"The «Smuggler's Message in a Bottle» made these two achievements almost impossible to get, especially when you factor in all the other quests that could possibly spawn."

100% This! I've given up on hoping to complete these at this point.

I love the merchants alliance, sailing around with shipments and the roleplay of it but it'd be great also if there was some response to the smuggling going on, especially considering it is impacting merchant game play. I'm also lost on how one can smuggle illicit goods when there's no law and order in the area to denote said goods as illicit.

The «Smuggler's Message in a Bottle» made these two achievements almost impossible

No. It Probable, just consuming and what not.

I wonder...once they "fix" this...what the next set of complaints players will have? "Nothing to do, finished everything"

@burnbacon said in Merchant Alliance achievements.:

The «Smuggler's Message in a Bottle» made these two achievements almost impossible

No. It Probable, just consuming and what not.

That is why they said ALMOST impossible. Your comment adds nothing here. Just let it go mate. The devs have already said this is high up on their priority list.

@Brat2rus Best fix would be: Every time you reach Emissary Grade 5 and go collect your Emissary Quest, a Merchant delivery quest comes along with the existing Emissary Quest.
This would incentivize people to keep "grinding" and play the game normally, instead of running around looking for bottles only. This would also make people run more Emissary Flags and keep them at Grade 5 for longer. It's a win/win for everyone.

You still have to grind for it. Nobody wants these to be just handed to them for free.

@burnbacon

I don’t know how exactly code is made, but before Smugglers' League was introduced, only regular bottles were spawning. Adding «Smugglers' Message in a Bottle» to the spawn rate lowered the chances of encountering regular bottle (which can still be anything - not just a fruit crate or keg delivery).

Also it was already coded and implemented before, so they basically don’t even need to waste a ton of energy and time on this little fix.

If we look at it from an engineering perspective we can see that it looks like they just forgot to add this type of voyage when making an update and just never cared to fix it, since it doesn’t break the average player’s gaming experience. For example, they removed «The Arena» due to development difficulties with new content and its low player base.

Furthermore, a couple of seasons ago development team took a look at players feedback and lowered required milestones for that season’s commendations and promised to be more careful when setting requirements for new achievements which makes this topic not so useless.

People started asking to return these voyages as they were originally before the update and this post is a sign that people still care about it and want them to be in a way they always have been since game release so your «complaining» part does not carry any meaning and looks like trolling comment.

@kashmero

YES!

I totally agree with everything you said - that’s the way it should be..