Spawn rate on Phantom's, Corals and Sirens way too high

  • II DARVIN II
    Marauder
    Insider

    Apologies if this has been posted already. I looked quite a bit all over the forums and did some searches without really finding anything. So, here goes.

    All of these additions are great but please not all at once! This seems good on paper but if you are trying to get anything done other than straight up PVP (and I do love my PVP) you are in for a miserable experience.

    My crew and I have been working on getting our emissary ledgers up recently since suddenly rewards appeared with season 3.

    First stop, gold hoarder vault.
    Each quest island we are just trying to get to the wayfinder and have to stop every few steps to deal with skeletons, corals, and phantoms all at the same time. Look at compass move a few steps deal with all of that, then move on only to have it happen repeatedly on the same island then x that with multiple islands.

    Finally, we get the vault key, get into the vault and as we are raiding said vault we get MORE corals spawning in the vault while we are trying to clear it.

    Next up, order of souls, super great trying to take out a band of skeleton captains with multiple waves again with sirens (due to trips back and for to the ship), corals, phantoms also joining in.

    On another occasion I was trying to help a crewmate finish up Seabound Soul. Good times were not had visiting islands shining the lamp around to find the "story" phantom's mixed in with real phantoms (and corals ect) while we are just trying to enjoy the TT.

    Then we tried Athena's run of TH. Wasn't that a nightmare to get through. My crew is frustrated as all heck as everything we are trying to do just takes so much longer. I like my PVP as I said but sometimes it's cool to just be a pirate doing x marks the spot, treasure hunts, puzzles and such. Right now, I don't even want to visit any islands anymore and that seems such a waste to be "stuck on the seas".

    I like these new threats, really do, just back it down a bunch or make them spawn in areas (corals on the shore or just shores of plenty, phantoms in spooky places like the wilds). Have them replace a skelly emergence or something that spawn rate felt pretty good it just seems like the RNG for skellys just got applied to the other threats too making the encounters 3x as often. It's just too much!

    I'm afraid I'm going to loose my crew.. please address it.

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  • chinapiggy
    Sailor

    I agree with this. I'm not a professional player by any means, and am absolutely average, but I love playing games in general and SOT in particular.

    For the last two nights, my sister and I have not been able to complete simple two part quests without us getting tired and turning it off. We were trying to retrieve four chests on Crescent Isle, and it took an hour! Fighting off teams of four or five Ocean crawlers, skellys, phantoms, and often all the same time.

    I really like the new mobs but would like less of them all at once!
    I still want the game to be a challenge, and I'm re-iterating that I very much like the new update, but I do think the spawn rates need to be tweaked.
    I know the common answer to this will probably just be 'git gud' but I wanted to agree with OP.

  • Mutinous Mel
    Lord
    Insider

    It’s the ocean crawlers that bother me most. I’ll pull up to a quest island and already see a handful of them waiting for me. Fight em off and more are already spawning. While it’s super cool to have new enemy types, it’s absolutely tiring fighting them off wave after wave after wave. The spawn rate needs to be drastically reduced. You can’t even visit an island and enjoy the view for a moment without being constantly interrupted. They’ve honestly killed any interest I’ve had in doing normal voyages/island visits.

  • Captain Fixx
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    I concur. This has been a vocalized problem from my crew. The rate at which the Crustys, Phantoms, and Sirens spawn is too high.

    • Immediately after eliminating the Pirate Captain(s) which is the target of your OoS voyage these ambient spawns occur. Immediately. There is zero time to get back to the ship.

    • Sometimes within 3 seconds of touching the water at an Outpost the siren's music begins to play. I mean we are stocking are ship in those moments and being attacked. I like the sirens but they are spawning far too often and in place of the lesser threat of the common shark which I have not seen one of since Season 3 dropped.

    • Destinations for quests are seriously prepopulated with Phantoms and Crustys when the target is the Skeleton Crews, riddles, dig sites. Having to wade through persistent thick spawns of these new enemy types is taking the enjoyment out of doing the thing that you sailed there to do.

    • I'd like to highlight the large/red Crusty as a significant problem. It takes two cannon hits to kill it with its "shield" up. Far more rounds from a firearm than you can carry and you cannot get close to it without its ground pound consuming 80%ish of your health. Its simply not a balanced mob within the confines of what a pirate can carry in inventory.

    The core issue here is that the high frequency of these spawns is elongating the time it takes to complete an activity at any given location, which is already quite long in some instances. The time spent off ship is the risk interval in a PvE voyage. So what this has done is unbalanced the loop even further between PvE and PvP activities in Sea of Thieves.

    The risk factor of leaving your ship to complete the on-land task has has always been crucial to the PvP vs PvE balance in the game. What has happened is now the PvE encounter takes even longer whilst the time to get underway for PvP is the same (or even less now that Grade V Reapers can take the Tunnels of the Damned to hop servers and preserve their Grade V sight on Emissaries).

    Either the spawns of these new enemy types, which I know Rare really wants to show off, has to be reduced or something must be done on the other side of the balance to also elongate the time needed for a PvP crew to come and get to you. Its very quick and simple to fire up your PvP ship, get underway, and go target another crew. Its not quick at all and now even longer with greater risk to wade through the mass of spawns occurring while on a PvE voyage.

    The easy answer is to simply amend the spawns, make them less frequent and less instantly triggered the moment you touch the water, set foot on an island, or complete the task on that island.

  • zokuji
    Seafarer

    Good post, though of course there are many threads on this topic - because it's a legitimate problem!

    I agree that their spawn frequency is so high that it devalues their presence and becomes an eye-rolling chore, particularly when playing solo. We need to experience some significant amount of down-time between waves - at least sometimes - to truly appreciate them; as with anything, contrast is key.

  • Hijack Hayes
    Commander
    Insider

    Wait for Season 4, I am 99.9% sure it will be toned down. This is all to drawn your attention to the new addition. Devil's Roar addition, for those of us who were sailing back then was the same, then it was nerfed, (then toned back up again. However, that's a story for another time.)

  • Schwammlgott
    Champion

    @ii-darvin-ii guys, come on...sure the spawn rate is high, these threads just appeared in the game...EVERYTIME in the last 3 years, when something new comes out, the spawn rate is incredibly high until the next update, if it's still that high in season 4, then you can come and complain...right now it's a feature

  • Sandstone42
    Seafarer

    Myself, I can't wait for Season 4 so Rare can get out of bed with Disney.

  • Ken Static
    Commander
    Insider

    I get where you're coming from. Sometimes, I do think the enemy spawning is ridiculous. But I'm admittedly mixed. While I do find them bothersome at times, they definitely are a good source of adrenaline when they just pop up and make things interesting.

  • Ruigtand NL
    Master
    Insider

    Every update its annoying destroying balanced gameplay by a overload of the next new toy.

    Too much megalodons
    Too much emergent skellyboats
    Too much cursed canon balls

    After a while they balance it and the next toy gets a buff.
    I think its not nice but super annoying and sometimes made us take a break for a while.
    More balanced introductions of new stuff would be a far better experience and more enjoyable. My guess its probably nice to stream new content since its all over the place.

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