Disclaimer: I’m a bit of a noob when it comes to this game: I had started playing it, then I only resumed recently. In my most successful game I only explored about 60/70% of the map, and I haven’t seen all there is to see in the game, far from it. Also I understand the game is in development so please don’t take it as criticism but rather as a suggestion. And sorry if this stuff is already in game, or if there are already plans to add it: I had not noticed.
Anyway, I think that the game could use some more variety when it comes to creatures. Right now if I am not mistaken we only have giant crabs, morays, sharks, jellyfish and "icebergs". Why not giant squids? Whales? Giant turtles? Giant albino bats? Giant sea snakes? Colonies of worms? Swarms of "piranhas"? Devil rays? A giant lobster? Giant sea lions? Sentient kelp colonies that shoot "spores"? An aggressive (and, guess it, giant!) kind of sea star? There are lots of creatures that could be added. (Also, I beg you! Add a balloon fish that inflates itself and becomes huge once it spots an enemy on the map :D ).
Also, I’d love to see "neutral" ships sailing the zee. I don’t understand why all ships you meet should be pirates. What about other zee captains? Merchants? Smugglers? Patrols? Running into them might even trigger encounters and events. And while we’re at it, I wouldn’t mind seeing creatures fight with other ships, ships fighting with other ships, and creatures fighting with other creatures. edited by Bluebeard on 11/26/2014
[li]I’d love to see a classic Leviathan-shaped "Sea Serpent" or Cthullu-esque type of giant squid or Kraken. I do remember a scaly green eye used for the illustration of the one of the "search" cards on the old battle system, but I haven’t seen any such underwater beasts as of yet.
I want to know what the eye in the eastern ocean is… Anything that can make the ocean shake is something I don’t want to encounter, but I do want to know what it is…
I’m sure we’ll see more enemies in the farthest reaches down the line. Bear in mind - they don’t even have all the islands in the game yet, and of those that are in a good number haven’t gotten their content added. Once they have the entire Neath built I’m sure a bit more variety will come. I’d also wager we won’t see the largest zee-beasts in combat until we can intrude on them in the underwater expansion.
At this point I’d prefer to see the enemies we have be better and more interesting. I’d love more monsters; but not if they’re just a new graphic, and some new loot storylets (if those.) Enemies did a lot of things prior to the combat rework that they need to be doing again…tentacle attacks to pull zailors off your ship, weird cries that increase terror, maybe some form of limited projectiles on a few of them. More guns on the larger ships, use of flares, use of burning fuel in the engine to speed up, torpedoes…
There’s lots of places the current content could be improved/old creature content revamped for the new combat system, before asking for completely enemies. Again, it’s not that I don’t like new stuff. We just need new stuff in the form of old stuff working again.
I think there’s sufficient variation in the different enemies that there are, and the different types of attack are still there, albeit in slightly altered form. The difference between the two different combat modes makes it impractical to have a creature with the ability to pull sailors off the ship without wearing it down first, because otherwise you’re suddenly running away from crabs because they can reduce your dreadnought to speed one with a few well placed claws, which does seem more than a little wrong. I like the idea of bigger ships and meaner creatures out there, but it’s the idea of having things that provide others sorts of challenge that most interests me.
There’s choices and balances to be made. But I think it worked fine in the old version. There was a reason you feared zee monsters even in larger ships, because they’d ignore your beastly hull to snatch crew members. Balanced against distance, a cooldown period, success rates and whether it even makes sense (crabs with tentacles maybe not being so sensible) I think it’d work. At the very least, we’d get more variation than "Ram the ship."
[quote=SouthSea Rutherby]
That is a good point, and I’m not just saying so because your name is "Rocket-heeled Jack" ;)
[li][/quote]
:) Well, if you’re going to have a name, make it a good one :)[/li]
There’s choices and balances to be made. But I think it worked fine in the old version. There was a reason you feared zee monsters even in larger ships, because they’d ignore your beastly hull to snatch crew members. Balanced against distance, a cooldown period, success rates and whether it even makes sense (crabs with tentacles maybe not being so sensible) I think it’d work. At the very least, we’d get more variation than "Ram the ship."[/quote]
That’s a good point. Zee monsters should still be scary even when you’re prepared. I’m not sure how easy it would be to animate, though.
That was one concern I had when we moved away from the card-based system. At this point, I only have good things to say about the new system (I had initially opposed fans who requested a more live-action combat system but the devs did a great job on it). Still, you are correct: right now the combat only has a few options and most beasts seem far more similar than the otherwise story-driven game is used to.
Perhaps a few other options can be possible a later date. One thing I liked about the old system was that monsters could use a number of techniques from "language of fire" flavor text to smelling fear if your terror was high enough.
That’s much harder to incorporate into a live-action system.
Perhaps a few sailor-grabbing animations, screams, or other visuals would spruce things up at some point.
[li] edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 12/2/2014
The problem inherent is that when it comes to a points based system for indicating what state the ship is in, everything has to be expressed in terms of that, now whether the attack does Crew damage, ship damage, or something else, it’s still numerical based, and I have no problem with that. As to the attacks, well, they’ve got to make contact one way or another, so I have no problem with the idea of rammers or shooters. Even the attacks that raise terror manifest as a wave of sound.
If there was a way for something to attack without having to make contact, there’s a problem in that your ship suddenly goes boom and you have no idea what attacked or from what angle, which is fine if you’re dealing with submersible b’stards and other such, but there’s got to be a point where you can figure out what’s having a go at you.