A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...

Players are gonna be so happy when private servers come out. But..

Gonna be bad when,

• might have to pay for it
• gain no rep or gold.
• nothing you do transfers over outside private servers.
• only friends play (sounds nice but after awhile..)

The competitive side of Sea of Thieves bred an atmosphere that plagued many casual players for the few years this level of play stayed alive. A good thing, a bad thing, it doesn't really matter. Like Arena, Competitive SoT was small and niche, and the larger majority had little hope of reaching that level of play, with some bad actors leaking out from this small and niche community make life on the seas a special little hell.

The closing of NAL is a sad moment for many, but another cloud removed from the sunny sky in my eyes. The seas might find it nice that there is no greater standard for PvP, that the strategies you learned from your days of sailing are what make you a great pirate, not these spurred moments of intense action that leave awful first impressions for those unprepared.

For me at least, I can sigh and breathe that my 2 years of experience from sailing and fighting are what are still relevant to me, and future crews shouldn't have to care how much I have PvP or what conditions I PvP'd under.

You are wasting your time, when Arena closed we all gave a piece of our mind and they didnt do anything about it, its a business and well when they see what it costs to maintain the arena gamemode vs the income well is a no brainer for them that is better they get all those new players who still get excited when a megalodon spawns because those are the players who buy cosmetics.

I gave up wasting my time with threads about them providing an easier way for us to set up the scrims, actions way louder than words, they just dont care.

Here's a solution for you: Put up a Reaper's mark, and convince other PvPers to do so too. You may run into the occasional newb who doesn't understand the flag, but 5 minutes out of your day to teach them isn't too hard, right?

But for the most part, you'll have near guaranteed PvP, and with people that want to do it, rather than overfishing the PvE pond and making players quit.

@mrat13 said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

Here's a solution for you: Put up a Reaper's mark, and convince other PvPers to do so too. You may run into the occasional newb who doesn't understand the flag, but 5 minutes out of your day to teach them isn't too hard, right?

But for the most part, you'll have near guaranteed PvP, and with people that want to do it, rather than overfishing the PvE pond and making players quit.

I fly nothing but reapers, and there is like maybe 1 ship out of countless hours that will contest. The game feels dead the last few months. I walk away from my pc or watch netflix while doing little smalls thing without the slightest care becuase of the lack of being contested

@licenturion said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mc-leggers said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mrat13 said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

Here's a solution for you: Put up a Reaper's mark, and convince other PvPers to do so too. You may run into the occasional newb who doesn't understand the flag, but 5 minutes out of your day to teach them isn't too hard, right?

But for the most part, you'll have near guaranteed PvP, and with people that want to do it, rather than overfishing the PvE pond and making players quit.

I fly nothing but reapers, and there is like maybe 1 ship out of countless hours that will contest. The game feels dead the last few months. I walk away from my pc or watch netflix while doing little smalls thing without the slightest care becuase of the lack of being contested

Sounds great. Soon we don't need to ask for PVE servers. We outlived the PVP people by denying them fights all the time by running, scuttling, red sea or not fighting back. Shiver me timbers!

I don't see how lack of contested content is a good thing for a online game.

@mc-leggers An online game is more than just PvP.
Same goes for "Player interactions". There is more to it than just messing with the player in different methods.

Although if this is true, that eventually PvP minded players will give up because no one is PvP'ing with them, then MAYBE, as in a very small chance, I will end up finding myself back into the game.

I full heartily agree with this. The removal of Arena changes the skill gap of new players coming in.

Arena was a place where you could just hop on a random boat, teach yourself how to shoot off and get on other boats and try to kill other players.

NAL was something to aspire towards. I've played with a few NAL players watching them go on boats and it's fun to watch to say the least.

The removal of all these now leaves arena players bored and looking to fight and NAL players entirely nowhere. With just Adventure to keep them busy and as stated "30 second sinks".

@ix-indi-xi Well said.

@licenturion said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mc-leggers said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@licenturion said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mc-leggers said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mrat13 said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

Here's a solution for you: Put up a Reaper's mark, and convince other PvPers to do so too. You may run into the occasional newb who doesn't understand the flag, but 5 minutes out of your day to teach them isn't too hard, right?

But for the most part, you'll have near guaranteed PvP, and with people that want to do it, rather than overfishing the PvE pond and making players quit.

I fly nothing but reapers, and there is like maybe 1 ship out of countless hours that will contest. The game feels dead the last few months. I walk away from my pc or watch netflix while doing little smalls thing without the slightest care becuase of the lack of being contested

Sounds great. Soon we don't need to ask for PVE servers. We outlived the PVP people by denying them fights all the time by running, scuttling, red sea or not fighting back. Shiver me timbers!

I don't see how lack of contested content is a good thing for a online game.

I don't see a problem with it. Many online games set in a shared world separate PVP and PVE like ESO, New World etc. and thrive because of it.

SOT does not have PVP flagging but the fact that arena was not popular and a few people are complaining that there isn't enough action means that the majority are PVE people, like in most of these shared world experiences. There are still 25 000 active players on Steam alone this month (Xbox and Winstore not counted). If such a huge playerbase still doesn't give enough PVP action, it says a lot about the preferred playstyle of the community.

That is a flawed and ultimately incorrect assessment of what led the downfall of Arena. It did not fail because of the lack of PvP players but rather it was not the type of play that PVP (or PvE players for that matter) wanted in the first place. It in no way is an indication of the ratio of PvP to PvE players and says nothing about the tendencies of playstyles neither.

Your reasoning is flawed and wrong due to conclusions based on incomplete data that was selectively chosen to support your own agenda, ignoring all other factors which DID affect the low turnout in Arena (not a popular mode, long queue times, players not playing mode as intended (TDMers), and griefers/spawn-campers/cannon farmers all being ignored yet actually the cause of low populations in the mode).

I understand the frustration, and I get where the NAL folks are coming from, but I really do need to emphasize patience for this. The custom servers aren't something easily created, nor are they something that will take a short amount of time to push to live, unfortunately.

From what I've heard and understood, the existing custom servers still leave more than to be desired, and have some bugs which is why only partners have access. I do however have faith, that when these servers ARE finished, they'll breathe new life back into NAL, and we can start seeing more awesome contests, but people just need to be a patient with Rare. I don't disagree that the lack of communication could have been handled better, but I also think that some folks have gotten a bit too upset at Rare in this situation.

All in all, I would just advise people to understand that they WILL come out, they just need to wait a bit. I think we could all agree that we'd rather have a fully-working custom server, than one that's a buggy mess, right?

@licenturion said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@dlchief58 said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@licenturion said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mc-leggers said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@licenturion said in [A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...]/(/community/forums/post/1691370):

@mc-leggers said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

@mrat13 said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

Here's a solution for you: Put up a Reaper's mark, and convince other PvPers to do so too. You may run into the occasional newb who doesn't understand the flag, but 5 minutes out of your day to teach them isn't too hard, right?

But for the most part, you'll have near guaranteed PvP, and with people that want to do it, rather than overfishing the PvE pond and making players quit.

I fly nothing but reapers, and there is like maybe 1 ship out of countless hours that will contest. The game feels dead the last few months. I walk away from my pc or watch netflix while doing little smalls thing without the slightest care becuase of the lack of being contested

Sounds great. Soon we don't need to ask for PVE servers. We outlived the PVP people by denying them fights all the time by running, scuttling, red sea or not fighting back. Shiver me timbers!

I don't see how lack of contested content is a good thing for a online game.

I don't see a problem with it. Many online games set in a shared world separate PVP and PVE like ESO, New World etc. and thrive because of it.

SOT does not have PVP flagging but the fact that arena was not popular and a few people are complaining that there isn't enough action means that the majority are PVE people, like in most of these shared world experiences. There are still 25 000 active players on Steam alone this month (Xbox and Winstore not counted). If such a huge playerbase still doesn't give enough PVP action, it says a lot about the preferred playstyle of the community.

That is a flawed and ultimately incorrect assessment of what led the downfall of Arena. It did not fail because of the lack of PvP players but rather it was not the type of play that PVP (or PvE players for that matter) wanted in the first place. It in no way is an indication of the ratio of PvP to PvE players and says nothing about the tendencies of playstyles neither.

Your reasoning is flawed and wrong due to conclusions based on incomplete data that was selectively chosen to support your own agenda, ignoring all other factors which DID affect the low turnout in Arena (not a popular mode, long queue times, players not playing mode as intended (TDMers), and griefers/spawn-campers/cannon farmers all being ignored yet actually the cause of low populations in the mode).

Problem is we don’t have any official data except anecdotal ‘evidence’. There are however likely a lot more PVP threads, or lack thereof these days in the communities.

What is a fact is that PVP usually attracts a lot of bad actors though, like you mentioned in your last sentence and led to the closure and low popularity of arena.

Again you are making false equivalencies with no data backing that up to back up your own agenda. There are as many "bad actors" partaking in PvE as in PVP activities and you have no proof otherwise. Likewise many of those accused of such in PvP are in fact players actually paying the game as designed but came across a "bad actor" taking part in PvE but got their feelings hurt because they were attacked...as allowed in the game. I'd say filing false reports because someone attacked you in game (as allowed and thusly stated to be so by the developers) is poor sportsmanship and as much a "bad actor" as PVP players who actually are being disruptive.

If you are going to use anecdotal data, you need to look at ALL of it and not just pick and choose what suits your agenda as you did. Fact remains that Arena was not cancelled by a lack of PvP players but by a variety of reasons that are in no way related to that false supposition. I gave SEVERAL reasons why Arena failed, yet again you choose only to focus on the ones that suit your purposes and ignore all the rest. And none of the reasons was due to a lack of PvP players but rather that the PvP focused players were looking for something different than what Arena offered (backed up by the tendency of many to take over a server and play TDM instead of the objective).

Oh the competitive side of this game is dwindling?

Thank God.

@ix-indi-xi said in A desperate call to help support the ''competitive'' side of the game...:

Yes I know what you will all start to say, the game is not meant to be ''competitive'' we get it, due to bugs/stability, pick your excuses...

Now for the individuals that have not heard of the recent update in the niche competitive community of the game, today the NAL has basically pulled out and gave an update that they will no longer be hosting any competitive games for the foreseeable future (Who knows in the future it may make a comeback, but it's looking bleak).

Short backstory:
I get it, Arena was dis-banded, I was a bit upset, some players completely quit, but I was still, among others optimistic about the future, and following its announcement I decided to join the NAL for guaranteed ''sweaty Galleon fights'' where in adventure you could sail for hours upon hours and not find opponents that would offer a challenge. Hell, at a certain skill level in the game, you can play for a few days and just by luck you could not have any PvP encounters that challenged you...

READ Carefully before you twist my words. Adventure DOES have PvP, but the quality is questionable at best, Pirates that run and scuttle when you catch up to them, crews that are clueless and sink in 30 seconds flat because no one in their team knows what a plank and a bucket of water does, stacking loot and/or server hopping looking and baiting for PvP gets frustrating, players that cry because you shot a cannonball at their ship boarded and blundered them before they could react, crews that will shout racial/homophobic slurs because you betrayed their alliance doing a FotD, is at large not a fun experience to be had. It gets old fast...

Which is why there was an influx of 4 man teams signing up for NAL to find consistent fun fights the past few months since Arenas closure (If that doesn't tell you something, then idk what will), players were not satisfied with the PvP that they were finding in Adventure {At least concerning bigger crews that were decent}:

• Yes the competitive community is small and ''niche'', yet most players there are loyal and have put thousands of hours into the game.

• Yes, the game is buggy, fights being decided because one crewmate black screened for 1+ minute is a bitter pill to swallow. Yet still continuing to put up with it should say something about their dedication...

• Yet through all that, a lot of us were OPTIMISTIC and stuck through the competitive scene to continue playing, continue making friends in a small tight knit community, continue to supply up for 2 hours for 1 hour worth or less of actual fighting time on private servers, continue in getting better and showing up to not let 7+ other players down... A LOT of energy and time spent for what essentially to be fun and intense Naval galleon fights is under-estimated.

• We didn't ask much from RARE, even a revamped Private server with ships and resources at our finger tips is enough to cut time and make the Competitive community happy, but months and months of waiting and being left empty handed... Sucks... ''NDA'' when asking NAL Admins and representatives was the only answer we got when we just wanted even the smallest of updates to see if it was worth continuing, which today the question has been answered, some may seem obvious, some may continue to do private scrims with other teams at their own discretion, at large it's a big blow and people are upset...

• At this point my motivation for the game is at an all time low, not like anyone cared if I quit the game, but for a game that I really like and the cool pirates that I have met along the way and having to simply let go, it sucks, it really does...

• I have done hundreds of world events, grinded a lot of commendations, helped a lot of new players, memories that I have come across and proud of my account that I have grinded for, but that itch to have a consistent gritty and fun PvP encounter in the competitive side of the game is now gone...

So heres my sacrifice and desperate call to the RARE devs reading this post, PLEASE re-consider helping your niche and dedicated player base at the top by giving them what they want.
Private servers with multiple options to set up from the get go... No more avoiding communicating with the player base... The past few weeks felt like snail pace of getting any actual updated information, playing through a buggy game where at times it was just unplayable putting the hours in PvP scrims when new adventures came out and brought a plateau of bugs, we have been through a lot, just to be marginalized...

A sandbox game that doesn't have private/custom servers for the everyday player in 2022 should be questioned at best and scrutinized at worst...

If you have nothing nice to say but sarcastic remarks, I would advice to just ignore this post and move on...

You also have to realize, this forum is mostly full of pve players, that really can care less of pvp players, so you wont get any support regarding this topic, just go in the game and sink people, is what we do, and then they cry when they lose their loot or rage, but thats what Rare wants, so lets go, theres nowehere else to fight so lets sink adventure pirates, let them be the ones making posts about how much they hate playing for hours only to have everything stolen, maybe they listen to that? i dont care either

@wudadnoiz You mean the largest demographic of the entire SoT playerbase? Is going out of the way to make PvE players feel bad, because PvP players feel slighted really the way to go? I understand the frustration of the NAL and their players, but is directing that frustration at the rest of the community the right way to go about it?

@burnbacon It’s for PvPers, it’s for RPers, it’s for sightseers and researchers, teachers and learners, photographers and recorders, everything in between. Many players can find use in it, but it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea!

@ix-indi-xi Good things come to those who wait. Learn to have some more patience. I really don't think anyone is in a position to make demands, here.

Rare has said on a couple different occasions that custom servers are a large endeavor, and not something easily crafted, especially such to meet the needs of the NAL. Despite what some probably think, Rare DOES appreciate the NAL community, and Chappman even said on twitter that they're hard at work trying to make custom servers the best that they can be, but it's taking time, as it's a large project. It's unfortunate that the NAL decided not to continue, but I think it was done such as to not keep people's hopes up, or to continue giving vague answers.

You say that it can't be hard, yet I really don't believe you or others who are impatient about this have the slightest clue as to what sorts of technology goes into making, maintaining, and supporting a truly customizable, custom server. If it was, I imagine it would have been out by now, or that a player would have created some sort of mock-up design. But they haven't, because it simply isn't an easy task.

Oh, come on lol.. Stop acting like Rare has shot your puppy, because they haven't finished CS yet. If you honestly believe Rare is sitting in their offices, saying things like "what can we do to upset the NAL community today," I really don't know what else to tell you. They aren't out to get you, they aren't purposely ruining your experience, and they aren't purposely slacking on the creation of custom servers.

Learn to have patience. I guarantee you that when the CS are finished, the folks at NAL will come back and reignite the contests, and people will be happy. But until then, stop acting like Rare is purposely ruining your fun. That's incredibly childish to assume, just because you're not seeing immediate results.

@ix-indi-xi You may not have, but I've seen a couple people with that sort of mindset, unfortunately.

I'm not angry at all, honestly. I'm just trying to instill the idea of patience, as hard as it can be. Again, I DO respect the NAL for what it's done for the game, and the community, but some people are getting overly upset, and over-exaggerating things when they simply aren't true.

I would be upset sure, but I wouldn't take to the forums or twitter to trash on the game further, saying silly things like "the game is dead now," or "SoT won't be able to thrive without us". I would be upset, but I'd accept it for what it is, and move on.

I don't disagree on the factor of lack of communication, as I mentioned earlier. However I would also say that a lack of communication simply means they aren't ready to show off their progress yet. I think we can both agree that when gamers are shown incomplete stages of development for certain features, ideas of what could or could not be often manifest, and people tend to get upset.

As far as patience goes, I'm not sure what else I can say. I understand people feel that they've waited long enough, but I also don't feel like arbitrary time that people feel they've partaken in is grounds to make silly statements that simply aren't true.

I'm glad we can agree on that front, mate, truly. I do think that when they go live, it will bring a rush of new and old players to the game, and will revitalize the NAL community. I want to see EVERYONE happy, but like all good things in life, sometimes those things take longer to become reality.