Posted in the wrong section so will repost it here. Sorry!
Because of the crazy grind, I think gold should not be the only way to get cosmetics. It should be the guaranteed way to get what you want, but not the only way. Many of us simply don't have enough time in our hands to get there, so to keep playing, we need some kind of hope that one day we'd get lucky Rare team said multiple times they want to support all kinds of gameplay and exploring the world without picking up the grind quests is what I love the most. Just raise the anchor and see where the winds will take me. With that being said, there's completely no reward for exploring the islands other than an occasional c****y "message in the bottle" quest and few scattered chests (it seems it was removed?). It will take months before you'll ever buy anything from that kind of gameplay, so here's my suggestion that shouldn't be too hard to implement:
BOXES/CHESTS OF PARTS
These boxes are very rare boxes that can be found on the islands. There are different kinds of boxes, each corresponding to its cosmetic category, so for example:
- Box of cloth scraps (vanity chest or whatever it was called)
- Box of weapon parts (Weapon box)
- Box of ship parts (Shipwright's chest)
etc etc. you get the idea
You need to pick up those boxes just like any other chests and give it to the right NPC to get the reward.
THE REWARD
Returning the parts box to its corresponding NPC will give you and your crewmates one random cosmetic from that category. So for example, if you give the box of weapon parts to the weapon seller, he'll give you one random weapon skin. If you give a box of cloth scraps to the NPC that sells clothes, he'll give you a random clothing item.
"I have to return it to the NPC?? What if I get robbed?"
That's the beauty of it, isn't it? The tension! Also, wouldn't it be amazing to sink a ship and realize they had a box with "cosmetic" on board?
"People will get cosmetics too fast!"
These parts boxes should be very rare. Hard to find and maybe 3 at the time per entire server. It's just something to give us, explorers the hope that it might be our lucky day
"But but, what if I already have all the cosmetics?"
If the NPC will reward you with the random cosmetic that you already own, you'll get rewarded with some money instead. Let's say 40% value of the item.
"What? 40%?? That's like 30k for a sail!!"
Boxes with ship parts can be super rare. Let's say if there's 3 boxes for the entire map, they have only 10% chance to be a box with ship parts.
