Introducing the Penta-vault world event.

So it's a world event where your ship is safe so you can focus on TDM until the event is complete and all the ships surface and kill each other for the loot.

Other than your ship being safe while the WE is in progress, what is effectively the difference between this any a skeleton fort/ashen wind? Those all have CQC when the key arrives and you're in a mad dash to bring the loot back to your ship.

Edit: and why shouldn't I just wait until the chuckle heads below finish the event for me, consolidate the loot, and just sink their ship when they resurface? That's sort of the problem with all these new world events: they all function the same. PVE'ers do the work, then PVP'ers ambush them and take it. I would avoid this WE more than FoF because the last thing I want to see after finishing a world event is a ship right next to me where the game decides to spit me out. It's one thing to post a lookout for ships for surface world events, it's a whole other thing for the game mechanics to hose you by not giving you the chance to spot them in advance.

@tybald This wasn't an "us versus them" argument, it was an objective observation of "intent versus impact" of what Rare designed and how the player pirates cheese the system.

If you watch the mini-documentary, they go out of their way to demonstrate that the original intent of the game is for players to follow this path: find a crew, joke around, collect some treasure, joke around, see another ship, attack the other ship, collect the loot from the sunken ship, joke around. That was the original intended playstyle. Aligned with their "tools not rules" mentality, they added alliances to give pirates another option, and took away some friendly fire, didn't allow us to bludgeon a pirate with a chicken drumstick, and made a few other changes, but the core risk/reward paradigm of the game was always "do I risk my loot attacking that ship over there?" The impact of the "tools not rules" mentality is that it gives pirates the option to participate in PVP without collecting any treasure whatsoever; i.e., all reward, no risk.

This is my average experience with world events: my crew starts a world event. A) another crew attacks us while we do the world event. We sink them. They come back. We sink them. They come back. We sink them. This continues until we run out of supplies and sink, or finish the WE and turn it in. Or B) my crew finished the world event and immediately gets attacked by any number of ships that were just waiting for us to finish. This is illustrated even better in the official Discord where a majority of the ads are "Server hopping for FoF/FotD steals; be good." Many pirates are not interested in playing the game, they're more interested in someone else playing the game and then just taking the reward. Funny thing is I've played with pirates that want to steal the Chest of Legends or Chest of Fortune just to thwart the other crew, then leave ours when we go to turn it in because they don't even care about the gold or the commendation, they like trolling the other crew and the PVP. They leave before collecting the reward!!

In both instances, the other crew had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. And again, if we sink them, they just keep coming back until we turn in the loot or run out of supplies. I understand it, the other pirates are the game. PVE isn't challenging (especially after the last update) and other pirates are the obstacle we're voluntarily overcoming to turn in the loot to "win" the game. But without risk/reward, without some benefit to sinking them, other crews aren't the game they're merely a nuisance. And no, "keeping your loot" is not the reward, that was the reward for doing the PVE. Honestly I like in hourglass that when you sink you get shunted to new seas. I like that I can now scuttle to new waters if I'm getting bullied by a crew. I feel this mechanic should be universal; you get sunk, you get a new server. But then pirates who get attacked have no chance to retaliate. So honestly, if you get sunk two or three times by the same crew, new waters for you stop bothering them.

Really I wish there were a way to prevent PVP if you have no loot on your ship, but "tools not rules." Watch the documentary, Sea of Thieves was not designed to be a "capture the flag" game where every server has one ship collecting treasure and six ships trying to steal it. It was meant to be all ships collect treasure and all ships try to steal each others' treasure. But being able to attack without any loot on board scuttles the vision of the game.

@tybald
I am a PVEVP'er. I do both PVP and PVE. I have no grudges. I sink, I get sunk, I move on. I'm simply starting my observations.