Season 7 PvP kinda sucks

Yeesh. Relax. And adapt. When I solo sloop and tuck it’s always one life.
You’ve been playing easy mode.

"This combat kinda sucks, but i dont personally mind, but im gonna continue to say how it sucks"

This feels like you do mind.

The mast on sloop was for the sake of all sloop players, old and new, if your mast goes down on the sloop, your basically done unless the other crew doesnt know what they are doing. On a brig or galleon, you down 1 mast and they can start working on that while you line up a shot on their other mast, the sloop however, has only the 1 mast, so if it gets hit, your stopping right there.

As a solo slooper myself, I think the mast change just nerfed solos ironically. I like the knockback stuff but That's it. 10 seconds was a bad choice. Buffing us was not the solution.

PVP feels bad these days because of the new respawn times. Just when you are done with killing 2 of the crew, the other 2 already respawns. Respawn timers are so fast that naval combat is useless. You HAVE to board. Normally you could fill a ship with a good amount of water without boarding and finish the job by boarding.

Nowdays, they just repair the holes so fast that you have to board and kill all many, MANY times to make the slightest of damage. Really sad for a pirate game in my opinion.

The real solution should have been this:

Make everyone respawn in 25 seconds (it was 30 before) and make solos spawn in 20 seconds. dont do the mast change or the respawn one. This is how it was from the start with some improvements.

The chainshot to the mast change was a bad one for a number of reasons.

It creates a difference in how masts work on different ships, which is an unnecessary complication.

It doesn't nerf bigger ships against sloops in the way it was intended. Brigs and galleons still have the ability to shoot chainshots in quick succession and take the mast down because they simply have more cannons.

It also somewhat hinders solo sloopers against duos - whereas before you could take down the duos mast to give yourself a breather, now it's harder to do that. While one player is still peppering you with shots, the other is on repairs.

I would rather have seen a limit to the number of chainshots that spawn in barrels and possibly lowering how many you can carry to 2. They should be as rare as ballastballs and wearyballs.

Respawns are far too quick but I'd rather not see it go back to a 30 second wait. I would like it to be 15 seconds for solos and 20 seconds for other crews.

The change to revive on enemy ships is a good one, though. That should have always been like that. Boarding another ship should come with a risk and it does help combat spawn camping.

The sloop buffs are pretty good but it feels pretty terrible to land a chainshot only for it to not demast. It also doesn't seem to actually help against bigger ships because the number advantage is already so powerful in this game, it mostly just makes Sloop vs. Sloop fights more drawn out and tedious. IMO it also strongly incentivizes people to board over naval when fighting a Sloop, which is bad because ground combat in this game is horrible.

Personally I'd prefer they revert this change and then increase the spawn timer for 3 man crews and especially for 4 man crews. Galleons are insanely strong right now with the current spawn timer. 20 seconds for Brigs and 23-25 seconds for Galleons would probably be enough, something like that.

Sounds to me like a continuation of the age old problem that no one change that the Devs make to PVP will satisfy everybody. I kind of think it's a little silly to imagine there will be a fix that will cater to every one persons liking. All forms of PVP (Naval, etc.) will always be a contentious issue until the servers go offline one day in the distant future.

@thorumsu If you think Naval combat is 'useless'' because of the new spawn timers.
Then I'm sad to inform you that your naval'ing skills are poor.

I can sink good gally V gally crews without a single board coming out.

Let alone in adventure with curses which are debatably unbalanced when spammed..

tucking on a boat is now ruined if your found and killed you have no chance.

There it is.

It like people have a single mind with no way of knowing. There more ways to sink a ship besides boarding and tucking.

It sucks from my PoV, I don't know if its just from my experience and the people I play with, but it feels like Captaincy has promoted MORE RUNNERS, like it was bad before, but now 99% of all reapers just run because they are scared of losing their boat and stats on their captains logbook?

In terms of stimulating any sense of PvP in this season, you can forget...
Just made a lot of crews and supposedly "brave captains" cowards...

@ix-indi-xi It's really hit or miss, like always.

Past 3 sessions barely any people wanted to fight. But tonight we did some veil voyages and we had a bunch of people coming to try and steal our loot. We've been attacked 5 times in a 5 hours session (a galleon attacked us 3 times before we sold and logged off). It was really fun and now I'm a bit more optimistic to be honest. :D

If you need to be revived, your plays may not have been as epic as you want to believe. But boarding SHOULD be risky. The boarder has 0 risk in boarding another ship. 100% of the risk is on the pursuing crew who let their guard down.

@thorumsu said in Season 7 PvP kinda sucks:

As a solo slooper myself, I think the mast change just nerfed solos ironically. I like the knockback stuff but That's it. 10 seconds was a bad choice. Buffing us was not the solution.

PVP feels bad these days because of the new respawn times. Just when you are done with killing 2 of the crew, the other 2 already respawns. Respawn timers are so fast that naval combat is useless. You HAVE to board. Normally you could fill a ship with a good amount of water without boarding and finish the job by boarding.

Nowdays, they just repair the holes so fast that you have to board and kill all many, MANY times to make the slightest of damage. Really sad for a pirate game in my opinion.

The real solution should have been this:

Make everyone respawn in 25 seconds (it was 30 before) and make solos spawn in 20 seconds. dont do the mast change or the respawn one. This is how it was from the start with some improvements.

I agree with almost all of this. The biggest thing the sloop needs is a speed buff. It's slower than pond water 99% of the time.

@godz-viper

It's the natural course of action they have to take to keep and gather players. PvPers might be louder, but the game is based on the PvE experience, and most of players don't want to fight every single time, and if we get forced to we'll just leave, which is bad for them.

The game isnt based on pve experience... nor is it based on pvp, its based on both in unison, i didnt play in the early days because i didnt have an xbox, or a decent pc if it was on xbox app back then, but i did watch the game, and the early days of it, pvp was a huge thing around skull forts, because that was the only thing worth stealing. People would gather from across the server and have a huge battle for just the small rewards that come from the basic skull fort back then.

This game has always been about pvp that is driven by the rewards gained through pve, and it always will be.

@eguzky said in Season 7 PvP kinda sucks:

If the devs want to give Sloopers REAL balance changes; allow them do to what big ships do; Fire, reload, AND maneuver at the same time!
When the Sloop is helmed; looking left and right and pressing the Secondary Action Key allows them to fire that cannon.
Looking up and down while looking to the side raises and lower that cannon's angle of fire.
Holding 'R' will reload the cannon on that side. But the cannonballs are taken from the Slooper's inventory, so he still has to go get more from the barrel if he runs out.

This would also allow 2-Crews to Fire, reload, steer, and repair, just like a 3-4 crew!
If the Captain is steering & firing; the second man can fix holes and bail!

Boom! Actual, real, useful Sloop balance that does not break the game.
It just allows Sloopers to actually keep up with every other crew.

So the only way to buff the "solo sloop" is to do tasks that cannot be done solo. The solution is to not be solo.

Great suggestion there lad, I'm sure someone in the dev room must be smacking their forehead wondering how they missed that particular detail.

I think people are overthinking (which is coming from someone that overthinks far FAR too much already) about how useless/worthless the sloop buffs might be because they think super competent players infest this game like a disease with their occasional brigantine and galleon crews, but like, the buff wasn't intended to ensure sloops will win, it's to remove frustrations and ridiculously easy lose conditions.

Losing mast is a lose condition, and it can be done in a low as 1 cannon shot towards a sloop. the reinforced mast is nothing more than a band aid to how unfair the single mast is in comparison to other ships that can't be pinned down as quickly as the sloop.

Cannonball Knockback has been an increasing problem that no one is upset that it was tuned for the sloop.

Sloop Mast Friendly Fire being disabled is pretty good for crews that get unlucky enough to get boarded by rather mischievous crews that will chain their sloop's mast on their sloop to ensure that if the camp on the sloop is somehow broken, they don't have as much time to get away so quickly. This, in tandem with the respawn times, seems like a healthy enough balance for a somewhat relatable situation.

The sloop is hilariously easy to spawn camp, like, beforehand, there are 4 spawn points, at the helm, at the bow, next to map table, and in front of the wood barrel. Experienced crews could always guess where the crew is bound to spawn and well... camp the spawnpoint with a sword or blunderbuss. With more spawn points on the sloop, the enemies are left guessing a little more now, but also makes it so a 4 man can't effortlessly camp a sloop's spawn points.

Not being able to be revived on enemy ships has been part of feedback, mainly from sloops getting camped by 2+ players at once. Before the revive feature was introduced and skillful sloop crews getting camped can pick off their foes one by one and get them off the ship in a couple of respawns, eventually breaking the camp. When revive was introduced, this destroyed that entire strategy as enemies can just stay alive on an enemy boat for longer, or as long as they wanted to if they were better, regardless if the solo sloop can kill one of them, they can't kill all of them.

We also need to keep in mind that while the scuttle function is recommended and even forcefully suggested by the game itself now, it is not a function that this game's community can properly accept. It is a "give up" option when you want to stay in the same session (for some reason). There are several, tons of crews that ignore the idea of scuttling their ship if it means keeping their 300+ cannonballs, 200K worth of loot, and stockpiles of fish on board their ship, even in a losing situation. If they're not sinking, they'll think they can make it out eventually. Players will refuse to scuttle, and they'll just get more frustrated with a situation they can't get their own way out of. Rare's attempt to combat spawncamping, regardless of intent, is pretty smart and effective over just recording and reporting to SoT Support.

@fretfulfiber809

Basing your concept of a game on streams of the game is a terrible way to evaluate the actual gameplay. If you watch Albion Online streams it's strictly PvP, but that doesn't show the literal hundreds of man hours it takes to level, gather and craft the gear that goes into those 5 minute fights. I DID play in 2018 and 19, and we (as in my friends and I) never PvPed back then either. There were plenty of things to do without PvP.

My point isnt that back then it was ONLY pvp, but that forts were one of the most fought over things ever, and were clearly designed to bring the server together to one spot for the sake of fighting for the reward, basing evidence on only your own game experience is a flaw of logic, my entire point is based on the wider experience of many different people back then.

And if this was true, why do Tall Tales exist and continue to be expanded upon? They largely give no rewards that can be stolen and are purely PvE experiences.

This is true because tall tales arnt the entire games experience, they are 1 small aspect, but not the main focus of the game by any means. If they didnt want pvpve as a strong base, all tall tales would be instanced, and they wouldnt advertise it as pvpve. People have many times asked for tall tales to be separated from the main game to avoid getting attacked, and rare has said no many times, they dont intend to take the player combat out of the game ever.

Side note, as for the "i played in the early days" i do hold some slight doubt seeing you are lacking the founder badge.

@fretfulfiber809

The majority of the new Tall Tales ARE instanced. That directly goes against your point, only the old ones are majority in Adventure.

Only specific ones that required the sea of the damned, which is not physically connected to the main world, but any time your not in the sea of the damned it isnt instanced.

It's not advertised as PvPvE. Highlight all the things that show PvP on the Steam store page.

You dont need the steam store page, you only need rares own word on it, which they linked you on one of your previous posts where you still tried to vouch that pvp is bad for the game, seeing you missed it, Here! is rares own word on it.

Here's my Xbox achievements, 2019.

If thats your xbox account, im not sure why you arnt using it on the forum as well.

I do find it interesting that most of your posts on this forum are against pvp, and vouching that pvp isnt intend in this specific slice of the forum even after rare directly told you their stance on a different post.

Think the chain shot combat meta in general is stale and boring. It was way more fun and interesting before they introduced them.

@ V_ca-hombre said in Season 7 PvP kinda sucks:

@goldsmen said in Season 7 PvP kinda sucks:

forts were one of the most fought over things ever, and were clearly designed to bring the server together to one spot for the sake of fighting

interaction

Rare's main message that they repeated constantly was that you never knew what the ship on the horizon would do. Even forts were put forward as things crews could fight over or team up to defeat.

And while I'm sure "bringing the server together" was part of the idea, what many players did was simply server hop till they found an active one, fight over it, and repeat. And while that might keep things exciting for a single ship, it doesn't really do much for the environment of the server.

I'm not trying to dismiss your point because I do think it has merit, to an extent. But we need to be careful about looking back on the game's early days as some sort of ideal. Even back then, players were dissatisfied with forts.

Absolutely, my point was less about the fort, and more that rare provided content with the intent that it could bring people together and force combat in most situations, so even back then it was clear that pvpve was their intent, they showed they wanted pve content that people fought over.

They by no means want pvp to be the main focus, but something that can happen at ANY time, and they have many times said they will never provide pve servers because that doesnt fit into their plan for the game.

Also, i really hope they fix the sensor on not being able to tag you just because of the first part of your name, it always throws me off any time i try to respond

@myorons

Maiden Voyage - Instanced directly, no PvP possible

Indeed, its the tutorial!

Pirates Life - Instanced directly, no PvP possible

Like i said before, instanced because of the sea of the damned not physically being in the main game.

I really don't care what they think, they can keep linking that and I'll continue thinking it's moronic.

Ok! So your saying you vouch that the game isnt intended for pvp... Then say you dont care what the devs think, when they are the only ones who determine intent... Good to know! little bit of irony, but good to know!

I think with that last little bit, that wraps up this back and forth nicely, it shows that no matter what evidence is provided, you will deem all that doesnt fit with your opinion, as wrong. No real reason to continue.

@myorons Im very aware, but theres a difference between a book, and a game that is always changing, especially if there is a very specific plan for the game.

Edit: Death of the author is about interpretation of the story anyways, not the final product.

@myorons BUT! as i was saying, have a good one, i know i cant change your mind on it, so i dont intend to try!