Incentives to Play with Reapers

@one-true-con said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

I propose either rewarding players who play with active Reapers on the server, as the increased risk should come with increased reward, or hiding the Grade of the Reapers flag on the server, simply showing that it's a Reaper. Personally, I prefer the former, as I truly enjoy being a high level Reaper and hunting down my fellow players, and I think allowing these players more loot and rewards in exchange for me actively hunting them is a fair trade, but I'm not opposed to the latter.

This is an intriguing idea that emphasizes the "high risk, high reward" style of play, which I really like. However, I can see one major ramification that you may not have thought of; players are punished (by losing their "risk multiplier") if someone sinks the reaper! This might mean that players avoid engaging the reaper, which goes against the spirit of that faction.

There could be ways around this (such as giving everyone in the server a payout if a reaper sinks), but I'd still caution you to think about the different ways this could be abused or how it would affect player behavior outside of your desired outcome. I still think this idea has a lot of promise!

I think the main issue is that when you take down a flag, you are rewarded. This seems backwards to me: you should be getting rewarded for keeping a flag UP, not for taking it down. By being rewarded for keepin FB a Grade V flag up, there will be more Grade Vs for the Reapers to go after, because currently, as stated, as soon as anyone reaches it then the flag gets voted down.

@one-true-con As one of the originators of the essimary system i can say a lot of what has been discussed here was expected. The emmissary came from the idea of an opt-in bounty system but was adapted into a voyage more then an event. This i belived was to cater to the casual crowd as @Xultanis-Dragon and @TehStepford pointed out. So that non PvPer would participate.

Its true most incentves in this game is gear toward avoiding combat then participating in it. That has been true since the lanch of the game. There have been many great suggestions to fix this but simply increasing the rewards for players to hunt down players simply does not work. As it is the mind set of the player is vastly different in what they value. As @Nabberwar suggested giving Pvpers things like Ccbs as a reward is much more value to them then the loot. Althou digging them up is not such a great idea i rather get them from sinking skelly ships and spawning in a create like the burning blade.

The main issue as identified by @Xultanis-Dragon and @Peteloaf777 is the way in which players are rewarded. Originally the idea was the reaper flag was to go up as you stole loot and you wouldn't start to appear on the map untill you reach grade 2 and you would only be visable to the grade 5 emmisaries and it wouldn't be permanent but on a timer that resets and increases as the grade goes up making you visable to lower lvl ships untill eventually at grade 5 all ships could see you. The grade 5 reaper ship was the event. It was to encourge Pvpers to keep loot on there ship for other to sink.

Cause you can just lower the flag and are rewarded for doing so no one keeps the flag long. However i dont agree with @Xultanis-Dragon on just having everone just pick a flag and have it all session cause that would remove the opt-in nature of the system. Rember crew comp can change mid session and there might be crewmate who do not want to be force to participate. Instead it would be better if the voyage you get from being lvl 5 only stays with you while being lvl 5 and refreshs after completion instead of having to lower the flag and raise it agian.

To conclude The risk reward balance is broken cause reapers are ask to put up a flag that is a disincentive risk while having no actual loot on board and then given a reward of seeing all the ships at the end when they should be avoid conflict while they have the loot. This is backwards the reapers should be given the reward to see ships as they lvl up the higher the lvl the higher the emmissary. While enermy ships shouldn't be given the heads up untill after player have been stolen from. And non reaper emmisary should be given and a reward for keeping a flag up not lowering it. Also they should be givin a chance to recover their lvl if they recover there flag. I see too many flags just lying around on outpost and seapost. They should be able to sell there broken flaf to their repective faction to regian their lvl.

@galactic-geek said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

What if the Reaper level was hidden on (just) the map table to other ships?

Wouldn't make much of a difference. Infact it would make things worst as non reaper emissary crews would be more likey to turn in quicker and lower or not start emmisary at all if they saw a reaper on the map cause they couldnt weigh the risk they would have to treat every reaper as thou they were a grade 5. Reapers want to have there lvl shown just not to there prey as it makes it more difficult to hunt.

If im a grade 5 reaper i want to be hunted while i'm turning in and out hunting when i have nothing not the other way around.

As it stands now reaper have the only incentive to keep the 5 flag up as you lose the abitly to track ships once the flag is lowered. But the hunt should begin a t lvl 1 not at 5 as most grade 5 i gotten thru pve not pvp as @TRlALON explianed. Hell the fast way to get gread 5 reaper ironicly is to do merchant cargo runs.

@prescafatty said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

@enf0rcer Appreciate the explanation, this is helpful!

How about:

a) ditch the map GPS for reapers and non-reapers alike
b) give grade 5 reapers a compass that always points to the nearest emissary, whose flag they didn't most recently collect.

Your on the right track with your thinking. As the original idea for reaper mission was to have go find a collect a cursed artifact like a chest or compess that points to a ship. I belive they couldn't do this cause they have no way to assign a target value on a player ship. In other words theres no way to tell an item to point toward a player ship let alone differentiate between 6 different ships wether there emmisary or not code wise.

But there are a couple of issue with what you suggest.

A) The gps on the reapers was the risk. Thats the bounty. The problem is that the bounty. Is the same wether the ship has loot or not. It was to encourge non-reaper ships to engage in pvp by allancing with other non reaper ships. Generally there are less reapers then non reapers on the server and realisticly there should only ever be 1 reaper 5 on the map as the risk increases.

If you remove the risk entirely then the faction would be OP broken. Being unfair to non reapers. The gps as a reward for grade 5 is fine as it works as an incentive to not lower the flag and keep hunting with greater control now that they can weigh the risk of hunting vs turning in. As they can now tell how many ships are in the vicinity and how many ships are actively trying to engage them. However there is no incentives for gade 5 non reapers to keep up their flag.

B) As i said above great idea but also even if they could implement this item why give it to just grade 5. The point of the reapers was to encourage pirating and shipcombat. The reaper were supposed to gain then lvls by stealing loot from both emmissary and non-emmisary ships but only focus on sinking the emmisary ships and killing emmisary pirates. By giving the gps to the emmisary ships they can focus on fighting the reapers while non emmisary ship would have to deal with tuckers and theives as there no reason to sink them and kill them risking the ship with the lvl but they dont know your there so easy to steal from. Instead of encourging Pve players to participate in Pvp its trying to encourge Pvp player to Pve first which was never an issue. This is broken since the easiest way to get grade 5 is merchant cargo runs were you have to turn in the loot to gain the reap. So you get to grade 5 with no loot. So. Theres no reward for the pve other then the grade 5 flag.

But agian the Flags are suppost to be the reapers reward that gives the most reap and gold for that faction. There no reward for the acutal faction that sunk the reaper. That was supposed to be the loot on that ship.

@ecaiiaw said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

Just curious, but why not consider Reapers being shown On the map levels 1-4, but at level 5 take them off the map? It still takes skill and time to go after a couple emissaries (if there is any) when you hit level 5. It took time to get to 5 and it will take more time to hunt them down as a reapers 5 ship. I would think you want a way to keep more PvP for reapers then say do “cargo runs” just to get the faction experience.

Glad you ask, the answer is quite simple. Giving the ability to cloak or "Go dark" at grade 5 is just adding an additional reward to the reapers for pveing and not pvping. Or rather say it removing a negtive. Consider this from the point of view of the reaper i want to hunt ships the best way to do that is with a grade 5 flag that way i can see all the ships on the map and they can't see me. I don't want them to know im here so i should avoid ships till i'm grade 5. Whats the fastest and safest way to get to grade 5? Cargo runs.

The point of the reaper faction is to encourage thieft frist combat second. I should be able to reach grade 5 from stealing from other ship weather there emmisary or not. But how do expect to steal if you annouce your presence before you stole. That asking a theif to announce he is a theif before he even attempted to steal somthing. Thats what the Reaper faction ask of you. Makes no sense. You should be hunting for ships to gain grade lvl not gain grade lvl so that you can hunt. Its completly backwards

The emmisarry faction were to act as a check for the reapers by adding incentives to alliance thru tribalism. Ex: a OOS ship is being attack by a reaper. A fellow OOS ship near by spots the reaper ship on the map he think ill help my fellow oos take out this reaper cause once they(the reapers) sink them they'll be coming after me. Idea of mutual aid.

Giving the ability for only emmisary ships to see a non grade 5 reaper in itself is and incentive to run emmisary as it encourge safty in numbers. Kind of like gangs you rep my color so we look out for each other.

Edit: also, maybe have a sound horn that goes off to the whole zone letting you know there’s a Reapers 5 in the seas somewhere...

This is where you hit the nail on the head. As like i said before this was concived of as a player iniated public event similar to the FTOD. As it would be difficult to reach a grade 5 reaper thru pvp(thieving) there would be a server wide annoucment much like the skull and ship cloud in the sky that would noticfy all ships including non emmisaries that there was a grade 5 reaper with lot of loot and you etheir team up or all out royal battle it for the spoils.

One of the inspirations for this was The Division dark zone bounty system. Like a true Master Theif that would want the the world to know that he was the one that stole all yer booty and got away with it.

In other words the original Reaper Gps flag was to signal to everyone i'm here come fight me. The new reaper emmissary flag was to signal to everyone I have Loot onboard come try and take it from me. Both failed at this or rather mostly fails at this.

The fact this wasn't meant to just incentive Reaper to just hunt emmisary ship but to also incentivise emmisary ships to hunt Reaper mainly via pack hunting. At grade 5 ships should be coming to fight you not the other way around.

Hope this answers all your quries.

Frist off i'm going to assume you do not Pvp much and are more strictly a PvEer. This is just analysis based off your mind set as you dont seem to understand the fundmental nature of Pvp values and think in terms of what Pve players value. I recommend playing with a seasoned PvPer and try playing that way just so you can understand how they think as their goals and values are much different from yours.

@ecaiiaw said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

My friend and I were just talking about this situation last night. What if, you made it a little easier to join alliances. What if, there is a way when you go to the table, and notice “okay, I see a gold hoarders on the table, let me see if he wants to join an alliance”. What the game could do maybe, is throw up a yellow flare signaling to the other alliance like.. “hey look, another guy wants to join our alliance. Should we accept?” ... you have those ‘swirls’ that signal for a Reapers chest is over there, make it so you see a blue flare for merchant, a purple flare for OoS, yellow for Gold etc. The guy who wants to accept has a message pop up say “join alliance?” Boom, you have an alliance formed. If you want ‘alliance wars’ to be an added perk in the server, make it so it’s clear and easy to do so. Then a 3rd might join and see there’s two gold hoarders, now he wants in. Adding special effects like flare would make it cool to see.

The "incentive" I mentioned was purely physicalogical not mechanical. Cause you can give someone a tool doesen't mean they'll use it the way it was intended if they use it at all. Thats not how people work. It already extremely easy to form allances and is heavly rewarded by giving you 150 percent value to loot turn in the ship turning in gets 100 percent while the allance ships get 50%. So logically everyone should be in an alliance all the time but they don't. Why is that? Its because they have different values and no trust.

How do you build trust? Start by showing what you have in common. A common enermy. "The enermy of my enermy" as the saying goes.

Second the alliance mechnic cuts both ways the reapers can use it to gain trust and get closer to their prey, if you make alliances easier it would benifit reapers more then the emmisaries making non reaper ships less likly to make an alliance plus sending out a flare is you ringing the dinner bell for the reapers to come gank you.
It will have the oppsite effect of what you intended.

Now you have your alliance in the game, gold hoarders! Now what to do about Reapers?

Nothing more prey in the same spot. Just go over there pretend to want to join the alliance betray them. have them think it was the other ship fault. They fight it out i clean up and run away with all the loot.

Reapers needs something cool to be a reapers. It doesn’t necessarily need to be about more gold or gain experience faster. If it is then that’s fine, but adding things like “horn sound” at level 5 gives a chilling effect to be a reapers. It’s saying “oh yea, let’s do this!” When the Gold hoarders joined alliance, it could give them a quick chance to see these flares happen so they some sort of idea what’s going on. They know now they have an alliance to go after and sink them! But fighting 3 ships is probably a very hard thing to do. Maybe even impossible. So the question still remains, what the incentive to be a Reapers? Why should I go up against 2 or 3 ships against 1? Odds are I’m going to lose. But if I know what the stakes are, then do I get more gold for sinking ships? Does the faction allow me gain bonus loot for turning in whatever I sink? There has be a balance here for bonus loot or some crazy awesome cosmetic they would earn for sinking 3 ships. Give them a reason to be a Reapers, along with hearing sound horns or special effects to that nature.

This is where your close but not quite there. Originally i wanted the faction ships to gain some cool vfx /sfx when they lvl in grade. For Ex. A Lvl 5 OOS Would have a purplish fog on the deck pouring off on the sides with a minor wail player would hear as they appoarched the ship. This didn't happen for a couple of reasons.

But agian this would only work as a reward for a grade 5 reaper once he fully stocked. But what reapers want as a reward is tools to fight like CCb ect and tools to find ships while not being noticed. A hunter stalks his prey in the shawdows then shows off after he catches his prey.

In other words the Reward is the fight. That what a Pvper wants. He wants to fight and take on all oncomers so that he can win and sink them. Then you collect the flags of your victims thats the objective. Its like CTF. Not to flex but i've taking 3 ships as a solo sloop. two brigs and a gally and sunk all of them. Now i've gotten my behind kick alot before then and the fight wasn't easy but the reward was winning that fight. I can't win a fight if nobody wants to fight.
This is what i mean between the difference in values.
When this game lanch nobody wanted to fight the kraken more then once cause there was no reward the same for the meg. As you can easily sail out of the black water or near a rock. It made sense to reward Pve elements with loot as the keren and megan acted more like obstacles to be avoided then events to partipate and engage in but players would always engage with other ships regaurdless if they had loot on board or not for many different reasons.

You have a cool thing with the emissaries. The table is cool to see who is who. I thought the original intent on the emissaries was to make people join alliances easier. Let’s USE what we have and put it all together!

Wrong. The intent of the boats on the table was not to make allences easier to make but to allow reapers to know if their were any ships to hunt on the server. The faction were to get you to instinctively want to join an alliance. This had additional effect of showing all player what the server is like. You just proved my earilier point on adding mechnics and tools and how players will use them. Perception is everything.

Thanks for the feedback. Glad to see you guys acknowledge these things!

You can check some of my eairlier post where i go more into detail about my thought process as well of criques and analysis of the game design and structures. Thank you for your ideas and engagement.

@ecaiiaw said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

@enf0rcer said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

Frist off i going to assume you do not Pvp much and are more strictly a PvEer. This is just anlyst based off your mind set as you dont seem to understand the fundmental nature of Pvp values and think interms of what Pve players value. I reccomed playing with a seasoned PvPer and try playing that way just so you can understand how they think as there goals and values are much different from yours.

So... I cant tell if this was a dig towards me or this was "friendly" advice, but If I were to explain to you my days during Sea Of Thieves, I would say I have seen it all. I've seen the vanilla version from release, all the way to today 'current state'. I'm here to help and offer suggestions, I don't need advice like i'm one of these 'new cats' who just started to play. My main thing I like to do in this game is camp RH with kegs and wait for ships so I VERY much welcome PvP. Now that is out of the way, let me explain a little further...

Ok i see there is a bit of confusion here let me try to clear a few things up. Frist i was not trying to dig on you sorry if i caused any offence. But some of the things you ask was already discussed and explianed previously in these fourums and would be obvious in game as it evoled.

@ecaiiaw said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

My friend and I were just talking about this situation last night. What if, you made it a little easier to join alliances. What if, there is a way when you go to the table, and notice “okay, I see a gold hoarders on the table, let me see if he wants to join an alliance”. What the game could do maybe, is throw up a yellow flare signaling to the other alliance like.. “hey look, another guy wants to join our alliance. Should we accept?” ... you have those ‘swirls’ that signal for a Reapers chest is over there, make it so you see a blue flare for merchant, a purple flare for OoS, yellow for Gold etc. The guy who wants to accept has a message pop up say “join alliance?” Boom, you have an alliance formed. If you want ‘alliance wars’ to be an added perk in the server, make it so it’s clear and easy to do so. Then a 3rd might join and see there’s two gold hoarders, now he wants in. Adding special effects like flare would make it cool to see.

The "incentive" I mentioned was purely physicalogical not mechanical. Cause you can give someone a tool deosent mean they'll use it the way it was intended if they use it at all. Thats not how people work. It already extremely easy to form allances and is heavly rewarded by giving you 150 percent value to loot turn in the ship turning in gets 100 percent while the allance ships get 50%. So logically everyone should be in an alliance all the time but they don't. Why is that? Its because they have different values and no trust.

How do you build trust? Start by showing what you have in common. A common enermy. "The enermy of my enermy" as the saying goes.

Second the allence mechnic cuts both way the reapers can use it to gain trust and get closer to their prey if you make alliances easier it would benifit reapers more then the emmisaries making it less likly to make an aliance plus send out a flare is you ringing the dinner bell for the reapers to gank you.
It will have the oppsite effect of what you intended.

Let me start off by saying once again i'm hear to offer my advice for your game. So when I said "make it easy to form alliances", that me going off what you said where the original intent was to have Reapers as an event so to speak. The way it is now is not necessarily working. If I see a guy who shouts "LETS FORM AN ALLIANCE, LETS FORM AN ALLIANCE", I dont listen, I put a cannonball right in between the eyes. This is an issue in itself but the other problem is the server is not that big or populated to be doing these kind of games. Most people for the most part don't have the time to go track someone down when they see a ship off in the distance and 'TRY' to get his attention that you want to join alliances. I bet most people think they are coming after you to kill you and your ship so that delays it even further because he is on the run. I was trying to make 'this' process to be easier on the other alliances. So we can get right down to business and get on with the game... The effect I propose is clear and easy, and it doesn't deviate from its core. What you're suggesting (and to tell you the truth, i'm not really sure what that is), is for people to find alliances with the "alliance system" you have, and go hunt a Reapers if its there. Right? am I missing something? 2-3 OoS ships goes after a Reapers and take them down. That was the original plan, right? What exactly are you looking for with other alliances vs the Reapers faction?

What i'm trying to say is "Alliance system" as a game Mechinic does not encourage the behaviour that is trying to be obtained. Making it easier to form an Alliance mechnically in itself will have conquences.
Instead its how the systems themselves are presented that encourages behavior.
I don't want ships to track other ship down to alliance instead to tools and system presented will cause certain bavhiours intinctively. Like the example i gave before the OOS ship that came to help didn't do it cause he is in an alliance but rather he help that ship out naturaly for his own sake and could form an actual alliance mechically after trust has been earned. The alliance has to happen mentally frist before it can be done in game.
So no you should not be able to instantly start an alliance Or send out a flare to call in for help. You can call for help now with the tools you have. If that was the case enermy pirates would alliance all the time they wouldn't bother running up to a repeating "Lets form alliance". You can't trust a ship just cause the wear the clothes or fly the same flag but it will encourge some to help.
So again about peception your not supposed to be trying track down ship to alliance the sprite is the exact opposite.
You should want to choose to be in an alliance an have them form natrually not be forced to alliance for some precived benifit.

Now you have your alliance in the game, gold hoarders! Now what to do about Reapers?

Nothing more prey in the same spot. Just go over there pretend to want to join the aliance betray them. have them think it was the other ship fault. They fight it out i clean up and run away with all the loot.

Yes we know this. But im not exactly sure what you're getting at with this if you want alliances to work. Being Pirates is being a Pirate.

Alliances are meant to be fickle its by design as there is no permences. They work as intended. With the exception of a few alliance server farms. I was trying to present you the veiw from the other side as i was assuming incorrectly you were only pve.

Reapers needs something cool to be a reapers. It doesn’t necessarily need to be about more gold or gain experience faster. If it is then that’s fine, but adding things like “horn sound” at level 5 gives a chilling effect to be a reapers. It’s saying “oh yea, let’s do this!” When the Gold hoarders joined alliance, it could give them a quick chance to see these flares happen so they some sort of idea what’s going on. They know now they have an alliance to go after and sink them! But fighting 3 ships is probably a very hard thing to do. Maybe even impossible. So the question still remains, what the incentive to be a Reapers? Why should I go up against 2 or 3 ships against 1? Odds are I’m going to lose. But if I know what the stakes are, then do I get more gold for sinking ships? Does the faction allow me gain bonus loot for turning in whatever I sink? There has be a balance here for bonus loot or some crazy awesome cosmetic they would earn for sinking 3 ships. Give them a reason to be a Reapers, along with hearing sound horns or special effects to that nature.

This is where your close but not quite there. Originally i want the faction ships to gain some cool vfx /sfx when they lvl in grade. For Ex. A Lvl 5 OOS Would have a purplish fog on the deck pouring off on the sides with a minor wail player would here as they appoarched the ship. This didn't happen for a couple of reasons.

That would be awesome if that's possible.

Would be but can't unforntatly, It was a good idea doe.

But agian this would only work as a reward for a grade 5 reaper once he fully stocked. But what reaper wants as a reward is tools to fight like CCb ect and tools to find ships while not beeing noticed. A hunter stalks his prey in the shawdows then shows off after he catches his prey.

In other words the Reward is the fight. That what a Pvper wants. He wants to fight and take on all oncomers so that he can win and sink them. The you collect flags are the objective. Its like CTF. Not to flex but ive taking 3 ships as a solo sloop. to brigs and a gally and sunk all on them. Now i've gotten my behind kick alot before then and the fight wasnt easy but the reward was winning that fight. I can't win a fight if nobody wants to fight.

Yes this would be amazing but honestly when does this happen? I think its extremely debatable to say that most people would enjoy fighting 3 ships at once. I have no problem saying I would lose that kind of fight 9/10 times most likely because its 3 ships lol. Unknown what sizes the ships could be but again, what reason would the other emissaries to go hunt down a reapers with loot on board?

Having the reaper have loot on board as well as the revenge aspect was the 2 main reasons. Are there any more reason you could think of to give emmissaries to hunt a reapers ship espicially a grade 5 with the additional treat of being able to track all emmisaries on the map? If you have some ideas i would like to hear them.

This what i mean between the difference in values.
When this game lanch nobody want to fight the kraken cause there was no reward the same for the meg. As you can easily sail out of the black water or near a rock. It made sense to reward Pve elements with loot as the keren and meg act more like obsticals to be avoided then event to partipate and engage in but players would always engage with other ships regaurdless if they had loot on board or not for many different reasons.

Yes this is true. Sometimes just fighting other ships is fun but if you dont see loot in the water you probably just wasted hours of everyone time.

Well yeah you should get the loot also but in per long fights with multiple ships this rarly happens.

You have a cool thing with the emissaries. The table is cool to see who is who. I thought the original intent on the emissaries was to make people join alliances easier. Let’s USE what we have and put it all together!

Wrong. The intent of the boats on the table was not to make allences easier to make but to allow reapers to know if their were any ships to hunt on the server. This had additional effect of showing all player what the sever is like.

This is wrong too. Its not easy to join alliances unless you MAKE it easy for them. IF... that the intent you're trying to make.

To be clear the intent was not to make forming or joining alliances easier.

Not me, but you guys. Reapers sees the ships on the table but they have no idea where they are or what state they are in. They could be almost done or they just started. They wont know until they reach 5 (takes time), turn loot in (takes time), and then decide if you want to continue and hunt down any emissaries (if any). If you factor in "Travel time" to get from point A to B, you want to get to the point with alliances and Reapers getting the tools to succeed. That would be a successful server.

Agian that why i advocate in my version to start the theving and hunt for reapers at grade 1 not at 5. At grade 5 the reaper is the ones that should be hunted. My version did not make it into the game but a varition did.

Thanks for the feedback. Glad to see you guys acknowledge these things!

You can check some of my eairlier post where i go more into detail about my thought process as well of criques and analysis of the games designs. Thank you for your ideas and engagement.

Of course. I think it could also help with whatever you guys have cooking down in RH as well. Cheers!

To be clear i dont work for Rare. There no Rare employee tag on my forum title however i have consulted with the devs and have given my thoughts and ideas. I also am a playtester.

BTW the dev themselves have reponded to all of this the very quite vocal bunch althou alot of miscomunication tends to occur.

We appreate your ideas and feedback althou you have threaded alot of old ground.

Edit: Btw i like the idea of having a flare like tool in the game for the sake of it just not having expressly to give a prompt to form an alliance.

@ecaiiaw said in Incentives to Play with Reapers:

@enf0rcer

Yes this would be amazing but honestly when does this happen? I think its extremely debatable to say that most people would enjoy fighting 3 ships at once. I have no problem saying I would lose that kind of fight 9/10 times most likely because its 3 ships lol. Unknown what sizes the
Having the reaper have loot on board as well as the revenge aspect was the 2 main reasons. Are there any more reason you could think of to give emmissaries to hunt a reapers ship espicially a grade 5 with the additional treat of being able to track all emmisaries on the map? If you have some ideas i would like to hear them.

Okay, here's my last suggestion. The idea is to give Reaper's alliance ship battles and have other emissaries to watch out for reapers or join alliances if they choose to. So... here what I propose,

Get rid of the quests that reapers can do. Get rid of it. Lets focus on PvP again. The idea I have is, at Reapers tables in all the outposts, have them pick up a MAXIMUM of 3 "GPS" quests. These quests are universal that allows the Reapers (level 1) to see ALL emissaries locations for 60 seconds. Just 60 seconds. They have 3 of them. Every time they throw down a "GPS quest", a horn sounds off to the zone. Alerting other emissaries that they can see you, but only for 60 seconds. This gives emissaries out there a chance to change course or maybe meet up and join alliances so they have each other backs. If they choose to do so. Now, Reapers sees their locations. Maybe a great spot to do this would be the center of the map they go before throwing down one of these GPS quests. This gives them the quickest route wherever they want to go. That would be my suggestion.

Lets say they see 3 ships on the map now, no idea what they are. No idea what faction, level, ship size.. they just see there's a ship over there like they would at level 5 Reapers. Say they sink their ship, the experience they gain all depends on their level faction. ill let them balance those numbers out but I think that would make the most sense. Collect flag, collect loot, and continue on. Go back to the middle, throw down another GPS quest. HORN SOUND! (similar to the one in Hunger Games when someone dies). This process would continue until they hit 5...

At level 5 is entirely up to them to continue or not, but they would gain their full access GPS like they do now so they see everyone. Other emissaries would know FOR SURE they have loot on board because the only way you gained level 5 faction was sinking other emissaries at certain levels. So there gotta be loot on board. The main thing that needs to happen is something awesome long term for Reapers. Like a "Reapers Legend" title and have access to a hideout there. Needs to be something for end game Reapers. If they have something in the works, I can see more Reapers continuing at level 5 so they get as much loot as possible to level the faction up. That flags and whatever treasure they gained from sinking ships. All 2.5x bonus or again, whatever they want to do with the numbers.

That my suggestion my friend and I came up with. If you like this, hope you have their ear...

@Prescafatty

Interesting idea. I quite like it. I think there might be some technical limitations with that. But this here is pretty good. Needs to be further discussed you should make this its own post. I would like to see what others toughts are on this.

On a side note what would you propose should be done to encourge theving/bulgaring as in not sink but stealth stealing from non-emmissary ships. Your idea is great for strightout ship combat so long as there are willing emmisaries on the server but what to do if there are non?

I ask this for the tuckers and ship ninjas out there.