Re-attach your Emissary flag

@mightyanchor

Emissary system is great, but make it greater. If there is something I'm missing that could be used as an exploit or if there is a reason this is bad and I'm not seeing it let me know. just trying to buff out the minor frustrations of the game without changing the balance.

One exploit could be stashing your flag once it reaches Grade 5 only to attach it while selling.

However, the current system is an all or nothing, one builds their Emissary status on the committment of keeping their ship afloat. By sinking you breach that contract and by extension lose your Emissary status. Within that contract there is no do-over.

@devariss you bring up an Interesting point with the high risk high reward. It's hard to argue with that, though one thing I have noticed as a Reapers bone's emissary is how few people are willing to take the risk of having a flag up at all.

This year alone I've sunk three thousand ships and fought way more than that in Adventure mode so I feel like I have the right to report on some of my findings on peoples play styles. Well over the majority of ships will run away as far and as long as they can even if they have nothing of value on their ship. Most players have little to no combat experience and take as little risk as possible. The average ship will not carry more than 12k worth of assets on their ship at any time before selling. I would say only 1 out of 8 ships will ever equip an emissary flag and even less than that will let it get to grade 5 before they panic and lower it.

I think a system that rewards boldness is really cool. This system is great but so few people are using it and the Reapers faction greatly depends on everyone else participating.

I hate when games dumb things down and give out freebies, like when Rare does double gold and xp weekends. I think everyone should have to do things the hard way like all of us day one players did but i'm willing to make an exception for the re-attaching of flags.

There's the famous example of how first World of Warcraft would reduce the amount of xp people recieved by playing for too long to reduce addiction but everyone hated being punished. So what Blizzard did was flipped things around and Rewarded people who logged off with rest xp which was a nice xp multiplier based off the amount of time they logged off.

My goal is to find a way to encourage players to use this new system with less fear. Studies show people value things they already have 50% or more than things they could have. People hate losing things and would rather obtain less things than lose anything at all. I think we need to find a way to meet more timid players in the middle than to reward those few like myself who don't care about sinking or losing a single fight.

For most players there is no carrot big enough for them to take risks, so soften the risks slightly and maybe more will partake.

@nabberwar very good point, I had not considered the possibility of being able to hide your own flag.
There would certainly be ways to work around this, by having even dropped flags show up to tier 5 reaper ships, or recode the way the gold and xp multipliers work but thats does seem like too much work.

I'll have to think on your point for some time and see if there is still a way to have this idea work without breaking the balance and the idea and point of the emissary system.

I appreciate your comment so thank you.