For many of us who have gotten the Skeleton Curse, I would wager that most of us continued grinding out Hourglass or commendations in order to try and get more cosmetics to cover our bones with. For me personally, I really want to get the Obsidian Bones, and have finally started to approach that goal in terms of hourglass rep. That being said, I have one other nagging problem in the acquisition of the obsidian bones which I have consistently had a problem with ever since Season 13; I cannot for the life of me find the Burning Blade. For reference, in Season 19, on Community Weekend, I hourglassed for a total of 8 hours, always seeking and getting on new servers, yet in all that time, there was not a single server that actually had a Burning Blade in it while I was there. I am well aware that they toned down how often it spawned after Season 13, as its chances were increased so that players would have a higher chance of engaging with it, however in my experience, it feels like they added an extra 0 to that chance. I have been off and on for the past several seasons, due to content not being something that's interested me, though when I have been on, I've failed to find even the slightest sign of the Burning Blade anywhere which is quite an issue when you need to find (at least) 10 of them, as well as complete 8 rituals and turn it in for the commendation to get the Obsidian Bones.
This is quite the issue I would say, and one of many with the event. Others include the fact that the world event itself is super boring to play with, as you end up just sailing around the server for the ~2 hours it takes to get to each island, complete it and sail to the next. And, during this time, you are either at threat of having nothing happen at all, which is equally or more boring, or you may reach a ritual stack of 6, when a random player who server-merged in after hourglass comes in and proceeds to slice up your and your crew's bones into dog toys before sinking the blade and taking all the loot, leaving you with nothing to show for the time you wasted. Considering you also cannot start voyages, nor can other world events spawn while the blade is active (player controlled or not), and the only way that BB players can increase the ritual streak is to go to the skeleton camps and complete them, the world event is, as a whole, quite stale by now.
I'll suggest a few ideas/changes that I think could make the Burning Blade a little bit more active and interesting for players whilst possibly being a little less monotonous as a whole.
1.) Adjust some of the commendations - While I'm sure the commendations that the devs added initially were perfectly fine in hindsight, they do not scale well to the current playerbase who either avoid it at all cost, server hop away from it for a different world event, or will sink you. I'd suggest to account for this, go through at least some of the commendations and adjust them so that they're a bit more reasonable and don't require you to seek them out so vehemently (for example, for the Playing the Part commendation, instead of having to get and sell an 8 ritual streak 10 times, maybe only make it 5 times).
2.) Readjust the "Spawn Rate"- It may be a good idea to check what the actual value is or chance of it spawning in as opposed to other world events, and maybe just give it a small bump up as it seems to be significantly less common than any forts of fortune, fleets of fortune, or other 'rarer' world events. This way both old and new players still have an equal chance to get the Burning Blade in current seasons.
3.) Revamp some of the mechanics on the Burning Blade - I'm not saying that they should fully remove the gameplay loop on the Burning Blade, however it should be possible or viable to be able to do something else with it in order to either get the streak up, or simply make it more valuable or fun to play. One possible option would be to turn an exploit that it had early in its addition into an actual feature - Allow the Burning Blade to be in the Hourglass Queues, however it cannot dive, and has to be invaded, and players that choose to seek it out must select an option to fight a larger ship, or just specifically a Burning Blade Crew. This would likely help give it the PvP aspect that it should have, whilst not forcing players on the server to have to try their luck unprepared. Another idea in this case would be to allow the crew of the Burning Blade to be able to start Reaper Voyages, and perhaps in some way, rather than getting loot items, it could give them a ritual streak for completing the voyage, or it could just be normal.
3.5) Remove it from the World Events Queue - I'm not as strongly opinionated on this one in itself, however as some people have suggested in the past (And yes I'm aware of the problems that this will cause in the way I say it, however it should still be at least considered regardless) it may be better for the Burning Blade to not actually take up the world event slot when it's in a server. Instead, perhaps it should be separated from the actual world events and act more as an emergent threat, similar to the Ancient Megaladons (If it were like this, then the devs could also make it so that when you reach grade 5 in Reapers, if a Blade is on the server, you can see it on the map, though this would require removing both the tornado and the map icon until it's player controlled). Then, just leave it at that, don't ever make it take up the world event slot, just have it there, and world events can come as normal. You could even have completing (certain) world events as the Burning Blade give a ritual streak as well, to possibly encourage players to try and hunt it down, or allow either the crew of the Burning Blade and/or the Players of the server to ignore each other.
4.) Revamp the loot pool/rewards - Something which may be partially helped by some of the above suggestions, the loot on the Burning Blade (especially without the Chest of Fortune) sucks. There is almost no value in sinking it as opposed to just leaving it alone or taking it over. The Burning Blade itself is as valuable as an ashen lord skull, which can be gained significantly faster than sinking a Burning Blade, especially a player-controlled one. Instead, it could be a better idea to make the loot gained from sinking the Burning Blade stack or increase with the number of rituals it's completed, on top of the loot that it may collect passively as it does some of the other things that it could do if these ideas were implemented. To balance this, it may be more reasonable to prevent players of the crew from accessing the stacking loot / the loot that spawns in the bottom deck, and it should only generate when it's sunk and despawn when the blade is turned in. This way, Players can't jusst sell the most valuable treasures on the Blade before going on their day, making the ship almost entirely worthless to sink, but in this way it would also allow the crew to get more loot and sell that if other players take too long to sink it, and still make a profit. On top of this, change the Burning Blade item's base value. Increase it to something a little more reasonable for the challenge of sinking a player controlled vessel (Or don't if it's not). But then you could also implement the idea used for the Orb of Souls into the Burning Blade, so that even if a crew didn't complete that many rituals, they would still be able to increase its value while keeping it on the server for a while. This way, if the Blade is actually worth taking on, more players may choose to actually sink it for more than to cycle world events.
I do love the idea of the Burning Blade event, however it's simply far too boring (and at least for me, uncommon) to be able to enjoy as much as I should be able to. I would love if Rare went back to this event and made it just more enjoyable to play and less of a grind the entire time.
