+1 Player Capacity for Each Ship Type!

The ships need balance, and for how they function and how fast they fill, the crew size is balanced for each ship. If they changed the player count they would have to rework every ship.

This would add little to the game and take up way too much time to do that could be spent dealing with more pressing issues the game is facing currently.

, oh my! But now that Safer Seas is out, there's no reason not to!

Not good excuse for poor Balancing issues.

Two people can sail a sloop together effectively, but one extra crew hand could help cook, keep a lookout, play shanties, etc.

So the Third wheel is just....not required. One person on a sloop can sail/steer while the other mains the cannons and keeps look out. Alternate between who fixes/patches holes. It not that hard.

Another reason is that players aren't always reliable. It is hard enough to sail a galleon with four people. If just one person quits it becomes a lot more difficult, which usually results in another person wanting to leave as well.

3 people can sail a Galleon, heck 1 can sail a Galloen. It not rocket science. Even if you go back to your Sloop example.
If one person leaves, the second person might also wanna leave...Why? Because the work the 3rd person was doing now falls onto someone else which...face it nobody wants to do :P

Seems to me, this all just big excuses to add extra players to ship because "I have extra friends"

but I believe the net benefit outweighs the drawbacks. More players means more fun, and that's what games are supposed to provide.

Not at all. More players means "if someone leaves" your down a player. More players means, Who wants to do what role? More players mean, everyone jumping off a Galleon (5 players) and Boarding a Sloop (3) thus resulting in even bigger issues of combat.

Could be an interesting idea to consider, but sadly not a priority. There's bigger issues Rare needs to focus right now after all.

It's not an easy thing to balance. You're viewing this from the perspective of newer casual players semi afk trying to make their lives a bit easier...which I get, but any balance needs to account for the other end of spectrum which is highly efficient well practiced crews.

2 good players on a sloop can do ridiculous things in terms of managing angle/pressure/repairs and water level.
Likewise galley crews at the high end are ridiculously efficient. The effect at that end of having an extra crew member would mean so much rebalance would need to be done in terms of ability to bucket/repair etc as they would be unsinkable without curse dump that it's just really not worth it.

It is much easier for inexperienced crews to practice and get better at maintaining the ships than make all those other changes to enable more crewmates

This topic has been posted numerous times before so I'll go to my standard answer - the crew size is designed so that not everything can be done all at once so a crew has to work together a prioritise dependant on the situation.

@aj-deadshow said in +1 Player Capacity for Each Ship Type!:

@guildar9194 hold the phone, there used to be 6 ships per server, remember? So that means there used to be 4 more player slots available. If those four are divvied up amongst the five ships then that means only one extra player slot is being added from what it was originally.

You could also have 6 Galleons on the same server at the same time years ago, but that has also been cut down to get better server performance and now there is a mix of ships. There is a player limit as well as a ship limit. There are no "extra spots" to fill, this without even considering the game balance that your suggestion throws out the window with no regard.

Safer Seas will NOT have any features missing from the High Seas as it is not a replacement or substitute for the main game (Rare has made that clear over and over), it is a complementary mode. Just because you are stubborn and refuse to accept constructive criticism of your suggestion does not mean there were not convincing points made, it is that you are not acknowledging the logic presented and hand-waving it away.

Is it boring playing with yourself? No, it most certainly is not - I do it all the time as do many others. Is it more fun with other people? Sometimes. Would it be more fun with your suggestion? Not really as you have more people than tasks that need attending and many ships would now be literally unsinkable with the extra help.

@aj-deadshow said in +1 Player Capacity for Each Ship Type!:

@iceman-d18 I hear a lot of naysaying in this thread, but no convincing points have actually been made. I still attest the game would be more fun with more people. Is it boring playing by yourself? Yes. Is it more fun with other people? Yes. Would it be more fun with even more people? Yes.

You know the galleon was designed for 5 people. Then they changed it to 4. this was in early design but it was because it made it that much harder to sink. The current balance keeps it so that the ships' crew needs to maintain a conversation about everything going on around them and divert resources (time) to fix the issues. A 3 man sloop would be crazy powerful. Sorry, this is just a bad idea.

edit. ps. designed something solely for Safer Seas is a waste of development time. The goal is to get people to move from Safer to Higher Seas