Cursed Sails had the pleasure of being the first major content update that added several layers of new gameplay at once, setting the bar higher than the Hungering Deep did. While the later had one big gameplay addition in the form of a new AI threat, minor gameplay tools were added like the drums, trumpet and the flags, after that it set up for the bilge rat adventures, the "inbetween" updates and events to keep us invested in the gme while we wait for major updates, nothing big was expected from these updates, though some were underwhelming like the thrones and the sunken curse, others were welcome surprises like the gunpowder skelletons. In summary, we had a decent start of the content roadmap updates but nothing truly great, until now.
The skelleton ships, the alliances and the brigantine are the three major new additions to the game, a set of new tools for players to enjoy available free of charge and with no exp entrance fee, the way gameplay additions should be. I'll go over each in detail and give my thoughts on them.
- The Skelleton Ships
A feature requested over and over again ever since pre-release, finally here. The ships look good, though their paintjob looks a bit strange, I hoped to see some black on red colors or even different colored ships depending on which cursed crew you were fighting, but alas, the same model and textures it is. The skelletons are ruthless and they are decently balanced, however they do spawn and die without much animation inside the ship, I suppose this was done to cut on performance strains, but the result is very jarring. Moving inside the skelleton ship feels very claustrophobic, the clutter does seem to be awkwardely placed in some parts like in the cell section, as well as the top deck back of the captain's wheel, where it is open for players to jump off from but there are some wood pieces that stick out and make the movement feel unnatural. As per usual colision with the ship as a player is awkward, you can aim yourself to land on the ship but get bumped off even if you were certain you would land on the ship. The multiple ways to approach the encounter do give versatility to the encounter, players can opt to defeat the galleons with only water buckets, chests of sorrows and/or ramming, thankfully the devs allowed for this kind of outside the box approach to the encounter. The skelleton ships themselves were fair and allowed for counterplay from the part of the players by allowing for players to board inside the ship and interact with it. A great addition here was loot drops from each ship and the final ship having the important loot, a pretty smart move and I hope to see rewards for every type of major enemy in the future or from the past, which includes meg and kraken. The ship's silluette is easily recognizable, but perhaps green/blue lanters may not come to player hands ever due to conflicting visual readability with the ships, or perhaps Rare will find a way to reconcile these systems.
- The Brigantine
The first out of hopefully many new ships is here and it is a very cute ship. I find it useless to me that no longer plays the game without a full galleon crew, but variety is what is most important, and giving players freedom to express themselves in the seas through the vessel they sail is always good. The clutter inside the brigantine is a bit intrusive however, the voyage table blocks a hole spot, making it a bit impractical to repair in a pinch, there is a cloth that blocks the line of sight to a hole on the left side of the bed, but even so, this stuff isn't too damming.
- The Alliances
My first concern with this system was how would players use it to circumvent gameplay by creating serverwide farming alliances, those concerns were remedied with the 50% cut, though I wasn't fond of it, because it would cause awkward intrigue between crews to see who would be doing the selling, still I got used to it and learned to accept it. The system is a direct response to "no reason to play together" and "rare forcing players to work together to complete missions", now working together is rewarded and encouraged, even if at least 50%. This should be a decent deterrent to the rampant aggressive behaviour most pirates have, now prefering to recruit crews to help them earn more shared rewardss for voyages they aren't doing while occupied with something else. Some stuff still need to be adressed, like the free short distance respawn while in an alliance and the fact that the alliance flags constantly dissapear at random.
- Other additions
First the cursed cannonballs. In total 9 new curses and with 2 variations: player curses and ship curses. The player curses require the players to be hit by the cannonball's blast radius in other for them to be cursed while the ship curses only requiring the ship to be hit. It does give a bit of a hint of which of the two is the more dangerous. First off I'd like to say that I share the feeling of the community of being annoyed by the dance/sleep cannonballs, it isn't fun to have your agency removed for a prolonged period of time without you being able to do anything about it, sometime it is too difficult to avoid and sometimes you and your crew get punished for getting hit once, due to the curse duration being prolonged through multiple hits. I agree it isn't fair. My only proposal is to decrease the effective radius of the cursed explosion, requiring for the player to actually be close to the blast zone rather than being in the general vicinity of the boat. I don't believe having the ability to "counter" the effect would be good, would be too much of a nerf to the cursed cannonballs. Now a quick summary of each cursed cannonball:
-
Dance/Sleep
Same effect, different emote, a bit weak on the creativity but still the more powerful of all the curses. Needs a AoE decrease nerf, at least. -
Grog Cannonball
I wanted one of these, I love it and I think it's probably the best one, it'ss on the edge of being annoying to deal with and fair. -
Anchor Curse
Players wanted a way to use a "slowing down" mechanism for chases, here it is, doesn't get more straight foward. -
Sails Curse
More or less the same as the anchor, but weaker in the sense that it still allows for steering. I feel like its in a good place, these two are the "anti-chase" cannonballs. -
Poison Curse
The only curse that deals direct player damage, pretty good to deal some early chip damage to enemy players and allowing for a quick guaranteed sniper kill. This will probably be the third most used type of agressive cannonballs, behind only the stunlocks and the anti-chase. -
Broken Bones Curse
Xbox players rejoice, you got a way to deal with the bunny hopping, this cannonball puts pc and xbox at sort of an equal playing field, only thing remaining is the turn rate unfortunantely. -
Cursed Barrels
Not too useful and hardly ever relevant, most players walk around with pockets full of resources, by the time they run out so does the curse. -
Cursed Helm
Probably the weakest curse, only relevant in situations the player leaves the wheel at a turn, but even then, its not intrusive enough.
As a final note, these cursed cannonballs SHOULD NOT BE BOUGHT FROM ANY VENDOR. Rare needs to make them random finds from islands, they can't be easily available from a location, especially due to their power, the only type of acceptable progression here is the type that allows playerss to be stronger the longer they are in a server, by finding and gathering new tools from the world, we see that with supply crates and gunpowder, same should be with cursed cannonballs.
Commendations this time around were more interesting, though they were a bit repetitive, I think Rare is learning how to be creative with them, even though the time zones were against the players, I do endorse most of these wacky challenges.
Finally we got the cosmetics, great new additions though I'm a bit sad that the kraken's beak figurehead isn't a reward from killing the kraken. The new legendary cosmetics were late, but are much apreciatted, legends need cosmetics to express themselves, yo.
I rate this event a solid A+, all major content updates need to be just as good or better than this one.
