Not much incentive to do naval combat anymore after patch 1.1.4
Heya all.
Well, this thread's title kind of about sums it up. I decided to do the weekly for the ship design and jeezy petes. Before patch 1.1.4, I'd sail around the Aegean Sea sometimes and blow up ships for the heck of it. Each ship gave somewhere around 1,250 to 2,000 drachmae, 300+ wood, and then an assortment of gems/obsidian that made it pretty worthwhile. Yeah, you had to deal with the tedious Bounty Hunter system, but it didn't really matter. You'd inexplicably get bounty points for killing soldiers in front of other soldiers in the MIDDLE OF THE SEA with NO WAY for them to report your crimes to anyone and then you'd get additional bounty for sinking a ship in the middle of the sea with NO WITNESSES WHATSOEVER. However, a level one bounty only cost 1,000 or so drachmae to remove and you earned 1,250 to 2,000. Whatever. Took two ships to equal one bounty level, and then you'd wind up spending 1k of 2.5 to 4k of winnings. The math worked out.
I just sank around 20 ships to complete a slew of contracts and the weekly... and ugh. Most ships gave me zero gold and a few gave about 250. Each ship also contained about 140 to 160 wood and around 7 to 23 of a secondary resource. 7 to 23. I didn't miss any zeroes there. 7 to 23. Oh, and the Bounty System is 50% more expensive now, so I had to pay 1,500 gold out of my nothing earnings.
Which leaves me to wonder... why would anyone willingly engage in naval combat anymore after this patch? There's no incentive. None. I'd have earned more money and resources doing a daily on the land while picking up every wood/iron node and skewering any critter along the way. A lot more (7 leather. 7 leather for sinking a trireme. A single wolf gives 35+). The only reason to go out to sea is if you pick up a few contracts to sink ships, and even then... the drachmae award has fallen from 23 to 38k range to a new 12k to 18k range. Considering the time it can take to round up five ships as you slowly meander across the water... you're still probably better off staying on land.
I don't get this change. Lowering the contract drachmae to adjust the in-game cash economy? Okay, but why nerf the drachmae and crafting materials earned from sinking ships at the same time? It feels like an odd design choice. What reason does the player have to engage with this system now? *shrug* :confused: