@grumpyw01f said in Rare refuses to learn lessons from other games:
For those who think that we shouldn't complain about hourglass, that we should just focus on the journey. A ranked system would make faction battles about the journey, because your goal would be to get into higher-ranked games so that you can earn more allegiance.
The journey in Hourglass is getting destroyed and wasting gold on supplies endlessly until you just magically get "better" at the game. It's mentally draining on most of the crews that participate and garner a loss streak from playing Hourglass, this kind of journey, for a relatively laxed SWAG, is garbage.
No longer would we be focused on rolling over easy-to-sink crews, we would actually be focused on improving.
A common issue I notice in PvP games is that improvement is not as exact as solving an equation with an accompanying formula. There are too many variables to consider improving on that you can't consistently or accurately improve on. You cannot improve your cannons (solo) because you have to also focus on steering, repairing, and defending should you catch a lot of pressure.
If your idea of "improving" is just running into the same unbreakable wall that is the lifeline of this activity: Pro/Competitive players, a ranking system would not improve that issue, or encourage improvement other than an arbitrary number that will mean nothing if your quality of matches are going to be lopsided anyways and boost you up/sink you further.
The streak system incentivizes elo tanking to give yourself easy matches and punishes you for being matched against a perfect opponent - one that you have a 50% chance of beating. Tying rewards to ranks is what every competitive game does - because it incentivizes the behavior that the developers want: Trying to improve your rank and fight those at your skill level.
Personally, I feel like Rare isn't really encouraging us to "improve" ourselves. Other than not sinking to a skeleton galleon, most of everything else outside of PvP has such an extensive lack of substance or difficulty, so even the most brain-burnt-out Bob out there can feel "rewarded" through the loot they acquire.
@grumpyw01f said in Rare refuses to learn lessons from other games:
As you say, competitive environments are always going to have large barriers of entry to new players. They're always going to have gatekeeping and high standards. So, what we're examining here is: "Which is the lesser of two evils: streaking or ranking?" My goal thus far has been highlighting the cons of streaking and the pros of ranking. The general negatives of all competition don't really apply here.
If you're trying to get a lot of people behind the idea, you're going to have to devalue the idea of it being competitive, because that's turning off people from wanting an idea like that. I don't care how 2000 players out of a possible 40,000 that log on per week that want a way to feel like they're improving through a number grading system, this will discourage players from wanting to engage with content, especially if they feel like they're being actively punished for failures both of and not of their doing.
In my opinion, the competitive environment just got a reset.
Until a real patch comes in and tells me otherwise (especially because social media is endlessly whining and in agony due to the awful server performance), these claims are very much not applicable currently.
Quick switching double guns are gone
Newer versions of the exploit has been found, but it's heavily questionable if they produce a similar time to kill.
cutlass vs. cutlass is consistent again
I want to agree, I genuinely want to, but the complaints from other people I watch, view on social media are making me believe otherwise, probably due to the server performance issues.
Players are spreading out into more weapon loadouts.
Sort of? I mean outside of some of the same hypersweats discovering and showcasing sword exploits that might help in some sword fights, server performance is in such an awful state that the only thing that looks like it might work, could be the cannons, and they're suffering issues as well.
In the end, it seems to me that you view ranking systems as pretentious bragging fests.
I do not belong to a crew, so how do you think a painfully average player is going to find high quality crews that won't leave after sinking if their crewing requirement is to be around the top 25% of all participating players in Hourglass?
I'll never get a good quality crew with dumb standards like that, when all these crews want is someone that won't fail them.
Let me just reiterate that ranked systems are implemented in every competitive mode of every game (I can think of). There's a reason for that, and the upsides far outweigh the downsides and the upsides of the current streak system.
The upsides ungraciously ignores the downsides that look at the bottom of the barrel, which is sadly, too much of this game's player base. Sea of Thieves does not want to be compatible with other games like this because it removes its uniqueness, as frustrating as it seems.
Encouraging players to push their limits while the game's servers are already at their limit was just never going to happen, and personally, I like it that way. It's not that I want to foster worse players, it's that I want the game to be what it's supposed to be: Casual!