Slayer, Team Slayer, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag.

[Slim McSauce]

Yes I've been playing halo online but that's not the point. These gamemodes aren't just present in Halo, they're a staple, an archetype if you will shared by hundreds of thousands of different games from various genres. Think NA is any different? Think again, the base game is basically multi-team slayer, outlaw battles being FFA slayer, and PB's being a mix of Team Slayer and 3 point KotH.

So to the suggestion, we have Patrol Zones, which are O.K. but they don't really offer anything to OW, just a side attraction. We also have the treasure fleet event, which is pretty cool but underutilized.

A mix of these two assets would work well. How would they work? Well, ever so often an announcement that "treasure fleet has sunk off x" and whoever is near and ready scrambles to get the booty. Why does that work? It's an urgency that must be accomplished at that moment that also happens to be very rewarding. Urgency is something ow NA lacks and we can create more by expanding the use of these randomly generated events.

So how can we do this? Simple, take advantage of the player's desire for content and reward by creating many types of these events, firing off rapidly enough that people can catch good entertainment anytime they log in. We see this with patrol zones, you can go there anytime and at the very least pve for pvp rewards. But, they lack any urgency and lack a sense of grand accomplishment. I can't find the right work atm but patrols zones are pretty meaningless.

So what more can be done? More generated events, many different types to provide all sorts of fun entertainment within the OW. One example that I'm pretty excited to suggest is a capture the flag event, basically the goal is to retrieve a flag from x enemy port, and return it to yours for a reward. It sounds complicated, but using some constraints on where the flag is spawned, and where it needs to go and how you decide the size and scope of rewards you can get large scale teamwork, large scale OW activity and intense battles/chases for the flag/reward. You can think of these as mini nation-wide objectives that get everyone involved in the game that are simple and effective.

One more in the scope of NA in it's current state is King of the Hill. Can be just like the current patrol zone, except placed more rapidly and more randomly, and the objective is simply, have more people from your nation inside the area than anyone else. Not complicated but it brings people together which means large, growing battles that aren't limited to a single area.

The draw of these objectives is that they're rapid fire, immediately engaging and involved, and rewarding for you and your nation. They promote people to get together and accomplish things on the OW, encourage movement around the map. A person can play these objectives for hours and feel like they're making a difference for their nation without having to commit to something like a PB. You can look forward to the next OW event like you would your next tow, your next sealed bottle, your next rare book drop. It hits that same area of the brain. You don't have to participate in the events all the time, but they're there for people and even if that's not your thing, you can always follow the traffic they create and get your rocks off that way.

That's all I have so lmk what you think and if you have any ideas for an event, mission or objective you think would improve OW feel free to post it. I defer to the NA community.

[Slim McSauce]

13 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

Sank Fleet + Patrol sounds ok, but sank fleets often spawn far from land, about 1h of sailing away. Solve that and we are good.

Another idea - make shipwrecks appear after time, make looted wrecks disappear instantly. That will make it more awesome for these who are "late" usually  Most players think "all probably looted, no point sailing there" and that is a main stopping factor.

honestly this in itself would go a long way. A whole event that lasts all day that only truely lasts >60 minutes because that's the time it takes before all the loot is gone and the event sits there doing nothing.

There's little incentive after that to go looking after that, completely underutilized as a tool to get players moving around the map. Which is why we either need more of these events in rapid succession as to not overdraw a single even far beyond it's usability.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Slim McSauce