@odst-a-morris said in Item Idea: Compass that points to the nearest ship:
@thekitchner So, you believe that it is fun to only hunt down people and kill them constantly?
I don't believe it's fun to "only" do that, but I believe hunting down players and fighting them and stealing their chests is the most fun thing to do in the game yes. Lots of people also feel this way, and it's a playstyle that Rare have clearly stated that is valid and has been thought about.
If PvP was the main driving concept why would they add so many types of merchants for quests in the game rather than quests based on fighting others.
Because if you didn't have any PvE then the only people that would exist would be people looking for PvP. Fighting those players is fun, but it's also fun finding a ship that has a whole bunch of chests on it, running them down as they flee, and taking all their stuff. If no one does the PvE, then there's no really fun PvP targets.
I wouldn't say PvP was "the" main concept of the game, the main concept of the game was that it was going to be a shared world sandbox with no safe zones where players make their own stories. For you that might be sailing around on your solo sloop digging up chests and solving riddles. For someone else it might be being part of a crew on a galleon hunting down and sinking treasure hunters.
And, having a compass to reveal anyone would take away searching, what if you're secretly sneaking up on a ship docked? Well, if one of their crew is on there they'll see it and run off or fight back which does sound cool but will become repetitive especially for ship hunters because all of their "prey" will run off.
So right now if I stand on the crows nest of a ship while my crewmates hunt down treasure, I can just constantly look around and see if there are any ships vaguely close to me. If I have a compass that says "The nearest ship is to the east" you can either see it, in which case your point is not valid, or you can't see it, in which case you'd still need to keep someone watching to the east to see when it appears on the horizon.
If you didn't have a crew on the ship and they were all on the island, a compass that says "a boat is to the east but it could be 100yards or 100 miles away" doesn't help much either.
It literally makes no difference with the exception that you know which direction to keep looking at.
Or, what about the shutting off all of the lanterns at night to cover your ship in the shadows of the sea? Well, a compass would easily expose a camouflaged or hidden ship, destroying the entire purpose of strategy and making it useless.
The idea that the lanterns make any serious difference to spotting ships is just not true. At a very long distance it's very easy to see a ship at night with lanterns, but it's not difficult to see them without. Again, the compass doesn't tell you the distance just the direction, so if you can see it you can see it, if you can't you can't.
And yes, you are right on the Pirate Code part, but that still doesn't justify the reason why people need a better mechanic at hunting others.
It's literally just to give players looking for PvP (or to make friends, doesn't have to be used for combat) a way to find other players in the map. The mechanic of hunting down other players is a core concept to the game, all your treasures and voyages tell you where to go, I don't see why you shouldn't find where other players are.
This is already done with people sitting outside outposts waiting to hunt down people who just got their treasure.
Camping and outpost =/= hunting down players on a ship.
I can sit in an outpost gold hoarders tent with a blunderbuss having sunk my ship and wait for you to come to me sure. This isn't against the rules of the game of course but it is boring and not particularly pirate like. Hunting down other ships, sinking them, and taking their stuff is basically what being a pirate is about to a lot of people.
