Dewderonomy
Grandmaster
Everything brought up was pretty much addressed.
@K A Z makes a valid point that the seas aren't getting used a whole lot more with the expansion, but as literally every other person mentioned, the reason why they aren't getting used is because all they added were ships with guns. People want to go out to sea; to say otherwise means you haven't been to sea in the last few weeks. We come across people out on galleons a lot - but keep in mind what "a lot" means.
We're talking about a "land mass" the size of the overworld and the dungeons combined. There are no choke points. There are no real recall locations. There are practically zero "hunting areas" (like overworld liches, Sacrifice graveyard, dungeon hotspots, and the like) outside of maybe the Grotto. Coming across a galleon once a week (roughly once every 10 hours of play time) is "a lot". To us, we're used to that, and we'll go out again and look for more action. To most others, that's a waste of time, and they won't set foot back on a ship unless that changes.
Let's look at the incentives introduced with the expansion:
-Galleons: People want to use these (there are new posts about fishing, galleons, piracy and people taking their ships out every week if not every few days). That means actually going out and shooting someone, though. When you set sail for 4 hours and maybe run across an AFK fisherman, you're likely not going to go out to sea again for awhile, if ever. Not when you go PK with impunity anywhere else and find action in about 10-15 minutes of recalling and dungeon hopping.
-Grotto: Let's be frank: the Grotto was not as impressive as anyone had hoped. It's a sub-par dungeon that requires minimal time to sail to (difficult to intercept ships unless you camp it), has a handful of people go there throughout the week (though they can farm in relative peace), and does not require a ship to get off it (drydock the boat and recall when ready). There's nothing wrong with the mechanics involved here; the problem lies in incentive to go in the first place. When you have new levels in half the dungeons with significantly high rewards and uniques to earn, why take your tamer to farm ogre mages? Sure during peak hours it might not be a bad idea, but ultimately if you don't catch 'em en route to the Grotto, you're effectively just dungeon PKing (which is not why people want to hop on a galleon to begin with).
-Deep Sea Treasure Hunting: This was a great idea alluded to post expansion without anymore information or an ETA of release. While the premise is amazing, how will it work? Will it be random hours? Will it be back-to-back fishing opportunities? If it's random hours, it really makes little difference to how things are now. If it's back-to-back whirlpools, then it will ultimately devalue the rares and, in short order, likely mean that they're worthless anyway. This will lead to the whirlpools being abandoned, and after one or two short weeks, we're back where we're at - except with a proliferation of "rares" to account for it. Bottom line, it isn't out, and if it's implemented poorly, it may not only not help the overall seafaring element, but hurt it.
-Prizes: The idea of taking a ship and ransoming it back or fighting over the wreckage and even seizing the ship to use or sell is a pirate's dream. Prizes are the true endgame content for seafaring. Going out and seizing ships, hunting pirates, terrorizing the fishing lanes - legit forms of risk vs. reward at sea (and there is a TON of reward at sea already, to mention nothing of the deep sea treasure hunting). Classics are running in the 20-30K range, meaning ransoms are about 2-3K. Whatever, no big deal. Galleons? 15,000 gold pieces. These things should be ransoming for 50K+, costing crews an investment of 500K+ just to get the ship. That was the promise of galleons: the big kids' form of team-based combat. Lay it all out to be blown away; no more ~50 of each reg and a 999 gold barbed suit. You pulled together and you risked it together. When galleons are ransomed back for 2K it's like... why bother? It's almost like getting pissed on your shoes. Sink a ship, they ransom it and you're done. You don't even get to utilize the other options of fighting over the wreckage because ransoming is just so cheap. In short, there's not even incentive for dedicated seafaring PvPers/PKers to fight. For the record, it's been almost a month (maybe more) and we still don't have correctly priced galleons.
I know people feel this expansion was about seafaring, because of the galleons and the Grotto, but look at the reality: other than the ships and the dungeon, there wasn't anything else the expansion dedicated to seafaring. The rest of the expansion was RDAs, new dungeons, bosses, new rare system, ancient armor/ancient hammers, special craftables, new tames - the list goes on, and they have nothing to do with naval combat, fishing, piracy or anything else requiring a sail. There are even things they wanted to implement that they didn't (MyUOF, house linking, special plants/botany buff, DotU, and on and on).
What we have is content that Alan worked exceptionally hard on implementing, and they haven't fully implemented it. I'm not talking about the deep sea t-hunting or adding additional content like sea quests, escorts/smuggling, pimping your ride, or anything like that, but even just pricing the ships correctly. Unless we're given incentives, there just isn't a reason to go out and spend precious time staring at blue.
@K A Z makes a valid point that the seas aren't getting used a whole lot more with the expansion, but as literally every other person mentioned, the reason why they aren't getting used is because all they added were ships with guns. People want to go out to sea; to say otherwise means you haven't been to sea in the last few weeks. We come across people out on galleons a lot - but keep in mind what "a lot" means.
We're talking about a "land mass" the size of the overworld and the dungeons combined. There are no choke points. There are no real recall locations. There are practically zero "hunting areas" (like overworld liches, Sacrifice graveyard, dungeon hotspots, and the like) outside of maybe the Grotto. Coming across a galleon once a week (roughly once every 10 hours of play time) is "a lot". To us, we're used to that, and we'll go out again and look for more action. To most others, that's a waste of time, and they won't set foot back on a ship unless that changes.
Let's look at the incentives introduced with the expansion:
-Galleons: People want to use these (there are new posts about fishing, galleons, piracy and people taking their ships out every week if not every few days). That means actually going out and shooting someone, though. When you set sail for 4 hours and maybe run across an AFK fisherman, you're likely not going to go out to sea again for awhile, if ever. Not when you go PK with impunity anywhere else and find action in about 10-15 minutes of recalling and dungeon hopping.
-Grotto: Let's be frank: the Grotto was not as impressive as anyone had hoped. It's a sub-par dungeon that requires minimal time to sail to (difficult to intercept ships unless you camp it), has a handful of people go there throughout the week (though they can farm in relative peace), and does not require a ship to get off it (drydock the boat and recall when ready). There's nothing wrong with the mechanics involved here; the problem lies in incentive to go in the first place. When you have new levels in half the dungeons with significantly high rewards and uniques to earn, why take your tamer to farm ogre mages? Sure during peak hours it might not be a bad idea, but ultimately if you don't catch 'em en route to the Grotto, you're effectively just dungeon PKing (which is not why people want to hop on a galleon to begin with).
-Deep Sea Treasure Hunting: This was a great idea alluded to post expansion without anymore information or an ETA of release. While the premise is amazing, how will it work? Will it be random hours? Will it be back-to-back fishing opportunities? If it's random hours, it really makes little difference to how things are now. If it's back-to-back whirlpools, then it will ultimately devalue the rares and, in short order, likely mean that they're worthless anyway. This will lead to the whirlpools being abandoned, and after one or two short weeks, we're back where we're at - except with a proliferation of "rares" to account for it. Bottom line, it isn't out, and if it's implemented poorly, it may not only not help the overall seafaring element, but hurt it.
-Prizes: The idea of taking a ship and ransoming it back or fighting over the wreckage and even seizing the ship to use or sell is a pirate's dream. Prizes are the true endgame content for seafaring. Going out and seizing ships, hunting pirates, terrorizing the fishing lanes - legit forms of risk vs. reward at sea (and there is a TON of reward at sea already, to mention nothing of the deep sea treasure hunting). Classics are running in the 20-30K range, meaning ransoms are about 2-3K. Whatever, no big deal. Galleons? 15,000 gold pieces. These things should be ransoming for 50K+, costing crews an investment of 500K+ just to get the ship. That was the promise of galleons: the big kids' form of team-based combat. Lay it all out to be blown away; no more ~50 of each reg and a 999 gold barbed suit. You pulled together and you risked it together. When galleons are ransomed back for 2K it's like... why bother? It's almost like getting pissed on your shoes. Sink a ship, they ransom it and you're done. You don't even get to utilize the other options of fighting over the wreckage because ransoming is just so cheap. In short, there's not even incentive for dedicated seafaring PvPers/PKers to fight. For the record, it's been almost a month (maybe more) and we still don't have correctly priced galleons.
I know people feel this expansion was about seafaring, because of the galleons and the Grotto, but look at the reality: other than the ships and the dungeon, there wasn't anything else the expansion dedicated to seafaring. The rest of the expansion was RDAs, new dungeons, bosses, new rare system, ancient armor/ancient hammers, special craftables, new tames - the list goes on, and they have nothing to do with naval combat, fishing, piracy or anything else requiring a sail. There are even things they wanted to implement that they didn't (MyUOF, house linking, special plants/botany buff, DotU, and on and on).
What we have is content that Alan worked exceptionally hard on implementing, and they haven't fully implemented it. I'm not talking about the deep sea t-hunting or adding additional content like sea quests, escorts/smuggling, pimping your ride, or anything like that, but even just pricing the ships correctly. Unless we're given incentives, there just isn't a reason to go out and spend precious time staring at blue.
