This will never happen and thank god for that.

People doing this would also be a detriment to their crew.

It is been said at least a few times... there will not be any item based progression.

Freind, prepare to witness the sorly lacking mental capacity of a large number of people with not much to do who like to seem like they know what they're talking about. People are largely not going to read the OP properly before commenting on it.

Anyway, this negative progression IS positive progression, you've just moved the middle ground, the sea level as it were. Your point is a fair one, but sadly the only people who don't understand it now and the ones that can't understand it. But while we're on topic, I personally think some flavoursome horizontal progression would be beneficial to the game. Sure, it will need balancing, that's just how these things go. The game can live without any kind of progression but it comes down to other content. But progression helps.

I'm glad I read your post through carefully. When I sped through it, it seemed like you were advocating progression. I concur that a progression system would kill the game but I do think that some form of additional cool stuff in the form of abilities or special ship equipment should be unlocked as you progress. Perhaps every ship has a 'special' cannon slot which can be filled with a series of sidegrade type weapons from a long range gun to grape shot to a harpoon launcher which can be tweaked for individual play preference.

Plus, don't forget that each tier you unlock also unlocks cosmetic items for you to buy only to not be able to wear due practical enough players who know the flaws of a tier based itemisation system. They begin to target you every time they see you coz you are more valuable one in their eyes than the poor fellow yet in rags. You gotta take out the best players in the groups and those who look cool enough probably are exactly them.

I think the current reputation system based on tiers has a fundamental flaw. You can only hide your competence behind the rags of worthlessness, but not your incompetence behind the mask of triumphs. This and the showcasing of every single item the clerks have in this whole game is a very poor design decision when it comes to keeping the game fresh longer.

Solution:

1. Remove tiers and reward players for each completed activity instead. Reputation would still be used, but only to show how dedicated you are at each separately titled activity. Each activity is based on an optional entry of purely willing-to-participate players. Don't want to cook? No worries. Don't want to fish? No worries there either. The fantasy you really want to experience to the fullest really, truthfully and utterly is behind your own volition this way. Want to challenge yourself more? Include an activity or multiple ones in your gameplay and you're set.

2. Remove showcasing everything from the clerks and add two items on the counter at every shop for players to examine instead. Giving away the details of every single cosmetic item, in a game about tactics and cosmetics, is a swift suicide. Making players imagine what they could have next time they complete an activity instead fits this game like a fist on the side of a punching bag. Going the way it is now would be more like your -palm over your face-. LOL

3. One of these items will be your next reward when you complete a voyage associated to one of the factions. Completed voyage also rerolls a duo offering anew so watch out which voyage you complete and to which faction. Pure PvP players would have their own dedicated faction(s) as well to utilise... somewhere.

4. Every item comes with a material criteria that allows the clerks to craft them. Material deficiency can be compensated with gold, but giving it would lengthen the crafting delay the more gold is used instead. In case you are poor enough not to meet material criteria nor gold, the offering would linger until you do; unless you accidentally complete a voyage the way mentioned at section 3 above.

5. Item at the counter is not the one you get, but the one you ordered. Instead you may persuade a clerk to let you actually have one of the items from the counter as a pre-payment for the voyage they then give to you. This would turn the voyage into a time trial, however, and success in it allows you to keep the item you haggled. Fail and they promise a bounty in exchange for the retrieval of the now-recognised-as-stolen item after you login the next time. One who returns the item in a way or another gets an offering of their own.

6. In case an order is made, clerk responsible will begin to work. After the crafting delay, a courier takes the hold of your item and delivers it to your ship. Better keep your ship close enough when this happens for the courier won't follow you beyond the beach.

7. More direct ways to get items could include fishing and dueling. Fishing would allow mates to participate in the cooking activity, but also reward them with items other than just marine ingredients. Of course the fished out worn and wet items ought to be cleaned and washed before use so there's that delay. Dueling would reward the winner with a pre-nominated item out of the losing duelist's hold with yet another delivery delay. Winner would have to wait for a week for this to arrive to their ship unless they do a favour for the losing side which then cuts the delay effectively down to 3 days.

8. Parley would be possible when a hostile crew of pirates attack and kill your protection escort. Parleying rewards a randomly rolled voyage for both sides and prevents them from further harming each other until one exits the shared bubble. In order for any of this to happen, the soon-to-parley player has to first become a merchant themselves. Certain voyage allows a crew to ship some wares to multiple outposts without (no parleying) or with an escort (hired player crew) under the faction's flag which also practically signals these certain outposts to not sink the ship.

9. Cooking amongst other seafaring duties would allow us to affect each voyage we proceed at with an array of somewhat positive and comically negative status ailments. In case we have ingredients with us when we leave our ship, we would be able to enter a kitchen at a tavern to prepare a feast for our crew before leaving the dock again. Having a sharpening tool with us when we board our ship allows us to sharpen every dull enough sword on the ship. Can't let ya wield a dull cutlass out there now would we. Gamble the tool to force another crew member to sharpen the swords instead. Gamble the rod to force someone else to do the fishing instead. Gamble the soap to force someone else wash the deck instead, but be careful with this one or the deck might become a bit too slippery for awhile. Gamble the pet of your ship and one of the other mates becomes lucky enough to get half of the gold from a voyage instead like a boss... umm, captain they now are.

10. Whenever gambling below the deck, the pet is always gambled every time even though no items of any other kind are present. Just watch out for other pirates for they get more gold from the captain slewn... who always has the pet on their side by the way. No need to worry about losing actual gold though. It doesn't come from your own pockets, but from the "sea" itself, in a sense (generated gold reward, not stolen).

@thejolirouge said in Gear progression system. Because you asked for it.:

@mythicalfable you're sure you answered the right thread ?

Yes. xD

I already had this issue and I don't get the link,...

Based on this; yes, it seems that you didn't get this. xD

...so I'm just asking to be sure and let you know if you wanted to answer somewhere else ;)

It fits here, yes. The sections 1 to whatever the last number was I wrote above (edit: 10) was just a connection of thought to another idea that was behind the issue you mentioned here about the gear progression. They share the same fundamental conflict and the sections I mentioned prevent the issue from forming. This is why it would be great if the current reputation system wasn't tier based.

@thejolirouge Finally someone opens their mouth that understands exactly why this is the first game with open PVP that I actually enjoy. I hate most PVP games BECAUSE they have some form of statistical progression that means newbies are at a severe disadvantage against someone that happened to play since release. yeah the high level players get to have fun, but meanwhile the newbie gets stomped into the dirt over and over and over until they finally decide "screw this, I'm playing something else"

@lobofh ok so I play for several months, and finally convince my friend to join. Now he can't play with me because they're limited to other players of their level. Rare actually WANTS people to be able to "power level" their reputation, so filtering players by level would go against that. also no matter what you do, if items have stats, there will be a "best weapon/armor in the game", people WILL grind for it, and newbies will be screwed over as they're constantly hunted for their easy-to-steal treasure.

@lobofh that is fair, but I don't think that's the type of game Rare is going for with Sea of Thieves. I'm not a heavy PVP gamer. I'm more of a roleplayer. I wouldn't be nearly as interested in this game if there was vertical progression, as I've tried PVP in games. I never have fun getting my face kicked in repeatedly, and I suspect a lot of others agree with me considering the number of people asking for safe zones. However, unlike them, I don't mind PVP if it's fair, which is why I love this game so much already. Sneak up on me while I move to cash in a chest? Congrats, I should have been paying better attention. That's on me.

Hahaaa, loving this! I just hope it gets the message across to the targeted players. It's surprising and sad how many misunderstood or didn't read properly.

Personally I'm torn between a craving for some kind of actual progression, and the even playing field we have, where the only advantage you can currently get over a new player is your experience.

If you're going to suggest a progression system to shoot down, however, then how about putting a modicum of intelligence behind it, because from the get-go you've suggested a horrible system that would kill any game for the specific purpose of making progression systems look bad just to make your point seem more valid..

Most games that do offer actual advantages to people who put in the effort to unlock (or pay for) their upgrades have balance issues, but what if they only offered balanced things like increased/decreased damage and spread on a Blunderbuss variants, variant snipers with increased/decreased damage but slower/faster bullet velocity, clothes that offer a little armour but slow you down; you know, the kind of things you see in other games that work just fine?

@thejolirouge I think that the skill and knowledge you get from in-game experience is enough as an advantage

The progression your talking about is fine, what the game needs is a reason to buy the gear and weapons, at the moment your no better off, so why spend the gold? The gear is already ‘tier’ based depending on your rank with a particular faction, so why can’t the higher tier weapons do more damage and the higher tier clothes offer more protection? This would encourage more people to play as I know a lot of people that won’t play the game purely because of the fact that you are no better off in your first hour then you are in a 1000 hours. Obviously these bonuses should not work on a PVP level as veteran players would put new players off the game before they can even get started l out but currently anyone who prefers playing solo or in a small two man crew is basically excluded from skullforts as trying to take on such a task without being able to gain any sort of advantage means it’s near impossible to kill ads whilst having to continually fix the ship before it sinks. I really enjoy the Game as it is but I feel this change would only improve the players experience and would attract a far greater fan base.