as he has no gold left instead the pirate that sunk his ship places a bounty on his head with the stolen gold from the sunk ship to prevent the victim from rebuilding on top of it.

That’s why I would suggest an automatic system depending on what you do, like many other games have, green player (passive), yellow player (aggressive) and red player (pirate). It could be placed on top of the player set bounty system which could than be better protected against misuse.
I’ll elaborate my suggestion for the bounty system a bit more. Tell me how you like it, I integrated some of your ideas with it
J



Player condition:
Green – Everyone is a green player from the start.
Yellow – When you attack a green or yellow player you will turn into a yellow player. Yellow players turn green again a few minutes after they last did damage to other players.
Red – When you have a significant bounty by a npc faction on your head you will turn red. Only by loosing the bounty you can turn green again. Red players can only use Homeservers in pirate territory.
Note that player bounties alone will not make a player turn red. So player bounties on green players can only be turned in by red players, pirates.

 

Bounty (What is a bounty)
Bounty is a gold amount on your head set by either the npc faction in which territory you commit a crime or by a player. Different factions do consider different things a crime.


Crime (What gives you a bounty)
- Killing green player, tiny bounty. (Except pirate territory)
- Destroying building parts of others, tiny bounty. (Except pirate territory)
- Stealing from locked containers, small bounty. (Except pirate territory)
- Attacking ship, small bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Trader faction territory)
- Sinking ship, huge bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Navy faction territory)
- Taking green or yellow players as prisoner, large bounty. (Except pirate territory) (Medium bounty in Navy faction territory)
- Player placing bounty on your head.
- Killing yellow and red players, no bounty
- Attacking red ships (ships of red players), no bounty
- Sinking red ships, small bounty (Only in pirate territory)
- Escaping a cage, small bounty (Except pirate territory)


Jail & Debuff (How to loose bounties)
A bounty will reduce when the player is online and sitting in a cage owned by the npc faction, player or company that placed the bounty. You can relatively easy escape a cage after a short while if you don’t want to sit idle but your bounty will no longer decline and you get a small amount added on top of it for escaping. You have to flee the area as well so your company rescuing you would be an option.
If their head is delivered instead and the bounty is paid they will receive a debuff that reduces xp, damage the player deals, harvest and taming rates significantly. The debuff will contain the amount of bounty that got paid doubled and every goldcoin the player picks up will automatically be used to pay of the debuff until it is gone. Players remain red while they have the debuff.
Bounties will also reduce naturally with time but very slow.


Payment (How to get paid)
Obviously the debuff or jail time must hit significantly harder than the bounty is worth to prevent misuse.
Deliver the head or the player alive to a npc faction headquarter to receive the bounty placed by the npc faction. Bonus money for alive players.
Deliver the head or player alive to the player or company that placed a bounty on its head. Be aware that players or companies can refuse to pay the bounty, so skilled bounty hunters need some measures to bargain ;)

That’s about the basic bounty system for players.


I like the idea of company or ship bounties.
On top of this there could be more bounty systems:

Company bounty:
The company bounty is the cumulated bounty of its players and will decide if a company will turn red as a whole including all members. If player looses its bounty or is removed from the company it will also be removed from the company bounty.

Ship bounty:
If you earn a bounty while a ship owned by you or your company is close by the ship will earn the same bounty, plus players can also add bounties on a ship directly. If a ship with a bounty is sunk you will earn this bounty. Again the owner of the ship will receive a debuff that will take gold from ship boxes the player owns to pay off the debuff. The amount of gold to pay of the debuff is always twice the amount of the bounty that is paid to prevent companies to profit from bounties set on them. Unlike player bounties, ship bounties can be paid off with the normal gold cost at the npc factions.

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Notice: I integrated all ideas so far into the first post for better readability.

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Thanks for including me. It's really a well evaluated idea.
Still you are working to add an rpg system to a mainly sandbox game, and automate possible things that player can work in the game just to focus purely on firing at each others. It would improve singleplayer/private server experience, but it removes the mmo sandbox vibe of the game. For example if you automate merchants, my "role" as a sap importer, and trader would be just.... gone. Since everything will be npc made, then all what would left to be done is just to shoot at each other and sail. It's like a well paved road, but its stricly limited.
Which would suit a game for example like Sea of Thieves more.

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On 1/23/2019 at 2:17 AM, Linea said:

Dungeons:

Player limit for dungeons. The game has everything from single players up to 400ppl tribes, its impossible to balance so there should be dungeons for different team sizes.
The limit allows only so many people inside the dungeon at the same time and the content inside is balanced on that number.

(max 2) Tiny dungeon - small with basic loot and suitable for one or two persons. Low chance for specials like fountain of youth, gold or rare stuff (including all mechanics of the game so everyone can take part and is not excluded). Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 4) Small dungeon - normal dungeon for a small group, hard but doable alone. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 😎 Normal dungeon - normal dungeon for a medium group. Normal chance for specials. Many of these do exist on all islands.
(max 16) Large dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.
(max 32) Huge dungeon - large dungeon with strong bosses for large groups. High chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.
(max 64) Raid dungeon - large dungeon with world bosses for huge crews. Very high chances for specials and rare loot. They only exist on special islands or zones.

More versatile dungeons:

A Cave (yea for sure)
Under Water Cave (having air to breath once inside but also part under water)
Shipwreck (in shallow water or deep in the ocean)
Ghostship (once disabled you can go inside or drifting ships with enemies)
Tempel or other buildings
Hostile Settlements or island counting as open dungeon
under water city inside an air bubble

...
 

I'd much prefer dungeons that scale difficulty based on how many players are in them at the moment.
The more players, the more mobs and the higher level the mobs are. In addition to bosses scaling up too.
Dungeons should also be sharded. Making it so that each company/alliance would get their own version of the dungeon. 

Scalable dungeons would make more content available to more companies.  
Also, the thing I really don't like about your suggestion is that you would exclude small companies and solo players from getting good loot. I see no reason why you should HAVE to be in a large company/alliance to even have the chance at getting some decent loot.
A way around this separation would be to have a common queue for dungeons, grouping random companies together.

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On 2/22/2019 at 2:29 PM, 4bZurd said:

I'd much prefer dungeons that scale difficulty based on how many players are in them at the moment.
The more players, the more mobs and the higher level the mobs are. In addition to bosses scaling up too.
Dungeons should also be sharded. Making it so that each company/alliance would get their own version of the dungeon. 

Scalable dungeons would make more content available to more companies.  
Also, the thing I really don't like about your suggestion is that you would exclude small companies and solo players from getting good loot. I see no reason why you should HAVE to be in a large company/alliance to even have the chance at getting some decent loot.
A way around this separation would be to have a common queue for dungeons, grouping random companies together.


Dude.... what you are talking about is to include World of Warcraft LFG and flexi-instance into the game.
This is not that kind of game.
Take for example, a queue system. I would sooooo just make a queue, and kill anyone for their gear when they join.
And why on earth would we ever want a shard system in this game? I mean.... I literally bought this game because it's unrestricted, sandbox, and everything is connected.

About the whole thread:
Also, to be honest, the whole concept here, is not a collection of "improvements", they are just gameplay, and genre changing reworks of the whole game on concept level. I mean, for example, in a sandbox enviroment, where players should dictate the powerplay, how could one just introduce npc factions that dictates the powerplay? Or for example, we have a working system for sails, with masts, and here is a concept, to have different sails on the same mast... Or multiple crewmembers for a mast...
This literally doesn't change anything in the game, it's just a personal preference about how it should look like. Like "Turn this flower red, because i like red better than blue".

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On 2/9/2019 at 10:12 PM, Deadbones said:

Thanks for including me. It's really a well evaluated idea.
Still you are working to add an rpg system to a mainly sandbox game, and automate possible things that player can work in the game just to focus purely on firing at each others. It would improve singleplayer/private server experience, but it removes the mmo sandbox vibe of the game. For example if you automate merchants, my "role" as a sap importer, and trader would be just.... gone. Since everything will be npc made, then all what would left to be done is just to shoot at each other and sail. It's like a well paved road, but its stricly limited.
Which would suit a game for example like Sea of Thieves more.

You are correct that it is to avoid by all means that player trading gets negatively influenced and a positive boost to player trading is to remain the sole goal of these changes.

The intention is not that NPC sell SAP at low prices to steal your customers but that NPCs buy your SAP at a lower profit as when selling to players so you always have somewhere to sell your wares and keep trading if you choose to. Even if NPCs sell SAP it still needs to be transported and it would always be faster and cheaper for players to sail to islands and collect it themselves so you don’t lose any trade opportunities.

 

On 2/22/2019 at 2:29 PM, 4bZurd said:

I'd much prefer dungeons that scale difficulty based on how many players are in them at the moment.
The more players, the more mobs and the higher level the mobs are. In addition to bosses scaling up too.
Dungeons should also be sharded. Making it so that each company/alliance would get their own version of the dungeon. 

Scalable dungeons would make more content available to more companies.  
Also, the thing I really don't like about your suggestion is that you would exclude small companies and solo players from getting good loot. I see no reason why you should HAVE to be in a large company/alliance to even have the chance at getting some decent loot.
A way around this separation would be to have a common queue for dungeons, grouping random companies together.


I would love to see dungeons that scale to the players and groups inside, so you always have a challenge at hand and still all possibilities the game can offer. Currently wherever you go its either too easy or too hard as its impossible to balance the same content for player groups with 1 to 400 members. Its quiet a big change and a lot of work for the devs.
Thou instanced dungeons can run on a different server and their entrances been scattered on the world map which give a lot of options to expand the game. If it should be allowed to drop in and out of these instances it will be difficult to balance but im sure the devs could figure it out.

 

23 hours ago, Deadbones said:


Dude.... what you are talking about is to include World of Warcraft LFG and flexi-instance into the game.
This is not that kind of game.
Take for example, a queue system. I would sooooo just make a queue, and kill anyone for their gear when they join.
And why on earth would we ever want a shard system in this game? I mean.... I literally bought this game because it's unrestricted, sandbox, and everything is connected.

About the whole thread:
Also, to be honest, the whole concept here, is not a collection of "improvements", they are just gameplay, and genre changing reworks of the whole game on concept level. I mean, for example, in a sandbox enviroment, where players should dictate the powerplay, how could one just introduce npc factions that dictates the powerplay? Or for example, we have a working system for sails, with masts, and here is a concept, to have different sails on the same mast... Or multiple crewmembers for a mast...
This literally doesn't change anything in the game, it's just a personal preference about how it should look like. Like "Turn this flower red, because i like red better than blue".


Eve Online which is widely seen as the prime example off a sandbox mmo with full pvp and player reigned empires also has to rely on PVE areas, instanced missions, npc factions, quests and stuff which are staggered and lead to semi regulated areas and finally full pvp areas for players to make the rules.

It might proof impossible to bring two things together, full anarchy pvp environment with nothing else beside it and a lasting persistent world. Im sure you dont want heavily regulated PVP which is the direction it is heading right now, as it only has one ruleset for the whole game world. Full pvp might work in matches or small servers like ark with only a few players and private servers with custom rulesets but not on big persistent worlds. The Atlas map is quiet small with about 400 pvp points (islands) that are meant to host a lot of players, if everywhere is happy wacky the player population will be very small and pvp very dim. The devs already stated that they want to make the game open to all players and the whole content available for different players during every situation.
The idea should be to create a living world as a foundation from which players depart into the endgame pvp areas which in return can be completly unregulated and allow players to freely make the rules.

I assure you the suggestions here all have improved full pvp in mind and expanded possibilities for player ruled kingdoms and areas. That’s why I suggested different areas including high level full pvp and even adventure areas where you cant build and explore uninhabited island while sailing around without save bases for a harder pvp experience.

Even large tribes and pvp players need a healthy playerbase on the server to rule. If a large tribe goes to war and needs traders there wont be players just standing around waiting until they need vast amounts of resources fast and deliver them on demand, there needs to be a constant trade environment to keep it going with small profits so traders are around once you need them to sell to players with greater profit.

Also pvp-tribes will be able to recruit the best players from the server population, as the better you get the more you can advance into the especially rewarding and promising pvp areas.
Beat players don’t leave the game and can retreat to previous areas and there is always a constant inflow of new but experienced players into the pvp areas to keep it going. It’s a quiet important necessity to keep the player numbers on the official servers up and healthy. Without new inflow of players into the pvp areas it seems impossible to keep the game world from turning static and absent of any progress which also means no pvp thou a lack of targets.
It did work very well in Eve Online as an example of the influence such changes have and how they profit the sandbox player pvp concept.

It’s a bit like the discovery of America and the real pirates. Explorers from good ol Europe send over ships and people to the new world to battle it out for the territory and power to gain the riches and free land that can only be found and claimed there.

I agree and will continue to avoiding any unnecessary changes that have no positive influence.

Edited by Linea

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Some new additions for the new and upcoming content/mechanics.

 

Upkeep & Decay & Taxes

New item resource-stack (like the ship resource-box). Repair hammer will automatically use resources from the resource-stack in the building. Like ships every building can have one resource-stack.
Ships and buildings will now decay very fast. The resource-box and resource-stack will automatically use resources to counter that decay (upkeep). There is a minimum upkeep for every box or stack to maintain itself, additional it will charge a cost for the amount of pieces the ship or building has attached.

Zones mechanics:
Freeport – No building, cannot anchor ships in the port area. No de-spawn timer or faster decay needed.
Lawless – Upkeep cost will keep buildings from decaying.
Claimed Citizen – The upkeep cost will go towards the taxes and the ship or building stays in shape. No or low taxes on basic resource collection, normal taxes on gold treasures.
Claimed Owner – No building and ship decay or upkeep for the owner and allies. Significant gold upkeep for the claim itself.
Exploration Zones – No building, ships upkeep like in lawless.

This will allow the server to get cleared fast from abandoned stuff including ships.
It will also allow player that want to go on vacation to put enough resources into the box for whatever time frame they will be away.
Foundation spamming is effectively countered as they will decay fast and it is costly to put a resource-stack for every foundation and keep it filled with the minimum upkeep.

This versatile system, will allow to avoid bad experiences with de-spawn timers, foundation spamming, too expensive, cheap, long or short upkeep phases. And allows new players easy access as in all Zones the same system applies, upkeep & decay are always at the same rates.



Underwater “Islands” (Additional world layers)

There should be natural air bubbles(caves) and player made domes under water where you can live. Also ancient cultures could have left artificial or magic domes that provide a place to live.
Similar to an island with resource spawns and wildlife etc. these will expand the space to live in the game and bring more life to the sea bed as well as base of operation for the upcoming subs.
There could be bigger and customizable subs for traveling and transporting that launch the mini subs for resource collection and other under water tasks.

Should airships be added some day the same could be done with floating islands to expand the space to live into the sky.

The battlefields and playfields should be mainly separated so that sea, air, land and underwater battles not significantly interfere with each other:
Surface Ships – strong hull, can carry heavy weapons and lots of resources, get new weapons like basic depth charges that are very effective against submarines and basic anti-air cannons that easily down airships. Of course more ship types here is a primary goal.
Land – large fortifications and heavy weapons also can use anti-air cannons
Submerged – have weak hulls and can only carry light weapons that cause little damage to surface ships planks but good damage to other subs. Can also use small deck guns when not diving to participate in surface battles but still way weaker than surface ships.
Floating – lightweight airships, cannot carry much stuff and only lighter weapons good for air combat and reaching floating islands but with low effect on surface ships.

4 different experiences and battlefields to master and expand the game content and many more cool places to visit.

Magic

Since magic will be added some ideas for magic types and purposes

Necromancy – Recruiting/summoning and controlling an army of the dead crew. Transforming into an undead yourself -> undead don’t need air and can live under water. Able to resurrect dead players and npc crew as undead crew. Turn your ship into a ghost ship, able to dive (cannons don’t work under water thou but good for surprise appearance)
Voodoo – Cursing weapons, ships, players and animals and lifting curses, changing the weather/wind (bad)
Divine – Blessing weapons, ships, players, animals or harvest, changing the weather/wind (good)



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Trading

To improve trading a lot there should be two new Items

Freight Box
When you access a player shop or trade hub you will have access and can select all inventories of your freight boxes in the vicinity of the shop to trade the wares or buy them. For example your ship needs to be in the harbor and every trade will take a while to commence (unloading).

Trade Hub/Port
The trade hub/port is a central coastal building that will show all offers of player shops in the vicinity and will also allow players to put their wares up for sale without upkeep but paying a tax when it is sold.  The sales tax can be set by the owner and is limited to 30%. Every day the offer is not sold the tax will increase by 5% when it reaches 100% the offer is taken down and the wares belong to the owner of the trade hub.
The trade hub has a reasonable upkeep for the owner. While the player shops/shacks will have far less upkeep, preferable they should decay and need to be repaired with resources not gold.




Skilltree

As a long time goal a rework of the xp system would be preferable.

There will be different XP for the different skill trees.
For example building a ship gives you seamanship xp and sailing a ship gives captaineering xp or hitting with a meele weapon gives meele weaponry xp…
-> If you build ships you become a better ship builder, if you fight a lot you become a better fighter and so on.
This comes along with a rework of xp amounts so you make some worthy progress with each action, where building a ship for 8 hours gives you as much progress with seamanship as killing creatures for 8 hours gives weapon xp.
Also the skill-trees are expanded to give more passive bonuses and active skills with every tree for a more in depth specialization above the basics.

Edited by Linea

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