Hello everyone,
This game needs to decide what it want to be and how the future should look. We can all agree that freeport is broken right now and loosing your stuff constantly to griefers is pretty bad. You could ask your self why fire arrows are even allowed on freeport.
I want to go a little deeper in to the system that is set up right now:
You have freeport which is supposed to be safe for everyone but your ship decays insanely fast even if anchored and boosting the resistance of your ship stats.
Then you have Lawless that allows you to play in a world where company's can not own the island and there is no offline protection.
Last you have an player owned area that is essential another Lawless area where you have to serve a large company to have your stuff protected in island peacetime or get destroyed by large zergs.
The question i have is, where can you be a pirate and keep your stuff safe? I have tried this now four times in four different pvp seasons and i am sad to say that you have no hope of living the pirate life in this game! It pains me to say this, it really dose! Because this game could be soooo good and that is why i keep coming back There is a bunch of factors that works against you here! You do not have a safe haven, you will get offline raided, the big companies have blueprinted ships that are insanely overpowered and the loot system is not really giving you much if you manage to sink a player ship. Then you also have the player island where more often then not Lag form building blocks is part of the defense.
This is my suggestion to solve some of this: I will take inspiration form EVE-Online and Last Oasis. I know that this might be a sore spot for some people because those games also have there own issues but i do believe that taking the best elements form those game might be able to solve a lot of the issues in this game.
I would suggest making it so:
In Freeport you can still pvp but you have a high security status in the grid that will make the a Freeport navy try to stop conflict. If you break the code of conduct in the Freeport grid then you will be punished with a bad security standing and the navy will start hunting you. This system would have to be worked out in detail!
Lawless should be changed so it has a lower security status where you can fight on open seas with out the Freeport navy meddling but if your security standing is bad enough then the Navy will still hunt you. However some island should have NPC Governors that have a unique standings that can be improved by doing stuff for them. Those island have safe harbors that allowed you to keep you ship and loot safe for a gold price. This is where it would make sense to have a out of game lobby where you ship can go when you safe log for the night but again it needs to have a gold price per day.
Last the player owned islands should be changed so when you take a island you get a fort on ground level where flag is in a predetermined location. This fort is build by using gold to upgrade and can be upgraded in steps fort, fortress and castle. The upkeep keep rising the more you upgrade your buildings. You can do the same ting for the harbor but it might be better to create harbor buildings for free build. They would need to be big building blocks, so they create less lag. Change the island limit to be determined by upkeep instead of island points.
There is a bunch of other issues that need to be addressed!
Take beds for instance, they make your ship act like a clown car of unlimited respawns. You have to limit the amount of spawns you have available on your beds by creating bed charges. I am not sure if this should be a gold cost, water cost or a food cost but least use gold for this example. You put 10 gold in your bed and then you can spawn 5 times, when the gold is gone the bed stops working as a respawn point and the bed need to be refilled. Distance aka spawning on a different island in a different grid should be more expensive to do.
Then we have zoning while getting attacked in ship combat. If your ship take damage on it's structures you should not be able to travel to a different server! There should be a cool down on you ship that prevents you form jumping to another grid for some time. I would say that the cool down should be between 5 to 10 min. If you take a chance and it does not work out then you should be punished for it.
What do people think about this? I am sure there would be a lot of problem that would have to be worked out. Yes, i understand that these things are changing the game but hopefully people understand that i want to change this game for the better
I did leave out a lot that could be expanded on later like bounty system that is integrated with the security system and raiding governors trading ships in lawless and so on..
Devs, if you have any questions, just send me a message and i will be glad to explain in more depth
Best regard
Jack Shepard