The Twisted Knives

@captainc0ast

With the recent updates it feels like your kicking your more experienced players to the curb

If you think that they are kicking experienced players to the curb, then why would you suggest a system that discourages PvP by making you a hunt target when you engage in PvP, most likely causing a bounty to be put on your head by another crew?
But I'll talk about other reasons why I don't like this.

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Since there aren't enough players on a server for this system to work, the bounty system would also need a portal system to move the first taker of the bounty of the ship to the server with the bounty. That would be very awkward as a system, and also you'd have to keep the bounty within a reasonable server area.

What if the bounty crew leaves after the bounty gets taken? Then the attacker has lost their reason to hunt and their time, and the crew with a bounty doesn't get attacked. I see how the bounty might entice the hunted crew to keep playing for their bounty, but a lot of the time, people will quit right after a sell anyway.

On top of that, no one would want to make the bounties without a reward for engaging with the Twisted Knives. If you lost 50,000 to another crew, you wouldn't want to put yourself more in the hole just to get revenge. So bounties would end up being less used than what you'd expect, and when they would happen, they wouldn't be worth much. So a separate incentive would be required (Faction XP) for both the poster and the taker. But that faction xp would represent a loss of gold for the poster (paying gold directly for xp is not a great system) and the opportunity cost of gold for the taker (as I explained, the bounties wouldn't be worth much, so the taker is missing out on the gold they could have earned otherwise).

Most takers would be already PvP-oriented players, so you wouldn't increase PvP for them. The hunted would probably PvP less as a result.

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I think another company should replace the Arena as a way to get pirate legend, but a company like this would be riddled with problems. There's a reason why none of the companies require personal interaction to progress through them, it just wouldn't work right.

EDIT:
This would also mean alliance servers could trade gold amongst one another, as they could put a bounty on one of their own crews and never sink it, giving that crew the money. Not only would this be another violation of SoT by alliance servers, it would also create a market for buying gold in SoT. I'd like to avoid that at all costs.

I would love to see the Twisted Knife added as a bounty faction! I think that would be cool lorewise, as we barely know nothing about them, save the small tidbits from Tales of the Sea of Thieves and the Athena's Fortune novel.

Every single time I see a suggestion for a pirate bounty system in this game, I comment and laugh in the key combination Alt+F4. You can't set up a disjointed bounty on another pirate without their consent or their commitment noticeably on them.

The Reaper's Bones Emissary flag is the only way you can set up a reasonable bounty system that has more than enough consent needed and provided, as well as general profit to be made from sinking such a boat with a bounty like that on them. PvP-dedicated players don't like to hear this but that's the game's bounty system, fighters and runners with loot of unknown amounts on board are under the same bounty board, and its up to you to figure out what you want to go after.

While I do feel like there needs to be some (more) PvP specific commendations in Adventure mode, I don't think a bounty system is the right call. It needs to be an "opt-in" system to be correctly done, IMO.

The Emissary system is that high-risk high-reward tool that kind of encourages PvP...but often times it doesn't do the one major thing that Arena is/was amazing for... getting that "quick action" that has a clear beginning and end.

I think they could start simple and offer some cosmetic rewards for completing tasks while flying the Reaper's Mark flag. Tasks that allow people to choose being either on "offense" or on "defense" and reward for both.

I am hoping that the new forts offer a "fort defense" type of gameplay at some point. I think that would be incredibly fun and potentially offer that "condensed" gameplay that Arena was good for.

I think if a bounty system is put in place, the payment needs to be doubloons. We have gold sinks but no doubloon usage anymore.

As for the other end of the system to make it fair, there needs to be a multiplier when handing in loot while a bounty is present against you. I think +50% per digit of doubloons levied against you would be pretty balanced. (1-9 doubloons=+50%, 10-99 = +100%, 100-999 = +150% and so on) If Rare wanted it to carry across sessions, then cumulative of bounties would work. If it is session based, then it should reset after you leave each server. If you sink said crew the bag of doubloons would be among the loot when sunk.

Some notes though. If it is session based and players don't want to be hunted, they will just either log out or portal hop to remove the bounty. SoT also allows varied crews for each session, so I am not sure a persistent bounty across sessions would ever work. This system can also be abused by alliance servers for increased rewards but honestly there isn't much in this game that they can't anymore (the answer to "alliance servers can cheese it" is to remove alliance servers)

I stopped reading after the first couple of sentences. Try pitching an idea without complaining so much first.
It doesn’t help your point. People tune out.

@captainc0ast I have to say, your post...seems a bit dumb. And while I do agree that the twisted blade would be a cool thing to get introduced, A bounty system is not a good idea as a whole server could just target 1 player which eventually would cause the player base to decrease.

Also this with that rare are kicking more experienced players to the curb is also a lie. You see the most experienced players were not in Arena, I have found out that most people that play adventure are more experienced than those in Arena. And this that Rare does not care, you must have not listened to Rare. As it was a heavy decision on them but it was only 2% of the player base. And I have noticed that many players are complaining about Arena shutting down, and while I do not say that you are one of this group of people, most people complaining never played arena until it started shutting down.

And an example for Rare not Caring about their player base, they focused a lot on their player's wishes and still do. For example, they threw the captaincy update out of the way to fulfil players wishes of the game.

And trust me, i get why you are saying this but...The twisted knives would not be a good idea, the arena shutting down was a hard decision and rare has one of the closest relations with their players out of any game.

@jaegerdelta3465 said in The Twisted Knives:

Bounties would be cool if this was a giant mmo with everyone on the same server. As it is there are 5 ships per server. It will just never work in a game set up like sea of thieves. Not to mention the complexities that the portals add on top.

^This^ is what sensible folk say every time this bounty idea comes up in a thread and I like this concise version a lot. No messing. Let it sink in....

700k?! What did this pirate do where he’s worth almost three Sloops?