Greetings!
I am loving the game. Had to put that out there. But there’s been a lot of talk about how nobody wants to die - that is, who wants to risk daring, brazen exploration against all odds with a character they have invested hours into grinding on? Dying is built into the spirit of the game, this is clear due to the effort being put into legacies. But I think that the current legacy concept is missing out, as its still too devastating to lose a character.
I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) that warehouses are going to be implemented at some point? So why not simply make it that anything left in a warehouse at wolfstack docks is passed on when you die?
It fits strategically: Anything major, such as Captivating Treasures, would instantly be left in the warehouse by every player who didn’t need to take it with them. The importance difference between this and legacies is that with legacies, converting CT to heirlooms means you lose the CT to your main character. It’s a massive blow to lose a CT purely to safeguard against something you never intended to do: die. With warehouses, you still have the option, at any point, to use the CT/other valuable item for something useful, but you have to balance the risk of converting it into echoes and not having that money passed on.
It fits thematically: On one of the loading screens in the telegraph message, it even describes exactly what I’m talking about! "As his closest relative, you are entitled to his remaining goods and crew." And what sane captain wouldn’t make arrangements for his warehouse in the likely event of his death?
I guess the thing I like about this idea is that it is so simple. It becomes so easy to ensure any excess wealth is passed on in the form of goods that it would encourage players to put everything in their warehouse, load up on fuel/supplies, and zail off into the darkness with impunity. That appeals to me! It’s why I play. And I’m sure my lucky up and coming grandson who receives the benefits of his suicidal granddad’s adventures would be more than happy to continue the tradition.
I would like a warehouse myself, but only as storage for my immediate captain. It would just be over-powered if I could pass on fantastic gear to my next captain, at least not without extenuating circumstances. I just want to be able to stash some of my excess equipment, artifacts and perhaps even my Live Specimens or Strange Catches.
Ah, you see, but that’s the thing. For that gear to be passed on, you’d have to not be using it and leave it in your warehouse in preparation for your death. So in your case, all your descendant would get is your excess equipment, artifacts, live specimens and strange catches.
Well, one of the feature that was in the program for the Emerald update were the extended Legacies but they slided down, due to the success of the Steam Lunch. Maybe they will be added in the next weeks, or maybe they will be slide after the Steel Update.
But you have made a mistake in your calculation: you don’t lose the CT, you can still sell the Heirloom. You’ll get a random amount between 800 and 1100, averaging around 900. So if you need emergency money you can always sell the Heirlooms.
And while I like the idea for a warehouse I need a little clarification on how you would balance it. As you propose it it’s overpowered: you put things in there and the next captain in the Legacies will get all of it.
But: the thing with having a storage space in London, it’s so we could place important stuff that takes up hold space (the 7 strange catches and the live specimen for the Song, for example) and then take that stuff from the London when we need it.
But are you proposing the stuff we put in the Warehouse is lost to the same captain that putted it there ,accessible only to the next one in the Legacy, or can he access it as well?
In the first case I say no. We need storage space for the stuff that we accumulate in our travels and take up hold space, but it makes no sense for us to not being able to access it anymore.
In the second case we’ll need some way to balance it, like a certain chance some of the Items will not be there, and an hefty price to have a warehouse in the first place, and restrictions on what could be put there, for example no Ship’s equipment.
It fits thematically: On one of the loading screens in the telegraph message, it even describes exactly what I’m talking about! "As his closest relative, you are entitled to his remaining goods and crew." And what sane captain wouldn’t make arrangements for his warehouse in the likely event of his death?
I guess the thing I like about this idea is that it is so simple. It becomes so easy to ensure any excess wealth is passed on in the form of goods that it would encourage players to put everything in their warehouse, load up on fuel/supplies, and zail off into the darkness with impunity. That appeals to me! .[/quote]
Certainly, expanding the options for legacies won’t hurt. But the solution you propose has two giant problems. Firstly, it coincides with the function of Heirlooms: leaving the next in line echoes. This costs echoes to do, so you’re actually investing echoes to make sure the next in line inherits something. Which brings us to the second problem: it’s too easy, your proposal doesn’t cost anything.
To make it work warehouses would have to do the following:
-There should be a sufficiently significant cost to having one
-They should not take over the function of heirlooms, that means that CTs and OAs should not be able to be kept in a warehouse (only buyable goods). But perhaps adding the contents of your warehouse to your will could be an extra action still.
-They should not magically transport the contents of your ships hold to your warehouse, if you tragically die at Zee.
-It should be balanced with regards to how much you pay for hold space on a ship. It should cost more than hold space costs for a ship.
-You really don’t need a lot of hold space for the Zong of the Zee. Most items that you need to collect for it, don’t take up hold space.
Therefore there are two conditions that warehouses must fulfill before they could work within the game as it is now:
-Don’t conflict with Heirlooms
-Don’t be a better alternative than increasing the hold space for your boat
What I would be interested in is the option to add extra legacies to your legacy, perhaps for 10.000 echoes each. That way a very very rich Captain could leave a whole compliment of officers and/or stats to the next in line, provided he pays around 100.000 echoes.
Lord1box is right, maybe the storage could be added to the lodgings so they are proportional in cost. So you’d have a small chest in your Room above the Helmsman, a storage cabinet in your townhouse and a cellar in your mansion.
Items stored there go into the will, your hold is for the drownies.
What do you store permanently that eats up your holdspace anyway, fuel and provisions get used, trade goods sold and curiosities don’t take up space or am I missing something?
[li]or just make the game less dependent on grinding.
[li]
[li]i started with permadeath but had to give it up.
[li]spent a ton of time making modest headway, then i’d get sandbagged and thrown back to square one.
[li]cute and fun the first few times, much less so as the meter kept running & running and the rest of the world ran by.
[li]became terrified of taking any chances, because risk = death = 20 more hours of grinding to get back to where i had been.
i’d much rather be exploring & developing than grinding … and that’s really not an option with permadeath.
Less grinding and less penalties for dying are both equally valid options - but I do agree that having to sink 10s of hours into a given playthrough makes permadeath excessively onerous. Note how almost all rogue-likes take only a couple of hours to play through (assuming survive to the end).
The game simply needs to make up it’s mind whether it wants to go more into the direction of Elite, or if it wants that danger element of a rogue-like. I totally get how the latter supports the game thematically, but it has to be balanced accordingly.
It’s pointless to say that this game is ‘rogue-like’ and than introduce and refine all the elements you think are rogue-like. Rather what they are doing and need to keep doing is look at their OWN GAME and improve it based on how THEIR GAME ought to be, without trapping themselves in the straight jacket that is the rogue-like name.
By the way Psst!, there are some ways to reduce the risks you take:
-Try to keep Terror as low as possible; I know, this is hard to do when you’re exploring, use excess echoes to go cavorting, do anything you can so you don’t gain more nightmare’s strength (50+ terror when arriving in London)
-Get a bigger boat. More crew means you can lose more of the buggers. Zailors don’t seem to mind a loss here and there. Just make sure you don’t suffer so many losses that you have to move half-speed.
-Being forced to move half-speed will almost surely kill you. But it was possible to make it from The Khanate to Fallen London, so you could be lucky.
-Plan your route. Know how much fuel and supplies going somewhere and going back will take. Will you even be able to make a profit if you go that way?
-Fight everything you can fight, as long as you don’t have to leave the light/coast to do it. Try to pull ships and monsters towards you rather than running into the terror inducing dark to get them.
-Expand your map bit by bit
-You won’t get murdered if you don’t immediately drop the Bruiser’s first cargo, you will on subsequent requests. Feel free to accept his commission and use the fuel and supplies you get to make your first big exploratory run.
Hopefully these guidelines will help you be more successful.
The only problem with grindy-ness that I experienced was when increasing the stats of my captain. That sure is a long and arduous process. edited by lord1box on 8/4/2014
[li]yeah, LB, i’ve run that jazz and can usually end up scoring at least 500 bucks on a ‘regular’ run.
more if the gods smile with a decent storyline or two.
but it takes a LOT of effort just to get to a point where scoring that much per cruise is possible.
riddle-busting plus extended cruises just feels so much more rewarding, especially if the main mission goes ‘bad’.
i actually ran into an issue where i was stockpiling cash early on but didn’t have anything to invest it in.
had enough for cheap guns & tricks, but it would be a waste of money (time) so it was quicker to save for heavy artillery.
also great to have a better boat, but didn’t have nearly that kind of cash on hand, so i had to wait …
and while guns are great, i’ve really come to value Veils over Iron.
Iron you can buy into.
Veils you really can’t, and without good veils, evasion in battle is near useless, which puts a lot of fights right out of your league.
I hadn’t realised you could sell heirlooms, thanks for that clarification.
Ok, so for clarity’s sake this is how it works in my mind:
You have a normal warehouse. Depending on how the devs implement it, you’ll probably have to pay for it in some way. Whatever you put in your warehouse, you don’t have in your ships hold when you set sail. You can’t bank echoes. You can get items out again and put it in your hold, say for example if you stocked up on cheap fuel and supplies in the Iron Republic to save for later, you could put it in your warehouse, then get it out when you needed it.
So when you die, you naturally lose all echoes and cargo that you were carrying on your ship. My proposal is simply that anything you didn’t need or didn’t want to take with you, is passed on. I agree that there would have to be a cost for balance, but I think its likely to be tied up in the original cost of the warehouse anyway, or if not, it could be in the unreliability of the warehouse itself (thieves, etc).
That’s the sum total of my idea. There’s no weird teleportation of goods or anything :)