This idea is a little heretical, but bare with me.
The devs have said ships take up the most server process power. SoT can't add more than 6 of them, and currently we're at 5. So SoT feels a little sparse.
What if you gave players the option to spawn directly into a Fort, and skip ships entirely? This would mean you could add more crews into the game, IN ADDITION to the 5 ships already on a server.
More life on the seas. More options for play. And... (wait for it)... more than 4 players in a crew! You could have 6 pirates, even 8 in your fort crew.
But what the heck would you do? Great question. The options are really limitless, but here is one idea.
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A Fort crew spawns into a Fort. They have 1 hour to gather up as much loot as possible, and defend it.
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To start, they fight off the phantoms holding the fort. Afterwards, they have a couple rowboats—they row to surrounding islands to gather up loot, to store as much as possible into the treasury.
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After 20 minutes, they Fort becomes visible to the rest of the server.
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After 40 minutes, the fort gets attacked by skeleton ships. The players must fend off skeleton ships and any attacking players.
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After 1 hour, the Fort Crew receives gold for everything in the Fort's treasury, and the mission is over.
There you have it. Asymmetrical gameplay. A whole new way to experience SoT. A shorter session for more casual players. And it stacks perfectly with the existing experience, making worlds more alive and vibrant without terribly taxing servers.
