Post by JustVine on 2022-08-27 15:25:54
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Not only would it be extremely difficult to retrieve most of your loot on death in the ocean even before this change, but like...
Bounty hunters aren't going to just swim on up to your pirate ship and attack all your reds. In any zone with a barrier to entry like a boat or aquatic mount there is going to be less bounty hunting. The open ocean was inherently going to have pirates and it was going to be much easier for reds to live in.
On top of that, you have IS leaning more towards having mobs in the open ocean before this announcement... So a low bounty hunter zone with mobs you can use to wash your corruption off of? The old model was already going to be pretty risky. It just required that red pirates did some like, you know, work and planning to reduce their risk.
So I kind of wish Steven explained what the risk calculation he and the team was basing this on. Because even if the loot is 'too good', I'm not understanding the justification for this change and I've played the section over and over just to make sure I didn't miss something.
Why is this an unexpected move to me? There were more ways to increase risk from a PvP perspective and a PvE perspective without making this change. Mob density, encounter design, and even geographical layout (which in my opinion they absolutely just did along with this change but that's speculation.) Flagging everyone is a pretty blunt instrument. There are a couple reasons I could guess as to why they wanted to do this specific move, but I'd rather just wait for Steven to actually explain it.
Until then I'll remain surprised at 'QoL buff for red pirates' since it'd be very hard to guess that's a QoL buff Steven was willing to make up until now. I just hope Dygz isn't a sign of something deeper given Ashes is a game that needs as large of a population to work.