How Ships with free currency are FOMO

GGG announced a couple "real time mechanics" like send ships off and they come back with divines, or let NPCs run your maps and they come back with divines.

Essentially this is Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and it's neither fun nor good game design nor something you as a player want.

The concept is the same in a lot of games and I cannot come up with a single game where I found this fun.
You spent your time in game and you farm a currency - say Gold. Then you use that gold to buy currency. But to convolute things you put this currency into a ship and that ship takes time, real world time. And maybe you add a limit as well - because otherwise people would exploit that.
So if you have an infinite amount of Gold, any player can reasonably only sent 5 ships within 24 hours. This means the bottleneck is the account and you just need 2 accounts to sent more ships. But then you make Gold account or character bound - so that bullet is dodged.
Then your bottleneck is time. Which means you have to log into the game whenever GGG tells you that your ship is in port and ready to sent off again.
Which essentially means, the box you are buying with your Gold can be opened and you can buy a new timer. But you are buying divines.
And it really doesn't matter how you convolute this process as a game designer. It's still the same. The timer is the bootleneck and you want players to feel the FOMO of not sending out all the missions and losing out on currency. Lootboxes but with ingame money.
For maps it's probably more convoluted - essentially you are sending of "bots" to run your map. Bottom line still is the same, you find currency (map) you have a timed box (portal machine) and you open the loot. You buy currency.

Now on Maps and on Ships you can convolute this with Roleplay. You can farm wood for the masts, orichalcum ore for the cannons and the souls of karui puppies for a lantern of joy that boosts the morale of your crew.

And all of this because you don't want the currency to drop right away. The technology is already in place. You could drop 1 divine instead of 10.000 Gold. But "game designers" or marketing chose to put in this convoluted system.


Why is it bad?

There are 2 reasons mainly why this is bad.

1. FOMO
Players feel more pressure to log into the game to send out as many ships as someone who is online 24/7. Other companies have added a stacking limit to prevent this a little. In WoW you don't need to farm the weekly 500 valor points every week, the maximum amount you can farm on your character will increase every week. So if you log in with your character in week 10 of the league you can farm 5000 valor points - just the same amount as everyone else.
GGG might add this - but it doesn't prevent a lot of shenanigans and it's still printing money,
Essentially I think this move is there to create more whales or big spenders or just retention. Which it might do - but it's not a nice move. This is a dark pattern. It's a psychology move against the customers best interest.

2. Inflation as a trade in for no additional fun
So opening boxes is fun and seeing that shiny divine is fun. For you. But every divine that is not found by you is not fun for you. Because every other player opening that box and having a divine as well decreases the market value of yours.
And this means inflation. which is fine if you are doing all the things. Like last league - if you ran those scarab juiced t17s and printed magebloods you are fine. But average me is not. I have a really bad divine per hour. my guess is that I am maybe making 2 div an hour. 10 if I really grind. So every one of my found divines is now worth less because someone else is printing divines into the economy by sending of ships or having npcs run their maps. This means my playtime is getting less valuable. My real life time is worth a lot more now. If I log in at the right times to take care of those ships that might be worth more than me grinding away at a t16 map or standing in HO looking at a crafting strategy.
"Free currency" as a gold-dump is dangerous game design. It messes with your economy big time - and economy is a huge fun factor for a lot of people.

Same goes for the random boss that pops up in your hideout and you can fight him or not. This is timed stuff. Why not an invite like all the other bosses have?


What I think could make this situation better:
There should be absolutely zero monetary gain from running these missions. I personally am a sucker for progression and building a town. I love farming materials and seeing places grow. The alone is enough joy for me, I don't need the town to produce anything. Especially not currency.
So any missions you send your npcs on should only yield currency that is not tradeable. Like the ores or gold.
If anything I could see the ship missions opening up fun maps to play. Like the master mission thingies that give you fun 3-6 map experiences. They shouldn't be super profitable - which is easily solved when you don't apply atlas tree or scarabs to them.
And btw - who thought them coming back with 30 heist missions would be fun? Probably the person that increased the heist locker by 10x.


The whole concept of "real time" in games is a dark pattern. It means the game does not respect your time. And same as with necropolis - how is this not being seen by game designers? Or was it? How are you coming up with ways that punish the average player so hard every league again and again.
Please look at this feature again and make it fun. I like opening boxes and finding divines. I like buying boxes with excess gold I grinded. I don't need a timer. In fact I like dropping divines in a map more than buying boxes.

Hey there,

I noticed the same issue. We must go in and look, but from the released info their new EXPERIMENTAL systems look too much bot friendy. Or at least the system can be abused in some way.

On the other hand, this "autofarming" can be a big QoL for SSF players. I did SSF many leagues (some HC as well), and barely found 10divs each. :D This can help to equalize the crafing currency for solo players, in order to allow a full content experience.

Guess the SSF QoL is not on the focus, I think this "fomo" mechanic is intended to improve player retention among the league with some low interaction content. But again, we must see how exactly works and if the systems were improved for a rational gameplay, they are only high-end friendly or is just an minimum afk system that gives free loots just for login-in.

Anyways, I liked to be able to mine the nodes myself, live in my barbaric beach tent trusting nobody and only go town to exchange stuff for things I want.

About boats and automapping,

With "zero monetary gain" you pointing in the right direction, in my opinion.

Giving currencies is the most lame aproach to an interesing new RPG system never used in PoE (but extended in many MMORPGs). We want new layers, not MORE of things we se again and again.

Rewards could be exclusive of the mechanic, in some cases personal/team/guild buffs instead of FREE currency printing. Im not a paid developer, but in ten minutes some inovative ideas can be dropped.

Say;

Successful boat trade grants you any of these:

X brewage that grants X% more (Scalable) global defences.
X fighting beacon that allows you to deploy mercenary reinforcements in a map YOU ARE CURRENTLY RUNNING,
X rescued citizen from pirates/derelict boat that can be trained as mercenary, help YOU mining etc.
X karui (Insert here strange pet XD) that picks certain loot for you but lasts 1 day and then scapes.
X Unstable gem with greatly increased power or weird interactions but lasting for a limited time/expiry date once "carved" onto an item and destroyed if unsocketed.
X Special beasts for Einhar to tame of make soup.
X Smuggler map pointing to a suspicious delve coordinate that contains a (INSERT ENCOUNTER).
X ticket for commando extraction team beacon with 1 day calldown that extracts you from a previously marked zone, when you are close to death.
X Powerful runic kaalgur themed items (RELIC RARITY), that break on use and cannot be fully repaired because they were old relics.
X Token to repair old relics in combination of scaps/whetstones at a runic blacksmith.
X fancy uniques, eventually.
X Tier Endgame content tokens (sulphite, heist, fragments, maps, valdo boxes)
X A kind of item-hunt token that allows to enchant a map for improved chances of certain uniques to drop.
X Exotic dancers of your favourite race/gender that improve morale and give MORE hp, mana, or resource / life regen.
X Charges for a Town Thaumaturgical device that grants temporal access to a KEYSTONE NOTABLE anywhere in the pasive tree.
X Runic /kaalgur themed scraps/wetstones that raise quality of items to +40 but downgrade to the previous level on use.
X Item enchantment token, juice or other crafting metamaterials (old labo and harvest revamped).
X Fish that you can cook in the tavern for buffs, sell for gold or just annoying easter egg.
X rarely, a voidborn reliquary key.
X Extremelly rare Gore Kuduku Wilson Skin parts (linked to fish easter egg). Coast Canibals make a dress with skin pieces of many unlucky exiles resembling their GOD.
X Ultra rare fish level map with 1shooty fishes chasing you.

A professional dev team can make this list 10 pages long in 1 day whitout using crapGPT, with crap GPT 100 pages long in 1 hour. C'mon.

Also, boat trades should demand items obtained by active gameplay, things otherwise worthless, say:

X Trade 10x (INSERT WEARABLE ITEM BASE: Gold ring, copper plate).
X Trade 1x item with certain afixes. (say phys,phys, life, mana, fire, cold)
X Trade 5000x Azurite.
X Trade 5X specific maps.
X Kaalgur king demands 100000 Gold as taxes (Not paid, your town goes raided xd).
X Kaalgur king demands (INSERT CURRENCY) as taxes.
X Kaalgur king demands (INSERT CERTAIN UNIQUE) as a weeding gift to a loyal.
X Send to the outpost 10x RED GEMS (RUTHLESS)
X Send to the outpost 1x AURA GEM (RUTHLESS)
X Send to the outpost 10x Life/Mana/Utility Flasks. (RUTHLESS)
X Send 10-100X soldiers to (INSERT HOSTILE) beachhead.
X Take a boat and inspect a pirate/alien hideout yourself.
X Defeat sea monsters.