I believe the champion battle mechanic is flawed, unappealing, and is already overlooked by most players. Taking a quick look at it, it provides a challenge for crews that have reached a streak of at least 4, however it provides no benefits. A crew would first have to reach a streak of 4 to utilize the mechanic, but adding a higher risk by fighting a larger ship with no added reward is putting your streak on the line unnecessarily.
It does provide a different experience for crews that are feeling bored with repeating similar battles. Sloop crews that are tired of fighting sloops can choose to fight a larger ship. Brigs can choose to fight galleons. Galleons, however, cannot utilize this mechanic obviously. If you use the champion battle system to change up your game experience, it can do that, but only for sloops and brigs. It provides a different flavor of battle but even those can become just as stale over time. I feel like it's a mechanic that doesn't provide enough to the player, and with the exception of some people, it will mainly go unused. With the mechanic being locked behind a streak of 4, and also providing no real benefit, I believe it should have some changes implemented. Changes that allow it to be utilized by more people, and changes to make it more appealing for crews in general.
My idea is to have three ways to fight. The two we already have, defending and invading, as well as this new champions battle. Once you activate your hourglass and roll out the war map, you will already have an option to go into a champions battle replacing the option we have now that appears after hitting a 4 streak. This will act the same as invading, causing your ship to dive below the waves and search for a battle, but the battle won't be just 2 ships. I suggest having battles that involve 5 or 6 ships.
This is where the matchmaking might be a problem. People have issues with finding opponents when it's only looking for 1 other ship, so looking for 4-5 others might seem impossible. I feel as if the matchmaking restrictions for this mode should be removed. It should disable the skill based matchmaking as well as have all ships and crew sizes put into the same matchmaking pool. So a solo sloop sweatlord can end up in a match with 4-5 other ships of any size and skill. Without skill, ship size, and crew size restrictions, it should help matchmaking times, which could help make up for the fact that it needs to find multiple ships.
These battles would play out with the same rules as a normal HG invasion. Each ship regardless of faction, would be combating with all the other ships in the fight. As ships sink, they go through the normal steps, loosing their HG status and value, gaining loosing allegiance, and merging to a new server. Each time a ship sinks, the remaining ships in the battle will all earn allegiance, HG value, and +1 streak. With a minimum of 5 ships, this means the winning ship will gain champion status at streak 4. With a full battle of 6 ships, the final 2 ships will be champions, guaranteeing that the winner will earn a champion ship sink.
I see this battle system being something I would prefer over the normal invasion battles. It would bring back the insanity of multiple ship battles that are normally only seen around contested world events, or in the old days of the arena. Some of my favorite moments were being on the cannon blasting a ship while my crewmate was behind me on the other cannon blasting another ship on the other side of us, or being surrounded by ships while our mast is down, all of them trying to take us out, firing cannons, sending over boarders, making it a 2v4/6/8.
Right now, if I jump on a sloop and want to do some HG, I have to fight 4 other solo sloopers one at a time, hope that I win each one, and only then I can unlock the option to change up my experience by making it more challenging. If I have limited time to play, I may only have enough time to do four battles, win or loose. I may not get champion status, I may not earn very much allegiance, I may earn 0 gold, and I may feel the burnout when each time I know I'll be fighting another solo slooper. I may get lucky and earn champion status and then immediately cash it in due to the effort and time I had to put into earning it.
This gameplay loop of fighting one ship at a time in very similar scenarios, in my opinion, is the biggest factor to this feeling grindy. It's not the time it takes for the number to get to 100 or 1000, but the repetitiveness of each battle happening one at a time, each battle being indistinguishable from the previous one, and the empty and long amount of time between each battle.
If I can hop on a sloop and join into a chaotic battle between 5 or 6 ships, I don't even think I would mind loosing. Even if I was the first ship to sink I bet it would be because I had multiple ships and crews attacking me at once, which would be more exciting than any 2 ship battle. I could be surprised by what size ships I get put into the battle with. I could feel intimidated by a galleon that seems very organized, which could cause me to temporarily ally with another ship in the battle to overcome the galleon, keeping the understanding that once the galleon is dealt with, the other ship will no longer be allies.
These moments of unpredictability make things much more exciting. Not knowing what ships I might have to go up against or how much they will target me as opposed to the other ships creates much more unique fights. With exciting fights like this, I'll be having too much fun to even think about my allegiance. Each battle will feel more unique with varying sizes of ships to battle against. Things will be more memorable and the grind should feel less of an uphill struggle and more of a journey, because you will be able to recall specific exciting moments that stuck with you along the way. If you could jump into an HG fight like this, and manage to outlive all the other crews, you could truly call yourself a champion.
I'm curious how many of you out there actually use the champion system we have now and if you would be upset to see it go, if you think it should stay the way it is or maybe tweaked slightly, or if you think it should be dropped altogether and replaced.
