Just some overhaul ideas for PVE

[Marquês do Bonfim]

So I've been talking to some players of my Nation in the PVE server and we were discussing about why PVE server is so empty and over repetitive overall and here are some ideas on how this should've actually been from the get go.

 

Overall character progress, nations & ranks:

This is something that I've been keeping for myself because I was planning on making my own game with some friends that study game creation and such.

 

Starting off with a fresh character, you would've been presented as a free captain that crews approximetly around 200 crew (which would be consider 6 to 5th rates as a start).

Now, if you want to join the Navy, you should be able to go to the Nation of your choosing and speak to the Admiralty and enlist yourself to the crown, which would instantly grant you the first rank that matches the description (the current rank system that we all know and hate, so 200 crew would be "Lieutenant Commander") and level up from there. The missions available for Naval Officers would be fleet battles, sink or capture pirate ships or enemies of the crown, patrol areas, 

If you want to be a privateer and serve the crown battling enemies of the nation and merchant ships, you should also go to the nation of choosing and get a letter of marquee, you would be granted the title of privateer (which would appear under your name) and the flag that you would be flying is the privateer flag of said nation, the missions available to you would be hunt down merchant ships from certain nations, patrol areas, capture ships, kill pirates on certain areas that have been harressing merchant ships from your own nation and.

 

With that being said, here's a system that should've been implemented at the get go instead of a level cap and end game.

Reputation system:

Let's just say that if you want to become a ruthless pirate and be feared by other players, your reputation must be increased by your actions. As you start off the game as a Captain of a 200 crew 5th rate ship, you must strike fear into your enemies, sink merchant ships and navy ships, harass everybody with the objective of being well known in the West Indies.

To become a pirate, you will have to fight for your reputation, sink ships, capture ships, board ships, the more you do in the game, the more negative reputation you will grow in your name, and the more negative/bad reputation you have, eventually people will know about you in the world. But, as we are talking about PVE and not PVP, players won't be able to hunt you down for the reward on your head. If you're a Naval Officer, your reputation will be your rank mostly, if you're a Commodore or a Rear Admiral, you are most likely top of your navy as an officer and you should be able to crew a fleet of 4 to 5 ships.

If you're a privateer, your reputation will be increased positively but similar to the pirates, to gain reputation, you must go after renown, battles that would grant you renown and a fearsome reputation. 

Pirates should not be able to craft 1st rate ships and most likely not 2nd rate ships aswell, the only way to a pirate to be able to get their hands on those type of ships, should be capturing them from NPCs around the world. Oh, and pirate NPCs around the world WILL ATTACK YOU, they will attack merchant ships, they will attack weaker ships and traders to profit upon it, you will be able to step in and protect the NPC from your nation as you see fit, if you're a naval officer, privateer or just a good honest captain that doesn't sail under any nation protection or anything.

 

Merchant/Trading Players:

Here you are, a merchant player that actually likes to play as a trader and go around exploring the world do trade runs for gold. You won't be left out, believe me. 

There should be missions specificly for traders and merchants. Missions that would grant you a good amount of gold and reputation as a good and honest individuals.

Trade runs, stablish trade routes that you will be able to follow to your destination. Hire players or NPC ships to protect your cargo and give you a quiet and calm travel to your destination. Go to a port, grab goods, buy and sell them in other ports that will actually give you a good amount of profit off of it.

Players NEED to be incentivized to keep playing the game and the game NEED content that will grab the players attention and time so they can dedicate it to be somebody in the game.

 

 

Treasure Hunting, Sealed Bottles & Merchant ships Captain's Logs:

You run into a merchant ship from a certain nation (any), you sink it and then loot it, suddenly you run into the captain's log and find out that they have information about a Galleon holding treasures and goods from that said nation travelling on a secret route guarded by a ship of the line. 

Suddenly a objective/mission appears on your map, an icon showing the exact location of that said Galleon/Treasure ship. You can go there by yourself and fight through it to get the loot, or you can invite your friends to join your fleet and set course to the location of the galleon, upon arriving, you will be granted the option to join the instance where the treasure ship and it's guardion is at, you need to sink both or capture it if you wanna loot the goods and treasure.

After looting it, the reward of that ship grants you a ton of gold, goods and mods, something to keep you on your feet and something actually rewarding to do. This would give you so much immersion and in-depth gameplay, keeping it dynamic at a certain level and random events like that makes the game so much interesting. I can assure you guys that there are players in the PVE and PVP servers that actually enjoy A LOT, those treasure hunting/sealed bottles ship wrecks.

Sealed Bottles will keep giving you information about ship wrecks, gold, goods and resources, but this captain log's system would give you a random information about the location or secret routes of treasure galleons running golds to any nation, plus informations about ship wrecks aswell, worth a lot more and we can add so much random encounters on these systems that I can't even begin with.

 

Anyways, those are just some ideas that I'll be posting here for you guys to read and discuss about, this is mainly for PVE server, but I'm pretty sure a lot of these suggestions can be implemented aswell in the PVP server. I didn't go too much in-depth and into the technical/historical accuracy of it at all, but you guys get the point of what I'm trying to say here. PVE NEEDS MORE CONTENT AND I'M WILLING TO GIVE YOU ALL MY SUGGESTIONS IF POSSIBLE. Let's make this game alive again, we gotta avoid relying too much on grinding levels, doubloons and reals and actually give players some good content to keep them busy and interested in going out in the open sea to encounter these things.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Portuguese Privateer

[Draymoor]

Would be nice to implement all of that on both servers, if the PvE server wasn't so lacking in content I might play in there as well. I believe a reputation system has been suggested multiple times as it would help make several areas of the game much more interesting and give people and additional goal. I'm not sure if the developers don't like the idea of a rep system or they find it too difficult to implement, but I haven't seen them comment on it at all. 
The randomly spawning missions sounds like a great idea, I'd even add to your concept and say that it would be cool to find such captain logs in flags ships of AI fleets that could give you the location of a massive SOL fleet (20 to 25 ships of varied rating that could perhaps drop paints and higher chance of rare loot ). I think a lot of players would enjoy massive fleet vs fleet SOL battles in both servers. 

[Marquês do Bonfim]

That's actually a good idea, dude.

[Guest]

Don’t forget Port Battles.

From a programing point of view there is no reason why AIs can’t spawn for port battles.

An idea would be to have selected ports throughout the map that are capturable, once and if a port is captured, then and on a timer, AIs will spawn and attempt to retake that port, the longer that port is held, the longer the timer is set for AIs to attempt a retake.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Guest

[Marquês do Bonfim]

Yeah, that's something that I've thought about and didn't come to an understanding. If Port Battles ever comes into place on the PVE server, players should also be able to join and defend their towns, making it a PVEvP server, which also could make some sense. Something that I've been thinking about is, PVE server could have PVP areas across the world, where players could go and pvp if they want, but that would take the pvp aspect that divides both servers, which PVE should be focused on PVE. It would be nice to have Port Battles in which players could PVP there, besides the NPCs, for example, if you're attacking Spain or Britain, both NPCs and players from either Nation could join to defend their towns, something to keep in mind.

[Marquês do Bonfim]

But I don't think PVE needs Port Battles right now. Most of the players prefer fleet battles instead of PBs.

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, Portuguese Privateer said:

It would be nice to have Port Battles in which players could PVP there

Could only work if all combatants click an "Agree For Player on Player" button, an extension of duel rooms, otherwise no for environment.

 

29 minutes ago, Portuguese Privateer said:

But I don't think PVE needs Port Battles right now. Most of the players prefer fleet battles instead of PBs. 

You mean, yes yes more content in any form or shape, don't let dev's hold back anything!

[Marquês do Bonfim]

I wanna add something here. I really think party/group XP in battles should benefit everyone a little bit more, PVE is getting really grindy after 7th/8th rank, and party/group battles are useless if you don't get xp for participating. Groups are usually made to help out new players and are usually used to help out level up someone, atleast bump it a little bit so we can all benefit from grouping up and fleeting, because right now there's no point on going out in a group, because you don't benefit at all from it. If you fleet with some bigger players, if you don't put up a fight or get a kill, you're pretty much getting 45 to 140xp per battle, inflicting 28 to 32% damage gets you around 300xp or 400xp. A kill bumps you up to a 700 to 800xp depending on the rate of your enemy  sunk ship, but still, not every enemy fleet low players will be able to inflict that much damage, unless they get up close and brawl, which most of the time gets you sunk. It's just unbalanced right now.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Portuguese Privateer

[Marquês do Bonfim]

One other thing, I know that the NPCs were nerfed to be harder to beat/sink and all, but giving them magical turn rates and sometimes even faster reload speeds are not the freaking answer! I've been seeing NPCs getting almost 6kn reverse upwind and turn rates that are unbelievebly fast, cannons that instantly fires after a full broadside just to keep you on your feet trying to get out of range to atleast recompose your wind and reload your cannons. 

I fought against a Wasa couple of days ago with my Connie and we were screening for a couple of seconds, after a full broadside, not even 5 seconds, he was already shooting me again. I distanced myself towards the shore and tack'd the wind to get my other side and give another broadside, he began to snipe my stern like is if it was nothing to him, EXTREMELY ACCURACY from atleast 600m away and cannons that didn't have any freaking reload time AT ALL, after I tack'd to the other direction, my stern was pretty much gone and he was facing the same direction ready to get me a full broadside. He turned quicker than me and were already gaining on me to get me.

My Connie has thicker and stronger HP and Hull on almost every single stat than the Wasa, and he was still cutting me like paper. And I know, the Wasa has almost 300pd more cannon weight than the Connie, but still, the NPCs are nerfed to a point that some battles are just unbelievable to sit and watch.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Portuguese Privateer

[staun]

Do think the peace server could profit from a couple of changed. Make it a warserver light version. Main focus ofc at PvE. But few things that could make it more diverse could be.

- Patrolezones for PvP(Don’t know if they allready have it).

-RvR light. Have like 20-30 ports that could be captured by players. Not important ports in regard of Woods upgrades, But for trade goods.

Would actually think it will increase the numbers on peace server. 

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by staun

[AeRoTR]

Have you played "Sid Meir's Pirates"? The initial which most ideas are same was released around 1987, 31 years ago

Most of the things we all have been requesting, has already been in a video game 31 years ago

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by AeRoTR

[Hethwill]

1 minute ago, AeRoTR said:

we all

😎...

Who's "we" and why "all" ?

[staun]

Do think a server where both PvE, PvP and RvR work side by side, without force the gameplay on each other would have potential. Those casuals PvP/RvR player of  the war server would have a place to be. So make PvE overall, PvP in patrole zone and limited numbers of ports for RvR.

@admin is that something that can be tested?

[AeRoTR]

4 hours ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:

😎...

Who's "we" and why "all" ?

All the guys who requested similar things, you can search the forum. I can not list them all. 

[Marquês do Bonfim]

Most of the players from PVE that I've talk to isn't interested in PVP at all, bro.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Portuguese Privateer

[Cabral]

4 minutes ago, Portuguese Privateer said:

Most of the players from PVE that I've talk to isn't interested in PVP at all, bro.

 They don't know what they miss.

[staun]

2 hours ago, Portuguese Privateer said:

Most of the players from PVE that I've talk to isn't interested in PVP at all, bro.

And they wouldn't need to be. Patrole zone is a very limited area each day the same with RvR(Only 20 ports, ports without any important ressources and crafting materials). So for The PvE players it would be basicly no change. But for the casual PvP/RvR player it could be a huge deal. But I guess I would bring more players to the Peach server. So for a social point, a gain. Also in doing fleet missions, epic missions and so on. It would not mean that they should stop creating more PvE stuf.

Edited December 28, 2018 by staun

[staun]

2 hours ago, Cabral said:

 They don't know what they miss.

Think they know. 

[Marquês do Bonfim]

11 hours ago, Cabral said:

 They don't know what they miss.

Oh, they know.

[Marquês do Bonfim]

I wanna add something here aswell.

- Be able to message, trade and group up with players from other nations, since we can't attack each other, why not let us create our own diplomacy.

- Once you're group up with a friend from another nation, in battle, both your nations flag would show up as it is, but your name and the player from the other nation would be allied colored (green, I think).

Edited January 5, 2019 by Portuguese Privateer