Saying Goodbye to The Arena

@kommodoreyenser

The green of the sword is based on the Ghost Cosmetics.

Ever since the Ghost cosmetics were released people started referring to green as a symbol of pirate legend. Look at the cannon flares, the only one you can buy as a pirate legend is a green flare. Honestly the Athena Fortune costume is more of a ghost costume than a legend costume.

The original PL cosmetics didn’t have green in them except as emblems like you said. The weapons would be better with silver than green

@captain-coel Its your alt. by definition its secondary to your main. If you want to do it, still plenty of time.

@captain-coel said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

Serious question. This is important. Should I try and get 72 more wins to get LSD on my alt?

or is TSD enough?

Don't grind

@grumpyw01f said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@captain-coel said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

Serious question. This is important. Should I try and get 72 more wins to get LSD on my alt?

or is TSD enough?

Don't grind

thats the direction im leaning

Am I missing something here? Surely if Rare removes acheivments, and you haven't unlocked them, they just won't appear or count towards the 100% completion rate?

@mferr11 said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

Am I missing something here? Surely if Rare removes acheivments, and you haven't unlocked them, they just won't appear or count towards the 100% completion rate?

That’s the case for Steam achievements, but not for Windows and Xbox achievements.

For Windows / Xbox - once an achievement exists, it cannot be removed. It can only be discontinued. Which means for people who haven’t unlocked the achievement, it will display as a locked achievement. And will never be obtainable.

This is what a Discontinued achievement is. It basically locks people out of 100% completion for that game on their Xbox account. If you can’t unlock every achievement, then you will never get 100%.

This is very common on Xbox games, because we’ve seen it happen over the last decade and a half. Ever since we’ve had Xbox achievements - since the start of the Xbox 360 generation - there have been games which have closed their servers and this discontinues all online achievements.

Some publishers unfortunately close their servers quite prematurely, only giving players about 2 years to unlock online achievements before closing up. Other publishers are generous and give players a decade or even longer.

So discontinued achievements are quite common, but they normally happen with games which are going offline altogether. This will inevitably happen with SoT one day in the (hopefully) distant future.

What is also more common nowadays, is developers closing down a portion of online content in their game service. This discontinues any achievements associated with that closing service (Arena being a perfect example here).

Most of these developers change the achievement requirements so that the achievements don’t discontinue. This is a decision made because of the history of backlash from completionist (and gaming communities in general) who severely dislike developers discontinuing achievements whilst their game is still in service.

An example is how a Stranger Things DLC for DBD was closing down. Achievements associated with using those DLC skins was changed to other available character skins so the achievements were still unlockable.

Another example was Destiny 2, they closed down some of their content and changed the associated achievements so they could still be unlocked in a different way using content still playable within the game.

Here’s another example - Rainbow Six Siege - used to have lots of grindy achievements based on Terrorist Hunt game mode. But the online side of the game became incredibly popular, and people asked for them to reconsider changing those achievements to reward completion to players who are participating in online games. So this wasn’t even an online closure discontinuing achievements… this was the opposite. An offline / co-op mode was less replayable and not as popular - so the developer just changed their achievements from the offline / co-op mode to their popular PvP online mode just so completionists were steered down a better path.

So bottom line… unless a developer changes the requirements to unlock the achievement(s), they will discontinue and block existing and new players out of 100% completion.

There is still hope. Even if Rare doesn’t change their mind now, they can still park this polarising topic, and eventually revisit in the future when they have more time to focus on it. They are capable of reactivating these achievements. Providing there’s no T&Cs from Microsoft that stops them.

@ell635 maybe another exclusive cosmetic could solve the problem. Throwing free stuff at things usually works.

I understand the choice of rare, but I do not allow the small notice, you have to give more time for all of us!
People have a life, we can't play on SOT 24 hours all day... it is insane!

@mferr11 said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

Am I missing something here? Surely if Rare removes acheivments, and you haven't unlocked them, they just won't appear or count towards the 100% completion rate?

The achievements will not one removed, but become retired/discontinued/unobtainable or as they are putting it "Legacy". Just as any other title that has a server shut down or an event/season based achievement it will be visible but you will not be able to earn. This means if you haven't earned it by the time it becomes "Legacy", then you won't be able to get 100% of the achievements. This is on Xbox and Windows, I think Steam does it a little differently where they do hide them when unobtainable/discontinued but not sure how that will work since they are still integrated into Live and I don't do Steam.

I am amazed by the people getting confused over this as it is no different than Madden achievements becoming unobtainable after a server closure (online MP and MUT), I just think the "Legacy" designation is throwing people off and they are not realizing it is nothing but PR speak to make it sound better than discontinued.

@dlchief58 while i agree with you. There is a small part of me hoping they found a new system.

@dlchief58 said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@mferr11 said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

Am I missing something here? Surely if Rare removes acheivments, and you haven't unlocked them, they just won't appear or count towards the 100% completion rate?

The achievements will not one removed, but become retired/discontinued/unobtainable or as they are putting it "Legacy". Just as any other title that has a server shut down or an event/season based achievement it will be visible but you will not be able to earn. This means if you haven't earned it by the time it becomes "Legacy", then you won't be able to get 100% of the achievements. This is on Xbox and Windows, I think Steam does it a little differently where they do hide them when unobtainable/discontinued but not sure how that will work since they are still integrated into Live and I don't do Steam.

I am amazed by the people getting confused over this as it is no different than Madden achievements becoming unobtainable after a server closure (online MP and MUT), I just think the "Legacy" designation is throwing people off and they are not realizing it is nothing but PR speak to make it sound better than discontinued.

Steam is the opposite, and can be particularly nasty to the people who earned them.

I have some that can't be picked to show in your 'rarest achievements showcase' on your profile, and even clicking on badge in some places dumps you back to your homepage because they're hidden.

@grumpyw01f

And with notice I was able to get all of those other cosmetics you mentioned. It wouldn't have taken more than 48 hours notice for me to get level 50 from where I was at because of the influx of players. I wasn't around at arena's inception when it was populated. So rather than wait in 30 minute lobbies I opted to play adventure. It's not FOMO as much as it is being upset that players who started after the decline of arena had no incentive to play the underdeveloped game mode, and by the time of the announcement it was too late.

@finestsounis arena wasnt populated when it was new. Matchmaking for it has always been broken. Many of us that finished gsd/tsd/lsd waited in terrible lobbies just to play arena.

@finestsounis if you had no incentive to play it earlier then do you now? I stopped playing it awhile ago and this announcement hasn’t made me want to jump back in.

If anything it actually makes me happier because I’ll be able to use 6 ship sets that look really dope.

@liantherx hello I know there's nothing that can really be done but the past two nights Ive tried to play arena Ive encountered crews working together to help one crew get the wins for legendary sea dog. I can only assume it will get worse as they final days are approaching and for cheaters to get rewarded just doesnt seem right.

So is this the only arena thread now?

I came back just to say, we had stopped playing over a year ago because the arena matchmaking was awful.

We waited, waited waited and now it's just gone. Arena sucked because matchmaking sucked. The gameplay was fantastic.

Is it also true there are fewer ships per server now so even less chance to have encounters with players?

I was one of the biggest advocates for this game, beta and day one. This is all a disappointment for me and the group I played with.

To All the People here complaining about Rares decision to close the Arena without giving a Fair Warning let me say this. First come, first served. From Tuesday, 30 April 2019 to Thursday, 10 March 2022 you had 1045 days Or 2 years, 10 months, 10 days to be served.

And if you don't get 100% Completion on Microsoft/Xbox Achievements you should blame yourselves since it's your own fault for not playing Arena all this time and I missed the part where that’s my problem.

As for the Fair Warning, the video is here https://youtu.be/AZjucPJfcBE?t=679 Premiered January 27, 2022, so From Thursday, 27 January 2022
To, Thursday, 10 March 2022 you had 42 days Or 1 month, 11 days to Complete & Unlock all the Arena Achievements.

In my option, it's a very Fair Warning so if you can't Complete & Unlock all the Arena Achievements within 42 days it's your own fault, not Rares.

Plus The decision around Arena has been made and it is final.

Why do people want to get cosmetics from the arena so much? To feel betrayed when Rare adds all these items to the store a few years later and makes them available to everyone? Do you like feeling frustrated or what?

@derekthegray said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@meroviel You guys didn't think this through. You brought all of the pvp junkies back into Adventure mode with all of their amazing skills (ie. targeting apps) that allow for them to destroy your ship in seconds. Grats... on turning this game into more of a pvp centric gankfest and driving the rest of us away.

I hope that video answers your question PvP is in the Game

And you absolutely CAN destroy other player ships in seconds

@crt-jedimark said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@meroviel Hi if you are not going to change the criteria for achievements please extend the arena a month or two more. Im trying to earn the achievements but winning in arena is super hard. I live for achievements and if I don't have all games at 100% I would die. Thank you.

They already have said the decision is final. Season 6 is in 19 days. Better hurry

@diamondrose7571 they were already there. 2% of playtime was spent in Arena. Alot of people that play arena on competitive levels are pirate legends, the participate in what this game has to offer, they are doing tall tales as well. They also just like to wreck boats and hang out.

If your love of the game is being ruined by half of the game, do you even love it? The threat of other players is intrinsic to Sea of Thieves, with out the pure randomness that comes with human nature, How many hours would you really play Sea of Thieves? Ten, a hundred, maybe a few hundred? Because of social interactions this game hss the potential for thousands of hours of entertainment.

Yes you will get pummeled and lose all your loot, how you react to that is up to you. My crew still laughs about times we got destroyed. We also laugh about the times we destroyed people.

Try playing the whole game and not just half of it. Miss the arena because it did have its moments, thats why this thread is even here.

@derekthegray said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@ookissmyasheoo Your links were absolutely pointless. It's getting worse now that the "hardcore elitest a$$hole jerks" who only ever pvp and live to wreck the solo players' days don't have arena to play in is my point.

They do still have arena to play, many of them are playing in arena to get the last of it that they can. I will miss the good times in arena, I will not miss the matchmaking. Perhaps instead of whining about losing as a solo and blaming it on arena closing you get a crew mate or three and have fun playing the whole game. Pvp isnt going anywhere, just like pve isnt going anywhere.

@derekthegray said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@captain-coel So last night, I hopped onto a random galleon and we spent a good while downing a boss at a fort only to get swooped in on by a couple of elite players in a sloop who took out our entire ship before we even knew it was happening... they killed us all a few times when we tried to save the ship and got the loot we worked for for over an hour. Ten seconds... the galleon was down in so little time we didn't have time to react cuz these guys were obvious pros or they were using some kind of targeting app (pretty sure it was the latter). So, me being a forty something year old with waning shooting skills... You think I'm having fun now with not being able to compete with these younger folks with better response times? Heck no. It's not fun at all but I do enjoy the story parts of the game.

Guess I'll do like I did last time years ago and just play the very little story I get in months then leave right after cuz everything else is just not fun... it's literal anti-fun. My actual point is that there should still be a pvp or no-pvp option like every other major game mmo on the planet.

So you were doing a world event, they have a cloud above them to show where they are. They are designed to attract multiple crews and encourage competition for the loot. If a sloop "snuck" up on you that is your fault.

As to a pvp and no-pvp option like other games, this isnt other games this is Sea of Thieves. This is a PvPvE game. This is by design.

@derekthegray said in Saying Goodbye to The Arena:

@captain-coel My actual point is that there should still be a pvp or no-pvp option like every other major game mmo on the planet.

Again this isnt every game. This is Sea of Thieves. A game designed around a constant threat of other players at all times. The development team has made it perfectly clear that pve servers will not happen.