Unnerf Merchants

  • Flashkannon5118
    Rogue

    It's been a long time coming. I rarely see merchants out on the sea, but who can blame them? The rewards for their efforts have been dwindled to near-nothing, and the hungry pirates of the waves have never been more numerous. Here's my proposed changes, that could make merchants more rewarding to play. Nothing that hasn't been in the game before, nothing that would require too much coding, and nothing that requires more assets.

    1. Animal crates appear on your ship when you start the voyage, and give 6-10 animals, instead of just 4.
      This is a solid fix for the problem introduced by dives, whereby collecting a mass of animal crates suddenly required a bunch of sailing. It was doable for PvP, for the hourglass supply crates, so it should be doable here. Number fix is for a simple reason - nobody else's treasure can die on its own or kill their other treasure.

    2. Cargo voyages end when their crates get picked up, and give 6-8 crates, instead of just 4.
      Another relatively simple fix - it used to work like this actually. Allows the kind of multitasking and sidegrade activities of which the merchants were once capable. As for the increase, nobody else's treasure can be destroyed by rain, lack of rain, or a single cannonball from any source.

    3. Increase Lost Shipment rewards
      This one is... well, the rewards have gotten rather small, of late, from the downsizing of the crates you used to get from the clue locations, to the hoard itself being mostly sugars.

    4. Distribute the coral small merchant items more widely.
      I promised "no new models needed" at the top of this post, so I won't call for non-coral variants to be added, but this is well past time, now that you can run with small items.

    That's the list, but, outside of the constraints of my header, I'd also like to suggest, there could be a fun X marks the spot for merchants, where you dig up a rum cache, or a chest of coffers or whatnot. Plenty of merchant goods keep, you know?

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  • DrBensei
    Master
    Insider
    1. They already drop at the island you're going to, and catching random animals only rewards peanuts. I don't really see the problem here?
    2. This was removed because people exploited it.

    3 and 4 sounds fair.

    I also think commodities could need a buff. Loading stuff onto your boat takes too much time and the gold value isn't really worth the effort. If it's more interesting to do, it would also be easier to complete the "stolen stock" commendation

  • blackscales20
    Castaway

    I like the idea of hunting for ore or resources, getting a unique tool like a pickax to do so. Having to know what islands certain stuff is at, and the good stuff being more challenging to get. Like certain minerals attract certain enemies that kinda thing. With the other companies having unique compasses or lanterns, it should be too big of an add.

  • Flashkannon5118
    Rogue

    @drbensei said in Unnerf Merchants:

    1. They already drop at the island you're going to, and catching random animals only rewards peanuts. I don't really see the problem here?

    Having the crates on voyage drop allows you to, say, get a bunch of animal crates at the start of your trip, then pick up a bunch of animals as you proceed, and turn them in as the voyage calls for it, rather than the direct acquire crates to deliver those specific animals pipeline.

    1. This was removed because people exploited it.

    Exploited? How so? Having multiple voyages worth of crates onboard at one time is no more exploit than having completing multiple voyages without turning in the loot with any other faction. Unless you're talking about a specific exploit?

    3 and 4 sounds fair.

    I also think commodities could need a buff. Loading stuff onto your boat takes too much time and the gold value isn't really worth the effort. If it's more interesting to do, it would also be easier to complete the "stolen stock" commendation

    True. I wanted to mention it, but second guessed it. I've personally been sitting at 40/50 on that for a long time.

    Also, gotta say, it'd be nice if you could sell smuggler stuff to the merchants for a portion of their usual premium. Half or a third or so. I'd gladly scoop it up, then.

  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    required a bunch of sailing

    Yup. Let’s continue to reduce sailing in this ship pirate game.

  • Flashkannon5118
    Rogue

    @burnbacon said in Unnerf Merchants:

    required a bunch of sailing

    Yup. Let’s continue to reduce sailing in this ship pirate game.

    Man, c'mon. That's not the point at all. This is about stocking up on empty crates before you sail out to go have fun on a big multi-island gold animal hunt. Besides, this is closer to how it was initially, before the dive update, with a modern twist of not needing to collect them from the merchant and harpoon them.

  • xDreegan
    Ship Mate

    @flashkannon5118 said in Unnerf Merchants:

    @burnbacon said in Unnerf Merchants:

    required a bunch of sailing

    Yup. Let’s continue to reduce sailing in this ship pirate game.

    Man, c'mon. That's not the point at all. This is about stocking up on empty crates before you sail out to go have fun on a big multi-island gold animal hunt. Besides, this is closer to how it was initially, before the dive update, with a modern twist of not needing to collect them from the merchant and harpoon them.

    Ignore them. They're only really active on these forums to shut down people's ideas or tell them to quit playing. Better off not engaging.

  • SweetSandMan
    Legend
    Insider

    The un-nerf for Merchants that I'd like to see is for them to take commodities back to the original values. They were worth a TON, but you also had to spend a ton on each item. It was one of the most unique high risk/high reward mechanics in the game. It still is unique, but now it's just kinda low risk and doesn't have that "end game" feel that they had when they were originally introduced.

  • A Popular Vote
    Seafarer

    I'd love to see more complex voyages, even if they're just remixes of what is already present. Animal or Cargo voyages that require you to travel to multiple islands to pick up goods all going to one place? Chained Cargo Deliveries, where you pick up at point A, drop off at point B, then pick up more goods at B for point C. And just bigger deliveries all around; I understand that they wanted to make the voyages more bite-sized, but 4 crates/animals is not a lot! Especially considering the captain's voyages used to have 8-12, and the emissary quests guaranteed 10 cargo crates! There currently just isn't a way to capture the same feeling of having your ship crammed with treasure that every other company has by default due to the way voyages have been changed. I do not think it is either a game imbalancing or logistically unreasonable ask for the voyages to return to functioning in such a way that the deck of my ship can be barely visible due to the small forest of ferns I have on it.

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