It's no secret that players have had some issues and concerns with merch voyages. A lot of the post on this topic I've seen usually go on and on about "the problem" without providing a possible solution. I won't go to depth about MA as a hole but rather two particular concerns of mine. If revisited I think it would greatly improve the experience when doing MA voyages.
- Variety
Main source of income is chickens, snakes, pigs, and gunpoweder (that's given on a voyage). My suggestion would be to add in more goods for trade. Quite a few people talk about wanting more reasons to fight the kraken and megalodon so why not have them drop a resource for sale?
Megalodon tooth and scales, kraken ink and tentacle? Sounds like something the merchant might be interested in. Maybe even regular shark scales or the spears in their back.
- Crate commindations and achievements
Okay, this seemed so odd to me that I actually started to consider whether or not it was mistake made during development. Maybe someone from Rare can tell me. Banana, wood, and cannonball crate contracts are received by finding a message in a bottle randomly in the world.
An update was made awhile back that made it to where they are no longer completely empty. I can not stress enough how much I believe these need to be implemented into the exsiting contracts. The commindations and achievement that you get for these require 1000 of these crates to be turned in on time.
I made a guess that it could take around a year of playing for a few hours everyday to get that. But I was told by a friend that after some calculations it may actually take upwards of 30 years playing every day to complete?? I'm not sure how accurate this is but you don't need me to tell you how crazy that would be.
I have to assume that they are not in merch contracts now because in it's current state there would be an overpowering amount of suppies on a ship if you could just collect them. But here's my solution. What if on accepting the contract that has one of these crates in it the merchants (or her employees) place a dedicated barrel on your ship that is only active when on the voyage. You can put stuff in but not take stuff out. When being delivered you go tell her you have it or maybe have us carry it.
The old crates can still be found and turned in (or saved) but this would be the main way. Let me hear your thought on this idea.
