Game Design/Discussion

Ahoy! This page can be used to post and discuss player Game Design suggestions while the forums are unavailable. Each suggestion can have its section on this page, where players can comment. Feel free to edit and format as needed.

Standings Changes

Please leave feedback for the standings changes on the Ice discussion page.

Notice board / Shoppes

Would love to see a fix in the game design so that a shoppe that is displayed on the Notice Board actually needs labor. A good portion of the time I jump from listed shoppe to listed shoppe doing no labor because the ones listed do not need any labor at all.

Community / Players

- Please set "Emerald Ocean" as the default server. New players have a 2 in 3 chance to get either Meridian (dead) or Cerulean (dead). There were a lot of random streamers that stumbled upon this game, just to see nothing, puzzle for 10 minutes and leave. The same thing goes for Obsidian.

- Script a nice tutorial mission for new players. Give them an amazing first impression.

Example: You design your pirate and meet an NPC. The NPC will swordfight and rumble (while explaining the basics) and give ye a bandana upon defeat. Then he'll ask you to hop on his ship to sail to Admiral island - on the way you will have to Sail, Bilge and Carpent. As a surprise, you get attacked, have to gun and yer NPC buddy sinks the attacking sloop with 4 shots (1 gunning board you filled). After looting the booty (treasure haul), you will finally make it to Admiral Island with a bit of PoE in yer pocket...

- Advertise the game through streamers.

- Email old players ("Your pirate got stranded on an island in a new ocean - Emerald. Yarghhh! [...] download the game [...]")

- Polish the user interface and make puzzles prettier. You can literally see the pixels of the Bilge background and everything else has a blue border on higher resolutions...

Purpure here.

- Start a Discord. All the current games at this time (that I know of) have a Discord. You can even set a bot to monitor the Discord to get rid of unsavory remarks/characters, such as Dyno or Mee6. --Purpure (talk) 12:15, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

- You can also lock channels and do announcements and stuff there. Many flags have Discord - people are used to using it.

- Engage with Reddit.

- If it's feasible, add the previous blog posts to YPPedia so that we don't completely lose the quirky history of 3 Rings. --Purpure (talk) 12:15, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Mobile playing - Either create a mobile app for the game, or allow the use of remote desktop applications to play the game. Currently remote desktop applications are considered to be a botting program, but they provide no puzzling advantage and do not manipulate the game environment. Opening access to allow these remote desktop apps will increase player population.

A tablet version of the game used to exist. However, it needed a completely redone interface in order to be suitable. When Three Rings attempted to bring this interface to the non-mobile side, they got a TON of backlash from the community about it. And since they didn't have the manpower to maintain two separate interfaces, the mobile applications were simply dropped. --Thunderbird (talk) 03:26, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Ocean Pirate Port - Looking for suggestions on how to port a pirate from some oceans to another. This has balance issues and some items, like deeds, couldn't be moved at all. What items do players actually care about if we had to put major limits on this? How do we keep it from unbalancing oceans? -- Cronus (talk) 19:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

>> Ships,trinkets, furni and chromas should be fine. Don't move fam/LE pet wealth directly, just the pirate stats. Give the pirates a "wealth voucher" trinket that they can redeem in the palace shoppe for special goods (like out of date mystery boxes; or with many tickets even a random LE fam). Possibly combine that idea with a general "trade-in" shop, where people can trade their excess tan fams/bad pets for a cheap gamble ticket in general; e.g 1 tan fam = 1 ticket. 5 tickets = a fam box that has 80% tan fams (big games like counterstrike have a similar system for their skin items). Non-emerald players could get a handful of tickets on the production ocean and then either sell them for PoE (out of date mystery boxes are desirable and good PoE) or gamble. Something of that sort could be solving both issues. But there definitely should be limits in place so that prices/quantities of desirable items dont inflate. - Demontoad

>>I don't think inflation should be an issue worthy of being worried about. I don't think people should be punished for moving their valuables from other oceans over to Emerald (or other oceans) after having worked many years for them to achieve what they achieved. That said, maybe items that are sent from ocean to ocean could become untradable items? Regarding deeds, I am sure it'd be possible to create some kind of system to delete a deed from say Meridian, and then recreate a ship of the same kind on Emerald, perhaps without the same name/furniture/paint. I think most people would care about their personalized ships and their familiars. -Technitium

>> Keep it simple, give the players an option to move their pirate with the stats/trophies/items to another ocean. PoE, Familiars, Pets and other items that are on the pirate at the time of the move can be moved. Shoppe Deeds needs to be moved to an alt or will be lost forever. I like the idea of ships being traded in, and reclaimed for half the cost. There will be a semi-temporary inflation on the new ocean but things will adjust over time. People have a lot of valuable/Sentimental items but may be more understanding about why shoppes cannot be transferred to another ocean. Another idea is to add an option to Trading Posts for people to trade in ANY item for a percentage of it's value (how the value will be determined is up to you). That way instead of bringing over a ton of stuff/junk to the new ocean because we can't find player-buyers, we can just bring over items we value the most. - Stans

>> I agree with a lot of what Tech and Stans have said here already. I think that the potential negatives mentioned do not outweigh the vast positives associated with allowing players to port their pirate(s) to another ocean. Players have invested an insurmountable amount of time into their items on now "dead" oceans, so many of which may hold incredible value and sentiment to them (namely, of course familiars). I believe that offering this option would bring back old players, especially those who had no option but to quit as oceans became unplayable, without any incentive to start a new ocean and leave much of what they've worked hard for, and potentially spent money on, behind. - Velternal

>> I think the above has it mostly covered, Velt especially pointing out the vast amounts of time and money spent across FOUR servers now. I think you should let players reclaim all items; clothes (familiars included,) pets, furniture, chromas, trinkets. etc and transfer the char with all items tied to it. I am not opposed to having all my items non-transferable, I've been making that suggestion for years. However, I do not think it would hurt the economy if they were still kept tradable. I also think that our deeds can come with us using the sealed deed system. If you seal all of our deeds before transferring us, you can then spawn us onto Emerald or whatever new server and then as we unseal the deeds they'd spawn in on the island we landed on upon transfer. I wouldn't mind a character merge option either at that point, so I could have all the trophies and hearties from both mains on one. - Mordida

>> Another +1 to bringing across familiars and ships - these are the items that hold sentimental value to me and without them I wouldn't consider the port a worthwhile endeavour. I suspect many players feel similarly about pets and trinkets. Sentimentality should be the focus when deciding which items to bring across, in my opinion, so by all means make them untradeable if inflation is a concern - but I don't think it is. --Dementedduck (talk) 22:04, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Monster Bash

From the roadmap posted here. Please make it clear when your comment starts/ends. Any comments or comments unrelated to the release will be removed. Please "sign" your suggestions so we know who to follow up with if needed.

Maps

Currently it is very stressful to do yer own little monster frays to obtain a map because there are a lot of people getting jobbed and taking spots in the fray. It always results in hectic moments where you pray that one of yer friends gets the map. Therefore my suggestion is:

- Monster fray was automated: Random pirate gets the map

- Monster fray was summoned: Summoner gets the map

Skeleton bones

The skeleton bone is a very strong bludgeon which can currently only be obtained from skeleton frays resulting in limited supply. It could be good to add them to the trading post or otherwise make them easier to acquire in another part of the "Monster Bash" update. Patgangster (talk) 20:57, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

[Demontoad] I agree! We should be able to exchange the skeleton skulls for a bone. 10 skulls (obtained by staying alive) for 1 bone bludgeon should be a good trade off and investment of time.

Vampire graphics

I have concerns that the vampire graphics displayed on the forums are not unique enough. We currently have yellow, orange, green and silver coins in game. The newly suggested artwork looks great, but it is blue, blue/orange, orange and orange. We do not need another 50 shades of green and blue bilge puzzle!

Perplexing (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

The new colours work great, thanks!

Perplexing (talk) 20:15, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

the colours need more distinctions AND the white gem is impossible to see - Dien

I fully agree that the new colour scheme is a massive downgrade. The colours are way too alike and even the new Emerald blends in way too much with the coins. On a different note: although I understand that dozens of people making petitions to vent their opinions isn't the ideal way for you to receive feedback, I strongly dislike being sent to this section/thread for it. It simply is too seperated from the game and far from intuitive to leave feedback. - Peaced

It was a nice idea to revamp (heh) the background and pieces, but sadly its extremely hard to distinguish and the rendering doesn't fit into the YPP universe at all [the pieces are pseudo 3D]. Having to play a fast paced puzzle game and only seeing shades of orange and silver is very aggravating. Please just revert it or at least change the colors and make it look more 2D. - Demontoad

I agree that more contrast between pieces is needed. Here's an example of how easy a fix could be (my changes below):

Also, I personally don't like the bulkier, pointy cursor thing, because I think it blocks view of surrounding pieces a bit too much. It was a nice effort and I like the overall vibe, but usability has suffered. -Wayfarer

SMH Trinkets for Poe exchange

[Vancord] Currently if you like to go on SMHs you will accumulate a ton of random Atlantis, CI, KH, or Vamp trinkets that really don't hold any value because there is not much you can do with them. I think it would be nice to be able to trade the ones you don't want into the trading post for a small flat poe value somewhere between 100-500 poe per trinket maybe, or be able to trade them for something similar to a greedy purse with a random amount of poe. I think this would give some value to useless trinkets and slightly boost the potential payout from jobbing with long SMHs, without being too much of a poe fountain. It might add a lot of poe to the economy initially because people have trinkets saved up, but I think it would balance out over the long term. A way to lower the initial influx of poe generated and spread it out more over time could be to implement a cap on the total number of trinkets you could exchange for poe each week.

[Demontoad] I think yet another small PoE sink is bad, unless its really just 100 PoE per trinket. Instead, trinkets should be able to be exchanged for better things instead. 10 trinkets = exchange for a chroma -> 5 chromas = recolor a piece of furniture | 30 trinkets = atlantis box (contains a random atlantean drop: chromas, maps, furniture (junk furni/amphoras/bellator statues e.t.c), atlantean clothing...)

[Tilinka] You can already trade Atlantis/CI/HS trinkets for chromas -- having that extend to the monster fray and vampire lair ones would be good. Could do crimson for the VL trinkets, shadow for fangs, ivory for skulls, burnt sienna for werewolf tufts, and, um.. I don't know. Bile or something for zombie hands. I'd also love to see furniture options for reskinning things like duty stations, rigging, railings, etc.

[Xelto] If you add in a "mainland merchant" (or however you want to trade trinkets to PoE), you probably need to decrease the PoE payout for the various sea monster hunts at the same time, as a balancing factor. And only do it if you can make trading easy! Dragging the 47 trinkets you got in CI over to a trade window one-at-a-time is a pain, but at the same time, some people want to keep specific collections or rare trinkets, so just grabbing everything is also not a good idea, at least not unless you add some way to separate out the ones you want to collect. (I know trinket cases can be used for this, but they have their limitations, as well.)

[DementedDuck] A really simple QOL improvement would be to allow us to shift+click or ctrl+click items into a trading window. Dementedduck (talk) 10:43, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

How about a new LE ship design. Kraken class Merchant brig Perhaps? Just a thought.

SE ("special edition") ships from the trading post normally try to match the ships used for what they're from - WF for atlantis, sloop for CI, the WB for HS was probably a misestimation from before release expecting graveyards to be more popular than they are. I'm up for more ship designs but a kraken class ship should be something that can actually be used for kraken hunts. A sloop or cutter (I don't see many KHs on cutters, but it technically has the biggest hold size of all KH boats by far meaning it can hold many more lifeboats, it's a good boat to use for them) probably fits best? Patgangster (talk) 22:29, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Vessel Owner

It would be great if the VO chest payout would be adjusted. Its really stupid for SMH/HS but even for CI/Vamp Lair as well.

Lets say you were on a warbrig cit SMH with 300 AC. The owner gets ~15% = 45 chests. That leaves 255 for the ship of 30 people (including the captain). 255/30 = 8.5 chests.

A jobber gets ~8-9 chests, the VO gets ~54 or 6 times as much. There is close to 0 risk involved, everyone spends the same time in the SMH.

SMH

[Zyre] It would be nice to have a beginner friendly way of running SMH's. Perhaps one day a week/month you would be able to run a no risk/no sink version of them but with much lower rewards, similar to how there are sinking and non sinking flotillas. This would allow new players to learn the mechanics.

Cursed Island payouts

[Austee63] Cursed Islands require a very good or a good full crew to puzzle to get you in and out safely. Also, in CI the owner of the ship faces the possibility of losing their ship on Each entry and exit. After all that work you are lucky to get 3-5k for the effort of thralling, then battling and foraging (repeatedly), then puzzling again to exit safely. Yet a Kraken run offers no risk, no battles, and pays substantially more than a CI. Would like to see payouts re-evaluated based on risk factor.

[Empathetic] Please increase payout of Cursed Isles to keep up with Citadel Runs, Graveyard Runs, and even Vampire Lairs. It is incredibly disappointing to see an hour and a half's worth of work for 20-30k PoE.

[Dgkk]I've ran hundreds of Ci's they do not pay out enough and for the amount of effort that you put into it you do not get paid proportionally. It would also be nice to see something change with the items received inside, possibly some new serp colors, gator colors, types of furni, weapons? Give us cultist spears!

Mercenary Update

From the roadmap posted here. Please make it clear when your comment starts/ends. Any comments or comments unrelated to the release will be removed. Please "sign" your suggestions so we know who to follow up with if needed.

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Companion

- Ahoy! I made a video [1] and an accompanying document [2] for my mercenaries proposal. Thanks fer reading/watching/listening! By Jazz (talk) 21:38, 31 May 2022 (EST)

Very cool: Customization and "personalities" of mercenaries! Would definitely dress my mercenaries up very cutely and give them cool weapons.

Not a fan of the whole abilities system, I don't think that fits into a game like PP. I also think one mercenary per pirate on the ship is not enough in the long run and just delays the phasing out of larger ships instead of providing a long-term solution.

The puzzles they play: Unsure of the point of allowing the mercenaries to play the secondary puzzles (rigs/patch). Is that to make them a bit more likely to roll well on move-producing/boat-fixing, or to provide some variety? I hadn't thought about mercenaries being able to dnav, but that idea could work and definitely make life easier for many pillages where there is no (willing) skilled duty navigator aboard. I do think I like it.

Leveling mercenaries: I do like this, too. Might be a little awkward with many mercenaries being on the weaker side on release, but I love the idea of seeing everyone's mercenaries "grow" into better puzzlers.

(Note: Thoughts are based on reading the document, have not taken the time to watch the video. Assuming all important information and thoughts are in the document.) Patgangster (talk) 17:15, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Really well thought out plan, Jazz. I hadn't considered the customizable/personal aspect of mercenaries. I do agree with TriplePat though that limiting the mercenaries to one per pirate might not entirely solve the loading issue and I think it would be great to be able to hire more - potentially a whole ship full for a single pirate. Giving everyone the opportunity to nav flotillas, SMHs, etc. as long as they were willing to risk their stock and ship (for sinking events). For rewards/loot, I agree it shouldn't be the same as a normal ship full of pirates, but I think scaling it down, adding a cost to hire mercenaries, or giving the mercenaries a guaranteed large cut of the booty (say 90-95%) could be fair. Additionally it might be necessary to balance how easily flotillas could be sunk/beaten - possibly adding an "instanced" version of the flotilla if X% of the ship is mercenaries - that version wouldn't contribute progress to beating the flotilla but would still provide some lesser rewards (and fun!).

For your "Old Man" mercenary, I believe the intent of the Black Ship is for it to be "unbeatable" - as a punishment for attacking significantly weaker ships - and is really supposed to be a deterrent from engaging those ships in the first place. Obviously the balance hasn't always been there and the ship was beatable at times early in the game timeline, which led to some cool historical notes. But I'm not sure that encouraging pirates to hunt the Black Ship by making it easier to beat is really beneficial. I don't even think it rewards any loot, trophies, or anything for beating it. Hansbrough 10:20 EST 1 June 2022

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Balancing

- I would not suggest a limit of maximum swabbies per ship, as this will create a situation where pirates in charge of the voyage will decline new/low skill players because the skilled swabby would perform better.

- My suggestion is, per pirate on the ship, a skilled swabbie would come aboard with equal stats to the player that has boarded the ship. The swabby could do any station the navigator requires, if the required liqueur (more regarding this below) is available in the hold. The pirate must not be dormant in the puzzle for their swabby to perform the puzzle on the ship; this is to avoid pirates reaching high stats and avoiding the puzzle just so their swabby can perform well in it. This would effectively cut the required pirates on board for a lot of voyages in half, allowing for bigger ships to be used for pillages and more sea monster hunts and flotillas. The only fault in this suggestion I currently see is - if the player base drops another 30%, this might not be enough again, and eventually reaching the same point the game is at currently. This would also only benefit the Emerald Ocean, as the other oceans do not have the player base to support voyages. {choice}

Liqueur

- Add a new types of liqueur! (Please help finding better names, also recipes require balancing Adding fruit-distilled liqueurs will make shoppes more profitable, promote distilling, improve forage voyage type profits and provide more use to currently barely used grand frigate ships.

Lime wine

Lime wine is a 60 proof liqueur, the limey ting is exactly what your swabbies need to preform good at sailing! 25 units are crafted using 8 hours of skilled distilling labor, 8 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 limes. Delivery cost is free.

Passion fruit wine

Passion fruit wine is a 100 proof liqueur, the sweet and tart mix is exactly what your swabbies need to preform excellent at sailing! 25 units are crafted using 4 hours of skilled distilling labor, 12 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 passion fruit. Delivery cost is free.

Banana wine

Banana wine is a 60 proof liqueur, the mild sweet flavor allows your swabbies to preform good at bilging! 25 units are crafted using 8 hours of skilled distilling labor, 8 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 bananas. Delivery cost is free.

Carambola wine

Carambola wine is a 100 proof liqueur, the sweet and sour flavor mix is exactly what your swabbies need to preform excellent at bilging! 25 units are crafted using 4 hours of skilled distilling labor, 12 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 carambolas. Delivery cost is free.

Pineapple tepache

Pineapple wine is a 60 proof liqueur, the incredibly sweet and fruity flavors is exactly what your swabbies need to preform good at carpentry! 25 units are crafted using 8 hours of skilled distilling labor, 8 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 pineapples. Delivery cost is free.

Rambutan wine

Rambutan wine is a 100 proof liqueur, the sweet and creamy flavor mix is exactly what your swabbies need to preform excellent at carpentry! 25 units are crafted using 4 hours of skilled distilling labor, 12 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 rambutan. Delivery cost is free.

Mango wine

Mango wine is a 60 proof liqueur, the creamy and fruity flavor mix is exactly what your swabbies need to preform good at gunning! 25 units are crafted using 4 hours of skilled distilling labor, 12 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 mangoes. Delivery cost is 1 doubloon.

Pomegranate wine

Pomegranate wine is a 100 proof liqueur, the sweet and slightly tart flavor is exactly what your swabbies need to preform excellent at gunning! 25 units are crafted using 16 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 pomegranates. Delivery cost is 1 doubloon.

Coconut wine

Coconut wine is a 60 proof liqueur, the tropical, nutty flavors is exactly what your swabbies need to preform good at battles (Swordfight, Rumble)! 25 units are crafted using 4 hours of skilled distilling labor, 12 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 coconuts. Delivery cost is 1 doubloon.

Durian wine

Durian wine is a 100 proof liqueur, the odd combination of sweet, savory and creamy flavors all at once is exactly what your swabbies need to preform excellent at battles (Swordfight, Rumble)! 25 units are crafted using 16 hours of expert distilling labor, 25 sugar cane, 20 wood, 3 iron and 25 durians. Delivery cost is 1 doubloon.

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Badge and Alcohol

[Demontoad] I made a graphic to demonstrate my interpretation of a possible implementation. Click here[[3]]

- No badge, nothing changes. The mercenary badge offers privileges for a month and enables better pillages and faster loading times.

- Flavored rum should contain all fruits (multivitamin against scurvy) because else it would be too clogged and finicky. (Side note: Maybe "Fine Rum" will be more expensive as a result, making it viable for Grog/Swill to be used at all as an alternative. Also moving fruits will spawn more monkeys)

- If someone wants to take Mercenaries into a SMH or Cade, they'll have to pay 1 Roguemark. The supply is capped (10$ = 1 RM), keeps the market going and its only intended to grab a few gunner mercenaries or mediocre tokeners, not a whole boat.

- Labor can be tricky, there definitely has to be some fine tuning to be found. However, mercenaries for pillages/cades should be the bigger focus.

[Xelto] If you do any sort of flavored/deluxe rum, please change the formula of non-deluxe rum so it doesn’t use expert labor. That would make it easier for more casual starting of what is supposed to be a basic, easy stall. The deluxe rum would, naturally, need expert labor.

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Alternate Mercenaries idea

[Xelto] Instead of (or in addition to) hiring mercenaries, have them be captives of brigands or barbarians that you can rescue during pillages. Rescued captives will take jobs at shops and will help with some sea-based activities. They have a preference for shops owned by the crew and flag that rescued them, are easier to recruit for seaborne activities by their rescuing flag and its allies, and will only blockade for their rescuing flag and its allies.

Eventually, rescued captives will return to the mainland and leave the game. How long they stick around will depend on how much they’re paid, either for labor or for seaborne activities. Over time, they will expect more and more money for their work (with a discount for their rescuers) and after X amount of time without finding any jobs that pay them, they leave.

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Tie into labor

From the roadmap: "We’re looking for ways for them to participate in the economy beyond being a sink.".

Here's an idea: weave this system into labor so that shopkeepers don't feel forced to have many "labor alts". Exact balance would have to be up for discussion, but my thoughts at first:

• You'd have to buy your mercenary a labor badge.
• You'd need to puzzle at the required level to unlock a mercenary's labor at that level for 10 days. (So, if you want a mercenary that provides expert level alchemistry, you (or someone else?) would have to finish a session of alchemistry that would have provided expert labor)
• There'd need to be some sort of additional cost, reduced output, or effort (or maybe both effort and either cost or output?) so mercenaries don't replace hiring others for your stalls completely.

Patgangster (talk) 20:52, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

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Here's an idea: weave this system into labor so that shopkeepers don't feel forced to have many "labor alts".

+1. Please, please give us a way to supply more than 72 hours of labour without having to puzzle once every ten days for every labour alt we use. Ideally, do it in a way such that we can provide our labour to any shoppe or stall, not just our own. Using Mercenaries to effectively enable us to buy and use multiple labour badges, without having to puzzle multiple times, is an excellent idea. Dementedduck (talk) 19:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

There'd need to be some sort of additional cost, reduced output, or effort (or maybe both effort and either cost or output?) so mercenaries don't replace hiring others for your stalls completely.

We already have a way to discourage anyone else taking a job - low pay. One reason people do this is because it can be cheaper to provide their own labour. Another is that it's difficult to find certain types of labour (Need expert distilling on a remote island? Good luck to you). Mercenaries should help solve these issues. I actually don't think there should be a downside to using mercenaries for labour, if the suggestion of tying a mercenary's skill level to the pirate's is also implemented.

However, if there is no downside to using mercenaries, there should probably be a limit to how many mercenary hours of labour a single pirate can "provide" but I don't know enough about staffing shoppes to know what that limit should be. Should a single pirate be able to provide full labour for a deluxe shoppe, if they have a non-dormant stat and are able to pay for the badges? Should I be allowed to buy 100 deluxe labour badges, puzzle once every ten days, and get paid for 7200 hours a day?

Another point to consider is any stall/shop that doesn't have a labour puzzle. Should furnishers be able to hire mercenaries? What skill level would they have? (does it matter, given those stalls/shoppes already assign skill levels to hours paid for?) Dementedduck (talk) 19:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

You should absolutely not be allowed to hire 100 mercenaries, although I'm also not knowledgeable enough about staffing shoppes to know what mercenary limits should be. Patgangster (talk) 20:45, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree, 100 mercenaries was an exaggerated example. I should not be allowed to do that.

An upgraded distillery shoppe can use 30 hours of labour per real hour of time (see Maximum labor throughput), so over a 30 day month it can use 21,600 labour hours if it is completely maxxed out with orders. I'd need 10 deluxe labour badges to provide that labour. Does that sound like a reasonable limit? Estate Agents and Furnishers have a max labour throughput of 90 hours per real hour, and a Shipyard has a max of 68. I'd need 30 badges for the former, and 23 (rounded up) for the latter. 30 feels a lot, 10 feels much better, but that would mean I could fully staff a Distillery by myself if I can provide expert labour, but not a Shipyard. Or I can fully staff a shipyard with two pirates instead of the 23 it currently requires, which still sounds like a fantastic QOL update. So I think the limit should be somewhere in the 5-10 range, and I think it's okay if people provide their own labour entirely (because it's already happening). Dementedduck (talk) 10:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

The 5-10 range sounds fair to me. I pretty much fully agree with this paragraph. Patgangster (talk) 17:21, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I personally believe the mercenaries SHOULD require player puzzling to activate. In my vision of them, the benefit of mercenaries in labor would be that one will no longer have to maintain labor alt armies (or start them, which is maybe the worse part, getting many accounts to have the stats to provide the labor you want), not necessarily (though it could also slightly do so) make it require less puzzling to maintain labor. Patgangster (talk) 20:45, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree mercenaries should require player puzzling to activate, but perhaps mercenary ability should be tied to the labour produced by the employees of a shoppe/stall, not to the puzzling ability of the owner themselves. Then I, as an average Joe pirate, can supplement employee labour to run my stall without needing to provide the expert labour myself if I am not capable, as long as I can attract employees. And perhaps it scales, so if I have one employee capable of providing expert labour, I can only have one mercenary; with two employees, I can have two mercenaries, and so on.

A side effect of all this will be that higher labour puzzle ranks become easier to achieve, because expert labourers aren't flooding the non-dormant population with expert labourers and affecting the curve detrimentally. Dementedduck (talk) 10:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the owner of the stall should not be the only source of activating mercenaries, I agree employees should be able to do so as well. a 1:1 ratio seems a bit harsh to me especially if owners can have up to 10 as listed earlier. Maybe an employee could have 3, or 5. (Or, like owners, up to 10, but they'd get to split them between their three possible jobs?) Patgangster (talk) 17:21, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps 10 is the limit in all cases? I, a single pirate, am allowed to hire up to 10 mercenaries with the same skill as me (in my non-dormant stats). Then I can choose to use those mercenaries to supplement voyage jobber numbers (and get additional booty - incentive for me to pay to hire my mercenaries? Or the voyage owner pays the mercenary fee to me?), or take jobs at any stall including my own (I pay for a labour badge for my mercenary, and receive the pay it generates).

I think there’s multiple ideas forming and starting to merge. Your original suggestion included different types of new rum to determine what skill level mercenaries could perform at on a ship, but we’re now talking about tying mercenary performance to pirate ability in stalls. Do you think these are separate ideas, or do you envision both systems being the best way to implement mercenaries? I think the two main concepts are:

• (concept 1) Mercenary performance is based on the stats of the pirate hiring the mercenary. This concept further breaks down into:
  • (1) The voyage leader/stall owner hires and pays for mercenaries with stats based on their jobbers’/employees’ stats.
    • This ensures mercenaries never replace pirates
  • (2) Any pirate has the ability to pay a mercenary and bring that mercenary on voyages (maybe the officer has to decide to hire your mercenary first), or take stall jobs with that mercenary.
    • This has the effect of 'spoofing' higher population without allowing a flood of expert labour/high skill puzzling that is preferable to hiring less-capable pirates (because you must hire a pirate to gain a mercenary). Every pirate has the ability to hire the same number of mercenaries, so the game population can effectively grow by a factor of the mercenary limit.
• (concept 2) Mercenary performance is based on the fee you are willing/need to pay (fees can be direct or indirect, so your rum idea would constitute the fee in this case).
  • On a voyage, this could be your rum idea.
  • In a stall, you’d have to pay a fee to hire a mercenary to perform at a certain level for you; expert costs more than skilled which costs more than basic. Anyone can hire an expert mercenary if they want to pay for it, regardless of whether or not anyone is providing the stall with expert labour. (This addresses Tilinka’s point below about hiring mercenaries for puzzles you cannot perform).
  • A glaring issue with this is that mercenaries can replace pirates entirely. A potential fix for this issue would be to limit the number of mercenaries hired based on the number of real pirates aboard/employed, but then we haven’t solved the labour alt issue. I have a distilling labour alt army because I can provide expert labour and very few other people can do that. With this implementation, the best I can do is halve the size of my alt army, and only in my own stalls.

On the one hand, it makes sense that only one of these ideas would be used so that mercenaries are consistent in the way they function. On the other hand, I think concept 1 is better for labour provision and concept 2 is better for pillaging.

Dementedduck (talk) 12:53, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

The rum idea wasn't mine, it was Napallday's. They're completely seperate ideas. I think their system works well at sea and ties well into the OM vision of "having a merchant empire helps with your mercenaries" (after balancing of recipes). Both solutions definitely do have their own strengths and weaknesses and could be more appropriate for different parts of the game. I hadn't thought about the importance of consistency. I don't think I like their system for labor solutions, and my solution is pretty specific to labor puzzles only. I can see them both fitting into the game. Patgangster (talk) 16:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Ah, my bad, I didn't see a signature on the rum idea so I assumed everything above your comments was your suggestion too. I absolutely agree their idea works well at sea and ties into the OM vision, as well as fitting quite well with what we would all consider a mercenary to be. My concern is we have two fairly different ideas for voyages and labour and I wouldn't be surprised if the OMs chose not to have that inconsistency. I do hope you're right that they'd both fit into the game, though. I'm thinking it may be wise for me to move that particular response of mine elsewhere on the page, maybe to the bottom of this section?

Dementedduck (talk) 12:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Non-puzzle shops should be able to hire mercenaries just fine. They'd provide up to expert in those automatically.

As for availability of labor and to attempt to keep a dynamic where not every shopkeeper (fully) provides their own labor, perhaps the mercenaries could be tradeable somehow? IncredDistiller could perform a distilling puzzle to "activate" a mercenary, but receive that mercenary as a "mercenary contract" item which can be traded to shopkeepers and activated in any shop they'd want them? Patgangster (talk) 20:45, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

My issue with this suggestion is that any labour providers would have to trade with shopkeepers every month. This is not a big deal if you're providing labour to hearties, but if you just want to make some money off your expert labour capabilities, it could be a pain to find and track down people who want your labour. I've had similar arrangements in the past where people have bought my labour alt badges for me to provide them exclusively with expert labour, and it's a real pain to keep up with. Now if this system came with an automatic exchange update - like the Auction House OOO implemented in Spiral Knights - then that changes my tune. But until then, the reality is we play a very low-population game with players from all over the globe, and most of us are adults with full time jobs and other commitments. I certainly don't have the time to sink into this game that I had ten years ago. Locking efficiencies behind manually trading other players sounds counter-productive to me. Dementedduck (talk) 10:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Agree; this could turn into a hassle to keep having to buy labor regularly. I don't really see the game getting an auction house-style shop at this time, but something like that might be required to make this idea worth implementing. Patgangster (talk) 17:21, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Tilinka: What if mercs would do labor at some local, high paying stalls/shoppes in need of hours after the voyage they were on ported? Could set a max amount of labor the mercs can provide in a day and base how much they provide off of how many PVE battles the ship they were on won.

Would this mean they can only work at shoppes/stalls on islands where they port? I can see that leading to some islands benefitting from mercenary labour, but not all. Dementedduck (talk) 10:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm thinking more of in the same archipelago, though mainly at the ported island if the labor pay rates hit some threshold of reasonable. It could encourage players to open shoppes on highly pillaged routes, which would be good for keeping the supply of stuff like rum and shot plentiful. This could be a bonus benefit that happens separate from hiring any NPC laborers.

I'm not keen on making what the mercenaries can do dependent on what the person hiring them can do -- there's no point in me sinking PoE/doubloons in a merc who distills (or sails) if they're going to be just as awful as I am at those puzzles. I'm for an added doubloon sink for the possibility of hiring mercenaries to keep players a preferable source of labor, but I don't think it would help anything if it's more convoluted than 5+x doubloons + paid hours to hire a basic/skilled/expert laborer for the month. (I would make it so that mercenaries refuse to work for you unless you're also hiring players at that threshold of reasonable rate). Tilinka (talk) 5:41, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Flag Mercenaries

My idea to have a group of dedicated mercenaries that can be managed by your flag ties together some of Jazzx's ideas about customization and leveling to create a personal connection to permanent mercenaries, and the ideas about labor abilities. I think it could be cool if flags could hire mercenaries that stay with your flag in a "flag pool" of mercenaries and can be customized. These mercenaries could be contracted out from the flag pool by any officer+ of the flag to help with voyages.

Training

Flag Mercs would start out with very basic stats, but could be trained to increase their skill in each puzzle up to a certain maximum skill level like master or renowned. A flag could also have a very limited number of "Elite Specialized" mercenaries that would be more expensive and could be trained up to Grand-Master in only 1 puzzle and the specialization could not be switched to a different puzzle. The way they would be trained is by actually performing the puzzles on them to level up their stats. Any officer+ in the flag would be able take one of the Flag Mercs out to train them by going to the Flag Hall and going to a special mercenary room where they could access the flag mercenary hub and see a list of all the flag mercenaries names and their stats to see who needs to be worked on. They would select the mercenary to train and then they would take control of that mercenary and have to actually go perform the sailing/carp/bilge/ironworking whatever puzzle well enough to rank up the skill. They could do this on a pillage/evading/IO/SMH, whatever they want so it won't impact their ability to go on voyages that they like, and won't feel like a chore. When they are done they'd return the mercenary back to the flag pool of mercenaries to be available by anyone else in the flag again to either be trained or put on contract for a voyage. Similar to labor puzzles, mercenaries would need someone in the flag to perform the puzzle 1 time every 10-15 days(or maybe longer because theres a lot of puzzles) or they will become rusty and their skill rank will drop by 1 level. In the mercenary hub at the flag hall it would also tell you how close your mercenaries are to getting rusty in each puzzle to help you see who needs to be worked on. Even swordfighting and rumbling could be improved by taking the mercenary to the inn tables to challenge other pirates.

The Elite Specialized mercenaries would be limited to a smaller number available and be more expensive to keep them from being too over powered. Maybe a flag could only have 1 or 2 for each puzzle depending on flag reputation. Maybe these special mercenaries also can not be as balanced as the regular mercenaries are, where the other puzzles could only be trained to a maximum of distinguished or respected, but they excel in their specific specialization. I think it could be cool to have 1 elite swordfighter mercenary for example if one of your flag members is a really good swordfighter and trains him up for the rest of the flag members to have access to for pillages. The Elite Navigator mercenary could also be used as a charter, because he would be able to memorize the ocean, but someone or multiple flag members would actually have to take him training and memorize those league points before he could chart them.

I think this could be a fun way to include the community and teamwork aspect that has always been important in this game while providing a way for more people to have a way to help contribute to a flag's success other than donating poe to fund cades, by being able to train mercenaries for their friends to use by playing their best puzzle. For example I am good at sailing and could train that for our flag mercenaries where someone else may focus on carpentry and another person on gunning or swordfighting etc. This would also reward more active flags with the ability to have and maintain a larger amount of well-balanced mercenaries that could score well on a variety of puzzles and could switch to a different station if needed based on the situation. I also think this would make it harder for a flag to just buy good mercenaries to win cades, because it would take a certain amount of coordination and teamwork among members of the flag over time to maintain a lot of good quality mercenaries for their flag to use. By: Vancord

Quality of Life

I'd like to see additional ship-wide orders that would be equivalent to "X needs more pirates to do some Bilging.", instead saying something like "X needs more mercanaries to do some Bilging.". It should not come with a whistle, nor should it come with a red background, but a chat indicator still might be nice. Perplexing

'Multiplayer' / Inn puzzles

Meridian is my main and overall, I am a pillaging pirate. But one of the sadder things I miss about playing now vs playing before, besides the pillages and the adventures, is being able to play Hearts. It is simple to leave PP and go play Hearts on an app on my phone, but if I could play here I would. We can play SF/Rumble against any white name pirates. We can play SF/Rumble against player pirate modeled dummies. It would be nice to be able to relax with poker/spades/hearts if/when I am able to get 3+ mercenaries. Perlandria

Blockade Balance

Competitive blockading these days obviously has its issues, and to prevent adding more to it, I have a major issue to raise in regards to the specific line "Mercenaries will provide influence in blockades.", while you stated earlier that "Mercenaries will not be as advantageous as having a real human", these two lines plainly contradict one another. In the modern blockading scene, small ship spam is a very common tactic utilized by many flags - what they do is send in wave after wave of small ships, with barely enough pirates on them to influence buoys, not caring about how quick they sink. The relentless nature of this typically allows them replace the ships on buoys quicker than they can be sunk, and therefore influence the blockade almost as much as a fully-manned ship, which has to contest these same points. Allowing non-players to give influence, means this can just be abused even more - whereas before the bottleneck was how many alts your blockade team had to put on these small ships, now you'd be able to use these Mercenaries.

Adding mercenaries to blockades, and letting them influence buoys, will cause a situation where either severe rebalancing (and perhaps a complete redesign of blockading) would be necessary, or opening yourself up to even more potential abuse of mechanics. Nielsfour (talk)

No to mercenaries (Warofwords)

I am entirely against the idea of mercenaries at all, for a number of reasons.

1) Fundamentally, this is a social game. By removing/reducing the need for people still further, you reduce the interactions and the opportunities to meet and engage with new people. 5 minutes reading /global is all the proof you need that a considerable number of players need to practise their social skills more, not less.

2) As far as I can tell, all of the problems that mercenaries are meant to fix are problems with the same root cause... Low population. Would it not, therefore, be better in both the long- and short-term to find ways of increasing player numbers rather than simply replacing players with bots? I am a pirate who remembers not being able to login due to the server being at a 2000 pirate capacity. Those were better days.

3) Linked to #2, there needs to be some thought as to why players quit the game in the first place. There are obviously a huge number of reasons for this but the game design itself is certainly an aspect of it for some. I know a number of people who have quit over the years due to grievances with puzzle bugs which never get fixed, inconsistent application of rules by OMs (or OMs failing to act at all) and the continued success of botters and other cheaters putting actual human players at an enormous disadvantage. These are all issues which should be taking priority over adding yet more new tweaks to a game with an already dispersed population (see #4).

4) Another solution, though I think this should be in addition to, rather than instead of, #2 and #3, would be to concentrate the existing pirates on core aspects of the game, rather than spreading them out. Currently there are 4 different SMHes, pillaging, vampire lairs, purchaseable expeditions and parlor games/wagering, which spreads, what is a small population, very thin. As much as I love SMH and lairs, I think they need to be limited, maybe in a similar way to gold boxes, so that they become special, occasional, events and, the rest of the time, people have to pillage. Linked to this is the simple fact that, of the remaining players in the game, many are simply glued to the poker table, making them inactive in other aspects of the game. I don't think that playing 3 different 20k-200k poker tables on alts should be a viable way of funding a flag and it adds nothing to the game. Taking the, admittedly drastic, step of removing poker (or limiting it to smaller amounts) would make a considerable difference to the available jobber pool, along with modifying the economy and the path to success. A similar argument could be made for all high stakes wagering, which would inevitably replace poker for those good enough (or good enough at cheating - let's face it).

General

Island and Shoppe Closures

With the merger of oceans came a new problem. There are currently more colonised islands than people able and willing to fight to colonise them, making it not a challenge to own/hold an island and, thus, killing the blockade scene, which is an important wealth redistributor. In other words, there needs to be more competition for islands.

1) Archipelagos could be limited to a certain value of open islands. Let's say Large island = 3 points, Medium = 2 and Outpost = 1. Archipelagos could be limited to, say, 8 points. Of which there has to be at least 1 of each type. In reality, this would mean 1 large, 2 medium and an outpost or 1 large, 1 medium and 3 outposts. The numbers can, of course, be played around with but the idea of closing islands down is the point (perhaps BKs could blockade every island simultaneously and any island which the BK wins gets closed). Yes, it would suck to be a shoppe owner on an island which got closed. Perhaps compensation in POE could mitigate that particular pain (or a spot on a different island, see #2).

In addition to this, a number of islands have problems with shoppes that, whilst paying their rent, are effectively dead space, as none of the owners or managers have logged in in years and the shoppe therefore does not have the stock/labor to actually make anything.

2) A solution to the empty shoppe issue is, I believe, to empower Brigand Kings/Governors to nominate shoppes for closure (similar to Dark Seas but with an important tweak. The nomination could be blocked if the owner or a manager logs in and clicks a button in the shoppe within the 4 week period between the nomination and the actual closure - shoppe could then not be renominated for a period of, say, 3 months). This would then create space for people whose shoppes were lost during the closure of islands. As compensation, the owner of the shoppe would receive the average value of similar shoppes on that island/in the archipelago (value based on sales output).

Notice Board Rankings

Change the algorithm, particularly for foraging offers. Currently the highest ranked foraging offers are alphabetical with no link to the amount of POE being offered. Either link it directly to the numerical values of the forage offer or change the offers to "small fruit" and "large fruit" or similar so that all offers are alphabetically identical.

Marketplace

I think that we should have a more sophisticated trading place - like a market. Pirates could display their own goods for a fee (e.g 5k per week advertised) plus maybe 5% of the sale price when the deals been done and market it towards the entire ocean. It would be a good PoE sink.

Wayward's suggestion on chat reduction

One of the biggest chat spams is people leaving stations - especially during SMH/HS/cades/etc .. and gunners are the worst. Most SMH/HS/cades shoot 8-16 a turn so you end up with at least 4 chat messages per turn that say "x has abandoned a gunning station".

Suggestion: Add a checkbox option in the settings pane that disables abandon station messages. This would make it far easier to keep chat windows clear and actually catch important chat messages in these excursions

Pillaging/Sea Fight

>> Addition of War Galleons to the vessels that can be spawned by Brigands/Barbarians/Brigand Kings. Reduction in the payout penalty for pirates leaving a vessel. Spawn size should be determined by the amount of pirates + swabbies currently aboard, not the amount of pirates + swabbies the vessel can hold. This is more noticable on the harder routes where the brigands/barbarians can significantly outnumber the pirates aboard. Example: In the harder routes, a Baghlah set at Hard - Very Hard configuration with 7 Pirates aboard and no swabbies spawns a Xebec with 25-26 aboard, the same amount the same Baghlah with 18 Pirates aboard would spawn. Sloops are spawning Longships/Baghlahs and War Brigs. Brigand Kings expeditions are also impacted by this leading pirates to mostly ignore the expedition. Cutter/Dhow/Fanchuans (12) spawn WB (30), Baghlahs(18) spawn Xebecs(45). Stans

Change the battle timer in pillages/SMH/blockades from 35 seconds to 20-25 seconds and adjust move generation accordingly.

It would shave off ~ 1/3rd of idle time. Gunning would be more rewarding and battle navigation would be less about shooting 24/7.

---

Comment: Low level pillages already suffer from finding good enough gunners, even some elite pillages do, it is also not uncommon for sea monster hunts to struggle finding the necessary 3/4 gunners for the voyage. Legendary/Ultimate gunners currently can load about 4 cannons per turn (perhaps even less with bad board luck), with this change it would become 2-3. The shortened timer will make having a top 5% gunner on your sloop pillage a requirement and the officer in charge to hire 1-2 more Master+ gunners for sea monster hunts, with an already scarce amount of gunners, the player base simply does not allow for it.

[Demontoad]: i mean, the lack of players hurts everything. its definitely not as bad as you lay it out to be (gunners can definitely gun fast enough), but it would be nice if they combined it with your skilled swabbies idea. (in which case you could just hire a bunch of swabbie gunners)

Suggestion (from Xelto): have some way to laze while on station between battles, without hurting the ship's output. For example, once you get your sparkle level to a certain point AND you've got at least X minutes/hours on that station, a "Laze" button appears. Clicking it lets you stop actively puzzling until you reach the next battle, while still providing sail/repair/pumping output at whatever level you were doing so before you went onto autopilot. When a new battle begins, you get a whistle reminding you that you need to move back to active puzzling.

Competitions

Whenever the leaderboard updates (regardless of being a participant), the client stutters for a solid second. It makes puzzling within the competition and outside of it unbearable.

A similar thing happens when you spot a "special character" for the first time in chat, such as "🐙".

Suggestion:

- Remove the lag.

Pets

Adding the color wave of each pet when you hover your mouse over. It is the only thing in the game that does not display its color.

This was actually addressed by one of the developers, a few years ago (I forget which one). The code for pet colors is different from most of the color code in the game, so the time cost-to-return to do isn't practical. —Xelto

Pets/Familiars could require feeding/maintenance or they start to decay and eventually dust. They would be fed with foraged fruits at intervals unique to the pet. Fruits can be stored in crates on houses/ships or carried on the pirate. The fruits could also decay and eventually dust. This would give use to forageables and increase the value of familiar/pet ownership. This could also encourage pirates to log on more to feed their animals - Stans

Portrait Items

There's some old portraits where OMs hold items such as a Conch Shell or a Starfish. Is there any chance we can get some currently unreleased-to-regular-players portrait items out there? Patgangster (talk) 18:56, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

I'd suggest make all trinkets holdable in portraits -Bisca-

Seasonal/Limited Edition Portraits

Maybe we can change the Limited Edition or the Seasonal text at the portrait easel to an expiration date.. For example: Bisca's Sweethearts (1) Available til 01-05 Or (1) Bisca's Sweethearts - 01/05

Frays

When a single pirate joins a monster fray of any type, the message from the monsters just says "One pirate is in the fray." You either have to start the fight, wait for one to leave, or have another pirate join the fray to see how many monsters there are, unless it's a small, easily visible group. It would be nice if the first message would say how many monsters there are, like the subsequent messages do.

Items/Commodities

A way to scrap items/commodities you don't need. Items and commodities can be broken down into a "Scrap" item which can be traded for new items at the trinket exchange. This would give pirates a way to get rid of unneeded items in their booty. The "Scrap" item can also be exchanged at ship/shoppe and turned into commodities that can be used to remake items in shoppes. Example - A woodpile/CI trinket can be converted into 1 Scrap item. At a commodity market, 2 Scrap items can get you 1 Wood or at the trinket exchange 10 Scrap can get you a Sea Green Chroma.

Gold Boxes

[Empathetic] Can tan/color & color/tan parrots be added to the loot pool for gold boxes? Bia pet tournaments have been cancelled for quite a long time, and it would be a good refresh compared to getting tan/tan parrots over and over again - they're very oversaturated in the game.

Conversely, or in addition to, add a reroll similar to bat reroll for tan/color parrots.

Tournaments

[Empathetic] If tan/color & color/tan parrots would be too tedious to implement, can we restart the automated familiar tournament schedule? The schedule used to run every 10 days & 5 hours per carousing puzzle when Bia had it automated, and would cycle through all sorts of different tan familiars before gold boxes were an option. Newer pirates should have the opportunity to get coveted tan/color & color/tan parrots - color the ocean!

Periwinkle

Please add a holdable flower trinket periwinkle as the color for the gold boxes in the month of April, similar to wine, spring green, and emerald that have been released in the past. This would accompany many pirate's trinket holder space and also add variety to portraits. The flowers are already coded in the game, an RGB code for periwinkle would need to be added. If suggestions for the color code, the darker color (as seen on the coreset/flaired pants) would match the best.

Familiars

Can we have a "manage your familiar" button so we can display our fuzzy friends in the order of our choosing on our pirate page please? Like the reorder trophy boxes option. It would be greatly appreciated as we can't always predict where our newly purchased friend will land and I'm not currently happy with the order of mine lol. Thanks <3

Owl familiar removal

Can we have an option to trash an owl familiar? As it's impossible to trade it, we cannot get rid of it off our pirate pages. Even the possibility to "unname" the familiar would be great, as it is untradeable anyway. Thanks!

Trading Post Items

• Can we exchange Greedy trinkets for Silver Chromas please? They're pretty hard to come by at the moment and it would be a sink since we would have an alternate use for them besides Greedy Purses.

• We should be able to exchange vampire fray trinkets (fangs) for vampire potions.

House Customization

The rugs are awful! We should be able to delete them like other props. You can also add them into the furnisher so we can buy them in different colors and sizes. We could also have the option to change the floor type or color and to paint doors.

Male Clothing

Can we have more options for male clothing primarily a solid colored pants without stripes or patches.

Voyages

I think as opposed to making new voyages, we should explore ways to rejuvenate the older voyages and make them relevant again. Here are a few ideas.

Vikings and IOs

These currently reward players with PoE, Trinkets, Grog. With Mercenaries currently in development, it could be beneficial to these older voyages if for example, there were a chance of Spiced Rum added to hold of the ship after defeating Vikings and Imperials. You could make up some lore about Imperials seizing shipments of the Spiced Rum (or some of the ingredients for spiced rum) and players having a chance to win some of it back.

Players could also capture mercenaries from these voyages as prisoners that don't necessary need Spiced Rum to stay aboard but could leave the vessel after a certain amount of time.

Occassionally, add new items that could be earned from these voyages for a limited time or traded from trinkets from these voyages. You could take from the pool of furniture, trinkets, clothing items that were awarded in mystery boxes in the past but are no longer available. Stans

Flotilla's

Can we look into doing some changes to flotilla's as this week on all oceans, within 5 hours every Flotilla was killed off.

Some changes as follows are just some suggestions that could be done to improve them:

1) Increase the number of Flotilla's that spawn or increase the number of sinks to kill off a Flotilla.

2) Add a second spawn day other than just Thursdays. Maybe for example Monday and Thursday.

3) Provide another way to get a Flotilla spawn. Maybe like a drop from a black box chest.

4) Randomise the days and times Flotilla's spawn so everyone has a fair chance.

What ever we look into I think we need some sort of change to Flotilla's as its a little bit unfair for all the pirates that play who have prior commitments on a Thursday who also would like a chance to do them.

Any other suggestions welcome! These are just some idea's and would greatly appreciate more to make these more fun for everyone!

Monsterhunts - Emerald Ocean

Puzzles

Let players adjust the star level of duty puzzles (like the speed slider for gunning) so it's easier for a player to enter a puzzle at the level of complexity they find enjoyable. Could put some upper limits on how far from your current standing you can adjust things. Maybe set it so that if you keep things at lower levels, your standing can decrease, but not increase. Tilinka (talk) 6:25, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Apps

Release non-integrated stand-alone solitaire versions of the easiest to adapt puzzles as apps to mobile devices.

How to make it easier and profitable:

- Doesn't have to be same code. Just reskin with Puzzle Pirates art.

- No log in.

- No standing.

- Set scoring to a historic average.

- Serve ads.

Puzzles that would reskin well (doesn't take flipping or rotating):

- Alchemistry

- Bilge

- Blacksmithing

- Bnav (maybe)

- Dnav (maybe)

- Distilling

- Rigging

- Rumble

- Shipwrightery

- Weaving

I would much rather spend my 'clicky game' time zoning out to bilge and give Puzzle Pirates ad revenue than give the gaming time and revenue to other platforms like candy crush. It could be a revenue and player fountain and if kept stand-alone might not be too much effort. I'm not just saying this because I want to practice whirlpools without tanking my stats. Perlandria

Just chiming in to say I think the above idea is a fantastic one. A way to generate additional revenue, bring exposure to the game, and even allow us to practice puzzles in our downtime is such a good idea. I'd wager you could find several players with the skills and desire to write these apps for you, too (hell, I'd learn to write Android apps to be a part of this). Dementedduck (talk) 22:18, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Carpentry

Regular Carpentry

The puzzle has way too much variance - the boards are too small and end way too early at low ranks. At higher levels a star level transition completely kills your score. The maximum is a masterpiece 17, which is only possible from a clean start. If you hit a perfect Masterpiece 17 and keep puzzling, you hurt your score because the next masterpiece will be an absolutely terrible masterpiece 1.

Suggestion:

- Make carpentry chains not end after reaching the star level.

- Treat consecutive masterpieces after a MP 17 as a MP 17.

Regular Carpentry

The puzzle is very unfriendly towards red-green colour blind people. For many years I have been missing the red warning outline on "new" holes and killing my score.

Suggestion

Adding a "colour blind mode" option that would replace the red warning outline with the blue one that appears while "holding" a piece.

Vampire Carpentry

Good carpenting does not get rewarded. Instead, everything is too much speed based and a bit degenerate.

Suggestion:

- 4 consecutive masterpieces should be treated as a "perfectly shut coffin", eliminating 1 vampire from the fray.

Treasure Haul

Its easy to get stuck, especially when you treasure haul in a vampire lair with 2 chests.

Suggestion:

- Add a diamond piece. It acts like the jellyfish in Bilging and clears all pieces of 1 type. It makes everything a lot smoother.

Duty Navigation

Only the top 2 pirates on the entire ocean get 9 star boards, which are a necessity to score well. In comparison: A regular ultimate pirate gets 6-7 stars on his board.

Suggestion:

- Fix the star distribution. - Fix the scoring curve - I've long been an Ult Dnavver and I can't even get it to sparkle on Emerald, let alone get my rank up. I'd like to meme but it's become impossibly difficult.

Swordfighting

The puzzle only has 2 viable swords - the Falchion and the non reversed Saber. The last swords were released more than 10 years ago. The vast majority of swords are terrible and havent been touched since 2003.

Suggestion:

- Add new patterns and/or revise the current ones. Especially a sharp stick would be welcomed.

Dealing with modders: Either remove the speed limit from the game entirely, so as to forcibly create an even playing field, or prevent green named pirates from taking part in tournaments.

Rumble

Artificially adding bruises is too powerful. Its even more powerful than the bruises from bludgeons. Most of the games disregard the games mechanics entirely - its all about sending the smallest combo possible (Triple), adding as many dropoffs as possible (9) and then pushing the layer of death down. If the defending pirate tries to clear those unbreakable black bruises, the game will push the board down every (8) clicks and include increasingly more bruises by itself. There are no comeback mechanics and the game is incredibly dry.

Suggestion:

- bludgeons contain grey bruises -> black bruises

- dropoffs are black -> grey

- a new layer every 8 clicks -> unchanged.

maximum bruise numbers (from dropoffs)

Combo	Max bruises
2	4 -> 3
3	9 -> 6
4	13 -> 9
5	13 -> 12
6	18 -> 15

- excess dropoffs can convert grey bruises to black bruises ( every 2 excess dropoffs convert 1 grey bruise into black)

(1) Triple with 6 dropoffs = 0 excess -> 0 black bruises = 6 grey bruises

(2) Triple with 10 dropoffs = 4 excess -> 2 black bruises = 4 grey bruises and 2 black bruises

(3) Bingo with 9 dropoffs = 0 excess -> 0 black bruises = 9 grey bruises

It would give the game a lot more depth. You could either (1) send fast grey bruises or (2) alternatively "upgrade" them to black bruises by spending 4 extra turns or (3) upgrade the combo instead to send even more grey bruises (with the option to convert those to black as well). It would also make sprinkle bludgeons stronger and actually viable.

On the bright side, it wouldn't affect casual gameplay at all.

Drinking

Whoever gets to play the first piece has an astronomical advantage. The starting player gets an extra stain, dominates playable rows by +1 and also starts the game with more points.

Suggestion:

- Let them play a game of rock, paper, scissors (maybe cannonball, pirate flag, dagger) to determine the starter. The player going second gets +50 points.

Poker

People break tables and grief in high stakes "Preflop" games.

Suggestion:

- Add a special "Preflop" game mode (e.g changing the blinds & making them mandatory).

---

Global and trade chat are regularly overrun with "40k preflop" "200k preflop" and other similar memegames. As mentioned by the person above, these tables are also often griefed. In my opinion, there are two solutions.

1) Remove it. Instead, add "turbo" and "hyper turbo" tables.

• Turbo: 0.5% ante, 2% small blind, 5% big blind.
• Hyper-Turbo: 2% ante, 5% small blind, 10% big blind.

Then, add 200k-2m buyin tables. On these tables, if the numbers in this suggestion are followed, the hyper-turbo option will have 20k antes, 50k small blinds and 100k big blinds. It's not quite the ante levels of "200k preflop", but that is offset by the much larger initial buyins.

2) Embrace it. Add option to set a table as a preflop table, and when making a "preflop table", the creator manually set an ante on a table, ranging from the minimum buyin to the maximum buyin. Outside of the ante there will be no blinds, and the preflop betting round is skipped. Adding this will remove the need to spam /global and /trade looking for people to play these games. Patgangster (talk) 21:00, 1 June 2022

Suggestion: Add it to the Noticeboard or some other place so that players can look for active preflop games (even if local table only) rather than needing the /global spam to know where/what games are happening. ~ Warofwords

Alchemistry

The puzzle is very reliant on luck, especially when you want to score high. Most of the times the special pieces arent spawning, or the bottles simply have the wrong colors (and thus a high combo is impossible). Sometimes coins can spawn on a crossover piece, making them twice as potent.

Suggestion:

- Bottles at high ranks should always be tall.

- Multifill requires 4 layers -> 3 layers of the same color

- Crossover pieces are moderately common -> Crossover pieces are a bit more common

- Special pieces on a crossover piece score 2x -> score 1x.

- Fix softlock and scoring issues when using the multifill.

Foraging

Foraging is sadly broken. It works fine in expeditions and cursed isles, but for rated play its a nightmare.

Suggestion:

- Fix the scoring bug.

Weaving

The board clogs up very easily and a single bad luck moment can completely brick your session. Most of the times its almost unplayable.

Suggestion:

- Pieces can be up to 4 columns wide -> 3 columns

- Minimum spawn width is 2 -> 1