My current problems with the new PvP system (And possibly how to fix them)

@sirsilentgamer

My only comment (since this is not an update I plan on feeding) is that invading at least gets you loser points. Defending doesn't. Even tho you're raising emissary and loot value for someone to claim.

Invade if you're garbage. You at least get loser points if you can keep people from sailing you OoB.

Imo: if they somehow nerf fleet ambushes they should give loser points for ring outs if the last person on the ship was an opponent.

People sitting and waiting in open waters

It the same if you spot a Reaper on the server, you decide to Sail to them, you see them at a shrine? Cool suddenly tho...two other ships appear. Oh they are in an alliance and you sailed into there Trap!
You go looking for trouble you find it.

Invading feels like you are putting yourself at a disadvantage

Idk, sometimes i come out of the water and the other ship is near and island...doing a voyage with a ship full of loot. Unprepared. All depends on the "defender"

we seem to come across people who either have earned one or both curses and are lvls past that mark.

Just because you come across a Pirare Legend, doesnt make them really..legend...since you can earn that within 24 hours atm :p So just because someone has the Curses already, could be easy that they had a Galleon Crew helping them, or cheesing it early before.

Encountering the same crew twice in a row

You rather wait for a match longer or encounter the same.
Even tho...They can't be invaded for a long period anyways...so unless you are stuck in waiting the same amount of time this seems very unlikely.

@burnbacon

It the same if you spot a Reaper on the server, you decide to Sail to them, you see them at a shrine? Cool suddenly tho...two other ships appear. Oh they are in an alliance and you sailed into there Trap!
You go looking for trouble you find it.

Now this is a different kind of "Sitting and waiting". The shrines are rather a risk and reward thing to do, cause you leave your ship unmanned while you go down to explore and loot the shrine, it is nothing like how many players wait in open waters (most commonly north of Smuggler's bay) just to have nothing getting in their way like other random players or rocks in the middle of the battlefield

Idk, sometimes i come out of the water and the other ship is near and island...doing a voyage with a ship full of loot. Unprepared. All depends on the "defender"

This of course is rather player by player basis, but it feels like if the defender is ready to be invaded they'll almost always have a head start

Just because you come across a Pirare Legend, doesnt make them really..legend...since you can earn that within 24 hours atm :p So just because someone has the Curses already, could be easy that they had a Galleon Crew helping them, or cheesing it early before.

I'm not talking about pirate legends or those simple curses, I am talking about the Ghost Curse and Skeleton Curse which both require the player to reach 100 allegiance in either faction. I couldn't care less if a player is pirate legend since it doesn't mean jack squat these days. But these new curses require you to either be a sweatlord who only PvPs, or a player who has taken their time to slowly get up to 100 in maybe a month

You rather wait for a match longer or encounter the same.
Even tho...They can't be invaded for a long period anyways...so unless you are stuck in waiting the same amount of time this seems very unlikely.

Personally it would be a better experience to either wait for a bit longer or take them out of your invading que until you have fought another crew (for your crew at least). Because nobody want's to get steamrolled by the same people 5 times in a row just because the servers couldn't find a different player fast enough

I get your frustration here and you make a lot of valid points but you should always consider the inverse of your suggestions ie
Can this be abused
Does this have negative impacts

Your champion point I get but I think I've only come across 1 champion so this would make queues for them terrible which removes all incentive from gaining streaks beyond champion

Likewise same crew twice in a row. I partly agree with this as it does feel harsh but I'd say limit to the last people you fought and not beyond as those exceptions scale exponentially again leading to harder matchmaking and longer queue times.
For context as athena I fought the same reaper sloop twice in a row, with a fairly long wait time in between, however they had fought another crew while we were waiting in the tunnel. So yes it's a bit harsh (we won both times) but would I want an even longer wait to avoid it? Probably not.

Your defender point depends, you have less control over when invaded with much longer queue times, and ultimately the design is that you do other things in meantime to get loot on board to up your stash value but at the risk of being invaded whilst doing this. You could hard camp an area (saw a streamer defending a Fort the other day) but I'd say fair play the patience you need to do that is beyond me will always prefer invading. Also I'd say 90% of my invasions have been invader vs invader pretty sure they get preference and maybe a 3rd of my defends have been unintentional (been caught out on way to try and sell or caught up fighting with someone else which delayed long enough to allow invasion)

Higher allegiance level I'd say no, it can be an indicator of high skill but it may also just be people hard grinding, could even be people who have loss farmed to cheese it. At lvl 36 yesterday I fought a duo sloop and one of them had the athena curse already. Was a tough fight but we actually beat them.
This would have too many factors (do you just base it off their equivalent faction or total of both)
Again though ultimately this is another suggestion that leads to tougher queue times and more playerbase disengaging from using the hourglass

I get all these things are frustrating for you but you're not really seeing the bigger picture, if implemented most of these would make queue times worse which they can't really afford the risk.

If you have a massive playerbase engaging with this then yeah we can look at more tweaks and balancing out the matchmaking more but the queue times as they are don't seem consistently good enough to warrant anything that could risk them getting higher

Here is a bit of a rant, but also an issue I have with the mode;

I meet the same sloop, 4 times in a row and... lost 4 times in a row... and the last time, he proceed to run me out of bounds so I gained no rep, saying "gg"... He had blessing and was doing the reaper side now. I was below Guardian allegiance 25 at the time.

They need to make either match making better, or losing more fun/more rewarding - with how things are currently, anyone else who isn't hardcore into Sea of Thieves would quickly get deterred from playing this mode. I can't imagine how it feels for the new players of the game...

@tyowin9418 a dit dans My current problems with the new PvP system (And possibly how to fix them) :

They need to make either match making better.

It's not the SBMM fault, the problem is that the playerpool it draws your opponent from is too small. Hopefully in january it will get better. But ultimately, it's how the mode gonna be if they cannot find a way to motivate enough low to mid skilled players to use it. That's why if it stays as is it has an expiration date for most people.

@grog-minto said in My current problems with the new PvP system (And possibly how to fix them):

@tyowin9418 a dit dans My current problems with the new PvP system (And possibly how to fix them) :

They need to make either match making better.

It's not the SBMM fault, the problem is that the playerpool it draws your opponent from is too small. Hopefully in january it will get better. But ultimately, it's how the mode gonna be if they cannot find a way to motivate enough low to mid skilled players to use it. That's why if it stays as is it has an expiration date for most people.

If that truely is the case, that the player pool that the SBMM takes from is THAT lacking, then they need to make losing more fun or/and rewarding. That in of itself is a problem if that is the current state of the player pool, we can agree on this, yes? So there needs to be an incentive to increase this player pool.

Right now it feels too punishing to lose. You don't gain a lot of allegiance, if any when the enemy sails you OoBs. You can either stack supplies; risk losing them after the first or second fight to someone who maybe has +3000 hours in the game for almost no rewards and you just supplied your enemy OR just sail out with base supplies and hope to god that you manage to sink them fast or you will automatically lose because of attrition.

Take the concept of League of Legends; you play on Summoner's Rift. There is no need to prepare/gather supplies before going into your match, if you lose, you just queue for another immediately without having to worry about preparing anything (except your mental maybe).
If League of Legends all of a sudden got tedious for x-reason and the player pool diminished to the extent that the game started pitching irons ranks against diamonds and above rank, imagine how that would feel for the low rank/new players - then there won't be any new players and the game would die real quick. This game mode is no different in that regard.

Even if you meet someone at your skill level, you can fight for a long, long time. The longest I've yet to fight someone, was for about an hour and 10 mins with boarding attempts. The reward for losing that and maybe even winning, is just not worth it. It really feels like they need to add something to limit the time fought or give additional allegiance gain when you fight, maybe amount of cannon balls fired, amount of mins spent fighting, etc.. Something to increase your reward, even if you lost valiantly.

We agree on that their progression system is definitely lacking. Even not winning enough (65% winrate) doesn't feel that rewarding with galleon queue (I usually make 3 or 4 lvl in a 4h session, currently 54).

The small playerpools could be due to the stamps legacy system that they should fix in January.