Creating incentive to fight Meg and the kraken

Surviving with my loot is enough incentive.

@testakleze

already posted something similar to this, and all it got me was argued with and yelled at. hopefully you have better luck. meg would provide shark's teeth as per what i had suggested. the kraken could give a different type of "token". the only problem with this is retrieving the items from the water...having the large monsters drop items is just detrimental to game play.

all that it would accomplish is any ship that saw another one in a bad situation to consider them as "easy picking" for getting themselves tokens. let them do the work while you sink them. the potential for griefing is just nasty. just award the tokens like any other currency.

@testakleze they would have to increase the occurrences or at least give you some sort of whereabouts because I've played for hours and I rarely come across either.

@testakleze said in Creating incentive to fight Meg and the kraken:

I think a vendor should be introduced that can sell specific outfits and boat customizations that are themed after the large monsters.

Killing the kraken could cause it to drop a kraken tentacle or some sort of body part. You would retrieve it like treasure from the water after the battle and turn it into this vendor. The vendor would exchange it for a form of currency that could then be used to buy clothes, weapons, and boat cosmetics that are themed after that specific monster.

Collecting and turning in fresh kraken tentacles could be traded for abundant kraken teeth, and then said teeth could be used as a form of currency to purchase kraken sails, hull, cutlass, etc.

The meg could provide an eye. Again you would have to kill it when it appears and collect the eye from the corpse like a skull and return it to the vendor in exchange for shark teeth or meg teeth. Those teeth being used for the set of cosmetics that are megalodon themed.
This would be a perfect opportunity to make the meg figurehead obtainable again for people that weren't part of the first event. Instead of fighting the meg once during the event, you would have to kill multiple ones to earn eyes and earn the currency needed to buy it.

We have gold and bilgerat doubloons and this would add two more forms of currency plus more for any new monsters introduced and integrated so an alternative is have factions or a faction.

A monster hunter faction that goes to 50 like the other three, increasing by turning in monster parts. Cosmetics not bought but earned either through leveling up or earning commendations like turning in 1/10/100 meg eyes, or kill a meg with a gunpowder barrel.

It's known that these monsters become no more than an inconvenience after seeing them enough times so this would definitely help create a reason to fight, kill, and even hunt these two and any additional monsters added later.

the kraken should move mate and then it would work

Bilge Rat adventures would be an easy way to add some incentive to fully engage the Kraken and megalodons, because as it stands the kraken is mostly just a time sink and I completely ignore megalodons.

I can't imagine it would even be very difficult from a developer standpoint to simply make it a commendation like "drive off the kraken" to get a title like "Kraken Bane" or something.

As far as the kraken fight goes, you don't kill it. You just defeat it and it runs.

At 3am every night you can hear the kraken. My thought was to have the kraken appear at the surface of the water when he starts calling out. Maybe not the same way as when you attack him but maybe just flinging a couple tentacles around out of the water like it's trying to eat something. That way once a day you have a chance of knowing where he is if you are in visible range and look for him at the right time. Then it would just be a matter of sailing over to it before it moves on. Even after it goes back down, it's still there. You would just need to run into it. If you don't find it where you saw it, pick a direction and hope that's where he went. Not the best way to find him but better than hoping for him to randomly attack you.

If the rewards were tied to a bilgerat event, it wouldn't give the same incentive to find and kill them. Most people would buy the cosmetics with the doubloons they have earned from previous events as soon as the event starts, and I feel like no one would care to hunt them, just hope to run into them for a chance at a few more doubloons. Then after the event ends you would only receive a commendation and maybe a title. Yes it would give reason to find and fight them but I don't feel it would be enough, and half the reason to do it (doubloons) would end after the event.

Two week events are fun but when the main problem with the game is content, you shouldn't create content and then remove it after a set time. We need more permanent content and giving long-term goals tied to these monsters would feed life into them and turn them into more than just something that can sink you.

Great idea, I agree with everything "testakleze" suggested.
The more content and more motivation to make it, the more fun the game gets.

Personally I prefer the faction with reputation. Commendations and progression unlocking the cosmetics rather than a specific currency exchanged for themed cosmetics. I also feel that would give more longevity than making it a bilgerat event. The kraken would need to be changed though since right now it's too hard to find and impossible for a sloop to encounter without a galleon triggering it first.

These monsters could even have more than one treasure piece obtainable. Maybe the meg could have four eyes spawn. Two larger and more valuable. The kraken could have potentially eight tentacles to spawn if you defeated it. Which means you could kill one tentacle, grab that piece and sail off leaving the rest but still making off with one piece of treasure. The values could correlate to how hard it is to acquire since the meg seems to spawn much more frequently than the kraken and also easier to kill.

Another idea is have commendations for killing them, with no item to collect. Those commendations being earned would unlock the cosmetics at a vendor but you would still need gold to make the purchase.
People would kill the monster, instantly receive credit in their commendations, and once hitting the requirements for items, would be able to go to an outpost and make the purchase. That would eliminate having to jump in the water and find the treasure to turn in after the kill but still give reason to stay and fight when attacked.