Forced Server Merge?

@wolfmanbush said in Forced Server Merge?:

but with this game it's always difficult to tell what change was intentional or not.

And this is why we love it.

The server merge rule used to be No other ships on the server then you would merge when you dropped the anchor, but only when anchored. They removed the anchor restriction first because people were exploiting that, never anchor and eventually you would be playing single player SoT. I got a 2 ships on a server once with a friend. He was afraid to alliance in case one of us got boarded he didn't want the hostile ship to know each others location. So I was like ok well we should be fine as long as we stay on the server and it doesn't get down to last boat standing. I was at plunder outpost he was up at galleons. We started playing and he was merged off the server.

I have also tried hiding off in the roar doing commendations since people rarely go out there. Get merged often to find now there's ships near me. It seems like there are a few rules now looks like if you are far from other ships you are ruining the social experience Rare wants for the PvP crews so not sure if its zone specific or a distance between you and the closest ship but it will merge you if you're being anti social because you're ruining PvPers fun. They had mentioned something in the past about wanting to do something if a crew keeps getting repeatedly sunk by the same crew. Seems like they might have added a rule for this.

Hard to know exactly what they are now. I believe the game will not merge you if you are next to other ships though. Like if you are actively engaged. So perhaps where you spawned was far enough from the other crews or it saw they sunk you multiple times or a combination of those factors?

a few certain rules
-You will never merge if you are in an alliance as the merge system wont break alliances and it cant merge 2 ships at once.
-The whole crew needs to be onboard to merge... Though there might be a small radius around the ship I think I merged once while in the water right at the ladder. But usually the mergers have happened for me either while climbing the ladder or the second I got on deck.

So ironically they merge you to force player encounters with other crews for the rare chance there is a fun and enjoyable ship to ship encounter. But they will also merge you if you get sunk too much?

Considering PvPers are using the pirates life portals to exploit merging to a new server with a grade 4 flag to find emissaries to hunt down with a full stocked ship I wish they would just give us the option to merge rather than having it just be a seemingly random thing

@super87ghost said in Forced Server Merge?:

Could just be that there was another server with just 1 ship left and that ship had to go somewhere?

I just find it annoying that you can't do anything during that time, while your ship just keeps moving and therefore is uncontrolably. I have had my ship sunk because of that and lost all my loot. Very annoying...

So youre suggesting it kicked his ship off the server to make room for a ship that was alone on another server? that would be awful design. And yea I am not a fan of the anchor change I want to go back to the old way of merge only happening when you anchor. The game can get glitchy during the merge and doing it while your ship is in motion can be problematic. Though I have had merges happen while coming in a dock, hitting the dock and getting a hole then when i finally load to the new server the game patched the hole for me. But I want the anchor system back since I rarely anchor anyways then I would be in control of when and if i merge.

@galactic-geek said in Forced Server Merge?:

Well, testing it is easy enough. Go find another ship, and ask them to sink you 3x - put up a Reaper's emmisary flag each time to mske it easier to find each other. 😅

If you sink at the shores of gold you spawn at the shores of gold. So if you got a ship on a server with a friend if you both can start that tall tale anyway you can go out there and test it sink them 3x but i dont believe you will merge if youre at the same island so 1 of you would have to sail away after the 3rd sink to test

@pithyrumble said in Forced Server Merge?:

@sweetsandman

Yeah. That's why they killed it. A lot of people got very good at never dropping anchor. PvP complained that people could end up on empty servers.

I understand why it got removed. But the "reduced motion" rule kinda leaves you in awkward situations sometimes. Unless you're stopped (not counting rotation) it shouldn't merge you so you don't server merge drift into the island you were approaching.

That's a little less hairy for those of us with old habits 😆

The number of people exploiting the anchor rule to get on a solo ship server is smaller than the number of people playing on alliance discords now though. So seems like a pointless change. Kinda of like the effort to make private servers so once in a blue moon a streamer can host an event.

The argument of people being more easily able to unlock cosmetics in this game is a joke. None of the shop cosmetics are a status symbol any more. Haven't been since the first year. Its more now about the FOMO cosmetics to show you never quit playing since day 1 or worse you just dropped $100s at the cash shop because all that stuff looks better than the majority of what we can actually earn. The arena cosmetics for farming 1st place and the weapon kills were the only ones that really had any status to them. And honestly even that was just a matter of how much time you wanted to waste in a horribly designed mode. If you had no life and played SoT 14 hours a day then that's an easy grind. Nothing in SoT is hard to do or get. Its just an issue of time and without the risk of getting sunk that just saves you time. Nothing more.