One of the most fundamental building blocks of design is the ability to take items from players and give them different items in exchange. The obvious implementation of this is a traditional shop, where money is taken and stuff is given. Less obvious but just as critical is taking of items instead of money. And yet we’ve been overloading the mission system instead as a placeholder for that system.

In the next devlog on this subject, AnnaM will tell you about the changes we’ve made to the infrastructure – replacing the unwieldy Delivery Missions with much more friendly and useful Exchange Shops. I’d like to talk a bit about the content in these new shops – the changes I’ve made, the changes I’m planning, and what this means for PvP rewards specifically.

My revisions deal with the Commendation exchange, the Marks of Victory exchange, and the Citations of Conquest exchange.

In Commendations, the biggest change is that I’ve reduced the number of commendation types from 10 to 5 for nationals. For Freetraders and Privateers, the removed commendations are the Medium Pennant, the Blue Seal, the Bronze Seal, the Encomium of Skill, and the Encomium of Valor. For Naval Officers and Privateers with the correct skill, the removed commendations are Diligence, Temperance, Bravery, Valor, and Heroism. For all the removed commendations, a special exchange shop is available to turn them into one of the remaining valid types in the correct proportion. This means that for every level of commendation, there are more options for spending them – nearly double the options in many cases.

Privateers will notice that Heroism was removed, which was their (ultimately useless) high-end Naval commendation. The exchange shops allow me to create specific shops for each career, so instead of restricting Privateers from gaining Royal Commendations, I’m just changing what’s available in their exchange shop to exclude the Navy-only ship writs. This means that one, you’ll be getting Royals from high-end ship claiming, and two, you’ll be able to convert your Commendations of Heroism into Royals for use in the Privateer exchange shop.

I had hoped to use the Commendations to allow dedicated players to obtain ships outside the usual economic channels. What’s become clear is that it isn’t dedicated players doing this – it’s everyone. What’s more, the gameplay experience when you get a ship that way is either uninteresting because the ship is too cheap, or it’s aggravating because of all the commendation grinding you have to do to afford it. Even if we manage to hit the sweet spot between those extremes, we’re still seeing the market for any ship given out via commendation crash into a below-cost pile. That means that the ‘free’ ships are the preferred ships, because they’re always cheaper than the ‘non-free’ alternatives. In hindsight, this is a pretty obvious and inevitable outcome. I’m therefore removing all the free ships from the commendation exchanges. The writs aren’t changing, but the endless piles of Bermuda sloops are going away.

Increased flexibility in pricing in the exchange shops means that I was also able to finally tune the value of commendations. The worth of any given commendation was extremely variable, between careers and between levels of commendation. Because all turn-ins under the old system had to be the same quantity of commendation, some turn-ins were just simply more valuable than others. Now, I’m able to make the values of the goods you receive very consistent. Across all careers, commendations are worth 25, 50, 75, 100, or 150 doubloons – that worth being measured in the production cost of the goods you can exchange them for at each level. If an item is available in trade for two different careers’ commendations, it will cost the same amount of commendations for both.

The revision to Marks of Victory doesn’t feature the same drastic alteration as the collapse of commendations into just 5 types, but in many ways it’s a more interesting set of changes.

Let me preface this with an explanation of my philosophy of Marks of Victory: they are valuable not just because you may want the rewards they generate, but also because you can sell them to someone else who wants those rewards. So when you look at the rewards I’ve added, keep in mind that while you, a PvP player, may not find them interesting, someone else does – and will pay you for your Marks. The design goal is that the Mark will become a kind of universal currency between PvP and PvE players.

First off, we’ve added the ability to buy faction with the Trade Union factions for each nation (and the Smugglers for pirates) via Marks of Victory. If you’ve ruined your trading faction through Open Sea hunting, or you’d just like to be able to use enemy auction houses, you can spend a Mark to gain 10 points of faction with the appropriate Union.

That’s not the only new thing you can purchase with your Marks. Also included in the new Mark exchange shop: explosive round shot and smelling salts. Additionally, you can spend a very, very large number of Marks to purchase a lineship structure item.

The number of recipe books in the game has grown as the complexity of the economy has grown, and for many of the books that are rare-ish loot drops, there’s no good reason for them to be rare – or to be loot drops at all. Thus I’ve also added many of the loot-drop books to the Mark of Victory exchange. This doesn’t include the rarest of the books, some of which are still only available as loot.

We’ll be adding avatar combat items and clothing options to the Mark of Victory exchange in 1.4, and continuing to add more rewards beyond that, of course.

Citations of Conquest received an update similar to that of the Marks exchange. I’ve added many of the more rare books to the Citation exchange (although, as I mentioned, the rarest of the books are still loot-only). If the item you really want is a Mark exchange, I’ve also added the ability to convert your Citations of Conquest into Marks of Victory.

I’ve also revised the consumable items you can get from a Citation. Before, they were very limited in duration and thus limited in utility, and also didn’t really explain what they did very well. Now, the tooltips on them will tell you exactly what they do; also, instead of being a single item that lasts for a few days, you get 10 items that each lasts several hours, so that you can decide when you most need their benefits on a per-play-session basis. I’ve also created two new consumables, increasing bonus loot chance and xp rate, which function in the same way.

From my perspective, the great thing about the exchange shops is not actually this set of revisions, though. It’s that finally the design team is working with a system that allows us to tune, adjust, and most importantly, add to the available exchanges. Over the next milestone, we’ll be continuing to add more rewards to all three core exchanges, including doubling (at least!) the options for turning in Marks of Victory. Avatar customization items, avatar combat gear, new outfitting, and new consumables are just the stuff at the top of the list for inclusion in the Marks shop.

Ultimately, our goal be much more responsive to your concerns and ideas about exchanges. As we move forward, we’ll be looking for the most interesting suggestions for rewards from commendations, marks, and citations, as well as other possible future uses of the exchange system.