Content Does Not Matter If Players Cant Play

I don’t mind if content is a little quiet, we’ve been through it for the last 6 years, but if the game is functionally unplayable without crashes, game breaking bugs, exploits, and cheaters, then what’s the point in playing?

I truly believe Rare needs to expand its size as a studio. They are running (with their partner studios) a triple A rated game with monthly updates and they’re still relatively small. They need a massive expansion and more staff to hit the numbers needed to maintain a live service game. I understand their PR saying it’s a great environment to work in but I can’t imagine the show it must be over there right now scrambling from fire to fire while you’ve got looming content deadlines on the horizon.

With what they’ve just announced Season 12, 13, and 14, it’s all but guaranteed it’ll be delayed or undelivered due to the state of things. I’m just praying it gets fixed quick, I want to play again without being paranoid.

@goldsmen said in Content Does Not Matter If Players Cant Play:

I want a good game, but more than anything, i want a functional game over any amazing content, and i can imagine many would agree.

People say one thing and do another.

The same veteran players that have long complained about a lack of content are the same people that rush, cheese, and exploit everything along the way.

As long as the veteran players that do all the talking treat this game like a pirate themed farming simulator (pvers and pvpers) and as long as devs to continue to feed into it like they long have then it's all "more more more"

Season 11 is a mess for far more reasons than bugs/crashes. It's become a mess because we are once again back to a game where the veteran players are going to extremes to sacrifice the organic experience, and for what? diminishing returns on social media. A competition of extremes for barely any engagement.

Season 11 could have easily left them lots of wiggle room to take some extra time, but no, veteran players had to rush, had to exploit, had to cheese.

All of this nonsense about how cheesing and exploiting doesn't hurt anyone but the one doing it could not be more inaccurate in a risk/reward shared environment. It not only harms the organic experience it puts them in this cycle of "never enough" where they are catering to loud people that don't play their game organically, as it was designed.

Even with all the bugs and crashes people still are finding ways to exploit and cheese rewards, interesting how there is always enough access for that.

Are we gonna pretend all that outrage didn't exist when this game had delays before?

@wolfmanbush

Nice whataboutism you wrote there buddy.

You are judging all veteran players by the standard of content creators? Wow. Sweeping generalisations like that, tell me all I need to know about your attitude towards veteran players.

I'm a veteran player and don't even have any of the PvP curses yet and only this year unlocked the GH curse, but sure all veterans just cheese the game. SMH.

Throw yourself and your terribly biased opinion in the bin, where you and your opinion belong.

@goofycs-811 said in Content Does Not Matter If Players Cant Play:

@wolfmanbush

Nice whataboutism you wrote there buddy.

You are judging all veteran players by the standard of content creators? Wow. Sweeping generalisations like that, tell me all I need to know about your attitude towards veteran players.

I'm a veteran player and don't even have any of the PvP curses yet and only this year unlocked the GH curse, but sure all veterans just cheese the game. SMH.

Throw yourself and your terribly biased opinion in the bin, where you and your opinion belong.

If you aren't engaging in the specifics that I posted then you aren't included in what I addressed in the post.

Nothing about the post was implying all veteran players.

The reason it's important to specifically address accountability within the veteran play group is because we have more experience, we play more, we participate more in the social areas. Addressing inconsistency and hypocrisy within our group of experience is necessary.

When new players show up on forums or other platforms and are frustrated about getting sunk or losing loot etc they are met by veteran players that tell them to deal with it, pirate game, risk/reward, etc. This is inconsistent and hypocritical conduct in regards to how high seas has been treated for years but specifically season 11 where it's much much worse.

If you are not engaging in that then you are not included.

Just like if people say "devs" when addressing something specific, they aren't referring to the devs that have nothing to do with what they are specifically addressing.

@wolfmanbush
There is nothing discuss.

If you are a veteran player then you should know fine well that every veteran player had the same frustrations until they got good at the game.

It's part of the process of playing the game, so no I have no sympathy for new players when they cry about being sunk or losing loot because I've been there, done that and worn the t-shirt and yet I'm still here.

You say that veteran players need to take accountability but where is the accountability on the side of the new players who actively jump into high seas unprepared and then cry about it on the forums?

They added Safer Seas for a specific reason, as a training ground for new players. They EXPLICITLY mentioned this in the announcement.

@wolfmanbush
Also just to address your claim about only those who cheese complaining about a lack of content is also entirely untrue.

As I have pointed out, I haven't cheesed anything in the game and yet all the content is lacklustre. It's literally the same thing over but instead of doing a fort you're fighting an Ashen lord on an island, or you're fighting ghosts instead of skellies.

Rehashing the same tired old mechanics and slapping a new name on it, doesn't make it worthwhile content.

@goofycs-811 said in Content Does Not Matter If Players Cant Play:

@wolfmanbush
Also just to address your claim about only those who cheese complaining about a lack of content is also entirely untrue.

As I have pointed out, I haven't cheesed anything in the game and yet all the content is lacklustre. It's literally the same thing over but instead of doing a fort you're fighting an Ashen lord on an island, or you're fighting ghosts instead of skellies.

Rehashing the same tired old mechanics and slapping a new name on it, doesn't make it worthwhile content.

Season 11 in design changes things quite a bit organically, it makes older content more appealing, it entirely opens up the organic experience for going to new servers while still having an organic and immersive session. It's very different experience organically than the past.

Season 11 is a quality adventure design for what SoT is.

The issue with season 11 is people not approaching it organically, rushing for rewards, exploiting for rewards, etc which significantly harms the organic experience for others because of how much it alters and diminishes encounters/risk/significance.

Game performance issues adds on to that.

The game suffers more from maintenance of the risk/reward environment than design of content. Encounters/risk have always and will always be what makes adventure fresh, content by itself will always get stale quickly, it's the encounters and risk that makes the game exciting and the reward significant.

Organic participation in risk/reward will be low as long as people have the option to just exploit/cheese things regularly. That's what ends up making servers feel dead even though lots of people love and play SoT.

@wolfmanbush
If you're going to beat around the bush and not address what I said then you're wasting my time.

Re-using the exact same, tired old mechanics for every single world event is not content mate, it's lazy development.

The distinction level stuff has been asked for by the community for years, 6 years in was too little too late.

I was max level in everything for a good 3 years before season 11, as were TONS of players.

@goofycs-811 said in Content Does Not Matter If Players Cant Play:

@wolfmanbush
If you're going to beat around the bush and not address what I said then you're wasting my time.

Re-using the exact same, tired old mechanics for every single world event is not content mate, it's lazy development.

The distinction level stuff has been asked for by the community for years, 6 years in was too little too late.

I was max level in everything for a good 3 years before season 11, as were TONS of players.

and they have been working on season 12 13 and 14 (shown in the preview video) which is changing course on development.

I have no interest in calling people or effort lazy. That's not how I see things, I disagree with them a lot on decisions, a whole lot in season 11 on maintenance, I'm quite frustrated in my personal experience about some things. I don't think they are lazy or that they engage in lazy development.

I think they put in a lot of effort to keep this thing going and even though I am frustrated with how this season ended up I think they do good work, they put a lot of effort into the game, and many people are still enjoying the experience even though I am frustrated with some decisions. That's on me to handle respectfully, doesn't say anything negative about their effort

@sammyr0cks said in Content Does Not Matter If Players Cant Play:

I truly feel like the situation is at a dire point. Right now, simple tasks such as buying supplies, turning in loot, picking up quest bottles, starting normal quests, and on and on, just don't work. Headline features like Guilds and Hourglass are broken. That doesn't even take into account that constant crashing, rubber banding, and other server performance issues. We got a video statement from the devs many months ago about reducing player/ship count until the performance issues could be addressed. What happened to that? We got another video statement a few months later that addressed it in a vague way, but nothing concrete. Here we are almost half a year later, and nothing.

Meanwhile, a preview video is released with all kinds of new features. Tight rope walking and spiderman guns, gigantic fire breathing ships, new weapons and cannonballs. All released in the next 6 months. Is that a joke? Hourglass doesn't work. Guilds don't work. Buying supplies doesn't work. A new bottle quest was added for the Anniversary weekend which was bugged in every way possible, and you want to add a player-driven moving skull fort?

At what point does simple pride take over? Pride in your product, not in your vision. Because right now, the product is broken, and the vision is ridiculous.

I don't think it's at a dire point overall. With PS5 on the horizon they aren't going to struggle much for people logging in.

I do think they will continue to lose some veteran players but it's a 6+ year old game, lots of built up frustration and complicated relationships there between devs and different veteran player groups. The role players aren't going anywhere, the social media experience players aren't going anywhere, the content creators that rely on SoT views are still gonna stick around for the most part.

The only people they are gonna lose are the players they've already been losing, the long term players on the more organic side of play outside of the social cliques and the people that are really into pvp. Not a whole lot of these players left, not enough to move needles either way for business.

They likely are doing WAY better at retention now with safer seas and with the game being brought way down in intensity and harshness for more pve focused players.

I completely understand the frustrations but I think the reality is that they likely are doing quite well by turning (or just letting the game be turned into) a super casual everyone gets mountains of rewards adventure game, where risk/reward can be a whole lot more reward than risk.

Dire for the game? very unlikely

Dire for playstyles that aren't roleplay focused or giveaway cosmetic focused or super duper casual focused? maybe, but I think this game could bounce back for other styles too in season 12 and/or 13/14.

Personally I think pvpers are far more likely to see a return to fun than someone on the more extreme adventure side. They can improve pvp significantly, adding significance back into adventure isn't really a possibility for long term players, all they could do is create some more of it for future generations of pirates (and hopefully don't mess with it as much for those pirates).