This is a simple suggestion to make the Outposts feel more alive. Have a selection of seven (or six, depending on the victor of lost sands) NPC pirate crews, with different animations and dialogue options for certain locations at each outpost, and rotate these crews between Outposts every week or so, not unlike Commodities. Another neat feature would be a Galleon for the NPC crew at each outpost, that would rotate cosmetic appearance based on which Crew is at the outpost. This Galleon would function not unlike the Black Pearl that spawns at the end of Lords of the Sea, though it would have no working Cannons, only Journals throughout belonging to members of the Crew. The only downside I could see to this is other players dressing their ship to look like the NPC one to troll people, but what do you think?
How to improve the Outposts
Would be interesting but I don't think there is a way to make them much more than folks milling about. Maybe having them offer obstacle courses or something ("get hammered on grog and hit x targets around the island with a flintlock", "do this parkour course around the outpost while carrying this basket with a really angry snake", etc) but I don't think it warrants the dev manpower.
Having some bilge rats playing music in the taverns would be cool though. Would make for some interesting athena steals.
@unfadingshimmy said in How to improve the Outposts:
Is it possible that by adding more assets to the world, it negatively impact server performance?
No. Those assets are loaded client side and only when you're within range. All areas are also dormant unless there is someone there, so empty space does very little to impact server performance.
Those assets are loaded client side and only when you're within range. All areas are also dormant unless there is someone there, so empty space does very little to impact server performance.
Then why is it that we've seen server performance worsen, despite the changes made to ship count & player capacity?
Not trying to refute your point, I'm genuinely curious & wondering if you have an idea.
Despite how empty the game was in its earlier days, that was the best the servers ever felt, imo.
@theblackbellamy said in How to improve the Outposts:
Those assets are loaded client side and only when you're within range. All areas are also dormant unless there is someone there, so empty space does very little to impact server performance.
Then why is it that we've seen server performance worsen, despite the changes made to ship count & player capacity?
Not trying to refute your point, I'm genuinely curious & wondering if you have an idea.
Despite how empty the game was in its earlier days, that was the best the servers ever felt, imo.
You'd have to ask Rare to know for sure, but basically anything that the server has to continually update every server tick will be a performance hit. Empty areas don't have any perf hit because everything despawns and goes empty, and only becomes active again when someone is there. It's why you can reset fort waves or boss positions by having everyone leave or go to the ferry and come back; server deactivates the AI on that island because there is no one around to look at it.
Number of AI being spawned by different crews would have an impact. There are also more emergent spawn types, like the crabs/eels that didn't exist before. There are probably other user-invisible systems that are likely running that didn't exist long ago that would contribute to dragging down server performance.
Randomly generated mobs wandering around to give the island life could be nice, and this could tie in well with the 'rumor' adventure idea from another thread.
They could hand out random treasure quests like what is given on the map board, speak of skeleton lords, or a sunken ship to be found somewhere. Each NPC with a single randomly generated quest that they could provide, or token item wanted.
@goat-father said in New Pirate Legend Adventure type idea - "Rumours":
"Have you heard the rumour that there is skelly captain's ship sailing with an Athena chest on it?
Well I heard from Bob on Plunder Outpost that there was. Go see him, he knows more.""Yes, I'm Bob. Yeah I heard it from Sally on Snake Island. She will know more, but be aware, she doesn't like strangers, though she does like chickens. Take her a chicken and she's more likely to talk to you."
"Thanks for the chicken, it's lovely. Yes you are....
A skelly ship. That's right, I saw it, oh where was it, i can't remember. But it was just as the sun was setting and I could see Old faithful to the south west."Rumours
Interact with the NPCs in the world to find out about the location of an event in the game world by piecing together clues. Rumours would be multipart and let the players build up clues to the location of valuable treasure. A Rumour "quest" could be run at the same time as normal quests.Potential for Rumours:
- treasure laidened skelly / ghost ships
- high value ship wrecks
- megaladon sightings
- kraken sightings
- marooned skelly captains
- high value phantom sea fort
Potential interactions/tasks with NPCs
- Give live [Chicken/Pig/Snake] to NPC (Players have to find the right animal crate and capture the animal)
- Kill skelly captain on ISLAND NAME and give the skull to NPC
- Find [Ammo crate/Powder keg/small treasure trinket] and bring it back to NPC (players have to find the right sort of treasure item from other quests or forts)
- Sink a skelly ship that has been patrolling ISLAND NAME for the NPC
- light the beacon on top of ISLAND NAME with a COLOURED flame
- Give X number of monster meat or fish
Available on:
