Arena:
I think Arena is a great addition to the game. I’ve had some AMAZING high intensity close matches which has really brought a lot of repeatability for myself and others that I talk to. However, there are a few things I would recommend some of which I know you guys are already working on but I thought i’d bring up anyways.
Hit Registration. I know this has been addressed and i’m looking forward to the solution you guys come up with. I know it’s not an easy thing to fix. I’d say it’s not as much that my shots don’t hit it’s that I get a hit-marker for shots that don’t hit.
Scoring System. Honestly, I don’t think this really bad but i’d love to see a few tweaks to how things are scored.
PVP: At the moment PVP scoring is a bit lackluster. I mentioned this to CaptainAshBacon when she brought up pvp scoring; At the moment a kill is worth 5 points. I think that feel free to change the actual numbers a kill should START at 100 points on a specific player. When that player dies their value halves -> 50 -> 25 -> 10 -> 5. After a certain amount of time the value of that player resets to 100. The reason I suggest this system is it would combat spawn killing and afk killing by making it less lucrative to repeatedly kill players in a short period of time but also making it rewarding for a pvp encounter especially when say it’s just a single island with chests.
Ship Scoring: Right now ships have a set value of 25 points for a hit. I was thinking maybe add in some additional points if say a mast falls, anchor gets destroyed, etc. Not sure what specific values but it does require a bit more precision. I’d also add in a bit of a cooldown for the extra points once said area is repaired. AKA if mast falls you don’t get bonus points for knocking it down again until its at least repaired or maybe a certain amount of time goes by.
Variety: Currently, there is just a single mode for Arena which is the Galleon. I assume you guys are probably looking into additional mode or ship-types for arena. If not I would recommend allowing a sloop and brig queue for Arena to spice it up a bit. Or if that isn’t the direction you’d like to go have the set arena queue for gallys and then a special queue that maybe every two weeks rotates arena with a twist.
Twists: Like the bilge rat adventures every x weeks we get a different arena mode. That could either be everyone in sloops, brigs, or other twists. There could be a map that's completely fogged over, etc. Just little things here and there that gives a bit of a fresh feel.
Maps: I’d also love a larger pool of maps if possible from other regions.
Stats: I’m a bit torn on stats. On one hand I believe that by adding stats people will feel obliged to have good stats and feel bad if they don’t however I also think it’s cool to actually know the total kills i’ve gotten, etc. Could even add a post game screen showing how many kills, sinks, etc and just leave out deaths and all the negative stats and try to focus on positive ones.
Chest Turnin: I don’t know if it’s been discussed but I thought maybe it would be interesting if the turn in ships actually moved around the map? This could also maybe be a twist mode.
Leaving Penalty: This is definitely one of my biggest peeves right now. I know this isn’t a competitive queue but that’s why leaving is seriously a problem right now. It’s also a really hard thing to address because you have to decide what keeps someone playing. I know this isn’t probably something you guys would like to do but i’d take a look at doing seasons for the Sea Dogs faction. Maybe each season reset the sea dogs rank and allow people to grind back up to the top. This way you can then add in a penalty for those who leave in the form of losing reputation. Then each season you also include new skin rewards and such so people have a reason to grind up again.
Penalties/Rewards: It’s hard to pick a good penalty because right now I get it if you are in the bottom three of a match there’s no reason to stay, why waste 24 minutes especially if the gap is HUGE. Therefore, you need to reward players for staying and I think also add in a penalty for leaving. I think you should lose reputation personally for leaving. If your reputation drops below the level you bought a sea dogs cosmetic for you can’t use that cosmetic until you re-obtain that level even if you already bought it. That might be a little harsh but might encourage people not to leave. Additionally, if someone has left x number of matches in y time, don’t allow them to queue again for z time. To incentivise players to stay i’d possible tweak how gold is awarded. Maybe make it certain amounts for each placement and THEN the silver you collected as gold (or a % of it). This still in theory is rough for open crews so maybe add in the ability while I hate to say it surrender. If an entire crew agrees or 3/4ths of a crew agrees to surrender their match is over. (i’m not really sure that’s really a good idea but thought i’d suggest it anyways because someone might be able to go off that kind of an idea).
Private Matches:
I'm not sure if there has been any discussion about private matches but I also think this would be a great idea. Firstly though, let me say I think this should be void of rep and just for fun with friends or events. As a streamer I would LOVE to run arena matches for my viewers. (could even do what PUBG does and only allow like PUBG partners to run private matches) I feel it would be a great way to interact with my community and also great for events that want to run tournaments for the community or prize pools. With a private match feature I also would recommend a possible spectate ability (free roam). While i'm sure none of this is easy i'd say this would be a great addition down the line.
Stream Sniping:
While stream sniping is of course a limited problem (since the vast majority of the playerbase is not a streamer) it has gotten quite bad recently especially with arena. There are discords dedicated to joining streamers of the twitch and mixer directories just to ruin their time. While hiding player names was a nice touch I wanted to recommend some different ideas and some flaws with the current system:
At the moment while hiding player names is a big step in game chat is not hidden in the same option; this means stream snipers will attempt to watch the ingame chat to find players to join on. Since there are a lot of open crews in arena sniping a ship can be pretty easy.
I would add in a different option to hide names and chat (it would also be great if this could be bound to a hotkey so incase we need to report a player it’s not a huge pain especially for console users)
Personally though, I would love to see scrambled names. Tl;dr USERNAME appears as like Pirate 1 or something. Basically what fortnite does. Instead of hiding the username and the chat it just scrambles the display name. This way we don’t lose a tactile advantage of seeing a nameplate. Also having a hotkey for this would be great. `
