An increase in ships speed

Not right off the bat, but I would totally do a quest or two that gave my ship a small boost for a limited period of time.

@touchiertooth28
That would be super cool! Like a shell that you can use like an ashen skull. You aim for the sails, click and breaths a continuos gust of wind for a limited amount of time. The more you use, the less you earn when you have to sell it, just like the ashen skull. Basically like dials in one piece.

@targasbr the balance would remain the same. Every ship gains the same amount of speed increase, so the gap would be mantained untouched. This would only be useful for saving game time for going to one island to another without losing too much time of sailing.

And how are sloops supposed to escape brigs with a speed buff with this. The sloop hardly pulls away into wind as it is. This will interfere with the ship balance. Only ship speed that needs adjusting is the Sloops headwind speed.

Sloops could use a bit of a speed boost when sailing against the wind. Otherwise, ships are fine in speed. Increasing it will make ships start to fly through the waves, making high speed cannon combat horrible in terms of aiming.

@touchiertooth28 Your idea that a speed boost should be given after some sort of voyage might not be well received. As far as I understand, vertical progression is still one of the main concepts the devs still hold and the majority of the community supports.

Again,

If it's a temporary buff that players can obtain after doing some PvE then I don't see it being a big problem. It will give prepared players a better chance of catching up or escaping from crews. Comes the same way as having more cannonballs, wraith balls, anchor balls, chainshots, better food, etc.

spend a bit more time doing stuff and a bit less time sailing from point A to point B.

You are doing stuff. Sailing.
Sailing is half the adventure and half the gameplay. You want half the game to be removed because you dislike sailing for long periods?

@burnbacon said in An increase in ships speed:

Sailing is half the adventure and half the gameplay. You want half the game to be removed because you dislike sailing for long periods?

This goes in tandem with issues like voyages sending you to different regions on a whim, or players looking primarily for other ships to interact with. The sailing can be quite tiresome and potentially sleep-inducing if one doesn't want to look ridiculous or too inattentive to the sailing wheel while getting to the part they really want to pay attention to.

Take the PvP balance out and the only thing you have to worry about when sailing is looking for what you want and not hitting rocks, island sandbars and coral reefs. If wind is not in your favor, you're sailing at a snail's pace with not much to do other than fish, play an instrument, drink grog (don't do that), check your pocket watch (remember that item?), chat with your crew mates (assuming you have any), Alt+Tab to another program (assuming you're on PC), etc. It's boring if there's nothing productive you can do until you get to your destination or have an emergent threat pop up.

I'm firmly against increasing ship speeds. They are fast enough. Also, if you've been PvE'ing and got a large loot haul, shouldn't your ship theoretically be slower? The only ship speed change I'd be inclined to go with is a reduction in speed if you're ship is covered in scars encouraging a gold sink to get your ship repaired. But even then, its not necessary.

The journey is part of the experience, its a pirate game, not a space game where you warp to the next location.

@burnbacon That's not what I wrote.

I think some of the problems may come down to situations. Head wind is ridiculously slow, and at least feels like you are going nowhere. And sometimes that island is in the head wind, there is no other way for you to go. The waves also don't help, as some of them are stupidly massive, and definitely rob you of some speed. And none of this is helped by the fact most players use Sloops. The Sloop is already slow every other direction, and the head wind advantage is so theoretically minute that the waves WILL allow a Brig to catch up to you.

So, in conclusion, fix head winds, fix waves, fix the Sloop. The first two benefit everyone, the last one benefits Sloop players.