PVP Server Alliance Exploit

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Note that I was talking about the "pre-made alliance servers who with four or more ships wait for an invasion", if this will happen frequently enough, their actions may impact those PvE alliance servers that keep to themselves.

The key word here is "if". This is hypothetical. The server alliances the seal club segment of the PVP community (who brag openly even in this very thread when they can infiltrate one) are not organizing these activities. Yeah, there's anecdotes of people diving into a battle who's opponents organized friends to help. And Rare has the metrics to montior.

We can speculate all day as to how widespread the issue is... (I bet it's not..) but we do know what Rare had to do to reduce the frequency of behavior they did not desire when they had to hot fix the "A Hunter's cry" adventure.

Yep, if this is done by one or two servers, the impact will be (I guess) insignificant and Rare probably won't take large measures to deal with it. If it becomes widespread because people want the level 100 or level 1000 rewards in an easy way, Rare might.

It's not just the crews that have to fight these alliances that will be impacted and probably complain to CS; three of those 4 ships are also impacting those that try to matchmake and can't because they are too close to other ships.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:
on to another game ? Are you feeling good about that impact on other players yet ?

Pretty confident the impact is as statically close to zero based on my anecdotal observations. As I don't presume the population of people who prefer to alliance up with frinds is all seeking motivated by maximizing emissary value. Believe it or not, some just want to fish... or get to PL... and got tired of getting chased around the map by a crew seeking content for their streams.

Getting to PL goes quicker when you have an emissary up though.

Fishing servers don't impact emissaries - that's right. I didn't include them in my statement though

For every 1000 people playing in alliance servers getting their emissary to rank 1 are roughly 1000 players

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Fishing servers don't impact emissaries - that's right. I didn't include them in my statement though

For every 1000 people playing in alliance servers getting their emissary to rank 1 are roughly 1000 players

Obviously, it doesn't appear you will be able to follow nuance and presume each player only does one thing in their SOT history.

I never presumed that; it's you that seems to detract from points I make.

The reality is people flex. The reality is also that this game wants to attach casual play and the open sandbox and freedom have generated significant negative interaction that can be measured in player rention to the poin the devs hot fixed their game to minimize their occurrences.

Too bad that casual players in Adventure servers have a harder time to accomplish emissary rank because of people who cheese.

Yet, even when the developers take steps to help players separate themselves.. It's still not enough. PVPers still moan that some segment of the game doesn't want to be their cannon fodder and choose to separate themselves. It's sad seeing these groups force themselves upon others.

This topic is about people who cheat the match-making system, have the invading crew be cannon fodder for their 4-ship alliance. Isn't that ironic ...
To be fair I included a measures Rare could take which also have might have consequences for PvE-Alliance servers and yes, I would welcome that.

We should be celebrating Rare's feat as to have come up with a good balance in Season 8 to cater to both sides.. and maintain the integrity of the Adventure sandbox. Nothing in the Season 8 reveal says encounters will be 1v1. Thank god, as that will become stale quickly.. as what ultimately happened to Arena. Today we have more choices in the game than we had 1 week ago. And more opportunities to find both the friendly and not-so-friendly crew.... Sorry that those players who want to play by themselves bother you so much. Switch servers and move on.

Private/ custom servers can't come soon enough for everyone !! This will give those people ample opportunity to play by themselves or in groups they prefer without having an impact on people who play PvPvE on Adventure servers.

@jester1027

So there's the possibility of a fair fight if there is no outside interference. Which...since they put it in adventure means the fight is fair game to other pirates, involved with a faction or not.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

I never presumed that; it's you that seems to detract from points I make.

No dude, you're the one-off track presuming 100% of players in server alliances are top emissary tier every month. [ ... ]

I don't say that at all !!
Again

For every 1000 people playing in alliance servers getting their emissary to rank 1 [ ... ]

is nuanced, there could more people playing in pre-made alliance servers, only fishing, doing whatever else, perhaps only playing once a month and having less emissary value than getting rank 1.
I specifically talked about those PvE alliance servers players who play exclusively or partially taking their emissary to rank 1.
Nowhere does that implies that it's all who play like that or that they only play for emissary rank getting it to 1.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Private/ custom servers can't come soon enough for everyone !! This will give those people ample opportunity to play by themselves or in groups they prefer without having an impact on people who play PvPvE on Adventure servers.

Good luck with that. The tech is already developed and Rare could have rolled it out publicly if they wanted. But like everything in the real world... I'm pretty sure Rare has a business team gathering metrics to see if the such feature would actually produce more revenue than their support costs. It's an excellent addition for those forming their custom events and such.. but with Zero progression, it won't have the uptake to justify rolling out as a general game feature... and likely drive away more paying customers than new should a TOS update go in targeting server takeover communities.

In EGX they talked about it ... and instead of a bare bones SOT without gold &c being awarded, they are now want to make it like a GM tool set so people can create their own Pirate Adventure for their friends to play in. IMHO they should release the bare bones if it's ready and over time add tools.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Nowhere does that implies that it's all who play like that or that they only play for emissary rank getting it to 1.

So what part are you missing? So you finally acknowledge 100% of severe alliance players are not tier 1. So you crack down on server alliances... and you lose a segment of that community for the game as a result the size of each emissary tier shrinks proportionally.

I never said that 100% of players in PvE Alliance servers are tier 1.
As for losing players - it's a PvPvE game - Rare's stance is No Pve servers where you can earn gold &c. People who don't want to be bothered with unknown players can play other games or use Private servers when they come out.

And let's say the server alliance has more than 25% of its population in tier 1 (a fair conclusion),

A fair conclusion ? Aren't you the one that said we don't have the numbers ? I agree with that.

slightly affecting the cut-off value for the month by a few thousand scores.... Which player in that community is more likely to quit SOT if somehow you could ban server takeovers? The grinders will adapt their playstyle. but the casual/occasional player who just wanted to complete the adventure in that community will likely be gone forever.... and you needed them to be in the player pool to increase the number of qualifiers for top 25%.

What ? That totally doesn't make sense.

Once again, the way Rare implemented the emissary rewards shows they did a good job balancing the feature. It's a reward for those who are loyal to the game and regularly play... but not so unatainable that those extreme outliers in the community demographics don't make the rewards entirely out of reach.

IMO it would be better for the casual players in Adventure without the ones cheesing it.

I think it would be better to drop this tangent though.

SBMM in Season 8 does the same thing. Play enough and you will get the reward. They game will adjust matchups overtime so even the casual PVPers will eventually get to progress the new factions and not insta-blasted every match by motivated crews.

I certainly hope so, it depends on the occurance of people cheating the SBMM.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

What ? That totally doesn't make sense.

ok, thanks for confirming you don't understand.

If the ledgers have 10,000 players in a month. 2,500 will be the top tier and the cut-off is the score of the 2,500th player.

If you drive off 25% of the player base... and only 7,500 players exist. then the top tier cut-off will be at the score of the 1,875th player. If you could magically declare server alliances are gone... where exactly do you think the players who quit the game and don't adjust actually are (on average) on the emissary ranks.

Are you now saying that you estimate more than 25% of the player base is in PvE alliance servers (as by your admission there will be grinders who find other ways, so the 25% left are only part of the total PvE alliance population) ? That's quite a large figure. But let's go with that ...

Now you are presuming that all the players that leave are playing emissary, you do realise that ?
10,000 players in emissary, 25% of playerbase leaves and if after they leave there are now 7,500 thats 2,500 players less (the 25%)
But let's go with that ...

Your low figure of people playing emissary and quite high number of people leaving, makes this speculation rather lobsided, as I said we better should drop this tangent.
As we both don't know how many of the players in PvE servers are getting rank 1, this exercise becomes pointless.

Again we can only speculate.. but I'm sure driving away the casuals would actually make the qualifying score for top tier to rise and exclude more regular adventure players.... The exact opposite effect of the 1,000 players you presupposes miss out because server alliances exist.

That doesn't make sense - unless most alliance PvE players enter emissary but don't rank up.

BTW, I said for every 1,000 there are roughly 1000 that miss out ... - I did not state there are 1,000 players on PvE servers that are rank 1. There could be more, could be less.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

[...]
@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

People who don't want to be bothered with unknown players can play other games or use Private servers when they come out.

They won't come out. There's no business case for it. [...]

Rare is saying the're working on the Custom Servers. So, you're claiming that Rare is lying when they say they're working on it ?
Or they have a business case for developing GM tools for only a few dozen content creators ?

My guess is they want to earn back the money for developing these and thus in time open them up for non content creators as well.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

My guess is they want to earn back the money for developing these and thus in time open them up for non content creators as well.

My guess is they will never release it as it would be expensive to maintain server for instances where players might only have 1 or 2 people on or the price would be cost-prohibive. As it's just an adventure instance there no real development cost other than having to support players trying to use it.

They said they are adding tools so people can create a Pirate Adventure for others. There is quite some development time and thus cost in that.

@artie said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

@lem0n-curry said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Rare is saying the're working on the Custom Servers. So, you're claiming that Rare is lying when they say they're working on it ?

yes, they have been saying this for multiple years now. along with a bunch of qualifiers as to why they might not release it generally outside their partners and if they did it would be a paid feature.

Always expected it to cost money.

It is imporant for everyone to undestand, by using the hourglass to invade:

No, you do NOT opt into a 1v1 of crews. That is not what it is, that is not what is intended to be, that is not what Rare wishes to provide.

You opt into having your ship relocated next to another ship, to save you the effort of having to find them manually, while remaining fully subject to any & all shenanigans adventure can offer, including the other 4 ships that may exist on a server.

But I'll tell you what, I'll accept people using the hourglass in alliances as a form of cheating, on a condition.
I'll do it if, and only if, everybody else accepts that using 3rd party comms in a game built with proximity chat is a form of cheating, and Rare bans the use of Discord while playing the game.

Because, let the thought get in your head, alliance people are simply using a mechanic intentionally provided to them, wherease external comms users are bypassing intended mechanics to obtain an advantage that actually isn't supposed to be possible. Which means it's the worse of the two things.

Don't ask for Rare to work against the lesser offense without working against the bigger offense.
Or just accept both and don't ask them to work against either.

Rare doesn't care, proof being the continued allowance of server stacking for alliances. You got wastelandmafia , requim, etc that actually CHARGE people for a spot on a "safe" ship every month. It's like 5yeah old preschool time. Between that a zero Anticheat programs to keep actually exploiting out the game. But at this point in the game, I'm sure they are working on the next project. And this one will get put a side to be forgotten like any other.

@artie said like a true Requiem discord moderator. The game wasn't intended for people to go hide in a hole somewhere because their scared of combat in a naval pirate game.....

Yeah this happened to us as well. It's not balanced at all.

Why go through the effort of matching us based on skill level and ship size only to allow alliance servers to skirt around the system like this?

Here's the solution I propose: If you are defending and you have other ships sailing alongside you when an invader shows up, those other ships that aren't being invaded should be affected by a peace ball curse until they leave the battle area. Not a single cannonball should be able to leave their cannons until they get away from the battle.

@chronodusk said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Yeah this happened to us as well. It's not balanced at all.

Why go through the effort of matching us based on skill level and ship size only to allow alliance servers to skirt around the system like this?

Here's the solution I propose: If you are defending and you have other ships sailing alongside you when an invader shows up, those other ships that aren't being invaded should be affected by a peace ball curse until they leave the battle area. Not a single cannonball should be able to leave their cannons until they get away from the battle.

That's not a solution at all..
The other ships could just simply board and kill the crew that is outmatched... Plain and simple..
In fact, that's probably what they should be doing.

No shots need to be fired.. board them, kill them, then sail their ship out of bounds for an ez win..

Its hilarious that for years the PvP crowd accuse the PvE crowd of cheating with alliance servers.

Now.. the PvP crowd are cheating with alliance servers..

You can't make this stuff up folks! Its hilarious.

But, anyways...

[Mod edit]

And this is what you get. I'm more bothered by the fact that this mode is going to kill normal adventure mode.. you know the PvEvP thing everyone has been harping on about when we had all those PvE server threads..

This isn't PvEvP. This is PvP. Thats all anyones been talking about. This is Arena 3.0.. but Rare didn't want to make private servers for it.. Either they were lazy or they didn't want to shut it down like Arena before it with the 'only 1% are playing it so we are shutting it down'..

There can be fun with S8. But the state of the game is so bad with many bugs and whatever that will likely turn away returning/new players. And if they play this mode and go into a server with 2, 3, or even 4 ships all teamed up to kill them, how do you think they will handle that? We're talking about players that don't go on Reddit or these forums. That don't care about giving feedback. These are the people you should be thinking about, the ones that will spend $$$ on the emporium and keep the game going.

I don't understand.... let's recap: They had to be balanced fights, right? ok, solo sloop that opens the map and attacks will ALWAYS find solo sloop that defends... the problem is that you could come up against the multi-medal champion who sinks you instantly, but he was just like you... so all is well... .so why are you complaining?... now alliances appear that break the game a bit... and you complain....I DON'T UNDERSTAND! and, however, I want to say that it happened to me against both the champion and the alliance ... does the game allow it? the game pits you against a champion... nevermind, the problem for me is that i didn't get the cursed bones flag 😅😅😅

@lord-spark-0 said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

Its hilarious that for years the PvP crowd accuse the PvE crowd of cheating with alliance servers.

Now.. the PvP crowd are cheating with alliance servers..
[ ... ]

Or maybe they're people who can't fight 1v1 well but want the cosmetics in an easy way. Doubt standard PvP players want to be known for "fighting " / cheating and winning in a 1v4 matches.

@bl4cksh4dow78 said in PVP Server Alliance Exploit:

I don't understand.... let's recap: They had to be balanced fights, right? ok, solo sloop that opens the map and attacks will ALWAYS find solo sloop that defends... the problem is that you could come up against the multi-medal champion who sinks you instantly, but he was just like you... so all is well... .so why are you complaining?... now alliances appear that break the game a bit... and you complain....I DON'T UNDERSTAND! and, however, I want to say that it happened to me against both the champion and the alliance ... does the game allow it? the game pits you against a champion... nevermind, the problem for me is that i didn't get the cursed bones flag 😅😅😅

You should get matched against someone of equal skill, as soon as the skill based match making has some data.