FallenDabus wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:39 pm
@Wenchslayer I'd be really curious to know what the experience has been with the NPC crew that larger ships got access to? Have you felt it has become easier to go out to sea, now you can basically just conjure a couple 30 sail rank characters onboard to cover empty slots without the whole average tanking?
Imagine you have a dungeon, and it requires 6 characters with 75 lockpick skill just to beat it. Adding in 3 spare npcs with 30 skill doesn't solve that problem. Alternatively, you could use 3 players with an 90 lockpick DC.
It's more effective to use a 3 man or a 2 man or a 4 man vessel then to use the Dreadnaught with two 30 rank crewmen that can't be buffed. The companion with three high skill characters will trade better with a Cordorian Galleon then the Dreadnaught with 3 high skilled characters and 3 NPCs. They'll also make more gold.
For PvM content, Flagships are largely an excessive use of resources as of this patch, when the same benefits can be acquired from a 4 man rental, with less time wasted (You don't have to return to port) and lower shares of gold and coin, and far higher risk if you fail due to in character elements of prestige and status associated with them. The primary pay off is being able to say 'Mine's bigger' effectively. .
The reality is that while flagships would be optimal for PvP if crewed effectively (Which is very difficult to do in the first place, and most ships can just escape you easily anyway.) they aren't typically warranted for PvM. Changes to the diving bell content, or more powerful npc content may change this and make a flagship more impressive in future.
This is also not something easy to balance. World of Warcraft couldn't balance it's PvM versus PvP features until it finally decided to just use two entirely different statlines.
Andunor is limited by only have a 3 man and a 6 man ship. Thus, there's no middle-ground 4 man brigantine or you would see the Dreadnaught used far less as a result of this logic.
The practical benefit I saw from NPC sailors was that if someone had to quit early, an npc could take over until we reached port and called the session early. The sessions still have to be called early in those instances. It was a quality of life change but not a mechanical change of note. It was also a welcome addition that did solve a quality of life problem, which was allowing the option have players quit early while we were returning our very slow ship to dock.
I'd rather see a gradual crew reduction across the board to encourage content being used along with less of a need for these optimal warlock/loremaster/cleric builds. Keeping in mind however, that the rewards from ship content may need to be scaled down as well to compensate. Crew sizes should be like Dungeon sizes and likely optimized around the same capacity. 3-5 people for typical higher end content.
I'd encourage more items and and diversified build content for sailors. That Northman's Armor that nobody uses for example could have +5 sailing on it easily. It says it's meant for Luskanite sailors. Help buff classes like fighter or other heavy armor wearers that really need it anyway. Swashbuckler specific items would also be smart like a set of swashbuckler locked robes.
'Gift of Sail while encouraging, does little for most settlements since few characters plan at character generation to play a sailor. It's mainly a benefit to the Sencliff start. Which again, already dominates the server for this role in population.
Moreover, we can't retroactively apply for these gifts on our characters, and few are willing to throw away 100s of hours of items and gold to go relevel it.
Finding someone who pre-planned a sailing build in Andunor rather like finding an albino squig in the Underdark. This is also the case for pretty much every settlement but Sencliff. At the moment, if -relevel is ever removed, the underdark sailing scene will gradually lose most of it's current playerbase.
Thus, I'm likely to advocate for systems that favor organic roleplay, and growth, and diverse character contribution and not pre-planned from level 1-30 characters that play three specific classes.