@leonidasnerevar said in How to Solve the Brig Issue:
I know what you're thinking "But I thought they solved the instant brigging problem by adding a 3 man crew option", and you'd be right. RARE came up with a solution to people joining a crew and being instantly brigged because the crew didn't want a 3rd member, or was saving the spot for a friend. Bravo RARE! But that isn't the only problem with the brig. Instead of going all philosophical on you, I'll give you an example: I played in the open beta. On one of those voyages I joined a most civil, but silent, crew; and the 4 of us set sail for a Skeleton Fort. Upon arrival we had a prolonged and most gruesome battle with the fort's inhabitants: skeletons. We all fought long and hard and when the waves were completed, I almost singlehandedly fought and killed the Skeleton Captain and got his key. What fun times! The four of us opened the vault and took the treasure back to our ship, ready to turn it for a handsome reward. Upon succesfuly stoing our cargo and the crew boarding the ship, I began to raise the anchor with the cry "Let's go sell our loot!" But a crew member ran up and dropped the anchor again as soon as I had raised it. I said "Oh, we aren't leaving? Ok. What are we doing next?" I was promptly locked in the brig. I know not why, nor could I ask them why because they had no mics and could not have given me an answer. So I sat there. Asking them "Why am I in here?" "If you don't want to leave yet that's fine, just let me out" They replied by playing music in front of my cage. After a prolonged wait, and seeing that they had no intention of leaving the fort any time soon, I left the match, and lost all of the progress I had earned in the last hour. Let me say that again RARE: I LOST ALL THE PROGRESS I MADE IN THE LAST HOUR!
This was infuriating and I resolved that if my only two options when playing Sea of Thieves were to either be locked in a brig while random strangers mocked and demeaned me, or lose all of the hard earned progress I had made in the last hour, that I simply wasn't going to buy the game. And I'm not the only one. All you have to do is search the key "Brig" in the forum and you'll see many other players saying that they liked the gameplay, but the Brig ruined it for them and they weren't going to buy the game. This is a problem RARE. You're discouraging gamers from buying your game! We gamers like to play games. We don't want to sit and allow random strangers on the internet to bully and abuse us, and prevent us from playing the game we spent $60 on! If I spend $60 on a game, I better have a 100% gurantee that I'll be able to play it 100% of the time I sit down to play it! We don't come home after a long day of work looking to have some fun, just to be either locked in a cell having people gloat over us, or lose all the progress we make. If we have a choice between that and another game we know we can sit down and play, no matter what, which one do you think we're going to choose?
I liked Sea of Thieves (when I actually got to play it) and I really want to continue my adventure with your game! But I won't stand to be bullied, mocked, demeaned, and abused while playing a video game. I won't tolerate it. Many other people won't either. But you may say "Well, we have to have an anti grieffing measure that doesn't involve 'vote to kick from lobby' and is still lore friendly and immersive" I know what you mean. We should have the option to play (or not play) with whoever we want, while also not ruining other people's experience by kicking them from the lobby and making them lose their progress. There's a way to do this. Here it is.
But first!
What are the 3 main things that make a player part of your crew? (trust me, this is important)
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The green name tag over his head (as opposed to white)
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The fact that you can't shoot him (no friendly fire)
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You all get paid when one crew member turns in a chest.
(Yes RARE, I know these aren't ALL the ways you're part of the crew, but I'm just keeping it simple, you can also vote on voyages)
Now, on to the solution to grieffers!
Instead of (not in addition to) the brig mechanic, you have "Vote to Walk the Plank", or in other words: Kick from Crew. NOT kick from lobby. Here's how it would work in game:
Three crew members vote to kick from the crew the fourth man. A little animation occures, he walkes the plank lands in the water, yaty yaty yatta. The kicked person finds a mermaid and is teleported to his own ship, as if he was playing solo and his ship had sunk. Now he is no longer part of the crew. His name tag turnes white, his old crew can shoot at him and in all respects he is as any other player in the world, exept in one respect. When his old crew turns in their chests, he still get's paid like he was part of the crew. That way someone who does a lot of work, makes some progress and then get's kicked from the crew, won't suffer the terrible fate of losing thier progress, like I had to. In my situation, I would have much pereffered this mechanic. If my crewmates no longer desired to sail with me, they could get their wish, and I would not be denied the spoils of my labor. Win Win!
But I forsee what you would say about this: "Our servers like to handle 16 ships and this would mess that up" I would say, it's a small price to pay to have a happy (and larger) player base. When you add the extra ship pushing the limit to 17, you just wait for one to leave the server and you're back down to 16. Not much more I can say on this, I'm the ideas guy, not the technical guy.
You could also say "Does he keep getting paid for the old crews chests for the rest of the match?" The answer is no. Any chests aquired by the old crew after the kick will not pay out to him.
Q. "How does the game know which chests are aquired before and which chests are found after the kick?"
A. You already have a system to see who discovered a chest. If a chest that was discovered by your old crew gets turned in (by your old crew) then you get paid for it.
Q. "But what about Stronghold Chests? Or chests you stole from another pirate ship? Or Shipwrecked Chests?"
A. Now this is the hardest issue of all. Here's my answer. Don't you already have in place a way to detect whether a chest is on a chip? Just hijack that code, and any chests that where on your old crew's ship during your time with them get counted as chests owned by that crew; and thus you get a cut of the pot when they're turned in (by your crew). If your old crew is attacked and the chests are stolen after you were kicked, then of course you don't get paid when the other pirate crew turnes it in. I know it's a lot of technical talk, but I've thought this through as much as I could in four days and didn't want anyone at RARE to not have the answeres to their questions. Thank you for reading this exeedingly long post and I really hope RARE let's me play their game. I'd really like to. It was more fun than anything I've played recently. I'm looking forward to the removal of the brig and addition of pure enjoyment for the players.
AAaaarggh!
thank you sir
