I am usually quite bold with my suggestions. Today is different. I am not confident at all with this one.
Fleets are flawed. This is a truth that pretty much everyone agrees upon. However, fixing the system is impossible. The mechanic is rooted too deep, it can’t be simply ridden of. Removal will cause even more damage, and any changes to Fleets will not be accepted by everyone. This is a problem without an obvious solution, therefore I provide one today, but even it isn’t perfect. Unlike other suggestions of mine, I don’t expect anything to come out of this one.
We tried debating certain aspects of Fleets in this topic, but didn’t quite get any meaningful results. Everything is too complicated, but we mostly agreed on the issues.
The auction prices went wild with Fleets being added. Drachma became very easy to obtain in large numbers, which inflated the prices.
The fleet tasks (Exploring, Harvesting and Trading) made grinding resources effortless. There isn’t a point to explore the open world of the game anymore 90% of the time, since you can just stand afk and earn much more than if you were spending your time on grinding. However, people aren’t against the idea of skipping the boring grind, which is understandable.
Fishing task is useless, right? Well, most of us agreed. Not everybody, though.
Conquest devalued Dark Sealed chests, but barely anybody minds that. The current Dark Sea is a mess of unfair RNG mechanics, sailing long distances and rare windows to actually gather rewards. Collecting enough Dark Sealed chests and getting them back to the War Seas is very tedious and not fun.
The gap between a <150 level player without a fleet and a >150 level player with a properly developed fleet is massive. Fleets alone heavily discourage players from using their other saves, since it is just too much work to bring them on the same level as their main save. Professions are also guilty of this crime, but to a lesser degree.
So, quite a lot of problems. Now, we must cause as little harm as possible when fixing them. To start with…
Fleets are now operating with a completely new currency, separate from Drachma. The issue was inflation of prices? Well, now the source of endless Drachma is gone. This new currency, called Galleons, is used for every fleet-related action butrepairing a recently sunk ship to join your fleet, that still costs Drachma. Naturally, every fleet action that earned you Drachma will now earn Galleons.
Additionally, every item obtained from fleets will have a tag applied to it, which prevents the player from selling it or trading it away. This will combat the insane amount of fleet items being sold on the auction. Rare ingredients must remain rare. Also, no more loophope of converting Galleons into Drachma.
Now, what to do with the players who already amassed millions of Drachma in their banks? Hard to tell, really. This is a huge issue without a clear resolve. Best we can propose, is a 90% cut in Drachma of every level 175 player and of their banks. This is a very bad solution, but what else can we do?
Fleet tasks are getting changed. Well, not all of them. The item yield of every task is decreased, but it only starts being so on high amounts of ships in the fleet - smaller fleets don’t change, so the early development isn’t tedious.
Recover, Plunder/Patrol - no changes.
Exploring - at max level, you can receive essences. These things can apply the statless version of their modifier onto any item except those that are already modified. You can also get a guaranteed essence from finishing a rare treasure chart, two for a mystic and three for a legendary. Gilded essences are also a thing, and are awarded 3 per a mythical chart. Atlantean essence is now also statless, and its drop rate is drastically increased with the level of an Atlantean, with current drop rate becoming level 1 Lost Sailor’s, because we do not want getting maxxed armor build to be even more tedious. There is an old suggestion that explains the reasons to remove Atlantean Essence better than I could, but I didn’t want to remove it entirely, so I left it statless for drip purposes. Items obtained already with Atlantean applied will keep the stats.
Fishing - now named Hunting, and gives you both fish, animal meat and animal drops on higher levels. Fishing is useless, but some players say it is a great food source, so let’s expand on that.
Level 1 - Commom fish and meat, fish can be Small
Level 2 - Uncommon fish and meat
Level 3 - Non-Dark Sea animal drops
Level 4 - Rare fish, can now be Giant
Level 5 - Fish and meat can now be Arcane, and animal drops can be modified (all modifiers but Gilded, Imbued and Atlantean)
Harvesting - can now yield Dark Sea’s jewel reagents only in addition to its previous loot, and every reagent/catalyst currently only obtainable from chests, excluding Prometheus’s acrimony and godly nectar, will receive its own spawn conditions and become harvestable in open world. These are: golden apples, caustic fabric, volcanic ash, scorched metal shard, island cloud extract, dark sea essentia and arcane scoria. I am not pointing out the exact obtainment ways - the suggestion isn’t about them, and most are fairly obvious. All jewel reagents must be made equally hard to get, since now, the difference between getting 5 auric seaweed and getting 5 aeroplasts or golden apples is massive.
Trading - doesn’t give enchantment scrolls anymore. Tier 1 enchants are replaced by tier 3orbshot cannonballs, and tier 2 enchants are replaced by tier 5 orbshot cannonballs. Also, the damage of these orbshots’ status effects should receive a moderate buff to be on par with explosive shells, or even greater. The task does retain its increase in currency gain, but it is Galleons now, so should be fine. As for scrolls’ removal - we don’t need tasks that invalidate the Dark Sea. Speaking of tasks, invalidating the Dark Sea…
Conquest - removed entirely. I know that people prefer it over exploring the Dark Sea, but it isn’t an argument for making the location obsolete. The better fix is to improve the Dark Sea itself, so people wouldn’t turn away from exploring it. I will do my best on making a Dark Sea-related suggestion. For now, just know that Dark Sealed chests from daily quests are still staying, so you have a way out to earn the rewards without going into the danger, if you really don’t have time for that.
The Fleet Shop. That “new” Galleons currency isn’t just for upgrading your fleet - you can use it past that. The Fleet Shop works similarly to the traders of Ivoris, but it isn’t a location - just a piece of gui in the Fleets menu. There, you can buy any items that are acquireable from fleet tasks of your currently unlocked level, but it has a heavy cost, so the manual grinding of an item is still faster than the fleet’s perfomance + constantly buying that item in the shop. People who spent their time should be properly rewarded, but those who don’t have the said time still have a way out. Reminder that every fleet-acquired item will have a tag attached to it, that prevents trading or selling the item.
The Fleet Raven is also sold in the Shop, for a really hefty price, and you can only buy it once, since the tool itself is permanent. Waiting for level 3 Fleet Research is too long, and the raven is the greatest utility a fleet captain could wish for. It must be made more accessible.
Exclusive Vanity Items are the main sell in the Shop. Designed similarly to Sir Garen’s wares, these vanity-only, fleet-themed items are made specifically for the richest fleet captains, and their Galleons price is enormous.
The fleet is now shared between saves. This is made to shorten the bridge a player needs to cross to start properly playing on a new save, or even on an old save from pre-Full Release that was abandoned due to the many new mechanics you’ll have to repeat anew. Now, I know people say that you can just use Paramount Bankers to transfer items from a file with a developed fleet to a file with a less developed fleet, but come on, what is this life support situation? Besides, the non-tradeable tag on items prevents their transfer anyways. However, only the file you are currently playing on will get Galleons and loot from the fleet’s activities, and you only get access to the shared fleet, once you get to level 150 and accept Edward Kenton’s quest.
Side Ideas. If putting Fleets onto a currency separate from Drachma will be accepted as a good idea, maybe Clan and Guild building can be transfered onto something else too? That does cost a lot of Drachma, and earns a lot as well. Could this be an opportunity to bring back Lamina?
Aight, the suggestion’s over. I am still very insecure about this one - the Fleet system is just this hard to tackle. I fear no man, but that thing… it scares me.
And, with this suggestion, they can yield all of that, but also reagents, fish, meat, animal drops, spices and essences.
Speaking of sealed chests - those earned from fleets will grant Galleons - after all, every Drachma source was replaced, so this counts too. The chests will have the tag, after all, so it is possible to identify which gives what.
It legit wont solve anything: the ppl with a lot of assets are also the same ppl who have a shit ton of drachma. prices will go back to the same within 5 days
The fleet system like it is now becomes a clan feature, dedicated to gather money for clan building like crops do right now. Eventual chests and items from conquest and other activities could be divided according to clan ranks, or stored into a clan treasury, with every member able to withdraw only a certain number of items based on his rank.
Crops now wield vegetable-like food consumables.
The “Edward’s quest” becomes either a lesson about naval combat, sinking a certain number of ships, or a lesson on the various groups of the bronze/nimbus sea. Once completed it would give the rowboat blueprints and flaregun. Optionally there could be a separate quest for explaining the logbook.
I know, and I stated that change as being a bad one. I do not agree with it myself. But, I had to put at least something in the “a fix to players who already amassed millions of drachma in their banks” category
I feel like the mechanic was intended to be everybody-accessible alternative to clan building, in the way of being able to earn lots of money and spent lots of money
Most of this sounds good to me, but I do have some thoughts.
First of all, since I can’t quote the thread title: I don’t think calling your suggestion “dreaded” does anyone any favors. That’s just a small nitpick though.
I think this is beyond the scope of fixing the problems with Fleets, and shouldn’t be a part of this suggestion. You might have people that would agree with most of this reject it if they happen to like atlantean essences as they are.
I think instead of removing it entirely, it should rapidly and unavoidably burn through a fleet at an unsustainable rate. I think that’d be better than removing it outright, and fit with the idea of the Dark Sea being something that you almost certainly won’t survive (at least in lore, if I am not mistaken). I wouldn’t miss it going, though.
Here’s my idea on how to sink all the excess Drachma: A glorious golden statue. Players can spend drachma on a bidding war to have their character be memorialized in a golden statue at a certain location in Sameria for a day. Perhaps it could be framed as a reward for donating to the cause of rebuilding all those islands that got wrecked by Keraxe. It’d be a leaderboard, perhaps a hidden one so there’s no inter-player trouble. 1 drachma : 1 point. You’re told what place you are in and how many points you have currently. Every day, the character with the most points has their character model data saved, and across all servers the data for the character’s vanity and hair and whatnot is loaded, everything is textured gold except the face if possible, and it becomes the statue. All points are halved every day. Throw in some cosmetic rewards for hitting certain lifetime points, points held at one time, maybe getting a certain amount of statues/consecutive days as the statue model, and I think that’d be a pretty good drachma sink.
I put “dreaded” there as “I am really uncertain what I wrote here is any close to being correct, and that I experience severe anxiety by posting this suggestion”.
Eh, right, went a bit overboard there.
At higher cost, sure, but you still kept the task that invalidates the whole area.
The idea is really funny, but I have no clue whether or not it will work. Its surely bound to catch the huge ego players, thats for certain
Vetex intended fleet money to go to everyday player expenses, like repairing and resupplying your ship. But if we cut off the fleet system with a separate currency, we will no longer have a passive source of drachma to spend on theese things, and running out of money when your boat is broken kinda sucks. Howewer, all this wont be an issue if we could repair player ships with galleons, perhaps?
This isnt gonna fix anything, since all of the previously fleet-able items will become more expensive because all sellers will now have to get them manually. So, what is the point of buying theese “premium” items if you can just get them with your own fleet?
If im reading this correctly, then harvesting will only be useable for getting like ~10 items and thats it. The purpose of this task is to gather reagents and catalyst so players dont have to and could spend their time doing something more fun. If you take that away completely, harvesting just loses its main reason to exist.
I dont see fishing as useless, but with your proposed change it still does its job of making food, so i dont really care.
Whats stopping people from just not spending money on the statue and keeping their millions of drachma?
Im gonna wait with my rating but this is all i wanted to say.
Why should we have a passive source of drachma to begin with? Want money? Earn it.
And, repairing your own ship with galleons is kinda pointless. Reserve those for the fleet.
If there isn’t a point in buying, then there isn’t a point in selling. And for those who still decide to sell their items, there are always those who are too impatient to wait for their fleet to do the work. I don’t see a problem here.
Hey, not only the Dark Sea ones. What I meant here is “Harvesting can now yield everything it already did + Dark Sea reagents, but only those used for jewels”. I updated it to avoid confusion.
What i mean by this is that every time your ship sinks and you have no money to repair it, you have no choice but to stop whatever you were doing and go make money to repair your boat. Fleets ensure you never run out of drachma. Maybe they give a little too much but thats besides my point.
Riddle me this bio, if getting 20k galleons for a brig was already an absurd task before fr, how the fuck are we supposed to afford anything past that without a large source of galleons
You already didn’t “earn” galleons, there was no consistent and skill based method of getting them other than chest farming which takes too long. Fleets might not be an ideal system, but I would much rather have them than return to the days when it took ages to gather enough galleons to actually be worth anything.
You’re identifying a flawed solution to a problem and then saying that we should get rid of it, when the alternative was an economy based entirely off of already having valuable items.
Make Fleets account-wide and then you just need to do it once, not sure if it’s a good idea to reduce drachma gain since it’s already been going for so long, but I think just making it account-wide would be better off for everyone so they don’t have to re-grind it on every file.
