Instanced Areas of Story

@jjblackhat said in Instanced Areas of Story:

We are returning players (Pirate Legend) from over a year ago and we are really loving Sea of Thieves again. All the new content is great!

We just finished the Seabound Soul tall tale in the game 3x to get our sword/sails last night, and it was really awesome to have 'story' like that in the game, but it could be so much more! I am sure there are other cool stories, and stuff in the tall tales that we have not gotten to yet. Right now we are doing the Legends one going around finding Umbra's books, and such.

I do think it could benefit from 'Raid' like material that would launch EPIC stories and adventures to go on with their parties. Rare drops of customization to go for - it's a proven working element in Massive Online Gaming - why not in this game? It would not take away from the combat either, let me explain further.

These 'Raid' like Instanced Areas of Story would last like an hour or so for a crew and be filled with big events, and really pull us into the story that Rare is building, and it should not be accessible from an outpost. These are places on the map that the player must travel to, and once they finally get to the destination only then would the party be 'instanced' out of the server and into the hour long adventure.

This could add so much more to the game - perhaps there are instances that place us against other players in different ways.

1. instanced casino (collectors cards anyone?) where you can play against other players.
2. instanced adventure (raid like adventure)
3. instanced arena (already exists, but what if it were a tournament of an hour long play)

These are just some ideas, but what I am trying to get at is 'instancing' is not bad in this game, it could be just what the doctor ordered... but non instanced stuff is still very important to keep coming too - it's just another element to really expand the story or come up with other engaging ways for us to play against people in Sea of Thieves.

Lets keep the comments constructive, even if you HATE this idea :p

One of the core concepts of this particular game is the shared world. Instances go against that concept.

@jjblackhat

I vote no on this one...

We're meant to be sailing in the Shared World with the 4 - 5 other ships we were matched with. Each session is a story, and those other crews are characters in said story, so I think it would be odd and unfitting to detach ourselves from the world we're in for instances...

It also feels too "MMO-like" and Sea of Thieves is not an MMO by any means - encounters with other players are more spread out, and therefore more special and engaging as a result.

@entspeak said in Instanced Areas of Story:

@jjblackhat said in Instanced Areas of Story:

We are returning players (Pirate Legend) from over a year ago and we are really loving Sea of Thieves again. All the new content is great!

We just finished the Seabound Soul tall tale in the game 3x to get our sword/sails last night, and it was really awesome to have 'story' like that in the game, but it could be so much more! I am sure there are other cool stories, and stuff in the tall tales that we have not gotten to yet. Right now we are doing the Legends one going around finding Umbra's books, and such.

I do think it could benefit from 'Raid' like material that would launch EPIC stories and adventures to go on with their parties. Rare drops of customization to go for - it's a proven working element in Massive Online Gaming - why not in this game? It would not take away from the combat either, let me explain further.

These 'Raid' like Instanced Areas of Story would last like an hour or so for a crew and be filled with big events, and really pull us into the story that Rare is building, and it should not be accessible from an outpost. These are places on the map that the player must travel to, and once they finally get to the destination only then would the party be 'instanced' out of the server and into the hour long adventure.

This could add so much more to the game - perhaps there are instances that place us against other players in different ways.

1. instanced casino (collectors cards anyone?) where you can play against other players.
2. instanced adventure (raid like adventure)
3. instanced arena (already exists, but what if it were a tournament of an hour long play)

These are just some ideas, but what I am trying to get at is 'instancing' is not bad in this game, it could be just what the doctor ordered... but non instanced stuff is still very important to keep coming too - it's just another element to really expand the story or come up with other engaging ways for us to play against people in Sea of Thieves.

Lets keep the comments constructive, even if you HATE this idea :p

One of the core concepts of this particular game is the shared world. Instances go against that concept.

@chronodusk said in Instanced Areas of Story:

@jjblackhat

I vote no on this one...

We're meant to be sailing in the Shared World with the 4 - 5 other ships we were matched with. Each session is a story, and those other crews are characters in said story, so I think it would be odd and unfitting to detach ourselves from the world we're in for instances...

It also feels too "MMO-like" and Sea of Thieves is not an MMO by any means - encounters with other players are more spread out, and therefore more special and engaging as a result.

In tall tale, seabound soul there is portion of the quest in which a door opens and you are sort of instanced in a quick way to open up a 'coffin', and in another quest already existing you open up a door where you are sort of instanced again where the water fills up the room while you attempt to figure out a puzzle. This is what I mean by an 'instanced' game play - imagine that room filling up, completing the puzzle and then another room opening leading down into a watery caverns where you and your crew can get in row boats and sail to find a hidden treasure (think Goonies), figuring out puzzles and fighting NPC's along the way with the chance for rare cosmetic drops.

To me, this does not take away from the 'shared experience', at all. They already starting to implement little elements like this - I would be excited to see larger elements like this too.

@jjblackhat

I've always thought it would be nice if SoT did what GTA Online does with its contact missions. You and your crew start a voyage, in which the game drops you in a temporary private session so that you can focus on fighting the AI, finding the loot, or solving the puzzles, etc. Then once you find the last treasure, kill the last skeleton, etc the game then merges you back into the public session, in which you now have to sail across open seas to turn in your loot. The AI in these voyages would of course would be much harder.

I love SoT for the sailing mechanics, the fun of taking out the skeleton ships and the scenery is just beautiful. But my crew and I do whatever we can to avoid other player ships. When I want PvP I just go over to Battlefield or Destiny 2 or some other game.

The reality though is that someone at Rare thought it would be a good idea to put PvP and PvE together in one world and that's what we're stuck with.

@kiethblacklion said in Instanced Areas of Story:

@jjblackhat

I've always thought it would be nice if SoT did what GTA Online does with its contact missions. You and your crew start a voyage, in which the game drops you in a temporary private session so that you can focus on fighting the AI, finding the loot, or solving the puzzles, etc. Then once you find the last treasure, kill the last skeleton, etc the game then merges you back into the public session, in which you now have to sail across open seas to turn in your loot. The AI in these voyages would of course would be much harder.

I love SoT for the sailing mechanics, the fun of taking out the skeleton ships and the scenery is just beautiful. But my crew and I do whatever we can to avoid other player ships. When I want PvP I just go over to Battlefield or Destiny 2 or some other game.

The reality though is that someone at Rare thought it would be a good idea to put PvP and PvE together in one world and that's what we're stuck with.

I would prefer it remain a 'shared experience' on the open sea's, but think for a moment if it were something more like this :)

1. You pick up a map from an NPC on an island.
2. You go to where the MAP X is and then a riddle appears on the back of the map.
3. You figure out the riddle and a door opens on the island.
4. You and your crew run into the door, and it shuts behind you
5. You climb down ladders to underground caverns filled with water, there is an old galleon/brig/sloop (depending on your crew size) floating in the cavern waters. You board the ship, and sail down the deep waters and suddenly traps start to set off on all sides of the cavern attempting to sink your ship, and a voice speaks out loudly to GET OUT!
6. You and your team keep the ship up, and get to a wall where it looks like there is no way to proceed further - but there is a puzzle, you need to figure out.
7. You figure out the puzzle and move on to the next room where you fight skellies, and gain treasures, and another puzzle.
8. Etc Etc, you fight the boss.
9. Rare cosmetic drop (small % chance for certain pieces of a 'set')
10. The door opens up and lets you back out into the public shared seas.

These are the sorts of instances I am talking about.

These could be bigger in some ways too.. You could go speak to someone who tells you to meet them at a specific location on the shared sea's, and they could then 'instance' you are your crew off to a new 'smaller section' of a sea you have never been on.. maybe it's filled with ICE, and your ship moves really slow and there are only 5 islands, and surrounding the islands is the fog that acts as a way to escape the instance. There you could have your major NPC fight w/o any PC's bothering you - after all this is for story.

But the CORE map that we are used to should never be instanced imo - i think only a sort of portal (doors opening, etc) that take you away for a little bit, but return you again.

Something like this - of course Rare would come up with much better stuff I would think :p

There was actually two threads with similar ideas!

I posted one asking for something similar as a "lvl 5o+ gold hoarders" mission. (The other asked for new dungeon type areas that are accessible through secret doors) A new tier to every reputation that is unlocked once your a legend that is basically "boss battle" missions. OAS is Briggsy, gold hoarder etc type fights, merchant is hunting skelly ships, hunting megs blah blah but the gold hoarders was the same! Adding "instanced" areas with riddles and traps like art of the trickster and golden shores!

The idea of rng tho 🤔 Rare likes their REALLLLLLYYYYYY LOWWWWW drop rates so I wanna push heavily to a no rare drop cosmetics idea since people already think it's a chore to do the tall tales 5 times to complete them lol instead...secrets! Hide stuff in the "raids" like the maiden voyage locked area! Sneak hidden rooms and puzzles inside the story puzzle that are easily overlooked but once you find your way you find a ghost npc who sells them for free or something lol or do what rare likes to do...make a bunch of dungeons, hide journals in them, and you unlock the cosmetics with commendations lol

In any case I love the idea! More puzzles! More traps! More secrets!

@d3adst1ck said in Instanced Areas of Story:

@jjblackhat said in Instanced Areas of Story:

In tall tale, seabound soul there is portion of the quest in which a door opens and you are sort of instanced in a quick way to open up a 'coffin', and in another quest already existing you open up a door where you are sort of instanced again where the water fills up the room while you attempt to figure out a puzzle. This is what I mean by an 'instanced' game play - imagine that room filling up, completing the puzzle and then another room opening leading down into a watery caverns where you and your crew can get in row boats and sail to find a hidden treasure (think Goonies), figuring out puzzles and fighting NPC's along the way with the chance for rare cosmetic drops.

I think your usage of 'instance' is confusing people. The current tall tales are not instances, because you are still in the same server as other players. An instance would be a completely separate server that no one else is on while you are doing a tale.

I don't think people are arguing against long dungeon crawls as a part of tall tales (spoiler, there is one already) but pulling boats off of servers to do them can get quite messy - you are in essence introducing a way for players to force a server merge at any time. This can have quite a few consequences on gameplay.

How ever they can get it done. I used to develop video games so instancing was the most common method for loading heavy data that raids would typically require without having consequences on other players, but Rare has done some exceptionally rare things with their tall tales as of recently so if they can do it without instancing - sure, a large dungeon crawl or something to that effect that would separate players from the public area to complete an EPIC story line and give them a chance at a rare drop (cosmetic - since here are no horizontal or vertical stats to weapons).

@tubiansayne said in Instanced Areas of Story:

There was actually two threads with similar ideas!

I posted one asking for something similar as a "lvl 5o+ gold hoarders" mission. (The other asked for new dungeon type areas that are accessible through secret doors) A new tier to every reputation that is unlocked once your a legend that is basically "boss battle" missions. OAS is Briggsy, gold hoarder etc type fights, merchant is hunting skelly ships, hunting megs blah blah but the gold hoarders was the same! Adding "instanced" areas with riddles and traps like art of the trickster and golden shores!

The idea of rng tho 🤔 Rare likes their REALLLLLLYYYYYY LOWWWWW drop rates so I wanna push heavily to a no rare drop cosmetics idea since people already think it's a chore to do the tall tales 5 times to complete them lol instead...secrets! Hide stuff in the "raids" like the maiden voyage locked area! Sneak hidden rooms and puzzles inside the story puzzle that are easily overlooked but once you find your way you find a ghost npc who sells them for free or something lol or do what rare likes to do...make a bunch of dungeons, hide journals in them, and you unlock the cosmetics with commendations lol

In any case I love the idea! More puzzles! More traps! More secrets!

Don't you want to feel unique to some extent on the Seas? If there is never a 'drop' then we will always get the same things constantly. I for one do not want to be a copy cat pirate, my character is exciting to me and I'd like the opportunity to possibly get a rare drop.

But yes, your idea would work great as well. i am thinking more like an hour long epic (instance or dungeon crawl) that puts you sort of on rails with lots of big things going on that is immersive to the story and your game.