World Ocean Revamped: Batten Down The Hatchers!

Ahoy fellow wynncraftians! Navigation in Minecraft has been always sort of clumsy, resulting quite usually in a boring mechanic used only in survival for it's fast travel properties without hunger depletion in the early game. When carrying this feature to Wynncraft, the benefits explained are greatly reduced, affecting a lot the overall motivation when doing quests throughout the sea. To improve this shortage, I decided to write this article, explaining with game design principles in my hand how to transform navigation from “Nay” into “Yay”. I present you the

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1.- Defining the problem:

When on boat, the reduction of the average button presses goes down to 2 inputs (W, to move forward, and MAYBE one directional like D or A), making it often a boring mechanic where going to point A to point B is a monotonous task. This is in fact an activity discouraged by gameplay heuristics, where player’s fatigue must be minimized by varying activities. That’s the first problem: “FATIGUE” (We will define it for now with one word and we will return later)

The second problem is aimed more on the inside the boat mechanics. You can buy the boat… and then… just navigate? It would be interesting to add some sort of relation to the problem we defined before, a progression. Something that can actually motivate you to explore. We can call it “DEPTH”.

Finally the last problem, and it’s a big one. When you are given a quest and you discover that you need to navigate around half of the world, you are pretty discouraged. We need to change that too, we need to build a new experience that converts this feeling of “Again I have to take a boat??” to “Oh, nice, I have to go there”. We will call this problem “MOTIVATION”.

Fatigue, Depth and Motivation. They are pretty relationated between them (and maybe a bit common sense) but it’s nice to set up the bases for when we start to design the actual solutions:

2.- The Solutions

2.1.- DEPTH - “It’s dangerous to go alone”
With the new additions to reskin possibilities, it is now really factible to generate more depth to this navigation system. For this matter I will tag the user @Thonck to reference his thread about boat tiers. I recommend you reading through it as I will explain how this will help later on.

The introduction:
Depth it’s about creating new relations, adding more options for the players. To start the navigation through the sea, I have created a simple quest that will carry you through the basics. This quest will start at level 7 next to Ragni’s beach. Until starting it you will be given slowness while touching the water.

Quest: Son of a biscuit eater.

[1/3] Galesh: Ahoy landlubber! I welcome ya to the big ol’ Wynn sea! But I may advise you this ain’t like other seas ya may have seen, this big boy is capable to smell the fear from y’all.

[2/3] Galesh: Before you end up being fish food, I can share with ya the receipt to make a boat like my little friend in here, but first I could use some little help from ya.

[3/3] Galesh: My ship has been scuttled, and I don’t have the proper land tools to repair it. Go chop som’ trees and bring this ol’ man some wood, would ya?

[Bring 10 pieces of wood to Galesh]​

[1/1] Galesh: Blimey! That was fast! You gotta great hand on the land little boy! I think I can let you try my friend to repair the ship over there. I will raise the offer. Please help me, would ya?

[Repair the ship stranded on the coast] ​

You have to use these 10 blocks of wood and put them around the ship. Once finally repared:

[Go back to Galesh]​

[1/1] Galesh: Yo ho ho, you are really good at this, buccaneer! Here, get some emeralds, you deserve them. You can now craft the boat. We will see ourselves battling the waters. Good luck with ya quest!

A wet start:
After completing the quest, you will then begin at level 1 sailor. This works like any other professions such as mining or woodcutting. Navigating through the sea will grant you points to rise up the profession level (Around 30 xp each 10 blocks). Each 20 sailor levels, a new blueprint will be unlocked for crafting. Here is where the post from Thonck is really useful. He exposes that boats need to be bough, but I think it will actually work better to have them permanently, and activated just like a horse.

To make the boats, you would need to craft them at a shipyard with the correspondent materials. These are some receipts ideas I have thought of. Please, don’t hesitate to reply with your own proposals. I’m from the old wynn school and all of this is a bit new for me:

• Level 1 boat scheme: 5 Oak Wood, 2 Wool. You need level 5 Woodworking.
• Level 20 boat scheme: 5 Acacia Wood, 2 Oceanic Silt. You need level 20 Woodworking.
• Level 40 boat scheme: 5 Jungle Wood, 2 Bloodweb. You need level 35 Woodworking.
• Level 60 boat scheme: 5 light wood, 2 Ancient Metal. You need level 45 Woodworking and level 40 Armouring.

To ride the boat you would need the same level of sailor as the boat. To put an example, the level 40 boat would need someone of at least level 40 at the sailor profession.

With this we already have encouraged some players to go out and use the boat. But we need to also encourage them to explore. In Wynncraft you don’t get the urge to get lost in the vast of the sea, so will try to change that too.

The new naval combat:
Right now it’s a bit frustrating to combat enemies on water. They can inflict you damage while you are totally unable to attack them. What I propose is the following: When on a boat, you will be given a little cannon as a weapon. The higher tier will have a better weapon to attack (Logically). This addition can be done by replacing temporally the hotbar with a simple icon of a cannon that works almost the same as the Wizard or Archer weapon.

Each boat will have also it’s own life, meaning that when destroyed, the player on top of it will automatically die. This DOES NOT mean that water kills you. You can still cross the sea by swimming if you dare (Or teleporting).

By changing this mechanics while on boat, we are given more opportunities to arrange and build better experiences and events on the sea, which will be explained on the next point down the list.


2.2.- FATIGUE - “The reward awaits you in the journey”

The BEST way to change this fatigue problem due monotonous tasks is to add variety while moving to point A to point B. Spicing things up. For this I suggest in creating 3 types of events:

Yarrrr Pirates!
A squad of pirates surprises you! You may be able to escape if you got a high level boat. Maybe they drop something interesting though ;). If you see that escaping is not an option, you can merge yourself in a battle with your recently equipped cannons and try to sink their ships!

This does not end here. There is a possibility to spawn a dungeon pirate ship in certain places. You can enter it and try to complete it, if you dare…

Jelly Roger's ship, level 20-90 dungeon depending on the place of its spawn. It would start at the bottom and you would have to go through the inside floors. When killing the captain Roger, it would instantly kick you off the dungeon giving you the reward. To decrease the massive load it would imply to change that amount of blocks, it could be really useful to design some sort of “door” or “trigger” that would teleport the player inside the ship directly. In simpler terms, it’s just a dungeon with moving doors on which depending its location the level would increase or decrease.

Jelly Roger's Ship
Level 20-90
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The main point of the pirates is to add a challenge to the navigation phase while avoiding making it tedious, just less monotonous. Think of this when writing your reply.

Floating Market:
This is a high level store that wanders through the sea. When travelling at night, you have a low probability to spawn one of these little structures with 2 merchants that would sell rare equipment. This equipment will vary it's level depending on the zone they are adjacent to. The probabilities would work this way:

Throughout the map, there would be hot spots with the capability to spawn one of these. When players are travelling through the sea, they constantly gain "Ocean Points". 1 OP is gained every 100 blocks of distance. When entering an area that has the power to build this market, the points are deducted from the player and are used to calculate the probability. This area would be triggered around 20 blocks from the center. The way it calculates the probability is the following: 0.5% Chance of spawning a market for each point you gained. So if you have 5 Ocean Points 5*0.5 = 2.5%

This is a low percentage, but the idea of the market is to encourage players to not take that much the easy fast travel AND to have more chances of being attacked by pirates ;). Also, the inspiration I took this idea from is referenced at the game Stardew Valley's Night Market:

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Sunken ship has been possessed by the undeads!
When travelling you will see different ships destroyed around the sea. This will first give variety to the different parts of the ocean. When passing by them, you will have a probability to activate the ship, forcing it to start spawning enemies and loot. You are not obligated to go and do the event, but the treasures in there might be good, who knows ;)

There won't be much of these, as part of the ocean experience is to be lost while seeing nothing in your surroundings, but the pace speed the game gets at these stages is too dam low.

2.3.-MOTIVATION: “I’m dead inside”
Finally, we get to the big part. What I suggest in here would make players want to explore the ocean freely, even if events where inexistent. The map in the website determines how every island is positioned and erases any feeling of exploration. Taking this into consideration, this is what I have thought of:

The Liquid Lands:
This late game special zone adjacent to the current ocean would be invisible to the wynncraft website map. Each month the landscape of the zone would be changed using prefabricated islands, making it the first auto renewed zone in Wynncraft. This would give late game players the experience to visit something new, using the systems we have already created. Basically, It would be like playing a dungeon crawler game through the sea that renews each month.

In fact, this idea could be applied to a lot of places, like the trom's jungle or the desert. Content is expensive to make, and generated content is really good to deliver a big experience to the players that already went through all the game.

Islands on this stage would have different biome or aesthetics, and there would be repeated themes with different structures to add more variety. Simply add some proper loot chests, enemies with predifined locations on top and you got some nice content in there. It would not be as personal or as dedicated as all the other map, but the feeling of not knowing what's in there almost each time you enter it would be unique.

3.- CONCLUSION: “Every journey has an end”

The main goal of this article was to give a new perspective to the sea. Right now is the blandest part of the game and it doesn’t really need to be that way. I know it would be difficult to implement, but being outside the development is a really tough barrier as you don’t know the technical limitations we are working with. If you have any suggestion or addition, please reply to this thread. If we all work together this may be transformed into something better we can all enjoy in the future.


Thank you so much for reading! We may see ourselves one day navigating through the seas.

 

This would probably be really interesting, if only I could understand what you're trying to say.

 

What's the thing/s you cannot understand?

 

I'm all for adding more depth and variety to the game, but what I see here is another layer of grinding that really doesn't appeal all that much to me. The only time I see myself using a boat over the Seaskipper is to cross short distances between islands, and even then I might opt to use spells instead. Yes, you address this in that the added variety will entice players to choose manually traversing the sea over fast-travel, but without detailing proper rewards I cannot find myself convinced. I don't intend to structure this reply properly, so I will simply provide my opinion on each section of your post.

Yes, travelling by boat is boring, and this is why I only opt to use a boat when needing to cross a short distance between islands or for navigating in the Fantastic Voyage quest. As for becoming discouraged for long-distance quests, I cannot relate because, again, the Seaskipper exists.

The quest is fine. With an entirely new world of exploration available to the player, an introduction is needed. However, again, what I see here is another layer of grinding to add to the immensity 1.18 brought us. How will this affect the pace of a player's journey? Will exploring the ocean be worth choosing over progressing through quests on the mainland?

This bit is lacking some detail. Why would I choose using the cannon over dismounting and using spells? I might consider this form of combat if the cannon had various upgrade paths to improve efficiency in taking down groups of enemies (multiple projectiles, area of effect explosions, etc.). The part about each boat having its own life pool and that life pool being linked to the player also seems a bit strange to me. How is this life pool replenished? What happens if you dismount right before your boat is destroyed? Does it gain health over time when not in use or will there be stations where the boat can be repaired? If you want to tie this into professions, you could have the boat retain damage it takes in battle and have scrap be the method of restoring it.

An interesting idea, but I feel that this, too, is lacking in detail. "It would start at the bottom and you would have to go through the inside floors" doesn't really tell me much. Is it a fully-fledged dungeon with various tasks and puzzles or is it more oriented towards a single boss fight with challenging phases and engaging mechanics? Perhaps as the level increases, more unique phases will be added to the fight?

While this, too, sounds interesting, it seems to add yet another layer of grinding to the mix. What amount of aimless exploration will be needed for this to be worth my time? What implications does this have in the endgame? Will I be stuck sailing circles around Legendary Island and Corkus to find worthwhile encounters?
As for the shipwrecks filled with enemies, it seems a bit... generic. If the only objective is to kill a pack of undead and collect your loot, I feel it would get old fast.

Ah, once more we reach procedural generation as the one-size-fits-all solution to endgame content. Personally, I would be fine with this, with the exception of this feature being applied to existing areas, as it would only serve to create more confusion among newer players. Veteran players, too, would be affected. Imagine learning the layout of a region (for application in finding loot chests or completing quests more efficiently than you had previously) only to learn that the area has now shifted and things have been moved to new locations. I don't see that working out well.

While I agree the ocean could use some spicing up, it would be a very difficult task to make it an engaging experience for all players. It looks like my reply ended up with more questions than anything, but these are my first impressions after reading through your proposal.

 

Seaskipper exists so any effort put into the ocean would probably be wasted. Nobody will ever enjoy water navigation.