PvP became a waste of time

@guepardo6741 said in PvP became a waste of time:

I know solo should be the hard mode, but duo sloop should be fair agaisnt any bigger crew, so maybe make the hulls of the brig slightly weaker (only holes T2 above), and galleon have way weaker hulls (Only holes T3 above).

Oh this old argument again... No. The ships are balanced. A sloop shouldn't have an equal chance to win PVP against a brigantine or galleon of equal size. That would negate the numbers advantage of the ships.

The ships are fine. Don't attack bigger ships if you are having troubles beating them.

PvP is always gonna suck as long as its governed entirely by RNG.

@red0demon0 Instead of restating my point I'm just gonna copy and paste from previous threads where this ridiculous suggestion was brought up.

@lordqulex said in Season 9 and the solo lie:

I like to explain this game as though it were a single-player game. Sea of Thieves is a "shared world sandbox pirate adventure game," and you do not control the other players who join your server. If you think of it as a single-player game, the game would spawn in and out various ships sized to represent different levels of difficulty—galleons would be harder than brigantines would be harder than sloops in a single player paradigm. (This is currently demonstrated well via emergent skeleton ships.) This paradigm enables the player to make the strategic decision of "fight or flight" based on what they are doing and what they have at the time, based on their own skill and the ship they see over there. Similarly, players can choose to be in a sloop, a brigantine, or a galleon based on the difficulty they want to play: galleons have more actions than brigantines have more actions than sloops and in that regard galleons could be considered "more powerful" than brigantines are more powerful than sloops.

The truth is that Sea of Thieves is a shared world, so instead of the game engine picking the ships that spawn in the other players do. Otherwise it is essentially the same. When you choose to solo sloop, you are choosing "hard" mode. I am sorry you cannot find or do not want to find more pirates to play with, but solo sloop players I advise to stay away from Forts of Fortune and Forts of the Damned; you will get attacked by larger crews doing those events, period, and unless you are quite skilled you will lose, period. You are choosing to play hard mode.

@lordqulex said in Extended feedback on game problems and suggestions for solving them. Appeal to developers:

I mean, there was one good point. I do agree that the sloop has the fewest point of sail advantages. I think if it became the fastest ship sailing into a crosswind, then each ship would be the fastest ship in two of the four points of sail when compared to any other ship. (See my above chart.)

We all know the galleon and the brigantine turn slower than the sloop. We all know the sloop is only faster than the galleon or the brigantine sailing into a headwind. Is this balanced? Does the sloop's turning speed really make up for the fact that it is only faster than the galleon or the brigantine into a headwind?

I really don't think so. I think if the sloop got a speed boost into a crosswind (or the galleon/brigantine were slowed sufficiently so that the sloop became the fastest) then the point of sail advantage per ship would be equalized. This would give sloops an advantage in trying to escape PVP from larger ships, which as I've explained above your average player will try to do. (4v1, bad idea.)

I feel this is a good idea because, anecdotally, the sloop is the most common ship I see on the seas and all the new players (who as said above are dumped into adventure mode alone on a sloop left believing this is the proper playstyle) deserve a fair chance at running from other pirates.

But making the cannons on a galleon reload slower than a brigantine slower than a sloop? That's just laughable.

There are lots of little solutions to make naval combat between unequal ship size more balanced.

(1) Adjust the time it takes to load cannonballs into ship cannons by ship size:

Brigantine cannons now load cannonballs 1.5x slower than the speed of sloop cannons.

Galleon cannons now load cannonballs 2x slower than the speed of sloop cannons.

This retains the offensive advantage of having more cannons to fire simultaneously but nerfs it to be less overwhelmingly powerful.

(2) Adjust the power of the bucket (the maximum volume of water scooped by a bucket from the hull of a ship) by crew size.

Solo - Retains the current amount
Duo, Trio, Quad - 0.5x the current amount

You can tell the bucket is currently balanced for the solo player it’s extremely powerful. Way to powerful for full crews.

(3) Remove the possibility to revive fallen crew mates who die aboard any ship.

Solo players cannot revive themselves so why should full crews have that advantage when they die aboard a ship?

(4) Rebalance the top speed of the ships to be more balanced while retaining each of their unique single wind direction advantage.

The brigantine is simply to fast and needs a speed nerf in both crosswinds and tailwinds.

The galleon is to slow against the wind. It should be nearly as fast as the brigantine when it sails against the wind.

The sloop is to slow with the wind and needs a slight speed buff in both crosswinds and tailwinds.

@guepardo6741 Healing aka Repairs is OP, but to change it would totally screw up balance for solo sloops in situations like Kraken and Skeleton ships.

Reason #456023975820948375209843752098745209384752094378 why putting matchmaking in open world was a mistake. If it was instanced these issues could have been fixed by having a unique ruleset for the instance.

@guepardo6741

A brigantine’s wheel and a galleon’s wheel require more rotations than a sloop to turn as sharply as possible

A brigantine’s rigging and a galleon’s rigging take longer to manipulate than a sloop’s rigging

A brigantine’s capstan and a galleon’s capstan takes longer to raise than a sloop’s capstan

So why then do the cannons on larger ships not take longer to load than a sloop’s single cannon per side does?

You can scale the cannon load times based on ship size to balance the dps output of the three different sized ships.

More cannons should mean higher dps potential but it doesn’t have to be so imbalanced that a brigantine can shoot 2x as many cannonballs and a galleon can shoot 4x as many cannonballs as a sloop can shoot in the same amount of time.

The bucket is so strong right now that a full crew can easily recover from having basically every single hole in their ship. It makes naval combat domination feel super weak and forces you to board and kill to sink good crews.

The only crew size that actually needs a bucket as strong as it is now is solo players otherwise it becomes even more difficult to sink full crews as a solo player with naval combat only. Which is how it is right now.

@guepardo6741 said in PvP became a waste of time:

@lordqulex

The ships are fine. Don't attack bigger ships if you are having troubles beating them.

I don't attack them, but they do attack me... So i accept the fate?

No, you reflect and learn.

Listen, I get it. We were all swabbies once. Every other crew I find on Discord is "meh" at best. But choosing to play alone on a sloop is your choice. You can learn from your experience, learn from the internet, learn from other pirates, there are multiple ways for pirates to learn the game. If you seek them.

But if you come to the forums to complain most of us are tired hearing about it and will just offer you some cheese with your whine.

@toggledeez said in PvP became a waste of time:

@guepardo6741

A brigantine’s wheel and a galleon’s wheel require more rotations than a sloop to turn as sharply as possible

A brigantine’s rigging and a galleon’s rigging take longer to manipulate than a sloop’s rigging

A brigantine’s capstan and a galleon’s capstan takes longer to raise than a sloop’s capstan

So why then do the cannons on larger ships not take longer to load than a sloop’s single cannon per side does?

You can scale the cannon load times based on ship size to balance the dps output of the three different sized ships.

More cannons should mean higher dps potential but it doesn’t have to be so imbalanced that a brigantine can shoot 2x as many cannonballs and a galleon can shoot 4x as many cannonballs as a sloop can shoot in the same amount of time.

The bucket is so strong right now that a full crew can easily recover from having basically every single hole in their ship. It makes naval combat domination feel super weak and forces you to board and kill to sink good crews.

The only crew size that actually needs a bucket as strong as it is now is solo players otherwise it becomes even more difficult to sink full crews as a solo player with naval combat only. Which is how it is right now.

"So, Mr. Tipton, how could it take you five minutes to cook your grits, when it takes the entire grit-eating world twenty minutes? Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than on any place on the face of the earth? Well, perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove. Were these magic grits? I mean, did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?"

A brigantine and a galleon are larger ships and likewise the rudder, tiller, and tiller ropes need to be bigger/longer. That's why it takes longer to turn the wheel.

A brigantine and a galleon are larger ships and likewise need larger sails that are heavier. That's why the rigging takes more time to turn.

A brigantine and a galleon are larger ships and likewise the anchor needs to be bigger, and heavier. That's why the capstan takes more pirates and more time to raise.

The cannons are the same on every ship. That's why they take the same time to load and fire. If you want the cannons on those ships to be bigger, like brigantines will cause T2 holes and galleons will do T3 holes, we can talk about making them take 2x and 3x longer to load respectively. Otherwise, a cannon is a cannon is a cannon. Cannons are tools and what you're talking about are rules. We all know how Rare feels about tools not rules.

@lordqulex

The cannons on brigantines and galleons do not have to load as quickly as a sloop’s singular cannon per side that is a design choice made by Rare.

If your goal is to achieve a more balanced game than it is something that could be considered by the developers.

This forum is about presenting ideas, suggestions, feedback not stifling it.

So I try to be open minded and consider the possible ways to further balance the different ships.

@guepardo6741 said in PvP became a waste of time:

@lordqulex said in PvP became a waste of time:

@guepardo6741 said in PvP became a waste of time:

@lordqulex

The ships are fine. Don't attack bigger ships if you are having troubles beating them.

I don't attack them, but they do attack me... So i accept the fate?

No, you reflect and learn.

Listen, I get it. We were all swabbies once. Every other crew I find on Discord is "meh" at best. But choosing to play alone on a sloop is your choice. You can learn from your experience, learn from the internet, learn from other pirates, there are multiple ways for pirates to learn the game. If you seek them.

But if you come to the forums to complain most of us are tired hearing about it and will just offer you some cheese with your whine.

Reflect then learn? I used to play NAL and when i go Hourglass i find other NAL players, with the sails and this whole thing, is not rare for me to find a ''pro-player'' crew to go agaisnt, thats what i'm talking about, ''Crews of the same level''. I know this will sound egoscentric, but there is not much more i can learn, every crew i go agaisnt, ladder board is useless, deckboard is pretty much necessary to try sink them, and again, if you are solo or duo sloop, thats REALLY difficult. Even more when double tapping is near 100% accuracy, the only thing that doesn't make 100%, is the hitreg.
I kindly ask you to enter the more professional side of SoT, try entering Legacy Brawl Hub, Sea of Vengeance and other discord servers, so you can have an idea on how broke the game currently, if possible, try to look previous NAL winners and watch their streams, read their opinions on the game. You will see the same thing, the game balancing is broke.

Should we care about the high level competitive side? Not really, this is a casual game... But sooner or later, everyone will see how, slightly, but still broke, is this game, and thats a point where MANY people leave the game.

Before you reply to someone, try to look their profile and see for how long they've been on community, so you can at least have an idea on whats this people has already passed through in this game.

So essentially, you want to change the game mechanics for everybody because the game is imbalanced for the 2.2% of players that are greater than two standard deviations above the mean in pirate skill? I'm going to take what you said at face value and believe you are one of the best PVP'ers on the seas.

Explain why your experience in the hyper-competitive PVP circuit, a player base who to be certain would find the meta and exploit it no matter what that meta becomes, should effect the 97.8% of the players that are enjoying the game as is.

@toggledeez said in PvP became a waste of time:

@lordqulex

The cannons on brigantines and galleons do not have to load as quickly as a sloop’s singular cannon per side that is a design choice made by Rare.

If your goal is to achieve a more balanced game than it is something that could be considered by the developers.

This forum is about presenting ideas, suggestions, feedback not stifling it.

So I try to be open minded and consider the possible ways to further balance the different ships.

And my response is I agree, the ships do need balancing, the sloop should be the fastest ship sailing into a headwind. That would balance out the advantageous points of sail imbalance. But the cannons are just fine.

@Guepardo6741

I don't want the cannons to be bigger, read what i wrote then think about it.

Read who I replied about cannons to and think about it.

@toggledeez said in PvP became a waste of time:

Adjust the time it takes to load cannonballs into ship cannons by ship size:
Brigantine cannons now load cannonballs 1.5x slower than the speed of sloop cannons.
Galleon cannons now load cannonballs 2x slower than the speed of sloop cannons.
This retains the offensive advantage of having more cannons to fire simultaneously but nerfs it to be less overwhelmingly powerful.

@lordqulex

Making the sloop or any ship more able to run away from another ship is not balancing ship combat.

It just enables long chases across the map that lead to a sovereign ram strat.

Long seemingly endless chases in adventure mode have been and are still a problem in this game. All that does is create a super boring environment.

Even streamers leave servers a lot of the time rather than choosing to chase a brigantine on a sloop. It’s so dumb. Just another facet of how horribly balanced SoT is although I guess you can say Rare has been tip toeing into balancing their game.

@toggledeez

Yes, chasing someone is dumb and boring and I agree. I don't chase anyone after I see their intention to point into an advantageous point of sail. It's not how I want to spend my time.

Go Google "ship of the line." Do you see any sloops in those pictures? No, they're all 2-3 masted ships with loads of cannons. Maybe your first mistake is assuming that the sloop was intended to be a warship and not a fast/maneuverable courier or scout ship?

That's not to say some players can't rock a sloop. I've sunk in a galleon to a sloop more often than I care to admit, such are the woes of open crew some nights. But I mean come on, you're playing a naval war game! Even in single player RPG-lite games you start in a sloop and build up to a warship. It is absolutely intended that fighting a larger ship is going to be harder. That is what adds variability to the seas and makes every voyage different.

"Balancing" the ship cannons could homogenize the PVP experience and make crews of equal skill equally likely to win any PVP encounter, but it would be at the detriment of the drama, the strategy, the suspense, and the adventure. Sea of Thieves is a shared-world pirate adventure sandbox, not a fair-and-balanced naval PVP game; they tried that with Arena and it flopped hard. I do not anticipate them balancing the ships this way because frankly most pirates are here for the adventure, not for the PVP.

@guepardo6741 said in PvP became a waste of time:

My bad on this one, i saw my @ on the post and i thought it was for me.

No worries matey! No hard feelings.

@lordqulex

That’s why they balanced the ferry timer by crew size right?

A ferry is a ferry is a ferry.

Just because you write long replies doesn’t mean you’re always right.