Milestone 6 Feature Discussion: Pillaging

[Aether]

This post describes a pending feature to be included in Milestone 6: Blood in the Water. Please use this thread to share your thoughts and ask any questions you might have.

Important: While your feedback related to this feature is important, there is a very real chance that the information shared below will be changed or moved to a future milestone as a result of testing, or to make room for priority features. It is crucial that you take that into account before becoming too attached to a specific idea presented here.

Pirate Pillaging
Pirate Pillaging is a new goal (and reward) for pirate players who participate in port conquest. A town eligible for the Pillaging treatment is redesigned by the Flying Lab art and content teams to include new town art, special events, and a bounty of piratical missions that offer up all the treasure, loot, and piratey goodness you'd expect. Players will be greeted on the docks by Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket--the creators of Talk Like a Pirate Day--to get the party started right.

The first two towns in the game to be eligible for Pillaging are the British port of West End and the Spanish port of Gibara (since the Pillagine "makeover" involves an entire town redesign, we're rolling them out one or two at a time). Pirates can begin contesting those towns with a goal of reaching the Pillaging state beginning with the "Fortress of Light" patch (patch 1.5). In the next patch, "Blood in the Water" (1.6) we'll introduce Pillaging to the inaccurately named British port of Spanish Town, and 1.7 (the "Clashing Blades" patch) we'll bring Pillaging to the French port of Port-de-Paix. So load the cannons, pirates, and get conquering!

[flaknugget]

Will pillaging be limited only to pirates?

Or will Nationals with the right reputation values be able to try this too?

[Cesshawk172]

Any news on if they found any better rewards on test server's pillaged ports?

[Aether]

Originally Posted by flaknugget

Will pillaging be limited only to pirates?

Or will Nationals with the right reputation values be able to try this too?

I'm checking my facts on this one, but as I understand it, this feature is for Pirates alone. While nationals will be able to see the changes, they won't be able to take the special missions. The goal here is to give the Pirates something more substantial when they flip a port.

Best,
Aether

[kungtotte]

In its current state (1.5), Pillaging offers 5700 doubloons and some XP. That includes the 2500 doubloons previously available when a port flipped.

It's not unreasonable to think that you spend twice that in the process of flipping the port and fighting the port battle. Heck, if you bring out your big shooters, you might lose ten times that if you're unfortunate enough to get sunk in the flip attempt/port battle.

In my opinion, the returns on pillaging needs to go up before it becomes a reason for pirates to flip ports. Right now (on Rackham), we're doing it to try and keep pace with the French, and see if we can't win a map despite having the odds stacked against us. Pillaging might shift the target of the attacks, but I will bet you anything it will not increase the frequency of them.

Maybe the rack rats will start hitting Gibara instead of Santiago on our way to 300, but that's about the only result of pillaging.

[Alexande]

No. And don't understand why pirates would get this and nationals wouldn't. Clealry some sort of bone for not giving them RvR? why waste dev time on something for a quarter of your player pop?

Instead, why don't you add a group mission for ALL factions that is essentially an avcom mission inside an open town with a few randomly spawning npcs and pillage art? Make this mission add contention toward a port battle.

Hey and lets go one better. Why not create player versus player avcom missions that put contention on ports or take it away? Why haven't you chained your "defend this port" mission together with a "pillage this port" mission? And why can't that second mission be joined by both factions involved? You put in AVCOM, use it.

[LoJo028]

Seems pretty awesome, I talked a bit with Rusty on this a month or two ago and I think it is a very cool idea. It gives pirates another reason to take ports and just gives a little more added content. I mean, if you are already going to be taking ports, why not get some extra cash and fun out of it? How could this be a bad thing?

After all, pirates are supposed to be a pillage'n and a plunder'n.

[kungtotte]

Originally Posted by Alexande

why waste dev time on something for a quarter of your player pop?

Pirate populations are the second largest to largest populations on servers. I am quite certain they hold at least a 30% stake in total.

But thank's for your input! 30% of the population is glad to hear you think they should have no end-game.

edit
In case your post was directed at me, Lojo, lemme just say, 5700 doubloons is nothing. 30 minutes killing NPCs on the OS (with no buildup, just go and kill) or grinding for hours to flip a port, and then winning the PB? Like I said, maybe we'll start hitting Gibara instead of Santiago, but 5700 doubloons is not enough to fight a PB over. We do it for the four victory points.

[flaknugget]

Originally Posted by Aether

The goal here is to give the Pirates something more substantial when they flip a port.

I can appreciate that.

I've never played Pirates, and I don't personally understand how different things are for them.

All I know is, if you can't hold a port for more than a week, winning a Map is pretty close to impossible.

Offering another reason to capture a port seems perfectly reasonable.


Still, I think reputation should play a role here. It takes a lot of effort to move reputation up and down, and manage all of it.

If a National player chooses to become a Hero among Pirates, that should mean something.

[Aameron]

Looking forward to it!

I like the suggestion of avatar PvP opportunities to contribute to contention - just not sure how that would be made workable in practice. I guess it could be a mission that becomes available after the first bubble that would have objectives and people could queue up for the instance, and when the queue is full the instance gets launched, meanwhile new queues are forming.