Ideas for the "Boring" Blade

These are some high-quality ideas if I’ve ever seen ‘em! I love the idea of being able to recharge the Obsidian Ashen Winds Skull by completing Skeleton Camps; I feel like that should have been added from the beginning, but maybe in a different form… maybe there could be a pedestal in the Captain’s Quarters to place it, which would recharge it over time? That could be an interesting way to implement that feature.
As for more voice lines, I am 100% in favour of that! Flameheart only has, like, three voice lines in the entirety of this World Event, and that seems a bit… minimal, to say the least.
Diving to this event is a good idea, if managed correctly. While the Battle for the Burning Blade is a good idea as a Reaper’s Bones Voyage, I think that, for a more balanced experience, the Athena’s Fortune variant could be more involved in Hourglass, as well as the Burning Blade’ Crew’s side of this. Here’s how I think it could work;
A crew votes for the Battle for the Burning Blade Voyage, entering a fray with other Reapers for command of the feared Burning Blade. They are victorious, the other crews being merged out of the server, defeated, to make sure the Burning Blade crew has a decent chance of keeping their hard-earned ship. The Burning Blade and its crew immediately go and complete two Skeleton Camps, making sure to hold enough Skeletons for their next battle. They vote on a new Hourglass of Fate (locked on the Servants’ side, of course) on the Captain’s Table; they vote to Defend the Burning Blade, and Captain Flameheart speaks through his statue, telling them how impressed his is with their dedication, giving them 1-3 extra Obsidian Skeletons (depending on the crew size) to make sure they are victorious. The crew is now part of the Hourglass Matchmaking system.
On a different server, a crew of equal size (let’s say 2 Pirates) vote to pledge themselves to the Guardians of Fortune. They quickly vote for the new option on their War Map - Hunt the Burning Blade. They dive under the seas, ready for a more challenging but also more rewarding battle, should they be victorious. they rise out of the water with their weapons drawn, immediately attacking the Burning Blade. The giant ship fires back, its Skeleton Crew working alongside its Pirate Crew to claim victory. This time, the Burning Blade is able to claim victory, earning the crew a hearty bonus for defending the Blade and an additional reward for the two rituals competed. They turn in the Burning Blade to reap the remaining rewards, getting an additional boost of Allegiance for their valiant efforts. The Guardians also receive a decent reward for being willing to go against the Burning Blade, despite losing.
I think this would be the right way to introduce Hourglass to a new feature to combat the damage dealt to it by time and sweats, giving both newer and older players a better experience with Hourglass and its levering progress, while also providing more content to the Burning Blade.
Anyway, I completely agree with pretty much every word you said; this is an amazing piece of content that’s just waiting to be seen more and more of, and would also give an opportunity for more Servant and Guardian milestones - Burning Blades Defended for the Servants, giving an upgradable painting of Captain Flameheart (specifically the one above the Reaper’s Lair fireplace in the tavern area) and Burning Blades Hunted for the Guardians, rewarding an upgradable painting of the Pirate Lord.
The added bonus is the fact that there could be even more Skeleton Curse cosmetics tied to this, which is greatly needed, in my opinion.

With the Burning Blade becoming more Rare as Season 15 releases, there should be a quicker / guaranteed way to access the event.

They made it rare on purpose.

Captain of the Blade is now your First Mate, continuing to serve the Flame, while probably still being bitter about the recent demotion. As a part of your crew, this skeleton has more health and a tendency to not stay dead, respawning even when skeletal reinforcements are depleted.

So your always gonna have a OP skeleton defending your ship?

and “drive” the boat (this could be purely cosmetic or functional).

I just got out of the camp and found my ship has sailed off without me because it was attacked and giving chase....Thanks second mate

Simply put, a bonus or a reason to visit every Skeleton Camp while manning the Blade would be nice.

Reason: Gather those Orbs.

Additional Flameheart Voice Lines

oooh no. Im already twitching by recalling FH voice never shutting up with his big fat skull in the sky....

Some of these suggestion I agree with, like the UI update. However many of these changes are unnecessary or completely fail to address the fundamental issues with the Burning Blade. The Burning Blade doesn't work because it's boring to play as the commanding crew, near pointless to try and fight it (if the commanding crew is at all competent), and it's susceptibility to the downward spiral of PvPvE content in SoT.

The worst issue of all, the content offered for manning the Burning Blade is not lackluster in the way many PvE experiences in SoT are, it's more akin to putting your head to a cheese grater. While the payout and "WOW" factor is all there with manning the BB, it becomes utterly stale once the payout incentive is pointless the "WOW" factor wears off. Not only does it restrict your play session to only playing a dumbed down easier version of the Skeleton Camps, now no harder than a children's puzzle offered in your churches toddler distraction bags, it prevents anyone else from doing world events, grinding the server to a halt. The only other thing you are realistically allowed to do is participate in the reaper hunting of another age, something which has become less rewarding and more difficult to execute since Season 11. You are supposed to be the boss of the server, but rather you feel like a king imprisoned in golden handcuffs, only given the freedom to farm money with no joy. I don't see how any of your suggestions really address this issue at all.

The next problem with the Burning Blade is how incredibly difficult it is to actually fight. A mediocre galleon versus some of the best players in the game will likely be able to stall for multiple hours, dragging out the fight and dwindling supplies of the crew without infinite repairs provided by Skeletons. For a majority of players it simply doesn't make sense to attempt fighting the Burning Blade. Encounters with it are simply so unfair that the almost chess-like gameplay of SoT where a few critical mistakes can turn the tides of battle is completely lost when the BB is thrown into the mix. Any player that isn't simply obsessed with just fighting (like me) would make the simple decision to just dive away as soon as they see that beacon, map marker, and second map marker approaching them. The Burning Blade should have felt like an upgrade, but unique with critical weaknesses. Rather what we got was a fortress on the waves that was difficult and quite annoying to win against regardless of the skill of the 2 parties. This drove people away from engaging in combat with the Burning Blade, the one fun part of its gameplay for the crew commanding it.

This ultimately led the Burning Blade to fall susceptible to what the original Skull Fort, FotD, FoF, and most significantly, the SoSS had before it, the death spiral of PvPvE. A PvPvE event relies on both PvE and PvP to provide fun for the player. When one, or both, of these elements are lacking, it tends to fail. The Burning Blade's interaction with PvE had failed on a fundamental level. This pushed most players, the ones that are willing to interact with PvP content so long as the PvE is rewarding as well, to stop taking over the Burning Blade shorty after launch. Then there's the issue of the problematic PvP. People that sought the Burning Blade out as a means to take over a server in the same way as a Reaper Grade V might in 2021 were met with the harsh reality that people simply didn't want to fight them on that boat. It was too unfair and the risk was too great for it to be a worthwhile endeavor for casual players. This inequality in the battles, something SoT had become well known for, and the somewhat recent addition of diving as a fundamental game mechanic, encouraged casual players to simply leave before a battle had begun. This allowed them to keep their emissary flag and begin to collect new loot on a new server, far from that ship which wouldn't even be able to chase them. And so the veterans and casuals alike saw little point in taking over or fighting the Burning Blade. And the "death spiral of PvPvE" took no time to take hold. Once one player stops interacting with the event, the grand battles and interesting engagements that it's meant to encourage become diminished and rarer. This can cause the next player to stop. And the next and the next and so on and so forth. This was most evident with SoSS. It has all the same flaws, lackluster PvE and a vulnerable PvP state that led to its collapse. In both cases the event saw great success within the first few weeks of their implementation, however as time went on the issue got worse and worse. Now they are both are remnants of a failed experiment, shackles on server performance, and largely forgotten features nobody cares about.

This is why I can't agree with many of your changes. None of these address the fundamental issues with the Burning Blade that have pushed it to be so meaningless in the current sandbox. The only thing that somewhat attempts to address this is the "Battle for the Burning Blade" raid voyages which would only push casuals further away from the event and make it more meaningless than ever. I agree that Rare needs to revisit the event, but it needs to be with a clear focus and purpose to not repeat the same mistakes again. They need to amp up the PvE, making it an enticing, fun, and repeatable adventure that people WANT to participate in. They need to free the boat, allowing it to be a diverse set piece for a variety of battles in unique scenarios rather than being only significant to the forts and the people that want commendations. They need to rebalance the PvP, it shouldn't feel like just fighting a galleon and perhaps cannons should be largely ineffective, but it needs to be interesting and dynamic in some other way. There has to be some critical weakness the crews have to concern themselves with other than just the naval aspect, because in a ship vs ship scenario the crew with the BB just has a massive advantage. They need to revisit the Burning Blade, but really tackle the big issues. Losing a World Event (again) would suck and I definitely don't think they can just sweep it under the rug like SoSS, so they are really left with no choice but to fix it. I just hope they fix it the right way.

@sirpebble323 your idea, thought I doubt it was intentional, sounds a lot like Arena, which they will never bring back. It's unlikely we will ever see anything implemented on truly separate servers again. Also no. We do not need the BB ruining HG even more. The thing is terrible to fight. Even up against the worst players it can take like 20-30 minutes to sink and is ridiculously easy to stall on. All you gotta do is watch the ladders and the thing will keep going by itself of like an hour+

You must have not read the full of my idea, and simply glossed over the fact that I said it would be a new OPTION. I didn’t say, “hey, let’s throw random Guardians of Fortune against this massive ship!!” I said that they could vote to do it if they wanted to. It doesn’t ruin Hourglass if it isn’t forced on you. If anything, it would bolster it, because more casual players could actually feel like they stand a chance if they fight with the Burning Blade, and the super experienced players out there could also vote to fight it for an optional challenge, if they so wish. It’s also optional for the Burning Blade crew - they don’t want to get crewed up into Hourglass? They don’t vote to be. I understand your concern, but frankly, that’s not what I said. As for the “arena” comment, that’s not at all true. There would be no point system, no additional cosmetics, just a way to get the Burning Blade. It’s actually tougher to keep for smaller crews than most people give it credit, and it’s actually pretty tough not to get sunk by Ritual 5 or so. The hardest part was never supposed to be getting to it, but taking command of it over others and then keeping it. And this would NOT be done in a private or separate server. Just a regular server, with an unclaimed Burning Blade up for grabs.

Plus, everybody knows that all you have to do is hit the top deck like 10 times with cannonballs or a couple Bone Callers and the Obsidian Skeletons will be absolutely depleted. The Burning Blade might be tough to beat, but it’s also very worth it if you give the Guardians a bonus of Allegiance for taking it down - plus, they can then sell the Burning Blade of Souls for additional Gold and Reputation. Plus they’ll get at least SOME kind of Reaper Emissary flag, something I can’t say for the current Hourglass results.

@fysics3037

The First Paragraph
Gonna be honest, I probably had my head in the cheese grater for too long, leading to the suggestions being what they are: Flavor that can spice up, but not fully fix something not cooked enough from the start. I agree that the payout and "WOW" factors wearing off, along with the comms. and rewards being geared towards LvL 200+ Servants (a smaller subset of an already small group of players), has led to the current stagnant state of the Blade. While the Blade does block World Events, the longer it remains standing the larger of a target it becomes. If people keep treating the server like a revolving door, eventually one (or multiple) crews are going to join who want to challange the Blade. When, or even if, that happens at all is still up to chance.

The Second Paragraph - Battling the Blade
(Note: I do take fights / choose to PvP often)
The difficulty of fighting the Blade does definitely scale with crew size and skill, leading to better and bigger crews being able to hold it uncontested for longer. However, I don't agree that the Blade removes the "chess-like gameplay of SoT", it shakes it up. The importance of boarding and cannon pressure are swapped, which is something that a lot of newer crews fail to realize and what better crews capitalize on. There are 4 ladders, so get on and cause some chaos! Yes, the infinite repairs of the Skeletons are what let people to stall, but this reliance IS the critical weakness of the Blade. The Blade can't be maintained by 4 people alone. Also, what does get downplayed a lot is Alliances (which is something I should have mentioned). Teaming up to take down the Blade should have been a comm. (heck it is one for the Ghost version) or outright encouraged by the game itself (i.e. giving something to all crews to partook).

The Third Paragraph - Death Spiral of PvPvE
There is no doubt that this does happen, and I agree with mostly everything stated (fundimental issues in PvP / PvE leads to the collapse and abandonment of these experiences). SoSS is a entire discussion in itself about why it "failed" (it did fine, but wasn't built for long term). Another additional argument would be the lack of focus from the Devs, often leaving things on their own for YEARS / not using events to shine some light on "forgotten" content. With World Events, this was addressed to some sucess with the CoF and Raid Voyages, but certain events are still left out of this.

The Fourth Paragraph - Closing
Like said earlier, most of the changes aren't meant to overhaul the event, just add flavor / fix gripes based on what I've seen. Right now, the Event frames the PvE as busywork while waiting for the PvP to show up. They could either amp the PvE and make it interesting, or make it easier for other crews to fight aganist it. The Event was a intresting take on asymmetric PvP, causing players to either rethink their stratagey or work with others to topple the beast. Again, the critical weakness of the Blade is its reliance on its Skeletal Crew, without them it sinks.

Other than that, I wanted to say that I really liked what you said. Cheers.

@northstar404485 I just think the skeleton crew takes far too long to actually kill. It just drags out the fights and lets the BB crew just board/defend as much as they want. I agree that boarding is the strategy, and I think it's an interesting direction, but it's not done well. Maybe adding something like a "heart" of the BB that the defending crew has to protect in order to keep their skeletons would be more interesting. They way it works now is just a really really long naval encounter with some more, but not a lot more, boarding involved. I think that the unfair nature of the fight has driven a lot of casual players from actually attacking the Burning Blade.

Really what I was trying to say with the "chess-like naval gameplay" part is that the BB crew can make like 20 mistakes without losing, while the attacking crew only gets a few. The idea of comparing it to chess was how SoT and chess are both games where a few mistakes can lead to large consequences and completely change the battle. The BB removes that part and makes the combat a lot more boring and stale IMO.

Anyways, I think some of your ideas could be implemented in a larger more broad update to the game in general. But I think to truly be good the BB needs pretty much a whole nother season dedicated to it. The good thing is, I don't think players would mind a season making S13 more awesome.

If I may add my own suggestion, can we also try adding an Athena's Fortune version of the Burning Blade to have the two ships duke it out and give both sides more chances for rewards? It could be a new version of the Athena's Fortune ship, or a new version of the Blackwyche. But with immunity to curses and the ability to fire a "Roar of Curses" instead of the Ashen Roar, that comes with Grog and Poison Ball effects. And is crewed by Phantoms instead of Skeletons, with the Phantoms joining your cause in a certain way to replenish them like replenishing the Burning Blade skeletons. The statue in the Captain's Cabin could be either the Pirate Lord or Sir Arthur Pendragon, with us going on a Tall Tale to rescue Pendragon in order to show the story of how the new ship was created. When inactive, it will take the place of the old shipwreck in Athena's Fortune. But becomes active and can leave whenever the Burning Blade is taken over by players.

Another mismatch is the reward for manning the BB vs sinking it. When it is not the CoF world event, it spawns with a paltry amount of treasure, and then it does skeleton camps for a turn-in of gold. Pretty much a single cash-in.

Folks sinking the blade, GoF especially, get the reward of everything it was carrying, commendation credit for sinking it, as well as the Sword whose value scales wirh rituals and is a fun toy /content lure in and of itself.

There needs to be more reason to sail with the BB, other than camps. Some sort of mechanic to keep the crew occjpied and interested as they PLOD from camp to camp.

Maybe make the Obsidian Skull refeesh with camps completed... and its damage scale with number of rituals? Perhaps the BB increases in speed (marginally!) with rituals completed? Guardian ships sank as BB?

There has to be more reason to persue it and interact with it.