Spawn-Killing Frustration

The old invincibility post. Sorry but this idea isn’t new nor will you be the last to suggest it. You have the scuttle option to get you out of the fight. If you’re being spawn camped and they aren’t sinking you, then report them, but if you can’t kill them while they’re on board, they’ve won the fight, so it’s up to you wait on the ferry till you sink, or scuttle.

@scheneighnay Or even a crew of the same size if you’re not good at PvP (i.e. me).

@tesiccl said in Spawn-Killing Frustration:

The old invincibility post. Sorry but this idea isn’t new nor will you be the last to suggest it. You have the scuttle option to get you out of the fight. If you’re being spawn camped and they aren’t sinking you, then report them, but if you can’t kill them while they’re on board, they’ve won the fight, so it’s up to you wait on the ferry till you sink, or scuttle.

The old “git gud” reply. Sorry, but some of us are simply so bad at PvP that no amount of practice or training is going to change our situation. I don’t think I’m asking for the moon and the stars here. All I’m asking is for Rare to make it so people can’t kill you the literal instant you return from the Ferry.

@raginginferno10 Rare has already made it so people can not be revived on an enemy ship. Spawn camping to sink is an acceptable move.

Asking rare for invulnerability is asking rare to save your ship.

implementation of mechanics that give pirates (particularly those who aren’t as proficient at hand-to-hand combat) a better chance to fight back against spawn-killing.

You lost the fight. Control of your ship. Continued to be killed. Solution: Scuttle. Cut your loses and move on.

@scheneighnay nowhere in my reply do I say “git gud”…

@raginginferno10 no where do I say “git gud”. I get you’re mad you sunk and can’t beat the spawn campers but that’s why the scuttle option is there. Heck, there’s even now the option to scuttle and move server completely. It’s entirely balanced and fair.

Tbqf it’s not like a few seconds of invincibility would help you out if you’re not winning your fights while being spawn camped so what difference do you think it would make? These people are clearly better than you and that’s why you got boarded/ambushed in the first place. If that’s a hard pill to swallow, you know what to do ;)

@raginginferno10

The old "get better if you want to stop losing" reply eh?

Or you could bleat on the forums to change the game so you have a better chance at winning.

Use this mentality on say...chess. Or sports. Or tic tac toe.

Arguing a game be changed because you arent as good as your opponent is childish. Arguing that practice and expending effort to improve yourself in something you're interested in isnt even a valid suggestion is entitlement in the extreme.

P.S. Not to indulge in ad hominem, but "Raging Inferno" pleading for training wheels because the other team is better is just funny.

Judging from the replies I have gotten, perhaps I need to clarify a few things. I’m not trying to call anyone out, here; I admit that I could have clarified some things better. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.

First of all, the last thing I’m trying to do is knock boarding as a whole. It is a perfectly acceptable strategy to use in PvP combat, and I have no qualms about it. Nor am I suggesting that boarding be removed from the game entirely. What I am trying to say is that the tactic is difficult to overcome even if the enemy crew is at the same size and relative skill level as yours.

Maybe an example would help show why I bring up the issue. I remember signing up for an Hourglass PvP match as a solo sloop. Pretty standard fight for the most part: cannon shots exchanged, retreating to patch a few holes before going back at it, the works. Eventually, my opponent boarded me and sent me to the Ferry. No big deal. However, as soon as I returned from the Ferry, my opponent landed a shot with their Eye of Reach and knocked me down to a quarter of my health. I only had time to pull out my own weapon before they finished me off with a point-blank Blunderbuss shot, sending me back to the Ferry. In short, I had no chance to swing a sword, fire my own gun, or even move an inch before I was back on the Ferry. There was nothing that I could do to stop them in the single second I had. This isn’t fair because I had literally no time to react to my opponent before they killed me again. If spawn-killing is going to be allowed, then the victim of the spawn-killing should at the very least have some chance to fight against it and break the loop.

Second of all, not all players are created equal. One player might be fantastic at PvP, but another player could be an expert at solving puzzles. Each player has their own strengths and weaknesses, and while practice can certainly help a player get better at a skill, not all of us have the time or the energy to spend 7+ hours playing a video game. In any competitive scene, there will always be some players who are better at a certain aspect of the game than others, whether through training or natural skill. The problem I have is not with the players, but with mechanics or oversights that players can abuse to gain a competitive edge. The ability to kill another player before they have a chance to do anything is not a fault of the victim, nor is it a fault of the killer; it is a fault of the game itself that makes playing less fun.

Finally, I was offering only one suggestion to how the problem could be fixed. It might not seem like it, but developing a video game is extremely hard. Heck, I took an introductory course in video game coding for high school and struggled to make a basic Galaga-style shooter of mobile-game quality. A game like Sea of Thieves is astronomically more complex than my borderline pathetic shooter, and implementing new features always runs the risk of making a preexisting element of the game not work properly. My suggestion was, in my opinion, a relatively simple way to alleviate the problem with minimal risk of inadvertently glitching something else. Besides, it’s not like temporary invincibility is the only way to solve this. Another idea I had was allowing pirates to choose where they wanted to spawn on their ship upon returning from the Ferry. Such a mechanic would be significantly more challenging to implement, but in theory could solve the problem just as well. Both of these ideas sound feasible on paper, but again, making video games is complicated. If anyone wants to share how they would implement these ideas or even entirely new ones, I would be more than happy to hear it.

At the end of the day, Sea of Thieves is an incredible game that deserves all the praise it has garnered over the past five years. I love this game, and it’s clear the Rare does too. That’s why they continue to add more content, give us new opportunities for adventures, and make changes in response to community feedback. What I am trying to do is advocate for a change that I (and many others) would very much appreciate being added to the game. I don’t care how Rare goes about rebalancing spawn-killing, as long as it gives the victim a legitimate chance, however small, to turn the fight around instead of being forced to watch their ship go down with no way to answer back just because the opponent can kill them the instant they return from the Ferry.

@soulstinger2k20 said in Spawn-Killing Frustration:

Arguing a game be changed because you arent as good as your opponent is childish. Arguing that practice and expending effort to improve yourself in something you're interested in isnt even a valid suggestion is entitlement in the extreme.

If my suggestion came off this way to you, I apologize. I wasn’t trying to argue that putting effort into improving yourself isn’t valid. My problem isn’t that other players are better at the game than me. My problem lies in being put in a situation where I am forced to lose a fight, and I have no time to even react, much less turn things around.

That said, there is no need to be rude if you disagree with someone. Having an different opinion is perfectly fine, but it’s not okay to call someone “childish” or “entitled” for advocating for themselves. I am not “bleating on the forums”, as you say. I am respectfully offering a solution to a minor problem within the game.

Skill issue. Scuttle.

@raginginferno10

Instead of invincibility, here is my suggestion:

1. More randomized spawn points on the ship.
2. You go through black screen and return to the ship, but you don't load in until you hit "x". You can't move, but you can see/look around, and perhaps choose the opportune time to load in and attack.
3. Optionally, while in the ready to load state, you can cycle through respawn points in order to find a spot NOT directly camped.

Okay that last suggestion isnt bad.

Not truly spawning in til you hit a button, or choosing your spawn point depending on whats being camped... thats not bad

@soulstinger2k20
Yep. It feels rather balanced....you can pick your timing to improve your chance.

@raginginferno10

Sorry for you in this situation. Its a difficulty to repel.

Due to the nature og the game, there are layers of elimination processes.

From the bottom up:

Natural naval is chaotic on low levels, due to this, boarding can be efficient if pulled of, and can result in spawn camping to prevent reset in naval.

When boarding gets normal in your skill pool, border defence is practiced, and naval efficiency is necessary. This is when chainshots become annoyingly efficient for its fight prevention.

Finally crews above this level will be aware of both advantages and will take advantage of clean-hit shots, and utilize angle and time of attack to do prominent dmg first and finish the fight with the previous 2 points of elimination instead.

As this process is optimalized, u will understand your impact and when you can control what is happening. Ubtil then it can feel like you are outnuberd or gunned to stagnation forcing the second part of the fight to be a slow and painful deterioration under attack, and this can be overwhelming. This is an experiece brought by crews that have learned since they had encounters on your level, and have now learned a way to lock you down. I know it feels like you are locked in spot here, but its actually a result of players working to neutrilize your abilities because you are able to resist their other skills. This will sort itself as you learn to counter all strategies.

In a way spawn camping is a showing that you still can kill them and turn the fight even though they have the upper egde, but often it feels like your abilities are nullified instead.

Im drunk so this might not make sense, but you have lost your edge at this point and is at a disadvantage here i think. You arent suppose to be in a good position when they have pinned you down once. Ita their step in road to victory.

Spawn camping to sink isn't in itself too bad and is required on some ships to gain that sink. The main problem is how easy it is to lock a ship down. Weapon damages being too high is a factor, immunity to friendly cannonballs and silent boards catching crews out in the heat of battle. I don't think invincibility is the answer, you'll never remove spawn camping from the game but some steps could be made to the balance to make it less of a requirement and not as OP.

Although the spawn protection of some sort would help to turn back the tide and give more incentives to land better cannon shots instead of boarding, I doubt it would really help much to the most hopeless pirates. If you are being dominated so bad that ''you can't even draw your weapon out consistently before being sent back to the ferry'' I would dare to say your reaction time is way slower than of those pvp sweats and that spawn protection won't help much imo.

Been there a few times myself in many games, especially at learning stages. Thing is the spawn protection will be countered by movement and once you are spawned back fully, you will get another sniper shot and a blunderbuss to the face.

If the weapon combat was rebalanced, animation exploit removed, I believe this would be great. But then again it's hard to judge without having those changes.

Currently you spawn on a random spot inside your ship, so this is in a way a spawn protection on its own. Try to use your environment to your advantage, try to have blunder bombs ready for boarders if you don't trust your blunderbuss. Don't rush in straight lines with your sword towards a drawn weapon.

I personally find the current weapon combat to be terrible, in perspective to other games and the current state I would rate it below pass mark 3/10. So we could try to polish things around it, but I believe fundamental changes and some innovation is required first. That asymmetrical balance only works and looks good on paper, otherwise allow us to animation cancel the sword lunge and allow us to pull out a weapon midway through, than we are evens Stevens. :P