Let's Talk About "Griefers"

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    You may be curious as to why griefers is in quotations, I'll explain this first then give suggestions on how to deal with our negative situations.

    First. For the most part, the only griefing I've seen complained about that I would actually consider griefing in this game, is the verbal abuse. Vulgar and obscene insults being thrown about while killing someone is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing it. This, we can all agree on, is just too much.

    Now, to the meat of the matter.

    Being killed, chased, spawn camped, or complaining about a ship or crew camping an outpost, is actually not griefing. Now before you jump down my throat let me explain.

    This game is an open world PvPvE game with a pirate theme, and while pirates in common era have been romanticized as honorable rogues, make no mistake, they werent. There is "No honor among thieves," and pirates were criminals that ruled through fear and intimidation. Any code of honor is per ship, per captain, or perhaps even per voyage. My crew's code won't be like your crew's.

    As such this means that you will die. Every single player in this game will die at the hands of another, it's inevitable. Now there are measures you can take to prevent someone giving you a hard time. Let's go over them.

    1. Get better. Seriously. There's no better teacher than experience and nothing can trump your personal growth in skill. By getting better you can circumvent even a disadvantageous situation through your own means. And don't worry, you will get there, provided you actually try. "Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something," Jake the dog, Adventure Time.

    2. Ships camping an outpost: this one is easy. In fact many of these situations can be solved by the same tactic. BE AWARE! Use your powers of observation and keep a CONSTANT look all around you all the time. As you approach an outpost circle it and look for ships, sails, or mermaid flares. All of these are signs that there's someone there and if you want to avoid confrontation, the best way is to avoid people. If you see any of these things then thats your sign to find an uninhabited outpost. There's as many ships as there are outposts, there WILL be one that's open.

    3. Spawn camping: When you die, you go to the ferry of the damned. Now, if you're killed by another ship and it's crew, why did you die? We're you outmanned? Outgunned? Outplayed? Did they have an advantage? You must weigh your options and think. Can you take on the situation and win if you respawn as quickly as possible? If the answer is yes, go for it and get back out. Is it a maybe? Then consider your actions carefully to come out on top. Is the answer an emphatic no? Well, then the best thing I can say to you is just don't go through those doors! You don't HAVE to leave when the doors open. You can chill with the undead captain as long as you want with no penalty. But your ship! It's being sunk! Well... yeah... You lost. And that's okay. It'll respawn and so will you on it and out of harms way. But say they don't sink your ship and want you to keep coming back to kill you over and over? Well, scuttle and respawn! Look through your options and find the scuttle option. I won't guide you there because you're a big boy/girl and can find it yourself. This will sink your ship and respawn it elsewhere, and guess what! You can even do this from the ferry of the damned! Now you're free to voyage once more and it took less than 5 minutes. (As a side note, it's ALWAYS a good idea to look through all of your options in a new game. I suggest you do so every time you play for the first time.)

    4. Chasing: so the crew saw you respawn and are now giving chase. Assuming you're in a sloop, you shouldn't waste time and get your boat moving immediately. The advantages you have are the fact that you can go into shallower water. You can turn much quicker and sharper than a galleon, and you're faster going into the wind than a galleon. If you utilise all of this then you literally can't be caught by a galleon unless you make a mistake, in which case, it happens. Pick yourself up and do it again. Lesson learned right? Now you know that that was indeed a sand bar that chewed through your hull.

    5. BE AWARE! At all times! The game has a really long render distance. Make a mental note of where ships are in relation to you and adjust accordingly. If you see one turn it's bow to you, then you should, in turn, take measures to avoid it as soon as you see it.

    6. Solo play: this game is hardest to play solo. Period. There's a lot to micromanage and trying to do it all by yourself is going to be difficult, especially against other larger crews because of just a numbers advantage. The game even tells you it's hard. It's meant to be. Playing in a duo sloop is your best bet of avoiding negative situations as you can't be locked in the brig, but you at least have one person in the world who can't outright kill you. Remember, rare said they want it to be a social game, this doesn't mean they want every crew being happy and friendly all the time. It is based on pirates, once again, criminals. They mean social as in a crew working together to overcome challenges both player and ai alike.

    And finally number 7. The other actual griefer. The difficult teammates. Let's face it... Every game has them. From halo, to overwatch, to league of legends to every multiplayer online game out there. These people are despicable. They are annoying, and these are the ones you actually can't avoid unless you play solo or with a group of known friends. To which, the only way to avoid them and get out of this bad situation, and technically every negative situation. Switch servers. You got unlucky and ended up with the bad apples on your side. It happens. We've all had it happen to us. The best you can do is report them and leave.

    Most importantly, we should remember that life will knock us down, but it's always up to you to pick yourself back up. You can't control others, but you can prepare for the worst in the eventuality that it does happen. You have all the tools at your disposal to make your adventure and keep bad things from happening to you, but in the end it IS up to YOU to use them.

    When the winds be against ye, ye welcome the challenge.

    Captain Crash.

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  • jajaalex

    And what about the endless respawn mechanics? is endlessly respawning and hunting the same guys greifing?

  • GiggleSnarf
    Master
    Founder

    @crash4654 more people need to see and understand this.

  • Sickleh
    Marauder
    Founder

    @crash4654 You need to add a tl;dr

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @sickleh nope. Observation is half the battle in sea of thieves and my post will reflect this. If you give up on reading it, then that's your own doing, same as unwillingness to learn how to deal with negative situations. I've provided a means and information for those who are having problems, it is inevitably up to them to utilize it or not.

  • Sickleh
    Marauder
    Founder

    @crash4654 You made a post you want to be heard and recognised but choose to be selective to those that can be bothered to read walls of text?

    tl;dr covers all the bases but if you want a select few to read your post. Crack on.

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @jajaalex no, just the actual spirit of pvp and piracy. If you keep killing someone and they keep coming back, then your options are still there all the same. You can continue to confront them, cut your losses and avoid them, or leave the situation all together.

    If it's at a skull cloud fort? The waves won't stop until it's completed. You can easily leave and come back and maintain progress after you restock.

  • Gamcheongsaeg

    I can agree with this but god I hate getting locked in the brig for doing nothing bad....( p.s. I'm locked in the brig right now happened while I was bringing my crews ship back after they rammed it into keel haul fort and sunk it so I thought I'd check the forum to see if theres any other prisoners out there)

  • jajaalex

    @crash4654 So you mean when a sloop comes back and gets insta killed by your galleon 5times and they still dont give up its not griefing? Thats the EXACT meaning of greifing. They know they wont succed, they just keep attacking, doing the same thing over and over again. Hows this not greifing? They already got bested several times?

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @sickleh if they can't be bothered to read it then that's on them, much like their "griefer" situation. Too lazy to read helpful advice or to learn how to avoid trolls is on them. I'm here to support personal growth, not the easy way out.

    It's none of my concern if a user is too lazy to utilize their brain for a couple minutes.

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @jajaalex and you have the options to leave, do you not? Is anything in the game MAKING you stay in the exact same place that your at? Or are you CHOOSING to stay to do something?

    Did I not say you can easily leave and come back to a fort and not lose progress? You have as many options as they do to overcome a situation.

  • jajaalex

    @crash4654 Yes, The loot in the ship

  • Sickleh
    Marauder
    Founder

    @crash4654 So what you say is useful to everyone?

    Mighty high opinion you have of yourself there.

    Maybe someone who CBA to read your post doesn't give two flying sharks about griefing and how you feel it would be "fixed"

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @jajaalex well you would ideally take your ship with you when you leave, wouldn't You? I really felt that would be implied.

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @sickleh yes, it is useful to everyone because it's something everyone can do. I'm not parading myself as a pariah of knowledge. This is all basic in game stuff anyone and everyone can do to avoid being griefed.

    But instead of merely starting arguments or complaining I decided to give advice. Take it or leave it, makes no difference to me, but it is there none the less.

  • Explosive Ouch

    While on one hand, I agree with this entire post... on the other hand, I just got done with two and a half hours of the absolute worst 'worst case scenario' possible.

    Myself and my fiance, in a sloop, spent two hours getting spawn camped by 4 4-man Galleons who had decided to team up to take on the lone sloop. Sure, they caught us after a chase because I messed up my navigating and bounced off a rock, costing us precious time. But not being able to spawn anywhere but in front of 10-12 Blunderbuss' wielded by obnoxious, Mountain Dew-hyped pre-teens was miserable. And even on relogging, we'd end up in the same instance, chased down or found, and then promptly murdered repeatedly.

    Oh, and on PC? If you're dead, you can't scuttle your ship. The vote can pass all it wants, but your ship never starts exploding. And it's hard to vote in the .01 seconds it takes for a group of Blunderbuss' to rip you to shreds... the vicious cycle continues.

    I can understand the PvPvE portion of the game. I can understand the massive, open world lending itself to a huge dynamic range of playstyles, but what frustrates the landlubbing dog poo out of me is when there's no manual 'out' when you end up in a bad situation.

    Maybe the fix is something as simple as prioritizing Sloops to matchmake with other Sloops, and Galleons with other Galleons? Or maybe it's something more complicated... I don't claim to be a game dev.

  • ShadedBot
    Castaway

    Well spoken post, what i get from this is stop crying and maybe learn from your own mistakes. =)

    Sign Captain Shadaddy

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @explosive-ouch you can scuttle from the ferry of the damned free from blunderbuss barrels

  • hiyall1
    Marauder

    @crash4654 the vulgar language is mainly from the xbox players. i now see why PC players bash and hate console players so much. i know PC players can be toxic too but consoles take the cake for toxicity

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @hiyall1 I can't say one way or another, but I know it's less than favorable no matter who or what system.

  • ElzamVB

    This post is a justification of shoddy mechanics. And also displays a severe lack of understanding of what griefing is. It's not "game mechanics" when the aggressor has nothing to gain. Shoddy PVP is one of many things that doom this game.

  • hiyall1
    Marauder

    @crash4654 i have been in other games on PC where the players are just complete d-bags. but on this game. every single xbox player i ran into as in joining their game or running into them out on the sea, they were complete butthats while the PC side i have had no problem so far

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @hiyall1 well I'm your first friendly xboxer lol

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @elzamvb griefing is when someone abuses a mechanic in the game to make it to where you can't do anything. This game gives you every option and opportunity to avoid it or get out of it. Which is more than some other games do. Many games only give you the option to leave the game to get away from server griefers.

    Or am I wrong?

  • MACHUCA ll
    Insider

    @crash4654 said in Let's Talk About "Griefers":

    You may be curious as to why griefers is in quotations, I'll explain this first then give suggestions on how to deal with our negative situations.

    First. For the most part, the only griefing I've seen complained about that I would actually consider griefing in this game, is the verbal abuse. Vulgar and obscene insults being thrown about while killing someone is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing it. This, we can all agree on, is just too much.

    Now, to the meat of the matter.

    Being killed, chased, spawn camped, or complaining about a ship or crew camping an outpost, is actually not griefing. Now before you jump down my throat let me explain.

    This game is an open world PvPvE game with a pirate theme, and while pirates in common era have been romanticized as honorable rogues, make no mistake, they werent. There is "No honor among thieves," and pirates were criminals that ruled through fear and intimidation. Any code of honor is per ship, per captain, or perhaps even per voyage. My crew's code won't be like your crew's.

    As such this means that you will die. Every single player in this game will die at the hands of another, it's inevitable. Now there are measures you can take to prevent someone giving you a hard time. Let's go over them.

    1. Get better. Seriously. There's no better teacher than experience and nothing can trump your personal growth in skill. By getting better you can circumvent even a disadvantageous situation through your own means. And don't worry, you will get there, provided you actually try. "Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something," Jake the dog, Adventure Time.

    2. Ships camping an outpost: this one is easy. In fact many of these situations can be solved by the same tactic. BE AWARE! Use your powers of observation and keep a CONSTANT look all around you all the time. As you approach an outpost circle it and look for ships, sails, or mermaid flares. All of these are signs that there's someone there and if you want to avoid confrontation, the best way is to avoid people. If you see any of these things then thats your sign to find an uninhabited outpost. There's as many ships as there are outposts, there WILL be one that's open.

    3. Spawn camping: When you die, you go to the ferry of the damned. Now, if you're killed by another ship and it's crew, why did you die? We're you outmanned? Outgunned? Outplayed? Did they have an advantage? You must weigh your options and think. Can you take on the situation and win if you respawn as quickly as possible? If the answer is yes, go for it and get back out. Is it a maybe? Then consider your actions carefully to come out on top. Is the answer an emphatic no? Well, then the best thing I can say to you is just don't go through those doors! You don't HAVE to leave when the doors open. You can chill with the undead captain as long as you want with no penalty. But your ship! It's being sunk! Well... yeah... You lost. And that's okay. It'll respawn and so will you on it and out of harms way. But say they don't sink your ship and want you to keep coming back to kill you over and over? Well, scuttle and respawn! Look through your options and find the scuttle option. I won't guide you there because you're a big boy/girl and can find it yourself. This will sink your ship and respawn it elsewhere, and guess what! You can even do this from the ferry of the damned! Now you're free to voyage once more and it took less than 5 minutes. (As a side note, it's ALWAYS a good idea to look through all of your options in a new game. I suggest you do so every time you play for the first time.)

    4. Chasing: so the crew saw you respawn and are now giving chase. Assuming you're in a sloop, you shouldn't waste time and get your boat moving immediately. The advantages you have are the fact that you can go into shallower water. You can turn much quicker and sharper than a galleon, and you're faster going into the wind than a galleon. If you utilise all of this then you literally can't be caught by a galleon unless you make a mistake, in which case, it happens. Pick yourself up and do it again. Lesson learned right? Now you know that that was indeed a sand bar that chewed through your hull.

    5. BE AWARE! At all times! The game has a really long render distance. Make a mental note of where ships are in relation to you and adjust accordingly. If you see one turn it's bow to you, then you should, in turn, take measures to avoid it as soon as you see it.

    6. Solo play: this game is hardest to play solo. Period. There's a lot to micromanage and trying to do it all by yourself is going to be difficult, especially against other larger crews because of just a numbers advantage. The game even tells you it's hard. It's meant to be. Playing in a duo sloop is your best bet of avoiding negative situations as you can't be locked in the brig, but you at least have one person in the world who can't outright kill you. Remember, rare said they want it to be a social game, this doesn't mean they want every crew being happy and friendly all the time. It is based on pirates, once again, criminals. They mean social as in a crew working together to overcome challenges both player and ai alike.

    And finally number 7. The other actual griefer. The difficult teammates. Let's face it... Every game has them. From halo, to overwatch, to league of legends to every multiplayer online game out there. These people are despicable. They are annoying, and these are the ones you actually can't avoid unless you play solo or with a group of known friends. To which, the only way to avoid them and get out of this bad situation, and technically every negative situation. Switch servers. You got unlucky and ended up with the bad apples on your side. It happens. We've all had it happen to us. The best you can do is report them and leave.

    Most importantly, we should remember that life will knock us down, but it's always up to you to pick yourself back up. You can't control others, but you can prepare for the worst in the eventuality that it does happen. You have all the tools at your disposal to make your adventure and keep bad things from happening to you, but in the end it IS up to YOU to use them.

    When the winds be against ye, ye welcome the challenge.

    Captain Crash.

    Man you couldnt have said it better, some minutes ago i was in a session where these kids started private messaging me because me and my friend decide to join them in the raid event but they attacked us so we sunk their galleon with our sloop and then they said we ruin the game and that they were there first..... At a PUBLIC event

  • Sorenthaz
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    @jajaalex said in Let's Talk About "Griefers":

    And what about the endless respawn mechanics? is endlessly respawning and hunting the same guys greifing?

    Something something "that's what this game is about" something something "get good" something something "PvP should stay the way it is".

  • ElzamVB

    @crash4654 You are wrong.

  • Sorenthaz
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    Tl;dr you don't consider s**m tactics griefing (which is based on your opinion/personal definition of 'griefing') and people just need to get good and deal with it by doing workarounds.

  • MACHUCA ll
    Insider

    @hiyall1 said in Let's Talk About "Griefers":

    @crash4654 the vulgar language is mainly from the xbox players. i now see why PC players bash and hate console players so much. i know PC players can be toxic too but consoles take the cake for toxicity

    Well... Im a console gamer and the problem is kids these days on the console because all of my friends specially in a game as great as this we always respect players and try not to engage unless they do first or if they other crew is bullying another we get in there to defend the other but i can agree at least the vulgar part but most of the time is just pre-teens over hyped because they killed you till you show them different or give them a reason to leave the server.

  • Zalm

    2 and 3 ARE griefers. Just because you dont think they are doesnt mean they magically arent.

    People hiding in outposts that have scuttled their ship and suprise you while hiding BEHIND a building you have no need to go behind are griefing and nothin can prepare you for that.

    People sitting on your boat killing you the second you spawn are also greifing in that you only get two choices. 1, spawn and die until they loot and sink your ship. 2, wait until they do. Actually not play the game you bought because of a griefer for 10(PLUS) minutes and sit there doing nothing. Makes sense.

    I dont think chasers are griefers, same as you, just get better at sailing or fight. But you missed the worst of the griefers. The spawn runners those who will die, spawn nearby due to flawed mechanics, and race back to fight again. Repeat until enemy has exhausted resources then win loot anyway. There is little you can do to them besides give them what they want(for you to leave most likely) and not bother, which us the same as sitting in ferry doing nothing. Basically not playing the game you paid for.

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @sorenthaz so when you play an even more PvP oriented game, such as call of duty or battlefield. Do you alter your tactics based on the situation at hand or do you mindlessly run into the enemy team over and over and try and kill one of them as they take you out in a conga line of death or do you approach it differently based on the enemy.

    Do you constantly try and take out a sniper with a pistol or do you flank them or counter snipe them?

    Are these not using the tools and methods at your disposal to avoid a negative situation?

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @elzamvb by the gameplay mechanics of being a pirate you choose to be, I'm not. Ever play ark or rust?

  • Cpt Rikari
    Founder

    If sloop is hard mode, I must be really good at this game. Not saying I don't agree. I'm just amazed it's considered hard mode considering how easy it is.

  • WLBCrash
    Marauder

    @zalm if they scuttle their ship then you can see the mermaid flare, as I stated above, and know not to go to that outpost. I did say to circle it and scope it out.

    As for respawn camping? Scuttle from the ferry and respawn after about a minute or two and you're home free. Definitely not 10 minutes. I mentioned this as well.

    As for the respawners constantly coming back after dying. You don't have to continually stay in the same location and drain your resources, that's always a choice. This one is about the only workaround and I agree that it could be adjusted. I would suggest that consecutive deaths place you further away from your sinking and place of death.

  • StillVill
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    i don't think you know what "griefers" are

    Griefers are when someone JOINS your group and keeps dropping anchor or lowering the sails into the island, shooting holes in your own ship and overall being horrible.

    PVP needs balancing and for people that i kill to either be put on the opposite corner of the map, or get pushed to a different server if im spawn camping them to the point they cant move.

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