Right now, ships are quite a niche part of AO. The only stats considered meta are the ones which make the ship’s movement capabilities better (speed, resilience and stability), unless it’s PvE. This is my idea to make ship combat more important.
You all know how attacking players on the sea looks like right, it is mostly all about approaching another player’s ship, jumping onboard and M1’ing until they die. This idea would make it harder by making both players unable to exit their steering wheels whenever one of them attacks another. If a player is assasinating another one on the sea, it would put both of them into combat as soon as they get close (200m?) to eachother, and make them unable to leave combat until one of the ships sinks, if the hunter’s ship gets sunk, they lose the bounty paper, and if the target’s ship gets sunk, it could work the same as hunting them normally, killing them on the spot.
Why? Because every bounty hunter gangsta till I pull up my 20k hull killing machine. Ship combat deserves more attention.
I feel like another thing that really hurts ship PvP is chainshot.
If you aren’t using chainshot in naval PvP you’re just screwed because your opponent has full control over the field because you can’t move and can engage/retreat whenever they please.
No other cannonballs are really viable unless you’re ambushing somebody with heavy explosive shells.
every 20k hull killing machine user gangsta untill i exit my ship 201 meters away and start airstriking your location with canon fist (i use the ‘release sails’ button to move around)
oh so the person that tried to sink my ship with heavy exploding’s either thinks my ship build is weak and shouldnt waste chainshots on or doesnt realise chainshots are OP?
As much as i agree that ship combat can use an entire revamp if anything.
this suggestion just won’t work especially since the only way this would be balanced is if the event was situationally right.
Main concern is locking people to the steering wheel which causes MANY problems. i think a different way can be introduced to make ship pvp more meaningful.
true, we would need a complex set of changes to find a proper solution to it but for now id rather wait until a major ship overhaul update is considered.
This would be good.
I have been ambushed too many times by someone who just came out of nowhere and slapped me into the next realm while I was holding my steering wheel.
I do agree ships are rather niche when it comes to PvP and depending on how you do your build you might want to avoid it completely since your character is not built for fighting in confined areas as a ship deck or surrounded by water. I feel sinking the enemy ship all it does is stopping their water mobility but does not guarantee you still manage to hunt them since they can still swim away.
That being clarified and saying the ship battle could have some polishing I really hate the idea.
Being locked in place on the steering wheel feels the game forces me to give up on my all rights of moving around to be forced into a ship battle minigame that probably I did not want to play in the first place which applies to both players not just the attacker. Especially since one of my most popular strategies is just bailing out the ship and drinking an air breathing potion when I feel I can escape. I feel it is very much against the spirit of the game that I get locked into a ship game in which I become a ship rather than a magical adventurer that is piloting a ship.
Also you still have to implement the whole code for the idea and it does not sound too easy to implement let alone it being bug free. What if the ship fight ends and you get bugged and remain locked in the steering wheel or worse you get locked in the ship without starting a fight and do not know how to break free. Not saying you cannot implement it and clean all the possible bugs but the effort it would take could be used for other possible implementations to improve ship combat.
That would be all that crosses my mind. I feel being able to assassinate an enemy player in ship should be a genuine strategy and the best way to counter it is by keeping the enemy ship at a distance, tracking the enemy moves and having a backup plan would they manage to get onboard.
