Wishlist Item: Server Player Count Increase (Aye! or No)

5 or 6 has never really mattered as much as some think it does.

It's all ecosystem of a server and 6 doesn't inherently make it better just because of more people, in risk/reward it could make activity worse depending on the state of the environment.

When 5 starts to really feel "dead" for server after server that's entirely an ecosystem issue, not a 5 boat issue.

Every season can be different, Season 7 was a pretty terrible season for organic play because of high bugs, over hunting, and the necessary QoL still wasn't in in the game yet.

Season 11 also has a lot of bug issues but this season is over cheesing and over exploiting. People had a lot of options to cash in for mass rewards with little risk and many veteran players chose to do that. Bonus on top of bonus and cheesing all over means participation is often far outside of organic play with risk.

5 has never and will never be the issue in SoT. It's health of the organic environment. Too much over-hunting and/or too much cheesing are the major problems in risk/reward.

6 will never be the solution, irrelevant bandaid that people look to as the answer to problems in the game. 6 can feel very crowded in SoT on some servers and crowding just adds to disinterest in risk.

In a game that struggles with performance as much as SoT it makes far more sense to maintain a solid 5 over a mess of a 6.

@el-c4pitano said in Wishlist Item: Server Player Count Increase (Aye! or No):

@wolfmanbush, thanks! When you say organic environment and ecosystem issues, do you mean that these are causing less boats to spawn? Apologies if I am misunderstanding. The idea I am presenting is to create greater chances for player engagement and interactions. How would this best work?

Every server is a roll of the dice

In healthy risk/reward it'll be higher chances for interest in risk activity. World events, commendation grinding, gold farming with risk, etc

When it's over-hunted or when people over cheese then those odds go way down, making more servers seem "dead" because that organic interest and participation aren't there.

This is why it's important to not lean too much into enabling over-hunting and not enabling over cheesing.

Seasons 8-9 are an example of how to address over-hunting, solid seasons. Remove the pvp pressure, add the QoL.

We are yet to see how or if they will address the extreme cheesing. So far it's been worse and worse.

To address all the pve cheesing they would have to draw some lines and stick to them. Mainly rolling back extreme cheesing/exploiting when it wasn't intended. Faster fixes, etc. It will 100% not improve naturally, it will require changes in maintenance.

We are also at a very concerning spot in exploiting/cheesing where regulars in the community are just flat out justifying pve cheating. Not a promising situation to be in.

@el-c4pitano said in Wishlist Item: Server Player Count Increase (Aye! or No):

@wolfmanbush, ah OK I see what you're saying now. Mostly in respect to loot and QoL. My hope here is to increase player/boat count someday.. resulting in more in-person interactions (whether those be PvE or PvP based).

They've long been committed to 6 so you have that working for ya

Whether or not it'll ever become something more than temporary remains to be seen.

Something like season 13 would be a good time to really go for 6 with that flameheart ship roaming around. That's gonna take a lot of participation to remain interesting as content.

It would also be a good season to ease back to 6 because so much of the focus would be on the opt in pvp.