ZeroEmpires

I feel like something has to change regarding EXP right now. I've spent many many hours capturing traders in my snow and trading back to PR, but since I reached rank 3 I only gained 480 exp! I feel like I'm forced to do missions or to take part in battles more in order to level up, even though there's countless other things to do in the game that don't reward exp. I hope you can understand my point and how this ties in to the main post.

I should add that a leveling system or passive exp system could be in place. But my main point is that I think EXP shouldn't be a limitation when players have more than enough gold but nothing to spend it on.

Hey Guys! I am making this thread to see what you think about this idea, hear me out because it makes a lot of sense when you think this through! This is supposed to be open world, so why not open the possibilities? Instead of the crew being limited by rank, let the crew be limited by the money you have to recruit them and let the size of the ship you can sail be limited by the cost of running it and what the player can afford. This will greatly increase the emphasis on economy, trading, pillaging and then the driving force behind the game is GOLD! Much more like real life You should be able to hire crew like mercenaries, each crewman costs gold to hire. Every time you set sail you need to provision your men with supplies else their morale will drop and they may leave your crew, or they may fight poorly. Repairs on the ship should come from the economy, not by buying the kits from an infinite supply. If you want to repair your fir ship, then you should have fir planks on board for the carpenters to patch it with. The cannonballs you fire should be produced by the player economy, and a finite supply. This also adds an interesting dynamic because it allows players to rise to glory, but also fall back when times get hard. Let's say you make it to a big ship but things go wrong and you can't turn a profit... you probably need to down-size and try again. More skilled players are more likely to succeed in whatever it is they are doing, and so instead of players skill being defined by their rank.. it's defined by how good they actually are in the game. As an example: You've been playing in your basic cutter (which crew and supplies are always free) and you've managed to turn a decent profit completing missions. You've seen some larger ships for sale and have saved enough money to buy it. With the larger ship you hope comes larger profits! However you have a small problem, you've ran out of gold and can't afford to fully crew the ship since hiring more mercenaries is too expensive for you right now. You can either sail under-crewed or you could go back out in your cutter for another mission until you can afford the new crew. Finally you save enough gold to get the remaining crew and set off, things go well and after sinking some traders you're turning a handsome profit. You're thinking what to do next, should you invest money in more upgrades for your ship or can you up-size again? Perhaps you just cant quite afford a better ship yet, so you continue on. Eventually you're able to save for a Santi, but boy is it hard to turn a profit in that thing. The upkeep is huge and there's rarely large enough targets to aim for, so more often than not you'll take out something smaller unless the time is right and the Santi is called for in a huge port attack or similar. Do you see how this play-style is not about grinding exp for the next level, but it's about generating money. A skilled player will be skilled at generating money and therefore progress faster and be able to turn a profit on the bigger ships more easily. A lesser player could be a higher rank than the skilled player in the current state of the game, and the skilled player has to be limited by an arbitrary skill measure that doesn't really show the skill of the player, but is more of a limiter to how fast the player can progress. In short, players should be limited by how effective they are at turning a profit on the high seas, be it via trading, completing missions, pillaging, blockading ports or managing crafting. Money makes the world go around! What do you think?

I am personally in favor of this kind of system, I honestly don't think the rank thing is a great idea and creates a grindy feel to the game as you have to work towards the next rank in order to unlock the next tier of stuff. I'm sat with a ton of gold in the bank and nothing to spend it on until I grind my way to the rank that I require to spend it. This is supposed to be open world, so why not open the possibilities? Instead of the crew being limited by rank, let the crew be limited by money and let the size of the ship you can sail be limited by the cost of running it and what the player can afford. This will greatly increase the emphasis on economy, trading, pillaging and then the driving force behind the game is GOLD! Much more like real life You should be able to hire crew like mercenaries, each crewman costs gold to hire. Every time you set sail you need to provision your men with supplies else their morale will drop and they may leave your crew, or they may fight poorly. Repairs on the ship should come from the economy, not by buying the kits from an infinite supply. If you want to repair your fir ship, then you should have fir planks on board for the carpenters to patch it with. The cannonballs you fire should be produced by the player economy, and a finite supply. In short, players should be limited by how effective they are at turning a profit on the high seas, be it via trading, completing missions, pillaging, blockading ports or managing crafting. Money makes the world go around!