Ahoy fellow pirates.
I want to write up some thoughts about the concept of PvPvE in a sandbox like game and balance, playstyles etc..
Ok, Sea of Thieves is a PvPvE sandbox game with horizontal progression you can play solo or coop with up to 4 Players on Servers with up to 24 Players in 6 crews in total.
As is it as sandbox with only horizontal progression, there is at one hand everybody balanced regarding gamemechanics.
Nobody is stronger or has any powers you don't have.
But the imbalance comes with the ship and crewsize, but this is a sandbox aspect.
PvP Sandboxes are never balanced, as they are no Battlearena's, it's about to organize yourself and your coop partners.
You can even ally here and so you can organize to have up to 100% of the players on a server in your team.
No foes anymore!
If you really think about it, this can be seen as a PvP tactic in a sandbox.
Friend everyone to have no more foes can be seen as avoiding PvP, but this is then nothing else than fleeing or hiding from PvP in the most efficent way.
In a sandbox all tactics are allowed and viable.
You then beated all players on your server with diplomacy.
Won! But politricks and diplomcy is allways fragile and everybody can and maybe will betray you.
You can also group 12 players on 3 ships and fight the rest of your server.
Balanced? No, like it is not balanced to fight a solo or duo Sloop with a 4 man galleon crew.
It's a sandbox, there is no balance!
Is overwhleming others by numbers then some sort of griefing or toxic and unfair?
I think in a sandbox game with PvP involved there is allways some sort of griefing. Nobody likes to loose, but in sandboxes with PvP you will loose no matter what you do. And loosing is part of playing anyway. If playing is only about winning all the time then something is wrong imho.
Someone winning all the time, no matter what they play will not appreciate the rewards for winning in the long run.
One will get used to win and forget to apreciate it and never know how it feels to loose.
Loosing in an game is important. But that is only my personal opinion, feel free to have another one!!!
But loosing in unfair siutations where you cannot do anything to prevent it are bitter.
No matter if it is RNG and the Kraken plus a Skelleone and a Meg or if it's 4 players in a Galleone when you are solo or just duo sloop.
This is where you need to remind yourself you are playing a sandbox game.
If you want to be prepared the best for these situations organize yourself and you will barely loose.
Thats why others say Alliance Server are boring.
But that depends of ones pov and approach.
We don't know and i think there is enough players who would say it's not boring and still challenging, entertaining etc...
Nobody can tell someone else what is boring and what is not!
It's completely indiviual for everybody.
People have different playstyles, some play the sandbox as PvPvE and compete over PvE and the loot like at Forts.
Some aproach it as pure PvPers and make it their DM Arena and KOS no matter what or why, the matter is PvP for PvP itself.
Sometimes these players complain because of no loot or less ships to attack or people avoiding PvP fleeing, scuttle or whatever.
See this is because its a sandbox again, there is no rules how to play as there is also no real progression what you need to do to be competetive no matter if against the environment or other players.
Players doing PvE only and dislike PvP, feel it is toxic if someone attacks refuse to see the PvP aspect of the game. And if outlayed they miss the sandbox aspect of the game.
But they can use Alliances to prevent PvP up to having a full Alliance Server without any PvP.
As i already said, you can say that this is also a PvP tactic, ally up with as much as you can to avoid PvP at all.
It's not the question if this is intended or not, it's a sandbox and that means it's up to you how you aproach and organize it.
To me the PvPvE concept works just fine.
What can become a problem is the balance of the community and how players aproach the sandbox.
If most players are only out for PvP and KOS, this may wont work well in the long term, because the sandbox is to big to find each other and the players who pve only and even those who pvpve will get overwhelmed to often.
Therefore we get the Arena, what is exactly the pvpve game simplified to one PvE aspect of the game, digging chests and then compete over it in a small area with balanced ship types and crewsizes.
The entire sandbox aspect is gone. It's an Arena, balanced and only about one playstyle.
And this is not PvP only and also not PvE only, but exactly the original PvPvE concept, but not in a sandbox with disbalances, but an Arena, balanced for ships and crews.
Compete for PvE content and loot.
I think a lot of players dont dislike PvP, but they dislike the sandbox, what is about disbalances, what feels like griefing often.
And some may dislike both PvP and even more sandbox PVP.
So i think the fact that it's a sandbox game with PvP involved is what makes it not a fair or balanced game and you can easily feel you got griefed and others were toxic.
But toxic in this environment it is only if people insult you additionally and not if they make use of the sandbox aspects and outplay you, bring themself in a more powerfull position beause of organizing more players, having the bigger ship or at least 2 or even all ships.
The pure PvPer who say the 6 Ship Alliance Servers are unfair were outplayed in the sandbox only!
You can aproach it also this way, or not?
That's just some thoughts.
What do you think?
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