Why are some people so desperate to PvP...

  • ZeTheNormal1
    Legend
    Insider

    @kapp16354 Even when Arena was on, we had all the right to PvP in Adventure.

    What people need to understand when they login in to a server is that PvP is always ON by default. PvP is not consensual, you don't need to agree to it. If someone wants to fight you and you don't want, your only option is to run away. There's nothing wrong with running away, as there's nothing wrong with a ship chasing you, and it still applies if the chase lasts for hours. Both parties are actors on the chase and none is to blame.

    Even if you don't have an emissary flag, there's no way for the other ship to know that you don't have any loot, even if you tell them (they don't need to believe you). Only if they board you and they see that you don't have anything. Still, they have the right to fight you and try to sink you. They might just want to steal your supplies, practice or simply have fun PvPing. You need to accept these reasons, weather you agree with them or not.

    The only thing that shouldn't happen is toxicity, even just trash talking. We should all be polite and respectful to each other. It's a game, a PvP-enabled game, a pirate game and any attack is not "personal". PvPers get a lot of fame for being toxic and for sure I know that some are but, as a PvPer myself, I can tell you that probably the majority of the times I meet toxic people are PvErs running away from me and annoyed with me chasing them. If someone crosses the line in toxicity, report them. I start recording as soon I realize I'm going to have an encounter just because of it.

    You can also report someone for spawn-camping. It's a banable offense if they are spawn-camping you without stealing your supplies and not just waiting for the water to fill up. Although, I don't agree with spawn-camping being a banable offense if no toxicity is being said. I think the people spawn-camping might just want to have some practice (again it doesn't need to be consensual) and the people being spawn-camped have a scuttle option so, they can finish it at any moment, whenever they want.

  • Liberance
    Master

    @kozakderg said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    I was doing a Tall Tale on a solo sloop (I'm a newbie with 40hrs into the game) and was heading to my destination when a Reaper Grade 1 sloop started intercepting me. I made a big circle and forced the sloop behind me as I kept sailing to my destination and tried multiple attempts to convey I am not looking for a fight and my ship has no value whatsoever. I fired my 2 white signal flare (I didn't stock up because I was doing one Tall Tale before work) took out my loud speaker and asked him politely to stop following as I was just doing a Tall Tale, multiple times. I even threw the only empty Briggsy chest, the quest gave me, overboard so the sloop can take it and leave me be.

    Why don't you just look at this as part of that Tall Tale experience instead?

    Would've really been better to just sail straight to an island without running into any problems whatsoever? And even the time one manages to do so, there's an added sense of accomplishment when you finish the quest because you know there was some risk involved and someone might have attacked you at any point. You could've lost your items.

    Next time try to lose the guys. Set up a trap for them. Make them run into a skeleton ship. Sail into a fog bank. It's no different from playing a single player open world game and having to deal with some unexpected enemy while doing something else entirely.

  • Bieltan
    Seafarer

    I mean, if they are running Reapers, thats to be expected. Sinking others is kinda the point and even if they dont get loot they get Emmi rank for the sink. Plus they may well want/need the practise in chasing down fleeing ships, you dont learn if you dont do.

    Not all Reapers will act this way, but a good chunk will. It is what it is, and FWIW at least you mitigated the inconvenience. You could also take it as an opportunity to practise your defensive sailing/boarding also.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @liberance said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    Why don't you just look at this as part of that Tall Tale experience instead?

    Other crews are part of the experience, not a distraction from it.

  • KozakDerg
    Seafarer

    @liberance Well it's not like the Sea of Thieves is lacking the inconveniences you can run into, like skelly ships, megs, or the occasional kraken, but I get what you mean. If lack of inconvenience was the case during Tall Tales, Rare wouldn't have made A Pirate's Life, private instanced.

    I am learning to live with it and rely on the checkpoints when doing tall tales to get the commendations, sailing efficiently to run in case someone decides to chase me and as a last ditch effort, abandon ship at the island I need to be on to try and get the checkpoint. Like I know PvP can happen anytime, I also know I am allowed to try and avoid it in every way possible. But sometimes I'm just looking to get a Tall Tale done before I have to do something else and it can get really inconvenient when someone decides to sink your ship and now you have to spend an extra 30 minutes sailing back to the destination you were heading to, to complete a Tall Tale.

    At the end of the day, my main focus right now is to get through the tall tales, learn a bit about the lore, get the commendations, then I will start doing the other ones, and later on even raise the PvP flag or the reaper emmi flag and practice PvP.

    I suppose in the end it comes down to how people behave. I have a friend in the SEA region and compared to the EU region, his region is a lot more timid, a lot less blood-thirsty folks who even hear you out before they start attacking you, most of the time.

    There were a handful of cases of me and my friend saying we were doing a tall tale and the chasing ship left us alone actually. Every-time I tried the same while I was playing alone on EU servers, no such luck. So far I had a singular case on EU servers where a Brig shot at my ship once but left, because they saw there was no returning fire and even the pirate who was on the same island as me, left me alone completely.

  • Nostrildumas249
    Marauder
    Insider

    It's a pirate game and the whole appeal is having epic pirate ship battles and being a pirate

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @kozakderg said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    If lack of inconvenience was the case during Tall Tales, Rare wouldn't have made A Pirate's Life, private instanced.

    They didn’t. They kept most of the Pirate’s Life chapters in the open world. When they were first released some players were frustrated that they were encountering other crews while working on them. Others can sink your ship and interfere with your progress in at least three of the five chapters. Only two of them are instanced and that was probably more of a practical decision. I believe those particular tales would have been difficult to keep in the open world considering the amount of space they take up and the additional biomes involved.

  • ScorpionKing355
    Castaway

    its not the PVP i don't like its the if me and one friend is playing and on the small ship and a 4 man crew on the biggest ship just comes along and destroys us because PVP is great but it needs to be on even footing maybe a good compromise would be playing by ship sizes

  • KAPP16354
    Seafarer
    Insider
    Founder

    @capt-steals agreed

  • Tre Oni
    Marauder
    Insider
    Founder

    @kapp16354 said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    They removes arena me and my friends love to pvp just like many love to pve. It's that simple.

    What part of sinking a ship with no resources, loot, or even a crew is PvP though? Lol

    You're shooting at a piece of floating wood. You aren't being engaged, and you're engaging no one.

    Like PvP all you want, PvP is great.. but there is something a little mindless about getting all joyed up shooting at and sinking what is essentially.. absolutely nothing.

    Some players fiend for the sink regardless, and sometimes.. it's just kind of brainless lol

    I also wouldn't call shooting at an entirely abandoned ship, with no loot to steal, resources to take, or crew to engage, PvP. Its pretty much just glorified ship despawning.

  • REALwebber2556
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    @kapp16354 you make pvp sound like a cult...well i guess reapers bones is basically a cult that encourages "true piracy" and sinking people...so problem solved! It's a cult thing! They sank them for the reapers bones...or the dark brethern...or some other cult? I don't know...everything seems to be a cult these days.

  • Liberance
    Master

    @kozakderg said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    There were a handful of cases of me and my friend saying we were doing a tall tale and the chasing ship left us alone actually. Every-time I tried the same while I was playing alone on EU servers, no such luck.

    It's psychological. Since you know they are people that can be talked to, you're assuming they can be persuaded to turn around and when they don't do it, you get frustrated because there was at least a chance they could have left you be. If it was a skelly ship slowing you down you'd probably live with it because the communication factor is not there. It's just a matter of looking at both things the same way.

  • Dr Orchamedes
    Master

    @kapp16354 said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    @dr-orchamedes ONE OF US ONE OF US

    HAHAH!

  • ElectricKnights
    Legend
    Insider

    There are a bunch of societal and psychological reasons why a number of people behave like that within this game - most especially the gaming psychology that Vc Hombre spelled out. Well said!

    I'm fully with you on how you look at it, but here's what I've come to accept.

    This game is not a game to Just do a solo tall tale before I leave for work (or whatever other predetermined scenario we wish to do, in whatever limited time period we have in mind).
    Honestly, I wish it was. I've played since beta. I've had a TON of fun with ALL aspects of the game. The player vs player ship battles are like nothing else in gaming.
    But I most love playing games without PvP that I can just feel more relaxed, play casually, and not have other people that I don't know determine how my gaming session plays out. Probably most of us have been there - Before I go to sleep tonight, I just wanted to finish off that new adventure, or this commendation, or whatever it may be - and then we end up getting ship after ship looking to fight. Even when you win every one of those fights - it's not what I was looking to do that night and it made my play session take SO much longer, and so on and so forth.
    Well, that's because I was wrongly expecting this game to play out the way I wanted it to. More-so, because I was expecting strangers to be like-minded with me (which is highly unusual in all matters haha).

    So, it makes me a little sad, because I'd keep playing far more often if the game wasn't like this - but it IS.

    I think we get a bit spoiled sometimes, when we have so many sessions where you CAN get a nice, peaceful gaming session in and you did what you wanted for as long as you wanted. Then, on that rare occasion where you REALLY just want it to go quick and smooth - and it turns out going the opposite way - it's frustrating! Mostly frustrating because you/we are not really upset about the game or the other players - we're battling the happenstance, completely out of our control, that turned things so that you wouldn't have that quick and peaceful session when you most wanted it. :D

    I have my personal opinions and preferences, but they're not going to change the way the game is - and, perhaps, it's what is best for the game. I'm not the one to decide that.
    The only thing I can do is decide what is best for me. I've had many years of fun in this game, but I don't play it as much as I used to, because I prefer not spending my gaming sessions heavily influenced by other strangers playing the same game.

    Others may tell you to just become the aggressor in all circumstances - and they're not wrong - when I'm out and looking for good fights (I stick to fights with others that also want to fight - or put themselves in obvious situations where fighting must be expected), it's all fun, because that's what you're expecting. However, that is not what I most enjoy doing while gaming, most of the time.

    Maybe some of us just have control issues. :D We want what we want, when we want it. And when others interfere with that, it upsets us to a certain degree.

    Anyway, I think I had a more coherent post to share, but it ended up like this and I lack the time to edit it back into shape!!

    Happy gaming to you, however you find it!!

  • Nova Shino
    Sailor

    @kozakderg Because the game has become infested with bugs in human skin who are either concussed enough to think the game is some battle royale genre where your goal is just to sink other players, or know otherwise and just want to hurt people.

  • PithyRumble
    Rogue
    Insider

    PvP wants to take your stool and sell it.

  • Unleet1
    Lord
    Insider

    @electricknights "Others may tell you to just become the aggressor in all circumstances - and they're not wrong"

    I agree with this, especially new players. Don't waste your time getting pve loot or doing tall tales, just rumble everyone. :D

  • Red0Demon0
    Commander
    Insider

    Ahoy!

    That's a really difficult question to answer, there are so many people that play this game and each player has different reasons, desires, perspectives, experiences, motivations, behaviors, and thoughts on how they play. This is one of the reasons why Sea of Thieves fans are so diverse, because the game encourages you to play the way you want to.

    Sure, there are many games out there that claim "Play the way you want to" but they don't actually commit to the freedom of letting their players deal with most of the game the way they want to. Take all the enemies, shrines, events, npc ship fights, forts and even other crew fights. None of these is one forced to engage in, you can choose to simply ignore and be on your way. Sure, you have voyages and tall tales, but what you do while getting to those missions or how you go about them is mainly up to the player to decide.

    So to answer your question, why are so many people desperate for pvp? Because Sea of Thieves community is a diverse group of gamers that try to embrace their own perspective of what it means to be a pirate. With so many perspectives on how to be a pirate, a large portion of the player base will settle on ruthlessness and attack.

    In a similar light, many players have expectations of what a pirate and a pirate game should play as, in which many people have been starved of that desire for a pirate pvp game with some exploration... and Sea of Thieves happens to get really close to meeting many of those expectations.

    Finally, you have to take into consideration that all players are basic when it comes to being entertained, many just want things to go boom. To add to this, one of the main things a new player will try to do when first meeting a new player is get into ship vs ship combat. In fact, some players who are completely new to the game will pop in next to a crew mate and try to kill them.

  • MostExpendable
    Lord
    Insider

    Pvp is fun.

  • MagicOrDie
    Sailor

    @wolfmanbush said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    I wonder how many of the negative reviews have a "I was stacking loot for 3+ hours.." tale behind their unsatisfied experience.

    In general it's all random. Lots of time left alone and lots of conflict over time, it just ping pongs back and forth.

    This just isn't true. So far over the past month, ever time we've logged in we've been chased/attacked. Every game. Regardless of what we're doing, if another ship sees us, they head straight for us.

  • MagicOrDie
    Sailor

    @nostrildumas249 said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    It's a pirate game and the whole appeal is having epic pirate ship battles and being a pirate

    Literally the worst thing that could happen to pirates at sea was to get into a fight, they actively avoided combat.

  • MostExpendable
    Lord
    Insider

    @magicordie said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    @nostrildumas249 said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    It's a pirate game and the whole appeal is having epic pirate ship battles and being a pirate

    Literally the worst thing that could happen to pirates at sea was to get into a fight, they actively avoided combat.

    Bahaha. So do you want a game about not showering, being stuck in the doldrums, being surrounded undrinkable water that you don’t know how to swim in, getting scurvy and dealing with the existential dread of being a failure to society and wondering if your sins will be forgiven by god or not?

    Because personally I’d rather naval battles than reality.

  • MostExpendable
    Lord
    Insider

    @magicordie said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    @nostrildumas249 said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    It's a pirate game and the whole appeal is having epic pirate ship battles and being a pirate

    Literally the worst thing that could happen to pirates at sea was to get into a fight, they actively avoided combat.

    This argument is just so funny to me. Sorry to harp on.
    Have you ever considered that in almost every piece of entertainment, the characters are usually having the worst day of their life?
    Die hard would not be as entertaining if John McClane was having a good day…

    We don’t engage with content because we want characters to have nothing happen to them.

  • KAPP16354
    Seafarer
    Insider
    Founder

    Bc they removed arena

  • Vaca Hombre
    Champion
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @mostexpendable said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    This argument is just so funny to me. Sorry to harp on.
    Have you ever considered that in almost every piece of entertainment, the characters are usually having the worst day of their life?

    It's no sillier than saying we steal things in-game because that's what pirates did. Both are justifying game mechanics by trying to compare them to real life, which almost never holds up past surface level.

    Now personally, I think the PvP is just fine as is. Sometimes I'm pursued relentlessly and sometimes I hardly see anyone. Both are enjoyable in their own ways.

    But let's not pretend that entertainment needs physical violence to be fun. There are plenty of massively popular games that have little to no combat and many with zero PvP.

    Of course, Sea of Thieves does have violence and PvP as an integral part of it's structure. But it is no more important or worthwhile than it's PvE elements. The entire game was designed around the balance of the two.

    If you prefer PvP, then that's fine. But you shouldn't dismiss the rest of the game as less important just because of that. Many of us do actually enjoy the act of sailing around, reading maps, etc.

  • VakrisOne
    Marauder
    Insider

    Not sure what the point of the question, "Why do players attack other players?" is, to be perfectly honest. The game allows it therefore it will happen.

    What answer do you really want to hear?

  • Karkona
    Commander

    Perhaps an overlooked example, some folks that play (this can apply to PvE folks) get tired of being attacked and sunk so some of them will look for a way to defend themselves, so they want to learn how to fight people and they want the practice and then they spend time trying to find pvp and may give up and go for low hanging fruit like a fresh spawn or non emissary minding his own business. Might be newer folks that don't do the regular server hop looking for reapers or emissary's because they dont realize its a thing as well, but anyway they might not care about the loot, they just want some practice.

  • Navikus
    Castaway

    @kozakderg I have been playing for two days solo and a two ships of 4 French players randomly kept following me around an island.

    I was only doing a level 10 curse mission thing, had nothing on my ship at all and my ship even looks low tier lol.

    After about 30 minutes of them following me they caught me with a cannonball that forced me to dance and did a ton of damage to my ship so I jumped into the sea and climbed aboard one of their ships. I took out everyone on board before they even realised I was there, set the ship on fire and threw their stuff in the ocean whilst they were putting it out when they came back.

    Might not have done much to them in the long run but screw those guys.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @navikus said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    @kozakderg I have been playing for two days solo and a two ships of 4 French players randomly kept following me around an island.

    I was only doing a level 10 curse mission thing, had nothing on my ship at all and my ship even looks low tier lol.

    After about 30 minutes of them following me they caught me with a cannonball that forced me to dance and did a ton of damage to my ship so I jumped into the sea and climbed aboard one of their ships. I took out everyone on board before they even realised I was there, set the ship on fire and threw their stuff in the ocean whilst they were putting it out when they came back.

    Might not have done much to them in the long run but screw those guys.

    And THAT is why I love this game! I salute you @navikus!

  • KozakDerg
    Seafarer

    Thank you all for the constructive feedback (not so much for the not-so-constructive, sarcastic remarks).

    I realized that this thread was ill-conceived, since I had some PvP encounters before that left a sour taste in my mouth, mostly a ship ramming us when we are on port or ships coming to shoot our parked ship (I know that all of these are the fault of us for not being on lookout where essentially you have to be alert throughout the whole game session so you can't really catch a break).

    I tend to do Tall Tales mostly when I solo or run some voyages and hope that no one interferes, but if that happens I would try my best to defend myself. But I mostly try to duo sloop or brig with friends to have an enhanced experience in this game and I've had some good encounters, both at forming alliances and sinking player ships.

    So please disregard this thread from now on and have a great day! =)

  • IShotYourNuts
    Castaway

    @kozakderg

    im a 99% pvp player, and i think Tall Tale should be able to be ''solo'', like no one cant join your server beside your crew. Everything else should stay as they are tho, if you can get a treasure chest, you can get your a** kicked.

  • Eguzky
    Castaway

    Yeah. I just had a group of 3 attack my sloop while neither my friend nor I were in it. They only broke the mast, and then waited for us to come back.
    Note: They had already stolen the treasure; they had 0 reason to stay. Other than to be absolute d-bags.

    They then proceeded to kill us, and camp on our ship as a 3v2. Probably while desperately pretending overpowering 2 players with numbers and spawn-camping is at all skilled instead of the result of garbage players being garbage.

    And, of course, the only reply on these forums, while locking my thread, is 'You should report them with those 0 screenshots you have!'
    Because it's child's play to see the names of 3 moving targets while they stab me in the back and kill me in under 2 seconds each time!
    And I TOTALLY record 4+ hours of SoT to my hard drive on the off-chance I get camped by scrubs so insecure about their junk that they have to ruin a video game for complete strangers!
    I mean, there's no combat log I can find, so I literally had 0 ways to find their names to report them. But sure; I'll report 'That guy' and 'His buddy' and 'This third guy' and they'll get punished!

    PvP is fine.
    Being a spawn-camping pile of trash means one should uninstall and never touch a video game again. For the enjoyment of everyone else.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @eguzky said in Why are some people so desperate to PvP...:

    Yeah. I just had a group of 3 attack my sloop while neither my friend nor I were in it. They only broke the mast, and then waited for us to come back.
    Note: They had already stolen the treasure; they had 0 reason to stay. Other than to be absolute d-bags.

    They then proceeded to kill us, and camp on our ship as a 3v2. Probably while desperately pretending overpowering 2 players with numbers and spawn-camping is at all skilled instead of the result of garbage players being garbage.

    And, of course, the only reply on these forums, while locking my thread, is 'You should report them with those 0 screenshots you have!'
    Because it's child's play to see the names of 3 moving targets while they stab me in the back and kill me in under 2 seconds each time!
    And I TOTALLY record 4+ hours of SoT to my hard drive on the off-chance I get camped by scrubs so insecure about their junk that they have to ruin a video game for complete strangers!
    I mean, there's no combat log I can find, so I literally had 0 ways to find their names to report them. But sure; I'll report 'That guy' and 'His buddy' and 'This third guy' and they'll get punished!

    PvP is fine.
    Being a spawn-camping pile of trash means one should uninstall and never touch a video game again. For the enjoyment of everyone else.

    Help me understand. You said they had already stolen everything of value on your ship. Why didn’t you scuttle your ship? Was there any reason to defend it? It would have taken less than a minute. Far less time than it took you to make two separate posts in two threads about the encounter.

  • MidDeckMommy
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    This is just my take coming from a long time player and someone who really enjoys pvp, I tend to go after every ship I see almost no matter what tall tale or not everyone has something. You can steal more than treasure, resources are arguably just as valuable for a pvp'er so I often with try to board and make an agreement to leave their ship above the waves in exchange for 50-75% of their supplies so while I can't say why that ship would sink you and tbh he seems like an insecure pos but to answer your question, we don't know what you truly have on your ship unless we get on board and we can't do that while you are two islands away, also even if you have nothing worth gold I can still get supplies to use against people with treasure. The last reason I can think of is many people not liking pvp and the small server sizes could mean that they are just desperate for some sort of fight no matter how fulfilling it is.

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