- Enemy (and inherently, Island) Variety - Keeping engagements fresh means having enemies that change which tactics a player uses to navigate a fight.
There needs to be a variety of enemies that force players to adopt different strategies (Halo (especially 1 and Reach) is an excellent example of this). It can be harpies or cyclops or skeleton parrots, it doesn’t matter. You need enemies that require a headshot, and others that force you to look up, some that require a blunderbuss, others that you have to disarm first, some that need to be set on fire, distracted, some that burst into a thousand tiny enemies when you hit them, some that charge, others that flank, fast, slow, large, small, etc. Variety. You are on the right path with the different types of skeletons, but it needs to be more dynamic. Consider encountering a group of Grunts, instead of a group of Elites, or two Hunters, or a pack of Skirmishers, and how different each experience is. Envision walking into a room of Convenient, vs walking into a room of Flood. You need to recreate that uniqueness in each type of encounter.
Also, an island needs to visually display it’s type of enemy(ies). I need to feel dread when I see from the crow’s nest that my quest has taken me to a harpy island, or a cyclops island. Relief that this other island looks to only contain human and parrot skeletons. Or fear that this island is ambiguous, and I might encounter both.
- Content Depth – Lasting missions of game-lore and story and mystery that span between play sessions.
Imagine talking to a barkeep who mentions that her sister has gone missing. (Tracking down and rescuing family members, think Pirates! Gold). Give me a quest that doesn’t just include fetch and carry, but item stealing, NPC escort (as long as the AI doesn’t suck, we’ve all played through horrible escort quests), resource gathering, sieging a fort and killing a specific target, finding pieces of maps, partial clues, etc. Something that tells a story of the islands and the inhabitants, maybe reveals a secret of the ruling nobles, or your characters past/family, or the origin of the Ferry of the Damned, etc. Give me large, glowy, shiny, visual rewards that can only be received from completing one of these long, epic, confusing, quests. - Merchants Guild Tweaks - Too much risk, too inconvenient, and not enough reward.
With the other two guilds, I only have risk after I have reached the destination and acquired the treasure. Be it a chest or a skull. With the merchants, I’m at risk as soon as I pick up a cage. It may not seem like it, but if I am sunk while halfway between port and an island, and I lose my cages, that quest just got ruined and I have to accept the loss of the voyage. Also, animals can die. So not only am I at risk as soon as I get the quest, I have more risk getting the loot back to port. Also, it’s harder to complete these quests, because just because the island may have pigs, it may not have the pig I need. Also, knowing the value of the item makes some of these super disheartening. Why even bother with a 2 white chicken voyage? Just strike it and buy another and hope for a gold snake. This guild is more costly, higher risk, more time consuming to complete, and doesn’t offer supremely better rewards.
