put down ur ideas on how we can fix AO’s biggest downfall: replayability
with your permission, I can add a suggestion with some of these ideas
Dark Sea improvements and more incentives to go into the Dark Sea. It is a really tricky thing to work with though so as for the contents of the replayability I’m not sure
Turn arcane odyssey into adventure story 2
permadeath
you can skip the entire bronze sea story for free if you complete it three times
The player should have a reason to return to the Dark Sea more than a dozen times, at the moment we can go there once and you could have successfully achieved everything the Dark Sea contains.
I despise forced story in games.
I agree wholeheartedly.
- elysium raid bosses with a matchmaking system and a leaderboard with the clear times, which maybe refreshes every week and gives some drachma, increased drop rates, and unique cosmetics (such as a title) which lasts for that week only before you have to clear it again when the raid boss refreshes.
joining elysium raid bosses would not require a subscription to elysium, and the raid bosses themselves would be regular bosses scaled to the current maximum level and powered up with new attacks and gimmicks. Just for a few examples:
- King Calvus’ Reign attack would deal way more damage and take longer to charge, but would create stationary Aether orbs that you have to find and destroy to stun him and cancel the spell instead of simply attacking him
- Lady Carina and Lord Elius would fight together, and after one of them is defeated the other gains a significant buff to their stats or revives the other boss to 25% HP after 20s.
- this is kind of unrealistic but an elysium sandbox mode where you can create your own map with a selection of spawners/enemies/bosses (perhaps custom enemies with customizable movesets), obstacles, modifiers, etc. that other players can join, but with no rewards/drops.
building could maybe use drachma for another drachma sink aside from fleets. some stuff could need special criteria too, such as defeating 25 young dragons to unlock them as a placeable enemy or needing 20 amphibious blooms for each magic jump pad you place. build slots would be shared between all files. unsure if this should require an elysium subscription or not
not much of a replayability thing but would be neat to add
Every town in a sea has a cargo quest board that holds 3 quests (refreshes every hour, but can still be completed if u grabbed it already). All the quests are “Deliver X amount of cargo to (insert town in the same sea)”, all the cargo is free btw but unusable similar to that ravenna cargo quest. When completed you get a fat paycheck and big xp
Better gameplay
Quality is the number one important thing for replayability
That is replayability.
You can finish the game in its entirety and still do these cargo hauls and it wouldn’t be the same always, as it procedurally decides the Start and End of each cargo haul.
This is actually a really good idea.
real, I don’t want to replay stepping in shit.
Elysium raid bosses are planned pretty sure. They are basically the prime version of people that have died such as Prime Argos so idk if ppl like Carina or Elius would be there (sadly)
wait rlly?
thats peak
here’s my idea: make dark sea islands a lot more common so its not just you being afk while your ship goes forwards for like 90% of the time, that way the dark sea can keep retention while still being able to implement the replayability features they want to it (the dark sea was supposed to be replayability anyway so yeah)
really? ight ill make it a suggestion then, prob gotta add in a few tune ups to this idea in the suggestion
minimize the catastrophic lag machines (weather phenomena like tornados and whirlpools the size of blasted rock.)
add instruments.
adding “company factions” like for example the “Rasna shipwright company” which the shipwright in rubica owns. where you can join it get exclusive faction themed and based rewards by leveling up in its “progression system / board” by doing tasks and quests given by certain “fixers” in the said company factions.
like armor, tools, and perks and buffs to the character. a perk example could be like speed buffs related to tasks or exploration or whatever, or what not.
each company faction should be based on different themes, notably could be like different empires. like name examples:
The Samerian Ice Company (related to ice mines)
Keraxe Weaponry and Smithing Company (related to i guess how vikings are fighting types or smth idk)
or something like the dutch east india company equivalent in the game.
and the progression system for each of these are completely different and give different rewards. some may require to do pve tasks such as exploration or bosses or what not.
or some may require pvp and more challenging tasks.
this whole company progression system sorta based or inspired by The wild west progression system.
another suggestion:
adding raid bosses that dont drop armors or weapons OR drop alongside with armor and weapons) but drop TRAITS / PERKS when you kill them by using their “essence” which based on a different themed boss give different themed perks. which you can also switch out by using some sort of rerolling mechanic or clearing mechanic.
For example: if i were to kill the omen, it could give me a trait / perk, it culd give me a trait such as:
Omen Scaled: “gives a 15 percent damage resistance against all dark sea NPCS and its enviroment, and by pressing B allows to cloak your self in Hard-indestrucible Armor-skin for 30 seconds which no attacks including ultimate art can bypass.” sounds broken but its a example or whatever.
OR:
The Lions Might: (general argos) “all magic attacks or magic related attacks are nullified by 20 percent. and by pressing B for 30 seconds all substats given by whatever armor the Player is wearing is doubled in percentage.”
you get what i mean. different bosses give unique perks that can fit the situation. so one boss can give a trait or perk for PVE based stuff. or one boss can give PVP based perks / traits.
adding Faction war events.
the grand navy and assassin syndicates are polar opposites.
throughout the seas you can find a serverwide “battles” where grand navy npc’s and assassin syndicate npcs are fighting each other, and there are higher ranked npc’s as well there. such as commanders and major, or Assassin or lord npcs.
depending on your renown (bounty or fame)
if you join in on the fight as a fame player, you fight alongside with the grand navy and aim to kill the lords or assassins.
and vice versa.
there would be like 5 to 6 of those on each side. it increases with each player. max only 5 players can join. if one person joins. its only 5 to 6. if its 2 people on each side. its 10 to. if its 3 and onwards.
the marines and acolytes and ranks below will not be fightable since they will only be focused on eachother only.
the players objective is too only kill the mini boss npcs.
whoever kills all 5 to 6 npcs first (if fame player manages to kill the assassin syndicate minibosses first) it wont be direct pvp. its more like who can do it first.
you get a huge personal reward such as drops and gems and reagents or whatever it can be. when the battle is over. and medallions which is just cosmetics you can put in your captains quarters or clan / guild claimed islands (assuming there are structures built such as the keep)
so its seperate for each player so noone can steal everything. and it also personal for each person as
these battles can also be ship battles on the sea. it can also be sameria and keraxe. not just gravy and assyindicate.
for ship battles you would just have to only sink the ships. and the rewards you get in your inventory.
these battles can become harder on each sea. so probably by 5th sea it might be 2 admirals on each side youre fighting. and the rewards get better each time.
add pets i guess? idk like parrots or ship based pets. domesticable or something idfk.
im not sure if any of these are replayability. just gave my suggestions.
More events, I guess.
Keep things interesting while sailing the sea or exploring islands.
Making cities more interactive, like spawning soldiers on you if you destroy too many building or giving some cities mechanics similar to forts, making them raidable without the long need to fight waves. Just bombard them, destroy their defences, loot some shops and run before the navy arrives.
Expanding on the rival mechanic, that is already planned, I think.
Making bases more interactive, like some mini games you can use to gain money more quickly, like standing at a shop and serving customers with a mini game. If you win, the customer is satisfied and pay you a reward depending on the grade. Could be a nice way to use jobs. Like a cooking shop, a potion one, ecc.
Expanding bounty hunting NPCs. Making them more difficult to track, or giving them followers or bases. Or leaving hints around on their locations, on the Agora or stuff.
Expanding on the cargo, like others said.
Keep it interesting and not just a boring way to make money.
Things like that.
Special ship upgrades exclusively found in the dark sea that allow you to access further ranges?
For example, range 1 can be accessed by anyone. However, if you immediately try to access range 2, your ship will start taking damage, not enough so that an accidental entry ruins a run, but enough so that you can’t explore range 2 at all before sinking.
In the first range, thus, you have to find some special items, as an example, a set of weighted anchors that improve your ship’s stability. They could give permanent extra stability, or be equippable for extra stability with a drawback, or simply just remove range 2 ship damage. These would be decently rare, but when found would enable travel to range 2.
Each range would have a number of these items to find, perhaps you could even have to interact specifically with some features to get them, making stuff like volcanos or sunken forests at least slightly more useful.
And of course, each range would need to offer better rewards than the previous. Perhaps some better modifiers can be found on items deeper in, or something similar.
Already planned… though I can’t see how that’s replayability if its just another tool to equip like shovels and shit.
It’s moreso a bloat feature to make the small amounts of communication mildly interesting, the potential buffs couldn’t be powerful either, as the game is not only built for solo-play more than group-play, but it is heavily relied on how good something is in the PvP space.
“Rasna shipwright company” - Sounds cool and is needed as there’s nothing there… but oh wait! now you can’t do ANYTHING with Rasna ever again or else the functionality makes no sense, it locks the location in a limbo.
Eh…
Not really replayability either, you can do it once and be completely over with it, even before you have finished the game.
Neat idea, likely not possible with Vetex’s coding knowledge.
The game has the stupidest AI I’ve seen in a long while, there’s no chance it won’t just be a dogpile with no sense of direction. If said AI gets upgraded it’d likely just introduce the issue of it being too computationally expensive due to Vetex’s coding knowledge!
Permanent upgrades would technically make it “replayable” though it would have to be considered once the player reaches the final range; should they keep getting upgrades? why should they keep exploring if not?
Maybe we could have NPCs generate quests that have good and bad alignment, and doing a lot of one side’s quest causes more and more quests of that type to appear, as well as special events, like bandit camps or blockades.
We could call it something like… Kingdom and Town Alignment System
Nemesis system. Fuck you WB.
Eh, idk exactly about making it specifically a whole minigame, but I guess it could be cool if you could have some special delivery quests. For example, a store needs certain potions or meals or jewels or whatever, and delivering those within a timeframe gives you a good reward.
Well, the idea is that the upgrades take a good while to gather, I’d say at least 8-10 hours on average per range or something.
The final range is more so meant to be the reward. For instance, there could be items with modifiers that give +2 insanity but a lot of stats, or with drawback and a lot of stats, maybe exclusive spell scrolls…
Of course, a lot of it depends on how creative with it is Vetex willing to get, and in what direction. If the reward is going to be Aphrodite’s bar of soap that permanently disables dirt and tanning, might as well not even add anything.