"Safer Seas"

@poopdekjones said in "Safer Seas":

"A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

I understand the idea behind this, but who will really use it beyond little kids?

"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

If we are losing too many to the harshness of the sea then it's necessary to offer more support.

Their success is our longevity.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush where's the evidence that we are "losing too many to the harshness" of game play, though, as opposed to the lack of content?

Have you noticed that everyone complaining about experiences getting crushed are... still here? It happened to me and I still play when there's new content to enjoy.

The lack of content is a much bigger problem for player retention than not having some single player/PvE CoOp mode.

There is no lack of content in sea of thieves

it's a top heavy food chain where cheesing the servers through pvp was running people out of here for years.

it's a game "toughen up, kid" isn't strong policy, it's counter productive, it's not sustainable

safer seas (as currently designed) is a stepping stone for reaching potential. Rather than just taking people's money, having them get wrecked and then leaving.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush no lack of content?

I believe the vast majority of streamers and veteran players will strongly disagree with you. There has been no significant addition to the sandbox since sea forts well over a year ago.

I've disagreed with much of what the minority of play through content creation and veteran play have said socially for years.

I have my grade V commendation in disagreeing with their narratives.

Many of the people that ran activity out of here through coordination and over hunting think the game won't survive without them, it's not the case.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush you say "Minority." I'd love to see your statistics.

You think a few dozen content creators being parroted by some twitch chats somehow represents the majority of play in this game? They've never represented the majority. Extreme meta gaming is devastating to a risk/reward environment. I've said it for years. Season 8 9 and apparently 10 are just Rare actually leaning into the majority rather than influencer feedback around risk/reward.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush you don't know that
You have no idea how many people fully agree with the streamers and influencers. You are making an assumption.

Surely you can at least admit that your "minority/majority" opinion is based entirely on conjecture, right?

I know how often I see people on a daily basis in social areas word for word parrot every hot take a sot influencer has about anything.

I know that low investment extreme coordinated pvp within content creator communities destroyed activity in the game and as they were running grade 2 reapers into the red sea did they stop for self reflection? no, they made content about how alliance servers are a problem.

No self awareness about the damage being caused by play styles that are similar to what alliance servers do only 100x more destructive.

The people at the top of this game saying "more more more, serve us more" while just destroying any path for people to get from the bottom to the middle.

Everything I have said about risk/reward happened over the years. Risk/reward environments like this do not care who is in power, they do not care who is popular, they do not work unless people are treated well and given opportunity when they do not have power and do not have connections.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush so to be clear, that's a yes on the conjecture question?

My record on this is public

the intent of season 8 and 9 was/is to balance risk/reward and to boost organic activity

so they had data to support what I have said here and implementing changes to risk/reward that are in line with what I have a record of saying lead to a very active season 9, organically.

How much content was made during that time by content creators about balancing risk/reward so that people stop getting wrecked by all the cheesing in pvp? How much content was made about being accountable for over hunting the environment? How much content is made that isn't self serving advertisements for personal business.

I've made zero profit off this game and will never pursue any, I have no subs, no followers, no social status. My record on risk/reward is public and consistent and I stand by that consistency and by the accuracy that has been shown throughout my posts here on majority/minority gameplay.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush not interested in whether you profited or how "consistent" you've been. I'm aware that you sing basically the same praises after each and every update.

But you also like to speak like you're the arbiter of truth, or speaking for a majority, and you simply don't have that data.

So let's be intellectually honest here: you are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine, but you are categorically not in a position to argue verifiable facts for which you have no evidence. Fair?

the same praises? lol

what "praises"?

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush so you're going to ignore the substance of my post and the question then?

If lack of content is a major issue then why is the longest season with the least amount of content added the most active organically?

There is no season before season 9 that had people regularly fighting over random risk/reward situations 2,3,4 ships deep towards the end and the seasons were much shorter.

I know this because I played just about every day of it in higher risk areas. This is also shown clearly on streams by content creators that invest in servers.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush I invite you to present your objective data.

Not your subjective, anecdotal experiences. The data.

That, or admit it's conjecture. Because without objective data, it literally is.

If Rare leaning more towards the principles of risk/reward that I have a clear history of posting about and away from the some of the more vocal feedback in the social areas (from veteran/content creators) isn't proof enough for you that data exists to support my views there isn't much more I can offer.

They are data driven when making these decisions and they have all that data.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush it's conjecture. You don't have the data, you are guessing at the data.

It's like saying "well if there's smoke, there must be fire!" But correlation is not the same thing as causation.

If you don't understand the difference between "conjecture" and "verifiable data" I don't know how to help you. Simply put: you aren't qualified to say you "represent the majority" until you have the data, and you clearly do not have that data.

So maybe you're not actually in a position to speak for rare or what their data reveals.

Season 8, addressing risk/reward and pressure on those without power, new players, inexperience, etc

Season 9, addressing risk/reward and pressure on those without power, new players, inexperience, etc

Season 10, addressing risk/reward and pressure on those without power, new players, inexperience, etc

that's more than just seeing some smoke.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush present the data, dude.

you mean the confidential internal company data? lol

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush so you're admitting you don't have it?

I do not have it.

What does exist publicly is devs flat out saying that they are trying to bring down pressure on new players/pvers/etc.

What does exist is devs saying publicly they rely heavily on data for their decisions. This includes decisions I disagree with as a veteran player but those decisions were made based on their data.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@eva1977 and I have been a player, and played with numerous other players over the last five years that crushed, and stuck around.

Not everyone is going to stay. That's ok.

Here's how I look at this

Sea of thieves is casual paintball. It's not pro, it's families and kids and everyone else that just wants to hang out and have some fun. It welcomes all players but the design is increasingly more for the casual paintball experience.

Over time a group formed that takes paintball very very seriously and they start ruining the experiences for others. Not because they are "bad" not because of anything personal, they just started taking it more serious than the design and it significantly effects the qol for others during paintball.

This group starts seeing themselves as the priority. They want to be served more and they want the experience more intense but that's never been casual paintball. They are still welcome and there is still fun to be had but at some point the leaders of the event have to step in and create a situation where it's no longer running out casual players or there is no more casual paintball event to offer.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush your metaphor is inapt.

To align it appropriately:

Consider a paintball field, with owners that say "we are committed to running this field as one for paintball."

Now consider the scenario you describe plays out, where a younger crowd comes in, and doesn't like losing or getting shot by paintballs, so they start complaining that the field doesn't also have a nerf arena.

Now, the Paintball field owners hear this, and eventually cave and develop a separate field for kids to play nerf.

Unfortunately, this means the Paintball field doesn't get new bunkers and obstacles to play on as often, as now the Field Owners have to commit their finite resources to two separate fields. It doesn't completely destroy the ability to play paintball, but the overall quality of the Paintball field inherently suffers because finite resources are now being divided in a way they weren't previously.

The nerf players are happy because they receive infinitely more resources than they used to. The paintballers, however, are disappointed: they get less than they used to, and they're getting less even though they were promised this would never happen.

The economic realities of this decision have downstream implications for the people that are upset that go well beyond the facile strawman of "fewer noobs to hunt."

They didn't create safer seas because of complaining they created it because of internal data that lead them there. I know you have a "show me the data" view but they make their major decisions from data not complaining in the community.

I've been very critical of how they have messed with captaincy but they are entirely doing it because of data, they can't just cater to me as the minority veteran view on captaincy. They didn't go against the original design just to dig at me as a veteran player that views Captaincy how I do. They messed with it because their data leads them to believe it's necessary.

Same thing for safer seas and same thing for all their major decisions.

They may not make the right decisions in the end but those business decisions are based on them being far more informed on the data than any of us veteran players.

@raaaavus Your metaphor doesn't make sense, since safe seas has the same playing field as the high seas. And it doesn't give them more maintainance, since it's the same as a normal server, just with a tiny script added that some things are disabled.

However: it way gain some extra income, since players who didn't play because of the PvP may now come back and buy things in the emporium.

@raaaavus said in "Safer Seas":

@wolfmanbush dude, you really need to quit it with suppositions you don't have data to support. Especially when there's a viable, if cynical alternative:

The goal with Safer Seas may well not be to actually cater to player feedback, but to draw in new players and introduce them to a game type where it is much easier to buy cosmetics in the emporium, than to buy them with gold (see e.g. the decreased gold take in Safer Seas).

If Rare can entice new people in, they get more sales of the game, more credits for Gamepass downloads, and likely more microtransactions.

The restrictions demonstrate that this is not truly aimed at people.in the community that want PVE servers because of the massive impediments to progression.

And either way: nothing in your perspective addresses the plain fact that this is a division of resources that does not favor loyal members of the community.

Moreover, the narrative that "this is necessary to drive new players into the game" belies 5 years of successful community building without safer Seas. Clearly the game has succeeded without this feature, it's hard to imagine it's truly necessary now.

No, I don't doubt that SoT has data to back their decisions. However, that does not mean that this Data supports a conclusion that this change is better for the community as it exists today.

If it's a choice between trying something new or shutting the game down sooner than planned I think that could be seen as for the better. It's entirely possible that this decision was that necessary.