Bury Treasure mechanic (Updated: Stash maps)

@galactic-geek ouch that was mean...

@galactic-geek Still you could have said that nicely rather than in a sarcastic joke that just tells me to "go away..."

@galactic-geek

I can respect those arguments. Though my vision is more about using the cache as a lure so you can get the cache maps of other pirates.

It's like a gambling system. I wager these chests you can't steal them from my crew on this island. If they do, then you can go to their cache island to steal your loot and their wager back...

So loot gets pooled but then distributed among the crew's that manage to steal bits n pieces before sailing to sell it.

Makes PvP more objective based rather than I'm going to kill you all.

Only thing I have difficulty thinking of is how would a crew give maps to other crews to come for their caches. Maybe the tavern can hear rumours of pirate caches.

@galactic-geek Thanks.

It's a cool concept of players creating content for other players. Plus a pirate game where we don't bury our riches seems lacking a core part of the adventure pirate fantasy.

I think it's possible to extend existing systems to make burying loot an interesting system for players of different play styles to engage with.

Like crew A go sailing collect loot then cache it at an island and log off. They had a nice adventure and end their play session on a high. It also means play sessions need not go for 2-4 hours due to sailing, looting, selling, emergent distractions happening. It allows casuals to play for 30 to 1hr and have a experience where they accomplished something.

The server is updated with a cache map. This map can appear as a voyage purchasable from an NPC. The longer the map is in the server and the more loot it contains, then the higher chance it will appear in other crew's map vendors.

Crew B log in, go to a cache map vendor and purchase a cache map from NPC. But the cache map will only show only a set number of bury points to dig up.

Crew C log in and get the same cache map but with other bury points displayed: some same some different.

So this points two crews to an island with similar treasure. So they can ally, fight, have a truce, watch what the others find before changing tactics. Play like a pirate.

So Crew B and C steal some cache loot. Crew A logs back in and sees what bury points have been stolen. They can then decide to dig up their cache and sail to sell it or they can add more loot.

Players can only have one cache per region and cache limit is determined by
Island size and distance from outposts.

The cool thing about this system is that there will always be caches since everyone can cache and the more loot in a cache the more crew's could be heading their to claim it. So smaller caches narurally pool to big ones that those bigger caches get distributed to other pirates. Equilibrium!

So can fudge the system by pooling the cache maps of players caching on the same island together. It'd keep data overhead low on the server side, and you can get lucky when you reclaim your cache and find the loot upgraded in value because your stealing part of someone else's cache simultaneously; so loot need not be perfectly tracked.

Could also create faction caches for emissaries, help get loot you need and reduces sell time since only need to visit the one vendor.

Can't see any exploits...

Oh and for caches made with big crews if they log in separately their own cache is a quarter of the big cache (they see only some bury points). When crew's team up, their personal caches are merged. So if people play with many different people then there's no problem.

@D3ADST1CK

That's a good point about kegs n crates. Would have to limit those, and swap them out for treasures of similar gold value.

The server stuff being global and merging, it's basically tweaking the random island dig point quest system. The cache just takes island coordinates and loot value, so store that on a player data then generate a treasure map from that code. So it's an illusion of memory.

Other thing is could make a new faction about burying treasure, allowing a lore explanation for why a seafarers chest is now a maurader chest. Cause the crab cachers swapped it.

The why is to allow for casual play, and accumulate the random quest treasures into bigger pools. Also gets pirates fighting on islands and not just on the sea when they go looking for the same cache.

You wouldn't cache an Athena or fort raid since like you said to big, might as well sail and sell.

It is a complex idea and I'm not saying Rare should do everything I suggests rather it's an interesting idea. Tries to address some issues with the game to make it accessible to other player types.

@BubaH1Z1 What I'm proposing is bit more meta than just hiding loot and outlined in my replies. I figure I should update the main post now having thought more on the concept.

Still I stand by my point that for a game about pirates it's strange we can't bury treasure.

@BubaH1Z1

Sort of.

Stealing other player loot is basically getting other players to collect it for you from the game world...

So while you technically always profit by stealing others loot (if you're sucessful) the profit may not always be worth while if you go by an efficiency metric of time and resources traded for loot and gold per minute.

Sinking a parked solo sloop on a fishing trip to steal treasure you might be lucky to get what, a skull or two... Trading ammo (maybe wood n food) for two skulls and a flag pole (don't know if flags only spawn from emissaries for reapers but reapers still sink me if they find me regardless). Doing so takes you how long, 10-15min...

That's pretty paltry profit for effort. I thought pirates were after the big score, not just blood and chaos. If anything it could be considered a great lose since you lose all the opportunities for bigger profits by pursuing such a meager bounty.

Really loot replete emissaries are supposed to be targeted by reapers since then you have an actual challenge. Defender emissary vs attacker Reaper. Players have their roles to play, may they enrich each others experiences.

Reapers killing any ship they find for fun is really just player griefing of new players. And solo sloopers who delight in foiling those griefers are just griefing the greifers. So it's mutual toxicity really...

I mean Rare could just rebrand "Sea of Grieves" so players know what to expect; but I reckon giving new, solo, and more casual players a way to participate in the game world would be beneficial for everyone. People can practice, get better, progress to open crews.