In a game like Sea of Thieves, I feel like taking bigger and bigger risks should bring bigger and bigger rewards, which is why I've come up with this: Skeleton Fort Chains.
Heres how it goes:
When you defeat the Fort Captain and get the key you're given a choice. You can open the door at the fort you're at now and claim the normal reward you're used to, or, you can take your key and bring it to another fort to keep the fight going for the hopes of even greater booty. Chaining forts together up to 5.
After the key is dropped, a new skull cloud would appear. Looking more menacing than the first. If you take the key to the fort under this cloud, you place it in a tablet or a shrine of sorts, and the new fort would begin. But this time more difficult than the first. With more skeletons in each wave or maybe a mixture of skeleton types in the waves.
When you finish that fort you're given the option again. Another skull will appear which will lead you to a new fort. Or you can decide to quit while you're ahead and open the Fort door here. Claiming a bigger prize than the first would've given.
As you chain forts more, the difficulty of each one would increase. Maybe they start being protected by skeleton ships. Or skeleton ships spawn instead of (or even as well as) a normal wave meaning you need to rush back to your ship before it's sunk!
I'm thinking the clouds could be made to resemble foul/disgraced/hateful/villainous/stronghold skulls as you increase the chain, so any players in the server can see the different skulls and know exactly how far along the chain the fort is
The loot from the fort would depend on how far along the chain you are. Awarding a stronghold skull and chest for every fort completed, as well as more random loot. You should get more loot from a level 2 (Disgraced skull cloud) fort than from two level 1 (normal/foul skull cloud) forts. At level 4/5 (Villainous/Stronghold skull clouds) you could even find Chests of Legends or new Athena loot.
I get the feeling this system would
- Promote PvP (Maybe that galleon of legends doing an Athena voyage decides to put their voyage on hold when they see the skull pop up a third time)
- Really reward players for investing time into a longer session (but still giving an opportunity to finish early if they want or need to)
- Possibly even reduce server strain as "Fort Hoppers" can stick with one server for longer instead of jumping in and out of many constantly.
This idea would definitely benefit from there being more than the three active forts we have at the moment, but when the rest of the forts go live, I think this could really take off.
Let me know what you guys think!
