A plea for more inter-crew mechanics

I don't think toxic players will stop being toxic just because they do some cooperative event. If players are swearing at other players, it's up to others to record and report or not.

A lot of what you're suggesting, depends on the playerbase. During the last adventure, where it took 2 crews to summon the shrouded ghost, I remember a LOT of griefing took place, simply because you could. People made posts here venting their frustrations, blaming the developers for not predicting this would happen. To use your example of encouraging players to trade company-exclusive items, one has to ask themselves if that ship is approaching sincerely, or with ulterior motives? If your crew is looking for victims, just pretend you want to trade. The only way to prevent any sort of pvp from happening, is to make pvp-free zones, which isn't going to happen, is riddled with problems, and is conceptually against the core of the game.

It's not up to the game developers to keep people from attacking you, allianced, co-op event, etc.

It's not up to them, you're right. But I think there's a distinct lack of any sort of additional game mechanics to encourage anything else (with the exception of alliances). I also don't think that (toxic) people are toxic all the time and there are scenarios in which you can actually encourage different behaviors from them.

@ghutar said in A plea for more inter-crew mechanics:

@astralenigma yet world event that requires two crews to start and finish it would be intresting thing.

Potential betreyal is like 99.99% but there is lot of room for some interactions ans emotions before it will go south.

This is still my dream. A world event that requires multiple crews to complete but that leaves the door open for betrayal afterwards.

The first few days of Hungering Deep (before camping started) was a prime example of this. It felt like a proper Raid. And that was before Alliances were a mechanic.

Tie the main rewards to completion and have the loot be a big bonus only and you'll find that most players will be happier. It's the completing something and getting nothing that tends to turn a lot of players toxic, as they feel their time was wasted. Make it tied to the Alliance system and you give it a reason to actually exist beyond throwing it up and sailing separately.

Have the tier and rewards increase every Season (like the COF) and you have motivation to participate.

@astralenigma said in A plea for more inter-crew mechanics:

I wasn't there for Hungering Deep I know I rejoined during the save Merrick's ghost adventure.
And what I came to the conclusion was that unless there's a way to force other players to not attack you they will do just that.

I don't think players should ever be forced to do anything, there should always be freedom to make a choice - even if that choice costs you. But I do think they're are ways to incentivise a certain playstyle. By tying it to the Alliance feature, you get halfway there. Random people coming in to attack/steal, don't get the main rewards unless they contribute first.

Unfortunately, as it stands the average ship i see in the horizon doesn't care about commendations, doesn't care about gold, they just want to hunt down ships and kill the crew.

I wouldn't say the average ship doesn't care about Commendations, but the fact is that a lot of hardcore players burn through Commendations fast and then get bored. By refreshing the Commendations every Season, you give them a reason to at least come back to that at the start of every Season.

I have my own opinions on hunting other ships and how Rare has made it too easy, but that's another topic.

So this kind of world event would die because there would be a ship killing everyone on the server that came to that event.

I'm sure there will be but, from experience with the Hundering Deep and the Shrouded Deep, there is often strength in numbers.

There will be bad outcomes but those tend to be dwarfed by the times it all worked out and everyone had a blast. Again, the Hungering Deep was like that. We had campers back then, but we also had those who specifically hunted the campers. The same thing happened with the Shrouded Deep.

By making it a longer term permanent event, rather than a limited time one, you also reduce that kind of behaviour.

Players should always have the freedom to try and steal these events, but what we saw during the limited time events was players doing it to gatekeep awards. Which isn't intended (and Rare actually made that behaviour reportable during some later co-op Adventures). But that's different to normal PvP and steals.

Add to that the fact that after the event is over there would be betrayal involved for the loot only 0.01% would try to do it and they would probably stop doing it properly after they got all the commendations.

That's why it would need to have Seasonal Commendation increases as well as new rewards and bonuses, for longevity.

Imagine if by doing the event, you also gained a temporary (say 6-hour) small boost to all reputation, would that be an incentive? Just a thought.

@astralenigma

Yeah, because alliances in practicality work like this: you go off and do your thing, I go off and do mine, and we leave each other alone, and get a small bonus for doing so.

There is no meaningful / interesting gameplay in an alliance. It's just an agreement that you will get 50% of the base value of what another crew hands in. It's no wonder that people choose to spice things up with combat when they see another crew.