Disclaimer: there is a few game killing issues throughout this support request and I am not just telling you how to do your job (replying to me with how to apply for a job with you sounds like the best idea because this is barely scratching the surface of my game design knowledge that can help you (my email is provided with this support ticket)).
Hello, I am writing to you for information and possibly to suggest some improvements for the future of the game. I have not been playing seaport for too long but I can see with the amount of games already out there why there is no combat mechanics on this game.
What I am looking for is not full on go and raid people but I can definitely see many ways you could implement arbitrary events to spice the game up a little more than just going out and getting cocoa beans and meeting good people all the time. A lot of players will quit after the first day because you instantly introduced 1 hour and upwards time delays with ships. I only have 1 Facebook friend who plays this and he quit instantly because of how long it took to do the simplest of actions.
Maybe saying on your adverts that you have gone with more of a realistic timescale would help avoid so many level 1 players.
Back to the idea of arbitrary events, you could add pirates into the game that come and pillage your port town. This would keep players coming back to the game to keep their resources safe as oppose to just stopping income. This also gives the game a new level of adding defences that will only keep you safe for 6-12 hours so you can sleep easy (could be costly both with in game currency (coins/crew) and have extended time “shields” for gems).
Basically what I have told you so far is that from levels say 5 or 10 upwards you could have level scaling enemies that attack you every so often and you can pay to have them not hit you. Skip a couple of paragraphs if you don’t want the attacking side of the idea.
So on the attacking side, you could have outposts that you need to attack with multiple ships and crew, you do not have to make a whole new GUI or even any new mechanics that are not in the game already, just give an attack/defence log mail to say if you won or lost and give or take resources accordingly. This is just a start and would look to be just going to small town and taking gold coins but you are taking resources from pirates. This is just a first step and could easily develop into maybe pirate ships appearing on the map and you then battle them with a battle screen and watch your crew sword fight with the pirates and the loser ship becomes a shipwreck to explore like you do with the current ones. If you lose however then you may have to buy a new ship and you lose the crew members. Maybe even winning a battle levels up that ship to use stronger crew in the next battle to make it easier to win with less crew members being used up.
None of what I have said for that battle is new mechanics except adding the ability to watch battles. The rest is easy code that can be copy and pasted from the shipwreck timer formula.
If you skipped then this is the end of the attack section.
Apart from combat you seem to be lacking any real sort of mystery to the game, you can gain the entire game knowledge within 24 hours. As soon as I saw Columbus, I knew exactly that the entire game’s exploration was going to be the exact same and that there wasn’t really anything special with this game over one like boom beach.
There is no end game which is great but what is keeping people staying to grow cocoa on their home port if they are only competing against 1 friend who stopped playing after he saw that fish takes 20 seconds to get 5 and it takes roughly 100 to level up wood to go back and forth with fish for 15 hours?
Sorry for that long and probably incorrectly formed sentence but I prefer talking to typing when I have a lot of ideas.
The first thing I said to you was a disclaimer and my title suggested that I would fix the issues that I presented you with. Now I will attempt to tackle the instantly leaving players problem.
First off, allow players to view the market and use it for small goods before they spend 15 hours trying to get more wood. If this is not possible then give the players more gems at the start and force them to upgrade using the tutorial to have a quicker growing start. If I didn’t want to come to you with these ideas then I too would still be level 1-3 and would not have carried on with the game. I knew before I joined that there was no combat but I didn’t see how boring the first hour of the game would be. Being unemployed at 18 gives me a lot of enthusiasm to play games that are relatively newly updated. This game was updated on the 8th so I gave it a chance. I also played the closed beta of Angry Birds Evolution and I gave the developers my thoughts. 80% of my ideas (and there were a lot) were implemented within the first month or two of me suggesting them. If they were already developing them before I suggested them then fair play but either way my ideas were good enough to be in a game played by millions. If they took my ideas and developed them because of me then I didn’t get the job that I asked for and I feel robbed but at least my ideas were part of a game.
Back to your game specifically, the current list that I have stated above are a starting point and only seeing how the public react to them can determine if any more changes are needed. Describe how there are pirates lurking at the start of the game and that the user will only be able to see combat at higher levels than 1 should keep people interested. Having a faster start whether it be on its own or tied with combat will stop people thinking that getting things done takes forever.
One final thing before I go, allow time boosters to be found in chests and not have to use gems to completely finish things all the time. If you are worried about the reality of teleportation on boats then say the winds are strong today. For buildings you can explain about either more helpers or putting workers on overtime.
Thank you for reading and I will keep a copy of this for myself with a time stamp. It took me about an hour and a half to get my ideas and type them all out. Goodbye. 13/01/2018 14:51pm GMT.