[Mega Thread] Balancing Exploration and Player Combat - Part 2
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I think it's a brilliant PvP FPS game.
The mechanics reward cooperation and don't (or barely) punish failure. Which is how to make a non-toxic PvP game.
You also have some MMO-like elements.. but people are misunderstanding what sort of game this is at heart.
It's a quest-driven capture the flag game.
Adding bounties to players undermines the value of "the flag" (treasure yet to be handed in) or removing the ability to intercept the flag carrier (a 100% PvE environment) undermines the fundamental gameplay (unless somehow an AI skelly ship threat is acceptable where players are not).
Combat is balanced and skill based, but people seem reluctant to accept even the notion of failure (despite an almost entire absence of detrimental consequences for it).
Where you might make changes for exploration is either have detail added to your charts as you discover things (player created waypoints or just fog-revealed) and perhaps rewards of items or treasure unique to a location.
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@princes-lettuce Developers tend to say a lot of things before a game is released. But once their bottom line is at stake, they change tune quickly. There's no way Rare isn't going to implement some sort of a PvE or safe zone mechanic, mainly because Microsoft won't let them be stubborn mules as they poured a lot of money in this game and want it to be successful.
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@smoke-potion You want to be rewarded for being a troll that thinks this is a tactical pirate simulator? You may want to wait until Ubisoft creates Tom Clancy's Pirate Warfare, but in the meantime you may want to put this game down as this is supposed to be a silly lighthearted shared world adventure game. You are exactly the reason many of us are requesting these changes. There's a reason the game doesn't exactly reward people like you, and that is because it is not meant to be that kind of a game.
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@maximus1978 The respawn issue and battles for forts becoming wars of contrition is not why people are asking for PVE servers. They are asking because a small toxic part of the player base turns the game into COD on the water and they have no other option at that point but to quit out and hope they can find a better server randomly or just find another game.
The imbalance is that if someone just wants PVP they can force that onto everyone they meet but for people that just want PVE there's nothing they can do. Giving people the option is what makes for a better experience for all because then the PVP players get their servers and can go nuts and the PVE players don't have to worry about harassment all the time. Mind you I'm not talking about just getting sunk and robbed that should be part of the game as is. I am talking about people getting chased and sunk over and over even when there is no chance they could have loot of any kind, or spawn camped on their boat until they manage to scuttle. That is turning people away and a lot of people that might otherwise come back after the free pass glut is over just plain won't now.
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Here's another way they could fix that problem:
They could implement a best of three type of thing for battles. If you lose two battles against a ship/pirate regardless of if you are the attacker or defender, then for the remainder of your play session you are at peace with that ship/pirate and can't attack each other.
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@greaseman85 Sounds like you didnt pay attention to what Rare is making in the least bit
The game is made so that money doesn't mean much, so if you lose it, it's no big deal. This game was marketed, from the very start, to people like me. Why do you think rare refuses to make a pve server. Im not acting like a troll, im playing a pvp game. If you want to farm quests, there are games for that. this is a game based completely around 100% fair pvp. During alpha and Beta (were you paying attention to game then?) Almost 100% of the content Rare put out and spoke about was how great this game is, when you have groups of people working together to fight over eachothers treasure.
Heck, most of my pvp is me (a 2 man sloop) vs you (a four man galleon)
But then again, it sounds like you're a [Mod edited] as we call you, so no amount of common sense will persuade you into seeing the merits of my argument, even with months and months of data to back it up.
All that being said, the PVP side of the game is lacking content. All we have is warm fuzzies for sinking our ships most days. And sure that goes with pvp (almost across the board, pvp is always the least paying job in all pvp type games, you don't want to pay people to much for killing others, after all) But I feel that a balance can be made, and it will curve a chunk of what people complain about.
But hey, that's just the opinion of a pvp player that's been playing since early beta
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Man alive. It's not a PVP game, it's not a PVE game, people need to stop asserting that it's one or the other, and stop asking for it to be more of either, otherwise the game will be destroyed. And it's really unhelpful because it distracts from constructive discussion about how to get the exploration/combat balance right without changing the game's core principles. I get just as frustrated as anyone if I've spent time collecting treasure and have it stolen, but that's integral to the game.
I do think we need something in place to stop people playing the game like a deathmatch though - perhaps there should be some kind of penalty for 'pointless' killing or sinking? No idea how to achieve that in a fair way though. Maybe some way to know when a ship may be carrying loot? But sinking a ship without at least the intention of stealing treasure/goods really shouldn't be a legitimate part of the game.
We do have to remember that these are the core principles of the game balance:
1. It will kill the game if there are PVE-only servers
Those PVE servers would lose the excitement of danger, and the PVP-enabled servers would lose all the 'friendly' players and just turn into deathmatches. The game needs both kinds of players co-existing (along with those who play in both ways).2. It will kill the game if any kind of kill stats or sinking stats are ever tracked
As Rare have made very clear, as soon as you track those stats it becomes a legitimate incentive for players to score kills for the sake of kills - at the moment it's just boredom or bloodthirsty tendencies, but ultimately pointless. If you legitimise it the game will just turn into a deathmatch again.3. It will kill the game if there is any 'vertical' progression
The experience gap will make it impossible for more casual or time-poor players to compete. The strong will get stronger, everyone else will get fed up, and the game will not be what it is meant to be. -
PvP has made the game completely unenjoyable to me. I stopped playing the game and I don't think I'll touch it ever again unless I can opt out of PvP somehow, just like pure PvP players can completely opt out of everything that I find fun.
Leaving the forums as well as I am so tired of writing about this and not being read. People just answer with why I'm wrong without reading what I actually posted, the developers seem to completely ignore everything that means friendly interaction, is crazy, at this point is just ridiculous.
Not looking back.
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@moomintroll Well for your Core Principles I'm just going to say this right now if Rare doesn't solve this issue of pve vs pvp in the near future (next month or so) then the game will be basically killed. I know a bunch of youtubers and streamers are having complaints about the game. (not enough content, camping, as well as other issues). After playing the betas I decided this game wasn't worth my money. Nothing really stood out other than the graphics and the social interaction which got kinda boring after 100-150 hours of playing. Yes there was a little added content from the beta/scale test to the full game but not worth $60 for a pvp (practically battle royale) game.
Edit: you might wonder why I am posting on the forums since i havent bought the game. Well I come back to check if I should buy the game or not as I'm on the fence. Each time I do come back I decide the game isn't worth my money nor time to just get frustrated at. Live a simple happy life is my motto! Why waste money on something that makes you angry?
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Well, I've uninstalled again. It's now arrived at a point where I can't reliably be logged in for ten whole minutes without being attacked because there is usually an aggressive ship in or near visual range when I first spawn in. I am being chased nearly as soon as I set sail, more often than not.
I am still waiting for the video to be released next week, but I honestly doubt they will have anything to say that will address my concerns. Beyond their maddeningly tight lipped, deliberately vague statements about their intentions for the future, we can also briefly examine the two really definitive things they have done with regards to PvE vs. PvP.
First, they declared in no uncertain terms that PvE areas and safe zones are never going to happen. No statements about something that will be coming, just one about something that won't.
Then they for some unfathomable reason thought it would be a good idea to further marginalize PvE enthusiasts by trying to introduce a death fee that would have discouraged pretty much every kind of play except PvP, the one kind of death they said would be safe.
In short, despite their claims to the contrary, the game's current design takes many steps to accommodate players' desire to fight one another, but actively forces players who want to avoid that to b*******r backwards just to participate in a marginal way. Further, the only movement or communication on this subject (at least since the Scale Tests) have been directly or indirectly against PvE game play. So like I said, still waiting, but not holding my breath, and not bothering to play at all in the meantime. As always, thanks for reading.
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Sigh. Here is another example. As many of the replies to this tweet have stated in one way or another, this would mostly serve to make solo and casual play even more difficult than they already are. My confidence in this game's future and the intentions of it's developers is in tatters right now.
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@moomintroll said in [Mega Thread] Balancing Exploration and Player Combat - Part 2:
Man alive. It's not a PVP game, it's not a PVE game, people need to stop asserting that it's one or the other, and stop asking for it to be more of either, otherwise the game will be destroyed. And it's really unhelpful because it distracts from constructive discussion about how to get the exploration/combat balance right without changing the game's core principles. I get just as frustrated as anyone if I've spent time collecting treasure and have it stolen, but that's integral to the game.
I do think we need something in place to stop people playing the game like a deathmatch though - perhaps there should be some kind of penalty for 'pointless' killing or sinking? No idea how to achieve that in a fair way though. Maybe some way to know when a ship may be carrying loot? But sinking a ship without at least the intention of stealing treasure/goods really shouldn't be a legitimate part of the game.
We do have to remember that these are the core principles of the game balance:
1. It will kill the game if there are PVE-only servers
Those PVE servers would lose the excitement of danger, and the PVP-enabled servers would lose all the 'friendly' players and just turn into deathmatches. The game needs both kinds of players co-existing (along with those who play in both ways).2. It will kill the game if any kind of kill stats or sinking stats are ever tracked
As Rare have made very clear, as soon as you track those stats it becomes a legitimate incentive for players to score kills for the sake of kills - at the moment it's just boredom or bloodthirsty tendencies, but ultimately pointless. If you legitimise it the game will just turn into a deathmatch again.3. It will kill the game if there is any 'vertical' progression
The experience gap will make it impossible for more casual or time-poor players to compete. The strong will get stronger, everyone else will get fed up, and the game will not be what it is meant to be.The sacred core principles! I posted this about a month ago:
"When push comes to shove, how much will they continue to advocate for that magical, core concept or is the slip toward madness so gradual no one will notice until it's too late. Many will chalk it up to, well, that's the game now and throw the core concept out the proverbial window. Yeah, it was sacred just long enough to hit people over the head with it in the forums."
The game is falling apart at the seams because while the art of the game is beautiful and everyone loves pirates and buried treasure almost as much as bacon, many of the mechanics are deeply flawed and the forced marriage of PvP and PvE is held together with duct tape and bailing wire. The two playstyles are destroying each other all in an effort of balance. See skull forts as exhibit A. It requires too many compromises that result in a frustrating experience for everyone. Well, almost everyone except those milquetoast people in the middle that no one ever likes.
Bob: "Come on guys, can't we all just get along?"
Everyone else: "NO!"Worst case scenario: Rare will string everyone along as long as they can as they look forward to that sweet, sweet micro-transaction loot in 2-3 months and sails into mediocrity on the S.S. Game Pass powered by hot air and core principles.
Best case scenario: A great game emerges in the next few years, one that eschews the core principles and expands to all sorts of different sandboxes.
Rare Studio Head on Sea of Thieves Post-Launch Plans — IGN Unfiltered - IGN
The team looks at Sea of Thieves as an experience that will grow as people return to it in the months and years ahead
Duncan went on to highlight out how the game's success will ultimately benefit Rare as a whole, saying, "The bigger we can make Sea of Thieves, the more opportunity it brings for Rare in the future." He noted that while they've invested the past three years making the game what it is today, the team looks at Sea of Thieves as an experience that will grow as people return to it in the months and years ahead. "If people are playing it in five years or 10 years and it's a very different shaped game, that's awesome for us as well," he said.
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@mrguymm I really feel for you man, and do agree something should be done. I would probably feel the same if I'd had such a negative experience, but I have to say it's not the case at all. Some sessions I'm left alone for hours, other sessions I try to collect some quests and have to take detours to avoid trouble, occasionally I get surprise attacked, sometimes I get into battles (although never on purpose). Clearly there is a huge disparity in the experiences people are having, and it can't just be bad luck.
I'm starting to wonder if there are regional or time-based differences in play styles - where do you live and when do you play? I'm in the UK and usually play between 9pm and 1am, and occasionally around 9am to midday at weekends.
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@moomintroll yeah, fair enough... I was pretty salty when I wrote that, I've now made a couple one word edits at the beginning to tone it down a touch. The point remains though, which, in the end, is that when I consider logging in to play, I don't and can't know if there will be any way for me to have fun. It's all up to when and where I encounter other players, and what they want to do, coupled with the fact that my chronic symptoms usually prevent me playing very long. It almost doesn't actually matter when an aggressive player makes a move on me, once they decide they're going to chase me it's pretty rare they give up before my poor health forces me to log out. If I had a faster, unarmed ship, one designed for escape, that would be something. If I could choose to spawn into a low population instance, that would be something. There are a number of other things that would make the game enjoyable for me, I'm sure at least a few of which would not break the game in any major way. That's the only reason I'm even still here on the forums, because RARE does have a history of listening and responding, even if they haven't made any promising moves on this particular subject, and I'm hopeful they will at least say something to address concerns such as mine in the upcoming video. Even if they don't I'll most likely stop back in every few months to see what's up. I paid my $60, and so I'm not giving up entirely... just mostly ;)
Also, I am in Western US. I've tried playing at all times of day and night, nothing seems to have a particularly large over- or under-population here. Sometimes I get lucky and can sail alone (or at least un-attacked) for a while, but not nearly often enough.
Also also, thanks for the friendly reply, that's always a refreshing change from the "Game is fine, go away" sort of replies dissatisfied customers such as myself sometimes get.
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@mrguymm No worries man - I do think we need some way for people to be able to decisively shake off pursuers in these kinds of situations, but it's a really hard thing to balance. There would have to be some kind of penalty for doing it, but no idea what 'it' could be, or how the penalty could work!!
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@mrloadedpotato Ha ha, fair points. I still think it's those core principles that make the game sing, but I do agree that something doesn't quite work. Glad I'm not paid to try to work it out though!!
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EvilAlienHybrid
why doesnt Rare introduce the british army and you buy bountys on people in the game instead of voyageschange the game back so your ship doesnt spawn miles away after being sunk...thats garbage
EvilAlienHybrid
why doesnt Rare introduce the british army and you buy bountys on people in the game instead of voyageschange the game back so your ship doesnt spawn miles away after being sunk...thats garbage
and please just get rid of the skeleton fortress...its the worst thing in the game everyone goes for it its so annoying
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@moomintroll PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKULL FORTRESS...GET RID OF IT OR MAKE IT SO PEOPLE CANT ATTACK YOU WHILE YOU HAVE JUST SPENT THE LAST 2 HRS FIGHTING IT....DO SOMETHING!!!!! ITS THE WORST THING IN THE GAME....BY MILES AND MILES...IT BASICALLY IS RUINING THE GAME....I CAN PLAY FOR 8 HRS STRAIGHT AND NOT SEE ANOTHER PERSON WHILE IM VOYAGING BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL JUST TRYING TO GET THE FORTRESS LOOT....EITHER NERF THE LOOT YOU GET DRASTICALLY AT THE FORTRESS OR RAISE THE VALUE OF ALL THE LOOT IN THE VOYAGES...I CAN SAIL AROUND VOYAGING FOR HRS AND HRS AND HAVE 20 CHESTS ON MY SHIP AND 15 OF THEM ARE CASTAWAY CHESTS WHICH ARE WORTHLESS AND THERE IS NO POINT IN EVEN PUTTING THE TIME IN TO END UP WITH 1...3 WILL BE SEAFARER CHESTS AND THEN 1 CAPTAIN AND 1 MARAUDER...ITS c**p...ITS COMPLETELY DISHEARTENING AND MAKES YOU GO WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER I MIGHT ASWELL BE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE AND JUST CONSTANTLY ATTACK THE STUPID SKELETON FORTRESS!...JUST GET RID OF THE SKELETON FORTRESS ..RAISE THE VALUE OF ALL LOOT AND ADD ALOT MORE STUFF TO THE GAME...TRUST ME THE SKELETON FORT WILL NOT BE MISSED..
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Need the same progression as a skully gets as we progress as we rank enemy is more and stronger and we dont progress at all to help us fight take 3 shot to kill skully you have only 5 shots kinda not fair weapons real weak and after this weekend wont play any more weekends to much pvp players at each rock so will play thru week its all about PVE for us to rank Ego PVP this game would be Perfect if they gave us a PVE away from PVP that want nothing but to screw your day up hope Rare will see this just look at pvp players stats there not even trying to rank up it about ego only give us a option to play with pvp or pve that will make this game PERFECT Love this game hate seeing pvp keep hurting it just my 2 cents
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@smoke-potion said in [Mega Thread] Balancing Exploration and Player Combat - Part 2:
But hey, that's just the opinion of a pvp player that's been playing since early beta
This is totally irrelevant. Many of us, including myself, have been playing since the first beta.
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There needs to be better balance with fighting other ships around skull forts. Because the map isn't HUGE per say. Even when u spawn 12 squares away. you can come back after being sunk. Theres no reward system for sinking ships and there should be. Or at the very least a time restriction before heading back to the skull fort. This is very annoying when you're trying to get a skull fort and griefers just sit around disallowing anyone to take it.
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I have been excited for this game for awhile and loved the beta. but ever since launch its been nothing but two hour ship battles with no end and raids that last three hours just to have one guy sneak in and steal the key and run away which leads to an hour chase which cant be won. this and the fact that during a raid or in general combat a ship can continuously come back over and over makes the game unplayable and hopefully this will be changed along with people camping on your ship!
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I've spent a lot of time thinking about this.
My temper is constantly jumping back and forth between being angry about the game and being in a state of "hm, I know what I'm getting into".What I truly dislike is this:
The amount of physics put into sailing is amazing. Being a sailor myself I'm stunned by how good it is. OTOH the hand-to-hand combat is the exact opposite. It's Quake 2-style bunnyhopping and super annoying.
The 5-shot-per-gun situation is an issue (for me) but I think this could be fixed by making it possible to place one (!) additional ammo crate per ship/crew anywhere on the map.
So the ammo crate we have now remains where it is, but you can bring one additional crate with you.The fortress situation is just frustrating. So you spend 1.5hrs fighting through it, face the boss and get wrecked by another crew that just snatches "your" loot.
It's important to understand the message:
I'm not saying it has to be changed, I'm just saying that it's VERY frustrating (to a degree that I deleted the game).We sat together with the crew and decided to simply not go for the Fortresses anymore because after some empiric research we figured out that the amount of gold/hour you get while voyaging is about the same - just without the potential frustration.
I think the real issue boils down to this:
Attacking another vessel out of "let's ruin some people's day" comes with no cost.
You attack, you might loose but that's it. No implications whatsoever.
So people sail around the seas doing just that... trying to ruin somebody else's day.
If the game had some sort of "crew X initiated fight A" mechanism RARE could try to balance around lost fights.
So say you sail somewhere, initiate a fight and lose:
RARE could remove either gold or reputation.
From a story-base perspective this also makes sense... you're not a legendary pirate of you constantly lose battles, are you?
I would also advise against incentivising winning battles. This would just make the game a bunnyhopping cartoon. -
I think PvE and safe zones shouldn't be included...
however not adding some sort of social space or social element on a progression system designed purely on cosmetics is a bit blindsided to what gamers love. They love being the best and looking the best. So far you can be the best by murdering everyone, but there is no avenue to show off your pirate and what you have achieved in your pirate life time.
all games with heavy customisation have some form of social hub, a seperate instance based area designed for trading/showing off. Look at the success of fortnite/warframe/WoW etc etc... a huge part of the community is about looking cool and higher level than others. all have social zones designed just for such an occasion.
My idea is a big castle fort on one square of the map, you park your ship enter 2 sets of doors. between which is a loading time pushing you into a social space instance (any treasure that remains on your ship will be lost since you will desync from the server) and now you have an instanced based social space which you could possible up the player count, add mini games, maybe unique items can be purchased.
Give me a reason to buy these cosmetics, PvP is a pointless endeavor in its current form where progression is tied to cosmetics, no one will see me and see that i am pirate legend (if i ever get there).
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@lefaux2 said in [Mega Thread] Balancing Exploration and Player Combat - Part 2:
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this.
My temper is constantly jumping back and forth between being angry about the game and being in a state of "hm, I know what I'm getting into".What I truly dislike is this:
The amount of physics put into sailing is amazing. Being a sailor myself I'm stunned by how good it is. OTOH the hand-to-hand combat is the exact opposite. It's Quake 2-style bunnyhopping and super annoying.
The 5-shot-per-gun situation is an issue (for me) but I think this could be fixed by making it possible to place one (!) additional ammo crate per ship/crew anywhere on the map.
So the ammo crate we have now remains where it is, but you can bring one additional crate with you.The fortress situation is just frustrating. So you spend 1.5hrs fighting through it, face the boss and get wrecked by another crew that just snatches "your" loot.
It's important to understand the message:
I'm not saying it has to be changed, I'm just saying that it's VERY frustrating (to a degree that I deleted the game).We sat together with the crew and decided to simply not go for the Fortresses anymore because after some empiric research we figured out that the amount of gold/hour you get while voyaging is about the same - just without the potential frustration.
I think the real issue boils down to this:
Attacking another vessel out of "let's ruin some people's day" comes with no cost.
You attack, you might loose but that's it. No implications whatsoever.
So people sail around the seas doing just that... trying to ruin somebody else's day.
If the game had some sort of "crew X initiated fight A" mechanism RARE could try to balance around lost fights.
So say you sail somewhere, initiate a fight and lose:
RARE could remove either gold or reputation.
From a story-base perspective this also makes sense... you're not a legendary pirate of you constantly lose battles, are you?
I would also advise against incentivising winning battles. This would just make the game a bunnyhopping cartoon.the skeleton forts are my crews favorite time in the game. because we know everyone else will be attacking and griefing each other at the fort, we can actually get to play the game as intended. its a lot of fun actually, a little on edge but still focused on the task at hand. love it!
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Two ideas to make the game more social and do something against people being "outpost-camped".
First thing would be to implement a fleet-feature, which basicly allows to merge crews that met at sea (as long as they stay in close proximity). They act as one crew with quest objectives and booty being shared between them. That would make the game much more social and allow for easier teamwork at forts.
Other thing is to balance out pvp-rewards. As mentiend above most ships engaging in pvp don't have anything to lose while others on a way to the outpost have.
My idea is to give the crew who sinks the other's ship a gold reward or have some loot being generated for them to pick up, but not actually touching what was on board of the sunken ship.
Let's say they get:
- 1 item per member of the defeated crew
- Item quality depends on the size of the winning crew compared to the losing one (big crew sinks solo player = 1 castaway chest, 2 man sloop taking on a big galleon = 4 Marauder chests or so)
- A bonus depending on how much stuff the sunken ship had (which would be deducted from the losing crew's payout) so there's an incentive to still not fill up the ship with treasure.
People would still have something to lose (but also something to win), but not everything they worked for, so they may engage in ship combat more often.
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One balance I'd love to see is the blunderbuss damage to players taken down a notch to emphasize sword fights more. I mean all of us can jump on a ship run straight up to someone and blast them at point blank for a one hit kill. But there's not much sport in it. Now I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple as I make it. But I think a movement in that direction would help.
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Longer death waiting times for larger crews; the larger the crew, the longer it takes for them to respawn if you kill them. This gives smaller/solo crews a more fighting chance of escaping from or looting a larger crew, and would make larger crews think twice or be more strategic in attacking smaller crews.
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I posted this elsewhere but I wanted to make sure the experience was shared:
I'm mainly a PvE player. This is by choice because my past experiences with PvP in other games made me realize it turns me into a player/person I don't like to be. Since the launch day I've avoided PvP in SoT for that reason. That being said, our galleon crew teamed up with a sloop crew at an outpost and nocked out a lot of the achievements then we decided to set sail together. A skull fort came up. We decided to give it a look. There were two ships already teamed up taking in the event. I got nervous when we decided to engage but I thought I should at the least give all aspects of the game a try. In the end we sank them, they came back and sank us and people decided they didn't have the time to try again. In that time though I learned that PvP in this game was not what I was expecting. It was different, refreshing, invigorating, and nerve-racking. To speak plainly, it was fun. We got a whole lot of nothing done for a while because if it but the experience made up for it. It also emboldened me to take chances and fight back every once in a while. I even ended up thwarted an attack from an aggressor later in the evening. Ended up chasing them down, sinking the ship. They boarded ours, one died and the other jumped ship. So in closing, to all my PvE comrades, don't shy away from combat here. Sure pick and choose when and where as the mood strike you. Rare has put in a fair system and it's enjoyable and enriches the experience. Don't worry so much about that loot, it's just a game after all; you'll have plenty of time to make up for any losses.
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@lacyclover26906 That's a nice experience, but many of us aren't saying we don't want to engage other ships in combat. I've had (and watched) many other nice experiences like you describe, but I've also dealt with (and watched others deal with) lots of toxic players. You see, when you attacked the other pirates who were doing a skull fort event, you sank them, they came back and sank you, and that was it, you left them alone and they continued doing what they were doing before. It didn't become an infinite game of trying to fight each other over and over again. You seem like the type of player this game needs more of. There are however certain things that need to change to make the game even more enjoyable and help combat the toxic players.
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Ok... I've put over 100 hours into this game and have some simple direct feedback that will have the largest positive impact on the game from my perspective (excluding bugs).
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Ship respawn is still too close for skeleton forts. A simple fix would be adding a parameter where ships cannot respawn within x distance of an active fort. It should be very far to allow you to potentially finish the fort before the defeated ship returns with new supplies.
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Right now, quests get much harder, but the rewards are the same. Let's get more experience/skull, chest, or merchant for harder quests. It's fine gold-wise if you want to have foul skulls drop from 5 waves of golden skellys with blunderbusses, but give us way more experience for those quests. Saavy?
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This next one is juicy. When you join a server as a crew, the total of all the crew's reputation should be added together to create a total crew rank. Players should be able to go to the tavern to see all other crews currently on the seas (server) with the associated rank and a picture of their ship (and name of the ship when that comes). Imagine seeing a crew with a total score of almost 500! You know they're a terror on the seas and it will add to the "Lengend" element when you see their sales on the horizon. It would also be cool to see unique player stats like ships sunk, pirates killed, and gold accrued when looking at the crew. You could also incorporate the bounty system into this feature where a crew's bounty increases as they sink other ships (most bounty) and complete quests. After a few hours of sailing, a good crew could rack up a bounty of 1K that could be seen from the tavern list. If a ship sinks another ship with a bounty, then the bounty marker would float to the surface as chests would, and could be turned in to redeem the bounty. It would be cool to have an old battle-hardened storyteller in the tavern where you could access the information listed above as if he is telling you the legends of the local seas.
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Some Legendary Ship/Captain Ideas to for endgame incentive/flavor: a) Extra player slot per ship Sloop (3) Galleon (5) etc. or you could just have the legendary ship have one more slot than the current highest. b) Moves at full speed regardless of sail direction. c) Perpetual storm effect surrounding the ship that only effects opponents (compass, lighting, and rain). It would be cool to turn this on/off. d) Obviously from PotC, you could summon the kraken or other beast, but wouldn't be able to move your own ship while the enemy is under beast attack. e) It also could be cool to have your crew turn to shadow skellys at night... maybe. All of these features do add a slight advantage, but they also add flavor and a new experience to everyone in the crew, so I think it's good for the game. I love your approach to keep advantage even, but if you stick too hard to that, you'll hurt long-term incentive and game variety.
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NPC ships from the Navy, skeleton crews, and other legendary ships is a no-brainer. This should be added asap. Ship combat is one of the coolest parts of the game, and PVP doesn't represent this well since it's so easy to repair cannon damage. NPCs could foster more ship combat with those sweet cannons. The excitement of a skeleton fort popping up is one of the coolest parts of the game. NPC ships would definitely add to that excitement and anticipation while on the seas. NPC ships should also start to come after crews once a bounty reaches certain levels.
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You should be able to initiate and agree to a duel with fellow shipmates to practice skills.
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I know games are coming, but pirate dice and other games for real gold is a must.
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Like the brig, you should be able to have players walk the plank with the same vote requirements, which would boot them from the crew/server. It's flavorful and helps with crew management.
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Sinking other NPC ships should be a faction option (Royal Navy) in the near future as well. It will obviously be the most popular, but could also be the most challenging.
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WAY more titles! You should be able to have a ton of customization around how you present yourself to other players. I like the little titles that are currently available below your name, but you should be able to add "The _____" at the end or at the beginning of your gamertag. There should be a large variety of these available when you start, with some that are unlockable via achievements. You could unlock certain titles in tiers such as "The Swordsman" for x number of kills with the cutlass and then the "Famed Swordsman" all the way to "Legendary Swordsman" for an insane number of kills. And it would be cool to choose how friendly you present yourself as. It could be a choice in your profile, If a character's name was green, he his presenting himself as a friendly pirate. If it's red, then he is presenting himself as an aggressive pirate with various colors in between. You could switch the members of a player's crew to white names to allow for this type of feature.
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I know I've heard this is coming, but colored top flags to represent intentions is crucial - especially for forts! lol
Hope this is helpful! I'll keep playing and sharing my thoughts as I do. I love the game, and I want to do my part in helping it reach the amazing potential it has!
Cheers!
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