New Faction

@thamb0

Create a faction called the adventurous sea dogs. It reintroduces the sea dogs in a new form. Working like hg but queueing into 6 ship battles. All ships would fight in a free for all, no restrictions on ship or crew size.

Every sea dog ship would have an item similar to the blade of souls on the burning blade. This item, perhaps a sea dog's chest, would increase in value as other sea dog ships are sank and can only be stolen from a sunk ship. The level of this item will be visible on the map so everyone knows the value of the sea dog chest.

The only way to earn sea dog rep is sink other sea dogs, or sell sea dog chests at the sea dog tavern.

This keeps the hg experience intact, creates new progression and rewards, provides a different style of pvp, utilizes the sea dog tavern, and reintroduces the sea dog faction in a new form.

@testakleze Interesting idea. How would the queueing into 6 ship battles work though, considering it would have to take place on High Seas servers?

@thamb0
Servers are opened and closed all the time. This would start a new server, and as ships in this battle sink, they would merge out like in hg, this would open up spots for new crews starting their session, crews diving for voyages, tall tales, and world events, or even hg battles if two spots are avaliable. Eventually only one ship will be left in the battle when it completes and new crews will have already started to populate the empty spots on the server created when the original ships in the battle sink.

This might leave the Victor of the battle on a server with fresh spawns or even recently merged reapers, that might want to attack and sink the winning sea dog for its chest, as well as any chests they collected from the other sea dogs that sank during the battle.

@guildar9194 not quite, it seems like the intent is essentially a free for all HG event with more ships and all of the ships involve start diving to a new//open server. It's essentially one of the merges that already happen but on demand.

I would say maybe instead of 6 ships do a 4 ship minimum and a 6 ship max so the queues can be a bit faster

@astralenigma Ya. Not really sure why the two new PVP factions were added considering they are already part of Athena's and Reaper's. But I think a lot of people would like a new faction in some sort of way. Was wondering if people had new or cool faction ideas.
Aside from wanting the Sea Dogs back in some capacity, I think a new faction that revolves around no emissaries and hiding spots would be cool. So, my thought was you have a faction that you don't need to raise an Emissary for, but instead you have to sell any loot to them to reach a grade level. So as an example, if I sold 50k to this NPC on an island, it would unlock grade 2 for me for that faction payout. Then everything I sold to this faction's NPCs would give me the base rate plus a grade 2 emissary rate. Then once I sold say 150k, I would get that faction to grade 3. Once I reach Grade 5 for that faction, I can sell any treasure to them for the entire month, but once ledgers reset, I have to start over with them.. So, instead of raising emissaries, they just take everything and give you an artificial constant emissary level for that whole month. The grade you are with that faction also unlocks new NPCs and hiding spots the FIRST time you reach them, then they'll always be available. So grade 1 gives you 2 NPCs on 2 random islands to sell to, grade 2 gives you 4, and so on. The hiding spots that unlock with each grade will have journals in them for unlocks, and once you unlock them they will be permanently available forever. The hiding spots will house the NPCs and be cool little areas that have a couple of shelves on one side of it that look like storage crates. You can bring empty or even partially filled storages crates to these NPCs and SELL them!! Hiding spots also will have higher chance of spawning curseballs in the barrels inside the hideouts.

@testakleze I love it. So you would in essence vote for adventurous sea dogs as an emissary and and then would it automatically make the HG voteable only as an ASD? Then you dive to a new server and fight it out in a large circled area? Or same size as HG to make it more hectic?

@thamb0
I've been trying to decide weather an emissary flag would even be necessary, or if it would feel weird not having it.

My thought was to either have a third option on the hourglass for the sea dogs, or a separate item on the table to vote on. The description would say something like "Fight against other adventurous sea dogs in a 4-6 ship free for all". Voting on this would pledge you to the faction just like servants or guardians. A sea dog's chest would appear chained to your mast with an icon on the map showing a value of 0. Perhaps an emissary flag can be automatically raised at this point instead of by voting on a table separately.

You can choose to adventure normally attracting the attention of anyone wanting your chest. They may be pledged to the sea dogs as well or they may be random crews. Either way you are a target. However, you will only benefit if they are also sea dogs, gaining nothing from sinking any crew that isn't a sea dog.

You choose to dive for a battle from the table just like hg, finding the first 3-5 crews to match you against. To keep development simple, you could use the same battle areas from hg. The tight areas with more ships would probably be best, to promote action and offense early while still keeping the area reasonable when only two ships remain. If a 4 ship battle is started, it could even take place on an already existing server, granted there are enough open spaces. You could then be 5th or 6th partied by the existing crews, who could easily and likely pledge themselves to the sea dogs as they organically join into the fight. I would.

Each ship that sinks would merge out and drop their sea dog chest in the water. As well as their emissary flag, if they have one. Remaining crews might scramble trying to retrieve the treasure and supplies while continuing to fight, or ignore it until the battle is over.

Eventually the winner would likely want to sell the chests they obtained from the other ships and would make a trip to the sea dog tavern, but they become a huge target with several sea dog's chest of varying levels showing on the map for any crews that have joined the server. The most valuable chest still chained to their mast and only obtained by sinking them.

Essentially I just want epic multi ship battles in some form. I miss year one fights over skull forts when the whole server would fight until the treasure was sold. I miss arena battles when ships were weaving in and out between each other and cannonballs were flying everywhere. I miss when everyone on the server converged on the fotd or the fof. These epic moments when chaos is everywhere are the best I've had.

We have several factions for collecting treasure, different flavors of mechanics but still just collect and sell. We have two pvp factions that actually work together as two sides of the same coin. It would be nice to have a new faction providing a distinctly unique style of pvp since the two hg factions that exist are mechanically identical and give us only one real pvp experience on demand.

@testakleze can only agree. I also think HG is a terrible way for newer players to be introduced into PVP. Having a more forgiving 4-6 ship FFA battle would do wonders to give new players the breathing room to make repairs and reset without causing frustration since you have a multitude of ships to battle. I think the biggest set back with HG is that it's barrier to entry is very high and new players wanting to learn PVP just do not like how punishing it is. Having extra ships to intervene would be a good way to ease that issue and having the new faction tied with it would give the chance for new and ps5 players to play without feeling like they're years behind on lvls like with HG.

@astralenigma
I hope one day we can organize our factions list. I have 3 factions on my first page I don't need to look at anymore and they just take up space. I would like to switch them with the 3 factions on my second page that I'm still working on.

@astralenigma Not really that overpowered. You would still need to sell at Outposts for all of your Trading Company factions. This would just be a way to sell things if you don't wanna raise an Emissary and want to sell.
Let me give you an example: I sell my loot to this NPC on an island and make it to grade 5 after selling like 1 million worth of loot. Now, I have the choice to sell my treasure here, but none of it will count towards the other Trading Company commendations, whereas Sovereigns does.. Why is this important? Well, let's say I spent a few hours doing voyages and I'm a grade 5 Gold Hoarder. Then I'm set upon and my ship sinks but I manage to sink the enemy ship too. I get all of my loot in my rowboat and now instead of not being able to sell it as a Gold Hoarder lvl5, I can at least sell it at this new NPC faction on a few different islands. I still have to put the ground work in each month to get that faction grade to level 5. So, if one month I decide not to sell any loot prior and I bring in a haul, it will all sell for grade 1 with that faction. The amount you need to sell to reach each grade for that month's ledger can be balanced later, but I think it's a good idea. The trade-off is you can sell loot to a few NPCs scattered across the seas with no emissary, but it doesn't unlock or progress any Trading Company commendations. Seems like a fair trade to me, especially considering it resets each month.

I'd love a Dark Brethren faction

@blazebeard2313 Seconded. Their storyline seems to have abruptly ended, and a faction based around them, however it'd work, would actively continue the story along!

@guildar9194 Respectively, my friend, I don't think Kai's suggestion assumes that it is. Or would make it so. In fact, it seems almost to me that it builds off of the usual things we all either tend to buy from the Merchants or simply take for granted, and adds a fair bit of weight to it all. It could potentially be modified in that instead of gaining straight-up planks from the trees 'round, (and thus having just infinite wood), it could give you logs that you sell to the new faction under the impression that they become the wood planks we all know and desire.

@blazebeard2313 DB would be a great faction. How do you envision the voyages/quests would work for them?
Also, if Rare brings back Duke and releases a variant of Wanda's outfit, complete with the mask, as a Season Reward, I would be so excited.

@thamb0 I think something divided in modules like legend of the veil, but focused on retrieving ancient secrets from ancient temples, with commendations focused on evil path (for Reapers), Neutral (Brethren) and Good (for athena), similar to Season 13. Basically a war between three main factions to gain control over the seas thanks to the power of the ancients.

I have an idea, it’s less than a new faction more like an add on: player posted bounty quests for reapers bones.
players can put a hit on other players if certain conditions are met and the crew that has a bounty is shown as such for reapers only to see. on the reapers POV they can boot up their quest table and look for bounties. they can either dive to their server or search for one currently on the server. the bounty will increase the more in-game days pass, sinking the bounty will reward you with gold and reputation and for a added bonus the ship logbook would get an increase in value the longer they survive. note: bounties would only count for reapers, once the target sinks the bounty on the crew disappears.
I think this would make Reapers a bit more interesting

@belphegor1384 good idea. Only problem I can see with this is griefing specific players or streamers if players can dive to them. I do think an in server bounty system would be awesome though. Like, when you log in and check that new faction's (Sea Dogs ;)) table has a bounty list for that server you're on and they can do them. It could be based on sinks that a reaper has.. So if a Reaper is in a server and is grade 5 with at least one ship sank an automatic bounty is put on them for Sea Dogs to claim. Every time the reaper sinks a ship, their bounty goes up and caps at 10 ships.