Rope is an essential Pirate tool!

@treblucfayle

Exactly!

I agree with the spiderman issue. Simple thing would be that you have to manually reel the rope back in to shoot / throw the hook again. Or pick up the hook if you swing / walk into it.

So many uses:

• Get to the crows nest in style.
• Water skiing with friends
• Co-op spelunking.
• Faster ascent when diving to get back to surface before choking.
• Tripping friends and foes and skeletons.
• Swing to board a ship from your mast.
• Ride a Megladon / Shark.
• Easier docking of a rowboat
• Could allow for some interesting puzzles

@ender-enderson Cool! Post link and I'll read it.

@odysseyhome said in Rope is an essential Pirate tool!:

One last post for the day. Lol. Don't want to spam!

One thing I've seen in pirate films and books is using ropes to swing on the ship into battle, grapple up onto cliffs, hoist chests up or down terrain or onto ships... Rope is an essential commodoty for sailors.

I guess we've got the self-cannon capability so it's not super important, but it's an interesting idea to contemplate. Rope is hard to code and program but it would really fit with the game's concept of 'tools'.

It'd be cool to have a grapple hook tool that can be used to attach to surfaces / objects and allow for swinging and rappeling, or slowly pulling objects it sticks to towards you (or tripping them) or oneself towards the object. Could use it to do water skiing...

Just a fun thought. What do people thing. If you had a grapple hook what antics would your mischevious pirate get up to?

I want to swing on a rope and grappling hook would be cool as well

@bugaboo-bill Ah didn't know bout that, dam. Would you say the problem is due to climbing or swinging or both?

@a-cranky-eskimo In my brain I was thinking a more Zelda breath of the wild approach.

Rope climbing is hard! So if they're willing to climb the mountain cliff going hand over hand with a rope that'll take more time than taking the actual path. Let 'em. Maybe give em a nice achievement!

I agree with the worry that a grapple "gun" would break things. But slow manually reeled hand over hand ropes that you use to connect two points together. It's a sailor's tool! Lots of interesting possibilities...

@a-cranky-eskimo I guess I'll have to go do that Tall Tale and come back n report, lol!

There might be work-arounds, though... either you can only 'grapple' to specific items or 'targets', or perhaps the Hookshot grapple could simply be disabled in certain areas.

I get to trot this out for like the 5th time since I made it :P

@a-cranky-eskimo

From a game dev perspective the harpoon isn't a true rope; I think it's a simple line renderer and the physics is more linking two points directly then moving objects to eachother based on object mass (Move ship to rock, move barrel to ship).

The rope can't bend or wrap or knot like true rope... Not many games try this since it's computationally expensive and physics is hard to debug and isn't always "fun". It'd be too taxing for the online nature of this game perhaps...

But there are workarounds. Rope can be approximated as a series of connected beads kinda like how the game "snake pass" does it's snake physics. Climbing can be removing beads and increasing the "reel" of rope, kinda like how Uncharted 4 does it's grapple rope.

In my mind players have the rope item and can carry three. When holding it they can tie the rope to objects by interacting, then press attack / guard buttons to unspool or reel the rope. They can also let go to leave it unspoiled. Players can then interact with the rope like ladders.

Rope over time braids and will snap. More weight more braiding. So to stop exploitation and encourage rope scavaging. Can also cut / shot rope to break it.

Additionally players have a new "anchor" tool. Like the fishing rod bait players can attach rope to it, they can then bola throw the anchor like a grapple hook. Guard detaches the anchor with a yank. Attack does hand over hand climbing / pulling if you walk backwards...

Additionally the anchor could be used as a way to fast dive in water to save on air descending so have more exploration and surfacing breath. With a rope you could have some cool coop diving where pirates on the ship can pull divers up faster...

Like I've said this would open up sooooo many opportunities. Pull Skellies to / away from water / light. Tie up other players. Create traps with gun powder. Swing on masts... Tie rope to rope...

Hope this articulates my vision. I don't want a pirate harpoon gun, I want actual tactile physical rope between my sailor hands! Lol!

@OdysseyHome This is an awesome idea, but I unfortunately think it's a Rule of Cool™ suggestion and won't be practical to add. Like you've said, I think it'd probably end up being too taxing on the game, and especially on the servers, which are already pretty taxed.

@ambiguousmonk

I think the main issue would be finding the sweet spot between believability and consistency. So the tax is spending time polishing something that may not turn out good in the end.

Rope is odd because it's like an infinite series of nodes in a chain for any length. So less nodes and the rope doesn't look or behave like rope... It behaves more like rubber Bungie cord if the nodes can stretch or chain links if they stay at fixed length; both would have odd game feel.

But hey, my pirate can eat whole coconuts so am okay with a bit of cartoon physics. I'm sure Rare could do it if they wanted to; but it's cost benefit. Rope vs new adventures...

I'd still want rope! But, know it's the wrong choice from a business game as service sense.

@odysseyhome Yeah, it's surely a creative and cool suggestion, but the issue is the practicality. I'm find with cartoony physics if it comes to that, but it making it smooth and actually functional might be too difficult to warrant actual implementation.

@a-cranky-eskimo There is one empty tool slot in the tool wheel so I hope it could be filled with something in the future.

That slot triggers my OCD for completeness. It must be filled for the game to be 'complete', haha!

Diving and or Climbing tool I hope :)

@a-cranky-eskimo said in Rope is an essential Pirate tool!:

I just wish 90% of our good suggestions weren't constantly on the list of what you said above for rare.

I totally get that, but people frequently forget that the devs for SoT have a very specific vision for this game. Above and beyond anything else, they are going to make the game they want to make. They may bend that vision to fit the community's requests, but there's no guarantee and that's a good thing. They are free to take or leave any of our suggestions depending on if they fit their vision or not. The other thing to keep in mind is that while some are well versed as players in the game, none of us (probably) are experts in game design/programming, so our good suggestions may only be good on paper and not very good on the technical/design end. In the end, if you (or me) haven't done it yourself before, you don't actually know what goes into making a certain game suggestion happen. The devs will know and are this better suited to make an informed decision

Because it dosnt seem to so consistently be a problem when i see other completed games, though maybe this is just a symptom of us being allowed a view in and to give feedback during development.

I think that you got it right. Being on the inside of feedback and suggestions, one naturally sees more "failed" feedback and suggestions. Every game always has a ton of user suggestions and relatively none of it is implemented because, as I said, users are generally not experts and don't actually know the details of what they suggest.

Either way i hope some cool new tools in the same theme of physics and sandbox based additions are coming to SoT.

Me too! And I'm sure they are, but literally the most important thing to remember is that development takes time and often a lot of it.