I read a lot of statements around the speculations/roumers/asking for a bigger boat type om the seas... now since am here and am a littel confused by all the statements around this.
I will ask it here. Since it also has a more direct line to the devs and more actief pirates
What is the status/plans for the Man'O'War/Bigger boat type?
And I'm sorry if this question is getting on your nerves, am probably not the first pirates that is asking... and am probably not the last either.
@qu1etone break the game where? Combat? Pve? HG? Quests?... just one have the better eye side of a pirate here.
The Galleon is a huge strain on servers, both because of it's complexity, size, trinkets amount, and above all, 4 players on one ship. A bigger ship would be incredibly detrimental to both server health, and the balance of the game overall. 5/6 players or more would be overwhelming to every other ship no matter how you nerf the Man O' War. The ship itself would also be incredibly annoying to operate at its size. The sheer scale and amount of players would bring servers they're on down to something like 3/4 ships per server, and take up a majority of the current server player limit. It's too much for the game.
@heyltsmetc I understand the overwhelming part of 5/6 players, it unfair... specifically if they figth a solo slooper. For the Boat side am relay hype, am mostly the helm in my session... and I did some amazing stuff with Gallons. Some close calls and some funny faliers.
But yes for some pirate is going to be a rocky 🌊.
What I doin't understand is your server health statement. Before posting this I did some research, and this statement your making is one of the most posted counter points. The server's of Rare not good anove to handle the stress of a bigger boat.
As IT pirate in irl this is going to sounds Easy, why doin't the update the servers? like I know this is challenging progres with risks and the game will have more than usual downtime. But one the brigth side they not only help improve the server quality/running preformens, the also wil have more room to mess around and inprove gameplay/fix bugs. Somebody adrest a wel back that Rare is sometimes messing/pushing with dear projects to fit it in dear game, doin't know of it true or not... but this 1 of the thing's where my update servers point comes form.
What do you think?
@kpg1711 Sea of Thieves is run on Free Microsoft Azure servers, in a contract WITH Microsoft, from my understanding. They cannot "upgrade" the servers because they are obligated to use Azure, which are basically designed to be servers for Microsoft office (I even have a buddy who crashed an azure server with Excel). ALL the calculations they need to do for Sea of Thieves, including Hitreg, boat physics, player locations, AI, all put massive strain and the game has been at its limit for years. A bigger ship with more players means making sacrifices with the rest of the game, like i said, less ships and less players per server.
Get a group of 8 players or more together (Say two galleons) and you already notice ping rises, delays, lag, and actual animation jank on the other pirates. It struggles.
So the dev work that would go into balancing this ship type, making it fun, AND getting it to not crash or damage the servers they're on, is NOT worth the investment. The game is balanced around the three ship types, a fourth, bigger ship with more players and strain on the servers just isn't feasible.
Maybe in a Sea of Thieves 2 which would be built on Xbox Series X2/PC architecture it could happen.
But as of right now: It can't happen.
Sea of Thieves is built from an older build of the Unreal Engine. Due to the level of modification of it, it can't be upgrade to Unreal 5... I would be surprised if there aren't programmers at Rare working on making a next gen version of Sea of Thieves using the most recent build of Unreal... or even working with Epic to have some of their innovations built into the engine itself.
But because SoT being built for Xbox One architecture, it can't be expanded too much.
If you take a step back and think of ALL the complexities SOT has over other Unreal Games, it makes a bit more sense.
You are a pirate, standing on an island, and you have a pistol that shoots a projectile: The game basically acts like Fortnite: it calculates your position, trajectory of bullet, the movement of your target, etc.
Now you are a pirate standing on a boat in choppy water. That boat is now moving up and down on the WORLD Z axis, and tilting on all SHIP X/Y/Z axis. Depending on your position, your position is now moving in WORLD XYZ axis, AND you can move in the SHIP1 XY axis of the ship deck... shooting a gun towards an island with a person moving in the WORLD XY Axis on the island... that massively complicates how the game calculates things.
Now you are a Pirate Sailing on a ship, moving in the WORLD XYZ Axis, Surrounded by 5 other ships also moving in WORLD XYZ Axis. Each of them is rotating in the XYZ Axis of their SHIP, and they have 2-4 pirates moving in the XY axis of the SHIP.
Due to the complications of all those calculations, they had to limit the number of ships (6+1) to the server AND limit the number of players(16+?) to the server. (The pluses are the number that can be added temporarily for an Hourglass Battle... not sure if the servers can add 4 players for a 2 Galleon Battle)
If they added a 5 person ship, that would leave only 11 player slots left on the server. 3 brigs and 1 sloop, or 2 galleons and a brig. If there were two 5 person ships, I would realistically only have 2 additional ships on that server... which would make it feel very empty.
Hopefully in Sea of Thieves 2, we can have more ships, more islands, and some bigger ships, but that is going to be several years away.
@kpg1711 On servers with 6 ships and 18 players a bigger ship would totally blow PvP and PvE balance.
@heyltsmetc But Azure is scalable meaning additional resources can be increased depending on need so it might be at it's peak for now but eventually can be upgraded and no need for SOT 2 unless the engine it is built on is the one that can't handle it.
Of course there could be other factors and i could be wrong about everything.
It would not really matter, how could you balance a 6 man ship against a solo sloop. The crew gap is as wide as it can ever be.
They could however add specialized ships. For example they could add a fast cargo ship for use with the Merchants. The ship would not be much in a fight, but would also not be easy to catch.
Also at some point they could let player obtain the Phantom and Skeleton ships.
Plus there is always the rowboat, many would like to see it's role expanded, perhaps with a sail.
@heyltsmetc said in Man'O'War Status:
The Galleon is a huge strain on servers
Thank you so much for reminding me Never to host games on MS servers
@eva1977
All I know is that Rare have stated themselves that the servers are always at a bit of a limit (I believe they even said in the "Journey of a Lifetime" Documentary that every update has had the unique challenge of shaving off and optimising memory from other parts of the game to fit new parts in) and that while Azure may be scalable, and at the end of they day, they are cloud servers that get the job done, they are intended for BIG data and AI, they weren't made with the explicit intent to run games.
Your average FPS could probably run fine on an Azure server sure, but Sea of Thieves has SOOO many complexities and calculations (refer to what @Reverend-Toast said in his brilliant breakdown!) that it struggles on bad days and is serviceable on good days. It's why Hitreg problems are as prevalent as they are.
The engine is the other factor yes, it's an old, uniquely modified version of Unreal 4. They modified it to be able to run the game as you know it, and it's very time consuming to add those complexities and unique systems to a new or modern engine. They could very well be doing it, and one would even hope a "Sea of Thieves: Ultimate Edition" is in the works, but as it stands now, Server abilities + Engine + Gameplay Balance = No Man O' War in Adventure mode.
@tesiccl What an incredibly helpful comment Testicl-e! It's a good thing we have members of the forum like you to make sure players aren't able to post their dreams and ideas for the game without them being immediately shot down, or if the devs have already made a statement about them, you making sure to give full detail and citation of this even though the post could have just been ignored! Thus attracting tons of attention to a post that has no merit! People have always wanted a man o war, they always will. It's a fun idea. We should allow people to pitch their ideas for it until SoT comes out and flat out says, WE CANNOT DO IT, like they have with other ideas, or said it's not a direction they intend to move forward in. Larger servers are also not an awful idea, just because it's "unlikely" doesn't mean it has no merit. Your post provides far less to the forum than the one you responded to, and if you do not have the energy to make any point, why respond at all? To prove you saw the message?
@foambreaker This actually sounds like a lot of fun, this is the type of stuff I dream of being added to the game, more diversity upon the seas! But I do think the devs would be able to balance the game for a solo sloop against a 6 man, the 4 man galleon is already balanced, and even a full alliance can be brought down by a solo sloop, this seems to be balanced already in the devs eyes by the fact that some players are capable of sinking anything they see.
@oonoseyoo to be fair at what @Tesiccl’s brief answer said, if you search the forum it is a question that’s appeared on numerous occasions for which you can also search for the answer :)
Mike Chapman has said:
"The biggest ship was designed for four," Chapman explained when asked why that became the maximum. "We've looked at feedback and of course there's people who want an 8-player ship, a 10-player ship. The thinking there, as with everything in this game, is really intentful. 13 Feb 2018
And there’s a little more about larger ships in this Polygon article written in 2021 :)
@lizalaroo Thank you, this post is really helpful and I'll probably give a read through of this article, I must say, there have been a few posts I've made about issues the devs have already expressed opinions on, and I wonder if it would be possible to make a commonly made suggestions pinned post, that explains or cites the responses the devs have given, so that frequent forum members like Testicl-e don't have to feel the need to say this or not simply post a link to such an article. But! I know this would also be a lot of effort that may go unnoticed by people simply jumping onto the forum to throw out an idea and then not return to it, their need to put out their idea sated.
@oonoseyoo said in Man'O'War Status:
@tesiccl What an incredibly helpful comment Testicl-e! It's a good thing we have members of the forum like you to make sure players aren't able to post their dreams and ideas for the game without them being immediately shot down, or if the devs have already made a statement about them, you making sure to give full detail and citation of this even though the post could have just been ignored! Thus attracting tons of attention to a post that has no merit! People have always wanted a man o war, they always will. It's a fun idea. We should allow people to pitch their ideas for it until SoT comes out and flat out says, WE CANNOT DO IT, like they have with other ideas, or said it's not a direction they intend to move forward in. Larger servers are also not an awful idea, just because it's "unlikely" doesn't mean it has no merit. Your post provides far less to the forum than the one you responded to, and if you do not have the energy to make any point, why respond at all? To prove you saw the message?
Thank you @lizalaroo
As they stated, my answer may have been brief, but OP was asking the question of the status of the idea, not presenting it as a new one (which they acknowledge in their post).
@oonoseyoo said in Man'O'War Status:
@foambreaker This actually sounds like a lot of fun, this is the type of stuff I dream of being added to the game, more diversity upon the seas! But I do think the devs would be able to balance the game for a solo sloop against a 6 man, the 4 man galleon is already balanced, and even a full alliance can be brought down by a solo sloop, this seems to be balanced already in the devs eyes by the fact that some players are capable of sinking anything they see.
Balance is not calculated based on the extremes, i.e. one Sweat Legend can take out an Alliance. It is calculated based on the average player. For the average solo sloop player running is the only option, even against sloops with 2 crew.
Just because "that one guy" did it means nothing.
@foambreaker It certainly seems more extreme based than anything else, they've worked hard to make double gunning and animation cancelling as viable as possible. There are so many details that seem to suggest they want the skill curve for the best of players to be extremely high so that new players have so much work to catch up it hardly feels worth it. Say what you want but new players are at an extreme disadvantage to a player like myself, or you. One that they will not catch up on until I stop playing this game. And a vast majority of maybe not regular players, but players who regularly play, are extremely high in the skill bracket of the game.
