Server Hopping???

Emissary flags for RB rep. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones that played RB the first week and had it handed to me.

Even worse these days it is very hard to even find one that’s not a grade 1-2 merchant just having it up as passive merchant progress doing other activities.

I find it perfectly fine i hop when we first log in to find a decent amount of emmisarys. On the rare occasion for a specific event but once we get a server we generally stick to it till the end of our session.

@wolfmanbush
I hear you about barrels and shipwrecks. I search as many of them as I can for fish and wood plank voyages.

Just unlucky I guess but I'm almost done with the rest of the fish but my battlegills were lagging way behind. So I took to server hopping for skull forts. Now, I only need 2 more sand and 10 more bittersweet.

Just the other day I had to sink a sloop and a brig to keep them from finishing the skull fort just so I could keep fishing! Brings back memories of fighting over skull forts only this time I was fighting to keep it from being finished instead of fighting to finish it!

I realize that it just wastes “my time” to leave server, back to menu, set sail, run out of tavern. Just to find that one thing I wanna do.

While simply joining a server and sailing around, waiting for that one thing I wanna do to appear. All the while, I’m doing small tasks to keep myself occupied.

I don’t see benefits of server hoping.
Maybe catching that server hop that has the thing I seek, only to lose it later because I was late sailing to it or someone else already did it.

I don't see a problem with serverhopping, have done a few myself for the commendations back in 2018-present day.

Ah yes, the good ol' days of server hoppin' for forts that only appeared once every 3 hours. I guess battletoads have been in the game for a while now lol. There's nothing wrong with finding a different server to find what you are seeking. When I was a wee pirate with very little experience, I'd hop around a lot to get away from treacherous pirates. Back then, they were all open crews, so even your own cremates could have been treacherous. Nowadays, I'm more confident in my abilities so I stick around longer on one server. Only time I typically switch now is if I find toxic players that like to cheat or say hurtful comments or spawn kill. It's also helpful to hop to find messages in a bottle for merchant crates to hand in. I suppose hoppin' for forts is ok too, but much like the weather, it will change over time.

@little-squash The only problem I see with server hopping is that it may be partially responsible for server instability.

I've read arguments likening it to DDOSing. When a new world event update is released, we experience issues connecting to servers as people jump from one to the next, hoping to find the new content. In arena, if you leave mid-match twice within a window, you are banned for 30 min. If they implemented something similar to adventure (e.g. 4 hops per hour), maybe it would improve stability.

Other than that, I see nothing wrong with hopping. People want to jump into action. I get it.

@theblackbellamy
Yeah, I remember server instability being an issue when skull forts were the only event and they only spawned every 3 hours or so. Many crews, including mine at the time, would server hop, sometimes for an hour, just to find a skull fort.

That would put 4 galleons on 4 separate servers over and over again. And I know we weren't the only ones doing it. I seem to recall Rare mentioning this causing server instability and being part of the reason they increased the spawn rate of skull forts back then.

My guess is that the number of players server hopping is much less now due to the increased amount of things to do and the frequency of events. It seems to me that the most frequently discussed reasons for server hopping now are to set up alliance servers and to look for emissaries.

It doesn't appear that server instability is much of an issue because Rare hasn't done anything to address either of these things. And the only people I see complaining about it have nothing to say about server instability, but rather claim it's an "exploit" that shouldn't be used.

I'd say my crew server hops about 80% of the time, mainly looking for emissaries and crews doing events.

Is it good or bad? Until Rare implements a "cool-down", I'd say it's fine.

I have wondered how server hopping influences server population. For example, if you hop into a dead server, sail around a bit looking for something, and then leave, does that "reset" some timer and leave that server up for longer, thereby leaving another empty server in the queue for longer, and creating an overall feeling of emptiness on the seas? I certainly don't know the answer, but I've wondered.

One thing is for certain: Rare needs to figure out how to keep servers filled more. There should never be empty servers. I've heard the argument for more ships per server. But, if the servers are empty, who cares if the limit is 6 ships or 20?

@sammyr0cks
I have no idea how Rare populates servers. I am pretty sure that at least some of it now depends on whether you "leave game" through the in game menu or you just restart the game.

If you restart the game it leaves your session open for several minutes because it gives you the option to rejoin the previous session. Whereas, if you use the "leave game" option it closes out your session.

Personally, when I server hop I restart the game. With an SSD it doesn't take any longer to load and it keeps me from loading back into the same server I just left. I have found if I use the "leave game" option, it closes my session and then occasionally I will load right back into the same server at the same outpost.

IF the server is completely dead and I'm looking for PVP I'll hop a few times. I usually get bored after four or 5 jumps and just quit though.

for now server hopping is still pretty common with my crew, having completed almost everything the game has to offer over the period of almost 3 years the game has been out, we find ourselves hopping servers simply to find other players. I think that this is the biggest reason people server hop these days, is to pvp. I also think maybe rare needs to decrease the amount of servers that are in play at the moment so that the more active servers stay populated longer. it is not uncommon right now to go for hours without even seeing another player anywhere in the current servers, and i think that is one of the biggest ongoing issues we have had with sea of thieves.