You should be able to request a mermaid, instead of it automatically spawning on a person when they're away from their boat. This would help stealth players tremendously, in my opinion.
Request Mermaids
@hate-the-clouds
This is something that has been mentioned before, but might also cause the balance to tip the other way in favour of an attacker rather than a defender. Pirates rely on the presence of the mermaid to indicate players in the water, at outposts or hiding on board their ship without actually giving away their specific location.
@hate-the-clouds They talked about this on a recent stream.
They explored the idea during development but it was problematic from a technical standpoint and they wanted the mermaids to feel like something that was organic and belonged to the world rather than a teleporter that the player summons when needed.
They said there's a lot of balancing work that has been done around when the mermaid appears, so the fact that it's not an instant summon probably plays into the balance of ship to ship combat too.
I always thought this idea would be a no brainer, but after hearing them talk about it I think I agree with Rare's decision on how they work.
@hate-the-clouds said in Request Mermaids:
You should be able to request a mermaid, instead of it automatically spawning on a person when they're away from their boat. This would help stealth players tremendously, in my opinion.
no you may not outpost camp without a mermaid visible.
It was recently covered by Andy and Joe in a weekly stream.
- Summoning was considered.
- Wanted immersion instead of it being in player control
- It's presence evolved into an aide to detect players.
- Too difficult to see players in the big world (especially with name tag gone underwater from above change).
- Non crew can't see smoke
One can already easily camp an outpost or an island without being visible, by just going the opposite side of where players are about to come, to make the mermaid appear and then go back to the other side to ambush. Never seen players going three times around an island before stepping on it.
Bytheway pirates are already very visible even at sea when watching them from a crownest/high pic.
Mermaid wouldn't be necessary to spot on players if "enemy" pirates would actually make noise when they walk on a deck, through trees and plants or any ground.
The same could be added about enemy ships making no noise while sailing full speed a few meters from yours.
Even if summoned a mermaid the second you fell of your boat it could spawn at an appropriate distance to keep balance in ship fighting. As far as world immersion which sea of thieves does fantastic job at already when you have 3 mermaids spawn in a row because you decided to try and do a ridiculous swim to a docked boat on a island it feels less like a mermaid coming to your aid in a time of need and more like a game trying to prevent you from doing what I personally feel is one of the funnest parts of the game. I do get trying to keep attacker and defender rolls balanced but adding something like snoring softly while using sleep emote and being able to hear more enemy sound ques in close proximity might be a better option and more immersfull. Or maybe not let players summon it but allow them to tell it to go away for an hour aside from when you are on a outpost. That way if you fail quickly you have to wait or have your ship pick you up or die, and giving it a time period to go away would give you enough time to start but long sneak missions it could still come back after a time forcing the player to move if they want to get rid of it. Just some thoughts I do still enjoy the game a lot this is just one of the features I feel could be adjusted in some fashion for a more enjoyable experience
Would affect other aspects also. Sometimes when you are locked into spin with other ship, they might try to shoot themselves on your ship, if they miss that gives you a good time to try board them, or put even more holes on them. Being able to call a mermaid at will would mean you could just jump, miss and instantly be back at the ship. Im sure there are other situations it would affect.
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