I realize I am a little bit late to this party, and most of the features are already decided on, but I want to throw my two cents into the mix anyway. I was linked here from a stickied suggestions thread that was locked and suggested to post ideas here, as such I have ideas for adventure mode, but also the future of GoIO in general.
First and foremost I apologize if any of these suggestions have been touched on before and asked and answered and what have you. The truth is that I have little free time and don't wish to spend it combing through pages upon pages of forum posts to see what has and has not been discussed.
Okay, so we're getting an adventure mode, woohoo! that's wonderful. Trade routes, pirate attacks, supporting towns, it all sounds like a blast. What I want to talk about is how to tie this into the bigger picture, and instead of having two "siloed" game modes we instead bring them together in a meaningful way. A lot of what I am about to suggest is not something that will come in adventure mode, but after it, after the foundation has been laid. I feel like what this game desperately needs for longevity is a competitive and dynamic world that responds to player conflict. How do we do this? In a word, factions. Or nations, countries, armies, whatever.
Two sides, pitted against one another struggling for domination. Players create a character as one of the two factions and fly, trade, fight, hunt, etc, for their faction. Trade routes are established to deliver goods based on real needs of settlements and the delivery or failure to deliver impacts that settlement's status and strength. Intercepting trade goods simultaneously supports your faction while depriving the enemy. Blockades, invasions, ambushes, all out warfare. Not to mention the pirates thrown in the mix who are unpredictable and fire on both sides. Then there's the mercs who will fly for whoever pays more. See where I am going with this?
Obviously what I am talking about is huge, the amount of work that would go into it is tremendous, but this game should keep evolving, and it should evolve into a game that has stakes other than a win in an arena or the completion of a mission which isn't really going to impact the map or other players. You've created something amazing here muse, and the foundation is there to build something great, I hope you consider taking this game to the next level.
When dealing with a faction based game the most fun will come from asymmetric balance, you already have varied ship designs that look as though they draw from two points of inspiration, Victorian era Europe, and Asian culture and architecture. There is a ton of flavor here already, expand it, and create two unique empires with different ships and tactics, and let the players fill the ranks and fly to glorious battle!
I get it, you read things like above and you begin asking a million questions, given this direction how would we handle X,Y,Z. Player vs player defeat, ship loss, map victory/defeat conditions, balancing concerns by making factions unique... I know. It's very involved... But it's workable, it's doable... eventually, and what's more is that it will give us players a good decade or more of enjoyment if you do it well. Look at games like Eve, personally I hate it, the gameplay is uninteresting... But it has a complex world that players can influence. That breeds longevity. And I believe that muse can do it better.
Give the RP community more to sink it's teeth into. I'm an RP nut I admit, I hate seeing ship names inspired by porn stars or things like bucketsof... well you get the idea, but I get it, most people never get past the mentality of a 15 year old and well, that's online gaming. But please for the love of Icarus throw people like me a bone and flesh out the ship designs a bit, I mean where are the bathrooms, the captains quarters. etc? Look, I get it, it was not needed to get the game going, it would be useless fluff, I know. Now that things are picking up though and you're building a world, let me live in it eh? Let me have a small ship which sleeps four and has a privy.
I've actually thought a lot about how all of this could work, but writing it out as a design document is presumptuous and wasted effort unless you actually want to think about taking the game in this direction.
