I have a few new map/geography suggestions/ideas to put out there just for fun. I'm fairly new to SoT, but one thing I find so inspiring, striking and lovely about this game is it's exotic beauty. The music is awesome too (reminds me of my love affair with the MYST series many years ago). That said, I love islands and can't get enough of them. But I would love to see a long (perhaps the length of one side of a map) coastline. Coastal villages, for supplies, trade, and/or plunder. Perhaps even a great river separating two great landmasses that ships can sail up and down while docking at villages, etc.
Would be great to see a chain of islands not unlike Polynesian or Hawiian islands - a family of islands, rather than having the islands so evenly spaced apart as they seem now. Also, and this is a little far out there, so please bear with me - but it might be interesting to see the edge of the map, or one edge being the end of the world. Literally a great waterfall that ships sail off into a starry oblivion (or, another map!).
Two other side ideas I'd like to see too are; massive whirlpools (where ships get slowly sucked into a water drain and if they do not work quickly have their ships destroyed and everyone dies at once.) And I'd love to see more of a use for the Ferry of the Damned. One must pay ones dues somehow to get back to life and another ship, not just run to the door and wait for the bell. A new extended Pirate's life and a new boat if required, must be earned. Just a few new suggestions that might inspire and make things even more interesting. Cheers!
Map Ideas, Whirlpools, World's Edge, Death Dues, etc
If you’ve read any of the lore or noticed on the map at the moment you wake up at an outpost that first time, you’ll notice that the Sea of Thieves is located in the Caribbean... some would say it’s in the Bermuda Triangle and the Shroud surrounds it. So, people enter the Sea of Thieves, so an edge of the world wouldn’t make much sense. Who knows what other land features they will add - we’ll be getting a new section of the map in September.
Welcome to the game, I can tell you're new because Rare floated the "death tax" idea themselves earlier in development, and the community wasn't having it. Not sure if you were playing for the powder keg skelly event, but that event or high level OoS voyages would probably leave some pirates bankrupt or in the negative if there was a death tax. The big motivation for not dying is... Well not dying. Most wouldn't want their crew short, or if playing solo their boat left unattended, so trying not to die is already a goal. I like the idea of whirlpools, its been brought up before. I can't imagine Rare isn't thinking about whirlpools, most pirate-fantasy stories have a maelstrom or two. We'll see what's coming through after cursed sails and forsaken shores I guess.
@bran-the-ent I didn't notice that. I've only been playing less than a week and all the ideas can't to mind. I'm sure most have thought of them already. Do you not find though that the islands in this map are just a little too evenly spaced out overall? I still love the map, and don't mean to be too critical, this was just a first impression. I hope when this new map comes out that they add to this map. I wouldn't want to see it replaced, or disappear, in favour of the new one.
@supriseautopsy hi and thanks for the welcome. Death tax... Hmmm. I wasnt thinking of that so much. But I do think the needs to be a scale of difficulty of sorts so that very experienced and wealthy players have more at stake to lose compared to new, inexperienced, or just less wealthy players. I don't envision this as a tax, but a kind of "karma" that provides incentive for strong and skilled Pirates NOT to die. So if a newbie dies, they get respawned with new boat, etc and lose LESS overall than the expert pirate, who potentially could lose everything and have to start over again with nothing. If the playing community don't like the idea of higher stakes death consequences for the best players, then it probably will never happen. My fear is that as it is now, the best Pirates will rule the entire map and everyone else will be at their mercy. Some balance would potentially keep the game challenging for everyone. Just an idea and again, I'm sure R had thought of all this and decided against it.
@starship42 neat ideas. The reasoning for the spaced out islands is likely thus:
Each island is an instance. When you sail into it, it only loads bit by bit. When you properly enter that island (when the title card pops up) you are in the island instance. This helps lower the load on the servers, GPU's and such.
The problem with heaps of islands chained together is that would be a massive instance to manage. Not sure the SoT engine could handle that.
@starship42 The islands are spaced out the way they are because it is a game - not a simulation - and, when creating maps, gameplay needs to be taken into account. We’ll have to wait and see how Forsaken Shores impacts thebmap.
Each island is not its own instance. There are distance triggers for rendering, spawning, and LODs.
@Starship42
Welcome to the forums and the game. Many of the ideas you mentioned have already been posted, so you can tell that your frame of mind is in good company.
You've only been playing a week so you haven't really experience a lot of the game. You'll find that its relatively easy to die, a lot, when you start going after forts or have a ship to ship fight and you get spawn killed. Then you'll see how ineffective paying dues to the Ferry are and how tedious earning a new life or boat can be.
Hope you enjoy the game and be sure to check out more of the threads on the forums, you'll find a lot of things that come to your mind already have a discussion taking place with all kinds of ideas being thrown out.
@kiethblacklion Thanks for the welcome. Yeah, every new session brings up new unexpected challenges, for sure. I have been hunted mercilessly from one spawn to the next, even on the other side of a map. It's fun because I've never experienced this before recently, but I can see how some players may find this tiring. As I was saying earlier, I can't help but think there should be consequences for dying. How this is done is up for debate, but I imagine a scale of most powerful, experienced pirates having more to lost when they die, than beginners and intermediates. What I see happening are people using death as part of their strategy. I held back after dying once, and decided not to leave the FOTD. At least one of the pirates who killed me, killed themselves to see why I hadn't respawned. As soon as I did, he was waiting to kill me. Even after scuttling and respawning with a new boat elsewhere, I was hunted down again. Some expert pirates seem to know exactly where players will spawn and are ready to pounce. I realize that's part of the game, and I do enjoy it, but being hunted and killed has the potential to become tedious. Especially since there appears to be no consequences for dying; which would provide incentive for the best and most ruthless, to be more careful about putting themselves in situations where they might get killed. If one were to lost their gold, commendations, and reputations with the companies... a ruthless pirate might think twice about attacking and potwentially having to begin the game fresh with nothing (except their expertise). Right now the FOTD seems a bit useless and silly. Dying should hold weight, have teeth... mean something, and be costly to those who wrecklessly attack everything that moves because they know if they die there are no consequences. They can just come back to terrorize again at their same previous levels and wealth. Anyhow, as you say, this has probably been discussed umteen times before and has been rejected. Just an idea.
