Skull fort key as random spawn?

  • Threezool
    Founder

    Hi!

    I were thinking of ways to add some suspense to the solo/duo players when grinding away on their voyages and then it hit me that maybe there should be a small chance of a skull fort key to spawn during normal voyages.

    This could be after a hard riddle is solved, or a skeleton crew is defeated that represents a crew grabbig the key and then run off to hide it or got killed and the key were lost, until now!

    This could even trigger a new voyage just like the bottle to activate the key and then finding the right fort it belongs to, making you sit on the edge of the seat the entire trip until you find the fort and cash in the rewards.

    Any thoughts or more ways to improve the idea? =)

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  • SweetCalf942652
    Ship Mate

    Forts are really in the game to offer players a high risk high reward playstyle, as opposed to the low risk low reward that voyages offer. That's why they get the skull cloud, and turn in for about 10 voyages worth of gold/rep.

    So, I think giving this (pretty massive amount of) loot to players that didn't actually risk anything to get it would make it feel a little less important and rewarding. You could make it an obscenely low drop rate, but that would just mean almost nobody is ever going to see it, and at that point it isn't even really worth coding.

    I understand that you want to add suspense for solo/duo players, but if this was a common enough drop for that to be a normal occurrence, with no risk, it wouldn't feel all that suspenseful.

    Lastly, with the way keys are coded, bringing them to the door of a vault that they don't belong to will despawn them, and you'll lose your chance. Plus with how long it can take to sail around the map (over half an hour from corner to corner if you don't have wind), you'd need to know which fort you're going to for this to be anything but boring. But knowing where you're going would really ruin any suspense. But to tell you where you're going, you'd need a voyage. And what if the key changed hands? You could say that the new crew would get the voyage, but that's even more code they would need to change for a really little addition.

    TL;DR - It's a cool concept, but in practice I don't think it would add suspense or rewarding play to the game.

  • Threezool
    Founder

    @sweetcalf942652 Since its a new event and how the forts are triggered the reward could also be lower due to how it was obtained.

    So during the voyage once you reach the fort there is no skull but there could still be a crew of skeletons guarding it. Once they are defeated and open up the gate the reward could be like half that of a normal skull fort event.

    So the lower spawn rate combined with lower reward would balance it out with the high risk/high reward of normal skull fort events.

    A alternative would be that once the key gets activated, the skull appears to show what fort it is so its a dash to get there before any one else so you can claim the reward. Else you need to fight other crews for the key once you reach there and then you claim the full reward of the fort.

    So it would still be risky once its activated but this allows also solo/duo players a way to get hold of a key in other ways and have riddles activate it instead of just fighting skeletons.

    There is always ways to balance it out. =)

  • Freecellqt

    @sweetcalf942652 i agree with most everything you said except the 10 voyages of loot. For gold hoarders MAYBE. Order of souls and merchant though, 2 1/2 villainous is a stronghold practically and unless you're super lucky with 4 villainous along side that stronghold once ur 50 gold hoarders its no longer even worth it to do forts.

  • SweetCalf942652
    Ship Mate

    @threezool I agree, there are ways to balance it, but what I'm saying is that the work necessary to add this feature wouldn't really be worth the payout. As it stands, I think forts are in a good place (enough so that a duo sloop can do it pretty easily; I only play duo, and I've never been on a server with skull spawn that I didn't get the loot from).

    And as far as solo players go, the game was never really built to be played that way (Rare has said before that it's only an option because they knew people would be insistent about it, but they never wanted people to play alone). If you decide to play alone anyway, you're sort of acknowledging that you probably won't be able to succeed as easily or often in high risk situations. And making this visible to other crews would make this find high risk enough that it's not even worth trying for most solo players if the fort isn't within just a few blocks.

    A lot of other work would have to go into it, like deciding (and coding) what would happen when the key changed hands, making a new skeleton cloud graphic (so people don't think it's a normal fort), a new voyage, a new system for fort skeleton and loot spawns,

    Like I said, the concept is cool, but from a development perspective, it just isn't worth it.

  • Threezool
    Founder

    @sweetcalf942652 Oh i know its not ment for solo-players even if i myself mostly play solo and i'm fine with the current fort event to target groups of players. The suggestion is to spice up the normal loop of voyages when you encounter it.

    Its not as hard to add as you make it out to be, i myself is a developer and even if i'm not familiar with this codebase it is easy to do some assumptions on how the codebase are set up and how to modify it, let me explain. =)

    When the key change hand the voyage disappears from one player and in to the other one, the code to add and remove voyages are already there its all about when to trigger them. The new voyage is mostly using old mechanics like doing riddles at places to activate it instead of getting a chest. Then a new riddle to figure out what fort to go to on the map.

    Once activated the skeletons spawn on the fort or the cloud above appears depending on what implementation where the cloud could just have another color, smaller or another shape. The reward spawn is also quite easy to implement by just checking what triggered the rewards to spawn and then let half of them spawn.

    So we are mostly using the same mechanics and triggers, just in a different form. =)

  • Gunny o0
    Marauder
    Insider

    @threezool I like this idea a lot. Of course your comment about reduced difficulty and a reduced payout are correct and if implemented that way I think it would be a great addition to the game. Nice one!

  • Threezool
    Founder

    @gunny21 Yah i feel that it would add some variety and excitement to the game if one was found and allow more players to experience the awesome skull forts but in their own way if they don't have a crew. =)

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