Rare needs its Victims!

@digital-perm

The journey of a pirate usually begins with lots and lots of PvE and hating PvP because you’re unfamiliar with it and lack experience and ends with either the love of the entire game PvEvP or just PvP because the challenge of being a pirate ultimately comes down to your crew’s ability to defend your ship from sinking to other pirates.

It’s just the nature of the beast.

There are so many tips and suggestions you can discover and use to make your chances of success higher but please realize that sometimes in some sessions you are going to sink and lose progress. It just happens.

Once you accept this reality the game will become tolerable and hopefully enjoyable to you. Good luck.

@digital-perm Please go watch the documentary. I questioned my own playstyle after watching it and a few of the podcasts. I assume the developers play the game "as intended" and I honestly feel like most of the player base is not.

First I want to say I understand your frustration. Rare's advertisements about the game (Welcome to Our Playground!) are remarkably off target. They focus on PVE content and barely touch on the ceaseless threat of PVP. I feel that the ads and videos online don't communicate this is a shared world pirate adventure sandbox. I wish I had bookmarked it because it is lost to the annuls of internet history now, but there seriously was a topic on here a few months ago where a pirate asked what sunk them: turns out it was another player. They fundamentally did not understand this was an multiplayer shared-world. Let that sink in—some new players don't know this is a shared world before signing in for the first time and getting sunk.

That being said, PVP is the game. That's not some "git gud" comment, that is based on the late Bernard Suits' (a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo) definition of a game: "A game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." Other players are the unnecessary obstacle to overcome. This point was emphasized by Rare recently when they nerfed world events to scale difficulty based on pirate participation. Collecting loot is now easier than ever—with the new harpoon mechanic collecting and turning in loot is trivial. Collecting loot is not intended to be the challenge, keeping the loot and turning it in is the challenge. The PVE would become very boring very quickly without any challenge or drama around keeping and turning it in.

I'm sorry if the game does not match your expectations for it. I see this a lot in the forums and I place the blame squarely on Rare's adverts.

Your journey isn't defined by wins or losses, it is adventure
there is no skill requirement, no victory quota in combat
this is an imperfect environment but one with opportunity
even for those that struggle

remove views about Rare and pvp from the table
this is about adventure
your adventure
you can get robbed and you will get frustrated but nobody can take experience and experiences from you.

maybe this isn't the place where you enjoy it but I hope you adventure somewhere.

@gunnner1 said in Rare needs its Victims!:

New players don't like feeling like a punching bag for veteran players

A time like right now is a good time for new players to acclimate

season loses a lot of activity around this point in a season and add on there is a lot of burn out and drama there are a lot less pvpers out there right now. This gives people a higher chance of being left alone for longer amounts of time but also means they might encounter more players outside of the very high skills levels.

The environment is always changing, high points and low points in activity, different types of activity happening and not happening as much.

The best thing a new player can do for themselves is take advantage of times like right now. Stay out of the higher risk areas and take advantage of the lower interest/activity.

looks like you're wrong. pirates life. tall tale one, and several others, takes you away from other players. and everyone loved it . we dont need anything else. we also don't need psychopaths who kill just for the purpose of killing, but your half of the cmmunity seems to think that a good idea. and yall wonder why player counts are dwindling.

@skil7spark04 said in Rare needs its Victims!:

looks like you're wrong. pirates life. tall tale one, and several others, takes you away from other players. and everyone loved it . we dont need anything else. we also don't need psychopaths who kill just for the purpose of killing, but your half of the cmmunity seems to think that a good idea. and yall wonder why player counts are dwindling.

let me state pvp isn't bad in nature, it's the fact that everyone who hates on pve only servers usually belongs to the upper escelon of pvp jerks. the ones who've constantly sunk me off spawn for no reason other than that they can. they dont even turn in, they just sail off to find another victim, and half the time, they ain't even reapers. so, this comment is dedicated to those whom deserve to drown in the sea of the damned, not those who fort heist, or conquest emmisaries, I actually respect those people. but when someone surrenders and tells you they have nothing and you continue to bully them, or you get sunk once and keep coming back for all eternity till the servers death or they turn in and log off, you're the problem. stop it, get help, seek therapy. if people knew what you did irl, you'd be judged for it.

@wolfmanbush said in Rare needs its Victims!:

Your journey isn't defined by wins or losses, it is adventure
there is no skill requirement, no victory quota in combat
this is an imperfect environment but one with opportunity
even for those that struggle

remove views about Rare and pvp from the table
this is about adventure
your adventure
you can get robbed and you will get frustrated but nobody can take experience and experiences from you.

maybe this isn't the place where you enjoy it but I hope you adventure somewhere.

No.

Your journey is defined by whether or not you can enjoy it, and there's a skill requirement in order to be able to get anywhere without being sunk.

Experiences are being taken away from you when you get keep getting sunk before you can have them.

@goldsmen said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@grog-minto said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@skil7spark04 said in Rare needs its Victims!:

and yall wonder why player counts are dwindling.

Players count is dwindling ? I wasn't aware of that. Could you provide me with your source, I can't seem to find any for Microsoft / Xbox.

Odds are they are basing it off of the steam charts which dont tell a lot about the total statistics considering where most people play the game from.

Just using numbers doesn't mean much in this game. Doesn't say anything about what people are actually doing.

People don't see xbox preferred players on shared servers and nobody sees mass server alliances. This game has a lot of people that just log in and not much happens between that and logging out.

They aren't dropping milestones from 100 to 30 in one dramatic drop because everything is going well. Same with huge pve nerfs in season 9. A real participation problem organically for years.

It's like when they say 30 million or when they say people have done a bajillion of this or a bajillion of that. Accurate stat but not really one that tells the story of activity in this game.

There is a lot of padding stats in there with alliance servers, drops, logging in and logging out, etc. Numbers don't much tell the health of the organic environment through participation at all.

@scheneighnay said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush said in Rare needs its Victims!:

Your journey isn't defined by wins or losses, it is adventure
there is no skill requirement, no victory quota in combat
this is an imperfect environment but one with opportunity
even for those that struggle

remove views about Rare and pvp from the table
this is about adventure
your adventure
you can get robbed and you will get frustrated but nobody can take experience and experiences from you.

maybe this isn't the place where you enjoy it but I hope you adventure somewhere.

No.

Your journey is defined by whether or not you can enjoy it, and there's a skill requirement in order to be able to get anywhere without being sunk.

Experiences are being taken away from you when you get keep getting sunk before you can have them.

They don't keep getting sunk in a row, they take losses. I've played the organic play style the entire time I have played. I've played solo nearly the entire time I have played. Never had a regular crew, when I did play with other people it was either an open crew or I invited someone to my ship from a server I was on. I played through all the high points of activity and low points of activity.

Acting like people can never get stuff down without a sink is just inaccurate. There have always been servers where people sail for hours and hours until they sink or until they leave their session. Lots of time to get stuff done.

Now people can sell very quickly, they can gather very quickly, there is more opportunity than ever before. QoL for the pver and new player has increased.

This game doesn't need to be enjoyable at all times in every moment, many of us don't view it that way, it's not realistic. It's the overall experience as time goes on and all the experiences add chapters to the story.

@grog-minto said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush I've enjoyed the sea a lot since the introduction of the Chest of Fortune. We're often 3 or 4 ships fighting for it. Great fun.

Regarding the trinket threshold drop, I don't see the correlation with the overall health of the game. It's more likely that they aren't as used as they would have hoped. Trinkets aren't that interesting to begin with, imo.

Why would they care if the "higher quality" trinkets are being used? People have access to the cosmetics early on in milestones, class 10.

It's because they have lost significant amounts of their dedicated players that actually grind stuff and new players have never stuck around in the amounts that the organic environment needs for sustainability.

They are throwing max reward for minimum effort to casual players in hopes for an activity bump but that's gonna do nothing long term and sacrifices a design that actually incentivizes long term play.

@wolfmanbush said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@grog-minto said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush I've enjoyed the sea a lot since the introduction of the Chest of Fortune. We're often 3 or 4 ships fighting for it. Great fun.

Regarding the trinket threshold drop, I don't see the correlation with the overall health of the game. It's more likely that they aren't as used as they would have hoped. Trinkets aren't that interesting to begin with, imo.

Why would they care if the "higher quality" trinkets are being used? People have access to the cosmetics early on in milestones, class 10.

It's because they have lost significant amounts of their dedicated players that actually grind stuff and new players have never stuck around in the amounts that the organic environment needs for sustainability.

They are throwing max reward for minimum effort to casual players in hopes for an activity bump but that's gonna do nothing long term and sacrifices a design that actually incentivizes long term play.

Grinding the same content over and over doesn't incentivise long-term play.

@scheneighnay said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@grog-minto said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush I've enjoyed the sea a lot since the introduction of the Chest of Fortune. We're often 3 or 4 ships fighting for it. Great fun.

Regarding the trinket threshold drop, I don't see the correlation with the overall health of the game. It's more likely that they aren't as used as they would have hoped. Trinkets aren't that interesting to begin with, imo.

Why would they care if the "higher quality" trinkets are being used? People have access to the cosmetics early on in milestones, class 10.

It's because they have lost significant amounts of their dedicated players that actually grind stuff and new players have never stuck around in the amounts that the organic environment needs for sustainability.

They are throwing max reward for minimum effort to casual players in hopes for an activity bump but that's gonna do nothing long term and sacrifices a design that actually incentivizes long term play.

Grinding the same content over and over doesn't incentivise long-term play.

It's not about grinding the same content over and over it's about having a path of goals that range from short to mid to long term.

Captaincy was designed to reward all which made it solid in design.

@wolfmanbush said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@scheneighnay said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@grog-minto said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush I've enjoyed the sea a lot since the introduction of the Chest of Fortune. We're often 3 or 4 ships fighting for it. Great fun.

Regarding the trinket threshold drop, I don't see the correlation with the overall health of the game. It's more likely that they aren't as used as they would have hoped. Trinkets aren't that interesting to begin with, imo.

Why would they care if the "higher quality" trinkets are being used? People have access to the cosmetics early on in milestones, class 10.

It's because they have lost significant amounts of their dedicated players that actually grind stuff and new players have never stuck around in the amounts that the organic environment needs for sustainability.

They are throwing max reward for minimum effort to casual players in hopes for an activity bump but that's gonna do nothing long term and sacrifices a design that actually incentivizes long term play.

Grinding the same content over and over doesn't incentivise long-term play.

It's not about grinding the same content over and over it's about having a path of goals that range from short to mid to long term.

Captaincy was designed to reward all which made it solid in design.

There's no such thing, and captaincy rewards past the short term are next to non-existent.
Putting in an extra 100 hours to gain 3 pixels worth of cosmetic isn't a reward.

@grog-minto said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@wolfmanbush a dit dans Rare needs its Victims! :
They took resources to develop, I imagine that they would have to justify it somehow.

It's not wasted resources just because everyone wasn't class 100 after 9 months

the entire point of the design was for years.

It's not like just because they make a decision it means it's going to be effective and best for the environment. They killed off commodities nearly immediately with changes when it was brand new content with potential.

@mrestiercol said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@grog-minto

Yes, griefers are the problem and this griefers tends to be veteran players.

I was trying to do the second part of the mistery an hour ago, I got sunk by a brig twice, I understand the first one because I had 1 skelly sloop loot on my ship, I don´t care about that.... but the second time they just tucked the island knowing that I was returning with zero loot and spawncamped me spamming emotes and doing BM.

This kind of players, the stupid and griefer ones, just make people quit the game. Exactly what I did, I was planning to waste my rest weekend playing sot with my wife, we changed plans, time to play other games.
We do not want to deal with this kind of human garbage on our free days, and like me, there will be a lot of players who feel the same. I only have 1 life to spend, my intention is not to waste it being others fun objective, reason why I only play this game to rush battlepass or double xp days since arena was closed.

Players kill the game with their behaviour, same players complain because "Seas are empty".

There is inappropriate conduct out there but something that is very similar in posts that are saying things similar to what you are is they often include things like calling people "human garbage" which doesn't help your case because it causes people to question how you were conducting yourself out there.

A common thing in SoT is all parties mistreating each other and then one or both trying to portray themselves as the "good" ones and the other party as the "bad" ones.

@mrestiercol said in Rare needs its Victims!:

@pithyrumble

Is an insult only if you don´t behave like that, not this case :)

Nope, I never will say that to my mother or my wife, they are polite persons and never have that kind of attitude with others.

Is not about the map, I do not care about that, but I will not share my time with this kind of "People". If Rare thinks this is the community they want, fine for me. There is a lot of open world games to play coop without dealing with this "players", I have enough to deal with them IRL on my job.

PvP? Of course. Griefing and BM? No thanks.

If we are not consistent with our value and principles in conduct why do we expect others to follow our values and principles?