Okay so. I've been playing the game for god knows how long now, and I love it! But, I, like others, have some issues with the quests feeling a little repetitive. This is mainly for the Merchant alliance. But I will add some ideas for the other factions too.
The Merchant Alliance Quests
The Merchant Alliance quests (as far as I know, as I am currently lvl 28 with them) Boils down to "get this item, and bring it here" Be it chickens, pigs, snakes, explosive barrels etc. When you get your first snake quest, it is interesting and fun, but 20 quests later. I can't help but be a little bit bored.
So what could spice it up?
One thing I've been thinking a lot about is investigation quests: The quest starts by telling you to talk to your closest Merchant, and he/she tells you that one of their ships got sunken in "insert area here" So you have to sail out to this ship wreck and investigate what happened.
Say you have a tool that let's you focus on objects in the ship (holes, claw marks, etc) and this can lead you to conclusions as: Pirates attacked the ship and has stolen the goods. Someone on the ship started a Mutiny, blew up an explosive barrel, and has now ran off. An animal attacked the ship and is in the area. And so on. These conclusions leads into chapter 2, or 3 depending on if you want the investigation to be it's own chapter.
The next chapter now makes you take the fight to what your conclusions was. If it was a mutiny, you get a map that could show you a radius where they could've gone, considering their ship is broken they'd have to either swim or use a life boat "hint hint galeon life boat wink wink" meaning they wont be far from the ship wreck. I would strongly recommend using hints to lead the player to the island instead of telling them "l**o just go here" because that isn't very fun or challenging. Say, you can see a subtle smoke cloud coming from a fire on one of the islands. You go there, fight, and capture the mutineers. (glory to the brig) and bring them back for questioning.
But if the conclusion was that an animal attacked the ship, maybe a giant crab, or a giant squid, sky is the limit my friends! You get 10-20 seconds to get out of the ship as the animal comes back to the ship, dramatic music starts playing, you hear a loud scream as the animal approaches. Time for a ship fight! Diffrent animals could have diffrent ways of being defeated. As an example a giant c**p has a thick shell meaning you'd need to use cannon balls to damage its shell. Then maybe use a weapen you've been given from the merchant alliance to deal with animals in the ocean to, or just keep going with cannon balls. A giant squid on the other hand, would be very diffrent from the crab, the squid would wrap its tentacles around your ship and attach it's head.. thing, on the front, making it impossible to attack with cannons! So you'd have to use swords or guns. It could also be squeezing your ship so you'd have to cover up holes (sloops would get less holes while a galeon would be stressful)
Pirate attack would have the same mechanics as a mutiny, you could, maybe change it up a little bit and make them go further away. And you'd have to spot barrels and loot that's fallen over the ship. And if you collect the loot fallen off the ship you get a gold/reputation bonus as the merchant alliance is so happy with your performance. Capture or kill the pirates, that's up to you.
Animals
More sea creatures could introduce capture quests for them. Say you get a big net you use to capture a creature after weakening it in battle.
Here are some animals I'd love to see in the game.
-Big eals (found in storms)
-Big crabs
-Big squids (not cracken sized obviously)
-Baby Cracken (will talk more about that soon)
-Boars (as shown in island paintings)
-Aggresive bats (found in caves)
-Seagulls (bothers you while finish hint hint smooch smooch)
-Predator animals (imagine being on an island a bear runs at you, yikes)
-Whales (could make very interesting capture quests)
-Diffrent sharks (Imagine a great white shark, scared already)
Order of Souls Quests
Order of souls quests are honestly pretty good, I like how you have to go to islands kill skeletons and bring back their skulls. They have good range in difficulties when it comes to skeleton types (gold, shadow, seaweed etc) and I like that, so good work there. But, I'd still love to see more. Because, as with the merchant alliance, it does get stale after a while.
Diffrent enemies
Obviously it's a pirate game, so I don't think anyone is expecting mummies and such. But keeping with the whole skeleton theme, it would be very interesting to see skeleton animals. Say you go to an island and fight a "boss" Like, a giant skeleton boar. It could be interesting.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, I talked about baby crackens. It could make a cool quest line to find a baby cracken to kill, and bring it's skull back to the order of souls. Why not just the cracken itself? Because that would be very hard for a sloop to deal with alone.
Interrupting rituals.
Instead of getting sent out to kill a skeleton crew, miss crying her mascara off could send you off to stop suspected dark rituals going on. Maybe rituals to summon cthulhu? These type of quests could lead you into underwater caves (I've seen them and I don't know what they are for yet, might be a pirate legend thing, I don't know) as they are pretty empty at the moment.
Ghost ships
It's been said before, but ghost ships would be really cool. You get your quests, it can be something vague like "something mysterious is happening outside shipwreck bay" So you go there, but nothing is there. Then the water turns bright green as a skeleton/ghost ship emerges from the water and you have to defeat it's crew and bring the captains skull back
Into the ghost lands
This is one of the more "out there" ideas I have for a quest. And I can already imagine the hell it would be to code. But. You get informed that a pirate has been sent to the ghost lands, but you need to get him back. So, we need to get to the ghost land. Only way right now is to die. But what if we could get there for a quest by sailing of the map into a whirlpool? (also, please just add whirlpools in general, they are so cool) You go into the whirlpool and your ship arrives in the ghost lands, land of the dead, what ever! spoopy green town. where there is an island, you go on the island where you have to fight other spirits, skeletons etc. To get to the pirate you need. Scoop him up in a jar or something I don't know hahaha. I did say this idea was out there, I didn't say it was a very refined one.
Gold hoarders
These quests are the ones I like the most as doing navigation is something I find really fun and entertaining. Both the quest types are great! discovering part of a riddle, or finding exactly where the treassure is hidden. very good stuff! I would still love to see more options tho, and here are my ideas!
Dungeons
You'd be given a map to an island where you'll find a dungeon filled with puzzles and traps. And to make those puzzles and traps actually be important, if a certain trap is activated due to puzzle failior, it will affect your reward. Say you'd get a captains chest for doing the puzzle correctly, but if you fail you lose that and only get a Marauder's Chest or something. Thinking about it, it would make more sense to find pure treasure (no chests just, gold, gobblets etc) Something that would work very well with this consept would be riddle maps. (also, traps should be insta kills)
Rival gold hoarders
This would be a simple go kill and steal quest, where you're informed about a rival goald hoarders location. You go there, take out the competition and steal their gold. A gold hoarder would be greedy I imagine, so competition would not be wanted.
Harder and longer riddles ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
One thing I would love about the riddle maps, would be for them to go on diffrent islands. It would be like a, your princes is in another castle situation. You dig up the treasure only to find a note inside of the chest, which would be another riddle, you'd then be guided to another island. Obviosuly the treasure would have to be worth the work! No 3 island adventure for a castaway chest!
Anyways these are some of the Ideas I've had for quests, I hope they are usefull or atleast interesting. I would love to see what other ideas people have, so please do comment what you'd like to see added to quests. And hey if you agree, maybe give the post a little upvote so more people read it :*
Anyways, I hope you all have a good day and find some good treasure, see you out on the seas!
