What needs to change to fix this game.

[Darkangel034 0]

Ok as ive played this for a while and there a bunch of issues that need to be fixed. The game is in a pretty bad state overall as of launch. although some parts are fun the games systems dont work well together to create a good overall game. They have a bunch of small features that work ok on their own but together its a mess. I will try to be as detailed as i possibly can. I wont touch on server issues in this review. 

CLAIMS:

The current claim system right now is very broken. It promotes zerging and doesnt require much thought. There should be requirements to placing a claim. Gather materials to build one, Or gaining gold to buy one by doing treasure hunting mssions. You need to have something in place that doesnt allow large guilds to take over a bunch of islands just because they have 50 people while also being fair enough for small guilds to prosper. Conquering of other people's claims should also be a something that has a clear way of working towards doing. Like building a flag that you can plant on the center of the claim and the defenders have to destroy to defend their claim. Gaining land should be an investment and it should grow over time. Life is feudals claim system worked really well and i think something similar would work here. 

ANIMALS: currently there are to many animal spawns on islands. You can barely even craft without being chased by 5 wolves. The alpha spawns are also crazy. Finding 4-5 alphas on a beach should not be happening. 

RESOURCE SPAWN: the way resources are distriubted on islands make the game sooo difficult to progress. Some islands have literally no iron or fiber which is key to progress and there is no Incentive to trade and be friends with other players. Each island needs to have acess to some of each resource. There are some islands that have a balance of all you need while some are forced to struggle with nothing. This creates an imbalace in a world where at least on the pvp servers is every man for himself. Give islands better resource distribution so you can progress at a decent rate even if you island doesnt have as much of a resource.

FOOD AND VITAMINS:  currently its easier to just die than eat. cooked food rsstores like no hunger, and making meals through cooking have no recipes that are accesible at lower levels. Unless you dont have a bed , dying is always easier than find food and paying attention to vitamins.

NO PIRATE EXPERIENCES IN EARLY GAME: as a game that markets itself as a pirate mmo there are no epic adventures for treasure early on. In my 30 hours of play i havent found any treasure maps or anything. It just feels like a survival game with boats. Grinding for resources all day to build boats with no objectives to sail to. We need treasure map vendors or increased spawns of them. The rewards dont have to be epic all the time. I would be happy with finding 200 metal or guns ans weapons. Make expoloring more interesting.

Lack reasons to not kill on sight.  on pvp servers there isnt reason to not kill a stranger. There isnt much point to trading. And with no reputation system people will just kill you for shits and giggles. In the game, most encounters are pvp. There is no way to build the kind of trading communities this way. Its just an all out war all the time.

GOOD INSENTIVES FOR SEA PVP

Without there being trade packs or treasures there isnt a real reward to fight someone at sea except for just wanting to fight. Sea of theives did a good job creating incentive for players to fight at sea. If a ship is around then it will prob have Bunch of treasure. Here there arent many valuables on a ship except for some resources they may have gathered.  Adding trade packs whose rewards scale with the distance traveled would be amazing and very valuable.

Overall these are some of the main issues with the gameplay. I feel like if these ard fixed the game would be fun.

[Emperor Spriggan 0]

I agree with the claims needing both more effort as well as resources (gold) also the PVP needs both incentive AND a penalty.

I think the addition of a royal 'crown' would solve both paying gold to the crown to expand claim as well as introducing a privateer vs pirate aspect to PVP where you start unflagged 'green' named then you can flag for PVP 'red' named,  or be ruthless PKr killing or stealing from greens 'black' named. You would only be flagged black if you are green and kill/steal from another green or red. The green and red players could fight/kill the black pirates without penalty same as flagged reds dueling and flagged black pirates would end up getting a bounty that accumulates persisting death and they can only become green again after paying that bounty to the crown. Also just as stealing from green/red would turn you black, a green/red should be able to loot black storages as its 'pirate treasure' without turning black themselves. This would incentivize players to sail out and hunt pirates storing gold, etc. on their ship/hidden elsewhere.

As for being in a company if one player flags black there should be a few days (3-7?) to remove that player from the company or everyone gets flagged black with a bounty appropriate to running with a pirate which will add another punishment to 'ganking' while also adding to the thrill of grouping up and sailing with pirates. If removed that player should only be allowed to join flagged black pirate companies until they pay for their crimes and if they join privateer company that company will have to remove them within the time limit or become pirates the same way.

My idea for claims was to only allow ONE claim but over time and by spending gold the circle under that companies/alliances control up to a max of owning both land and sea in a single server map tile. As one circle expands and hits another it would block it from taking that circle but if further expanded it would envelope that circle forcing them to ally, surrender and abandon claim, sell the claim, or fight.

[Darkangel034 0]

i do like that idea, there needs to be some sort of reputation system to keep people from just murdering for the sake of murder

[Grimmreaperme 7]

I definitely agree with the vitamins/food. This was a horrible idea or just bad implementation because they drain way too fast, even with the bonuses to make them drain slower. Trying to keep these up constantly and constantly over eating is just a pain in the butt, so I generally just let myself die because it is so much easier.

I haven't done the PVP aspect yet, but I also agree that animals need to be adjusted because it gets to be way too much. There is also not much in the way of a pirate experience as of yet as my friends and I have just been trying to find some place to put a flag down, but everywhere is full, trying to find and gather resources all while fighting against constant animals spawning and trying to find islands that have stuff, and just dying cause it is too hard to keep up those vitamins.

[warhealer 25]

This game is early access for the coming two years.

The game is not broken, its early access.

 

Didn't you read the steam page before you bought the game?

This game will get balanced probably when the major bugs are gone, and will get every month a major update with new content.

[Darkangel034 0]

@warhealer yes, it is in early access, but that doesnt mean things cant be broken. I expected them to be. I made this post to point them out so the devs can fix them for the betterment of the game, not to bash it. This is the suggestions forums and im pretty sure thats what its for. I want the game to do well.

Thanks for your input.

[Shalmon 0]

Yes, there is a difference between "things being broken" and "things that should not even been a thing in the first place".

No fiber/metal at all on some islands might be an unintended world gen bug, so I will add that to the broken section.

The biggest design flaws at the moment are:

- the grind on the freeports: holy moly, I hope whoever thought racing others and your hunger bar for the hides for a raft to place your chest on got coal in their socks for christmas. Currently the freeports are full of players who set up entire raft camps on the starter islands, because....

- the lack of claimable land outside the freeports/lawless regions. I get it, it's a pirate game competition, robbery, etc. But there just isn't enough space for new players to set up shop and upgrade from to a sloop. Add a bit more land outside the starter regions and limit the claim to one per company.

- speaking of stealing: I saw a guy running around on the freeport area today hopping around the boats of players and stealing from the storages. I don't know if he was using a macro or a hack or whatever, but the possibility of him guessing a couple boats locker boxes (and yes they all had a pin) is really low. I don't get why storages are accessible to others in the first place and if you think a 4 level digit code is good enough without even trying to stop brute forcing, you are making griefing a bit too easy. Again this was on a freeport, so all I and the other people he stole from could do was watching him walking away with our stuff (very slowly).

 

I really want this game to be immersive and spend hours with other people, fighting with them, for them and against them. So please learn from mistakes online games have made in the last couple decades. If 3 hours of grind can walk away because some guy guessed your locker code right, that can really hit your fun as a new player.

[Shalmon 0]

I just found another one: vultures and wolves breaking chests to get to your sleeping body. So you don't even need other players to lose all your stuff, just log off for 45minutes at an unfortunate spot because you want to spend time with your family. You ever thought about simply removing logged off players from the game and let them spawn with their inventory when they log in again?