About Safer Seas

@riptide3683 Well since it's a new feature it would be a bad idea to have a rule about locking the threads about it. Otherwise they won't be able to see how it affects things.

I do hope they won't change the rewards though. I think that's gonna be the big thing.

I'd like to see two ships in a server though. PVP is completely different from anything the NPCs can teach you. Including chainshot which you'd literally never use outside of PVP.

@riptide3683 said in About Safer Seas:

Ahoy!
I've been thinking about what SS means for SoT
1.
It doesn't do much to perpare players for High Seas combat.

In fact, it actually anti-prepares them for the High Seas: think about how many terrible TERRIBLE habits will become ingrained in Safer Seas players after spending 2000+ hours getting to level 40 in every company. They're not going to be posting lookouts, they're going to be anchoring facing islands, not keeping good supps... I mean the list goes on and on - and by the time they've spent enough hours on the Safer Seas to get to level 40 in all companies, those habits are going to be so unconscious they will be virtually impossible for them to unlearn. Like trying to drive on the left after driving on the right all your life.

2 and a 1/2.
It also slightly worries me that deckhands and moderators are not locking threads asking for changes to SS rewards. Rare said they wouldn't change it, therefore threads should be locked.

Whether mods lock threads or not is essentially meaningless. They repeatedly locked threads where people asked for PvE servers, despite actually capitulating in the end. They also repeatedly refuse to lock or ban threads demanding "hit reg" be fixed, despite the fact people don't understand what they are actually complaining about and the devs can never actually "fix" it even if they did...

@d3adst1ck said in About Safer Seas:

Isn't this still better than a new player with no knowledge of the mechanics at all encountering an aggressive player in the game as it currently works?

No, because in the first case, the player has no pre-conceptions, they are a blank slate, they have no bad habits to unlearn.

In the second case, they are going to have thousands of hours of automatic, unconscious, ingrained behaviours that are detrimental to their survival on the High Seas. They will be killed even quicker, and have a much harder time adapting. Their experience going from Safer Seas to High Seas will be even MORE aversive to them.

@gravesilence272 said in About Safer Seas:

No, because in the first case, the player has no pre-conceptions, they are a blank slate, they have no bad habits to unlearn.

In the second case, they are going to have thousands of hours of automatic, unconscious, ingrained behaviours that are detrimental to their survival on the High Seas. They will be killed even quicker, and have a much harder time adapting. Their experience going from Safer Seas to High Seas will be even MORE aversive to them.

In my opinion you're severely overestimating what a new player reasoning looks like. They're not going to have watched every tutorial on YouTube about do's and dont's, or always have friends teaching them the ropes, neither will them understand what is it they're doing "wrong" unless someone explicitly pointed it out for them. It's just going to be someone grabbing their controller, sitting at the couch, seeing that funny pirate game on the store and saying "oooo, I wanna try the big ship", not someone pulling up a spreadsheet teaching them how to micromanage their every move from the start. It's completely normal to learn bad habits as you're learning a game, many times it is in fact encouraged. Problem is, they currently do not have any time to learn even the basics before being thrown to the sharks. How do you learn when you're not given the chance to do so?

There are no "blank slates" either, everyone, consciously or not, will indoubtedly carry their own experiences with them as that's exactly what life is about. Be it a cartoon or movie they've watched, a play at school, a book their parents read to them as a kid, previous games they've played, the list goes on.

@riptide3683 That is a saying, yes. But it's not like the mouse asking for a cookie brought a gun. They can just hold on to the cookie.

A lot of people end up playing this game solo, some for preference and some just because it's the most realistic way to play this game whenever and however a person wants to play it.

It is by far the most difficult way to face the environment and it's not even close.

How does one stick with it? Passion, drive, dedication, and having a personal style. Safer seas allows for one to find that personal style which then can lead to the rest.

Once a person feels rewarded a person becomes more attached.

What the game has lost over the years is uniqueness in style. You very very very rarely find experienced players that are truly doing their own thing anymore. Experienced players are largely people that are doing what is popular, what gets clicks, what creates content, what looks cool in social areas. It's all very similar in approach.

This will help support people with unique styles and within that it rebuilds more unique randomness, unique randomness is a large part of what makes this environment beautiful and unforgettable.

@d3adst1ck said in About Safer Seas:

I doubt someone who has knowledge of how to control their ship is going to be killed faster than someone who has zero knowledge.

Agreed, but that's not at all what the discussion was about.

@linowx said in About Safer Seas:

They're not going to have watched every tutorial on YouTube about do's and dont's, or always have friends teaching them the ropes, neither will them understand what is it they're doing "wrong" unless someone explicitly pointed it out for them.

Nobody was talking about tutorials and YouTube vids, so I dunno where you go that from. People learn good habits in the game from experience: by being forced to by interactions with other players. You learn NOT to anchor your ship pretty quick after the second or third time you get sunk because it's down. Same thing with not posting lookout, parking facing in to an island etc...

It's completely normal to learn bad habits as you're learning a game, many times it is in fact encouraged.

Nobody encourages people to play video games badly, that's a silly statement. Yes, bad habits at first are normal, but most people unlearn them pretty quick through experience.

Problem is, they currently do not have any time to learn even the basics before being thrown to the sharks. How do you learn when you're not given the chance to do so?

You've got this completely backwards: being "thrown to the sharks" is HOW you learn the good habits you need against other players!!!

There are no "blank slates" either, everyone, consciously or not, will indoubtedly carry their own experiences with them as that's exactly what life is about.

Not what I meant, you're talking about something else here. I'm talking about specific knowledge and experiences within the game itself. Anyone who's never played SoT before is a "blank slate" as far as SoT is concerned.

Here's some concrete examples (repeated for emphasis) about what I'm talking about. At only 30% reward, it's going to take people thousands of hours to get to level 40 in 3 companies. After playing in Safer Seas for thousands of hours, and NEVER having to worry about making sure your anchor is up, NEVER having to post a lookout, NEVER having to park your ship properly, NEVER learning to keep moving when other players are around etc.... Those bad habits?

They are going to get people killed faster than if they had just come out of the Maiden Voyage.

People coming out of the Maiden Voyage have not spent thousands of hours automatically dropping their anchor while facing the beach - after the first couple of times they get sunk from having their anchor down or being parked wrong, they're going to figure it out and learn.

The people who've spent thousands of hours in the Safer Seas training themselves how to play the game poorly are just going to get frustrated, and because the problem is their own ingrained automatic behaviours - they are going to have a hard time even identifying what they're doing wrong.

@gravesilence272 said in About Safer Seas:

Nobody was talking about tutorials and YouTube vids, so I dunno where you go that from. People learn good habits in the game from experience: by being forced to by interactions with other players. You learn NOT to anchor your ship pretty quick after the second or third time you get sunk because it's down. Same thing with not posting lookout, parking facing in to an island etc...

That might be true for a tailored experience, not a sandbox multiplayer. There are too many things outside their control to have the opportunity to guide a player precisely towards so called good habits, unless they include crazy amounts of guidance. That's why I assumed it was implied people would have to learn outside the game. I can assure you right now there are thousands of very successful players who built their entire pirate legacy while still having bad habits to this date, simply due to the random nature of the game. Should the game eventually have SBMM, then maybe that would work, but right now, not really.

Developers don't care when players develop bad habits early on because learning is part of the fun, along with discovery. If you start micromanaging people, they stop having fun and leave for something else. Putting extremely experienced players together with new players is precisely why player retention went downhill. Getting dunked on over and over before people master atleast the basics most certainly results in most people leaving without giving the game a fair shot, specially under the current social situation.

Nobody encourages people to play video games badly, that's a silly statement. Yes, bad habits at first are normal, but most people unlearn them pretty quick through experience.

As I've said, when someone joins the game, your priority as a developer should be making sure the game works as intended and that people are having fun. Have you noticed the number of competitive games having casual gamemodes, ranked matches exclusively to newcomers or requiring a couple matches before allowing competitive play? You're suggesting the equivalent of matching silver players with globals on CSGO, because that's the only way they would reach that rank themselves.

They are going to get people killed faster than if they had just come out of the Maiden Voyage.

Faster than not even knowing how to navigate around your own boat, gathering resources, shooting cannons properly or adjusting your sails? Come on now...

People coming out of the Maiden Voyage have not spent thousands of hours automatically dropping their anchor while facing the beach - after the first couple of times they get sunk from having their anchor down or being parked wrong, they're going to figure it out and learn.

People with thousands of hours would have less knowledge than a new player? I'm pretty sure they will eventually understand anchoring your boat slows you down regardless of the player threat. If you spent thousands of hours farming at a 12% rate (without emissaries), would you really not learn how to expedite the process?

The people who've spent thousands of hours in the Safer Seas training themselves how to play the game poorly are just going to get frustrated, and because the problem is their own ingrained automatic behaviours - they are going to have a hard time even identifying what they're doing wrong.

Experienced players will understand the new circumstances easily enough, again, a thousand hours of "bad habits" are still a thousand hours of experience. They are not drilling inside your head, adaptation is one of the tasks our brains does best. If they stick with the game for large amounts of hours, there's a way bigger chance they might be interested in learning more specifics about the game. People with a couple hours are more likely to cut their losses.

@rlkaa said in About Safer Seas:

Hello,

RARE's policy is focused on new players, and the SS will not change anything for them. In my opinion the SS is a form of submission on the part of RARE, they have lowered their pants, agreed with the players who do not want pvp in the adventure even though it is in the game. And in my opinion again , I think they will lower it again later, to modify the limits in order to respond to the massive complaints from players who do not want to make efforts to learn the game and improve, or bad players (know defend their loot before wanting to farm in large quantities), exactly as they lowered their pants for the 2tap, he prefers to listen to the mass of CALIMERO instead of integrating it to everyone, or add a tutorial so that everyone can do it.

wait and sea

This just entirely ignores the reality of business.

They aren't sitting around making emotional decisions based on social media outrage for major changes in the game. In the space there will be constant pressure/deadlines/quotas/etc. They will use data to make decisions to reach obligations.

These are decisions being made to keep the game around, that's why they are being made.