Post by salamano on Jun 8, 2014 15:24:55 GMT -5
Now that I've been a captain for almost 10 years 
I think I have a suggestion or two that would make my (already good) experience better.
- Storyline Quests - A lot of the commissions I've seen out here are fine, but they eventually feel like farming or chores, which is certainly fine and has its place. But, I thought it might be more interesting to have adventure quests too (or maybe I haven't seen one over these last ten years
)
I'm thinking you can hold back a bunch of the various ship upgrades (or add a few slightly better ones) by introducing some storylines. It can be as easy as a bunch of setting and tripping flags as the character goes around and meets/talks/defeats/haggles/etc. various NPCs. You can even solicit the story ideas from the users (via forum) if the creativity part provides the biggest obstacle. A few that I thought of straight away was with stalking a specific Kraken (rather than randomly encountering them), or even a quest that ends with a fight where you take on a fleet of a faction (where you have to fight them all one-on-one in succession and come out the other side-- avoiding one means you still have to get to it later in the sequence). Some quests could come (as with the commissions) with drawbacks to various factions, or maybe not become available until there's a high enough reputation/fee/etc. paid. Maybe when you're done you can get a special cannon from the Kraken, or maybe a map from the fleet, etc. etc. Failure here obviously would result in death/imprisonment/etc. Lots of possibilities beyond no longer even bothering to read the commissions as we 'farm' the seas. (I guess there's more than one thing for a wishlist here)
- Officer Value - I still don't know what they officers specifically do to my ship/crew (or at least it's not specifically stated anywhere in the stats, etc.) It'd be an interesting thing to have to manage them (paying them regularly, giving them time off, etc.) in addition to using their strengths.
- Some sort of 'arena' battle area where you can take advantage of sailing abilities and shooting abilities in a similar way perhaps as Sid Meier's Pirates! way... That way we can all have a crack at it in a different way that might provide even more entertainment. Play against NPCs and PvP. Maybe some boss sequences can be decided this way, even against multiple ships at once.