Season 18 Act 2 is a huge disappointment.

@rare-jumbie
Rare gives us cool tools like sneaking and harpoons, then makes events where cannon spam is just straight-up faster. Players optimize. boom boom wins. The issue isn’t the explosions, it’s that the rewards don’t make stealth or improv worth it.

@rare-jumbie sagte in Season 18 Act 2 is a huge disappointment.:

You came out with really interesting mechanics a few seasons ago; the sneaking, harpoon gun, blow darts. Where is the gameplay to highlight and prop up these interesting things? I'm sorry, but there's no benefit to using any of those tools in any of these new 'events' you've just released.

You’re right. There is no content within the game that benefits those mechanics.

But - at least in my opinion - it was a strange decision to dedicate a whole season to sneaking mechanics to begin with. I like the new weapons and a few of the hiding emotes are kind of nice … but I never hung at the side of other players ship or tucked, disguised as a chest, within someones loot stack. And during my eight years of playing I‘ve only been tucked on twice.

Maybe I‘m wrong, but using sneaking tactics doesn’t seem to be the preferred play style of most players. Sure, streamers use them to create content, but outside of that …

So what I‘m trying to say is, that the real problem isn’t the lack of gameplay that caters towards sneaking mechanics, but the implementation of mechanics, that do not fit very well into most gamers play style. While I like some of season 14th features, the whole thing wasn’t well thought out in my opinion.

But at the core you’re still right. They tend to bring in interesting stuff and miss to give players a reason to use it.

I feel like this is gonna be the same deal with Act 3's new fortress. I remember in the trailer or whatever they were like, "You're gonna have to scale the wall to get in!"

But there is no wall scaling or climbing mechanics... you can't even take a ladder with you. You're gonna get into the fort via Cannon or Harpooning yourself.

It's the lack of the little innovations like that, that limit my excitement for "updates" to this game. Like they expect us to fill in all the blanks with our imaginations

@shadowfox327533 @Rare-Jumbie I don't know about cannon spam being faster, 'cuz it depends on the skills of the cannoneers involved and if the other crewhands can repel boarders and keep the ship afloat. 'Cuz if your opponent is higher skilled, cannon spam will just get you killed and your ship sunk. And they'll make off with the rewards before you can even get back to the "scene of the crime", or have it all sold while you're still trying to catch up to their ship.

My good friend once stole an Orb of Secrets from a hapless solo sloop player at the same Skeleton Camp he got it from, piled all of his supplies into a Storage Crate, and hid in a disguise amongst whatever else he had, until he took his chance to bury the Crate on the Skeleton Camp the fool was lingering at for whatever reason, while swimming with the Orb to my ship that drew close to pick him up under the cover of the storm... all without firing a shot while the solo still stared out looking out to sea at who knows what and he was none the wiser. Certainly none the richer, either.

I buried a Chest of Fortune on the far side of Molten Sands while an enemy crew (excellent double-gunners, I might add) were repairing their own Sloop that sustained significant damage from the volcano's eruption. I returned to my ship, took a rowboat over back to the Fort and then swam to where I buried it, eating a baked Merfruit to keep away the pesky mermaid, recovered the CoF, and rowed back to my ship with my friend, and we cashed it in, while they were still flailing about in their ignorance trying to get everything else left in the Vault. They never saw me, nor ever even noticed that I had come back to retrieve it. Who knows how long they probably scoured the Fort, raging and cursing at their inability to find it, whilst I got away with the Chest? XD

Stealth and improv won where cannon spam would've just been a wasteful expenditure of time and an exercise in futility, and you say there's no benefit, that it's not worthwhile? It just depends on having the patience and instinct to use it. Perhaps a little bit of luck as well.

@fred-fisheye said in Season 18 Act 2 is a huge disappointment.:

So what I‘m trying to say is, that the real problem isn’t the lack of gameplay that caters towards sneaking mechanics, but the implementation of mechanics, that do not fit very well into most gamers play style. While I like some of season 14th features, the whole thing wasn’t well thought out in my opinion.

But at the core you’re still right. They tend to bring in interesting stuff and miss to give players a reason to use it.

There's plenty of reason to be found in using such tactics. A potentially strong pirate has a piece of high value loot and they've crushed all direct opposition that have challenged him for it and got themselves sunk. Behold, a reason to rely on stealth to swipe that piece of loot from under the strong pirate's nose and get away with it if you can't beat him for it. You just need to see when it will work in your favor, and know when to use it. Suppose that says alot about the player base...

i probably would have done this event more if it were like the servants forts. the fact we have to goto an island and fight a boss to get a key to then have to sail a considerable distance to activate the fort.... thats a bit much for me. they could have in the very least made the boss only spawn on islands close to molten sands. and to make it worse this seasons all about getting some reaper loot as well to have to sail all the way back west to sell? thats too far man.... this is such a swing in the opposite direction of all the short session updates they kept trying to do. they need to find a nice middle ground. we are tipping the scales too far in either direction every time.

that being said i dont think this would be as bad as it is if it were permanent content. it being fomo makes it worse. its now something we have to farm vs something we could have casually done over years. theres a lot on the commendation and achievement side of things where it was meant to be a long journey. something to "passively" work on as you just went out and had fun. though a lot of gamers have an unhealthy mindset driven into us by other games in this modern era of gaming where we have to complete all the things right away all the time! making the content fomo drives that feeling and makes it feel worse and honetly makes the games feel worse to play. fomo is really unhealthy. its actually abusive game design. its actively preying on players psycholocial state of not wanting to miss out. thats the whole reason its called fear of missing out. its a real psycholocial trick/con similar to sunk cost falacy though the sunk cost falacy is more on the person not wanting to feel their time was wasted. the effort was wasted. your marriage is in ruins. you both hate each other. you both want to leave each other but then the past 30 years of your life meant nothing? what you built together? can you just throw that away? though sunk cost falacy is more often referncing gambling additcionts. ive already put this much money in... surely i will have to win and not only make back what i lost but still come out on top right? games are no different. we invested time, regardless of levels of effort or passiviety of those gains its still a substancial investment of our life. "time is money friend" we have a finite time on this earth. we have choosen to spend it playing a game we loved by a company we grew up with and loved... until they didnt warn you about the point of no return in starfox dinosaur planet! (i will never forgive you rare!!! kidding... sort of. it has scared me a bit clearly, but not as much as foxes melee attack only dealing damage on the 3rd & final swing of a 3 swing combo) . having chosen to dedicate so much time to a game then have the developers constant say your time spent meant nothing.. hurts. and i get it. just like those old school games that didnt run forever like modern games with seasons. they end eventually then they collect dust till you could sell them later or pass them down to your kids/grand kids (remember owning your games? those were fun times), but like those old games. live services will eventually end too. in the grand scheme of things our time spent here will be nothing but fond memories as the game no longer exists. so is the company deleting or ignore our acomplishments not really any different than us losing all of that in the future when the game inevitable gets shut down? its the problem with focusing so much on collectibles and fomo in games. its creating an unhelathy mental connection to our playing experience. so when the end does come it hurts. will sot of thieves be another wow for me? will i look back at the years spend with disdane and hatred of the time investment? unlike wow, sot hasnt cost me literally thousands of dollars. it has been filled with more fun times than wow ever was. but also some sad times as well. i miss seeing the youtube videos and streams where the developers seemed full of joy and excitment for the future of this game. now we get developer update after developer update of "yea we keep making the same mistakes and not learning from them" and then the "news" updates which are just pre recorded souless ads (ok not 100% fair they have done some fun comedic ones with those retro filters, we need more of that) if were being honest.. you can tell where the soul of this game has gone. it was in our crab friend. he was in all the trailers and update videos. then he stopped showing up. crab is life. we need crab back!

@burnbacon yes it is a free update. but also lets not kid ourselves. they openly admitted before the emporium was added that moral around the office was low. this game was a money pit. they werent feeling the drive or passion to continue pushing out updates because the game was failing. this game is still around because of the emporium. it needed the monetization to fund the updates. so the updates are free to keep us coming back to get eyes on the shop and ooo new shineys!! buy buy buy! i knew some people on the pve discord i recently left that literally bought every cosmetic they added. every pet, every fur color of that pet. they bought everything, every time. and these were players rare doesnt want in their game!!! the pve only players!!! kinda proves my point that more eyes on the shop = more money. figuring out a way to add proper pve servers with progression while still having incentive to play pvpve is paramount to the future of the game. its doable. just requires careful thought and planning. though honestly i think doubling the progresson on pvpve would be enough. i would have safer sead everything at that 70% slower progression if they allowed it. instead they turned safer seas into some weird gold farm for new players with a lower reputation cap? to what end? who actually looks at reputation as a status symbol in this game? just saw a video on youtube about you you can cheese your way to a gold curse. even that doesnt have prestigue any more (if it ever did) so while these season updates are free and most of us dont buy the new cosmetics or plunder pass... theres also a lot who do buy it. and thats the point. if no one bought the new cosmetics or season pass they wouldnt still be doing updates. even i have bought a few plunder passes. though with free ancient coins because they have been too generous with that passive currency. thats supposed to be their premium cash shop currency. i applaud them to giving it out for free as some people cant afford to buy the stuff... but they are a business they need income. i bought ancient coins when they first came out. dont remember how much 40 or 80 or whatever the pack was. but only that one time. though i did buy 2 copies of the game. 1 at full price (sort of a lie, a friend bought it and gave me the cd key in echanged for 4 months of wow time, he wanted me to play sot with him but i didnt want to give money to the microsoft store) i did later buy a 2nd copy at 50% off because i didnt understand family share at the time. and i wanted the ability to reload my game when solo slooping if something went wrong since there was no rejoin option at the time.