Idea for a "slightly" less toxic community

As long that alliance can be broken drop of a hat. Sure.

@burnbacon ...after the quest or event, sure, but it would be pointless if 2 ships could activate an alliance specific event, and then one ship immediately drop alliance so the other ship could solo. That would make the concept of cultivating a cooperative game experience futile. Especially if the alliance events had loot that could accommodate multiple crews to incentivize a communal event.

@captain-pwnsy

They did this in the past when Adventures were a thing. It required 2 ships to summon the shrouded ghost, and while it was fun, there was almost always a betrayal or a 3rd party ship would come in. My friends and I always loved it because we love PvP chaos and would always predict/be ready for one or the other. There were plenty of forum posts from those unhappy with their experience.

During the Hunter's Cry Adventure, ships would arrive at a special Sea Dog's tavern instance. It required multiple crews to sink ghost ships, plus you had to do parkour, to free Merrick. You'd have 5 ships in a tight area, with galleon PvP crews decimating and locking it down. Sinking their ship was pointless since they'd respawn right there. After about a week, since many weren't able to complete the achievements (the PvP was fun though), the devs turned off all damage to players, including cannons, removed the ghost ships, which made the event incredible easy.

That was the absolute last time they tried this.

Now you're hoping to bring rewarded teamwork to the game, and after these experiences, I have a feeling that history is going to repeat itself. 2 ships do something that provides treasure, one decided to sink the other, drops the alliance and sells all the loot, causing a repertoire of distrust about said event, and forum posts of unhappy players.

@europa4033 i did not get a chance to play the Sea Dogs instance. However, just because the devs didn't do it right the first time, is no reason not to do it better the next time. I have given this all of 20 minutes of thought, but here are 2 ideas that would reward teamwork and remove the instant betrayal.

1. Perhaps the 2 or more ships are required to accomplish something on different islands. Each task completion is required for victory, and posits treasure in 2 or more different vaults. Even if one crew were to circle back and backstab their alliance, they would be leaving either undefended gold in the vault from the island they were supposed to do, or they would fail the quest for both players, and no one would get anything.

2. A fleet battle, or grand scale raid that requires multiple crews, but doesn't provide treasure at all (since treasure is actually useless). instead crews that finish could get heavy rep rewards, special skins and ship sets for teamwork achieves. And even if one crew backstabs another, whatever ships took on the quest and contributed X amount to the tasks, would get the rep/rewards regardless if their ship was still standing.

Im not a game developer, but in 20 minutes I think I came up with better ways to incentivize team ups than Rare did in the Sea Dogs fiasco. I would be happy to give this a lot of thought and present detailed ideas to the team if I didn't think it would fall on deaf ears.

Thanks for responding and pushing my idea forward.

Something this game is sorely missing, is a reason to work together. I know pirates and backstabbing and what have you but we need something that makes it worth it to not backstab. As it stands right now there is no reason to work together because fighting someone and taking their stuff is more profitable than alliancing. I don't think they should make alliances more worth it, I think they should either introduce a set of voyages or another type of alliance that have more encouragement for working together. An alliance emissary flag type deal maybe? Something where the longer/more you work together, the more it's worth, and because all the alliance ships show up on the allianced ships map, you as a person outside of the alliance could locate all the alliance ships and hunt them to gain their alliance emissary flags, making it worth extra value for hunters as well as the people in the alliance.

@captain-pwnsy

A few questions about #1-

• Can I leave a crewmember behind to bury the treasure at our island, while we go sink the allianced ship?
• What if 2 members of my crew tucks on their ship, waits for them to open their vault, and then attack/sink them?
• If my ship completed our voyage and opened our vault while our allianced ship is having a battle with a seperate ship and they sink, would all the treasure in our vault suddenly vanish? How is that fair to us?

The only issue I see with #2, is that it's predicated upon Rare creating special skins, ship sets, new cosmetics (I'm guessing?), and heavy rep rewards (the latter making voyages, world events and certain time-limited events like Merrik's Recipe redundant and suddenly no one is doing them anymore), which, based on their recent trackrecord, they're not interested in doing. Just as a quick example, they reduced the Pass by 50% this season, and are now offering emporium cosmetics, voyages, and ancient coins (if you already have what's offered) with just one unique cosmetic. It's been promised that the gold shops will get the much-needed love they've needed for a long while now, (you can see how that's turned out). Not even going to mention the amount of reskins released, like this month's smouldering Pegasus set (and I'm sure there's more to come as well). Rare isn't going to be motivated to create special skins, ship sets, whatever, to those who alliance for a particular voyage (that has a chance to punish both parties if one side sinks), just to try and change player's behavior in this game.