Hello there.
The title may have scared you, sorry.
Im trying to propose something that wont break/unbalance the game in any aspect and still make a significant change to the progression mechanics. Making players want to return into the game for a way longer time, as they will have more objectives, porpuse and things to fight for.
Its pretty simple, instead of Galleon or Sloop, there should be buttons to chose between rent a ship or to sail with your ship.
You dont have to pay to rent a ship, but playing with your own ship grants you more gold on quests and stuff, thats how you are benefited for playing with your own ship.
I have seen people with great ideas for new types of ships, and would love to see it being implemented, but simply having all of it for free is a little bit vague and boring.
This is how things would go:
The best ships of each kind/size are avaliable on start to play as rented, casual players will not be affected in any way. Ships can be bought, but it takes time, you have to find the blueprint on your adventures to pay for the NPC to build the ship. Bought ships would have a minimal amount of everything: 1 Banana barrel, 1 Cannon Barrel, etc. You would have to upgrade everything to its limit, then it would be as good as a rented ship, but you would earn more money on selling stuff than playing with a rented ship, thats pretty much it. It adds progression without unbalancing the game.
The diffrence between ships of the same type would be related to design and layout, not advantages or disadvantages.
Implementing the rowboat would make all this a even stronger suggestion, the rowboat support on the boat must be bought, and the rowboat as well, if your rowboat is destroyed you must buy another one if you want to keep one on your boat (of course it would be cheap, like a 1000g for ex.). Rented ships would still have to pay for the rowboat, but not for the support.
What do you guys think? Is it a nice solution? need some changes? I have took this idea from Forza 4 in which you could play with any car in the game, but if the car wasnt yours, then you wouldnt earn any money at all. In the case of sea of thieves, on a rented boat you must earn the amount we already earn, but if you buy a boat then you would earn more.
"Endgame" ship types would add even more to this, special ships (same aspects, diffrent appearence) like the flying dutchman for ex. It would be extremely hard to get it, its a ship that you would be completely surprised when you find a crew with it, it must be rare. Hard to unlock, takes time, and luck finding extremely rare things to acquire the ship.
THOUGHTS PLEASE.
Up /\ if you like the idea, so rare is more likely to see it.
