Re-imagining the Regatta in Pirate101

There's an interesting ship dungeon in Pirate101 that's a little off the beaten path. It's a one-of-a-kind in game, and that makes it naturally more interesting than the dozens of other dungeons you can find in Pirate101.

As it turns out, two-boxing the Regatta is not too difficult!

As the Pirate's Regatta was one of two remaining quests in my quest log for Pirate101, I decided to duo it with my two box account to see how it'd go. The end result was that I was able to finish the event without much mishap! Well, a few of my companions got knocked out on that final fight, but it wasn't too bad.  

After the hour and a half that it took me to complete the event, I had a lot more scrip than I started with, but I'm pretty sure I'd need to run the regatta at least a dozen or more times to really get what I want from the Black Market shop where you buy exclusive rewards with said scrip.

I decided to take it to Twitter to see if there was a consensus and while I didn't get a ton of responses, I did get a response from @Telekneticissue that kind of summed up some of the suspicions I had while playing through the event.

I remember there was a little discussion about it on ye' old Pirate101 forums as well, and a quick search led me to mixed feelings about the Regatta, so I started thinking . . . if I was asked as a Designer to improve the Regatta, what would I suggest? 

It's a tough one to answer because the event is tuned to bringing a full party of 4, but can be done with as little as 2 . . . maybe even as little as 1, but I'm sure the time to complete the event escalates the fewer people that are involved.  In addition, you can't really adjust quest requirements based on the number of players that enter an instance together, so you want to ensure it's a fun challenge for all party sizes.

So, taking all that in stride, I think the real problem of the Regatta is player population, time decay, and motivation. To further explain it:

1- Player population in Pirate101 just isn't what it used to be, point blank. There are plenty of people that still play, but you can see it when you run around and play in the game . . . it's a bit barren these days.  

2- It's been five to six years since the content has released with no new update to the Scrip rewards a person can earn. 

3- When a person can get 4 players together who all want to earn Scrip, their time is probably better spent at the Smuggler's Arena where the scrip rewards are infinitely better, but the difficulty is ramped up. There's less risk in the regatta, but also fewer rewards.

To counter act all that, I'd suggest the following changes:

1- Place new Scrip rewards in the Black Market to freshen the motivation. It's been long enough that if players are going to be excited about the Black Market again, new rewards should be added. Maybe take some of the Boss rewards from around the Spiral and make new alternate versions of them with effect glows and a high price tag.  Or maybe pick one piece of ship equipment and make it more interesting -- I'd love to see ship cannons have more importance IMHO. Yes, there are probably a handful of people sitting on a glut of unused Scrip, but I'm sure it's not the majority of players.

2- Instead of increasing the difficulty of the Regatta, I'd simply suggest removing the first two waves of ships and bosses, so that there are only 3 waves total to defeat. This makes the Regatta more digestible and short, which leads me to . . .

3- Make the Regatta an event that can be turned on and off, so that it is cycled in and out of the game. This would give it more increased focus when it was active, and because it would now be limited time, the rewards could also be slightly increased.

4- Create a second Regatta event out of the first two waves you removed from the original Regatta and then add a tower boss as the final wave of the event. This then gives you a second, unique event you can turn on and off between the original regatta. 

5- For bonus points, make a third Regatta where the tower boss from the second Regatta is seasonal themed -- a giant Christmas tree, a sized up turkey platter, a giant cupig, etc. Turn this version of the Regatta on during holidays.

6- Make the Regatta entrance appear in Avery's Court so that it's in a location with more foot traffic . . . probably up by the Muskateer's Roost. It's so out of the way currently, that it's easy to forget the Regatta is even there.

So, that's a lot to ask for. If you could only choose one of the six suggestions, I'd take a look at numbers 2 and 3 above.  A little goes a long way, and that's my hot take on the Regatta on this fine Sunday morning! Of course, what people really want is not changes to the Regatta, but more story content . . . so . . . 

Thanks for reading and Happy Dueling!