PVP Rewards

@Munchichi1 I don't know if i agree with you. I respect your post and opinion but I don't find it accurate. PvPers already can take all of the loot from the ships of enemies which is what spawns Griefers and spawn killers. Players can use these stolen chests for gold coins and reputation experience. You could argue that if you do this they can just keep respawning and coming back but I don't think this is really a problem. They have made you spawn further away from where you died and I think it is very easy to defeat an enemy crew and cash out before they get back now. For an example I was sailing solo sloop earlier today and lost in a PvP battle. They took my Captains Skull from a skeleton ship battle and my villainous skull from a previous quest. I respawned halfway across the map and buy the time I reached them, they had already cashed out my items and restocked supplies so I was forced to stop the chase or risk being killed again. As stated by rare there is a higher level of toxicity and griefing going on right now and I feel like adding more rewards for killing players would raise this level even more. I do think maybe they could add a bounty system where killing enemy players would reward you will gold and killing players that have killed more players recently would grant you more gold. This would make sense but for the most part I think the system they curently have is fine. Hope this was helpful.

@munchichi1 Agree completely.

• Players should drop some form of loot. Even just like 50-100 coins.
• If you defeat an entire crew, you should control their ship. The whole idea of pirating is taking over a ship. Maybe if there's some kind of king of the hill timer so once you take it over, they can't spawn. The endless respawn mechanic is stupid
• Sunk ships need to float all their loot and supplies + give you some kind of rep. Why is PvP not tied to order of souls? That would make sense to me.

@surveyorpete Agreed

@skippy1812 A valid insight, but I'll have to disagree with the spawn far away. Multiple times we've killed a team off a fort, we watched them respawn at the island right next to us, or the outpost within sight range. As for their reward for killing you was your stuff, it's far easier to spam the boring fetch quests. I'm not saying that we need to reward pvpers more than those who don't. But a single coin for sinking a players boat would be something. That way its better not to spawn kill and just let it go. But you still have to spawn kill to make sure they don't fix the boat, that's just how the games works. But 10 coins for 1k gold, 20 for 10k like they do with the other currency in game would be fine and pvp skins for items, boats, sails, clothes, weapons and the like would give playes like my friends and I a reason to play. The riddles are too easy, the captain kill quests too. Even the volcano area isn't a challenge. Give pvpers something for acting like a pirate. If you lose your stuff too, that's going to happen.

@munchichi1 Sounds good! I just wanted to offer my point of view. I don't really know how the respawn mechanic works because I have lost in a fort pvp battle and respawned super far away so who knows. You also have a valid point in the fact that the game isn't challenging enough or rewarding enough. Thanks for your insight.

@surveyorpete So what about the stupid respawn mechanics?
PvP could also count towards rep and specific PvP cosmetics.

@x-effekts-x Can you elaborate on the stupid respawn mechanics? There also shouldn't be cosmetics exclusive to PvPers because this encourages players who would normally avoid conflict to go out of their comfort zone to get the cosmetics. Does that mean someone who catches 10 gold animals or completes 10 boring fetch quests on time should get exclusive cosmetics?

@x-effekts-x said in PVP Rewards:

@surveyorpete So what about the stupid respawn mechanics?
PvP could also count towards rep and specific PvP cosmetics.

This.
Let pvpers use the currency for pvping to purchase rep and pvp related skins. Let us turn it in for gold. But saying that "your reward is what you get for sinking them" is absurd. So many times all I've gotten for a voyage is a single seafarers chest. Like I said, not everyone wants to do fetch quests non-stop.

@skippy1812 They do. Its the normal cosmetics. For doing normal stuff, you get normal gear. If you want the pvp skins, do pvp. If you don't want to do pvp, then you don't want the skins.

@munchichi1 Yea but for PvPing you get rewards. I can send you proof that not everyone just has garbage loot. 3 times yesterday I had raided A skeleton fort, have multiple captains chests and villainous skulls, and various crates and artifacts found on islands. Its not the games fault if you get unlucky and find someone with little loot or who just cashed out. And also, the normal cosmetics are not exclusive to people who do fetch quests as you get gold rewards to get normal cosmetics from skeleton forts and PvP encounters meaning its not fetch quest exclusive so why should PvPers get their own gear? No one else does.

@skippy1812 Pvpers would get pvp gear, while the pvers get pve gear? I'm sure they could add a thing where you could turn in gold for the tokens and buy them. I'm not saying lock pvp related stuff behind a wall that only good pvpers can get past, but give them something other than "Kill players and hope they have done something decent recently"

@munchichi1 Yes that is deffinately a possibility but then they would need to make each group like fetchers, PvPers, PvEers, Hoarders, etc their own currency which isn't in the interest of Rare right now with the new Arena mode and all and im sure people playing in PvP arena mode will get their own gear so that does solve that problem.

Having to que for an arena doesn't fix it. What is the entertaining part is the surprise of "Are they trying to fight us or just run away". The open world pvp. An arena mode just regulates pvp and takes the "out of the blue" aspect from it. Everyone in arena will be there to pvp, so just try and sink everyone. Some of the best parts of this game are rolling up on people who don't want to fight. If people don't want the option of being pvpd, then maybe a pirate game isn't for them.

@munchichi1 So why even give PvPers the bonus loot at all? If they do it for the "out of the blue aspect" mostly then that and the loot plus xp they get from enemies loot they can get should be enough and maybe a special outfit for killing a certain number of players but thats about it.

@skippy1812 Like I said. I don't want it to be extremely hard to get the skins or what have you. Something that even the most casual player can do, might take them some time, but still be obtainable. All I'm saying is that my friends and I, and probably a bunch more players, are bored. And more pve content or an arena mode might not be the fix. It's just more content, something this game runs out of very quickly.

@munchichi1 You are right in this regard. The game desperately needs new, non-repetative content and I belive that evolving the PvP element could do this.

@skippy1812 That's what I've been getting after. I'm sorry if it came across as a "Reward pvpers, and pvpers only" stance. The easiest way to add content is to add things to work twords. And it was just my opinion that a pvp reward system would add something for those who enjoy it to work for, and those who aren't really interested a reason to do it.

@hope-less-2556 Or a chaos style vendor that gives contracts to "Kill X players" or "Sink 3 boats" or something.

@hope-less-2556 See? The arena sounds more like "who can pve the fastest or hide out the longest" and it seems like if you dont have a galleon then you lose out, so rip to 3man or 2man teams. Give another style of vendor with its own rep just like the others. Could even find completed kill contracts in the bottles on the shore, so the pvers can still get rep without having to do pvp if they dont want.

It would be cool but they would need to make sure it didnt break the currency

@skippy1812 Then don't give a special currency, make it the same as the others with most of the gear being purchasable, with certain things being locked behind rep, same with the boat skins.

I do agree there should be achievements as worthy rewards for pvp but I don't think there should be specific cosmetics for it though, because then what would be pve centric cosmetics : a chicken set, a white dove set ? I also consider people willing to play as remote as possible from the fights, as long as they can.

Of course there should be titles to unlock with fighting ships thanks to achievements (like sinking X galleons with a sloop, surviving X good beating of n amount of canon balls hits from a galleon when manning a sloop, sinking X enemy ships on an island or a rock and the such)

So I copy paste here my idea of a bounty hunting system which could support proper pirates meanwhile help defending filthy merchants (don't even try to pretend you never steal and kill from times to times) Here's my new bounty mechanic adding bounty hunter npc in outposts of adventure mode :

• you raise the bounty on your head anytime you damage as sink another ship and anytime you damage or kill another pirate.
• all red and black flags should highly raise your bounty "meter" when sinking and killing.
• white flag should apply a malus to your raising bounty (since you can't use cursed canon balls) if you sink and kill with it (to defend yourself for exemple)
• using cursed canon balls should raise your bounty
• killing the same pirate several times in a row should highly raise your bounty
• using a keg (dealing a lot of damage to a ship in a row, killing several pirates all at once) should highly raise your bounty

For such a system you have to consider basic behaviors to avoid most exploits : filthy merchants should try to evade fights as if their lives were at stake (to save their loot) while bloody pirates should try hard to make them happen.

Once the bounty on your head is too high : you're black marked (which should unlock a title). You got a message informing you the pirate lord has black marked you for messing around in his business way too much (the more golds he got the better thus chests lost at sea are quite an issue) thus launched a highly rewarding hunt to sink and kill you for the exemple (as to restore order amongst his folks) So boom : 30 mn (by default + 30 mn if you attacked another ship within those 30mn, and so on until you leave the game or you're sunk) locked glowing red flag whatever server you'll go, 30 mn unable to log if you quit the game and raising (+ 30 mn) everytime you rinse and repeat during 2 hours, starting after the 30 mn penalty.

Bounty hunter npc in any outpost, you see a red flag on the map then you can check if there's any black marked crew thus a substantial bounty for sinking them and hurry your way (like all the other greedy bloody pirates who may compete you for the prize) for a rightful and worthy ;) vendetta. In addition a message from the system informing any joining pirate, in the black marked crew server, there's an ongoing bounty ready for the taking wouldn't hurt for sure.

Bounty meter would obviously lower over time to prevent hard grinders to end being hunted on the long run, for such a bounty hunter system would allow to open pvp lovers to fight each others for a very good reward.

All this got me thinking the PvErs don't want a system that forces them to PvP so they can get cosmetics and the PvPers really want a system like that i don't see the problem with adding a merchant based off of stolen chests for the time being basically
Instead of going to the gold hoarders you go to the PvP faction in which case you turn in stolen chests and that gives you rep based on the "thievery" that you've done.
Now there is one more thing that i wanna point out a big flaw in PvP loot don't get me wrong i would really love PvP-Based loot and faction and cosmetics and all the good stuff for PvP but the thing is there are people who will form alliances add each other keep killing each other keep trading chests or in case of the bounty system they keep putting holes in the ship and the other ship keeps repairing it until the other alliance members get "black marked" killed and then repeat with the other one that will invoke players to abuse the system pretty much that's why i think they haven't added PvP loot but they should be able to find a way around it and give us a damn reason to PvP other than "steal the enemy chests" yay i stole a chest mom and guess what?! i get the same gold as i do if i had farmed it in PvE that's boring i'd love a PvP based system inadventure m the normal mode since the game is PvEvP there should be reward for the PvP from the game itself rather than only the players kind of like PvE if you wanna do only PvE you'll make money and gain rep easy if you wanna do PvP that's gonna be much harder than just repeating boring quests over and over and over and over again

@zenosynem That's just stealing again and a new vendor. I was thinking new quests altogether. Like kill x number of players or ships. But reading other posts, a bounty system would be cool too, like where you get marked for killing so many players, giving whoever shuts you down a nice reward for making the seas safer once again.

@skippy1812 Meaning you can have never ending battles between crews as players can constantly respawn.

I've had a few where you manage to snipe another player during a chase, or knock them off with a cannon ball, only for them to respawn and recover. It's quite annoying.

There should be some kind of diminishing returns when you die.

And the reasons for more PvP loot is because I don't want to have to run around digging up chests being pretty much the only way to earn a wage in this game.

If you could get contracts for kill x players, or sink x ships to turn in for a gold reward that'd be cool.

Take out bounties on other players? Stuff like that.

Firstly I'm going to open up by saying worry not, we are likely to get combat oriented rewards in the form of doubloons, faction rep, and unique as well as some time limited cosmetics in... Wait for it... "THE ARENA" but if... "THE ARENA" doesn't seem like your cup of tea and you'd rather hunt down merchants and gold hoarders then I have some insights:

Personally while I agree that PVP needs rewards, I think there is a lack of necessity in saying it given it already has the rewards it needs; Someone can spend 1-3 hours doing an Athena's voyage, and any one of us can happen to stroll by them and relieve them of all their treasure in as little as one minute.

It is worth noting that when one approaches a player, they are taking a risk, when they approach a player with hostile intent that risk is slightly higher still. The risk in PVP is that no one is guaranteed to succeed in an engagement, and they are not guaranteed treasure should they succeed in the engagement, but the reality is it is far more advantageous than any other style of game play in terms of progression, because every ship sunk has a chance of saving the winning team hours of work.

If a pirate is aimlessly targeting every ship they see, such as sloops that just appeared with lights on at an outpost clearly having freshly entered the seas, sinking them and then lamenting "I got nothing for doing that" then I believe the issue is the pirate is expecting to be rewarded for poor and tactless behavior. My advice to other pirates is plan and pick your fights, if you're killing for sport then by all means barrel yourself at anything with a sail and a pulse, but if you're killing for reward then earn it by considering "Does this mark seem worth it?" first and taking the appropriate action of either pursuing or leaving it be second.

It is also worth mentioning that a sunk ship can spawn almost anywhere, and can take nearly ten minutes to return to the location of their demise. If a crew is really worried about vengeful ships returning for their haul, they might first consider supplying their ship adequately before having engaged with another ship in the first place: 50 cannonballs is seldom enough to hunker down and take on the seas unpunished.

From the start the devs have been trying to encourage interesting and engaging interaction between the players, to garner the formation of unique experiences so that crews can create their own story, and impact the story of others both positively and negatively. Were sea of thieves to implement hollow content such as "Kill players 100 times" it would reduce our fellow seafarers to a meaningless target that we never take half a second to even wonder "What are they up to" much less benefit from their presence in any meaningful way. PVP goals in the open world would quite frankly undermine the already struggling alliance system further, while encouraging unsportsmanlike gameplay such as camping.