Idea how to balance the game - PVP/Gold (pve)

  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    Ahoy!

    Was just thinking while reading the forum about the vast differences in everyones playstyles in this game and I came up with an idea, how to make everyones life happier.

    Probably since day one, there was a massive problem, you go do your voyage and someone comes and steals your fruits of labor. Which is perfectly fine as this was the game design.

    But if you watched the documentary, people who originally playtested: ''I did not speak to him for a week'' after his colleague stole his treasure. Now imagine you are not a 40 year old adult getting paid a decent salary to do your job and you are just some random joe, or a teenager and you paid for this game and not the other way around. You will be swearing your peg leg off, some might just quit straight away. Which is bad for the game imo.

    So now a lot of pirates will gather here, to lecture these upset people (most wouldnt bother going such lenghts to vent) on the good ol ways of sea of thievin and asking them to just take the L. Which is fine.

    But how to make the game more fair. You can't just skip preperation, sailing,finding the treasure,loading the treasure, sailing back and selling it without ruining the immersion.

    But how would you balance it, that a crew thats hunting for the treasure and a crew thats hunting them would both feel satisfied?

    So I believe the 'thieving' part is fine and not much needed in that direction.

    But the crew doing the work would feel massively robbed if they did let's say - Athenas voyage as an example.

    **My suggestion: - Gold piles. Just like in the Sea Fortresses. Only they would give a lot more decent amounts of gold.

    What if every treasure chest could give you an amount of gold before selling? You could pry it open for a payout, but obviously wouldn't be able to fully open them.

    This would slightly lower the value of the chest as it got 'lighter'. Opening theses chests would not affect emissary grade in anyway. No pay out, no reduced bonus either.**

    So as an example. You find a captains chest. Let's say the base value is now 1000 (could be more just an example). You open the chest, you get 300 gold out of it.

    You sell it at an outpost afterwards you get 700 + emissary grade bonus.

    Regular chests that can be opened, would still be the same, but their gold value would be much higher.

    So now imagine you are carrying a ''big 3 hour work stash'' worth of 300k. Well now the stash would be worth about 250k (to sell and steal) and the crew would have made 50k already into their accounts. So the big payout of 300k is still up for contention, but they also wont leave empty handed if sunk and could buy a few cosmetics for that much already. Please dont dwell into numbers, this is just a rough description of my idea. Also everyone can stash fully valued chests in hopes of full payout, without opening anything.

    Someone on a sloop sailing past a galleon, could sneak up and steal some gold from inside their ship that way too.

    I think this would be a great risk/reward addition to the game.

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  • Scheneighnay
    Ship Mate

    That's a really simple solution that I like.

    Great thing about seaforts is that even if you lose your loot there's tons of gold piles and pouches around the fort that make it worth bothering with on a hot server.

  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @scheneighnay True, also for experienced pirate they are so quick to do. Which makes it a great activity for most factions.

    Also my suggestion feels natural from ''Lore''/Pirate perspective.

    Imagine your crew sails to Old Faithful Isle.

    Your captain stays behind to write letters (Afk playing another game) while you and one other bilge rat go to look for treasure and gather the loot back to the ship.

    Now wouldn't you use your knife/cutlass to fill your pockets at any given opportunity?

  • Scheneighnay
    Ship Mate

    @zig-zag-ltu said in Idea how to balance the game - PVP/Gold (pve):

    @scheneighnay True, also for experienced pirate they are so quick to do. Which makes it a great activity for most factions.

    Also my suggestion feels natural from ''Lore''/Pirate perspective.

    Imagine your crew sails to Old Faithful Isle.

    Your captain stays behind to write letters (Afk playing another game) while you and one other bilge rat go to look for treasure and gather the loot back to the ship.

    Now wouldn't you use your knife/cutlass to fill your pockets at any given opportunity?

    Also makes burying treasure a more viable strat.

    Forgetting to come back for it isn't as much of a concern.

  • Foambreaker
    Sailor

    I like the idea of finding gold piles.

    I'm not so much on the idea of having loot give some gold now, less later like the Captains Chest example.

    The treasure chests and the bags of gold that dead skeleton captains drop could definitely be buffed.

  • heslashthem
    Castaway

    @zig-zag-ltu That's for the gold hoarders though, what about the other factions? Plus, the chests are locked and the gold hoarders have the keys to them, that's why we have to bring them back to them in the first place.

  • Scheneighnay
    Ship Mate

    @foambreaker said in Idea how to balance the game - PVP/Gold (pve):

    I like the idea of finding gold piles.

    I'm not so much on the idea of having loot give some gold now, less later like the Captains Chest example.

    The treasure chests and the bags of gold that dead skeleton captains drop could definitely be buffed.

    My thoughts reading the OP were just to make chests full of loose gold and gold pouches more common, as well as what you're saying.

  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @tesiccl That makes a lot of sense, Did not think about it. I'm sure Rare could find a way to implement a similar system for other items. I mean I can certainly see myself takingon some tea or gems, just a bit baffled when it comes to skulls and what value they would offer.

    What if...Most loot would have such an option, apart from OOS skulls. Given how they are body parts compared to goods and treasure, maybe they could hold a significantly higher value and make the faction - go to for money making?

  • LordQulex
    Captain

    @zig-zag-ltu I think the elegance of this solution is that it plays so well with the already existing risk/reward paradigm of the game. Turn in at grade three for a payout, or risk it all to get those last two emissary ranks? Crack open the chest now for a pay out, or risk it all for a larger payout?

    I think the answer to @Tesiccl's question though is that it may only give faction reputation and not gold... I remember back when I was a new player and I didn't lament losing the gold so much as I loathed losing the faction experience before I was a PL. That's worse than the gold because I feel even new players learn real quick the air-quote "value" of gold in this game real fast...

  • HiradC
    Legend
    Insider

    Don't carry 3 hours worth of loot, only do as much as you're willing to lose.

    I've never understood the appeal of stacking. I might do it unintentionally to ensure I hit max emissary, the only actual reason for it is if saving for golden hour but if you're trying to min max to that extent you're aware of the risks and or confident/competent enough to defend it.
    1 world event or 3 I put all on bowsprit, not fussed about screenshot for the sake of showing off.

    Rather than 'opening' every chest you get, why not just sell more often? There's an abundance of loot on the seas now, and can sell quicker than ever with sovereigns.

  • Magus104
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    Even if gold piles gave more money I still wouldn't loot them if they take as long as they currently do. Not worth the time. The game has always been sell often. Pretty sure there is even a tool tip on loading screen for it? I don't read them any more so I dunno. But I seem to recall a "Sell early and often" loot becoming more valuable over time when you already have PvE discords with a rule to sell every hour they would just extend it to every 2 or 3 hours to maximize profits since those servers are all about min maxing gold and rep gains moreso than having fun playing the game. Which is why proper PvE server support would be better because then you could actually do a tall tale or play how you wanted at your own pace. Though your post is all about increasing gold incomes while my idea of a PvE server would be nerfed income as a tax/penalty for wanting to play in a "safe" environment. Instead the way it is now is the PvE discords is just stacked benefits with no down side other than waiting in a que.

  • Ghostfire1981
    Vanguard
    Insider

    No.

    50% of the value of any loot, is in the danger of loosing it. Remove the danger of loosing it all, and people stop defending it properly and after that people will slowly get bored. People are already "loose farming" the hour glass levels, so people would do similar things with gold (they just do lots of loot farming, and dont really care if they turn it in). We should not underestimate the length people will do to play it secure, and this is something that will in the end be boring for everyone.

    Many of us love the high risk of loosing it all. It makes you more alert, you fight harder, you play more sneaky, there are so many benefits to having the current system where you have to cash in your loot.

    I believe this "excitement" (before selling) is one of the reasons SoT is still alive.

  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @LordQulex - Not exactly, you would only take some coins out of the chests, making the base value of it less. Emissary grade would not be affected at all, that means no gold reward for a grade, no grade xp loss for placing such chest on ship. When you sell it, it is just worth little bit less than a full one.

    @hiradc Thank you for the lecture sir, I did not suggest this on my behalf. I am simply trying to offer suggestions to make this game more appealing for pirates who are not as fast and bright as you mate. Given how this game has so many accessibility features, it should hint that it was never meant to be this 'sweaty' pvp fest in the first place. So I think you missunderstand why I wrote the ''big 3 hour stack'' in qoutation marks, obviously nobody should stack for that long, but some players are just bad gamers and small activities can take them a long time. Only the other day some guy complained that Sea Fortresses are too difficult and him and his mate took about 45 minutes if not more to complete it? Can you imagine how good they must be at pvp or just orientating around the map? Finding treasure etc?

    @Magus104 I don't think I would bother either. But I would imagine a lot of pirates never went that route of improving, when they saw that in this game they will be far too often trying to escape/fight crews much bigger and better. Offering them some kind of incentive to get some money, might just keep them long enough to try to.

    @Ghostfire1981 1000 gold - 100% , 300 gold - x%. 300gold x 100% / 1000 = 30% not 50% that would be too much. It would not change the game for anyone on the seas at all, you would not even feel you earned 'less' loot from stealing. But the player you just sank, would still make something.

  • Ghostfire1981
    Vanguard
    Insider

    @zig-zag-ltu said in Idea how to balance the game - PVP/Gold (pve):

    @Ghostfire1981 1000 gold - 100% , 300 gold - x%. 300gold x 100% / 1000 = 30% not 50% that would be too much. It would not change the game for anyone on the seas at all, you would not even feel you earned 'less' loot from stealing. But the player you just sank, would still make something.

    I just meant, that most here normally think 50% of the value of the loot is in the risk of loosing it. It is more or less an unwritten rule. The actual risk of loosing it, is the actual 50% value. If you can "salvage" some of it (more or less the OPs idea), it looses its value.

    Think of it as inflation. If its easier to get gold (not loosing everything) it looses its value, as its easier to get more of it. So by letting players get a small slice of their loot before banking it, you actually devalue ALL loot in the game. And this will again lead to the 800.000-1.000.000 gold cosmetics, and that will hurt the new players and casual players even more. (More gold lead to higher prices to balance the game economy.)

  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @ghostfire1981 Rare can release something for 0, 10 gold or 10 million gold. It's up to them, there is no market and supply/demand here. There is no economy. I understand your reasons, but did you notice that gold prices keep changing. Captains chests now seem to have a solid 880 value (Sorry if the figure is slightly off) where as it used to be something like 600-1200.

    And some noobs that quit the game all together, won't change anything for anyone by getting a small amount of gold. This proposal is targeted at these non existant players, who simply stop playing. Maybe it would help the game, maybe it would not change a thing. But imo it would give 100% incentive for a pirate to 'try again'. For me 1 million is nothing really, for some new player 100k is a lot. If he somehow managed to make 30k stash on his boat which took him hours maybe, I think it would only be fair if he could make 5-10k gold out of it (as an example). And if you sank him and took his 30k, which now would sell for lets say 25k, would you even care or notice? Obviously not. Also this feature would be optional and not automatic, everyone could still keep the full value of those chests. This is simply to help the most vulnerable players out there, perhaps this would also help to fight the popularity of alliance servers amongst them?

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