Ghost ship. Lore friendly passive mode that wont prevent PVP. Thoughts and opinions please!

@spr1nk said in Ghost ship. Lore friendly passive mode that wont prevent PVP. Thoughts and opinions please!:

@kotetsuchiha went into this thinking It'd be a game breaking idea and I'd hate it, but I actually like this idea and think it could possibly work

Thanks.
As someone who plays a lot of PVP I want to keep that option open, but I find myself getting tired with the attrition wars. I wanted to give a victory to players while also allowing an escape to those who don't want to to PVP.

If you have any suggestions on improving this please add them, I don't think this solution is fool proof and I am certain to have overlooked something.

Additional PvE content to lessen PvP activity

Additional Vendors/Missions – Additional vendors are needed to give other options for players when it comes to missions
Govenors – they will be able to give military missions, attack other pirates, player and NPC, protect ports from other pirates and NPC’s, and find and attack ghost ships, you will gain political influence with the governor
Mercenaries – bounty hunt other pirates, player and NPC’s, attack military ships, you will gain mercenary rep
Merchant – add missions to escort merchant ships, NPC’s or to protect a specific shipping lane from players and NPC’s, you will gain merchant rep just like now

Add additional NPC vendors and characters
Castaways – find on islands and they will ask for transport to a particular location and in return give you information on a mission for treasure, have these be more of an exploration type of mission
Castaways would be a great tool to develop the lore of this Sea of Thieves world through the more involved missions they would give since they would be exploratory in nature
Cannibals – they want to catch and eat you, very basic enemy
Other pirates, militia, merchants, and bounty hunters

PvE content and its affect on the PvP content – We have some PvE content in game, vendors, skeletons, Kraken but we need more to flesh the game out. I know Rare has said they would not implement this but since the game has been live, it appears this would enhance the game and maybe worth compromising on

Creating NPC ships and ports, this would lead to an alleviation of PvP to some degree as there is more PvE content to do, this would give the anti-PvP crowd something without removing the danger completely
Having NPC pirates, military, bounty hunters and merchants will make the game seem more alive and give the players more to do

Create the ability to form accords for things like events. Player Pirates can form a temporary agreement for a truce. This way they can do events like the skull forts or Kraken and not kill each other, when the event is over create a 5 min timer and then the accord is done
Accords would be voluntary, if one side does not want to do it then the game plays like it does now where both sides can decide to work together or fight each other

@mr-pontiac421ho

I do believe more PVE content is necessary; but I disagree on a few points.

I really dislike the idea of NPC ships (outside of Large scale events with clearly NPC ships like a merchant ship idea I saw someone mention.) I dislike the idea as I want to know I am fighting with players. PVP is a core part of the game and forcing it into PVPVE would ruin it for a lot of people.

It may sound cruel, but part of the fun of PVP is seeing the other person lose.
There is the test of skill, the thrill in knowing the risks and confronting loss, but beating someone and seeing them inconvenienced as a result of your action is a part of it.
This is why so many people are advocating for more risk, not so they can be punished for when they lose, but so they can inflict punishment on others.
It is also this punishment that forces people to consider wether the fight is worthwhile.

PVP should be a battle which is won and lost. Currently there is no lose condition unless you sre carrying loot.

Adding NPC ships would confuse the situation by making players unaware if the ship on the horizon is a player or NPC. that is my opinion on the matter though

Having NPC's guarding some outposts I could agree to as long as it is possible to defeat them. Players should still be at risk while in an outpost and should have their loot at risk.
Playing without risk doesn't seem a good idea.

Adding NPC's to islands is great, the game needs more variety here.

I am opposed to forced accords. I think it should be an option to offer one, but that the agreement should do nothing more than highlight the other players in a unique way. Friendly fire should be enabled as one of the most interesting aspects of this game is the creativity of the players. This includes the deception and betrayals.

So, before I get into this, I just want to say, please do not take these criticisms personally. You are trying to fix a problem in the community and are respectfully putting forth your ideas for consideration and asking for help, which I wholeheartedly respect. I've also seen you post on other PvP-related threads, and you are always very respectful and helpful when addressing people. That said, I don't know how your idea works, and I don't think it does work. I'm going to address your thoughts point by point to let you know how I interpret them, and let me know if I misunderstood any of the points you made.

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With this solution, you are trying to:

• Allow players who have lost loot to other pirates to get a second / third chance at recovering their plundered loot without breaking the game's current lore
• Give the winner of each PvP skirmish a better feeling of accomplishment at the end of the fight
• Let people who are less skilled at PvP a chance to reclaim their plundered loot without being harassed and without spawning elsewhere
  __

I don't have a problem with these goals. These all sound fairly harmless and are things that could stand to be dealt with in one way or another. My only question with them would be the harassment part of the third point. Harassed by who? A second or third crew ganging up? Or are you talking about spawn killing? I'm sorry if that comes off as rude or pejorative; I do not mean it in that way at all. I am genuinely wondering what you mean by harassment.

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To fix these problems, you are suggesting that:

• If a crew's ship sinks twice within a certain window of time, they automatically respawn as a 'Skeleton Crew' on a Ghost Ship for a pre-set amount of time
• The Skeleton Crew cannot attack/hurt other players or board anyone else's ship, and in turn, the Skeleton Crew cannot be attacked/hurt, nor have the Ghost Ship boarded by others either
• The Skeleton Crew can continue to do voyages, but cannot enter a Skeleton Fort
• Skeleton Crews will get a warning when they have 3 to 5 minutes left before they become corporeal again
• When the timer runs out, you and your crew will respawn as your pirates at a random island with any and all items and loot you have acquired during your time as the Skeleton Crew

and in doing so, you are suggesting that these measures:

• Give PvE players a chance to recover their stolen loot, but at a greater risk to themselves
• Prevent Outpost & spawn camping
• Give PvP players a better feeling of winning
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So, the whole point of this, as I see it, is to let people who get sunk pretty regularly, due to harassment or otherwise, go around and get at least one voyage more or less complete without being threatened by other players. This is my biggest criticism about this idea. You say that this idea increases the risk. You don't say who the risk gets increased for, but as I see it, it decreases the risk for all parties involved. The players who sunk get 15 or so free minutes to get loot without having to worry about having anything happen to them, their ship, or their loot, and the players who sunk the ship get a free getaway since the Ghost Ship cannot engage them and cannot attempt to steal back their loot. This system almost seems broken in favor of the aggressors, since all they would have to do is sink you twice, then sail away to an Outpost without worrying that you'll try and steal your loot back. The way this is laid out now, I think it would become a dominant strategy, since I often seem to respawn one or two islands over from where I sunk, giving the aggressors a fairly easy tactic to quickly track me down and force me into a position where I cannot even try to hurt them. If you include scuttling a ship as sinking, then this would've happened to me at least once a day.

You say that neither the Skeleton Crew nor regular players can attack each other, but that fighting on land is still viable. Does that mean that ship battles cannot happen, but when you step on land, then you can fight other players? If so, what happens if you lose? Why would any player engage you on land, especially the people running away with your loot? If the whole point of the Skeleton Crew is to give PvE players total immunity for a short time, why include this weakness at all? If this is supposed to be part of the risk involved in this mechanic, why is it the only one? Especially considering it will more than likely rarely come into effect at all.

You say that this mechanic "allows players to attempt to recover lost loot" but since you can't board anyone else's ship, how are you recovering your loot? This point probably has more to do with your word choice rather than your actual idea, but it's still a point worth thinking about. What I think you meant by this is that players will get a chance to go around and collect a lot of loot risk-free to make up for the loot that they lost, but what if they lost a lot of high level, high rarity loot? Allowing them to go do other voyages doesn't make up for the loot that was just stolen for them, especially considering that there's not a great chance that the loot you get on the next voyage will be exactly the same as the loot you lost. Even if it was, that's still extra time you were forced to waste essentially re-doing the same voyage because a group of people stole your stuff. Attempting to recover your loot from the aggressors without the invincibility would be more worth it in this scenario since at least then I could say that I tried, and that my time wasn't entirely wasted.

Forcing players to become a Skeleton Crew on a Ghost Ship isn't a good idea. Like I said earlier, it takes away the player's ability to fight back against the people that stole their loot, and forces them to play PvE for a set period of time. I'm sure that some people won't mind since they would get immunity, but I guarantee this forced removal from the regular gameplay would cause a good chunk of the player base to quit the game entirely. I know I would.

Building off of the last point, the fact that some of the game's content is blocked from being accessed in this system is a big problem. Don't get me wrong; in the way you've built this system, it's very necessary to restrict certain aspects of the gameplay to prevent cheating or abuse of the system, but I would argue that a system that requires content to be restricted is a system that should be left behind. I would genuinely prefer to stick with the current problems we have rather than be forced into a state where part of the game is restricted to me.

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I were to re-work this idea, I would design a new system entirely. I would focus on a system that doesn't pull you out of the regular game, especially without my choosing to do so. As I just don't agree with what you want to do here, I'm having a hard time coming up with suggestions to make your system better, and even the ideas that I do have still have the core problem of essentially being a different mode that forces the player to play game a certain way by restricting certain gameplay options.
Once again, just want to say that none of this is personal, and I do not mean to be rude about any of this. If any of what I have said comes off as rude, I am incredibly sorry and do not mean it that way. I wanted to let you know everything I thought about your idea, and I wanted to be honest. I hope that by pointing these things out and by posing these questions to you that you can think about this system and refine it to fix these problems, since the problems you are trying to fix definitely deserve to be fixed.

@koolgoldfinch
/edit This got long, so i have Bolded the important points.

I dont take things personally, so dont worry bout that at all.

I actually started replying to the majority of your post, but realised I dont need to.
You hit exactly the point I was trying to make in here.

Forcing players to become a Skeleton Crew on a Ghost Ship isn't a good idea. Like I said earlier, it takes away the player's ability to fight back against the people that stole their loot, and forces them to play PvE for a set period of time. I'm sure that some people won't mind since they would get immunity, but I guarantee this forced removal from the regular gameplay would cause a good chunk of the player base to quit the game entirely. I know I would.

Essentially forcing players into a PvE only situation is bad for gameplay.
And I agree 100%
But this is exactly the problem for PvE players currently.

Consider that once I see a ship that I want to fight. That ship has 3 options.
They are forced into a PvP confrontation they didn't want, or they try to run, which is not a good option by any means.
Or they scuttle and give up any progress they had currently on their voyage as well as any loot.
I force those people to play PvP if only for a short period of time.
Forcing players into a PvP only situation is bad for gameplay.

The counter arguments are the same. The ship should have spotted me approaching. PvP is a part of the game etc etc.
I don't disagree with that at all.
But I do believe that the balance is in favour of PvP.
Personally, I am OK with that.** I enjoy the PvP. There is however a part of the player base that doesn't, and I don't think they should be alienated for it.
I think they should be given tools to help them avoid it.**

This idea I have for Ghost Ships is a tool I thought could help. But you raise a strong point in saying that forcing others to play in a certain way is bad.

But this leaves two problems to solve.

How to prevent the constant respawns and attrition battles. (Particularly with skeleton forts)

And what tools can we give to players who wish to avoid PvP encounters.

I have posted elsewhere suggesting more defensive/evasive weapons.
Things like chain shot to damage sails.
Allowing cannonballs to affect ships controls. ie. Altering sail angle, releasing the anchor and adjusting steering angle on a hit to those systems.

I also have suggested non-lethal weapons such as flash/smoke bombs, snake venom to slow/disorientate characters.

These kinds of tools would allow players a chance to escape, and I think ultimately, that is what the PvE players need. Is a way to release themselves from a PvP situation without having to resort to one of the 3 options currently available. All of which can involve losing large amounts of time, progress or both.

As for the first problem;
How to prevent the respawn and attrition battles.
The only solutions I can think of require punishing the loser of a PvP battle. A punishment for having your boat sunk.

The reason for the Ghost Ship idea was that it punishes aggressive PvP players who repeatedly lose their ship, while the same mechanic provides relief to the PvE players who currently feel heavily victimised.

As for the rest. There is a little confusion.
The ghost ship status would require 2 sinkings within a time period (as en example I said 20 minutes.)
This means you have to sink a 2nd time within 20 minutes of the first sinking.
Essentially allowing one attempt to recover lost loot. This is to stop the war of attrition that many players end up in.
This side of the mechanic would also punish overly aggressive players. If you engage and lose, you then have to consider that engaging a second time, within that 20 minute window, could result in your weapons being unusable for a few minutes.
The idea is not to give players an easy way to recover loot, but rather a single chance to do so, as opposed to the near unlimited chances they currently have.

The idea to allow combat between groups of boats is simply to keep a small element of danger to the skeleton crew. I don't believe total safety should be an option.

Ghost players will have only a small window 10-15 minutes to continue unhibnered. The idea is to allow them to complete a voyage or two without interference. Not to allow them to recover the lost loot, only to give them some freedom in exploring and begining to claim new loot. Losing loot is a part of the game, and I dont think players should be protected from that.

Ultimately.
The problem exists that PvPvE will require players to adapt to both PvP and PvE game styles. But the tools that currently exist favour the PvP crowd.
As a community and Rare as developers need to address that imbalance, and I will admit, this idea may not be the best way to do so. But I wanted to start the discussion on solving the problem instead of simply pushing for seperate servers or telling people to improve.

I believe the solution lies in giving PvE players more non PvP options to disengage from a fight.
I also think that PvP players need to be able to clearly and definately win or lose an engagement.
This almost has to involve punishing the loser in some way, but in the current system, this would further hurt the PvE players who are already at a disadvantage.

@kotetsuchiha These are all really interesting ideas, and now that I see how you were thinking about the situation, I totally get why you came up with this as a solution. When you think of the situation through the mind of a PvP player, this seems like a totally viable option as these people would be the most likely people to sink twice in a short timespan. However, as I said, it is possible for very skilled players to abuse this mechanic to end up punishing the PvE player instead.

Throwing in some items that affect how a ship works is an interesting suggestion, and it's one that I think Rare could explore, but again, this solution falls into the trap that the PvE victims wouldn't be the only players who have these options. The higher skilled PvP players wouldn't dare go out of stock of these items. Adding these items would more than likely increase this game's skill gap, and actually end up favoring the PvP players again, with the trade off that they'll have to go to islands to get supplies for these items, taking them off the seas for a marginal amount of time.

I think an interesting idea would be to give each player a flare gun. It would be a huge flare, very hard to miss if you're a close by ship, especially at night. This is an item that would more than likely only be used by players being attacked by other players. It is possible that PvP players might try to lure in unsuspecting sailors by sending up a flare, but if anyone checks through their telescope and only sees one ship, they'd hopefully ignore it if they're smart, or risk it if they're greedy. The idea would be to give each player an item that shouts very loud and clear "Hey! Look! I'm right here! Please take a look at what's going on!" This would draw any nearby ships towards the commotion and either cause more confusion so that the smaller crew who didn't want to fight can escape, or to summon any ship out there that wants to help the smaller ship out of a sticky situation, furthering the options PvP players have in terms of why they engage an enemy ship. It is possible that this method won't work either, whether that be because everyone could end up ganging up on the ship that sent up the flare in the first place, or because other ships just ignore the signal. But, I think that it's an idea that's worth exploring, at least a little.

Im not for pve only servers or any passive mode or "ghost ship" idea just to be clear...however these are real problems people are dealing with...so IF a pve server or passive mode were to be implemented i would say leave the progression the same only on that server, so if you get legend on the pve server you have to start over on the pvp server kinda like a pve legend...lol
And a pvp legend.
I am not for this but i think it would be the only fair way.
What i am for is a small 1 man ship thats faster than everything else but has no attack cappabilities....
Cannon rear facing, only vertical adjustments
Ramming your victim only gives 1 hole, you get 4
Crows nest? No just a ladder on the mast...no powder kegs up there for you

Any other ideas for balancing would be great...

No.

Just no.

I dont like this idea at all. Sorry mate. No hard feelings