First of all id like to say that english is not my main language.
I only played in the most recent final beta with a couple of friends.
I come from very competitive background and have been present in the Esport scene for about 15 years.
This thread is about PVP balance around the game mechanics.
Lets start with a couple of points that did not feel right.
- Respawn ( Timer, Respawn location)
The first thing that I noticed in sea of thieves is the respawn timer. The respawn mechanic is essentially the main problem of alot of PVP balance issue.
The respawn is too short, forgivable. The respawn timer has to be longer or the spawn location has to be somewhere else than the ship (Such as nearby island.)
The respawn timer is responsible for alot of frustration in PVP. It makes it almost impossible to take down a full crew Galleon due to the respawn times being un-synchronized. Leaving no rest for the attacking crew to take down the enemy ship without having someone spawning behind them while they are looting the ship.
Leaving the only solution to "spawntrap" the enemy crew while you wait for the ship to sink IF you managed to pierce the ship without someone patching it in time.
2.Lack of effective ways to sink a ship.
This is also a serious balance issue. It is virtually impossible sink a ship using your cannons. Cannons should be the most effective way to sink a ship, they are somewhat difficult to land in high tide or high speed chase. You are restricted to your cannonball inventory. Yet the answer for a cannon ball whole is one wooden planks. Now planks are even less rare than cannon balls. On top of that you technically cannot lose a plank like you can lose a cannonball by missing your target. Inevitably a fights with cannon balls will end because of the restricted amount of cannonball a ship carries rather than a lack of plank on board. The solution for it would be to add a rarity to the material needed to fix a cannonball hole. The planks should be a valuable item, something that you would seek on an island. Something worth stealing if you get on another ship...
Because of how expendable the planks are the Best current way to sink a ship is to hit another boat with your own boat to get your crew to "spawntrap" the the other crew and hope they didn't get to fix the hole you just did while you fill their boat with buckets of water. It literally makes no sense.
Another solution would be to add ways to sabotage a boat from the inside. Maybe with unlockable purchasable tools to pry open the hull from the inside of a ship.
I know it is possible to get gunpowder inside of a ship but gunpowerder is very rare and could very well used against your own ship. It is very hard to take it on another boat and blow it up.
- Weapon mechanics.
There are several weapon mechanics in the game that still need a tune up In my opinion.
The sniper rifle is too hard to use to even bother using it. The lack of damage is also a let down. Due to the difficulty of landing a shot the damage should kill instantly. The bullet travel time is too slow and the bullet drop is too harsh. Every scoping needs a relative aim sensitivity in the settings because the sensitivity gets way too low, making it even harder to use.
Swaping gun requires an animation before being able to shoot. It is currently possible to shoot twice very fast by shooting and swaping to your secondary weapon and get another shot off in less than a second. It is exploitable in the current state.
The cannonballs physics also seem wrong, at least from my understanding ( but I could be wrong here.)The way the cannonball behaves when you shoot them from the ship seems physically wrong. In the current state of the game the cannon balls direction is affected in a way that the current direction and speed of the boat is added On top of the initial direction of the boat. Makes it that the cannon ball curves way too much and often passes your own ship when fired straight from the side, that it technically impossible. The wind is the only thing that could potentially give the cannonball enough speed to push it past your moving ship. ( I can't really word this any better, sorry)
4: Lack of ways to catch up/ hit boats from the front.
Game needs a mechanic to catch up some boats. Boat inventory should somewhat affect the speed of a boat. A boat with more chest or larger crew would be a little slower.
Another idea would be unlockable perk of a cannon at the front, grappling hooks shots to close the gap on another ship to make it possible to board another ship at higher speed.
A crew would need to cut the grappling hook wires with a sword.
There is also a clear lack of incentive for PVP at the moment. I raided ships for a good 3 or 4 hours with friend and we only found one ship containing one treasure.
A ship containing a goood amount of treasure chest would just pass by an outpost and jump off the ship to turn in the chest and get back on the ship with a mermaid ( also very exploitable)
I hope I was clear enough and the language barrier will not cause you too much trouble for the read.
To be clear I really want this game to succeed and I do plan on purchasing the game. I just feel like there is a good lack of content at the moment for the player looking to raid other ship. An alliance / clan / Group system with Pirates / merchant and even some kind of kingdom "Police" could be great but I did not cover this aspect as I feel there is alot of threads about it.
Please leave feedback.
