[Survey] What should be changed/added to PotCO

[Raven Night]

Updated 3/8

Ok, I would like to see a list of things people feel should be changed or added to PotCO, and some feedback on what I think the game needs, or what I feel needs to be changed.

Here is my list.

1) Player housing on the boats we own.

Allow the door on all boats to instance to a captain's room. As long as you are in port (your ship is ready to dock) or you are on shore (you are given the option when you are asked if you want to row out) your ship is safe...enter your room out to sea, however, and you can get attacked. This is for the boat owner only.

We would be able to decorate the room with the treasure we find/loot/pillage. We could also store gold in this room, more clothing, and other items I will get to later.

2) The option for open chat.

This would be an option that could be disabled by parents. You would be able to use words that are blocked at present, like numbers and such, and speak to others more easily (using /tell commands). This would make the game more social.

3) Crafting.

Just a few items to start with, the abilty to craft custom weapons. That will require a trade system I will get to later. You would have to gather the materials and use points to improve craft quality. I suggest the following...

Blacksmith - Swords and Daggers

Gunsmith - Guns and Ammo

Voodoo Priest - Voodoo weapons

Shipwright - Vessels

Tailor - Clothing

4) The ability to purchase visual customizations for ships.

Pirate flags, most of the traditional ones to choose from.

Pirate logos on the sails

Change the color of the ship or the sails

Change some of the ship trim

Change the lady on the front of the ships forward keel (a few different ones to choose from of course)

5) The ability to buff your character with voodoo charms. The charms would be crafted by a Voodoo Priest, or purchased from a Voodoo vendor.

Vitality - Health boost

Essence - Voodoo boost

Power - Damage boost (bladed weapons)

Eagle - Accuracy boost (ranged weapons)

Swift - Damage avoidance/mitigation

Rebirth - Come back to life if you die with normal jail debuff in your current location

Valor - Avoid voodoo damage, curses and debuffs (50 percent chance)

Glory - Experience boost (50 percent)

You can only use/equip one charm at a time.

6) The ability to remove all skill points from allocated slots and reallocate them for a fee. I would say 1000 gold.

7) The ability to upgrade your ships with additional armor, weapons, sails.

This would be unlocked once you reach a certain sailing level, say 20. You would be able to purchase additional armor (up to 500 points), cannons for broadsides (up to 6 per side), sails for speed (up to 4 sails, 5 percent speed boost each sail).

Cannons and armor increases weight, decreasing speed by 1% for each cannon and 1% for every 100 additional armor. This can be offset by sails.

The only ships that can be upgraded in this fashion are as follows...

Sloops - 100 armor, 1 cannons each side, 4 sails
War Sloops - 200 armor, 2 cannons each side, 4 sails

All Galleons - 500 armor, 3 cannons each side, 2 sails

Frigates - 300 armor, 4 cannons each side, 3 sails
War Frigates - 400 armor, 6 cannons each side, 3 sails

If your ship sinks, you lose the items you customized on it (appearance and the upgrades above) but you do not lose your stateroom...that stays with your character no matter what ship you take out or purchase.

There would be no visual difference for the ship itself, but the name of the ship would be in Red, letting other players know this ship is upgraded in some fashion.

8) The ability to trade items and money between characters.

First, this can be shut off by parents in the account options menu.

We would need an inventory box that we can manipulate, like the box you use for treasure collections. You can move items around in it, like pieces of clothing, and choose to put them on, replacing the piece you are wearing. I suggest a 20 slot box.

The trade box would only have 6 slots with a place to put in money denominations. This way you could craft items, sell them to other players, or trade items/money between players.

You have to be a level 30 or higher character to have a trade box (or to have a crafting skill for that matter), and you have to purchase a trade licence from the EITC (10000 gold) and pay a weekly fee to keep the licence current (50 Gold)

If you get thrown in jail for dying or cheating, you lose your licence and must get it reinstated for a fee (100 gold).

Traders will have a tag above their name to let other players know they have the ability to trade. You can choose to turn off the tag to avoid getting spam tells.

9) The ability to master a weapon.

It is a quest line that will give you the ability to master a weapon and display that title if you so wish. You get the quest at level 30 from weapons and ship vendors on certain islands.

Mastering a weapon cuts your recharge times by 10 percent, increases damage 10 percent and gives you 5 more talent points to allocate.

10) More "pirate-like" stuff to customize your character.

Tatoos

Tatoos that cover the back and sides of the head, more face tatoos in color and ink (tribal), tatoos that cover the entire arm, large tatoos that cover entire chest and stomach, back tatoos.

Scars

The ability to add scars to your toon on the face. Just a few would do.

Eye patches

The ability to add an eye patch to the left or right eye.

Wooden leg

The ability to add a wooden leg, from the knee down, to the right or left leg.

Hook

The abilty to add a hook to the left or right hand.

Longer hair, mustaches and beards

A long stringy mustache with little bards in it, same with a long goutee, or a long square or round beard with bards in it, longer hair in back open and in a ponytail.

11) Pets

The ability to purchase or quest for a pet...like a cat or dog, parrot, etc. The pet would either follow you wherever you go, or sit on your shoulder in the case of a parrot. You can choose to display the pet or not, the pet is not displayed when you out to sea.

12) Remap keys

The ability to remap any command key to another key. This is a vital option for seasoned gamers, and they usually have a set gaming style and are used to using certain keys for certain things. Would be a great addition to the game..


That concludes what I suggest as the add-ons to the game. Now comes the proposed changes.

- Get rid of the fire blooms that you have sprout up here and there. They look silly. Instead, if a place is under attack, have cannon balls come in from time to time like in the first tutorial.

- Allow mouse sensitivity to be adjusted, and allow a setting to lock the right mouse button.

- Increase gold payout from ship booty about 25 percent base, and reduce the skill level of NPC card players slightly. Also, lower the weapon quality of NPCs by about one or two levels across the board.

- Increase experience payout about 15 percent across the board for all mobs and ships below level 30.

- Allow us to list a ship we own above our heads. This will let potential crewmates know we are looking for people for that type of ship. So, say if you own a Galleon, the word "Galleon" would appear UNDER your name if you so choose like the words "looking for crew" appears over your name.

- Add "looking for ship" for those players looking to join a crew...the "looking for crew" would be a way a captain can say he wants to create a crew.

- Add "looking for glory" for those players looking to form a group for questing or grinding, not for a ship.

- Convert current experience system to a straight payout system based on weapon level, instead of damage output. You penalize players for trying to level weapons, which is silly. A player should be able to level all weapons at the same rate, instead all weapons but the voodoo doll usually remain at very low levels. An excruciating grind to level a weapon is not a replacement for content.

- Weapon upgrades are very high in cost with little to no benefit, with the gun perhaps the exception. +2 and +4 damage is not a plus. Give the upgrade weapons either a substantial increase in damage or lower the cost.

- Clothing vendors should not sell different color version of the same shirt or pants. Instead, you should have a pallet that allows the player to choose the color of the item, and that color will change on the player preview as he is wearing the item. Also, make the choices persist as you choose new items and add a reset button to return to your current gear. This will allow a player to try multiple pieces of clothing on for an overall look without having to guess what it will look like.

- The ability to grant someone the title of "Stowaway" or "Deckhand" on your ship should be added, as well as a "Walk the Plank" vote to get them off your ship.

Its very simple...if you are not a member of a crew you should not get a share of the loot. You also should only get XP for the damage you actually do.

If someone TP over to your ship or to you, and they are not a member of your crew, you can brand them with the title "stowaway" which they keep for 15 minutes. It is displayed over their head like "looking for crew". You can only tag players that are not part of your crew but are present on your ship as stowaways. When you do this, they do not earn any XP other than the actual damage they do, and they do not get a share of the loot. Since the tag remains over thier head for 15 minutes they will have trouble getting on another ship.

This will discourage the practice.

You can also ban someone from using the guns or taking the helm by using the "deckhand" title, or you can boot someone alltogether from your ship by initiating a "Walk the Plank" vote.

This is how the interface would work.

You click on the person and additional options show up if you own the ship.

Stowaway
Deckhand
Walk the Plank

1) As a Stowaway they get no XP except what damage they do, and get no loot as well as the other effects explained above. This tag persists for 15 minutes, even in port. This tag cannot be given to anyone that is on your crew, nor can it be given anywhere except when on your ship.

2) As a Deckhand, they cannot mount the guns or the helm for as long as they remain on the ship. They will still get XP and the loot share. This tag is removed when the player makes port.

3) If you choose Walk the Plank, a vote is started to kick the player off the ship. All crewmembers vote on it. All crew would have to vote yes, and then person would have to "walk the plank" so to speak. When the player is kicked, he goes back to his port of call, and has the jail debuff (but is not in jail of course). The problem with the current system is that you have to invite the player to the crew again to get the removal prompt. This is too time intensive, especially in a difficult battle.

Thats it for now, I reserve the right to add more later to this post.

[Angel]

*Chants* WALK THE PLANK!!! *Chants*

Sounds like alot to be allocated if they did choose the above. I like the idea of the state room for the capt. I mean we women like to have more then 4 outfits, and a nice walk in closet would be great!!! Plus it would be a good place to hold ur treasures you collect along the way. Sail customization and some ship upgrades. Plus, whats the benefit of being able to buy 9 ships iof you can only hold 3?

[Jeflafla]

The most important fix is to not PENALIZE players for putting points into skills, I have 4 points into shoot and 4 into lead shot, HUGE MISTAKE. Someone of the same level with only 1 point ion each is getting 3 times the rep for the same mobs, PLEASE PLEASE FIX THIS

[Angel]

The more powerful the attack the less reps you get. My second pirate has skill points saved up cause I want the reps not a faster kill. I learned from Angels mistakes

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Raven Night

Ok, I would like to see a list of things people feel should be changed or added to PotCO, and some feedback on what I think the game needs, or what I feel needs to be changed.

Here is my list.

1) Player housing on the boats we own.

Allow the door on all boats to instance to a captain's room. As long as you are in port (your ship is ready to dock) or you are on shore (you are given the option when you are asked if you want to row out) your ship is safe...enter your room out to sea, however, and you can get attacked. This is for the boat owner only.

We would be able to decorate the room with the treasure we find/loot/pillage. We could also store gold in this room, more clothing, and other items I will get to later.

2) The option for open chat.

This would be an option that could be disabled by parents. You would be able to use words that are blocked at present, like numbers and such, and speak to others more easily (using /tell commands). This would make the game more social.

3) Crafting.

Just a few items to start with, the abilty to craft custom weapons. That will require a trade system I will get to later. You would have to gather the materials and use points to improve craft quality. I suggest the following...

Blacksmith - Swords and Daggers

Gunsmith - Guns and Ammo

Voodoo Priest - Voodoo weapons

Shipwright - Vessels

Tailor - Clothing

4) The ability to purchase visual customizations for ships.

Pirate flags, most of the traditional ones to choose from.

Pirate logos on the sails

Change the color of the ship or the sails

Change some of the ship trim

Change the lady on the front of the ships forward keel (a few different ones to choose from of course)

5) The ability to buff your character with voodoo charms. The charms would be crafted by a Voodoo Priest, or purchased from a Voodoo vendor.

Vitality - Health boost

Essence - Voodoo boost

Power - Damage boost (bladed weapons)

Eagle - Accuracy boost (ranged weapons)

Swift - Damage avoidance/mitigation

Rebirth - Come back to life if you die with normal jail debuff in your current location

Valor - Avoid voodoo damage, curses and debuffs (50 percent chance)

Glory - Experience boost (50 percent)

You can only use/equip one charm at a time.

6) The ability to remove all skill points from allocated slots and reallocate them for a fee. I would say 1000 gold.

7) The ability to upgrade your ships with additional armor, weapons, sails.

This would be unlocked once you reach a certain sailing level, say 20. You would be able to purchase additional armor (up to 500 points), cannons for broadsides (up to 6 per side), sails for speed (up to 4 sails, 5 percent speed boost each sail).

Cannons and armor increases weight, decreasing speed by 1% for each cannon and 1% for every 100 additional armor. This can be offset by sails.

The only ships that can be upgraded in this fashion are as follows...

Sloops - 100 armor, 1 cannons each side, 4 sails
War Sloops - 200 armor, 2 cannons each side, 4 sails

All Galleons - 500 armor, 3 cannons each side, 2 sails

Frigates - 300 armor, 4 cannons each side, 3 sails
War Frigates - 400 armor, 6 cannons each side, 3 sails

If your ship sinks, you lose the items you customized on it (appearance and the upgrades above) but you do not lose your stateroom...that stays with your character no matter what ship you take out or purchase.

There would be no visual difference for the ship itself, but the name of the ship would be in yellow, letting other players know this ship is upgraded in some fashion.

8) The ability to trade items and money between characters.

First, this can be shut off by parents in the account options menu.

We would need an inventory box that we can manipulate, like the box you use for treasure collections. You can move items around in it, like pieces of clothing, and choose to put them on, replacing the piece you are wearing. I suggest a 20 slot box.

The trade box would only have 6 slots with a place to put in money denominations. This way you could craft items, sell them to other players, or trade items/money between players.

You have to be a level 30 or higher character to have a trade box (or to have a crafting skill for that matter), and you have to purchase a trade licence from the EITC (10000 gold) and pay a weekly fee to keep the licence current (50 Gold)

If you get thrown in jail for dying or cheating, you lose your licence and must get it reinstated for a fee (100 gold).

Traders will have a tag above their name to let other players know they have the ability to trade. You can choose to turn off the tag to avoid getting spam tells.

9) The ability to master a weapon.

It is a quest line that will give you the ability to master a weapon and display that title if you so wish. You get the quest at level 30 from weapons and ship vendors on certain islands.

Mastering a weapon cuts your recharge times by 10 percent, increases damage 10 percent and gives you 5 more talent points to allocate.

10) More "pirate-like" stuff to customize your character.

Tatoos

Tatoos that cover the back and sides of the head, more face tatoos in color and ink (tribal), tatoos that cover the entire arm, large tatoos that cover entire chest and stomach, back tatoos.

Scars

The ability to add scars to your toon on the face. Just a few would do.

Eye patches

The ability to add an eye patch to the left or right eye.

Wooden leg

The ability to add a wooden leg, from the knee down, to the right or left leg.

Hook

The abilty to add a hook to the left or right hand.

Longer hair, mustaches and beards

A long stringy mustache with little bards in it, same with a long goutee, or a long square or round beard with bards in it, longer hair in back open and in a ponytail.



That concludes what I suggest as the add-ons to the game. Now comes the proposed changes.


- Get rid of the fire blooms that you have sprout up here and there. They look silly. Instead, if a place is under attack, have cannon balls come in from time to time like in the first tutorial.

- Allow mouse sensitivity to be adjusted, and allow a setting to lock the right mouse button.

- Increase gold payout from ship booty about 25 percent base, and reduce the skill level of NPC card players slightly. Also, lower the weapon quality of NPCs by about one or two levels across the board.

- Increase experience payout about 15 percent across the board for all mobs and ships below level 30.

- Allow us to list a ship we own above our heads. This will let potential crewmates know we are looking for people for that type of ship. So, say if you own a Galleon, the word "Galleon" would appear UNDER your name if you so choose like the words "looking for crew" appears over your name.

- Add "looking for ship" for those players looking to join a crew...the "looking for crew" would be a way a captain can say he wants to create a crew.

- Add "looking for glory" for those players looking to form a group for questing or grinding, not for a ship.

Thats it for now, I reserve the right to add more later to this post.

... you left me speechless this is EXACTLY what i want

[James TrueCutter]

I don't like how the Rep system works. I should get the same Rep for low powered skills and high power skills. And I would love to beable to redo my skill points.

[Chris]

yea makes no sense then if u preform combos u get alot less rep than button mashing O_o and if u add sp to a skill u get less rep ?? make abosolutly no sense what so ever

[Raven Night]

Ok, I updated the list to add the experience issue.

[Bootaneer]

The ability to repair your ship at sea.

[Soy]

I would like if you had the ability to dump unwanted cargo.

[Raven Night]

Ok, how about you can repair your ship if you have a crew, a regeneration rate similar to the health regen rate, but you have to have at least one crew, and the more crew you have the faster you regenerate.

You also never regenerate to 100 percent. Say no more than 85 percent.

As to the cargo dump thing, I could add that. But how would you choose what cargo to dump, or would you just dump it all?

How about if you could be given the option to plunder the wreck, when that box pops up? That way you choose to accept the plunder or just leave it to Davy Jones.

[ShiftySwagger]

About a week ago I sent this list of "fixes and suggestions" to PotCO, I may as well leave them here for criticism too. The list is copy pasted from notepad.


SAILING
- Make cannons transparent while firing them. Currently for nearly all shots the cannon covers the most important part of the projectiles trajectory, where it lands. In order to see where or whether you've hit your target you have to move the cannon, thus losing your aim.
- Graphical Lag from Fury is absolutely insane. Even with the graphics all set for performance it gives severe lag.
- Some enemy boats are losing their texture and become invincible but they are still able to shoot invisible bullets that register no sound or graphic at you sinking you with a stealthiness.
- Allow for unwanted cargo to be removed from the boat or for Cargo Crates to not exist on boats above a certain level much like royal chests can't be found on the lowest level boats. Having to dock with half of your booty being cargo crates while sinking level 35+ ships is disheartening.
- After a recently killed enemy boat respawns they gain a super speed and turning buff of some sort. I'm not sure if this is intended or not but even the most skilled captain couldn't dodge this. They gain ground on top speed boats with ramming speed up.
- People can Pull their Boats up next to yours, zoom in, and click your body to pull up your menu and "go to" you to board your vessel uninvited.
- Allow for a "Walk the plank" option for people to remove others from their boat.
- Cannoneers need some way to gauge the distance they're shooting. I'd suggest higher tiered boats have lookouts placed in the boat that allow for a ring on the ground showing the vicinity your shot will land.

PvP
- There is no organized PvP. This is my biggest pet peeve. People activated this game to play WITH friends not AGAINST them. Allow for people in crews to queue up together and place them in a PvP match when an equal duo of opponents is found.
- Massive Latency issues plague the pvp areas. It makes doll kiting people zig zagging across a screen nearly impossible to attune or hit.
- When zoning in to the PvP areas screens tend to bug out and stay black. I experience this multiple times a day and have to close the game to remedy it.
- Skin PvP players according to team. Both can stay zombies just make one brown or something, finding your teamates can be tough.

INTERFACE
- The interface desperately needs a clock. You cant "tab out" of PotCO to your desktop to look at the time without another window up in the background.
- Interface size adjustments aren't working properly. The setting itself saves but the size adjustment won't apply itself until you pull up the options menu.
- Camera panning while moving and in combat is needed. I prefer to know what's going on around me at all times. Panning your camera makes for a more alert play style and would keep me from getting zerged by rock crabs so often .
- Allow targeting for friendly crewed members. There's nothing worse than having to run up and attune someone in need of a heal. PotCO is designed to have everyone fighting and im assuming you didn't want people standing in the back lines and becoming heal bots, but the cooldown timers and the ability to kick out great dps with the voodoo doll fixes that. Give us the benefit of not having to chase down our teammates to attune them for a heal, latency makes it a huge problem.
- The report system needs to be more general. As it stands now I'm hesitant to report people for anything because my description comes in one of four options and they don't cover much. Allow a description box and "other" option for specifics if needed.
- Allow more customizations, movable interface, remapping of attacks on the hotbar.

WEAPONS
- Allow for some form of a respecialization system. People make mistakes and revise opinions. If you realise at level 35 that you've just wasted a month or two leveling a character with 5 points in hack (from dps number crunching it is a mathmatical waste at the moment) you're more inclined to quit the game rather than spend another 1-2 months getting back to where you were. Over time I suspect abilitys to change anyhow, it's only fair to allow a steep penelty for respecializing. I suggest 50k gold per point to discourage constant respecs but yet make it possiple to fix these "mistakes".
- Grenades are painful to level, not only do they do insane damage therefore yielding little rep they're also terribly hard to aim and can hit you. Warping mobs you're attempting to kill while backpedaling make you hit yourself with next to every grenade and promote hasty deaths. The grenades also need some form of ground target to show where they're going to land, as it is now, people would rather find an exploit to level them in an area where they cant be hit rather than level them legitimately.
- The doll ability Attunement is out of control in the pirate vs. pirate environment. Assuming someone can attune you once they can follow you around spamming poke and life tap for a relatively easy kill all while healing their team. This crushes the viability of the gun, dagger, voodoo staff, and all grenades for any pvp encounter. Pvp matches come down to doll kiting and possibly a few cutlass styles while someone is shackled for a little burst dps. Attunement needs to be looked at as well as the dolls DPS in pvp.
- The life tap graphic has the same effect as fury from cannoning. Extreme lag.
- Hex shot is absolutely worthless in pvp and is only used to bug out mobs in pve. Players regenerate voodoo faster than a 5/5 hex shot can sap it, any of it. While being hex shot spammed I stay near 100% voodoo. In pve mobs that use voodoo are being hex shot to no voodoo (3-6 shots depending on rank) and killed while they stand there motionless doing nothing.
- Dagger and Cutlass have pre requisite points already added when you obtain them. These points aren't necessary and, in fact, decrease the the weapons viability, the second style in both chains highly reduce melee weapons dps since they're not worth upgrading and only increase the duration of your weapon chain. Remove Pre reqs from swipe, slash, and sweep. This also could be remedied by increasing the growth rates of these particular abilitys by more than 25% per point to slightly increase their dps as a 5 point ability.
- The staff has an auto recharge exploit. Have your staff equipped and your spell selected, then switch to another weapon, then back to the staff. When you switch back to the staff hold down the left mouse click and voila, your spell has an instant charge. This negated the use of the reduced cast time passive ability and increases your dps for all spells by a marginal amount if you're dextrous enough to pull it off. Needs fixed.
- Weapon upgrades, other than the gun, are nothing more than a way to reduce your gold if you're at the 65k limit. They have no real noticeable dps increase and there is no graphical change on anything except the sword and gun. For the price of these +4 dmg (lol) weapons they should at the very least scream, "I'm 15+ of this particular weapon and wasted the money on this shiny thing to prove it". Make the graphical upgrade worth the splurge at very least.

WORLD
- Some corners of walls can be walked through thus make it so mobs cannot attack you. Many people are leveling ranged weapons this way.
- Some mobs warp below ground while still attacking you which forces you to run until they warp themselves back up. This is very apparent in the navy mobs inside the navy camp in Padres Del Fuego.
- Mobs cannot move up levels. People are bugging mobs out by running up steps and getting them stuck below, this is also a ranged weapon leveling exploit.
- If you're snared while zoning into another area the snare sticks to you permanently. Some times it will show the snare debuff above your character's health and you can simply get snared by another player (pvp) or mob (pve) to remove it. Other times no snare debuff shows up and you're forced to log out to remove the debuff.
- Stop penalizing people for increasing their damage output. Implement a formula for experience gained based on the mobs level compared to the the players notoriety and skill specialization level. Currently you're punishing people for adding points to skills forcing us to level using exploits and rank 1 starter skills.


Shifty~

[Edit] Some of these are repeats which im sorry about, like I said it was copy pasted. My apologies if it looks like I'm trying to hijack the thread
[Edit] Fixed some grammatical errors

[Raven Night]

No such thing as Hijack in this thread

I like the prior suggestion post, but it didnt have a single post in the beginning that listed all the agreed suggestions, so I made this one.

I encourage anyone to post their list so I can add it to the above.

[Soy]

My idea about the cargo dump. Once you sink a ship, the list of plunder appears, then you could have the ability to check the cargo you want and dump the rest.

[Angel]

Yep, just like tonight....we go out Hunter sailin with Max treasure sence, and I get 3 cargo from Juggs?!? Can u say Mulligan?!? I would love to dump the cargo or have the option to.