Pirating - more like farming.

[SEAKING23]

Well, i have been thinking, and I've noticed that plundering/looting/leveling in this game is more like farming then actually pirating.
Put it this way: The seas/caves/anywhere you can get loot is the "Field." The baddies at the "Crops," and your weapons are the "tools of harvest." And all you do is "farm" all day.
This is the point I'm trying to make - The game is so easy, its more like farming than pirating. So, i have some ideas for the overall benefit of combat in general, and more interactive game play.

1. Make enemies armed with El's loot.
It's lame how you can kill a thrall with a rusty cutlass and get a World Eater. Really, how is that fair? I was thinking that you should be able to kill a thrall with a World Eater and GET a World Eater.
So this is how it would work: An enemy would be armed with 2 weapons. Say a thrall using a sword would have the Behemoth Blade and a Sacred pistol, as a side arm. It wouldn't be able to use the Sword, as the game doesn't allow it, but it would be able to use the Behemoth blade. So, when you kill it, you might get some gold, the Sacred pistol and it's sword. So then looting is more skill then luck. See where I'm going?

2. Ships should follow a route.
It's really... failed, how ships randomly sail in a circle like their helmsman had to much of Davy's rum. I was thinking the should follow a route. E.X: A trade route from Padres to Port Royal, or a Patrol route. The charts for these routs would be in forts, and you'd have to steal them from a desk, or whatever. For Jolly, they'd be hidden in a cave/jungle. Basically what you'd do is put them in your item box, press M, and check whatever routes that you'd be able to see becuase of the chart you stole. Sailing improvements would be given by charms.
Anyways, so a different chart may show a different type of route. Say you get the England's trade chart. Then you'd see routes coming in from England, and you could steer you ship towards them, and intercept the convey. The merchants would be galleons, any class, supported by Frigates, any class. The galleons would offer more Loot filled with random but expensive treasures, and of course more cargo, where as the Frigs would give you more rep and loot with money.
That would be an example of a trade route. There would be patrol routes, where there would be Sloops/Frigs, any class, would be sailing on them, searching ships for illegal cargo. They'd hail your ship telling you to let them board, and you could ether blast them to Davy Jones, or take your chances and hope they don't find anything. Or you could let them board, and chop them, whatever.


3. Interceptors and assassins.
This is more for pirates level 45+. What would happen is that when you reach level 45, the Navy/Eitc/Jolly would send out an order for you kill/capture. These orders would be hidden like the charts, in caves/forts. If you don't find your warrant, the EITC/Navy/Jolly would be sending troops after you, to kill you, maybe in an alley way or something. Same idea with ships, but at sea with War Sloops.

4. Smuggling.
Pretty simple, you can get a quest from towns folk and they'd ask you to smuggle some stuff to another Island, for a share of the cargo and rep. If you said yes, you'd be able to decide what ship you'd like to load it on. Of course, if a patrol hails you, boards and finds your cargo, they'd attack you and hail a friendly ship to send an arrest warrant for your ship.

5. Occupations.
Well, simple. In an invasion, Jolly's troops attack the houses, and try to destroy them. If they win, he leaves troops to take the destroyed town with a boss and you'd have to liberate it by killing off most of those boneheads.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Well, thats all. Please comment, post questions, and whatnot. Thanks!

[ruisen2000]

I thinks ships that follow a route that can be seen on a map with cause a lot of lag. Look at the amount of ships sailing at any given time. The amounts of maps would have to be massive, and getting them to follow "routes" would take POTCO years to make, provided they work at the same speed. Not to mention that many ships have the same name. There may be 20 EITC Warlords, and you wouldn't know which one was which. I don't think every ship sail in circles. The flag colossus at outcast spawns at outcast, but then sails to tormanta.

The thing about assassins is that 1. At the current rate, the player would easily kill any "assassins". If not, you know how pirates are. You would get 200 players rushing over to kill the "assassins" in a matter of seconds

I do agree about the loot tho, kinds wierd that enemies would drop a beautiful weapon, but then use a crude one themselves. But if enemies use what they drop, you would see players telling "dude I call that thrall over there with the silver freeze!"

[SEAKING23]

It didn't take POTCO years to make a route for the fleets. And besides, there is enough space for a lot of routes.

As for the assassins - they'd only come when the player is alone.

[Mr. Awesome]

1: Yes this is an awesome idea. It may be hard to do, but I would really like to see them add it...

2: Also an awesome idea, it won't be as hard as Ruisen makes it out to be, but I don't see them adding this since ship routes don't matter to most players.

3: NO!! Imagine trying to have two minutes of peace, talking to your friends when all of a sudden a lvl 45 assassin comes out of nowhere and attacks you! and what if you are AFK?

4: This idea is great, it sounds similar to the work for hire quests, but better.

5: Imagine you are a lvl 1 and you just finished creating your pirate, you go to Port Royal for your first time only to be killed by a lvl 10 skeleton. But this might work if it has a time limit.

So over all great ideas! I really wish that some were added...

[Tiberius Fireskull]

How about instead of those assassin's, we have heat? In order for there to be heat; however, we would need to be able to do a lot more things in game, such as looting shops, breaking things, or be seen swinging a sword around the townsfolk. On any civilized island (Cuba, Port Royal, and Padres primarily. Tortuga is a pirate's town and Raven's Cove is a wasteland.) if you were seen committing some sort of crime, there would be a notification for you saying that you have heat. When you have heat, the Navy sends soldiers after you with their level corresponding to yours (as in no more than 5 levels above you). When you are being chased, if you continue to do crimes and/or fight off the waves of troops that try to attack you, your heat will go up and MORE troops will come after you. These troops will be quite aggressive, so if you get near them they will attack. But this is not all bad for you. If you progress a level of heat, you will actually get a certain amount of rep based on your level. You continue to get rep until you are captured (in which case you lose all rep gained by heat) OR until you make the Navy give up, in which case there is a huge rep bonus. Heat goes down over time if you are able to evade the troops or leave the island and goes away completely if you are captured or log out (in which case you will not get rep). A lot of games use this feature, and I think that it would apply well in this game.

I do think that we should be able to get our enemy's weapon, but it would get a bit tricky. What if more than one person attacks the enemy? Does each person get a World Eater, if it was armed with one? It would just get a bit weird, especially if you think about Darkhart Abassa. Perhaps if an enemy is armed with something that is famed, it will drop a famed weapon of the same class (if it was using a Gorilla Cutlass, it will drop any famed cutlass). I like the idea, but it would get a bit tricky.

Ships following routes would be cool... but too many may get strange. I have yet another idea. I think that we should still have the ships with drunken helmsmen, but we should also have fleets. You can only see these fleets if 1. You have recovered a map showing the route of this fleet. or 2. You are on the ship where the captain has one of these maps. It would be a bit similar to parts of the Raven's Cove quest, where one person sees Kudgel there, but the other person doesn't. These fleets would come occasionally, and you would see their routes if they do. The merchant ship is a galleon of some sort, with frigates guarding it of a corresponding class. Their cargo would be pretty much the same as what you said.

I do like everything else that you said though, especially the ships hailing you for inspection. That would be fun. "Oh yes! Come aboard and see our cargo! Maybe we can show you our pretty swords too!"

[Catherine Ironcutter]

Originally Posted by SEAKING23

Well, i have been thinking, and I've noticed that plundering/looting/leveling in this game is more like farming then actually pirating.

You have a point here.. all we're really doing is sitting there pushing buttons all day till we get something worth keeping.

1. Make enemies armed with El's loot.
It's lame how you can kill a thrall with a rusty cutlass and get a World Eater. Really, how is that fair? I was thinking that you should be able to kill a thrall with a World Eater and GET a World Eater.

Why would you want another World Eater if you already have one? I mean, if you kill a thrall with a famed gun, you should have a fairly good chance of getting a different famed gun. But it SHOULD be sort of random, because you would have to GET a famed to start- so it would have to be that say, a rare weapon has something like a 50% chance to loot a rare weapon, a 25% chance to loot a famed, and a 25% chance to loot a common weapon if you did that.

So this is how it would work: An enemy would be armed with 2 weapons. Say a thrall using a sword would have the Behemoth Blade and a Sacred pistol, as a side arm. It wouldn't be able to use the Sword, as the game doesn't allow it, but it would be able to use the Behemoth blade. So, when you kill it, you might get some gold, the Sacred pistol and it's sword. So then looting is more skill then luck. See where I'm going?

I don't see how it's skill. It would still be luck, because you would have to pick the correct enemy at the correct time to find the one with a Behemoth blade.

2. Ships should follow a route.
It's really... failed, how ships randomly sail in a circle like their helmsman had to much of Davy's rum.

LOL.

I was thinking the should follow a route. E.X: A trade route from Padres to Port Royal, or a Patrol route. The charts for these routs would be in forts, and you'd have to steal them from a desk, or whatever. For Jolly, they'd be hidden in a cave/jungle. Basically what you'd do is put them in your item box, press M, and check whatever routes that you'd be able to see becuase of the chart you stole.

So kind of like the fleets?

Say you get the England's trade chart. Then you'd see routes coming in from England, and you could steer you ship towards them, and intercept the convey. The merchants would be galleons, any class, supported by Frigates, any class. The galleons would offer more Loot filled with random but expensive treasures, and of course more cargo, where as the Frigs would give you more rep and loot with money.

So mini fleets. Although it would be... a little more historically accurate, aye?

There would be patrol routes, where there would be Sloops/Frigs, any class, would be sailing on them, searching ships for illegal cargo. They'd hail your ship telling you to let them board, and you could ether blast them to Davy Jones, or take your chances and hope they don't find anything. Or you could let them board, and chop them, whatever.

Oh, now THAT would be fun.

3. Interceptors and assassins.
This is more for pirates level 45+. What would happen is that when you reach level 45, the Navy/Eitc/Jolly would send out an order for you kill/capture. These orders would be hidden like the charts, in caves/forts. If you don't find your warrant, the EITC/Navy/Jolly would be sending troops after you, to kill you, maybe in an alley way or something. Same idea with ships, but at sea with War Sloops.

I think it would have to be a pop-up on your screen... say, giving you 2 minutes to finish what you're doing before it starts the warrant mode- it could be, say, a mini-game, like PvP type - it teleports you to a special arena with other pirates who are looking for their warrants too. It gives you hints as to where your warrant is hidden, and you have 10 minutes to figure out the clues and find the warrant - you will have to fight several guards ranging from levels 30-50 depending on your level. If you find the warrant in the allotted time, you are given 1000 gold & a random item, which can be any item in the game. That and you aren't sent to jail, which is much tougher to get out of if you are sent there from warrant mode. I like the sea warrant idea though.

4. Smuggling.
Pretty simple, you can get a quest from towns folk and they'd ask you to smuggle some stuff to another Island, for a share of the cargo and rep. If you said yes, you'd be able to decide what ship you'd like to load it on. Of course, if a patrol hails you, boards and finds your cargo, they'd attack you and hail a friendly ship to send an arrest warrant for your ship.

Now THIS would be fun. This would tie in with the patrol routes, correct?

5. Occupations.
Well, simple. In an invasion, Jolly's troops attack the houses, and try to destroy them. If they win, he leaves troops to take the destroyed town with a boss and you'd have to liberate it by killing off most of those boneheads.

Even more fun.

Comments in bold. As for the assassins though, I do like Davy's suggestion. And his ship routes suggestion as well- I think it would possibly work well that way.

[HammyTheSquirrel]

Davy's reminds me of Need for Speed: Carbon

[Dog Gunmorgan]

the ideas need some minor refinement but over all great ideas 23! I definitely agree this game needs more to do and to be more challenging... the reason I even like this game is that it's not like the average MMO (which I hate) it's more interactive and more like a regular game than an mmo and I think if they improve it and make it harder it will be much more fun!

[Roger Sharkshot]

Hey love all the ideas except that ships already follow a route I saw a thread about this with a colorful map let me look for it.
EDIT:Found a similar post I had seen a better map but this is the best I could find http://www.piratesonlineforums.com/f...t.php?p=107317

[SEAKING23]

Maybe instead of the assassin idea, we could use heat, witch is what Davy said. But the interceptor thing shouldn't change, it seems.

As for the whole fleet idea, it would get kinda confusing. Imagine what would happen if somebody is doing a guild fleet.

"Hey! Lets attack that huge fleet!"

"What fleet?"

- Ship that sees fleet sinks -

"?????"

As for the whole loot idea, the person who does the most DMG would get the World Eater, and everyone gets the Sacred Pistol.

Keep in mind that they can get Daggers as side arms, and use that.

[Mr. Awesome]

Here is a thought, why not have Mercenary's use a EITC Mercenary's Cutlass? or have Sergeant's use a Navy Sergeant's Cutlass? How about Grunt's using an EITC Grunt's Broadsword? Or have a Spineskull use a Spineskull Blade when you get close to him? A Dragoon should be able to use a Dragoon's Broadsword. What about a Thug using a EITC Thug's Dagger? A Hiredgun using a EITC Hiredgun's Dagger? An Assasin using a EITC Assassin's Dagger? and of course. how about having El Patron use a Lost Sword?

Just a thought...

[Dog Firestack]

Just wondering... but when the Assassins come what if you're on Abassa and they aggro a Level 1? Just saying.