Champion Battles

Input from a casual season 8 enjoyer.

Due to the fact that I am constantly matched against people with curses or way more skilled.

It is illogical for me to attempt anything more than a 2 streak. I think I only ever won 2 in a row - two or three times. Not once it occurred to me to lets continue.
I don't care about the gold or flags I could loose, I am also level 30 Athena, it's just the reputation you get for guardians if you sell after 1/2 or nothing at all if you loose.

It's not up to me obviously - but I find this to be a flaw in design.

It makes sense that the loot is not yours until you sell it. Does not make much sense that the reputation of sinking a ship that's already in a new server is not yours until you cash it in. I mean you can make an argument here, but I don't think this punishment is necessary. Also it's not like this game is COD with millions of daily players worldwide. The more incentives to keep people playing and engaged - the better.

Imo developers really need to rethink reputation rewards for season 8 pvp if they want to keep this as a permanent feature. They should allow faster progression for casual players and slow it down for hardcore ones. So if we had level 0-80 a lot faster than now, and after level 80 it would slow down to what it is now. Perhaps another nerf past level 500?

@zig-zag-ltu it definitely seems like I’ll win 2…….. and then get ABSOLUTELY SMASHED on fight number 3. Friday night while we were playing we were going to go for a 10 streak on fight 5 we loaded into being flinched of the boat “no fights available please use war map to look for a new fight” on the screen as our boat “gonged” and sunk….. WTH Rare. Never again.

@super87ghost I doubt they have a formula to determine skill levels of players. There are too many variables imo. The very basic one could produce wrong results.
So I don't think there is a problem with the streak bonus.
But the problem is that a very good player will reach level 1000 before bad/average will reach 100. Which sounds ok on paper.

But that player going for 1000 will run out of ships to sink if its a crawl to get anything out of that game mode for players not interested in it. I personally don't care that much about the Ghost/Skelly curses. Wouldn't mind to have the ghost one, the one I am after is the one from Season 1. Also why its 5 levels above the PVP curse is beyond me to understand. Should have been a PVP participation reward (just like it was a participation reward during season 1) that you could purchase, (Level 15-45 would seem fair).

So in a way it's a carrot on a stick for me to be a training dummy for the best players in this game at the same time if it takes that long and losses are so unrewarding and the gameplay is just plain ship v ship that goal might become secondary and participation severely reduced.
Also I am trying to think of a carrot on a stick past 105 as a solo slooper. (galleons,brigs even duo sloops are cool, dont get me wrong).

So I am just wondering, what will Solo sloop scene will look like after 1year. When the casuals have gotten their curses and are concentrated on other new things? What will this game have to offer for people not interested in 1v1, how will it offer short matchmaking times if there are only completely new players and level 500++ players? Would it become something available during prime time on weekend? Would it be allowed to exist with players waiting for 30 minutes for a battle that might end in 10?

(Please don't take my rambling here as suggestions or advice or especially demands) this is just my take on the game mode and the situation in general. If I have this opinion and several others, perhaps more people do. Other people are concerned regarding cheaters as they really want this to be like a sport with true competition, skills etc. Some others want something else in general.

If I may suggest some things, which can improve/eventually save this Season 8 PVP in the future.

• A decent anti cheat, even if it wouldn't work 100% people would feel better having one.
• Report/Commend function IN - GAME.
• Revamped Open Crew (obviously the PVP game mode would require adjustments to fit two strangers who want to have 1 game together to fill crew spots, what happens after the fight would be freedom of choice without any punishments, like one person wanting to sell and the other wanting to continue, resulting in griefing and verbal fight)

How exactly, I don't know at this moment as half baked ideas work until you find major flaws. But the result of the revamped open crew for PVP should meet these requirements.

• You would get matched with players with similar Skill + Mindset. -Perhaps after battle finishes you could report your opponent for verbal abuse/cheating or commend your opponent for good sportsmanship. Players with more reports (validated) would obviously be matched in the future with similar minded toxic people.

Where as polite and normal people would get crews similar to them.

• The Open crew for PVP should not work like Open crew for adventure. There should not be any doubts of what you are doing before joining or punishments if you decide to stop playing after 1 battle(not getting a penny if the crew does not want to cash in). Also if your crew (including captain) decide to log off and you want to continue your streak you should be allowed to, just with new teammates.

I mean the whole concept basically needs to have all the fundamentals and foundation of Arena. And I am not one of those people who are crying about arena to return, I am part of 98% who never played it. Why?

Because Arena is like the Taxi companies before Uber completely eliminated in a lot of places. The service provided OBVIOUSLY would never disappear. So instead of changing themselves they wanted everyone else to change expectations and ride on their dirty, smelly banged up taxis.

Same with Rare and what happened with Arena, instead of having fresh ideas, improving Arena, advertising new featuers on social media, gathering statistics for those improvements - all I ever saw was remarks that nobody is playing it. Why? I found the whole concept half baked personally- ''1v1v1v1v1(ships) and get a chest btw''. I am sorry but what stopped the developers from Introducing Team deathmatch, this very same 1v1 amongst other things to see if interest would grow? I don't remember the long asked curses to be rewards for that either. Now this is the topic everyone is on about.

So I can guarantee you and I bet my house on this. Leave this mode unattended, introduce nothing new and we can all see a post 2 years from now. ''We are removing Hourglass function from the main adventure as nobody is playing it.''

Just my two honest doubloons, I hope my criticism to the approach will be met with thought and perhaps even laughter instead of negative emotions.

To clarify your idea relates to choosing the hard mode of fighting bigger ships. I've heard you get more rep but I don't know how significant it is, I def accidentally vote for it a lot. Think it needs more separation

I think general incentive for going for larger streaks as I so rarely come across champion ships as majority lower at 4

The system is flawed from the start.

An ELO system, as adverised, is DESIGNED to get people close to a 50% winrate. It is fundamentally incompatible with the very notion of "streaks".

Now streaks are the fastest way to gain allegiance. The system is favouriting top players at the expense of the lower performing ones. We see this.

The result is that noone below the 80% winrate is even attempting streaks I guess. So yeah, definitely need some changes in my opinion.

Sea of Thieves have always been build around this notion that everything is obtainable for everyone. One just needs dedication and time, not skill, statistics in the background give the normal player enough RNG that eventually, over time, everything can be done. This hourglass mode breaks this. Some achievements linked to streaks/champions will be literally impossible to do for some people with the current system, because statistically they are very not likely to happen (sinking 2 ships in a row ? Sure. Can happen to anyone given enough encounters. Sinking 10 in a row ? With an ELO system ? Huh....). I just feel like some in the community are OK, or even happy about that. Which is sad.

@jolly-ol-yep This would make sense if we had visible skill groups at least a bit.

For example CSGO has ELO, in high levels it would take you about 10 matches to uprank if you have 1000s of matches under your belt.

Where as lower ranked/new player would uprank 2/3 times from so many wins.

Their heart is in the right place and we love them for this, problem is they just don't know what they are doing and since they are game developers they probably did not have the time and passion to play a game with Matchmaking and ELO for 1000s of hours to understand how concepts work. Perhaps they will open their wallet and find ways of attracting people.

I can guarantee you, hire a top CSGO pro player (doesnt have to be a current one) that has interest in this game and some knowledge as an advisor and he will sort out the PVP on demand for them. Perhaps the game would become too hardcore for casual players, but the sweats and streamers would love it if executed right. Just a wild thought (Also does not have to be CSGO necessarily there are many good games, but I feel that that one is the most similar to the way your pirate moves and mechanics etc)