Arena and Rare Communication

@the-staples-89 There was a bug in the main game right after the communication was removed where you could turn communication back on. Not many knew about it, especially not the kind of people who complained about Arena toxicity. And I wondered: "Isn't this bug the exact same as default mute?" Who was getting bullied when this bug was in place? No one. When the people who want cross crew communication turn it on, they know what they are getting into and won't throw a fit when another player calls them a loser.
I say that you would have to turn cross crew chat on for every single game manually, just in case a newer player accidentally turned it on once so then it gets reset after every game.
In fact, when I played Arena, I wanted other players to spout the nastiest things they could think of so then I could get them banned before they did that on someone else. Players in games like Sea of Thieves should either have thick skin or turn voice chat off for other crews. It's really just that simple.
Trash talking is okay, being toxic is okay, spawncamping and trashtalking is annoying but still okay. The sort of players who report don't know that, and in many cases don't care, they hope Rare will ban someone for being mean in a PvP online game. Turning off Arena chat won't change those people, it will only increase their use of reporting in Adventure.

Rare won't reverse the decision because they don't want to look bad. That doesn't change that their "fix" is a poorly thought out way to end reports. Sure, it's effective in removing reports, but it's not the right way to do it in my opinion.

Playing Arena lately is just weird. As you said, the chest beams and map are broken. Also, hitreg is so much worse in Arena. I've done TDMs recently, and many times me and my opponent will drain our entire bullet inventory on each other and not get a kill. I've also had tons of sword backtracking issues on my regions' servers.
But, the matchmaking isn't so bad anymore. The game is super lenient on starting games. One time, I was in sloop arena and the game started with 2 ships full and 1 with one player that quit as soon as the game started. Then it was just about taking out the one other ship on the server. I'm not sure if I've just had a few flukes but it is refreshing to only wait 5 minutes for a game, which is done a lot more if you're on open crew.

@the-staples-89
A minor example of some sword weirdness in Arena:

@the-staples-89 #BringBackArena1.0!!!

So much better than this PvP cannonball farm spawncamp tdm mess we have now.

@klutchxking518 #BringBackArena1.0
Yeah, Arena 1.0 was a snapshot of adventure, except no one is ever friendly to one another. There was strategy involved in "Should I get these 3 chests right here, or go contest Green's 6?" It wasn't about PvE Lording 9 chests and winning, as many people said. It was about remembering who was closest to what maps, and how many they ended up digging. The fight against a crew was about choosing the right target to prioritize time, not about going to the closest ship to get as much cannon shots as possible.
In Arena 1.0, When you fought another ship, it was a real battle. You sink them, you take their chests, and then you defend yourself from ships trying to take your chests. In new Arena, it is about getting an advantage on the weakest ship to farm out as many cannon shots as possible... definitely doesn't compare to classic fights.
Some problems with Arena 1.0 were the double sellposts, and stupid games when crews quit. Double sellposts made it hard to defend another ship from selling and incentivized running. And then the quitting. Having only 3 ships in an old Arena game was a roll of the dice on who wins... You either fight crew A and let crew B dig chests uninterrupted, or you fight crew B and let crew A dig chests uninterrupted (and you can't dig chests because the other two ships are at the best islands). Single sellposts and quitting penalties would help old Arena more than new in my opinion.
On top of those issues was intentionally not digging up the last chest on a map to hold up the game to force people to fight. While annoying, I kind of liked how it changed up the meta of a game so that PvP was way more rewarding than PvE, especially if the winning crew was camping the island. The problem with that tactic is that everyone started using it, so it consolidated the meta too much. To fix that, I would add defined times that Map Group 1 was active, and when that deactivated, there would be a wait until Map Group 2 was active, and then Group 3 right after to allow for last minute sells. This would remove the tactic and get Arena away from being so chest focused.

I know Arena 3 would never happen, but if I were in charge of Arena 3, I would add:

• Revamped classic Arena with revamped new Arena, and maybe even a mode that incentivizes player v. player fights rather than ship v. ship. These 3 would randomly be spun up for a game, not something that could be chosen, so that you don't split the playerbase. Instead of "The Battle of Sunken Grove", you would get "The Classic Battle/Capture/War of Sunken Grove" and that's how you'd know what mode you were playing (along with icons and whatnot).
• More cosmetics/titles, of course
• Ranked. Instead of an emissary, you have points that go up depending on your finish in a game. Those point tiers give certain ledger rewards at the end of each month.
• Training? Maybe something small where you're on top of the Arena tavern, and you can train in all kinds of pvp (sword tactics, gunfire, cannon fire, throwable aim).
• If this was real you'd might have to raise the Arena cap to 75, though I would go back and give max level players experience based on their exploits after reaching max level, many would jump directly to 75, which is fine because if Arena 3 was real you wouldn't need a level goal to get those players to play. It would also be disrespectful to those players' time to say "oh, here's 25 more levels that you have to grind when you've played 400 games after hitting level 50 lol". Basically, the Triumphant set is the thing you get while working from 50-75 instead of this add-on to 50 that is separate from regular progression. I guess you could argue that Triumphant is an invisible level 75, and I'd agree; level 75 isn't really that big of a deal.
• I don't know how Arena servers work, but it seems like quite a lot of islands are loaded inside the red sea. I say, any island/rock touching a block around the arena zone can stay, but everything else should go. I would cry immersion but I seriously can't remember the last time I looked at the horizon out of the red sea during an Arena game. Save lag/hitreg, get rid of the scenery.
• Arena communication is back, but it has to be turned on for every game you join, even on the same server (resets after a server merge). Give it a warning message with something along the lines of "Online interaction not rated by the ESRB". That would deter thin-skinned pirates from turning it on without thinking, and protect it from being accidentally toggled and allowing those who don't want to hear it a bad experience when they don't know how to turn it off.
• Optimizing performance rather than quality. Idk, maybe the Series X doesn't need to be 4k when you need to see more frames? Of course, most 4k TVs max out at 60 fps, so there'd need to be some detection along with that. I can't really speak to how this might work.

That's what I'd change to Arena, I know it's kind of off topic but I just started typing and now I'm here, with a finished rant.

@grumpyw01f yes. Just yes.

@grumpyw01f i like your idea for arena 3.0
My idea is a bit different but i think it would eliminate cannonball farming and force you to sink other players. Also give us the option to unmute if we chose! But this is how i would go about arena 3.0 if rare decided to revamp it.

First give the tdmers a mode and this is how id lay it out for them
Have it where there is no boats at all just one island and a couple of the arena sell points (the stationary boat) and circle the island with them 4-5 of them. And have the players spawn on them. They can use its 2 cannons to launch to the island an fight it out lke they normaly do. The only points they get are from the kills they get (kinda like how the current arena is) this way they still get island fighting and launching out of cannons wich they seem to like (gotta get those mid air shots lol)

As for the navel battle arena here is how id go about fixing it
First get rid of digging the chest and points for kills and cannonball hits.
Have it so that every time a boat sinks a chest floats up (kinda like emmisary flags do) and that chest is the ONLY way to get points (well if you manage to sell it without it being stolen from you).
It stops cannonball farming, idk about spawnkilling cause people like to troll but it does stop the cannon farm.

In order to get any points you either have to sink a boat and sell the chest that floats up or steal chests from other boats and sell them.

Now if you sink you lose HALF of your points you built up instead of the -1k. Make it more devistating to sink because currently if your 4-5k in the lead and you sink you will still be in the lead. Make sinking hurt point wise and if your at 0 points then make it -1k per sink, bring it into the negatives (up to -2k) so you have to go on a sinking/stealing rampage to recover.

There has been plenty of feedback from the community that rare could have used to make it a more viable mode to play but instead chose not to listen to them and instead just took the abandon ship route.

If we could also get rid of the disconnects occupying a crewspot for 15 minutes too, that would be great. That's so terrible ... omg.

@the-staples-89

Wait times are so atrocious that it's unplayable. I would like to play Arena, really, but I can't sit and spend 30 minutes of my play time waiting for just one match to start.

I'm actually now wishing they'd add the Legendary Weapons to some big PvP commendation for Reaper's Bones so they can be earned in Adventure. I used to disagree with giving an alternative way to unlock these, but the wait times in Arena are just so bad now that it's no longer realistic to even attempt to win 240 matches if you aren't already very close to that number.

Arena is on life support and understandably they aren't interested in investing time and effort to breath new life into it.

@eratikstorm said in Arena and Rare Communication:

@the-staples-89 said in [Arena and Rare Communication]

Have it so that every time a boat sinks a chest floats up (kinda like emmisary flags do) and that chest is the ONLY way to get points (well if you manage to sell it without it being stolen from you).

Now if you sink you lose HALF of your points you built up instead of the -1k. Make it more devistating to sink because currently if your 4-5k in the lead and you sink you will still be in the lead. Make sinking hurt point wise and if your at 0 points then make it -1k per sink, bring it into the negatives (up to -2k) so you have to go on a sinking/stealing rampage to recover.

I agree with both of these points. My friends have always thought the reward should be for sinking a ship and not hitting it as much as possible while keeping it afloat and the crew incapacitated.

Also, the crews that would Load up a rowboat and scuttle their own ship while camping the turn in knowing that the could not lose any points if they never spawned their ship caused issues in sloop servers, and I think negative points would help with some of that behavior.

The problem with rewarding only sinking is that ships are getting hit often by multiple other ships. How do you determine who actually sank the ship? Plus by not rewarding cannon hits, game activity would not be rewarding.
The TDMing ... yeah another arena mode for that would be quite interesting.

@paul-quin-pq well the points come from a chest that floats up from the shipwreck. He who gets it and sells it gets the points.
As fot making it a more rewarding well think about it like this, you gotta sink the crew to get their chest. Now they are at half their points since they sunk and have several choices.
1 go back and sink the crew that put them in that situation to even the playing feild.
2 find other ships to sink to get back up in points
3 camp the outpost and try to steal some chests

Another thing i just though about for arena 3.0 is make selling your own chest worth like 500 points and normal chests 1k so getting your own chest back is still an option

@the-staples-89 A quick thing I would say is that you would need some other way to get points, so as to prevent ties. There would be so many ties in this way.
Here's a suggestion(not a full solution, though): make the base price 1,000 but add on to it however many points the enemy ship lost when they sunk. This would prevent bullying of a weaker crew maybe? Still, there would be so much room for ties.

I say, bring back a revamped Arena 1.0 and make Arena 2.0 less about farming cannon shots, and have both be part of Arena. Make a more player close combat focused mode, as you suggested. Imagine having everyone start on Smuggler's Bay or Old Faithful Isle!

I completed Professional Sea Dog and now I'm kinda over arena. The matchmaking and all the aim-botting ... Not sure if it's worth going through all that for another 240 wins to get the Legendary Sea Dog title. I rather do hunter's call. Much more rewarding. lol

I have been playing SoT off and on for about 9mo now, and have recently started to focus on Arena more. I'm playing with one of my sons (who made LSD in recent months) and we're actually having a very good time, and getting at least a couple wins per day on average. At this rate, in 2-3 months I'll probably make LSD myself, which is a nice goal to have.

Anyways, I do hope that even if Arena doesn't get new content, there can at least be some effort made to address bugs that have been added over the past few months. One of the worst offenders is the chest light pillar bug, which shows the chest as still being on the island even when it's actually aboard someone's ship (you have to check your map table to see which one). There are plenty of other issues, especially hitreg and general jankiness (loading in and not being able to interact with the cannons, wheel, etc, or the "god mode" bug where people become invulnerable).

I don't personally miss voice chat in Arena, though we did have some pretty fun interactions with folks from time to time. One time we were getting camped by another crew and they and I developed a whole running joke about some snake they were cooking on the stove. Beating the camp became a contest to see who could claim the "hot snake" as soon as it was done, and that was pretty funny tbh. But overall I can see why they removed it, and even now with Pirate Chat, some players see fit to spam "rolls on deck" and so forth, which is unfortunate but less bad than hearing bannable stuff over voice, I suppose.

Anyways, just adding my voice to the choir here. Arena is actually quite fun, and great PVP practice. Even if nothing new gets added, it would be nice if it wasn't actively broken.

I personaly would love to see what rares stance is on the hit registration because i run around 50-60 ping and my cannon game use to be on point (to me anyways) but now i have to rely on a second player on my boat to walk my shots in where they need to be because ive got plenty of recordings showing a shot miss but in reality it hit, just not on my screen. Or see a shot hit but nothing. I hate seeing a chainshot complety miss but yet watch the mast drop. Or see all my shots hitting and i hear "more to the right" so i correct and watch my shots miss but what random masts go down.
Right now i cant trust my own aim with a cannon because what i see on my screen doesnt match what others or the server sees.
As for gun/sword play its just as bad and again i have pleeeeeenty of footage to back it.
I know other games has their own hitreg issues (well depending on the game) but this is by far the worst.
And i know others i sink out in adventure experience it also because im still being called a hacker cause "i put 4 sniper shots in you and you didnt eat or die" and yet on my end none ever hit, heck some times i even see the bullet hit me but no damage to me.
And this has been an issue for a while and the only thing we get from rare pretaining to it is in the patch notes under "known issues"
Its been an issue for waaaay to long and no word from rare other than the copy and pasted patch notes.

I want to how rare is handling it, or progress to solving the issue, or anything other than the patchnotes copy and pasted answer. Some form of news is better than anything cause its only getting worst with the more stuff being added.
I doubt others would go for it but if it means a fix on hitreg im game for it. I wouldnt mind a season devoted to fixing hitreg and other quality of life stuff. Kinda like how shrouded spoils went. Again thats my opinion but if anyone else has ideas please thow them down cause i would love to hear them.

TLDR: hitreg is getting to the point of cant trust shots, cannons, or swords. And can rare please give us any info as to the steps to solve it or progress cause its been an issue way to long and only getting worst.