A proper server hop for pvp players

@timedsatyr79799 said in A proper server hop for pvp players:

@Cinnumann i understand what you are saying. I just want to pvp.

You do know what people asking for PvE servers or circumstances only, get for an answer ?

SoT is a PvPvE game.

Just as Rare isn't providing a PvE-only mode, you shouldn't expect Rare to give you tools to sink other ships on a different server every 10 minutes. Reaper 5 emissaries on an (almost) empty server might need some tools. Indiscriminate server hopping via portals is IMO not the way.

Wanna fight all evening ? Find other players and try to get on the same server; you can have Arena experience with a larger area and no need to wait in the tavern ...
You want to fight and take loot from others ? Then you have to deal with the PvPvE nature of the game.
Or find a different game.

Why should i wait 2 hours for a server hopper or pro player to find when instead i can easily fight the ship that spawned in. But if they run. What will i do? Should i just quit the game for beating it or being a pvp lord?

Part of sinking ships / beating other crews in SoT is the ability to find other ships, determining if it's worth the fight, setting up a trap or a good course, getting the tools / supplies to sink them &c.

If it takes you 2 hours to locate another ship: try and use the spy glass , climb in the crow's nest and/or think for more than 5 seconds where other ships might be ?

@timedsatyr79799
Like it or not, running away from another crew is a pvp interaction.
Try working from a different angle, instead of trying to punish or block people from running away from combat so often, try to think of ways to incentivise more crews to actually meet you in battle, good game design is about getting players to want to do and enjoy playing the way the developers wants them to.

@timedsatyr79799 said in A proper server hop for pvp players:

@Lem0n-Curry Arena had pvp. Running isn't a part of pvp. How will i get players on the same server? I don't wanna hop for 1 hour to find my friend in a 200 ping server. Private servers are for events, but pvp is a great way for it. It takes 2 hours to find a veteran crew who will agree to fight. But there are none. So all i am asking for is
Can we get private servers
More pvp
Nerf running
Ty hope u understand

Sailing to a better position or putting some distance so loot-drop, gaining experience in chases, rowboat plays &c can be executed are very much part of PvP. Running to the Read Sea to despawn your loot isn't (and should be removed, but that discussion is done somewhere else already).

Looking for veterans that agree to fight ? While we might not try and sink every ship out there (*), everyone on the Seas plays the PvPvE game and thus is fair game.

I guess wait for Custom servers come to the general public and see if you can start up some fighting servers.

(*) People who only doing a Tall Tale, fresh spawns, portal hoppers without loot and such I don't want to fight; perhaps steal some resources. We might go easy when we encounter new players.

@jaegerdelta3465 said in A proper server hop for pvp players:

Eh I dont remember the last time I portal hopped. I've never really found it to be necessary.
The game is named Sea of Thieves, yes, because that's where it takes place. A mythical section of ocean called the sea of thieves. The game it self is a pvpve game. You have stated that you want to ignore the pve part and only do pvp. That's great, you can totally do that, but you cant expect the makers of that game to implement systems that enable players to just skip half of the game they work on. Thats not how people work.

The tools not rules philosophy that rare applies means you arent forced to do anything, not that everyone's specific choices should be catered too. Can you play the game only doing pvp?Yes. Will it be a more difficult experience because you are voluntarily locking your self off from half the game's content? also yes. This applies to any choices a player makes.

To take it to the extreme case, let's say I'm a snake basket player. I have chosen to only use trapped snakes as a weapon. But I cant sink any ships or do ghost fleets because snakes cant cause damage to ships. I think this is really unfair and rare should add ship damage from snakes for snake basket players.

Basically, there arent pve players and their arent pvp players. There are only sea of thieves players who have made the choice to limit the parts of the game they engage with or how they engage with them. Tools not rules means players are free to do that, not that their choices will be specifically catered to.

I completely agree

@lethality1 said in A proper server hop for pvp players:

[…] The point is the game offers a variety and you have to do that within the bounds of a session... in fact, even the Pirates Life server hop thing should be a bannable offense.

I wouldn't make it a bannable offense.
I don't see the need for an Emissary flag while doing the Tall Tales and/or an overabundance in supplies on your vessel; besides the basic supplies the Tall tale supplies you with enough to deal with the threats IMO.
TT Portals should remove the Emissary and supplies above a decent enough threshold.

If Rare wants crews to keep on hunting on or escaping to another server - lets put something in place that has pros and cons.

@epiclildude9408 Increasing server hopping is something I hope to never see. In fact, it should be reduced if anything. It was never an intentional game feature.. It just occurs because when ships leave to do the disney stuff they need to repopulate the server. They should make everyone who server hops lose their flag and all of their supplies.

This is not just a pvp game. Some people enjoy the pvp.. some people enjoy the adventure and social aspect.. some people enjoy both. We certainly don't need to make it even easier for some of the most toxic trolls to just freely go from server to server and not have to work for their emissary flag from scratch, etc.. and yes, I know not all pvpers are toxic, but I've lost count of how many disgusting people I've encountered on voice comms when they act like tough guys and get their butts handed to them. I'd say 5 percent of Reapers I encounter actually have skill... others just want to come screw with you and then start throwing the most toxic kind of garbage out of their mouth you've ever heard when they fail.

Plus, how is it fair to someone who has no interest in pvp and now you just suddenly spawn in their server with a reaper 5 flag and tons of supplies after they've been playing for hours without you around? The game doesn't exist just so you can hop all over creation sinking people. That's what arena mode was for, and now it's gone.

Ok so this entire thread is carnage so I'm just going to try and summarise the points here:

THIS IS A LONG COMMENT, PLEASE READ WHOLE THING TO UNDERSTAND AND DONT COMMENT ON RANDOM PARTS WITHOUT KNOWING THE CONTEXT

For Server-Hopping:

• Reapers intended purpose is to PvP with other players, shown by the commendations and ability to SEE other players on the map

• After reaching Grade V, any other company can keep doing company related stuff. Reapers cant because they've killed everyone

• Server-hopping can be considered "picking up a new voyage" you have a new map with points to go to, think of it like a GH voyage where you travel to X's (ships now) and collect loot. After reaching Grade V, Reapers in their current state is like getting a GH map that has no X's on it

• Being a Reaper is already unfair because people insist on running and red-seaing. Sure they don't owe you a fight, but it's a PVPve game so they should be forced to PvP at some point. Also of you let a Reaper get that close to you then you should be fighting. A Reaper can skillfully catch up to you if you drop sails and run with the wind

• A server-hop is the same as a server-merge, just done on demand

Against Server-Hopping:

• Gameplay should be server-specific and people should adapt to the server they are on.

• Ships leave portals too close to other players giving you little time to react and run

• After reaching Grade V Reaper and having no one to hunt you should drop the flag (why?) And do something else or restart in another server.

• Its a PvX game and doing nothing but PvP isn't the idea of it

Explanation:

So currently the issue seems to be that both parties wish to play and have others play their way.

Reapers want people to PvP like them, and non-Reapers want people to stop going after PvP. Both parties then seem to say this a shared-world adventure and you can do what you like, which then makes both of the above points irrelevant. Server-hopping should not be removed, and equally Red-Seaing shouldn't either. Because from the opposing parties eyes, the opposite is a 'playstyle' that contradicts theirs. One actively seeks PvP and the other would end a fight as a draw to avoid PvP.

Another point that was thrown around is portals not taking other players location into account. This is the only point that I can get behind, and personally have nothing against being placed in a quieter area of the map.

Ok, now the main point. People against have said that each session should be server-specific. And I (and other Reapers) have said that Reapers cant stay in a session forever like the other factions. Some against people have even said that after clearing a server you should drop the flag and do something else. The issue that arises here is that every other faction can go forever, doing faction related stuff. But Reapers can't as they rely solely on the presence of other players.

I have compared a server hop previously to being like a Reaper Voyage. You get a map with points on it containing loot. All the other factions have some version of this, and you can keep buying them after hitting grade V. Reapers cannot without running into Portal-Hopping bugs. Now I can understand that people think sessions should be server-specific, but for a faction like this, it doesn't work.

Some people have said Reapers isn't a PvP faction. I think it is, and many others agree. You get emissary grade for killing others, a whole commendation page for handing in flags and a Reapers Chest which is designed with a beacon to bring players together. The ship showing up on maps is also intended to bring players to them, but instead just scares off everyone else. Because of PvP being the clear intention, a workaround to human behaviour (e.g. server hop is necessary). People won't raise a flag if a level V reaper is going around. But by adding Server-hops, flags actaully carry a risk and you
need to be vigilant.

Finally, the PvX argument. People have said nobody owes you a fight and therefore should be allowed to run. I say that Reapers should be able to get a fight out of people and be allowed to server-hop. It's an impossible argument. Both parties are unhappy with the others extreme measures to counterract one another witch then results in them asking for features to remove the other.

E.g. Reaper chases after someone, person dumps loot in RedSea, ruins whole interaction for Reaper, Reaper comes and asks for RedSea to be removed.

Or

Person is farming, Reaper comes out portal, Reaper sinks them, ruins whole interaction for PvEer, PvEr comes and asks for portal hopping to be removed.

So as you can see it's an impossible argument. No way to win, other than to fix the issues and satisfy both parties.

THE SOLUTION:

Ok, so Ive attempted to outline both viewpoints, in a hopefully non-biased way and think I have a solution.

The issue revolves around each party disliking the others playstyle and the solution is to make both easy or remove both. So here is my proposal: server hopping resets materials and emissary grade. Loot on board is left in the portal after the ship leaves. Red Seaing is also removed and sinking a ship there causes loot to float back into the play area.

Now, some fixes to the other issues. Reapers come off the map table and all little boats leave the emissary areas. This means that Reapers wont know whether emissries are present and may end up PvEing. Equally, other factions are unaware of potential Reapers and are less likely to leave and may end up PvPing. Reaper Vs can see people on map still, but any other V emissary can see Reapers.

Hopefully additions like this would make Emissaries a risk/reward scenerio instead of the current "get rich quick" scenario. It should also resolve issues surrounding PvP disliking PvE playstyles and vice versa.

If you read this far then thanks :)

--End of Lecture--

@cinnumann said in A proper server hop for pvp players:

@ottyman8687
Nice lecture man. You have some good points. There is just one thing you keep mentioning which confuses me a lot:
-Server-hopping can be considered "picking up a new voyage" you have a new map with points to go to, think of it like a GH voyage where you travel to X's (ships now) and collect loot. After reaching Grade V, Reapers in their current state is like getting a GH map that has no X's on it

Basically my logic here is that in a GH voyage, you get a map with X's. In a Bounty Voyage you get a poster with an island on it, and some merchant missions have an island on them. The same is true for AF. The point here is you get a location showing you where loot is.

When you hit Reaper V, your map table becomes this map. But instead of X's, you get ship icons and instead of skeletons you get actual players at the locations. So essentially it's an Emissary Quest. A 'map' that directs you to the high value loot.

So my main argument for the server hop was that when you switch servers it is like being given a brand new 'voyage'. A new map, with new locations on it.

The empty GH map is more of a way of showing what the Reaper Map looks like at V because most emissaries who stayed under the radar have sold and lowered flags. So the quest becomes meaningless - like a map with no treasure

@epiclildude9408 said in A proper server hop for pvp players:

@scurvywoof im just gonna copy and paste the same thing all over, because it is the same answer..... but that is the whole point to portal hop, imagine, raise emissary 5 by doing pve, sometimes by the time you reach emissary 5, the server that you hop on with 1 or more emmisaries, they are gone, sometimes they see a reaper and go sell and lower the flag, you reach emmisary 5 and the server is empty, you want pvp and you ended up doing pve only, you quit that session and start all over, raising lvl 5 again by doing what? pve again, i know that i can get lvl 5 faster and get rss faster, but the whole point of being a pvp player is avoid pve and focus in pvp only, steal world events from others, the name of the game is sea of thieves

You are the one missing the point here - Emissaries are SUPPOSED to have time to react to you raising a Reaper emissary and building up to grade 5 - it is fundamentally built into the balance of the risk/reward system. Especially now, with how quickly you can get to Grade 5 if you know what you are doing, it makes it very difficult to feel sorry for you if you find people lowering their emissaries before you get Grade 5.
Bottom line is: if people are able to lower within the 30 or so minutes it takes to get Grade 5 now, then you would have had a near-impossible time catching them anyway. If they have a longer chance to turn in and lower because you take longer than that to get Grade 5, its because you havent optimized enough.

Being a PvP-focused player does not entitle to you not have to interact with any of the PvE systems anymore. The game being called "Sea of Thieves" does not inherently mean that the only valid actions in the game are directly related to killing other players and taking their stuff. Notice how raising a Reaper emissary doesnt magically turn off emergent PvE encounters. It doesnt immediately toss you into an arena-like gamemode. Just because Arena is now gone and there are more PvP focused players running Reaper (although, can you even consider less than 2% of the playerbase a significant change to this), doesnt mean that the Reaper faction is fundamentally changed, or that it has any reason to be anything other than what it was intended to be from the beginning. Sea of Thieves is, always has been, and always will be, a PvPvE game. In the same way that anyone begging for PvE only servers are completely off-base, it is equally short-sighted to presume that you are obligated to a PvP-only experience in Adventure, a gamemode that never promised such a thing, and in fact, is specifically designed not to be.

I have to fully agree with @sweetsandman regarding portal-hopping and the potential fixes to the Reaper faction. I also spend the vast majority of my time running Reaper and hunting other players, but even from the beginning I realized that portal-hopping was a clear exploit, and fundamentally breaks the entire emissary system. Honestly, I hope that the problems people have been having with portal-hopping since the update is a shadow-nerf rather than an accidental bug. Is it annoying to raise Reaper and find an empty server an hour later? Yes. Does that annoyance justify destroying the entire foundation of the emissary system just for my personal convenience? No.

I personally have found Adventure PvP to be a in the strongest place its been in a while this update. With the limited rotation of world-events, regular Forts and FoFs have been popping off. Even if you cant find a server with 3+ emissaries just by normal server hopping before you pick a session, I've been pretty reliably finding good fights in just 1 or 2 hops just from beelining for the nearest active fort with a Reaper already there.

In short, if you are having problems finding people to fight under normal and intended gameplay (during this particular update), you need to play better, plan better, or optimize better.

it is necessary to ban everyone who jumps on servers and spoils the game of normal people in this way. Especially people who play alone on sloops. PVP in this game is impossible without clear rules of the game and perfect operation of servers with well-defined tickrate. Any toxic reaper on a galleon and brigantine (often even without an emissary flag) attacking single sloops should not receive anything

Just my two cents without reading everything: I have the feeling that less than 50% of players (outside of alliance servers) know about the existence of emissary flags.

Or they do know but choose not to use one. I suggest to do the following experiment yourself: Hop into any session on any ship type and check how many emissaries there are on the outpost tables. Usually only one. sometimes two. But anything above that seems to be an absolute rarity.

It could mean several things but there is not much to reap as a Reaper if there are no emissaries on the servers.

Maybe emissary flags (aka "licences") need to be better advertised or the more experienced amateur players need to get an incentive to prefer public over alliance servers. Because in terms of loot and reputation there is literally zero reason not to play on an alliance server.

But thats up to Rare to change. Many people use to play alliance servers for the many advantages and little disadvantages. That might be a reason why Reapers have a hard time finding PvP. On the other hand streamers who have an entire viewership of 100 people server hopping for them might be the other side of that coin :D

Not wanting to favor one side here, but there are several things affecting this and these are the things that I noticed. Only Rare can fix or balance things and I would also wish for more and more rewarding PvP options since Arena has been my practicing playground to get at least enemies who WANT to fight :D