First off, Plunderstorm’s never been my favorite. I’m mainly there just to get the cosmetics, not to have fun. That said, I did have more fun with the first Plunderstorm. But not all of the changes this time were bad, so I’ll start with the good:
Respawning plunder is a good change. Original Plunderstorm, when there wasn’t any plunder around it was time to die in the storm. But now, there’s a reason to stick around. As long as you’re in the match there’s plunder to pick up. So, I’ve been doing a lot less running into the storm early this time around, to the point that I even won a match just because I stuck around collecting plunder and the rest of the players killed each other or died in the storm. Sadly, it seems this change came with a reduction in gold chests?
Respawning mobs is also a good change, for the same reason. Gives us more reason to stay around. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to also include respawning elites? That could be cool, but I guess it could also be abused by people just camping an elite respawn point.
More little mob and elite camps around. That’s a good thing.
… And that’s it on the good changes. There aren’t a lot of bad changes but they’re really bad.
Worst change: letting us pick our spawn points. It looks good on paper but in practice there’s really nothing good about it. Just leads to people going to the same spot game after game, doing the same run, game after game. Random spawn points kept things more… interesting, at least. Had to think about what to do no matter where you wound up. Added a lot more randomness to each match. I know some people will want to keep this change just so they can keep their rote plunder collecting routes, even I have a spot I always go to now, but it’s not worth it. It’s boring.
Speed change? AoE change? I’m not sure what the change is for sure, but last Plunderstorm we could more easily avoid attacks from other players. My main playstyle last time was to just keep running and collecting plunder as I went. I could usually avoid other players attacks for a pretty long time doing this, even maybe avoiding them all together until I reached the storm or they got bored. But now, it seems every attack hits. I feel like either our run speed has been reduced or the damage area of attacks have been increased, or both.
“Items” seem to be reduced. I so rarely see items, like the barrel or motorcycle, etc. drop. Speed items seem to be more rare across the board. That could just be anecdotal, I could just be unlucky, but I have played Plunderstorm Part Deux enough to get everything but one mount so, I dunno. The addition of horses is nice, but I’d still prefer more access to speed boost skills and items.
Not sure if this is a change or it just feels like a change, but I feel like I’m getting less plunder per run than last time. Even though there’s respawning plunder, there seems to be a lot less gold chests. It’s to the point where it doesn’t feel worth doing more matches than the one to get the captain’s orders done. That alone gives more plunder than multiple normal runs.
So mixed bag. Some good changes, some bad changes. Making spawn points random again would go a long way toward making the other bad changes not feel as bad.
