An option to play card games and gamble small amounts of gold

@its-alpa Sea of Thieves is a T-rated game.

@dominusocto7 I have three main issues with your assertion. Lets compare with Runescape, a game that actually has a gold-buying problem. I recognize that Sea of Thieves and Runescape are completely different games, but the concept of buying gold is not unique to a single genre.

1. Gold offers no tangible benefit over other players.

In Runescape, gold directly increases your character's power. You can buy the best gear at the grand exchange and stock up on backup gear in case you lose your current gear. If a new character is given access to that amount of gold, it provides a significant increase to their character's progression.

Now compare this to Sea of Thieves. Unless you consider your first emissary purchase to be a "tangible benefit", gold is spent exclusively on in-game cosmetics and voyages. These items are cheap, and can be obtained rather quickly through regular gameplay. The only benefit a new character would gain from buying gold is the ability to look snazzy, and lets be honest, you'd look a lot snazzier if you bought a parrot with that money.

2. Buying gold in Runescape is quick, easy, and requires very little interation.

You pay the seller, and he either mails it or walks up to you and drops the gold.

Now you could obviously eliminate the problem of idling at a poker table by just kicking them out if they're idle, much like the ship's wheel, but even this isn't necessary. The method of idling at a poker table while your friend throws would idealy prove to be not as profitable as doing voyages, but even if it were, see problem number 1 for the reasons it doesn't matter.

3. People don't want gold, they want reputation and action.

In Runescape, gold is tied to the progression of the game. You spend your gold on better gear, consumables, runes to cast spells and teleport around, et cetera. You can even buy items in advance to significantly cut the amount of time it takes to complete certain quests.

Gold doesn't really help you in SoT though. If you're new, your goal is established in the tutorial: Become a pirate legend. Gold is nice, but it doesn't get you any closer to that goal, even if it helps you look snazzy while you work for it. For a new player, reputation is the name of the game, and you won't be getting that playing poker. And as of right now, there's nothing stopping you from bringing your friend along to do high level content and quickly level their rep.

Now experienced players have another problem altogether. The general complaint that I hear is that people with millions of gold in their bank have nothing to spend it on. Generally, they play Sea of Thieves for the PVP and the sailing, gold is inconsequential. My suggestion isn't meant to be a solution to this issue, that's a topic for another thread, rather it's meant to provide a flavorful pastime for crew members who either have nothing better to do, or just want to play poker.

I understand the point that you're trying to make, but it's extremely unrealistic that people would pay IRL money for gold in Sea of Thieves. I can easily find ads for boosting services where people play the game for you to boost your rep with certain factions, but gold-boosting is never advertised. It just simply has no real monetary value.

@redeyesith In my experience, when people have nothing else to do (one guy's on watch, one guy's steering, everything's sorted), the rest usually just fish. This would offer something else you could do to kill time.

Also, the gambling aspect isn't a necessary component of this. It would just offer something for people to sink their gold into, if nothing else.

@its-alpa said in An option to play card games and gamble small amounts of gold:

@r3valkyrie LOL i actually had no idea. that makes sense though with guns and stuff... but still, wasn't GTA V having problems putting gambling in their game? and thats 1000% rated M.

What makes GTA V's casino controversial is that in-game money can be bought with real money. Even if you can't exchange that money back for real money, there's still a chance you can lose a lot in the process, and might lead you to make some irrational purchases.

Sea of Thieves can avoid this problem by just not allowing people to buy gold.

Think it's pretty safe to say that gambling in general (not only in SoT) is a "nono" kind of situation.

@greengrimz You wouldn't consider buying an ashen key and chest voyage to be gambling, but it does fill the criteria. Despite this, I don't see many people complaining about them. They're plentiful, and it doesn't pressure people to spend (real) money for another shot at ashen gear.

This suggestion would be, arguably, much less impactful than buying ashen chests.

@r3valkyrie said in An option to play card games and gamble small amounts of gold:

@greengrimz You wouldn't consider buying an ashen key and chest voyage to be gambling, but it does fill the criteria. Despite this, I don't see many people complaining about them. They're plentiful, and it doesn't pressure people to spend (real) money for another shot at ashen gear.

This suggestion would be, arguably, much less impactful than buying ashen chests.

Gambling, again - in general - is easy to control and enjoyable to some (perhaps you and myself) but it's a well known fact it can be addicting and quite hurtful to others. That's why it's officially banned in many countries.

@greengrimz I'm going to continue this argument because it's a pretty neat thing to argue about, but I do need to emphasize that the gambling aspect of this suggestion is optional. I'm more interested in the ability to play cards.

Anyway, I don't think it's right to compare this to other forms of problematic online gambling. The way gold is implemented in SoT (earned rapidly, unable to be bought with real money, offering no gameplay advantage), along with the restrictions I suggested be imposed (limiting the amount you could gamble to an insubstantial amount) make this nowhere near as hurtful or impactful as other online gambling solutions.

People don't tend to care about online gambling in video games unless real money is at stake. Usually the rewards are also pretty high, too. In this scenario, you bet an inconsequential amount of gold, you gain or lose an inconsequential amount of gold. Hardly a reward, or a reason to keep you hooked.

@galactic-geek You're correct, but the argument that I'm trying to make is that it isn't harmful to gamble small amounts of gold due to the perceived value of the gold, and the fact that there is practically no impetus to keep playing because of the insignificant prizes you're playing for. It's made to be a harmless way to kill time more than anything else, much like the system in POTCO that I'm basing it off of.

Imagine this unlikely, albeit humorous scenario:

After finishing my Athena's voyage and turning in my chests, I check my bank: 139300 gold, not quite enough to buy the scurvy bilge rat sails I wanted. I take my chance at earning some money over blackjack with my crew mates. I bet the maximum amount: 100 gold. Bust. It's okay, I only have 139200 more gold in my bank, I should have this in no time. Bust. Again, no worries, surely I'll make something out of this.

Hand after hand, I continued to lose. After throwing away upwards of 3000 gold after an hour of play, the pressure was on. I could just quit and do another voyage to make my money back, and more, but I had already sunk so much time into blackjack that there was no way I could turn away.

I continued to play, winning some, losing more, and after 48 hours of nonstop blackjack play, I finally broke the bank. As I gambled away the last coin in my purse, I finally conceded; I'll do another Athena's voyage.

@galactic-geek said in An option to play card games and gamble small amounts of gold:

@r3valkyrie Playing minigames means fewer pirates sailing, and fewer pirates to rob - that's still a problem here. If you're playing them to "pass the time" then perhaps it's time you move on to something else.

The games take place on the ship, it's an alternative to fishing when you're traveling to an island. Fishing doesn't mean there's less pirates to rob, neither does this.

EDIT: There's also nothing wrong with wanting to do some light activity to kill time while waiting to arrive at an island.

With fishing, you can still keep your eyes on the horizon. Can you say the same while looking at cards?

Assuming your vision is locked like it is while fishing, that would depend on the position of the game table. So I could say that if two people are sat opposite each other in an area with few obstructions, they would be just as effective spotters as someone who was fishing.

It also takes a minimum of 2 people to play cards (unless, Solitaire). That means that, at best, you're taking half of a galleon's crew away from sailing. On smaller ships, it's even worse.

You don't need the entire crew at their stations to sail effectively.

Besides occasionally angling sails and having someone look out for ships, there's not much optimization that needs to be done while sailing in a straight line to your location. If I'm playing with friends and we're on a straight 20 minute trek to Devil's Roar, we're usually just screwing around by fishing and jumping on the sides of the ship while talking current events.

Once we see an enemy, however, we stop screwing around and deal with the immediate threat.

If you have crewmates that are fishing while you're trying to deal with a threat, that's a problem with your crewmates and not with fishing. The same applies to playing cards.

It sounds like the gambling feature in the now defunct POTCO was a fun and engaging activity for players. Implementing a similar feature in a game could certainly add an additional layer of excitement and social interaction among players.