PvP Arena not fun for newbies

@saynt-sorrows Welcome to arena. Just a heads up there are specific commendations that require large numbers of specific weapon kills.

Also if you are not ready for pvp the arena might not be the place, or maybe it is so you can try and get better.

Better luck next time.

@saynt-sorrows it is how the game is set up. Just don't try to win, and just practice.

Other info, some lobbies are going to be more sweaty than others.

@Saynt-Sorrows The reason why people spawn camp you is beacause they're trying to complete the kill commendations. And newer players are usually an easier target.

@saynt-sorrows the only progression is skill based. I was talking about arena mode.

And if you can't get a chance to fight in Arena, try a different tactic.

@saynt-sorrows

Just as in the Adventure mode, if you find yourself in a spawn camping situation and have no intent to fight yourself out of it... you can scuttle in the crew menu. This will sink the ship, which naturally means in the Arena a loss of 1000 silver, but I doubt that is a concern at that point.

As indicated by others they most likely are trying to fast track their weapon commendations, but it doesn't mean you have no options.

@saynt-sorrows you know they are coming at that point and what their approach is. So, guard your ladders, sail to avoid them and be aware, learn from it and try and adapt try new methods they are predictable at that point? Isn't your whole idea to learn to PvP?

They are beating you by outplaying you, if your goal is to learn, improve and become better at PvP... you have to be willing to lose and die a lot. Scuttling gives you another chance to try again. Use it to learn how to respond to boarders.

My son is a proper Sea Dog and talks me into joining him on arena sometimes, I hated it when we first played galley arena and stopped playing because of the lobbies mainly. Then I started playing sloop arena with him a bit and it was much better because I was much better by then. Treat it as practice, you'll come last every time at first but you still get rewarded for that, then you'll start coming 3rd sometimes and eventually you'll start doing well. It is excellent practice for adventure mode, that feels like a stroll in the park afterwards..

@saynt-sorrows said in PvP Arena not fun for newbies:

@CotU42 That's a good point and something I will think about. Question: how do you keep your boat under control, your cannon going, your ship repaired, and your ladders unboarded? (Assuming that you are solo, as is often the case when you aren't queueing with a friend.)

So, it is a very broad question you ask here and there isn't one approach or generic always do this and you succeed type of formula. It is mainly about priorities and awareness.

My personal point of view is that as long as I am still floating I have not lost. Naturally in Arena with the point system and all that, there are times where sinking can be a strategic move, but if your goal it to learn to PvP for adventure this idea is very true. So, here I go... I will try to answer your query:

The largest threat to your ships safety is where you are no longer on your ship be it due to a death or being knocked off into the seas. If you aren't on your ship, there is no means to act to keep it alive. Therefore it is paramount to pay attention to flying cannon fire, both in terms of actual cannonballs flying at your as a direct hit or even a knock off can be the end and that of flying pirates, as this is a clear indicator that someone is trying to board. Simply put, a single death, a single knock off at the wrong time can simply mean defeat! Not always, sometimes you have multiple chances, but it surely can be done by a single mistake if the timing is just wrong and there is nobody to correct it for you (this is where a crew really comes into play).

Keeping pirates off your ship is extremely important, listening to distinct sounds of as mentioned above a pirate being shot off (it sounds different than a cannonball), mermaids appearing and the splash when they grab the ladder. When you hear these queues you should act upon them, pay attention, steer the ship away from them if needed or be near the ladders to blast them off and be ready.

Then we have the health state of your ship, the water level within your hull and how much water you are taking in. Now many new pirates believe that having holes is a disaster and must be remedied as quickly as possible, but in all honesty as long as you can manage the water level with buckets the holes themselves are less important. However if you ever hear your ship creak loudly, you need to be bucketing... it is like a death breath to your ship, a last cry out for help before the bell rings. When repairing, first manage your water level... then plank. The bucket is more effective, it is literally your most powerful tool.

Staying on the move is vital, if you are a standing still you are a sitting duck and naval positioning is something you will need to learn. How to avoid broadsides, when can you take a hit or open up opportunities to attack, how to switch it up to avoid boarders, etc. this is so dependent on the area you are in, the movement of others, the state of your ship and all that this purely comes with experience. This is the most hard thing to judge and yet vital to naval combat, especially as a solo and where the above about holes comes mainly into play. It might be better to simply run down, fill your bucket and head back up to steer the ship. Naval positioning will determine whether you can apply pressure on the others, whether they can apply pressure to you by which I mean having lines to attack. Naval combat is all about who can apply pressure better than the other and how they deal with it, whether they can reset or push when needed to tip the other to a state of no return.

A quick advice, just put your sails forward and leave them like that, you are to busy with juggling others that managing catching the wind is the least important and having them facing forward is the most consistent and beneficial choice if you aren't managing it. You can even raise your sails a bit to half way to make it easier to navigate. Once you get better at managing everything at the same time, that is when you can start fiddling around with sails and optimizing your naval positioning, but when you are learning just have them face forward and raise them a bit so you can see. Find a speed at which you are comfortable, but don't go much less than half way as going slower makes it easier for you, it also makes it easier for others... it is a balancing act.

Then we come to attacking, this is where it gets tricky as on the one hand I am telling you to focus on your survival and yet if you don't apply any pressure on the others this means they are free and safe to do as they please. This is where the naval positioning and priorities come into fruition; you will create windows in which you can attack and in which you have time to bucket and repair - recover and reset. Try using the windows where you have a chance to attack to deal damage, aiming for peoples masts, cannon areas when you broad side each other or hitting vital areas to maximize water flow are all to be considered.

I will try and point out how I set my priorities:

1. Make sure I don't sink if I hear the death cry of my ship, as in I will literally fill my bucket during a fight... but at that point you either kill your opponent quick or you sink - if you are lucky you can throw out the bucket, jump around and fill it again. Yet this is like clutch play situations and you should try and avoid this situation, but you know you died, you got knocked off and they boarded you... it happens it is tense and it is your last chance and even if you win the pirate on pirate fight, if it took to long you will still sink.
2. Get rid of any pirate on my ship and/or avoid them boarding me.
3. Get back moving! If you failed preventing the board, most likely your opponent will be running to the anchor to drop it... use this moment to get the advantage in the fight and ensure they aren't on your ship for long... yeah your anchor drops, you are sitting still and they are moving in to position themselves to blast you to smithereens or send more boarders. First get rid of them, then raise your anchor to get moving again as they aren't just simply going to let you do so. Catching the anchor is usually the wrong move unless you have a team you know will be able to guard you and give you the time to lock it back into place. Steer if needed, then jump down and grab a bucket of water if you know you are taking on water... check the level it is at, then head back up to steer your ship towards a safer area so you can reset. Manage your water levels and plank up - do pop your head out when you are repairing, you need to know whether your naval positioning is ok and whether you have more time to fully repair or whether you should be back steering before you continue or whether there is an opportunity to apply pressure to them.
4. Head back into battle and try it all again.

Being alone on a ship is all about efficiency, paying attention and smart choices. It is hard and as someone that fights as a solo even in adventure mode against larger crews, it is the most rewarding and most frustrating experience the game has to offer. Juggling everything and keeping all the balls up in the air is not easy.

P.S. if you are running a sword and you are spawning back into a hostile situation, try blocking and jumping left or right... it can sometimes mean you dodge a shot or take less damage. The most important thing in battle is keep moving, whether that is pirate on pirate or ship on ship.

1. gunning your ship down. Yeah that is arena.

2. scuttle. Same as adventure.

Unless you actually like it, you should stop playing arena. However if you decide you still want to play it here are some tips:

1. Only play sloop arena. It's a lot easier than galleon because quicker matchmaking and easier ship to control.
2. Get a good team mate to play with. It's a lot harder to spawn camp 2 people than 1.
3. Spawncampers will often try to identify the weakest target in the lobby, so to decrease the chance of being targeted you can wear sweaty outfits, examples you could wear:
   Sovereign hat
   Admiral shirt
   One of the sovereign shirts
   Shirtless with tattoos
   A bilge rat outfit
   Don't wear a jacket

@cotu42 Just lurking in this thread but I appreciate this post, thanks

Just to be clear, while certainly people got to Arena for practice, that doesn't imply its designed for it. Majority of people come to it to compete. It seems silly to complain about being targeted out when players could be merely just playing. That isn't to say you aren't getting camped, however, as others have put it commendations are linked to kills. So that means some people would rather focus on commendation farming over competing. I guess my question become this, what is practice to you? What is sounds like to me is that your opponents must be forced to go easy on you or simply allow you more special treatment than they would afford any other ship. That to me defeats the purpose of a competitive mode. To many people, practice is just playing normally, its a good place to hone skills or try new moves, but that doesn't mean everyone else must just comply with your whims.

The Arena is a lost cause in my opinion. It never actually scratched the itch of the PvP crowd. There was too much focus on non PvP things like digging chests and a point system. Deathmatch is a tried and tested mode, why fix what ain't broke? Simple elimination on death is what most people want.

Hell, go broke with BR if you want. SoT's honestly makes good use of it. Whole map gets used, different islands have caches of special munitions like curses and their ilk. To ensure reasonable round time, make the map close with the Red. I'd imagine you could increase ship count by reallocating resources not in play like the Kraken, Storm, Megs, and events.

@saynt-sorrows My advice would be to wait on Arena at least until you are Pirate Legend.
The matchmaking is bad because there is a very low amount of people still playing Arena due to its lack of updates.
While spawncamping is annoying, it is in the spirit of Arena because of the commendations that require you to kill 200 players with each weapon and 100 with each Glorious weapon. It sucks but nothing can change that except doing your best to keep them off of your ship in the first place. This won't work 100% of the time but do your best.

Your Arena mode does nothing for me because either I don't get to shoot the cannons due to players with perfect aim hitting my cannon for days from impossible ranges

Yeah, its hard to practice cannon aiming when you get outskilled... I would suggest doing skeleton fleets or flameheart fleets in Adventure.

Ah, and yes, I can't even talk to them in an attempt to hash something out.

Uh oh guys, a newer Arena player that wants cross crew communication? Maybe removing it is a bad idea?

oh boy what a waste of out this game mode it ............its way way to slow to be fun waiting in lobbies...i would just take the lobbies completely out of the game mode and just load you i to 1 of the 3 AFK ship
...but my jees is it a trash fire gamemode this is it second fix and probably no more support ever.
i can olnt talk for open gallions as meny meny crew are completely confussed what the gole of the gamemode is is stay go get a chest ...it but it pays less then 20 cannonballs hitting a ship.......pro tip in open if you log in and the person on the wheel isnt communicating with his team is not going to be a good game ..........but waiting in lobbies is a wast of your time avoid unless you find the right 3 friends with a passion of a punishment in waiting around for the server to load up.

@saynt-sorrows

That's a good point and something I will think about. Question: how do you keep your boat under control, your cannon going, your ship repaired, and your ladders unboarded? (Assuming that you are solo, as is often the case when you aren't queueing with a friend.)

I would say, find a crewmate to play Arena with, then you can have roles to cover all of that.
You want a driver, and a cannoneer. If the driver is driving, the cannoneer fixes. If the cannoneer is shooting, the driver fixes. Whoever is closest to the ladders/hears the boarder should take care of them to the best of their ability. Either the driver or cannoneer can board the other crew if they tell the other that they are doing it and they won't be needed on the ship for a bit.
Also, don't be afraid to change roles mid-battle. This is a game about having fun after all.
Besides that, I'll mirror @CotU42