Make sailing great again.

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Huilusha
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Make sailing great again.

Post by Huilusha » Wed Nov 07, 2018 11:25 am

Lorewise the history of Arelith includes massive naval battles and usage of ships in general. With the possibility of actually sailing, I do wonder why it is not being improved. Facts is that currently you don't really need to sail anywhere, thus, most of ships are rather meaningless flavour addition. The only place you need to sail in is Skal and this fact has it's own troubles. In my opinion, it would be only fruitful to the server if there were some changes to sailing and traffic in general. I think it would help greatly to rise the enthusiasm to actual IC adventuring, exploration and give us more of these spontaneous interactions between players.

1. Remove Laurick/smuggler/other transition captains. Each player can access most of the locations they need on the mainland via these npcs which reduce the value of owning/renting a ship. Make more rental ships instead, so, if you, for example, want to go from Cordor to Guldorand you might rent a ship or find players who run a transport campaign. That would also give some popularity to Cordor's navy faction/pirates/mercenaries. As a player of a pirate main, I found it rather useless to rent a boat once you hit your 18 level and can transition hop to any location you need ASAP. Also you can't find any ships sailing, aside these which migrate between mainland and Skal. Yet, the only possible passengers will be low leveled characters, as once you reach the mainland you can simply port out from Skal.
2. Restrict portals. This is important one, because it affects traffic even more than npc transitions. I am not offering to wipe portals completely, just leave a few at the main hubs like cities/tower without the possibility of quick travel through the world whether via stable portals or lenses. And leave this possibility only to mage classes who have that epic portal feat. This would give a more reason for players to cooperate and travel by land, to use horses etc. It would also allow people to roleplay bandits/patrol roads and generally give more of possibility of spontaneous interactions in the wilderness.
3. Make Shadow Plane as an option to faster travel. Add this as a special ability to dedicated shadow weave mages/sharran priests. Would both make this place more interesting and give some love to Shadow Weave mages for the loss of Evo school.

Dagonlives
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Dagonlives » Wed Nov 07, 2018 4:57 pm

Sailing at this point is pretty much optional, though there is a single rune-drop dungeon that is only accessible via boat without portals.

I admit that removing the NPC Smugglers/fast travel ferries would make sense if you wanted to encourage more sailing. I personally am not fond of how many portals and how many fast travel options exist in Arelith because I think they remove the simple pleasure of navigating a route and dealing with these troubles of bandits and travel, and such.

The Minmir Nexus for example is clearly designed to be a mish-mash of travellers and crossroads for high level characters to meet each other but this is rarely experienced due to the ease of portal use.

Sailing however is also largely an epic level/high level activity, by virtue of very strong random monster spawns, and the fact that your ship can be boarded by underdark or pirate P.Cs that are armed to the teeth. The reward is not really equivalent to effort, honestly. It's something that players do for the fun or the theme of it. I think rather then forcing players on to boats more often, which while making sense and is going to force more immersion, is going to also result ins situations where level 10s get robbed by level 30 pirates. Arelith seems to be based on the premise of rewarding players for selecting certain options rather then restrictiong their options.

Therefore, if you want to improve sailing, make the rewards much higher, add in more content, and make ships more interactive, like adding in cannons and ship-to-ship conflict beyond boarding actions. If the gold value, and the locations are incentivized to be visited more, then the problem is solved in the first place. Give it a viable reason to do to offset the opportunity cost of piracy and long waiting times and random encounters.
My Rp kinda like droppin' a betta in an otherwise serene fish-tank.

Current Concepts:
Jhaamdath Wenchslayer, Drow weaponmaster and pirate captain

Eruantien Chil Ryilnn Aelorothi Aleansha, War-mage and Diviner of Evermeet. .

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420chambers
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by 420chambers » Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:03 pm

I think Laurick charges way too little and rides way too quick anyway.

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Twily
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Twily » Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:16 pm

While I can understand where this suggestion is coming from, there's some pretty large OOC factors at play here.

As can be seen in this poll, many players want to spend less time walking to/from places as is, and a change like this could more than quadruple the amount of time players are stuck spending on exactly that.

There's two large issues here. OOC time restraints, and it's just not fun.

The larger of these issues is OOC time restraints.
Some players only have 1-3 hours a day to hop on the game. If someone were to walk from Cordor to Guldorand, that will take a solid 10-30minutes, depending on level, delays, use of hastes, etc.
When you only have a few hours on the game a day, you don't want to spend a notable chunk of it walking from one place to another when you could be roleplaying with other people or going to an actual dungeon(which most of these take around 45m-1h15m, some going upwards near 2 hours).

The other being, it's just not fun.
Many players on this server have walked the roads between settlements literally hundreds of times each. They know what the maps look like, they know what mobs are found on them; there's just nothing new to see.
Stack that with being higher level, now you're walking through something you've been through a million times before, that also gives no reward and also requires regular stops to smack annoying mobs that give 1 XP per kill.


There's also other factors as well, For example:
Person A in Guldorand sends speedy to Person B in Cordor "Your order is ready, come pick it up in Guldorand".
Now Person A has to just sit around and wait an extra 10-30minutes on top of however much time it'd take for Person B to finish what they were doing at the time. This sort of thing could result in having to wait around doing nothing for 20minutes to nearly an hour, just to deliver the object.
Also, some of the roads between some settlements are dangerous for low levels. This could put even more of a 'level lock' than already exists on being able to visit and/or participate in the roleplay of these settlements.


TL;DR
People want to spend time actually playing the game, and as is there are already many players who feel they waste a bunch of their very limited playtime simply walking from Point A to Point B; time that could be better spent roleplaying with people or exploring actual dungeons.

Miskol
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Miskol » Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:21 pm

Blackfin can only be reached via sailing, Khollingen by sailing or the astrolabe. There are many interesting locations you cannot simply teleport to. Availability of ships would need to be massively expanded as currently, only a small number of players have regular access to ships, and rental ships have the issue of not being returned to port, or the lease not released after the previous owner was done.

As for sailing not being improved, it was. Seven months ago, Irongron announced an update adding new locations, encounters, and monsters only accessible to seafarers, two new ships (one player owned, one rental), and turning Sencliff from an outcrop with a single player-owned house to a fully functioning settlement where players can choose to start. Given the rate that major content is pushed out in Arelith, I would say this is a relatively recent improvement to the sailing system already.

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Anime Sword Fighter
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Anime Sword Fighter » Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:59 pm

Random idea:
Make Laurick a special instance-based writ that you can only take once every so many hours.

You and your party, upon paying him, are simultaneously transitioned into a ship instance with Laurick and some NPCs. Preferably ranged NPCs to avoid them all getting killed. Mobs spawn after some time on the boat, similar to an encounter in Final Fantasy (or normal boat riding encounters.) The Mobs are leveled to the groups average, maybe a little bit weaker (or somehow Laurick and ship NPCs are able to offset most chance of dying, but the risk is still there), once that is done there is another brief time of ship RP then you are transitioned at the destination.

Then, before you can take his ship again, he will always say something to the effect of "We've got room for you in another 3 hours and 29 minutes" (countdown since last smuggle.)

Thoughts?

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Miaou
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Miaou » Thu Nov 08, 2018 6:17 pm

As this is clearly feedback (and part discussion on suggestions), I went ahead and moved it to the appropriate section.

Cerk Evermoore
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Cerk Evermoore » Thu Nov 08, 2018 9:06 pm

Only way i would suggest fixing boats would be to make them bigger and less clutter on their decks. For that reason the Warship is my favorite.

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Emotionaloverload
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by Emotionaloverload » Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:37 pm

Twily wrote:
Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:16 pm
The larger of these issues is OOC time restraints.
Some players only have 1-3 hours a day to hop on the game. If someone were to walk from Cordor to Guldorand, that will take a solid 10-30minutes, depending on level, delays, use of hastes, etc.
When you only have a few hours on the game a day, you don't want to spend a notable chunk of it walking from one place to another when you could be roleplaying with other people or going to an actual dungeon

This. I greatly appreciate the ability to invest in lenses, ferries, -teleport in order to cut down on activities that I don't have time for with my lessened playtimes.


-S
Formerly; Echo Hemlocke-Ralkai, Joshua Colt, Namil Evanara, Elanor Shortwick, Sawyer Brook, Kaylessa Dree, Sines Oliver Selakiir, Birgitta Birdie Swordhill, Bella Weartherbee, Arael Laceflower, Corbin, Rupert Silveroak, Hadi the Slave and others.

TheFanciestChocolates
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by TheFanciestChocolates » Fri Nov 09, 2018 3:17 am

Emotionaloverload wrote:
Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:37 pm
Twily wrote:
Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:16 pm
The larger of these issues is OOC time restraints.
Some players only have 1-3 hours a day to hop on the game. If someone were to walk from Cordor to Guldorand, that will take a solid 10-30minutes, depending on level, delays, use of hastes, etc.
When you only have a few hours on the game a day, you don't want to spend a notable chunk of it walking from one place to another when you could be roleplaying with other people or going to an actual dungeon

This. I greatly appreciate the ability to invest in lenses, ferries, -teleport in order to cut down on activities that I don't have time for with my lessened playtimes.


-S
Going to have to agree with this.

While I am playing a halfling, the idea of walking enough to pad a Peter Jackson movie's runtime doesn't appeal to me. I hold down a job, have other pursuits out of game, and would really lose interest if every journey required 10-30 minutes of walking, plus another two or three six-minute ticks on a boat hearing, "Cordor Rules the Seas!" That's almost a fifth of my playtime on a given night, which I'd much rather traveling in ways that allow me to quickly get to dungeons, speedies, settlements, and pockets of RP.

Everyone's got their niche of course, but making travel more painful just prevents people who don't specifically enjoy the travel aspect of the game from playing in theirs in a timely manner.

And about horses...well. I hear Red Dead Redemption 2 just came out.

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-Heavyline-
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Re: Make sailing great again.

Post by -Heavyline- » Fri Nov 09, 2018 1:48 pm

Personally.. I think sailing has improved alot in this server from what it was 5+ years ago when Penny Rose, Troubador, Cordor Flagship and The Sea Leopard were just added to the server and were the only ships available in Arelith.

Sailing was brutal. You needed a decent group/epic levels to survive. Enemies that attacked your ship were ridiculously powerful. I still have nightmares about that snake thing that got fear aura like basic dragon that put your character into total panic... and it attacked quite often!

There are now more island to discover than ever before. There is more adventure and mystery with sailing. I have more fun with it than exploring dungeons and doing writs. There's alot RNG involved. You never know what you get..

There weren't many ship interactions. If you wanted to find a player ship to plunder with Sea Leopard, it required alot of luck. Now you can check out if any playerships are sailing and where they are located so it's easier to "plan for plunder".

Crow's Nest or Wharftown was the place to meet for Pirates. Sencliff didn't exist.

I think sailing is fine now. Improvements can be always made, but so far. I enjoy it alot more than ever before. Of course I would love to see more active players with ships. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea.

The absolute worst thing about ships 5+ years ago ... there were no rental ships. If inactive player bought a ship and decides to log in for 5 minutes once a week to keep that quarter to themselves. You were done. The Sea Leopard was captured by inactive player for very long time, so piracy pretty much died during that time. With rental ships, you don't have to worry if player owned ships get inactive. With rental ships you can now RP as a pirate as many times you like and the timer for rental ship is nice addition. The only problem is when people don't bring their ship back once they're done (or renaming the rental ships).

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