I've talked to numerous pirates lately that didn't even know the food heal amounts were different, and just thought it was cosmetic because the game never mentions the heal amounts for various food. This shouldn't be "secret knowledge", nor should it be misleading. For context, these players usually had hundreds of hours in-game.
Here's the current fruit descriptions, isolated for any healing-related info:
- Banana: "Remarkably good at aiding the healing process"
- Coconut: Healing isn't mentioned
- Pomegranate: "Almost balances out the damage caused by years of grog-swilling"
- Mango: "Despite being a healthy fruit, some banana lovers don't trust the mango"
- Pineapple: "Refreshing"
The banana is described in the highest and most direct manner as "remarkable" which just seems unnecessarily misleading considering it's the least healing fruit.
I understand adding some flavour to the descriptions is nice and all, but we shouldn't need a wiki beside us to have a rough understanding of how this works.
Minimum Effort Suggestion: Modify Descriptions
A sample of what could be more useful descriptions (of course, needing translations):
- Banana: "A staple for pirates everywhere, even if it doesn't provide much healing!"
- Coconut: "The moderate benefits of its tasty centre almost make up for its hard exterior, besting the banana"
- Pomegranate: "This complex fruit possesses better healing properties than the coconut."
- Mango: "Greatly beneficial, this soft and tasty fruit is preferable to a pomegranate"
- Pineapple: "The maximal benefits of this controversial fruit will serve you not once, but twice!"
I worked in a referential hierarchy as an example, especially since it's now easy to obtain one of each type of fruit via a purchased Fruit Crate.
Of course, extending this to other items isn't always perfect - fish, for example, would likely retain their information on obtaining them vs. healing info.
Larger Effort Suggestion: New UI Elements
Icons in Description Panel
Little fruit or health-related icons in the description panel could indicate the rough amount of relative healing each item is capable of. I will represent this with "@" for now. Some icon or number for number of bites would also be good.
- Banana: @
- Coconut: @@
- Pomegranate: @@@
- Mango: @@@@
- Pineapple: @@@@@
- Fish (Cooked, Regular): @@@
- Fish (Cooked, Trophy): @@@@
- Animal Meat (Cooked): @@@@
- Monster Meat (Cooked): @@@@@
Clearly this isn't a perfect system, but if there's a resistance to directly numbering the percentage of healing, it's still at least an informative option.
This has the side benefit of showing players that bait can be used as (bad) food, and that uncooked food is ineffective.
Direct Healing Percentage listing
Instead of the icons above, a direct percentage number along with the number of bites could be listed near the description of the food item.
Having these be more accessible in-game rather than a wiki seems like a win to me. It also provides an authoritative source should this information ever change.
Some other informative element
For example, if we want to preserve "discovery", maybe when you eat a piece of food, a quick "+20%" or something like that flashes beside your health bar. This way, pirates can experiment to learn. It's unobtrusive as far as UI elements go, fitting with Sea of Thieves design.
I'm not a game designer though — there could be other ways to communicate this information that are "Sea of Thieves"-y. As long as it's informative and not misleading, it's an improvement over what we have today!
