Idea Time #1: Buried Treasure!

@mr-dragon-raaar Thanks for the input! Yeah, I put a lot of time and effort into this idea. Me and my sailing buddies were discussing it for like, 4 hours.

Imagine if the name of whoever buried it came up. Like 'The Long Lost Treasure of Captain KlutchxKing518'. Eventually you'd get notorious treasure burry-ers, people who you'd know would be leaving good treasure behind.

@mferr11 Exactly! That'd be the coolest thing. I always leave stocked storage crates behind when I get off, imagine burying them at an outpost for someone to find later?

@mferr11 it would display your level in the company via the 5th level names.

Revered, Lowly, Measly, Notorious, Legendary, etc.

A stash long lost by the "Legendary KlutchxKing518" would be the max level one.

@blazedrake100 could limit the amount of treasure you can bury to 10, idk.

@klutchxking518 This is an awesome idea!

One of the biggest benefits I can see with this is the ability for a player to bury a cannonball crate, wood crate, or fruit crate (empty, full or somewhere in between) and create an actual message in a bottle crate mission for the player who digs it up!!!

@blazedrake100 We could also make it so there are no "X"s on the map when published, instead, a small dot appears in the corner of the map, and that dot will glow brighter depending on how close you are to a chest on the map. No dirty images now!

@bactatankbill yeah! Id love to bury some tomes i dont need. Imagine digging up a box of wondrous secrets, or a stash of skulls!

People rarely do bottle voyages, many do not even picking them up. The devs would need to store the maps, associated treasure instead of generating them when opened and disposed when the session ends.

The fact that your progress in the faction is based on a random person, finding a random bottle that has your voyage and actually completing it... sounds horrible to me. People might do it when it comes out as a novelty, but I assume it will die out soon and isn't worth the effort.

@cotu42
The reason nobody picks up the messages in a bottle is because they are generally garbage... they always give you low value loot.

But a red bottle gives you a player's buried stash, and the level and credibility of the person who buried it would be displayed when the bottle is picked up. You could tell between someone who buried some foul bounties and someone who bueied some villainouses.

if you saw that the stash was from a well known pirate, who usually buries high value items.... would you really pass it up?

@klutchxking518 said in Idea Time: Buried Treasure!:

So, when I think of pirates, I think of guns, swords, ships, seas, and buried treasure! This game nails all but one of those things. You see, it only does half the job for buried treasure. We can dig it up, but we can't do the burying part.

So, here's what I'm thinking, and a scenario on how it works:

New "Trading Company"
Ability to "Bury Treasure"
New "Red Message in a Bottle"

This idea was heavily based off of Super Mario Odyssey's "Luigi's Balloon World" minigame.

You sail up to an island with 6 pieces of treasure. You bring each one to a separate location on the island and dig an empty hole, set it on top of it, and then use your shovel to bury it.

When you bury it, you are given a map of the island and shows you where you have buried your loot. You can continue burying things, dig them back up, OR press a button that says "Publish Map".

If you Publish the Map, the Map is taken from your wheel, put in a bottle, and tossed to sea. You can no longer retrieve the items you have buried.

Red Messages in a Bottle will spawn throughout the Sea of Thieves. These are Published Map Bottles. Upon opening one, a randomly selected Published Map will be put in your wheel. Maps published in one server will not be found in bottles on that same server.

Published maps will expire if nobody does them after 7 days, and depending on the total value of the map, it will expire slower, but if someone DOES do them, you will receive Reputation and Gold for the new Trading Company, based on the value of the loot that you buried for them.

There could be commendations for burying different things. Maybe even a Legendary Commendation for burying 5 Athena chests and having them dug up.

Some example commendations

Bury X amount of X
Bury X amoumt of X and have it dug up
Dig up X amount of X
Complete X amount of red bottles

Wouldn't it be exciting to do a Red Bottle mission, go in not knowing what you were going to get, and dig up some philanthropist's Athena chest or Stronghold Key?

What do you guys think? I think it's a nice idea, and I'm down for improvisations. Let me know!

I love this I want it so bad and I've made a simarlar idea to this

@klutchxking518 said in Idea Time: Buried Treasure!:

@blazedrake100 We could also make it so there are no "X"s on the map when published, instead, a small dot appears in the corner of the map, and that dot will glow brighter depending on how close you are to a chest on the map. No dirty images now!

lol

Idea for this:

To make a map you have to go get a "Blank Map" from the faction at the outpost. Started similar like a tall tale. Once your near enough to the island you want to bury the treasure you can use your blank map on your ships map to get a "Trace" of the island. As your crew buries treasure the Xs start to appear on it. I would place a min/max cap per island. so min 3 max 7 ish cuz everyone hates 1 x maps. Once you and your crew have buried the treasure you wanted to you can "Bottle" the map and now it becomes a carried item that you have to return to an outpost. That way there's risk of losing it to PVP or PVE. For PVP players that manage to find it they can uncork the map and go dig it up right away or they can turn it in in your place to get the rep.

@klutchxking518 said in Idea Time: Buried Treasure!:

@cotu42
The reason nobody picks up the messages in a bottle is because they are generally garbage... they always give you low value loot.

This is actually inaccurate, as the voyages from a bottle are just the full range of which random one is picked. You can get high level chests or low ones based on the roll.

They are generally garbage for higher reps as we can guarentee a high roll. Bottles can actually boost low level pirates by offering them voyages that are actually far higher level then their own with better loot. So, garbage is a subjective term to use based on where you are on the scale.

But a red bottle gives you a player's buried stash, and the level and credibility of the person who buried it would be displayed when the bottle is picked up. You could tell between someone who buried some foul bounties and someone who bueied some villainouses.

if you saw that the stash was from a well known pirate, who usually buries high value items.... would you really pass it up?

The level of the person? Like you don't think the majority will be low value or super high? I bet most of them will not be much better than a regular voyage. How would you establish credibility? Based on how much they put down, will I just have an indicator: Major Haul! because of that value? Sounds less like a treasure hunt than a free gift in those cases. If it is based on previous treasure buried, everyone that joins after a while just be excluded because who is going to do a level 1 credit voyage or people bump it by burying some small items they have left over each time? Either way...not ideal.

PvE generated by people giving up their spoils in the hope someone else picks that one voyage up, we have millions of players to create them so yours is truely going to get them to find and actually complete it, sell the treasuret and provide you with the reputation you seek. This is not going to be a substainable model in my view.

Might be funny, but for most the pay out isn't going to come. They stop trying and don't bother doing them after a couple of them pay out badly or only do those with score X and up as they have predictable mega hauls.

Also an easy answer to your question, a random player I never heard of selected booty... yeah I would pass it up, I do not really care for loot anyway and finding a Castaway Chest is amazing, it always is the most prized treasure I have. If the voyage just states: ATHENA's HERE! what is the excitement of that? Then I just pick them based on their 'credit' value number, not very exciting either as it isn't like they can lay ambush.

Sorry man, I just don't like the idea. I think it would fall flat, not really get the momentum and just sit in the world like normal bottles and just act like frustration machines for people that would put effort into it. While needing storage on Rares end.

@klutchxking518 said in Idea Time: Buried Treasure!:

@bactatankbill yeah! Id love to bury some tomes i dont need. Imagine digging up a box of wondrous secrets, or a stash of skulls!

My ultimate goal would be to bury a supply crate with a fish species, let's say Splashtails, just as an example. I'd cook everything in the crate, and it would have 50 ruby, 50 sunny, 50 indigo, 50 seafoam, and 10 umber. Fully complete their commendation catagory for whichever fish type I choose.

@mr-dragon-raaar said in Idea Time: Buried Treasure!:

@bactatankbill
I may even get my wood crates complete then!!

wait a sec, my wood crates are way behind my cannonball and fruit crates too... are wood crate missions the ultra rare option from messages-in-bottles?

@cotu42 simple fix to a lot of the issues: Commendations!

You have to complete X amount of X tier voyages. The bottle would show your level by the 5th level tiers.

There could also be a minimum value requirement. For example, the map has to be worth at least 1000ish gold. Maybe it would change the title of the map depending on how valuable it is.

Example:

1000-3000: Castaway's Stash
3000-5000: Seafarer's Stash
5000-7000: Marauder's Stash
7000-9000: Captain's Stash
10,000+: Legendary Stash

Add commendations around completing and creating each type X times. Make each progressive tier require less. Only 5 legendaries, but 50 castaway stashes. Somethig like that.

They dont need to SELL the loot. Only dig it up. I thought ahead of time with that one.

Theres always room for improvements...

Also, The Feedback and Suggestions section never had rules on what is and isnt possible by rare. Im here to suggest idea. It's rare's part to figure out memory and storage. Lets not bring that up.

Also, maps would only be saved for so long. Theyd be disposed of after say, a week. Plus, they could have a voyage from the new company that gives you a red bottle, that would help clear storage.

@bactatankbill imagine the kinds of things that streamers would use this for... people would race tobury the most stuff.

You know those huge loot hauls that people display on islands? Imagine if instead of turning it in, they stashed it all for some newbie to find!

@klutchxking518

Commendations do not help, adding numbers for the sake of numbers doesn't solve the issues in games. People will just bury a couple of their haul, add to the pool of 1000, 2000, 3000 or where ever you place the minimum requirement to bury things and have the numbers go up. Once the numbers stop going up, why should one continue to participate?

If the number only goes up when someone completes the voyage it will tend to time out as thousands will make them while less people will do them. What happens for those that pick them up and ignore. How can you guarentee a decent completion rate? The progress from the party making the investment is banking on it. I do not think it would be making the investment feel worth it, as the chances of success are not going to be high.

If the title tells you how good it is, people will just do the best ones, captains, legendary red bottles everything else will be considered garbage, meaning minimum requirement for it to be completed: x. While wasting tons and tons of storage capacity to store the rest, which everyone needs to bury more of for their commendations and therefore more likely to be found, till they expire or are ignored once picked up to check if it is any good, while those that made them get nothing in return while sacrificing the treasure.

Now let's say this takes off, these voyages are great, everyone is burying the chests, digging it up and put it back in the ground to have some else sell it instead as they want the rep. Many people do not care for gold after all. You prevent that? What if it was stolen, could they bury it? They don't know where it came from.

Now let's say these things take off, wouldn't it just make gold hoarder voyages obsolete? The red bottles would just be the better version of x mark the spot maps now anyway? All that while costing tons of storage required just by the mere volume of the maps we generate. Even if the data is small, multiply it by millions and it will still be a fairly chunky feature.

Just because they need to figure out the technical application it doesn't mean that it should have no consideration. The idea suggestion is not one that I think will work, there is nothing wrong with the suggestion of something it doesn't mean that it is viable or needs to be in the game.

@cotu42 the gold hoarders and X maps already are kinda obsolete. Any voyage is. Also, an easy way to prevent them from going to waste is to just not put them in bottles, but to put them in voyages. You seem to be nitpicking every little flaw as if it cannot be fixed whatsoever. I simply made a suggestion and you seem to be completely shutting it out...

If you actually READ my previous post, youd see that i answered two questions that you have repeated. People will do anything for commendations. If nobody wants to do the bad voyages, put something good in to entice people. "At least it counts for the commendations"

Again, theres a solution to everything. If too many voyages are cranked out and not enough are completed, there are ways to sort it out.

Possibly increase the minimum burial count to thin out the 1-2 item maps.

Possibly add a timer between publishing maps.

Possibly make it so you can only publish one at a time.

Simple solutions.

Once again, ignoring the technical point of view. Im not here to program the game for them, only to give ideas.

@klutchxking518

Yes I am commenting on the idea. Giving my feedback based on flaws that I see. This is my opinion, this is something I can express. Nobody stated that if you suggest something that everyone needs to believe it is a good addition to the game. I am not shutting you down without any explanation of why I do not see the added value of such mechanics being introduced. This in turn allows you to either try and address these points I bring up or disagree with me, resulting in a discussion as we are supposed to have on the forums.

Commendations are a motivator, but only a section of players will do anything for them. That is based on the variety of why people play and their own motivations to play - it is a very interesting aspect of game design. Yet commendations would and should be associated with content when added to accommodate these type of players, the gameplay itself should stand on it's own as well to motivate more than just that demographic, just doing it for the numbers should not be the only appeal.

Gold Hoarder voyages are already dead? I don't believe that is the case. It is one of the most common types of voyages I come across in open crews, but I dont have the data. Either way, having the red bottles just flat out be the better choice over the hoarders voyages, standard bottles and treasure map seems bad to me.

The outcome, which seems more likely to me is that they will be like the standard bottles in how they get treated; That they get picked up, if it is convenient or if very lucrative, even then is no guarantee, they might be completed and else ignored. Causing a negative feedback loop for players that put the effort and their treasure into making the map. The game has more things to do, stumbling over these will not convince many to abandon their current objective to do these. Relying on people completing these voyages is fairly unreliable, none of your solutions resolved to my concerns regarding this core one. Ton of voyages will be made, many of which will never be completed. That is how I see it and it will just be the same as the normal bottles, just with a negative player feedback loop of no return for investment.

Not to mention the technical implications of data storage. You might not care about technical application of an idea, yet this is a very important aspect to consider. The storage of data that has to last beyond a session, even if minimal will take up system capacity, cost money and have impact for future development. The benefit of using these things must be clear and large enough to justify it, if you want to have them invest in it. Consider the fact that I can ask for anything, but if it isn't worth the resources for Rare it stands no chance to become a reality. Ignore them if you want, but it is not something that Rare will.

@cotu42 Don't put words in my mouth, please. I never said that you can't disagree with me, I just said I was frustrated that you seem to be looking for every single little flaw as if they cannot be fixed. You seemed to be looking for ways to completely shut out an idea. If you don't like it, so be it. You're not me, and I respect that. But if you don't like it because of a flaw, I will try to fix said flaw, to which you just keep bringing up issues, leading me to believe that you just dont care for the idea one bit and want to shut it out.

Numbers dont quite matter on voyages, the fact is that you say that the Red Bottle would be just a better version of GH, leaving no reason to do the original.

Firstly, that's another issue. The voyages have been very lacking since all these easy ways to bypass doing them have been added.

Secondly, Forts are much quicker and easier than voyages, but you arent complaining about those?

Thirdly, whats the difference between gifting treasure and the Red Bottles that makes the bottles so bad?

Also, any time I put in a motivating factor, you seem to throw it away saying that not everyone cares about it, as if that isnt an issue with anything.

Gold? "Not everyone cares for gold"
This is an issue i like to call "Broken Pirate-itis", and everything that rewards gold suffers from this issue. Its the players own fault if the dont care for gold, not the missions.

Commendations? "Not everyone cares about commendations". Once again, everything suffers this issue, its the player's own fault if they don't want it, not the mechanics.

Once again, Im not programming the game for Rare. Im here to suggest ideas.

I like your idea but I think it would be hard to execute the player to player quests. I do though agree on the quests that you find and do bury your treasure for lets say the Merchant Alliance. Like leaving a dead-drop for someone else.

@klutchxking518 said in Idea Time: Buried Treasure!:

@cotu42 Don't put words in my mouth, please. I never said that you can't disagree with me, I just said I was frustrated that you seem to be looking for every single little flaw as if they cannot be fixed. You seemed to be looking for ways to completely shut out an idea. If you don't like it, so be it. You're not me, and I respect that. But if you don't like it because of a flaw, I will try to fix said flaw, to which you just keep bringing up issues, leading me to believe that you just dont care for the idea one bit and want to shut it out.

You are stamping your feet a lot at the fact that I disagree, I am just explaining why I disagree. I could also state, no horrible idea. Just don't see how that would add to the conversation.

Numbers dont quite matter on voyages, the fact is that you say that the Red Bottle would be just a better version of GH, leaving no reason to do the original.

Yes I think it shouldn't be this similar in nature and just be 100% of the times better.

Firstly, that's another issue. The voyages have been very lacking since all these easy ways to bypass doing them have been added.

You hit the nail on the head here. People will skip the voyages made by players. This is my main concern with the idea. The negative feedback loop for the people that make the voyages. The amount of voyages are going to be high, many players. Less players will actually complete the voyages. Players will find and not do the voyages, not pick them up, etc... as we are to be rewarded when someone completes the voyage, as a return for the treasure we used and it could just be that it never gets done, so no reward, no interaction and no real story to tell afterwards. Just a L without any benefit.

Secondly, Forts are much quicker and easier than voyages, but you arent complaining about those?

These are server wide cloud events, they are designed to be contested by other players. It has a clear sign for everyone to see; gathering tons of treasure! Come steal it. To provide hot spot for interaction between players and is why it rewards more.

Voyages are meant to provide more secure ways with less bombastic messaging to others about your activities. The interactions are more optional.

Thirdly, whats the difference between gifting treasure and the Red Bottles that makes the bottles so bad?

Difference; Can be used for ambushes, you meet the people, you are sure they received your gift, you notice their response, etc. A positive feedback loop. Player interaction in essence.

Also, that part of the idea is fine by me. The issue is that I believe most of the gifts in this manner will never be received.

Also, any time I put in a motivating factor, you seem to throw it away saying that not everyone cares about it, as if that isnt an issue with anything.

Gold? "Not everyone cares for gold"
This is an issue i like to call "Broken Pirate-itis", and everything that rewards gold suffers from this issue. Its the players own fault if the dont care for gold, not the missions.

The gold is fine the parts I don't like is the similarity to the voyages. The ease to know what you are getting kind of defeats the purpose of a buried treasure in my view.

Commendations? "Not everyone cares about commendations". Once again, everything suffers this issue, its the player's own fault if they don't want it, not the mechanics.

This is one motivation yet it is just a number to go up, at some point that ends. It is why it cannot be the main, only, motivation to do it. It is a good way to jump start it.

Once again, Im not programming the game for Rare. Im here to suggest ideas.

I just point out that ideas need to be able to be executed. Though you don't have to address these issues, as that is a more technical application aspect. It is a concern of mine nonetheless.

Another thing that could be added instead of an X Marks the Spot. Pirates don't like to leave their treasure unguarded.

You wouldn't be told exactly how many chests there would be, the idea would be to keep digging in the area until you've dug up enough chests to reach the estimated value. The map would not disappear until you left the island.

A captain would only spawn upon reaching a certain level in the trading company. 30+ maybe? Starting off with weak captains that would become harder each rank up.

@cotu42 you cleared a lot of things up there. It really seemed like you were there to just disrupt it for the hell of it. Now i feel ya. My bad.

@mferr11 i like this idea very much. It is kinda odd that you have to dig aimlessly though. Maybe they could add a sparkling sound when you held up the map, and the sparkling gets lounder and louder when you are closer to a dig site.