Voyage and experience imbalance: Returning to shrines

  • I have played this game for many years, and lately i've been feeling bored after launching the game and trying to play. Sure, part of it is because there's not much progress i can make in this game unless it's pvp and I'm just not up for that type of grind again. I took the time to wonder about this as I kept jumping from server to server trying to find one that wasn't brain dead boring. I realized, that part of the reason, was due to the fact that most servers had people doing the same thing over and over again. The same voyage, the same ship path being taken by every single crew I tried to play with. It just seems that most people now a days will just grind out fortresses or do gold vaults and nothing else, it's dissapointing.

    What do I suggest? Well, what I have always suggested. It's not the first time that I've mentioned the fortress abysmal difficulty and the negative effects it has in the long term. I think one of those effects is starting to show up, the fact that fortresses has become one if not the most popular meta out there to grind out gold, so everyone's doing it, and no one ever really wants to deviate much from that. Sure you can argue that "something has to become meta, that's just the norm" and no, it isn't, not for a game like this where the focus is on exploration, and certainly not for voyages. Can you imagine if other games just had a super easy mission that everyone would only try to do and re do? Just grinding out that 1 mission? Not a really good game if the majority of the player base only group up together to complete that 1 mission on repeat.

    But the main thing we're here to talk about isn't just the difficulty of fortresses, it's mainly another issue that many here had previously shut down before when I introduced it in the initial stages of their implementation, the shrines, or more specifically, the treasure quantity that one is able to get from them. Now that they have been around for a while, I think we can all agree that their implementation has such a flaw, that leaves players in a situation where they would rather avoid them than try to undertake such an experience. Mainly, because the treasure amount is just not worthwhile for the time it takes to accomplish them. It's almost ironic that many of the reasons that people where against it, where the exact reasons why fortresses became so popular: Treasure quantity increases the more/ longer you explore.

    If it wasn't obvious already, then all you need to do to understand my point is to read this:

    Please increase the treasure quantity and rarity rewards the farther in one goes into the siren shrines.

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  • I thought they were already like this? The more complex, deeper ones give you a Chest of Ancient Tribute at the end. They also reset on a timer and if it takes you a really long time to explore you can end up with twice as many items. I once left the Shrine of Ocean’s Fortune with 43 items as it took me so long to do the parkour that it reset once, if not twice while I was in there lol!

    I feel like most people avoid them because the risk isn’t worth the reward. You have to leave your ship in an extremely vulnerable position, for mostly standard loot items. Either you need to leave someone on the ship as a lookout, resulting in it taking longer to do for lack of help, or if you are solo or brave you leave your ship unmanned and may surface to it sunk.

    Especially with the introduction of World Events being scaled to size, there’s not much desire to dive under the water for less reward and much more risk. In a world event, you might have someone come after you, but at least you’ll see them coming. So it feels more even.

  • @abjectarity said in Voyage and experience imbalance: Returning to shrines:

    I thought they were already like this? The more complex, deeper ones give you a Chest of Ancient Tribute at the end. They also reset on a timer and if it takes you a really long time to explore you can end up with twice as many items. I once left the Shrine of Ocean’s Fortune with 43 items as it took me so long to do the parkour that it reset once, if not twice while I was in there lol!

    I feel like most people avoid them because the risk isn’t worth the reward. You have to leave your ship in an extremely vulnerable position, for mostly standard loot items. Either you need to leave someone on the ship as a lookout, resulting in it taking longer to do for lack of help, or if you are solo or brave you leave your ship unmanned and may surface to it sunk.

    Especially with the introduction of World Events being scaled to size, there’s not much desire to dive under the water for less reward and much more risk. In a world event, you might have someone come after you, but at least you’ll see them coming. So it feels more even.

    No, treasure quantity should be increases significantly in quantity and rarity, the deeper in you progress. That's not the current case for the most part. The treasure amount and rarity are usually set at low rates, and like u said, ultimately this leads to the risks not being worth the rewards. At the end you may end up receiving a chest of tribute but even that's not enough.

  • Totally agree. Shrines are wasted potential for all the reasons you mentioned and I can't understand why they haven't been reworked or even updated almost 2 years after their release.

    TALL TALE SPOILER ALERT!!!

    We have already seen a coral version of the gold hoarder so they could easily add some sort of coral skeleton lord in each shrine as a final boss that upon defeat drops their skull (similar to ashen wind) which would have a value of 7-10k gold in order to make the trouble worthwhile.

    Furthermore about the fact that the seas feel boring, this is due to the absence of new content since sea forts were introduced. After 1 year all we got was a stat tracker (captaincy), a pvp mode which is a complete mess for the most part and a few QoL updates. Even when new voyages are added, they are the same dig up quest we all have done numerous times just with different loot.

    There is so much that they can do honestly. Hunter's call voyages, devil's roar rework, shrine rework, new world events, new voyages (like the veil of the ancients) for each company, new tools for the sandbox like curseballs, rowboats, food, etc. Yet it took 8 months since captaincy to just change the amount of gold trinkets cost and grind they require.

    I am not trying to hate on Rare and I respect them for building a very unique and amazing game. However it is about time they picked up the pace and gave us something new that works properly...

  • Bored?

    Solve the week one riddle and get back to us.

  • Sure buff shrines, but also buff OOS skeleton hunt, X marks the spot, catching animals, trading commodities, skull fort, and anything else that nobody wants to do anymore except to grind commendations because the rewards per hour invested are bad.

  • @foambreaker said in Voyage and experience imbalance: Returning to shrines:

    Bored?

    Solve the week one riddle and get back to us.

    hes bored, not mentally ill.

  • @foambreaker said in Voyage and experience imbalance: Returning to shrines:

    Bored?

    Solve the week one riddle and get back to us.

    I don't want to? Like why would I want to play a game that requires social media? I didn't buy this game with any desire to have community events, where I have to use pictures on instagram and a word cypher to figure out the meaning of life. Honestly, that's possibly one of the worst responses to give to someone bored with a game lol. Content should stay in game, if the devs want to create story content around social media, that's on them, they can waste resource and time on their own account, but overall, that's a really horrible practice.

    I'm not going to go on some 2 week pilgrimage trying to discover the meaning of the clues in the riddle, and end up in ancient Egypt, spooning with a mummy lol.

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