Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries

@schwammlgott I would definitely like it if Reapers gained emissary value from kills as opposed to emissary kills. I've had far too many encounters where the ship had no flag and no loot, so I gained nothing from the fight.

Had some discussions in the official discord that I thought I'd post here before heading to bed.

1. Emissaries should lose their emissary quest when they lower their flag, that way emissaries are encouraged to remain level 5 for longer.
2. Only level 5 reapers are visible on the map. That way emissaries can still react to a reaper on the map and flee, but only if the reaper can also see them.
3. Make it so that instead of gaining the ability to see other emissaries, level 5 reapers gain a considerable boost to stolen loot (500% was suggested) This way, reapers are still rewarded for hunting down other ships, but emissaries aren't incentivized to not play on a server with a reaper.

Honestly, my proposition definitely has flaws, but that's why I'm enjoying the discussions. I want to work towards an understanding of what would be best for the game.

@tastybird107 sagte in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

Secondly, I think a good change would be to allow emissaries to sell reaper flags to whichever company they're representing. Lore wise, it would make sense as the trading companies already reward you for defending yourself (via giving emissary value when you kill reaper players) but this change would incentivise emissaries to fight reapers instead of running, as they can get gold and reputation from the company they are representing for sinking reapers.
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Interested to hear your opinions as well. I'm not sure if this comes off as whiney or not, but I feel as though these changes would be a lot more healthy for the game. Also, sorry if this post is poorly written. I haven't written something like this before.

Don't worry, not everyone here will make condescending replies just because you dare to give feedback to a game's topic.

About your last point, a torn flag is lore-wise just worthless to the other factions. Maybe with the exception of Athena's Fortune.
It makes sense that the Reaper's Bones reward you for bringing other RB emissary flags to them as you basically help them to get rid of weak blood in their lines and it saves the flag they once handed out to that emissary to get lost elsewhere.
Only the brightest flames will bring power and honour to the Sith, uh, Reaper's Bones.
I'd only let other trading companies accept your own flags, just so that it can't be misused by someone else (not only RB, also impersonators) and be handed out once again for future use.

@schwammlgott sagte in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

@tastybird107 sagte in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

Had some discussions in the official discord that I thought I'd post here before heading to bed.

1. Emissaries should lose their emissary quest when they lower their flag, that way emissaries are encouraged to remain level 5 for longer.
2. Only level 5 reapers are visible on the map. That way emissaries can still react to a reaper on the map and flee, but only if the reaper can also see them.
3. Make it so that instead of gaining the ability to see other emissaries, level 5 reapers gain a considerable boost to stolen loot (500% was suggested) This way, reapers are still rewarded for hunting down other ships, but emissaries aren't incentivized to not play on a server with a reaper.

Honestly, my proposition definitely has flaws, but that's why I'm enjoying the discussions. I want to work towards an understanding of what would be best for the game.

I'm against 2 and 3...it will be enough if only emissarys see the reapers...you already get a bigger amount of rep from stolen loot
And yeah, emissary voyage should disappear when putting down the flag...

Edit: if only reaper V are seen on the map, everybody will just sell everything, lower the flag and put it up again, so they won't be seen

@tastybird107 @Schwammlgott
The general problem is that this entire feature, that you can permanently spot someone's position live on the map, is simply overpowered.
Note that I mean the feature itself, even though I know that it's a lot of work for a Reaper's emissary to get to grade 5.

Because once a Reaper reaches grade 5 and you're an emissary, there's basically nothing you can do to counter this without risking your own flag. Well, except rushing to the next outpost, selling the rest of your booty and lowering the flag.
And at that point you might as well just change the server because if you have to start from grade 1 again, it makes zero difference where you do it.
Battling the Reaper's emissary after lowering your flag for instance is just, you know, not comfortable enough and by that time you could've already reached at least grade 3 on a different server by doing a usual PvE mission.

Forcing people to keep a grade 5 emissary flag doesn't solve the problem either imo, even putting a timer to force it being kept after a Reaper hoists his flag is inefficient. Because you can simply sail away all the time until the timer runs out. Wouldn't be too hard to do. Or just leave the server anyways and maybe the flag has sunken into the abyss already until the Reaper has reached your position. If he even remembers your position.
Or just sail into the poison sea if you really want to make sure that no one gets your flag before you leave the server.
Not that you even need to care what happens after you leave the server. At least I'm just seeing the 5K for lowering the flag as the waiter's extra tip, the real gain comes for me from the increased item rewards.

That being said, do you guys know the Scotland Yard board game?
Because I'm starting to get some ideas.

@schwammlgott sagte in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

@trlalon I don't mind beeing seen as a reaper, as long as they have an emissary on...maybe give the reaper IV already the ability to see other emissarys...

But this is exactly the problem.
I mean normally I just play Solo as OoS emissary, but recently also tried RB emissary.
As soon as I reached grade 5, I looked at the map table.
Guess what? Nothing changed.
No PvP in sight, only when I unloaded my loot at the RB choke-point, of course some guy from the outpost right next to it went looking for me, because what did he even had to lose...
Everyone else seemed to strictly avoid me. I was one guy in a sloop, so yeah.
This was one really boring play session.

On the other hand, if I plan to play as a regular emissary, I immediately run to the map table to check if there's any RB emissary around. You can guess the rest.
If that RB emissary is already at grade 3 or 4, it's not hard to guess how much time will be left for me until he reaches grade 5 and I can kinda forget about playing as emissary.

This system just backfires for everyone, the worst for the Reapers. Every regular emissary knows right after joining the server that he's going to be in trouble soon, while a RB emissary will find out much later that there's really nothing to harvest anymore.

Just throwing ideas out here. What about no map visibility for anyone, at any level, but reapers get a bonus for sinking any ship, and grade 5 reapers get a special compass that always points to the nearest crew. Or the crew with the highest emissary grade :)

I like that this diminishes the emissary meta and keeps all the choices within the actual gameplay.

@cooliocam I've experienced this a lot, too. The vast amount of ships I find while playing aren't emissaries, which would be fine if they were doing tall tales or just didn't want to make themselves targets to reapers, but like you said, I think it's simply because people don't understand the emissary system.

@tastybird107 Agreed you have to really want to get into the game to understand the emissary system and other functions. I'm that guy for my group of friends. Without me they wouldn't know about the emissary system. Even as is, I'm not sure they understand what is happening.

@doctorfork sagte in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

Since I solo sloop a lot, I never really played as reapers. The other day, I gave it a whirl and realized that it's actually really easy, because it tends to keep other players away from you, all the while you can still grind out missions from other factions and progress your emissary flag without any real interruptions. I know that's not the intent, but it works.

Either way, some way to force it into more PVP, like making progression based SOLELY on stolen treasure or sinks is imperative. That said, the maps are too sparsely populated to rely on PVP. So, I'm not sure what would need to be done to fix the faction.

@doctorfork Funny, that was exactly my experience as well. All I wanted was to find out just for the lolz how it affects my gameplay if everyone can see me. I just did OoS missions all the times because often you don't even have to get far away from your ship. Just in case someone would attack me.
Still, it was just a very tedious journey as I, of course, didn't receive any grade XP for completing skeleton waves or finishing OoS missions.
Also the OoS emissary missions, which give the best OoS loot, weren't available to me.
And the only way to get rep from Reapers is to always return to the same chokepoint.
No one really bothered me, but emissary grade 5 didn't give me any advantage either.

All in all, I'll finish this month playing as OoS emissary just to make sure that I get the sail rewards and to make more money quickly. Trying this with the Reapers is pointless now as the basic PvE loot doesn't reward me with enough emissary value.
Next month I'll look forward to grind this, but not without another teammate on the sloop I guess.

I sail as Reaper's everyday and I think the grade 5 is the strongest when there's a server switch. U can see everyone instantly, and after you destroy everyone of them, u will get a server switch again. Rinse & repeat. I think its a good thing that people can see Reaper's so that pve players can do their best to avoid pvp, I would hate to murder people without giving them a fair chance.

I do agree that the Reaper's flag should be able to be sold at other emissaries. Since it makes more sense that way.

@littlezombie846 said in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

I think Reapers Emissary players should stop using Reaper's bones as a way to grief other players it is getting out of hand and should be stopped

In what way are Reapers griefing other players, specifically? In particular, in what way are they that isn't also done by other Emissaries or even just random Ships. Griefing is hardly exclusive to a particular in-game Faction.

I'm saying this once in this one time only no more Reapers emissary

This makes very little sense to me, cause they are a balanced part of the equation for the Emissary System in the game. Emissary is not a bonus only system, it is an increased reward for increased risk system. I have seen you provide no reason why Reapers shouldn't exist beyond "because I'm saying so" (this is implied, and not a direct quote).

oh and one more thing did I forget to mention that they're also using it to Target low level players

In what way is this happening. You can't raise an Emissary as a new player. You have to achieve the appropriate Faction rank and then pay money to unlock it. At this point you would have done at least a few Voyages and no longer be a low level player. Additionally, nothing in the game (including the Emissary system) serves inherently as a way to tell how high or low of a level a player is. There are some Cosmetics that could indicate it, assuming they are using them and you notice them, outside of that all anyone can see is how big your Emissary flag is at this exact moment when looking at it (or in the case of the Reapers you can see their grade on the Maps of everyone, including on non-Emissary Ships). Reapers can see Emissary Ship(s) are on the server via the Map but they can't see the Grade until they can see them.

There is nothing about how this is designed that would allow for intentionally targeting an inexperienced player.

@littlezombie846 said in Changes to Reaper's Bones Emissaries:

Message for Reaper players why don't you get off your ... and get the loot yourself instead of looting other people you guys are selfish arrogant jerks and you're also lazy

So, being able to beat other players is lazy now? The arguably hardest activity in the game. Managing to sneak, in a game without much for sneak systems other than stationary emotes when you need to keep moving around on a timer to not AFK, and pulling this off with success and not being caught is lazy now? The only way to not be lazy is to engage with bulletsponge rudimentary AI threats?

Worse yet, apparently just joining a Faction in a game or stealing loot in a game that has goals centered around doing just that and has PvP as part of the core of the gameplay loop and experience means you are a bad person in some way. Insults seem wildly unneeded here, and are arguably against the Pirate Code in regards to community and all that.

I saw someome make a suggestion about it on the other thread which I think is a very clever way to fix it.

Have reapers be visible only to crews that are level 3+ emessary.

That way crews would have to commit to a server.

@littlezombie846 Stop reviving old posts.
And make a new post on what ever topic you want to talk about yourself.