Keep the grind but change it up

[Sea Fox]

I Understand from developer standpoint that if you want people to keep playing the game and if you have unlocked and conquered all levels and steps in the game people put the game down. 

Like it or not grind is necessary. The longer the grind the longer the interest.

So the suggestion is to keep the grind but different way

* put All Ships on the market and make them available for sale, keep them crappy so that a person has to actually craft that ship in a good way

* eliminate permits and other things that are redundant to ship building. It should not take playing for a month to build one ship and on the flip side you should not be able to lose that ship in under 1 minute to a rage boarding.

* make ports unlimited if they are owned by your nation and institute a or a tariff in order to port in an Allied Nation port.

* encourage players to build their own personal Empire of ports throughout the map.

* decrease the nation's and have set historical alliances. Example: U.S./ French would be one faction locked as allied. You could either become a u.s. or a French player and port at either Nation. This would allow the player to fly the national flag of their choice.

* bring back towing option at end of battle. Current system only encourages PVP to cap and sink so they can go to the next one without having to sail all the way back home with captured ship

* please, please fix boarding

* please fix free ports!! we the teleport option even if it has to have a cool down

    

[mikawa]

26 minutes ago, Sea Fox said:

Like it or not grind is necessary. The longer the grind the longer the interest.

I don't agree. The better the game, the longer the interest. The game must be so good, that even the highest rank with all XP on ships has still fun.

28 minutes ago, Sea Fox said:

put All Ships on the market and make them available for sale, keep them crappy so that a person has to actually craft that ship in a good way

Don't agree. Not all people like crafting ...

29 minutes ago, Sea Fox said:

liminate permits and other things that are redundant to ship building. It should not take playing for a month to build one ship and on the flip side you should not be able to lose that ship in under 1 minute to a rage boarding.

 

29 minutes ago, Sea Fox said:

encourage players to build their own personal Empire of ports throughout the map.

Very good proposals!!

30 minutes ago, Sea Fox said:

bring back towing option at end of battle. Current system only encourages PVP to cap and sink so they can go to the next one without having to sail all the way back home with captured ship

I would even extend this and let people teleport to each town where they have a ship (instead of outpost) (we have already limited ship slots so the number of possible teleport ports is also limited, should work nicely I guess ....

 

 

[Slamz]

8 hours ago, Sea Fox said:

* put All Ships on the market and make them available for sale, keep them crappy so that a person has to actually craft that ship in a good way

MAYbe. The only way I could see this working is if the devs invented a new wood called "common wood" that was just awful. -10% armor hp, -20% armor thickness, -4% speed, -10% turning, -10% acceleration, etc. Usable but noticeably bad. NPC shop ships are all made out of this. You might even find a Santissima for sale but it's going to have those stats.

As it stands, the "bad" NPC ships are just regular ships with crew space instead of planking, which is not hugely different from what a player would make.

8 hours ago, Sea Fox said:

* eliminate permits and other things that are redundant to ship building. It should not take playing for a month to build one ship and on the flip side you should not be able to lose that ship in under 1 minute to a rage boarding.

The point of permits is to make some ships intentionally "rare" in the sense that they use an ingredient that can't simply be dug up by 1 alt account who plays for 1 hour per week, which literally every other ingredient can be.

Marks help create a concept of "rare".

8 hours ago, Sea Fox said:

* make ports unlimited if they are owned by your nation and institute a or a tariff in order to port in an Allied Nation port.

I assume you mean "outposts".

I think about this a lot too and this could be its own separate thread, really. I think in the original vision, outposts were a way to limit players to particular regions of the map. But now that we can teleport between friendly cities, this concept no longer applies. I'm not sure "outposts" as a concept even makes sense anymore. I think any non-enemy port should probably just count as an outpost for you.

Limited outposts are a pain in my backside and I have a hard time seeing what they are adding to the game today.

8 hours ago, Sea Fox said:

* decrease the nation's and have set historical alliances. Example: U.S./ French would be one faction locked as allied. You could either become a u.s. or a French player and port at either Nation. This would allow the player to fly the national flag of their choice.

As per my "8 teams is too many" thread, I do agree with this. I would like to see admin create 3 separate blocks. You can still have 8 flags (hell, add 20 more if you want) but in the end you are part of 1 of 3 alliances.

8 hours ago, Sea Fox said:

* bring back towing option at end of battle. Current system only encourages PVP to cap and sink so they can go to the next one without having to sail all the way back home with captured ship

I like that there is a decision point to be made after capturing an enemy ship: try to get it back to safety or sink it now.

Now that we have 45 seconds of hyperspace it's not as risky as it used to be but capping a Victory a long way from a friendly port is still a big decision. I don't think it should just be an easy "send to port" option.

You want that Victory, you gotta get it home safely, just like the guy you took it from failed to do.

8 hours ago, Sea Fox said:

* please fix free ports!! we the teleport option even if it has to have a cool down

I don't want ships to teleport at all, ever, for any reason.

Only thing I would like to see added is an ability to do a captain teleport from a free port to a nation port. One-way only. It would keep it meaningful to drive a long way out but at least you don't have to make TWO huge trips every time you want to go adventuring.