@brodycanuck imposing your idea of genuine game play on everyone else doesn't work. People are looking for their way to play the game. There is no rules against looking across servers for content you want to do. Making imaginary rules and declarations of genuine game play in a sandbox game is entitled and I hope no one feels inclined to suddenly follow them.
Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort
@gutterangel said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:
@brodycanuck imposing your idea of genuine game play on everyone else doesn't work. People are looking for their way to play the game. There is no rules against looking across servers for content you want to do. Making imaginary rules and declarations of genuine game play in a sandbox game is entitled and I hope no one feels inclined to suddenly follow them.
Its not genuine to skip in and out of game servers on any game, ever. That is exploiting
@sweltering-nick said
Skeleton forts remain active for about 4 or 8 hours until someone completes the fort, or until the next fort is scheduled to activate.
This means, if nobody on the server bothers to do a skeleton fort... that server eventually gets PERMANENTLY locked, because nobody can join while a fort is active, and the forts remain active until the next fort activates, and that transition is instant... So, no players would get the chance to join that server to begin with.
Needless to say, that would be a huge problem, not to mention, if you are fighting enemy ships on that server long enough to win the skull fort for yourself, causing several other crews to quit the server, because after several hours, they're literally just done playing for the day... No new players would join, 'cus the fort is still active, and because the server is too empty, you would be forcefully merged with another server and lose that skull fort anyway.....
Although I initially up voted this thread, you do bring up a very valid point.
A compromise could work and it might even be what the OP intended, where by saying "active fort" he may have meant a fort already under attack.
This would cancel out most of the negative or opposing replies in this thread.If we reset that trail of thought, what downside would it present?
The fort will not be permanently locked.
The server will still have the same population so no need of a merge.
Many game sessions, although not all, may only last a few hours but my crew mate and I play SoT for eight or more hours at a time.I don't mean to sound cocky so please don't think of my post as such. I'm just pointing out that it's hard to totally understand what some people mean on a forum without body language, tone and of course any language barriers that may exist.
We are all misunderstood from time to time.Fair winds and happy sailing. :o)
@admiral-rrrsole said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:
@sweltering-nick said
Skeleton forts remain active for about 4 or 8 hours until someone completes the fort, or until the next fort is scheduled to activate.
This means, if nobody on the server bothers to do a skeleton fort... that server eventually gets PERMANENTLY locked, because nobody can join while a fort is active, and the forts remain active until the next fort activates, and that transition is instant... So, no players would get the chance to join that server to begin with.
Needless to say, that would be a huge problem, not to mention, if you are fighting enemy ships on that server long enough to win the skull fort for yourself, causing several other crews to quit the server, because after several hours, they're literally just done playing for the day... No new players would join, 'cus the fort is still active, and because the server is too empty, you would be forcefully merged with another server and lose that skull fort anyway.....
Although I initially up voted this thread, you do bring up a very valid point.
A compromise could work and it might even be what the OP intended, where by saying "active fort" he may have meant a fort already under attack.
This would cancel out most of the negative or opposing replies in this thread.If we reset that trail of thought, what downside would it present?
The fort will not be permanently locked.
The server will still have the same population so no need of a merge.
Many game sessions, although not all, may only last a few hours but my crew mate and I play SoT for eight or more hours at a time.I don't mean to sound cocky so please don't think of my post as such. I'm just pointing out that it's hard to totally understand what some people mean on a forum without body language, tone and of course any language barriers that may exist.
We are all misunderstood from time to time just as others sometimes misunderstand us.Fair winds and happy sailing. :o)
That could work, the main problem with that is, how does one code in a way for the game to recognize or classify a fort as "under attack"?
As long as 1 or more ship(s) are within range of the island itself? To be fair, it seems kind of contradictory, as many of those ship battles, whilst staying close to the island, often leave the islands radius whilst fighting eachother... So the server would close and sopen repeatedly, giving other players several chances to join the server regardless.
Ultimately defeating the point of such a system... Even if you do manage to stay within the radius long enough, there's a very likely chance that the server would be empty for a few seconds given how many hours people often fight on skull forts, which would server-merge you anyway... In THE MOST frustrating way possible. xD
I don't think this system works, on a fundamental level... it would just punish everyone trying a skull fort, unless they were gods at the game and could swoop in, sink everyone and do the fort, in 30 minutes or less. xD
This system brings with it an unpredictable time limit in that sense, once the skull fort is active, it's just a matter of time when everyone leaves the server, and the very second the server is empty, the last crew gets server-transferred immediately... Sometimes even before they're the last crew remaining... It's very unstable and unpredictable.
I think people that have been playing on that server for three hours should be entitled to that skull fort, like the other people on that server with them. I doubt server hopping was something Rare intended for players to do which trivializes the rare occurrence of a skull fort.
@sweltering-nick Again, you have brought valid points to the table. I appreciate you keeping my grey matter from becoming a dribbling couch potato. Cheers. lol
Once a fort has detected an attack (lock server) then it detects that no one is on the island any more, the timer starts. Give it a period of whatever time to calm down again after nobody is remaining on the island (unlock server).
I know we're taking about a totally different game engine but as mappers we can script this (on a trigger / off a trigger) player detection in Medal of Honor Allied Assault which is now 15 years old.
I'm certain that SoT has a very similar method to detect when your entire crew (regardless of it's size 1-4 players) has died and are on the ferry at the same time.
The active fort resets all of the skeletons in the cannon towers.So the switch to enable additional new comers to that specific server would (if not already full) turn on and off respectively depending on player detection anywhere on the fort island.
It may never be implemented as most tasks seem too difficult to Rare, but as a retired programmer with a lot of mapping experience I find it easy to implement.
@pugmie Well I doubt they ever will be entitled to anything other than the gold from the loot they turn in. Forts aren't trivialized just because you say they are.
@gutterangel I mean, all you're realistically doing is simply repeating yourself. I didn't just "say" I explained that the skull forts were designed to be rare events that cause the entire server to converge on a very lucrative goal. Also I never once said Skull forts are trivialized. I said the rarity of the occurrence is trivialized because people can bypass it through abusing the system. People server hopping essentially removes that rarity because they reduce a 3 hour waiting time to a time it takes to server hop.
Also the issue with server hopping is that it reduces the amount of action you receive while you're on a voyage. When we first started this game, we got into skirmishes doing GH and OoS. Now? The seas are empty and dull, we literally have to go to Skull Forts solely for PvP action.
Personally I think that rather the causing an issue with locking servers, just make the Skull indicating the fort is active not show up to newly joined crews for a set period of time.
IE Say 15 minutes before an active Skull would appear if you just joined the server. If server hoppers had to sit and wait 15x minutes, or decide to sail around the map manually looking for forts when first joining it would probably drastically reduce the number of people just server hopping without causing problems with locked server etc.
If you join and you want to sail and look immediately if a fort is up, so be it. You will be out on the water with opportunity for people to engage you and make you actively part of the server crews for a while.
@pugmie I haven't repeated myself once. Where has it been stated that searching for forts to do is "abusing a system"? False declaration. Imagine seeing "You can't do a fort if you haven't been on a server for 3 hours" " that will go for any other future content which may funnel players to it for pvp or to do co-op" . I'm done here.
@gutterangel Well, in which and what situation do we have to wait for something to be stated somewhere else before creating or bringing up our own problem for it to be considered "true?" I'm merely bringing up a concern using the initial game design of skull forts. A skull fort appears every 3 or so hours, skull forts are server side. Hopping servers allows players to bypass the 3 hour cooldown so they end up grinding content that wasn't meant to grinded in such a way. If they didn't want players to experience that content with such frequency, they wouldn't have implemented such a ridiculously long cool down to begin with. Of course this is a perception, it's up for debate, it doesn't make it "not true" because server hopping is part of the player meta as we speak of it right now.
Also, noone here stated people should have to wait 3 hrs. I merely expressed that server hopping is problematic.
@pugmie Oh I forgot. You just want to be entitled to it after 3 hours. Got it. Back to what i first said. I really could repeat myself here now.
While I don't think server hopping is a problem, I think locking servers from being joined would be the wrong solution. Instead, skull forts should activate more often, like 30 mins to an hour, and all of them should have a chance to activate, not just the same 3. That way, people could grind them on their server, but couldn't simply split their crew to the other 2 forts after completing one.
The problem with decreasing the timer is that the loot would need to be reduced, otherwise there would be no incentive to ever do a voyage again. Then again, the value of the loot is causing people to server hop in the first place.For me, the more annoying issue surrounding forts is that many crews are unable to accept defeat. If you get sunk over and over again by the same crew, you should accept the fact that you got bested and that there is no way you will gain that loot. Be a good sportsman and move on.
@brodycanuck just tell me, how do you know that someone is on this server because he just hopped in?
Server hopping is not that all that rewarding and then again if a server hop is succesfull it means that the server has space for that extra galleon or sloop, and furthermore server hoppers are actually at a disadvantage from everybody else on the server because they have to rush there actions to get to said fort.
They start with a ship low on supplies (cannonballs, wood, bananas) all the while all othere server residents have been able to stock up for hours.
The only thing that happens is that hoppers are usually all good at pvp and have tactics on how to take on both sloops and galleons or even multiple at the same time. And they have become efficient on how to battle a fort as fast as possible.
I dont usually want too leave with somekind of “git gud” statement but if you want to be able to take on forts and all that comes with it (pvp combat) you should really try to get better at it, this doesnt mean i am saying you are bad at it just saying is try different tactics and always have an eye out at sea te know if someone is coming in.
@nightmare247365 I only did one Fort, and i teamed up with another solo sloop, while we got attacked by 2 other solo sloops, which we defeated/scared away and finished the fort.
But as suggested here, just for the fort event the whole server instance should be blocked. I always see ships sailing around and ignoring active forts, so i don't see the point of closing a server just because a fort is active.But maybe Rare sees this thread and runs a statistic to see how often somebody jumps to a server and attacks everyone at a fort instantly. We are only talking of personal observations right now.
I'm not sure if disabling incoming people with a Fort is logical at all. But I do agree server hopping ruins the game a little bit. I have personally done it a little bit, and it takes away from playing the rest of the game the way it was meant to be played, if you only do Forts. Some way of preventing server hopping would be nice.
@blam320 said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:
I disagree with OP. I feel that locking people from joining a server while a skull fort is active is inherently unfair, because it assumes everyone server-hops, and it denies people from inviting their friends, especially if they have no plans to take on the fort.
Claiming such a system would reward players who have actually spent time on a server only reinforces the feeling that the game is all about grinding, and nothing else. It breaks up the monotony of missions being able to log in and take on a Skull Fort, with the PvP interactions.
honestly I don't think he meant to lock people out from joining crews... just no new crews. But this is still exploitable.
@brodycanuck
I have to disagree. They need to keep servers balanced. They can’t do that by locking out servers to other players. Who also knows. You could have two Galleons who are complete newbies to the game who don’t know what a skull fort it. How long will that fort still be up? They might think it’s just a normal cloud in the game for appearance. Then you have a locked server because people don’t know what the cloud means.Yeah I've been thinking of this as well. Closing the server for new entries would stop server hoppers and kind of force them to just enjoy the game itself.
I'm thinking Rare knows this too and maybe it's not as clear cut as we'd think. Remember if you close a server off while a skullfort is active and there's just one person there doing nothing but quests it's going to stay an empty server forever. Maybe that's what people who only like PvE will do then, keep the skullfort active at all costs.
Maybe you like the thrill but are alone and don't want to do a skullfort then suddenly you're on an empty server forever.
@hynieth I would imagine, if locking servers with active forts were implemented, there would also be some sort of time limit.
So, if no progress has been made on the fort in X amount of time, the fort goes inactive again, the cloud vanishes, and the server opens back up.
@pugmie No one is entitled to a skullfort. The loot in skullforts are the spoils of war. Whoever is able to fight for it claim it & redeem it are the rightful owners of the loot.
@Robski101
Why are you replying to a 2 month old thread?Bumping Threads
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@pugmie in exactly what way is it problematic??? I’ve sacked hundreds of skullforts, I’m a legend who is 10 chests from Athena 10. The only problem I have at skullforts is no other crews to fight. When I sail to a fort I welcome every single crew in the server to come & contest my mighty crew. If the server is only half full I welcome any & all server hoppers to come try their hand in a duel with us. That’s what skullforts are for PvP period. They aren’t for noob crews to take without challenge. If your crew doesn’t have the fortitude to deal with server hoppers or any other crew on a server for that matter. Then you have no business even looking at that skull in the sky.
Question: So, how would stopping fort hopping help you?
Answer: You'd have a better chance of finishing a fort without other crews fighting for it.
So, no. Stop trying to dumb down the game. Stop trying to make the game easier and easier. Forts are supposed to be hard. Just because YOU are having a hard time doesn't mean the entire game needs changed.
Keep practicing. Keep trying. Keep going.
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