@E0SE
It's easy for me to name a console game that was innovative (guitar hero) but that was playstation. The problem with xbox is it is made by microsoft, the same people who made windows. Sony has taken most exclusive deals while it doesn't seem microsoft has really been trying to win exclusives from devs. As far as my knowledge goes, this is the first exclusive since several years ago.
Your previous comment was "think outside the dumb 'xbox'", not outside the "box". Regardless, you constantly mention shooters (cod, fortnite, pubg, all are shooters) and that "this guy must be a cod player" attitude is what i get from that. I apologize of my judgement their is off, but i want to say that my favorite game to come to xbox was smite, a moba that i got to play on pc for a couple months before it came to console. Again, i may be misjudging, but if you assume all console players like all the same games, you are wrong. I'm very diverse, i did start getting bored of cod after modern warfare 2, as the game was innovating it's formula a ton up until that point, where it became only about new maps, maybe a couple new perks, and new zombies. I'm in agreement that the cod series has stagnated, and what i've seen from the most recent, they are actually only getting worst.
On the note about npc ships, if you read my post, i wasn't in favor of littering the world with npc ships. To further explain, i don't think the npc ship needs to be flagged for all players to see, and it doesn't even need to be full of cargo, 2 or 3 chests maybe, but enough to give reason for players who see it to be more willing to engage in a pvp fight with another player over taking that ships treasure. also, even if the game was to be littered with npc ships, their really aren't enough pirate/ship combat based games out to say it isn't innovative, when the gameplay itself is innovative enough on its own. My overall opinion, however, would be to have a small amount of npc ships on the map to where you only see them once in a rare while. After all, flagging the whole server could easily cause a near endless pvp scenario, as the time it would take to bring 2 or 3 other crews ships down would be enough time for even more people to join the fray or the first crew to make it back. Servers are going to hold up to 100 players at full game release with a bigger map from what i've heard, so until then i can't really comment on whether or not 1 very rare npc ship event or multiple less rare ships would be better, how flooded the seas are with players could be a worry that makes the entire idea bad to begin with, I can say for certain that neither of us know for a fact of which is a good idea, or if either is a good idea, until we experience the real SoT experience.
To say ship customization in your method is innovative is only accurate if the above idea is innovative. Many games have self customization, just as many games having npc enemies that are like an "event" (treasure goblins in diablo, for example). In fact, CoD is a prime example, being able to outfit your character with different perks like noiseless footsteps or my old favorite of using the 50cal sniper outfitted with an acog scope to reduce the zoom for closer range aim: all do-able so that you can form your own strategy or playstyle. It's the general gameplay in SoT that makes nearly everything in the game innovative as is. That said, i could get behind the different types of wood, sails, and cannons idea. I have heard someone quote the devs saying the game will have "tons" of ships with a variety of customization options. The tons of ships part tells me that customizing the wood/sails is probably something we won't ever be able to do as your ship choice (like the sloop vs the galleon) is also your method of choosing types of cannons or sails, or in simpler terms, your ships performance in damage output vs speed vs maneuverability etc.
The small amount of gold spent was already thought by me and i dismissed it as a good idea due to the fact that players trying to pve will also incur that cost if they are sunk and would only further discourage this game as a pve-able game. Then again, tons of ships they say, so maybe theirs a ship that simply can outrun all others and would be the go-to for pve. Will have to see on that.
I love the bounties idea, i mentioned it in another thread. My variation is to have players who engage in pvp more often (higher kill and death counts then average, with time played considered in the math of it all) to be more likely to be designated as a pvp players target, and simply sinking them gives you a reward so you don't have to worry about wasting time killing a no-chest having ship.
