The galleon

'bout a month ago I tried a discussion on the topic of customization.

@urihamrayne said in Ship Customization is comming, here are some suggestions:

Thanks to some leaked pictures by Rare, where they showed off the brigantine with some very slick looking cannons, I would like to explore the new horizon of ship customization to allow for feedback that can help Rare improve upon the player's desire for variety and expression. First, some quick topics.

1. What can be customizable?

The following things/areas of the boat should be customizable at the shipwrigkt: steering wheel, captain's quarters, ship liveries, masts, cannons, anchor and hull.

2. How much should these customizations affect gameplay?

None, every cosmetic change is merely cosmetic, avoiding giving any advantage/disadvantage or gameplay change. All of the pieces of a cosmetic should still allow players to read each type of ship from a distance, therefore sillluettes will be preserved to maintain consistent reading from afar. A large ship is a large ship, a medium ship ship is a medium ship and a small ship is a small ship, players cannot be confused by cosmetic changes.

3. Should these cosmetics cost real life money?

Debatable. I prefer not, this is not a free to play game, it is a $60 game, microtransactions are not the main source of income for this game, therefore cosmetics as big as these should not be behind a pay wall. However, moving foward, if this game does end up becoming free to play for whatever reason, I would be fine with paid ship cosmetics.

4. Should these cosmetics take precedence over gameplay updates?

No. they can be added gradually, so long we don't end up with a major update that is solely cosmetic focused.

With all that said let's talk about each individual piece of customizable part of the ship:

Steering Wheel
Players should be allowed to change their wheel to whatever theme they want, be it kraken themed, cursed skelleton themed or even chinese themed. The wheel is an essetial piece in the captain's set of expression, it does tell everything about the captain and the type of dude he is.

Captain's Quarters
This one is tricky, it is clear where the quarters are in the galleon and the brigantine, not so much in the sloop, so the "captain's quarters" basicaly entails the backside of the boat's interior. Chages to this would include the voyage table's design, the map, the little clutter scattered around and the bed.

Ship Liveries
This is more or less how you intend to customize the rest of the interior of the ship. Includes the appearance of the chests for vanity/equipment, some interior clutter and the brig.

Masts
Pretty straightfoward, allowing for some different design's for the masts.

Cannons
Straight foward again, but I'd like a twist, instead of merely changing the cannon's appearance, I also would like to have some particle effects change to the cannonballs, if the cannon cosmetic is legendary, example fireworks:

Anchor
Another pretty simple, however another twist would be to change the anchoring sound depending on which cosmetic is selected.

Hull
This one is different from just a paint job, instead you will change the overall design of the hull, have the appearance be more broken and used like the bilge rat's stuff, or more orderly and pristine like the admiral's, the point is, it's not a texture change, rather a model change.

This is true to all of the above, the biggest thing here is that these suggestions are more than texture changes, they are brand new models. Thiss will give players an extra layer of customization, since their galleons will be different looking from one another. There are already a bunch of cosmetic sets the game can use to expand these items with variety, however going for other themes should be interesting too like: Medieval Themed ships, Chinese Themed, Viking Themed, Sea Monster, Barnacle, Cursed, Ghostly... list goes on.