lets just say, by dieing often enough you also clearly show where your allegiance lies xd
Loss Farmers
To be honest there is never going to be a perfect system that please eveyone. I’m not the one who play 10hrs a day but I have yet to experience an opponent that clearly threw away the fight. Im sure it will happened but so far for me it doesn’t seems to be frequent so it doesn’t bother me.
Even with the increase reputation it is still a decent grind to get to 100 by throwing away fights. I can’t even imagine for the golden curse at lvl 1000. So the few that are motivated enough for it can just have the curse as far as I am concerned. They are not going to be any better when I cross them in regular adventure mode.
@scheneighnay said in Loss Farmers:
Not reading to see if this has already been suggesteded, but my solution is that points should be rewarded based on actions taken and time spent in battle.
Ie, firing cannons, making hits, patching holes, bailing bucketsWin or lose should just be a multiplier.
Arena 2.0. You want to experience true toxicity, implement this.
overall the system is just flawed, locking away all the rewards to past level 100 was already a bad idea, and the ability to matchmake in the first place just overall makes the game feel less sandboxy. I like the aspect of it where you can invade other players who opt in who may be stacking loot or whatnot, but the way you gain exp doesn't reflect that at all. It's already quicker to loss farm than to actually play because most matches end up extending past 20 minutes while in like 10 you could get three losses which would give you the same amount of exp. (I haven't tested this, I can test that real quick though.) I really hope next season they give us more ways to gain exp for these factions because at least in arena there were little rewards you could get for every 5 levels, here its just all bleak until you hit 100 for either.
@personalc0ffee said in Loss Farmers:
Perhaps, we stop caring how other people play their games or spend their time.
Nah, shutting that down. You have literally and avidly proposed to nerf/remove the ability to only have two guns equipped, completely wanting the removal of how other people validly play the game.
People are allowed to feel miffed that the fights they've been in 30 minute queues for are just insta scuttles when they probably wanted to practice their teamwork and mettle against the enemy crew. Especially when they played the mode specifically to... fight!
@nex-stargaze said in Loss Farmers:
@personalc0ffee said in Loss Farmers:
Perhaps, we stop caring how other people play their games or spend their time.
Nah, shutting that down. You have literally and avidly proposed to nerf/remove the ability to only have two guns equipped, completely wanting the removal of how other people validly play the game.
People are allowed to feel miffed that the fights they've been in 30 minute queues for are just insta scuttles when they probably wanted to practice their teamwork and mettle against the enemy crew. Especially when they played the mode specifically to... fight!
Entirely different mechanics and entirely different circumstances.
@nex-stargaze said in Loss Farmers:
@personalc0ffee said in Loss Farmers:
Perhaps, we stop caring how other people play their games or spend their time.
Nah, shutting that down. You have literally and avidly proposed to nerf/remove the ability to only have two guns equipped, completely wanting the removal of how other people validly play the game.
People are allowed to feel miffed that the fights they've been in 30 minute queues for are just insta scuttles when they probably wanted to practice their teamwork and mettle against the enemy crew. Especially when they played the mode specifically to... fight!
Don't remember who said it first but they said it best:
"No PVP'er ever cared that they ruined my night by sinking me and taking my loot. I don't care how miffed anyone is if they've spent 30 minutes in queue expecting a battle and they don't get one."
I still think loss farming is a plague on the game mode and its existence is a strong indication of which mechanics need remediation, but I have to agree with @Arch-iDeall, I'm happy to take the win when I can get it.
Loss farming is just a symptom. People farm losses because it feels more rewarding than the few pixels of allegiance we get when we fighht normally.
We've been voicing our concern that this grind is TOO MUCH for 2 months now.
What have we got ? A nerf to allegiance gained after lvl 100, a (very very very) slight increase in case of a loss, no allegiance at all when THE GAME matches you with a ship you already fought, commendations not working cos' of same-faction battles.
So yeah. A lot players, including myself, are beginning to feel not listened to at all. So they cheese.
You want people to play your content ? Make it rewarding, fair (no bugs) and fun.
Make it punishing, on the othher hand, and you get this.
I actually admire the perseverance and pugnacity of loss farmers more than the exploits of a minority of pvp players that had trained for years and are now selfishly gatekeeping "their" update
I took a (company mandated) debugging course a few months back. On average, there's a bug every seven lines of code. So, please, try to have a little compassion. This isn't easy.
P.S. Had to look up pugnacity, there's a crossword answer for ya...
@jolly-ol-yep said in Loss Farmers:
...no allegiance at all when THE GAME matches you with a ship you already fought...
Does anyone know how many wins it takes for this to kick in? I was playing with a crew the other night and we matched against the same ship a number of times. I convinced my crew to throw a match to them every so often just so that when we inevitably match with them again in the future, we do get allegiance for the win.
It would be great to know if you stop getting allegiance after the third or fourth or whatever win so we know how often we have to server hop or throw a match...
I would agree though, this mechanic punishes players for a flaw in the game system. That is unacceptable by conventional game design principals.
@lordqulex a dit dans Loss Farmers :
I took a (company mandated) debugging course a few months back. On average, there's a bug every seven lines of code. So, please, try to have a little compassion. This isn't easy.
P.S. Had to look up pugnacity, there's a crossword answer for ya...
I am a developer. My whole job is to get rid of bugs (and Google things). I know.
My point is : this is their job. I never said it was an easy one. But that's still their job.
And furthermore, this has NOTHING to do with code. The code works pretty well, that's quite impressive what they accomplished if you ask me, really.
This has to do with the very design of it, which is flawed imo. It is only "rewarding" top-tier players. (And as I said in another thread, this is all about the IMPRESSION of progression, which is inexistant here for the vast majority of non-sweaty players. Fix this and you'll ave fixed loss farming)
@jolly-ol-yep said in Loss Farmers:
This has to do with the very design of it, which is flawed imo. It is only "rewarding" top-tier players. (And as I said in another thread, this is all about the IMPRESSION of progression, which is inexistant here for the vast majority of non-sweaty players. Fix this and you'll ave fixed loss farming)
I'm not even sure this is who they're rewarding. I play with and against cursed pirates, my win rate on a good night is probably close to 50%. I struggle to call myself good or sweaty, but will confidently say above average. This system doesn't reward good players, it rewards good-or-better players who have significantly more time to pour into the game than I do. If I spent 10 hours a day playing, I would have the curses. I have maybe 1-3 hours a night to play due to life. The pirates with the curses whom I've interacted with are all students on break, troglodytes in mom and dad's basement, or professional content creators. This system doesn't reward good players, it rewards dedicated players, as is demonstrated by the topic's title, people willing to spend hours loss farming.
One problem is loss farming is more time efficient than losing a hard fought battle. Find a way to give allegiance for good-faith PVP participation, and you'll get more good-faith PVP participation. The challenge is, anyone who played arena saw what happened when they awarded silver for pirate kills: spawn camping. Awarding cannon hits resulted in spawn camping and perpetual middle deck shooting. The flip side is if they reward repairing, pirates will sail around to get hit and just repair their ship. If they reward cannons fired people will sail around without engaging just firing their cannons. If they reward time spent in matches, people will rename their sloop "Fish With Me" and won't actually do any PVP in hourglass.
The real problem is the reward. All players want the reward, and I don't feel most players actually want PVP. So this is the result: bad faith PVP participation in the PVP mode because PVE'ers just want to get the curses and get out. The biggest mistake Rare made was releasing these curses in hourglass. If they didn't do that, they'd have brought back the PVP community and the PVE'ers simply wouldn't touch the mode. It would have been win/win, but they can't redact the curses now.
How do you measure good faith PVP participation without promoting toxic behavior?
@lordqulex a dit dans Loss Farmers :
One problem is loss farming is more time efficient than losing a hard fought battle. Find a way to give allegiance for good-faith PVP participation, and you'll get more good-faith PVP participation. The challenge is, anyone who played arena saw what happened when they awarded silver for pirate kills: spawn camping. Awarding cannon hits resulted in spawn camping and perpetual middle deck shooting. The flip side is if they reward repairing, pirates will sail around to get hit and just repair their ship. If they reward cannons fired people will sail around without engaging just firing their cannons. If they reward time spent in matches, people will rename their sloop "Fish With Me" and won't actually do any PVP in hourglass.
That's why it was suggested many times not to reward the actions of your crew, but to reward you based on the actions your crew has the other crew do (repair, eat)
As for the curses being locked behind PvP, why not ? They clearly want their players to engage in PvP, and who can blame them ? It's one of the most fun part of the game and PvEers really miss a lot. They just want people to play their game, and the curses as incentives work. It worked for me. Pre-season8 I was your average PvEer avoiding all interactions with other crews, now I confidently fly my reaper flag while doing world events as a solo slooper. The narrative of my pirate for me, its player, is incredible. This is Sea of Thieves at its best. I can see how they want people to experience this.
I kinda agree with some here that people will HAVE TO indulge in PvP to get these curses, this is the design philosophy here and don't see any reason to change that. See paragraph above. Most requested curses for 5 years now ? Well too bad in a sense, you could have trained in those 5 years.
My point is : I'm really OK this is locked behind PvP. Loss farmers cheese this, OK, but at the expense of their time and their fun. Let them grind this way if they want, idc, really, they will never experience what I was talking about, but hey, not my problem if they choose to miss on something great like that.
This should stay PvP focused. Now with that said, is the pain and the grind over the top for those people like me, who will happily learn to improve and go from a journey from PvE to PvP, playing the game honestly, with its many issues (bugs, toxicity, broken matchmaking....) while the devs put forward updates to make this even harder (allegiance nerf post lvl 100, no rep if the game matches you again, comms not counting with same-faction battles) ? A bit, yes. Does it feel like a slap in the face ? Definitely.
I 100% understand people that left or grind losses while doing something else. This system is just too elitist.
The challenge is your entire argument is subjective.
They clearly want their players to engage in PvP, and who can blame them ? It's one of the most fun part of the game and PvEers really miss a lot.
In your opinion. And sadly, I don't honestly feel that's the majority opinion. This season alienated a lot of players, and that's a problem for the longevity and size of the playerbase.
@lordqulex a dit dans Loss Farmers :
The challenge is your entire argument is subjective.
They clearly want their players to engage in PvP, and who can blame them ? It's one of the most fun part of the game and PvEers really miss a lot.
In your opinion. And sadly, I don't honestly feel that's the majority opinion. This season alienated a lot of players, and that's a problem for the longevity and size of the playerbase.
Ok, you're right, my bad.
What I meant was "interaction" instead of "PvP". Interaction between crews is the most fun part of the game. This is still an opinion, but one many share.
Thing is interaction can be good or bad (leading to PvP mostly), and some people are just not willing to communicate at all.My point being : You can't expect either to have all the rewards a game have to offer if you deliberately miss out on a large chunk of content you just dislike.
As I say to all the loss farmers I find : "I know about the pain and the grind, but have you even try to maybe propose a dice roll ? Some people accept and you'd have get some wins."
By not interacting, communicating, people are just missing out on a lot of opportunities. You can get everything in this game with communication and interaction
I see two type of loss farmers: those who are lazy and those who feel discouraged from pvp because of the flawed sbmm. I don't farm losses but I might as well be with how awful the sbmm is. There are many that struggle with pvp and the sbmm isn't putting people in a fair match. When you aren't good at PvP and keep getting put against the best players to the point where you have lost more than won, you get discouraged from playing the mode. I feel if the sbmm worked properly many would stop loss farming and actually try, but now it's just too difficult for anyone to even get a match that is fair.
You can loss farm a level over an hour or so, with maybe 5 minutes of actually having to touch your controller, leaving you with the rest of the time to do other, potentially more fun things. That, our you can sweat it out for 2 or 3 battles, maybe eek out a win or two, or maybe 3 losses, and end up with less on your grinding efforts than you would have just taking the L quickly while doing other things with your day. At the end of the day, people take the path of least resistance, and loss farming, while slow, requires no effort or attention, and the rewards can often be better than trying your hardest. If it weren't for the cosmetics, I'd join it from time to time, and try my hardest every time, just to scratch that PVP itch against others looking to do the same. But it's a grindy grind for cosmetics masquerading as a PVP system that doesn't respect your effort or time. So people will try to minimize both.
@mysticshadowzx said in Loss Farmers:
I see two type of loss farmers: those who are lazy and those who feel discouraged from pvp because of the flawed sbmm. I don't farm losses but I might as well be with how awful the sbmm is. There are many that struggle with pvp and the sbmm isn't putting people in a fair match. When you aren't good at PvP and keep getting put against the best players to the point where you have lost more than won, you get discouraged from playing the mode. I feel if the sbmm worked properly many would stop loss farming and actually try, but now it's just too difficult for anyone to even get a match that is fair.
SBMM isn't putting people into a fair match because participation isn't high enough to have a standard distribution of skill. An overwhelming majority of participants are arena refugees and PVP sweat lords because those are the players that like PVP, most of the rest are veteran players just trying to grind out the curses so they never have to think about hourglass again, a small percentage are loss farmers who also just want to grind out the curses, and the rest are newbies who don't understand what hourglass is. The only way SBMM works is if participation is high enough so that any given crew can match with someone around their MMR, and right now HG is dominated by the sweats.
They need to entice more people to play HG by adding more rewards at lower levels, awarding more allegiance for PVP activities to encourage good faith participation, and offer daily/weekly/monthly deeds to retain interest on a regular cadence.
@ihiate said in Loss Farmers:
You can loss farm a level over an hour or so, with maybe 5 minutes of actually having to touch your controller, leaving you with the rest of the time to do other, potentially more fun things. That, our you can sweat it out for 2 or 3 battles, maybe eek out a win or two, or maybe 3 losses, and end up with less on your grinding efforts than you would have just taking the L quickly while doing other things with your day. At the end of the day, people take the path of least resistance, and loss farming, while slow, requires no effort or attention, and the rewards can often be better than trying your hardest. If it weren't for the cosmetics, I'd join it from time to time, and try my hardest every time, just to scratch that PVP itch against others looking to do the same. But it's a grindy grind for cosmetics masquerading as a PVP system that doesn't respect your effort or time. So people will try to minimize both.
I absolutely agree. I think putting the curses behind PVP was a total mistake because it makes everyone angry. PVE'ers are angry they have to grind PVP to get the curses. PVP'ers are angry that they wait in queue and waste supplies on loss farmers. If they put less desirable cosmetics behind hourglass, PVE'ers would never touch it and PVP'ers would get to play each other in satisfying matches. This in my opinion was the biggest blunder of hourglass.
About to log in tonight and grab level 94. Hopefully wont take too long. I know who the good players are on my stamp and maybe I'll entertain them with a match. But usually its just a pain. I have to figure out if this match is worth the effort. 30 mins to fight this guy if we dont sink each other in the first few minutes. At that point I tell him/her im throwing the match because it'll just be faster. I usually recieve compliments on just how accurate I am on cannons so theyre always surprized when I tell them to just sink me. I'll challenge myself if I want to put forth the effort. Only cannons and buckets with no repairs. Because I dont like ship repair simulator. Anyways lets clock in and get to work.
Yep. My goal is 1-2 levels a night and targeting having the curses early this summer, grinding out whatever commendations for the skeleton cosmetics I want and then never thinking about the game mode ever again. Small, measurable, attainable goals is the only way to survive this miserable grind with any sanity intact.
@ondrejbakan said in Loss Farmers:
It's not efficient at all. You need approx. 1,200,000 XP for level 100 and then 1,260,000 XP for every 100 levels. Losing gives you 700 XP. That's 1800 losses per 100 levels...
It's efficient for people that lose a lot of fights
The truth is it would even be efficient for experienced solos some of the time, solo fights that drag on are even less efficient than loss farming.
Depending on someone's skill level and region they could stay afloat a long time without getting the wins or taking forever to get them.
1 of the many reasons they should implement ways to move solo fights along.
@ondrejbakan
Depends on how you're looking at efficiency. It takes about 30 seconds to flag up, flip the glass, and start sailing after a loss. You can do this 8 or so times an hour pretty easily without much other input. So that's 5600 xp for about 4 minutes of my time over the course of an hour. Definitely inefficient from a total time standpoint, but if that leaves me with 56 minutes of time to do other things, it's very efficient with MY time. There's also a pretty good chance of getting a win in from time to time when you match up with another loss farmer. Getting good and running streaks is certainly the fastest way of getting to 100, but loss farming while you're doing other things is stress free and a good return on the personal time invested.Yeah, that's like 215 hours if that's all you're doing, but it's only like 15 of your actual time. To me, it's a good way to supplement the grind when you don't feel like sweating.
@zig-zag-ltu said in Loss Farmers:
@targasbr It does happen and rather often and from different perspectives (At least from my experience 2014 - 2017) It happens where people would smurf and try to get a stomping fest. It would happen where a team would give up after 1st round. Luckily for sea of thieves players there is only 1 round and not 15.
However the more MMR you acquire the less of a problem it becomes as you get matched with more evenly skilled players, obviously human factor can always play a part where some teenager gets a meltdown and starts griefing.
Also if you ever played it, you would not get disheartened by an easy win, because for 1 easy win you would have 100 griefing teammates losses. ( I could not find IRL friends who would stick to it to form a squad of 5) Where people from ruzzia mostly would ruin your experience every single day. And the more games you have under your belt the harder it gets to up-rank.
So this is why I mentioned the Skill based match making, if this thing does exist and let's say (imaginary numbers) you have200 wins, you will not get matched against instant sink ships as they won't be anywhere near your skill group or win count. So If I was you I would be happy with easy progress towards becoming a champion for a faction, XP, win count and win streak.
P.S. When talking about problems against being matched vs certain stereotype of players I would personally like to know where are you playing from. I am yet to meet anyone like that playing from UK, however, I don't think I played 20 matches yet, Probably around 10-15. But if you play from a country where this game is not popular at all, perhaps you get constantly matched with players like that as there is nobody else to match you with and nobody wants to play/play against 300+ ping
Yeah, I stopped playing arena because the game was a mixed bucket on open crews your partners would be randomized sometimes you would get paired with a good crew other times you would get paired with trolls. By the time I gave up Arena at least 1 ship out of the 4 was being trolled.
@zig-zag-ltu said in Loss Farmers:
@eldritchbear I know what you mean dude. But this is why you have to give it some time (given there is some kind of ELO/Skill based system). The system is too fresh to be able to know these things accurately and it is also done by people who never made any kind of competitive game before. Those other FPS games are done by people who know what they are doing and they still have problems. The lower your rank is or if you lose it due to inactivity you get matched witha/against a 'Zoo'.
They had arena (a PVP mode) for quite some years so you would assume they would have learned something out of it so I don't believe they are inexperienced with the system.
The few issues with Arena was that it was it's dedicated mode disconnected from Adventure so most people would just ignore it and some bad faith actors in open crews would ruin the game for the rest, just like you would get a Pirate Legend in your open crew in adventure trolling you completely cause he had nothing better to do since he already did it all.
@wolfmanbush a dit dans Loss Farmers :
1 of the many reasons they should implement ways to move solo fights along.
I mainly solo sloop and the fights lasting forever are my nightmare.
Even though, I wouldn't implement anything for solo sloops battles. If one people drags the battle, it's either because he's a runner or a troll (bad) or just a not-so-good player, has his wheel broken, needs to reset (not bad).
We are all playing this game differently. Some are very cautious, some risk everything. I can imagine a cautious, not very experienced player, panic over a broken wheel and 2 holes, thinking he's about to sink, and going away to reset. Do we need to prevent that ? No. Do we need to teach this player that his ship is fine and that he must accept a bit of pressure put to him while he needs to put more on the opponent ? Yes. How do we do that ? Encourage that solo slooper to go into a bigger crew. How ? Make the mode more attractive and rewarding and so on, we've been on it for 2 months now.
This is a player issue, not a game one. No need to enforce anything, it would only have undesired effects somewhere else (When I'm on a bigger ship the knockback feels insane. It doesn't feel rigt to me already that the LAWS OF PHYSICS change depending on what ship you're on, if you see what I mean
@ondrejbakan said in Loss Farmers:
It's not efficient at all. You need approx. 1,200,000 XP for level 100 and then 1,260,000 XP for every 100 levels. Losing gives you 700 XP. That's 1800 losses per 100 levels...
It is remarkably efficient if your W/L ratio is low.
Let's take the current average queue time, Q. Let's say if you try really hard and put up a good fight you lose in 30 minutes. If you sail out of bounds or just anchor and let them sink you, you can lose in maybe 5 minutes or less. Now you're talking 700 XP in (30+Q) minutes, or 700 XP in (5+Q) minutes. We're examining the delta between 700/(30+Q) and 700/(5+Q). Assuming a Q time between zero and ten minutes (not entirely unreasonable after the intra-faction pairing depending on ship size, time of day, etc...) we're talking about loss farming being 2.6-6x more efficient than trying, if and only if you absolutely, positively never win or hate PVP enough to not even try.
The thing I will agree with is that loss farming isn't more efficient than minimally trying. When I'm on work calls I try to convince my (solo sloop) opponent to roll a d20 for the sink, or I just ram them and bait the board so they sink faster than I do. Those tend to be fast matches one way or another. If you can get even one win every 10-12 matches, you're more efficient than loss farming. If you can't then it is as efficient as loss farming.
@nex-stargaze said in Loss Farmers:
@magus104 said in Loss Farmers:
...What wrong with "getting good" exactly?
What's wrong with getting good? I don't know maybe people shouldn't be expected to study video footage to find glitches and exploits, and then beyond that, to put in extra hours of their life only to get better at a VIDEO GAME. The thing we're supposed to be doing for entertainment and enjoyment, not as our job. When the game becomes a chore, it stops becoming a game.
@n0soup4u said in Loss Farmers:
What's wrong with getting good? I don't know maybe people shouldn't be expected to study video footage to find glitches and exploits, and then beyond that, to put in extra hours of their life only to get better at a VIDEO GAME. The thing we're supposed to be doing for entertainment and enjoyment, not as our job. When the game becomes a chore, it stops becoming a game.
@nex-stargaze said in Loss Farmers:
...I know it's not an easy task and takes a lot of time but like, that's what a truly dedicated player has the right to say, even if it's rude and uncalled for at most times. You can't just get better by not doing anything, and if you have a goal to work for, it should be earned with a similar amount of struggle as normal PvE players who can't finish a single voyage in under 2 hours. Is this not equal, minus the difficulty?
So taking into perspective that I already addressed your counter-argument, you're in a thread where players are arguing of whether the actions (or lack thereof) related to fighting players in the Opt-in PvP Naval Battle mode are ethical to the health of the brand new side mode.
So to TL;DR you, welcome to multiplayer PvP video games. Any game that has situations where you have to test your skills against one another, is essentially, competitive. As someone that heavily dislikes competitive games, I will always have issues with the ladder climb of skill needed to succeed in more matches than not, but this is only an issue I'm more concerned about, in games with PvP in it. Curious, is it not?
On a serious note, the only people that are getting good are those that love the game to a certain extent that they want to become great at it, show off their mastery, and use it to their best potential. That's how one manages to "get good", and it's not by saying "I'm going to get good today", it's more of "I want to try something and see if it works, and maybe keep trying it till I'm great it." This kind of stuff is comparable to exercising, pushing beyond your limit and trying new things. I don't want to be one to question how dedicated you're willing to be to this game, but it seems the hourglass benefits from constant, honest dedication to the game, even if there's not much in the way of rewards.
@n0soup4u said in Loss Farmers:
@nex-stargaze said in Loss Farmers:
@magus104 said in Loss Farmers:
...What wrong with "getting good" exactly?
What's wrong with getting good? I don't know maybe people shouldn't be expected to study video footage to find glitches and exploits, and then beyond that, to put in extra hours of their life only to get better at a VIDEO GAME. The thing we're supposed to be doing for entertainment and enjoyment, not as our job. When the game becomes a chore, it stops becoming a game.
You've never played Eve online, have you? 🤣🤣 Some of those corporations get uber serious...
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