A Player Driven Economy

@dark-shadow9056 any trade anyway would be at player risk. Game's got no support for a real player economy or trade like an AH, or trade system.

Basically comes down to: "I've got two standard chests for your chicken and some planks" and basically backing away slowly with each of your goods.

Of course.. finding people to play along is also part of the fun.

@zombie-p1ague not everyone is always going to be your enemy, once text chat is implemented on pc, and the use of proximity chat, you could make it clear you wish to trade before getting close to another player. But again just a theory here, obviously if it ever happened it would have to fit in with the style of the game

@zombie-p1ague they could have a vote to parley with nearby crews on the voting menu, crews could agree upon a timer for the parley, and items would only be able to be picked up by players on their own ship during parleys. This would lead to trading one item at a time back and forth and the worst that could be lost in a "trick" trade to any competent sailor would be one item if the other crew failed to reciprocate. You can then still take the loss and try and leave while you have the benefit of parlay, or just fight for the chest back. Maybe if a cannon is shot and hits a parleyed player or ship there would be a debuff or the players names would go red for a time, and the ship would be forced to fly a jolly roger

We already have the tools like shovels and buckets to have some small scale mechanics to cater to more in depth item gathering than just from barrels. Maybe banana trees etc could bloom when watered or other simple but fitting of the graphics type things to provide items that can be used for this economy. A grog distillery, a grape vineyard and the ability to make and age wine, a tobacco field and a cigar factory. All designed to suit this world but this way instead of islands being a stop along any sort of linear voyage, they could be tools that could be used by players to create their own trade routes and voyages. I feel like this idea is hard to grasp as something needed in this game, but a pirate game without a merchant economy will get stale. If there was a lot of variety to the "crafting" if you will it would be amazing, things like banana grogs and coconut husk wrapped cigars etc lol. Just ways to use the items to create things to sell to npc merchants, add a faction system on top with reasons for players to risk trading to make money because of price variations among the factions.

@ethnine there is soo much in that article that is talked about that you dont hear anything about after.. makes me wonder how much they are actually hiding until launch, and what got scrapped

@averagestraw199 I dont think you will get a lot of answers in the beta, the beta as they have said is a way to test the servers handling a ton of people, as well as giving you a glimpse at the pirate experience in the game. Looking at past interviews/videos and such, there is so much mentioned that is never mentioned again, That IGN article above is a good example. So I have a feeling there is going to be a lot more in launch then what people are actually assuming

@Ser-Swag-Pants

I don't even think it needs to be player driven, just having an economy would be enough!

I remember another classic pirate game (published 30 years ago, darn I am showing my age again) that was all about gathering resources like Cannonballs, Food, Spices, Gold, Etc. and buying and selling these are different ports for different prices. The trick was remembering where you could buy what, for how much, which ports how a storage of which resource/would pay a premium for it. All the while pirating others and trying not to get raided yourself.

@cpt-erebos I wouldn’t want you to get gold from sinking a ship, I think the supplies should float to the top like with chests so you have a chance at grabbing them
@RGBKnights i love this idea, makes the trade spread out so you can’t all just sit at one outpost, they would have to have more people per server at outposts though for this to work well

tbh this is really tricky to do right. on one hand you can overkill it and make it super grindy to get anything you want, as prices for mats will be no doubt expensive. Also fear of it becoming like an Eve online sort of deal where you have the 10% super rich and then the rest are dictated by their affairs. Not sure how much ild like it to be 100% player controlled tbh.

I just want the ability to give and receive gold. I fully intend to establish a merchant company by paying off other players to serve as guards.
I intend to stockpile a vast hoard to fund my operation.