Title: Rework the Naval Karma System (Naval Fame)
Family Name: Voxous
Region (NA/EU): NA
Suggestion/Comments:

At present, the naval karma is uniquely far more punishing than any other karma related system in the game, despite the incredibly low impact pirates have. It only really serves to soft lock new players out of ocean content. I will begin by outlining why the current system was added, then outlining how naval karma currently works and then what should change.

The current naval karma system was implemented for 3 primary reasons. Preventing griefing of the guild boss Khan, preventing griefing of barterers, and prevent griefing of fishing events. The unfortunate impact of this system has been making it incredibly easy for a new player to soft lock themselves out of the ocean system, and a drastic decrease in the number of people actually participating in naval content, and the introduction of a number of exploits that I will not go into detail here to grief new players. The seas have never been more empty.

In addition to this, Khan was recently changed so that you cannot grief it with ships, and both bartering and sailing can be done without restrictions on level 49 characters, completely ignoring any pvp griefing, naval or otherwise, and rendering the naval karma system's only purpose irrelevant.

My proposed changes would address some of the exploits introduced, the potential for new players to get soft locked out of ocean content, and the overly punishing systems of naval karma in general, as well as improvements for players with positive naval karma.


How It currently works:

(everyone)
-Naval karma is account wide, so being negative on 1 character means being negative on all
-Naval Karma maxes out at 300,000
-Flagging and hitting another player or boat costs 50,000 naval karma (this includes hitting a boat with your land gear)
-Sinking another boat costs 200,000 naval karma
-Killing another player with your cannons costs 200,000 naval karma
-The total cost of sinking 1 boat and killing the pilot is 450,000 naval karma, resulting in instantly being 150,000 naval karma in the red if you were maxed out.
-Naval karma is recovered from defeating sea monsters
-The only way to recover naval karma without a boat is a very slow repeat quest, "Hidden Item", providing 2,500 naval karma per completion and taking weeks to get out of the red.
-Sailors can get sick from random event
-Sailors can get sick when sunk in pve or pvp regardless of naval karma
-Sick sailors can dissapear randomly regardless of naval karma
-Sick sailors can be recovered using elixir of regeneration IF they have not left

(negative naval karma)
-Warf guards will shoot at ships and players with negative naval karma
-You cannot talk to warf managers other than the one on pirate island
-Gear can degrade on being sunk in both pve and pvp
-There is NO protection against gear downgrades like crystals for land gear
-You cannot equip or unequip ship gear outside of a safe zone
-your ship is automatically flagged for pvp outside of safe zones
-you cannot participoate in Papu Crinea content
-The warf limiting makes bartering and ship progression nearly impossible, effectively soft locking new players who did not know better out of ocean content
-The warf limiting forces a VERY long swim to pirate island for players without a ride
-The warf limiting blocks off several required quests for boat progression
-Automatic flagging creates an exploit allowing players with negative naval karma and positive land karma to force flag other ships, including those used by level 49 players



Proposed Changes:

(everyone)
-Reduce the karma costs to about 1/3 what they are now so a single sink or kill is more in line with land karma
-Make the trade item protection of the guild skill "Skilled Rider" apply to barter goods
-Sick sailors no longer dissapear (how it was during oasis)
-Monsters on pirate island should recover naval karma when killed
-Add a ferry from port epheria to pirate island
-Increase the naval karma gained from the repeat quest "Hidden Item"
-Reduce the level requirement of the vigorous velia and oquilla's eye quest line to make it easier to create a level 49 sailor with access to breezy sail

(positive naval karma)
-Sailors should not get sick from the ship being sunk in pvp
-(optional) Barter items are not lost from being sunk in pvp

(negative naval karma)
-Like town guards, warf guards are not active at night
-Allow players with pirate status to talk to and use any warf manager again
-Remove ship gear downgrade, and let sick sailors be the penalty to being sunk while negative naval karma
-Prevent negative naval karma players from climbing unpartied ship ladders. This would fix the exploit
-(optional) allow players to participate in papu crinea content
-(optional) change the margoria sea to be more like valencia, where getting sunk while negative sends you to a prison you must escape without other penalties. There are many unused islands this could be done with

Or just go PvP on Arsha and stop sinking noob barterers and fishing boats...

Leave it the way it is.  

You don't lose naval fame on Arsha.  You don't lose naval fame for guild dec's.  Therefore, you're sinking people who just want to do their own thing.  

that's pretty much sums up all piracy we had before, all they want is to grief ppl who can't fight back and run away if they encounter danger. They even have a specific channel in discord where they posting whisper screenshots of ppl being mad at them.

I have a maxed out carrack, I am not the kind of person who gets hurt by this system. The people who get hurt by naval fame are people who are still early in the process of getting their boat and may only have a sailboat or friggate or even nothing at all yet.

I have run into way too many players who have had the experience of flagging when they were new, fighting someone near a boat, the side of a skill clips the boat, and now they are suddenly so far negative, they are better off making a new account if they want to do sea content. Most of these people have never even used a boat before.

There are also periodic bugs and exploits that crop up where players are able to force flag other players, causing them to lose karma, the most recent one involving guild cannons.

If PA wants to get more people into ocean content, they should look into a system that only serves to hurt people new to the game/ocean content

You mentioned exploits that "You wouldn't get into here". I think the best suggestion here is to contact a GM or CM about these exploits and get them resolved first. I really don't think a new sailor can "accidentally" find themselves in Negative Karma, soft-locking themselves out of the system.

If you as a new player learn the key-combo to flag up before you learn about what happens when you shoot someone, you deserve what's coming to you.

If you do that as a new player, you aren't locked out of land content. odds are, you will already have enough karma by the time you are 50 that you won't even go red from the amount lost for hitting someone on land with your land gear. 

That is not the case for naval karma. You start at 0. None of the monsters you would be killing as part your normal play restore naval karma, meaning that the first time someone does that, they would instantly go -50,000 naval over a system they didn't even know about. And because it is account wide instead of per character, they can't try playing a different character to get into ocean content. They are just locked out.

I am sick of showing new people I meet in game some of the stuff you can do with a boat and introducing them into sea content, and then having to tell them that that boat they hit once a year ago on a character that doesn't even exist anymore has effectively locked them out of ocean content as a whole.

When I say "Accidentally find themselves in negative karma" I meant Naval Fame, so sorry for not writing correctly. Is it really that often that people will flag up near a ship and accidentally hit someones ship? I do agree that someone should be able to recoup that, and a negative 50k penalty on hitting a ship with a land skill is a bit much. Most of what your suggesting sounds too much like you are trying to improve the QoL of people who are knowingly trying to live the pirates life.

The pirate community are the ones who typically exploit and abuse game bugs to grief people... like having a friend flagged and climbing up and down a level 49's ladder so his boat can then be attacked.  They were doing this long before naval fame was even a thing.  Their idea of fun is to ruin someone else's fun and go after people who can't or won't fight back. You never see them fighting each other. So its not about the pvp, lets stop pretending like it is. Just remove naval-based pvp all together and only 13 people in the entire world would care.

Also increase the damage a trina ax does to carracks during siege and nws, especially on t1 nws. 

Reduce the damage carracks do to players on t1s. They literally 1-2 shot players on t1s. 

lol this just isn't happening realistically at such a massive rate that it needs to be addressed. Its a red herring so pirates can go back to griefing people with no real penalties.

While it would be some qol for people who play as pirates, those players already have upgraded ships and aren't really impacted by the current system. They didn't stop shooting barterers because of the new system, they stopped because everyone barters on a 49 these days. They didn't stop griefing khan because of the naval fame system, they stopped because PA made it a safe zone. They are not stopped by having to use the pirate island warf. They have fellow pirates who can give them rides and extra characters already over there.

The only players who are really impacted by this are new players who have accidentally gone naval red for what ever reason. The only players downgrading are already low geared players trying desperately to get their karma back at the ghost ships near iliya.

The only suggestion that you could argue is mainly qol for actual pirates vs just low geared players trying to recover or the changes that are intended to make everyone's life better, blue red or green, is the suggestion to make the margoria sea like valencia, where you get sent to a prison instead of normal red penalties.

Even that isn't really targeted at pirates. All of the monster grind spots in that area are so poorly designed that you have to use all 3 of your guild's home channels to avoid over clearing, making conflict between players out there very likely. Even more so when you factor in lekrashan being the only spot worth any money and crocs having one of the rarest treasures in the game, more so than any of the valencia treasures.

-------------

On a different note, playing devil's advocate for a minute... There are also players who leave rafts, fishing boats, rowboats, etc abbandoned and blocking off common barter auto paths or, in more coordinated and extreme situations blocking off entire areas. I have seen hakoven blocked off by several sideways boats, and even seen velia blocked off entirely by a bloccade of abbandoned boats positioned as a wall around the harbor. It is not unreasonable that a newer player who doesn't know the consequences would flag to destroy those kind of obstructions, and then find themselves locked out of the port they just flagged to open up, or worse, sunk and downgraded by the same people who set up the obstrctions.

Now if the usual people you would expect as pirates came accross that, assuming they didn't set it up, they don't have the same consequences as a new player. They can simply sink the ships and head back out to the ocean.

-------------

The overall point is the same. The karma system primarily impacts the very new and low geared players, and these suggestions focus on making the system less punishing to those players. 

Even if it was just making it so you can only take out small boats from warfs other than pirate island (like how heidel works), disabling port guards port at night, and making it so the otherwise worthless pirate island mobs give naval karma on kill, that would go a very long way for helping lower players recover, while not having much impact on players who already have carracks.

-------------

The sick sailors changes would be nice, but that is more of an everyone thing, since with the system as it currently is, you could get sunk by a pirate and have valuable and rare sailors that you worked hard grinding to get just vanish before you can even make it to the warf manager to recover them. It would make more sense for sailors to only get sick for positive karma players if they are sunk in pve, and not pvp, and the sailors leaving mechanic is just poor design.

Edit: and the vigorous velia quest level being lowered serves only to make it easier for people to make a level 49 sailor to barter/fish on