In all seriousness, this is my attempt to call out to anyone else who feels as though Merchants have suffered as a result of the past several seasons of changes and tweaks.
Gold Hoarders still have vaults and the massive income from those.
Order of Souls can summon Skeleton Lords.
Merchants, however, have smaller deliveries than ever, less variety than ever, and even their highest output voyages (Lost Shipments) fall utterly short compared to almost ANYTHING else. It's better to do nothing but raids than actual Merchant voyages. Several commendations and achievements are widely considered by many to be nearly impossible now with the long removed fruit crates, wood crates, cannonball crates and even gunpowder kegs from delivery voyages. Instead, you have to hope that you find a message in a bottle, hope that it's the right type of quest, and hope that it's for a delivery of a type of crate you still need to deliver.
And this isn't me saying that they just need a gold value boost across the board, that wouldn't fix anything. What they need is larger volume deliveries, more variety of cargo, multi-staged deliveries or even special transport voyages that mark you on the map while you cover a long distance. There's still only the same 3 types of cargo, which appear to have gotten easier to care for since I first sailed the seas. I want a challenge that doesn't involve raiding world events and hopping from server to server.
I would like to believe that there are other players out there who feel the same way as I do, and I encourage them to post their suggestions and ideas below.
Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!
@mrblue8596 I remember when these quests could be found in barrels at the outposts...
They have since disappeared. Maybe make it an on-demand voyage... or at least increase the chances of getting these quests in the bottles.
I'm all for another voyage or 2 for the Merchants as well as an update to commodity trading which i've made a thread about just the other day
Most of all, the merchant faction is supposed to be the faction that ships large quantities of goods around the map, ideally turning a higher investment (buying goods) into even higher profits, and in turn become attractive targets for piracy. You know, the essence of the history of piracy.
This whole concept of Athena vs Reapers is a load of bull. What should really be the focus of the game is Reapers (a bit of an edgy faction but still the main pirate faction) vs the Merchants. With the former trying to rob/sink the latter.
Give Merchants some love!
Completely agree. The cannon/fruit/wood/gunpowder for sure need reviewed. Literally anything at this stage. Lost shipments unfortunately aren't quite as good as they used to be either. New voyages or a refresh of the old ones would be very welcome
I'd like to see more of the commodities in the world. There's a com for stealing a reasonbly large number of them. Thankfully I have completed it, but honestly a lot of them were done by sailing around ouposts with a friendly crew. I'd have much rather stolen them properly, but it's nearly impossible to find anyone carrying them. You have to raise emissary, go through multiple pages of dialogue and menus to buy, then check the book on the dock on where to bring them (online resources make this much easier, but going out of game shouldn't be needed). Not exactly an obvious path for any new players. Maybe put something simillar to the Merfolk's Lullaby/Rare Thief trade route map on the dock near every merchant. It doesn't have to be as big as the Port Merrick map, just a bit more obvious.
Also, Merchant curse please! Not sure what it should be, but every other faction has curse at least somewhat related to it. Shame that merchants don't have one. While on the subject of cosmetics, I'd like to see the Disction 1 outfits be broken into individual parts. I really like the Merchant jacket, but I don't want to wear the wig!
@d3adst1ck said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
I'd be fine if they just added more variants of the Cargo Runs that have higher quantities of cargo, and that the newer higher tier loot counted towards the delivery commendations.
I really didn't understand they went from 7-8 to just a couple - even the emissary quests are just a few.
They weren't already much liked by most players and now you'll have to do 4x as much and sailing with just a few. At least with having 8 on board it made a long journey worth it. The random ones from bottles still have 7 or 8.
@lem0n-curry said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
@d3adst1ck said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
I'd be fine if they just added more variants of the Cargo Runs that have higher quantities of cargo, and that the newer higher tier loot counted towards the delivery commendations.
I really didn't understand they went from 7-8 to just a couple - even the emissary quests are just a few.
They weren't already much liked by most players and now you'll have to do 4x as much and sailing with just a few. At least with having 8 on board it made a long journey worth it. The random ones from bottles still have 7 or 8.
I understand why you can no longer stack them (because of diving, it was a bit OP, etc...) but they really nerfed them into the ground when they only gave you a maximum of 4. Even worse is that only the old cargoe count towards the 200 deliveries of each type commendations. You'd need to do a crazy amount of runs to complete all 6 different delivery commendations (normal + DR) if you were starting from zero today.
They did make the animal deliveries much better though.
@d3adst1ck said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
@lem0n-curry said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
@d3adst1ck said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
I'd be fine if they just added more variants of the Cargo Runs that have higher quantities of cargo, and that the newer higher tier loot counted towards the delivery commendations.
I really didn't understand they went from 7-8 to just a couple - even the emissary quests are just a few.
They weren't already much liked by most players and now you'll have to do 4x as much and sailing with just a few. At least with having 8 on board it made a long journey worth it. The random ones from bottles still have 7 or 8.
I understand why you can no longer stack them (because of diving, it was a bit OP, etc...) but they really nerfed them into the ground when they only gave you a maximum of 4. Even worse is that only the old cargoe count towards the 200 deliveries of each type commendations. You'd need to do a crazy amount of runs to complete all 6 different delivery commendations (normal + DR) if you were starting from zero today.
Aye, I'm done with them, but I used to do them sometimes after that - not so much after the change though (as in hardly ever).
They did make the animal deliveries much better though.
If you're in it for voyage completion, yes; if you need a number of animals for a commendation, I think they're less efficient: you would have several of one animal and maybe had to sail to 2 large islands (or small and one large island if you're lucky) to get a nice dent in your commendation - and skip the animals you already had 100% in.
Also, now you're directed to an island for the baskets &c, which might be close to another crew (not sure if they take into account other crews when directing you to an island) while before you were free to choose the island (I used to sail to one close to the delivery outpost).@d3adst1ck said in Merchants to ARMS!!! We Need More Voyages!!!:
I'd be fine if they just added more variants of the Cargo Runs that have higher quantities of cargo, and that
the newer higher tier loot counted towards the delivery commendations.Edit: Also, rebalance the commodities so people want to do them.
Got inspired to do a few of these since I'm pretty close, and it seems like they stealth fixed the Devil's Roar variant at least since the new tiers were counting towards the commendations now. The emissary quests are still pitiful though - got a 4 crate and a 2 crate.
@everseagull I remember that too!!! I never really thought about that it disappeared though until I read your post. I wonder what happened to them 🤔
@wolfiechan77 All tattered parchments were removed, likely as a way to simplify the item storage system.
Why add another smuggler faction when the existing factions need improvement, especially the merchants? Before Season 11, I was relatively interested in playing this faction, but even then they required a lot of improvements. After Season 11, Rare, instead of fixing this problem, downgraded this faction. Now, it's necessary to increase the rewards from completed voyages, and, as the thread's author suggests, voyages should be rebuilt to make them more attractive and challenging.
@d3adst1ck
As someone who used to run a lot of merchant voyages, the changes to the voyage system killed a lot of the fun. I think the element that makes merchants feel so bad right now is that for merchants, the primary forms of relevant skill expression are navigational ability, ability to min-max the voyages, and ability to shave time off the process. Rare has been steadily chipping away at the third by making logistics generally easier (see the harpoon changes, and the sovereigns), and the voyage changes basically removed the second entirely. The inability to exert any control over the lost shipments makes them significantly more disruptive if you're trying to follow the trade routes; the new barriers that make stacking animal voyages and cargo voyages impractical effectively took high risk/reward options off the table, leaving only the gold-flattened base options, which people already didn't like doing. That just leaves navigation as the main area of skill expression, and the whole thing feels a little flat.I personally believe that the game does not need a new company as of right now as merchant and order of souls are boring to do for extended periods of time. in my opinion rare should make the smugglers a sub fraction of merchants as from what we’ve seen in the teaser of said company it has a lot of similarities to merchant I feel. Also this would give the community a new way to level up merchants with a new quest with a potentially crew ending explosive at the end for some rather loud steals. This added interest would be beneficial as well for commendation hunters who are struggling to complete the reaper commendation for selling merchant flags as from my experience no one really flys it anymore
