Suggestions... help us to help you Rare!

First off, for what the game has now, its extremely polished and excellent. The problem is, the river is too narrow and too shallow. There just isnt a lot to the game. The foundation has been laid for an epic game, just needs more depth so....

These are the obvious:

1. Name ships and ship names stay with that player.
2. Player can "captain" any ship and add friends only if desired or open to public.
3. Flags! A lot of flags! Get creative!
4. Enemies! Skeletons are great, get others asap!
5. Let us own/buy specific ship types. Let us add "points" to areas such as speed, turning, steadiness, toughness, wind Efficiency. This can be done with XP or cash or both! The longer we own a ship, the more we "make it ours". If it sinks, you have to rebuy the ship with its points upgrades. BUT we arent talking huge upgrade numbers, 10% max on anything! Dont break the game for old vs new. But with age comes experience and better equipment to a degree. If you lose your ship and cant afford to buy it back with its upgrades, then normal ship it is until you can/choose to!
6. Ship stats that degrade in performance with damage until its fixed and be realistic with repair costs! You take damage, it certain things go down. You repair with boards, you get half back. You dont get full until you hit a shipyard or ship vendor and repair. Simple.
7. Damage to more than the sides. Sails, rudder?
8. Ball and Chain cannon shot. Sails hit. Hurts speed until repaired. To repair, stand at mast with cloth and repair.
9. New mission types.
   Pirate missions (find merchant ship that is leaving Island X going to Y on date/time'ish. Sink ship, take ship, get plunder and loot.
   Naval missions (Pirate shipname has been seen in the waters around X. Seek and destroy. Might be a ship, might be 3 or 4.
   Merchant missions Goto Island X. Pick up cargo (that isnt just an item, a lot of or mixture of items but something that takes a few to load and unload) Take to Island Y. Put a time on them, where you have to hustle and do things right regardless of wind direction!

These are just my opinion for an epic game:

A: Make the map size huge! At least triple the map size and lets get more of a MMO feeling!

B: More ships per map instance! As it stands right now, you might see 3 ships, or you might play 6 hours and never see a soul. Lets get an active world going!

C: Make a daily server Riddle Event We see a skull in the air, we all rejoice, the loot is fine but the dynamic action is even better! So in that vein... have a daily riddle mission pop up. Darken the screen, text shows up giving clues to first island you have to go to. On this island, put a bottle/book that gives you another clue to go to another island. ect ect until you finally find the last destination. Then, X marks the spot in several places (think 5+). Waves of skeletons with bosses at each spot. Make all clues universal, someone finds it, its still there for others to find. Lastly, make the treasure found have to goto a specific Outpost and when first chest is dug up, light up that "cash in" outpost so you have to fight your way there and while there, or be creative to sell.

D: Make 3 kinds of ports for selling plunder/goods/loot.

1. PvE port that has a radius of 2 squares around it where no bullet can fly, and no damage dealt to boat or player by another players boat. Safe haven, but you only get 60% item value - safety has a price.
2. Pirate port. Wide open, no holds barred, get up to 120% item value but make skeletons with cannons defend these outposts and roving bands and waves of skeletons are present constantly, think strong hold. Risk vs Reward! Make it a challenge to get there and a challenge to sell!
3. Merchant port. Normal, everyday port.

D. Player Rep. Simple, 3 catagories, Pirate (Red), Naval (Blue), Merchant (Green). Plus 1 other overall bar (yellow), this is simply a ships sank vs how many times YOUR ship has sank (scuttles dont count). You scope in on a ship within a certain distance, you get details - ship name, 3 bars Red Blue Green and right next them them a yellow bar (above half way up, you sink more than you are sunk.. below you get sank more than you sink others). This is for showing propensity for certain behavior (no guarantees in life!) and a possible inkling of how good you are at it. The more you pvp/sink others ships/damage others ships/take strong holds/take pirate missions, the more your Red rep reflects this and K/D to yellow. Gives PvE players at least to opportunity to duck out of hostile players or players they might not be able to fend off. Rep is tied to player and ship, if you join on this player, then actions during this coop affects your score also when/if your captain of your own ship. All 3 rep bars added together have a total of 1000. Regardless of what you do, the adjustments to the 3 area always total 1000. You take a pirate mission, adds 20 to Red bar and reduces other 2 bars by 10. You attack a ship, adds 20 to Red, subtracts 10 from Blue and Green. Strong hold fights or fights in strong hold areas do not affect any rep besides your yellow K/D bar!

E. 3 Distinct Role Skill trees with subdivisions for character creation. This one will take a lot of working things out but anything worth doing does....

Merchant, you have captaining skills, trading skills, nav skills ect.
Pirate, captaining skills, gunning skills, underground info skills
Naval, Captaining, Nav, discipline, intel gathering (you open your map, shows you where merchant ships are in general, not exactly, AND the pirates are in general)
(I have a list of skills to "tree" up - for example; Wind Finder - The more you put into it, the more you have friendlier winds...soooo sick of always having to go into the wind every where it seems. Piloteer - ship turns faster, sails adjust faster, anchor drops faster. Scouts - get a small visual clue on their hand held maps on where to start or go next ect. the list goes one)
...... a note on these skills. They are NOT big increases, keep it subtle, 10% more here, 20% more there. Nothing game breaking just a touch here or there.

F. Servers. Give us named home servers. Want to goto another one, off you go with your ship and crew. Just sail to any corner of the map and hit the water spout, go visit another server if there is room for you. Also, make some PvE only servers.

G. Crew size This game is a TON of fun with a crew, raise the max to 6. Please? Also, if we have two groups that want to play with... or against!... each other, let them make 2 groups and link up and be put in the same map instance! That would not be hard at all to do and the fun would be raised exponentially!!!!!!

H. Weapons/Food/Drink/Meds/Potions/Temporary 1 Use Personal and Boat Buffs
As it stands right now, pretty vanilla. Lets get some variety!

Guns and swords, Nothing too crazy, small is better than power creeping weapon damage up, that kills games! But you spend that much on a gun or sword, lets see some better in certain areas than others. Reload time, power, range.
Food, have to eat to stay strong and/or recover from wounds.
Meds for temporary health up in small amounts, mending/stops further blood loss or loss of consciousness, NOT HUGE FULL HEALING from damage... do NOT make med packs! You take damage, you're damaged! Time heals, no medkits and your good as new 10 seconds later. Kills games and pvp, it becomes a med fest and the winner is who has more, its bad!!!!
Drink, water, tea, grog, rum (sorry kids), let each do something besides make you puke and swoon.
Potions, need to swim faster? run faster? less sway when looking at something from rocking ships? or just assign these attributes to what you eat.
Temp buffs. Need friendlier wind? Faster cannon ball speed? Faster turn speed? ect. Nothing game breaking. You pop one, and the next 5-10-60 seconds its active then goes away.
All of these purchasable from merchants or can be found! Some cheap, others expensive! Once purchased they are part of your inventory until used OR if you die, a percentage of them "drop" to be recovered by anyone.

I. Interactive Map Features
Map events, weather, last reported hostile or safe areas (these aren't square specific, just this quadrant - think 6x6 squares - a battle 5 mins ago in this area type info or a navy ship has been/is in this general area) Make them togglable as overlays to the map. If youre on a Merchant mission, Pirate Mission, Naval Mission (see below) the map will also give a generalization of where whoever is at. Large generalization, but.

J. Real quest type game play with dynamic features

1. Merchant Missions. You receive a commision to goto Island X and pick up a load of "stuff". You have to take this to Island Y by date/time. BUT!!!!! I listed this above, PvE can have some fun like this BUT!! When you pick up the mission, you have to put down a deposit and no one knows you're on a mission. You go do it, you get reward minus deposit(think mission pays $2000, you had to put $500 deposit to "secure it"). HOWEVER, you DON'T put a deposit down.... Gossip Mongers in each outpost will offer for sale the details of your Merchant mission!!! The details will be, shipname will be at Island X on date (no time) and has to deliver "stuff" to Island Y by date and general time ie morning, noon, afternoon, evening, after dark, early dawn, just a generality. Players can buy this information and try to stop you. If you succeed as the merchant though, you get full price times 2 and any bounty out on whoever attacked you IF you sink them. Merchants can also commission help for a price by posting a Naval Mission with the Gossip Monger!
2. Naval Mission. A merchant ship can make the risky run. But he can hedge and post an escort request. Merchant Run player offers a commission, Naval Players say they will, price is up to Merchant - not enough no help, too much, no profit. Naval Players can be anywhere at any time, with or away from Merchant player. But. Any ship they sink that is within 2 squares or that has attacked the merchant, they get double bounty on, as well as merchant pay. If they dont protect the merchant, they all sink, they lose the merchant commission x2, that goes to the merchant, and they lose Naval Rep 2x. But, Merchant goes down, pirate goes down, Naval still there. They can pick up lost cargo, and finish the mission at normal pay/rewards they would have gotten if merchant had survived. Same for merchant, naval goes down, pirate goes down, everyone still gets paid the same. A delivery is a delivery, it either makes it on time or it doesn't.
3. Pirate Mission. You goto an outpost, hit up the Gossip monger. You "buy" the gossip and stop the merchant! You get the cargo at value times 2, rep times 2, and any bounty on any ship sank connected with the mission times 2.

K. Bounties
Remember that Rep above? More pirate you are, higher the price on your head!

1. If you just sank and pillaged someone? Next 30 minutes price doubles and map indicates your last known general location (updates every 2 minutes) and heading with ship type/description... If you quit the map/server, too bad, time holds for the ship and its captain until hes back on, time is game time, not real world, no running away like a chicken, youre a pirate!
2. Bounties. Each outpost has a Bounty Board showing who is in that server instance. Attacking and sinking low rep, PvE types pays nothing. But sinking high rep players, pays well! The higher their Red Bar and their Yellow bar, the higher the reward!
3. Player Assigned Bounties. You have a bunch of griefers? One ship continually preying on you and others in the server? Player Assigned Bounties. Player simply puts in Ship/Player name, offers a bounty of $X. Board shows if that player/ship is on your instance. If you find them and take them out, you get the prize. The Issuing player will get a message when they log in or ingame that revenge has been dealt out with justice served. Bounties expire after 48-72 hours.

L. Make a Permanent Crew
We can pool our in game gold, tax members, donate, all of the above.

M. Own an island! We have home servers, ways to move to others for shenanigans, let us claim an island! Put down cannons, build a peer, a keep/tavern, strong room. Some islands will be more choice than others and cost more, so be it. Owned islands cant be touched/harmed by just going to them.

1. You choose your island, buy a claim Deed flag from vendor. Island size can affect price to Claim!
2. Plant Flag - Claim Deed. You pay for the island based on size and location ie near possible strong hold worth more, near server jump point, outpost, island shape and size has natural defenses/harbor/ect. Island given name (shipname) Harbor (that way the 14 year olds cant test the boundaries of certain names/words twice).
3. Build as much as you want, as little. Build a strong room for your plunder and to protect your flag.
4. While there, ship repair is free, can store loot, equipment, consumables, other ships if you have the room.
5. Can be attacked but it has to be a declared attack. (no sneak up per se). To attack, you submit Cash equal to 50% of Claim Deed Price, you post what day, what time between the hours of 6pm EST and 9pm EST (for NA players as an example). Attacked player has four options. A. Accepts time and date B. Accepts date offers different time C. Accepts time offers different date D. Refuses (dates have to be within 72 hours - 3 days. Time has to be "normal" time relative to that players location. You want to be in EU attacking NA players, thats your issue, not theirs, no 4 am attacking c**p)
6. Defender Accepts. Fights, wins. Gets Attacker posted cash.
7. Offers alt time/date. Accepted, Fight on.
8. Offers alt time/date. Declined. No fight, all money returned to attacker.
9. Doesnt answer the challenge, refuses it, doesnt show up. If you cant hold it, you lose it. Attacker at posted time goes to your island, and for free, gets the island and all that's there for free.
10. Can recruit others to help on either side!! Post with Gossip Monger! Put up commission to be at X at date time. You win, they get paid. You lose, they get paid if they were there and did damage in someway. Even if its just to sail in circles around the island launching guys to fight. But, no commissions are allowed to be posted or accepted less 2 hrs before the fight. All attack and defend commission are public knowledge purchasable from the Gossip Monger.

Win conditions for Attacker. Attacker wins by blowing up the Claim Flag within the 60 minute time limit. Exploding barrels f*w! or If defender moves himself on any ship over 6 squares away (thats evacuation! Instant loss! But doesnt mean he cant load up his plunder on a ship and run either!)

Win Conditions for Defender. Defender wins by keeping their Claim Flag up for 60 minutes or if Attacker moves all ship/ships 6 squares away. Defender wins cash prize attacker puts up.

Any ship damage for either is repaired under normal game circumstances.
The island owner does not have to be present to win/lose. If hes not on the server, he is considered in his base, win or lose. If he is on a different server, and traveling back home to defend, and time hits and hes more than 6 squares out, he loses. He wasn't there to defend and it's not like this was a surprise attack.

Ship respawning.
Attacker ship sinks, it will respawn at the nearest island within 6 squares of Defender island. If more than 1 island is within the available area limits, Attacker can choose which island to respawn the ship/s at per ship sinking.
Defender ship sinks, it will respawn in the Defender harbor or at the nearest island within 6 squares of Defender island. If more than 1 island is within the available area limits, Defender can choose which island to respawn the ship/s at per ship sinking.

During the battle, the server is still a wide open environment. If a ship comes along and attacks the attacker, life happens. He gets the bounty ect per normal game rules. He cant harm the defender per normal either. But he gets no commission either.

That was a lot. Just the tip of the iceberg. Wonder if I can send in a resume'?

Lastly, let the damn escape button work on any out of game screen for us PC players! I've never used Alt+f4 a much in the last 10 years as I have in the last few weeks!!! HALP!