I started playing this game during seaso 1 and spent over a thousand hours in it. I love SoT, its great, for now. Developers released their first quality of life update during season 5 or 6 (I think). Ammo pouches were added as well as simpler storage crate management. It was great.
Then they added the sovereigns. This was an interesting addition, which killed off the whole point of selling to the OG factions. Then season 8 happened. PVP, its great, and now the seas are dead of players. Every ship I now come across is of no challenge to me 90% of the time, cuz all of the PVPers are in HG.
The way I see it is that Rare made the game so easy for new players, that its no longer the SoT is started playing and fell in love in. Lots has changed for the better, sure, but some of the changes made the game so easy it lost its charm. And I am genuinely concerned that if the game keeps on changing to make it easier and easier, then its just going to die.
My suggestion is a major PVE update. Not jus rebalance of older PVE activities (Im talking about you, normal skull fort) but the addition of new challenging PVE content. Not just bullet sponges, or 2 ashen lords, but actual challenge.
This could involve new type of enemies, that appear as a final boss at the end of a new voyage. They would be an AI controlled enemy, with the same moveset as our pirate. Except, it would be able to dodge shots, use jumping and dashing, as well as control the distance between himself and the player. Best part is it would not have an enourmous amount of health (maybe double the amount of player's HP) and would not heal. At the same time, only 1 player at a time could fight the boss. This would be a real challenge for the PVE players, set to prepare them for PVP encounters, as well as allow pirates to practise their combat skills.
Another, less difficult but still funa ctivity would be new bosses, that would posess weakpoints and could be brought down, only if hit there. Again, nothing new in the gaming industry, but still better than bullet sponges. Please Rare, do not make the game completely easy, we need some "endgame" CHALLENGING content.
The game became too easy
Experienced players choose their own difficulty in this game
Solos are rarely bored, rarely consider things "easy" because the environment as a solo is constantly presenting risks and challenges.
Yeah, this game is really easy when people are sailing around with a few other experienced players, and it's quite a challenge for those that aren't, and are producing.
Challenging in this game really doesn't end up challenging it just ends up more weight for small and/or inexperienced crews to carry while everyone else just cheeses it with over-skill, big crews, coordination, whatever their thing is.
The game needs consistency, they are always going in scattered directions, catering here and then contradicting it with catering there. Is it still going to be a risk reward game? is it going to be something different? They try to do everything and it leads to a lot of potential loss by bouncing around
I think "challenging" is a proven flop, it doesn't move the needle and it doesn't create activity. I think interesting is a better bet, something that isn't just a miserable experience to call it difficult, something that gets people to invest long term, build on captaincy, build on milestones, keep supporting role play and individuality.
Even if people moving treasure around in a risky way is behind us they can build on what we still have around.
Find ways to create interesting interactions, not just required cooperation stuff nobody wants to do, not just trying to push dead world events, create some sort of incentive to interact in a variety of ways, not just a cookie cutter encounter that leads to alliances or pvp. We have on demand pvp now, people have a resource for a fight, we need more than just fighting and cheesing outside of that content now.
I wouldn't say PvE needs more challenges. Once you learn the mechanics they become pretty easy and you're never going to get say Elden ring level of difficulty in this game. I'd prefer PvE that has unique mechanics, a good example being the gold skellies or shadow skellies. Something that needs you to do something in order to beat it. More world events that require mechanics rather than bullet sponges.
The difficulty side of SoT for me has always come from PvP and solo slooping.
Once you have your sea legs, the only thing challenging about SoT is PvP.
The PvE (Tall Tales aside) quickly becomes a grind where the most time-consuming part is sailing from A to B over and over and over because Rare's idea of "challenging" is making you do the same thing 25...50...100...240+ times. After a (short) while playing the game, you don't lose (sink) to PvE anymore.
The biproduct is that a lot of players associate PvE to always winning...and PvP to always losing...so they avoid PvP until they can't...and when they can't, they either run, scuttle, or put up so little fight that they might as well have scuttled.
And to make it worse, Season 8's PvP content has quickly devolved into sweaties and loss farmers with very little middle ground. Why? Because instead of rewarding for effort in the event of a loss, they reward for simply participating. A short sited design that has amplified how divided our playerbase is and not allow for the middle ground to improve at PvP.
Hourglass is the late game content for pirates looking for a challenge. If adventure mode is now "easy" perhaps you ought to give hourglass a try?
@sweetsandman said in The game became too easy:
And to make it worse, Season 8's PvP content has quickly devolved into sweaties and loss farmers with very little middle ground. Why? Because instead of rewarding for effort in the event of a loss, they reward for simply participating. A short sited design that has amplified how divided our playerbase is and not allow for the middle ground to improve at PvP.
The content never had to appeal to support improvement at pvp, that was always over-hype and unrealistic optimism.
The only way this content was ever going to be more than what it is would be for it to be wildly popular and it had zero percent chance of that happening. 5 years into the game and years into enabling quick action rather than balanced pvp scenarios had it DOA.
It's what happens when they invest so much into partner opinion and opinion of those that hang around with partners.
They have very few voices around them that truly play this game organically (at least ones they apparently invest in) and it shows time and time again in design around combat.
Difficult to make wildly appealing combat content when there is a severe disconnect with those that play the game as it was designed.
@sweetsandman said in The game became too easy:
And to make it worse, Season 8's PvP content has quickly devolved into sweaties and loss farmers with very little middle ground. Why? Because instead of rewarding for effort in the event of a loss, they reward for simply participating. A short sited design that has amplified how divided our playerbase is and not allow for the middle ground to improve at PvP.
Loss farming is a strawman fallacy. There is an entire thread discussing it and it was darn near unanimous. Even on community day there were so few loss farmers, and that was the best time to do it! The percentage of pirates loss farming hourglass is so negligible that they are barely in the equation. I think what you meant to say was everyone is getting cursed and getting out, or just quit the game mode because their time wasn't being rewarded/respected.
@wolfmanbush
I think with the right reward/progression system, this content could have had wide appeal to the playerbase.Unfortunately, the way it's designed pretty much only rewards A). those that are good at PvP....or B). those that have enough free time to offset that requirement.
_
@LordQulex
It's true that there aren't that many loss farmers...but the skill gap makes it feel like there are tons of them. There are constantly people in streamer chats or on the forums or reddit or twitter complaining about the MMR as they get paired up with nothing but sweats. Today, I felt so bad for my one opponent that I was doing absolutely everything I could to "throw" and make him feel like he was doing good. It's gotten that bad.So, to your point, people are quitting the game mode after very little investment...further eliminating the middle ground...very soon we'll be left with sweats, players that will quit after a few matches, and...uhh...loss farmers.
[mod edit]
@sweetsandman said in The game became too easy:
@wolfmanbush
I think with the right reward/progression system, this content could have had wide appeal to the playerbase.Unfortunately, the way it's designed pretty much only rewards A). those that are good at PvP....or B). those that have enough free time to offset that requirement.
_
@LordQulex
It's true that there aren't that many loss farmers...but the skill gap makes it feel like there are tons of them. There are constantly people in streamer chats or on the forums or reddit or twitter complaining about the MMR as they get paired up with nothing but sweats. Today, I felt so bad for my one opponent that I was doing absolutely everything I could to "throw" and make him feel like he was doing good. It's gotten that bad.So, to your point, people are quitting the game mode after very little investment...further eliminating the middle ground...very soon we'll be left with sweats, players that will quit after a few matches, and...uhh...loss farmers.
Side note...I 100% ran into you loss farming about a week ago 😉
Something that always blows my mind is how much skill is actually in the game. Not saying it's not a fun game or even a fun game for pvp but the performance issues would drive me up the wall if I took pvp serious. In random adventure the deck was so stacked in their favor that those frustrations would be a lot less, but in this new content I dunno how people find the drive to take pvp as serious as they do. The passion and drive is impressive to me.
@wolfmanbush Perhaps a testament to how unique the experience is that SoT delivers. There's truly nothing else like it when it comes to PvP. Sure, it's imperfect, but I feel like the imperfections are exaggerated by certain members of the community.
For me, SoT PvP is an oddly addicting aspect of the game. I've done plenty of PvE, but the session-based excitement of it wears off quickly these days. For as many sighs and frustrations that PvP brings, it always seems to keep me coming back for more and trying to improve, prevent mistakes, and mitigate situations where the imperfections are most prolific. It's like a chess match against the player and the game, especially as a solo.
@guyrza Adding PvE content is a hamster wheel, the PvE folks will consume it in a matter of days and then quit if they don't get more. Whereas PvP is player made content.
@foambreaker said in The game became too easy:
@guyrza Adding PvE content is a hamster wheel, the PvE folks will consume it in a matter of days and then quit if they don't get more. Whereas PvP is player made content.
The hope here is that eventually milestones start taking off with newer players.
Rough start because they were implemented in an abrasive way that shook the dedicated farmers left in the game but over time they might still catch on
Milestones are an incredible investment in the future of the game, they left a lot to be desired on implementation but them existing is a great thing moving forward.
I'm like the pve stat dude of SoT, it's long been my thing but it didn't become my thing for a while, first I went through a year or so of just figuring things out. They still might catch on for players over time. Hopefully they catch on more and more over time because it can help a lot in staying motivated long term with higher end production and activity.
Season 7 and 8 ended up being slow starts but down the road the features lay the foundation for some future longevity
Captaincy has just unbelievable potential, some of it is already in effect and hopefully they expand on it. The qol that Captaincy adds and may add in the future is also another incredible investment that they made for pve and longer term adventuring. I'm personally quite optimistic about Captaincy and the connection it creates between a player and the game, the significance it adds to the story, the individuality it supports.
@wolfmanbush To me that is the kind of content that is very healthy, systems as opposed to adding endless tales. Tools for player made content.
I'm making HUGE PROGRESS on my Times Sunk milestone :)
Personally, for me the PvE content has been fantastic while PvP has been quite repetitive. I also avoid player interactions as much as possible while in adventure mode. Just personal preference, but I prefer the PvE content, the voyages and the tales. As someone who has been in the game since the beta, I like a lot of the changes made and I am glad that the game is accessible to more players.
@sweetsandman said in The game became too easy:
Once you have your sea legs, the only thing challenging about SoT is PvP.
The PvE (Tall Tales aside) quickly becomes a grind where the most time-consuming part is sailing from A to B over and over and over because Rare's idea of "challenging" is making you do the same thing 25...50...100...240+ times. After a (short) while playing the game, you don't lose (sink) to PvE anymore.
The biproduct is that a lot of players associate PvE to always winning...and PvP to always losing...so they avoid PvP until they can't...and when they can't, they either run, scuttle, or put up so little fight that they might as well have scuttled.
And to make it worse, Season 8's PvP content has quickly devolved into sweaties and loss farmers with very little middle ground. Why? Because instead of rewarding for effort in the event of a loss, they reward for simply participating. A short sited design that has amplified how divided our playerbase is and not allow for the middle ground to improve at PvP.
Totally agree. Seriously, you are right. This whole time I've spent in PvE avoiding PvP because I know I will lose to other players because I fear they are better than me. I avoid player interaction because most of the time they are hostile for me and I never grew the confidence to fight back feeling I can win.
With the hourglass PvP, and inowing that my enemy is the same crew size as me I saw an oportunity to improve at PvP. I've reached a point where I can land more shots consistenly, cam repel borders most of the time but I still can't secure a win consistenly. I feel like I reached the middle ground and I hate to see that all the effort and time is meaningless if I can't secure a win. I am tired of fighting and surviving long enough just to be rewarded the same as a loss farmer. In fact, loss farmers have a much more efficient way to progress than what I do.
I don't want to spend a lot of time going in circles, landing shots, and fighting just to get the same ammount of xp as if I just dropped anchor and let them sink me. It frustrates me a lot.And that's a problem it happens in solo sloop, but I can't go with a crew because I don't have anyone to play this, I don't have anyone else to rely on. If someone says that I should go on Discord or LFG on the xbox app, I would like to say that I find it pretty horrible to need a 3rd party software to get teammates. I don't have a discord account, and even if I create one, don't expect me to use the microphone either. Due to circunstances in the real world I can use a mic.
I can't rely on open crews either because they start without an objective, and evem suggesting to queue for PvP I don't expect them to win since I am sure they didn't have the predisposition nor experience to win a match against another crew that would 98% would be premade.
I am puttng effort, I am using the will I have left to continue the grind, but the system is really not on my side. I am seriously considering going back to loss farming if this is how things will continue. I care about the enjoyment of the other enemy for a good fight as much as the system carea about my effort amd time invested in this game mode.
Before anyone says that I should do it for the enjoyment of PvP and the curses should be something secondary, they should also tell that to anyone who used the argument of "I don't like the Tall Tales but I put the effort into getting the Gold Curse" whenever yhis topic is brought.
I am tired of getting meaningless progress after all the work I do in amatch. And someone who just farm losses get the same ammount as me, but faster.
I remember when the Kraken was an actual threat. And Megs too.
Bring back island skelly snipers.Introduce "hard mode". Ramp up aim on skellies, sirens and Phantoms. Make the feared meg/kraken/skelly gally a thing again. Let skelly gallys spawn on Solo Sloops. I don't want damage sponges, but improved and aggressive ai to fight.
I don't want to pvp. I want pve to be hard again.
@dragotech123 It's truly a shame that you've gotten to that point and I hope Rare makes some changes in the coming Season(s) to course correct the hourglass progression system.
The amount of effort/time just to get one curse is substantial even if you're winning a lot. For reference, in Servants, I'm at level 106...my W/L ratio to get there is 201:40. Figure between queue times and match times an average of 20 minutes...251*20 = 5,020 minutes = 83.66 hours to get to the level I'm at...and that's with an 80% W/L ratio...
If you're not winning, this will take an eternity if you're actually trying but just keep losing. They've designed a system that pretty much only rewards time spent if you're winning consistently. They need to do something to get the average players some honest progression even in loss. I don't want to gatekeep and say "meh just gotta get gud"...that doesn't help and will certainly push this content to be more dead than Arena in just a few short months. I want more people of all skill levels getting these curses and enjoying the content.
_
Side note...I'd strongly discourage finding a random person to try and get through hourglass as a duo. Duos is by far the sweatiest queue. It's not even close. Probably have 30 matches in duo and at best my crewmate and I have a 50% W/L...and we're a pretty well oiled machine for the most part. Matches take longer and wins are tougher to come by...I can't imagine trying to compete in duos with an unfamiliar crewmate. I mean maybe the MMR is more appropriate in duos? Idk...I just wouldn't put a lot of faith in the grind being easier if you had a crewmate.More people play solo so they wanted to improve the solo experience. Sovereigns is a perfect example. Turned a 50+ minute selling stop into at most 5 minutes if your rotating through emissary flags to work on ledgers. That being said it also ruined reapers. Takes too long to sell there now. What used to be the faster place to sell since everything went to 1 person and the run is relatively short it still takes far too long now. But there is a difference between Easy and Time saving. It is bad game design to make something insanely tedious just to inflate your play time.
@lordqulex I am lvl 115 in guardians, so yeah, I have given it a shot. The thing with it is that u burn out sometimes, and want to do some PVE. But the PVE is too easy.
@wolfmanbush i agree with some of the points u made. And I agree that this game used to be the type of game where u make your own fun. But again, these days all competent crews are in HG, and the others are running. So now its a lot more difficult to actually find a crew to have an interesting interaction with.
@a10dr4651 see, thats the thing. Golden and shadow skellies are a simple, yet a lot more fun mechanic. Its not over the top difficult once u know how to kill em, but at least its a lot more fun than regular skellies u jus spam ur weapon at. Which is why I belive that more bosses than are not bullet sponges will benefot the game a lot.
@guyrza said in The game became too easy:
@lordqulex I am lvl 115 in guardians, so yeah, I have given it a shot. The thing with it is that u burn out sometimes, and want to do some PVE. But the PVE is too easy.
@wolfmanbush i agree with some of the points u made. And I agree that this game used to be the type of game where u make your own fun. But again, these days all competent crews are in HG, and the others are running. So now its a lot more difficult to actually find a crew to have an interesting interaction with.I think this is what hourglass defending was designed for. Go do PVE, get invaded once or twice, win some, lose some. Once they find a way to actually get defenders to match, this is how I intend on playing in the future.
@sweetsandman PVP opportunity is great, but u burn out with it after some time (I got lvl 115 is guardians so ik what Im talking about)
@lordqulex I havent thought of that, ngl. Yeah, this is actually a way to play the game, I might give it a shot in the future. My main point, however, was about PVE potentially becoming easier and easier by the actions of the developers. And sometimes I jus want to do PVE, but its a shame its monotonous LKM spamming 90% of the time (skelly fleets are fun tho)
@guyrza said in The game became too easy:
@lordqulex I havent thought of that, ngl. Yeah, this is actually a way to play the game, I might give it a shot in the future. My main point, however, was about PVE potentially becoming easier and easier by the actions of the developers. And sometimes I jus want to do PVE, but its a shame its monotonous LKM spamming 90% of the time (skelly fleets are fun tho)
I think the development team has painted themselves into a corner and are having a bit of an identity crisis. Their advertisements and collaborations present wacky pirate hijinks in a cartoonish world, so that is what a majority of new players expect. I think hourglass did a good job of taking most of the mega sweats out of adventure mode, so newer/lesser skilled players are the ones doing voyages and such, building their skills.
The challenge is there is nothing to keep players here. Pirate's Life saw the largest number of new players, and the largest number of players lost. I think Rare understands they are in a cyclical paradigm where new adventures/seasons get people playing for a short stint, then go somewhere else until the next new thing comes out to interact with. What they don't have is any reason for me to sign in every day. For more casual games (basing this next part off of Raid: Shadow Legends) there are different currencies to earn, different bosses to fight, different content to explore that rotates every day. I just don't find that daily/weekly/monthly deeds motivate me enough to sign in every day, especially after I finish the seasonal progression. I usually forget they exist frankly.
A long while ago while begging for an ice biome was popular, I floated the idea of a rotating "veteran" zone. Right now the only veteran zone is the Devil's Roar, with its volcanos and geysers and buffer NPCs and more valuable treasure. The reason there is no ice zone is because the servers really can't handle a bigger map. What I suggested was an ice zone with dangers for veterans, but only one is active at a time. The Shroud is described, "the shroud itself ebbs and flows like a living being, swallowing up areas into its corrosive and deadly fog and spitting out new areas." So if the servers can't handle a bigger map, keep the map the same size but have different zones be exposed week to week to at least give the feel of different play. It would be a complex change for sure, but I think more aligned with a relatively proven gaming design principal.
Rare needs to find a carrot that will get players to play every day. I don't really have a great idea yet but that's what I feel they need.
@pithyrumble пишет в The game became too easy:
I want pve to be hard again.
I want Sea of Thieves to be hard again@valor-omega and yet sweats are a major part of SoT community, whether Rare likes it or not. So they should be more market orientated in this case
@lordqulex said in The game became too easy:
Rare needs to find a carrot that will get players to play every day. I don't really have a great idea yet but that's what I feel they need.
New interest.
This community is very cliquey and largely just a bubble of social activity and it doesn't do great at bringing new interest in beyond just gamepass marketing. They invest a lot in streams and streamer content but sot streaming is a major bubble. There are many people that are major parts of significant amounts of channels, it's a bubble of the same people showing up in many different channels and the only time that changes is with manufactured activity through drops.
They invest in fortifying that bubble more than they do in expanding it. The partner program is a clique, incentivizing variety streamers was the only real way to move outside of that. They use drops to pad numbers with their chosen creators more than to actually find some new interest out there.
My guess is that the healthiest activity they have in the game is xbox activity for a wide variety of reasons, something that is very unlikely to ever be pulled off on shared servers like it was 2ish years ago when people regularly and actually playing in a way that contributes to rather than just takes from a server.
Far too much focus on status and far too little focus on new interest by appealing to people outside of these social bubbles.
They cater to people that don't play their game organically, that's extremely counter productive when trying to get people to fall in love with the experience and stick around. New players don't have anything to do with all the social and status things people have going on in the cliques around they game, they want a quality experience not just to be people's content pawns.
Nobody outside our sot bubble cares about who the cool streamers of the year are, people patting each other on the back over and over, that doesn't appeal to people outside of these circles. They care about their inexperienced experience, their fun, how the first few weeks are to them.
Every time a random content creator with some views pops up and wants to just have some adventurous fun they get swarmed by the bubble and lured into "pvp pvp pvp content content content, we need to stream together pvpvp" and they either get burnt out or they never return to just enjoying the game and the same people once again clog newer channels to sot. Networking has been damaging the heart of the game for a couple of years. It runs off all the people that just want to chill in the adventure pirate game.
It's not community by leeching off new blood through networking, community is supporting new people playing how they want to play at their own speed with the people they want to play with. They aren't just a resource to tap into for personal gain, just like all new players aren't. Let them grow and bring new interest in.
I hate to say it, but Rare had new interest and let it slip through their fingers. Pirate's Life brought in more new interest than any other season or update before or since.
Why didn't those players stick around?
The two reasons I hear is that they were ambushed by hyper aggressive PVP and that's not what they bought the game for, feeling like a bait and switch, or after they finished the Pirate's Life content they just didn't want to participate in the grind-fest the game is. I know well your position of "player driven content" and pirates needing to set their own goals, but as we've discussed in the past a large contingent of contemporary gamers revel in simply watching that number tick up. And when the fastest/best way to get that number to tick up is running an emissary, well, we're back to the hyper aggressive PVP again.
I'm a big advocate for rewarding behavior you want, and I think if Rare wants to keep new players that content brings in, they need to make the seas more peaceful. I don't think supplies is the right vector, I can sink a ship with my mates with nothing but ramming and boarding. There needs to be a bigger reward for cooperating to match the reward for stealing. I think that if we're flying the same emissary flag, we should both get our multipliers when either side sells. It would incentivize players to check the tables, fly the same flag as someone else on the server, and actually seek out friendly interactions with other pirates. The hyper aggressive PVP'ers will always be a risk out there, but that may reduce the initial trigger finger twitch when you see a sail on the horizon.
@guyrza I don't disagree that PvP should be marketed more, for sure. But I also don't think the hardcore community needs to be especially catered to, either. Just because they came to the game, and clamored for changes to fit their playstyle doesn't negate what SoT was meant to be.
As you become a veteran of this game and become very skilled, the game is going to get easier.
That's how a skill based curve works.
But you must remember, you are not the only person to play this game or players like you. They also have to consider balances for solo and smaller crew, especially new players.
