Why Sea of Thieves is Dying:

@guildar9194 I don't think any real "PvP gigachad overlords" are mad at casuals. We're mad at the devs for taking direct shots at our community through balancing, while not giving us any new reasons to play. I mean the devs remove parts of the game we enjoy using and don't add any new content for 2 years and then wonder why we're a little angry. Not a big surprise is it? We don't hate casuals, we don't like the devs for only catering to them.

@wolfmanbush said in Why Sea of Thieves is Dying::

I've always said it here but I'll say it again. Rare has gone out of their way to make SoT a less greedy experience than other games. They could have done wayyyy more and wayyyy worse about making money here, and they would have 100% gotten away with it. This game is more ethical than most when it comes to getting gamers to spend money.

Sea of Thieves is still the only game that has a good battle pass system. In any other game, I absolutely hate the battle pass system because it costs money to get ANYTHING from it and it takes multiple months to max it out... The Plunder Pass? I maxed out Season 15's pass in six days and most of the items from the pass is free (only a themed cosmetic set costs money and you technically get your ancient coins back anyways).

I never understand the complaint about SoT's micro-transactions. Yes, the game has them and I would prefer to not care about the Pirate Emporium but it's really not that bad. I've seen far far worse examples of greedy mts in the gaming industry, I don't need to complain or worry about the Pirate Emporium.

@fysics3037 said in Why Sea of Thieves is Dying::

@guildar9194 I don't think any real "PvP gigachad overlords" are mad at casuals. We're mad at the devs for taking direct shots at our community through balancing, while not giving us any new reasons to play. I mean the devs remove parts of the game we enjoy using and don't add any new content for 2 years and then wonder why we're a little angry. Not a big surprise is it? We don't hate casuals, we don't like the devs for only catering to them.

The only PvP thing that Rare has ever removed was The Arena, and that got replaced with the Hourglass system later on. Unless you're talking about exploits that should've been fixed, and WAS FIXED... In the latter case, don't use exploits as a crutch.

Also, before it gets brought up (because I know it would be). Yes, sometimes an unintended bug can become a feature like the sword dash. The difference with that and exploits is that one is a fun mechanic that doesn't actually break the balance of the game while the other is exploiting a bug for an extremely unfair advantage (such as the double-gun exploit where you can just instantly kill anyone back in the day with) or the funny launches where you can unfairly gain insane levels of mobility to board another ship...

@guildar9194 quick swap shouldn't have been removed cus it had been 5 years. Now that it's gone, the damage is done and shouldn't come back.

Crud/fish/whatever else launch was just fun while it was in the game, and the fundamental mechanic of directional movement out of cannons should return in some other way. It wasn't balanced and I'm not sad to see it go. But I'll be ecstatic to see it return.

Now that I've clarified my stance on the matter, I hope you don't see me as an "exploit loving no good sweat that should be banned" Any further attacks on me with that claim will just make me ignore you, so I hope you refrain from that.

What I mean by "taking stabs at our community" is the egregious balancing changes that have been implemented. While some parts of them were changed for the good, that I supported and even suggested, many aspects were ridiculous and have only further simplified the games combat. I mean removing the one shot from blunder did wonders for the diversity of the game, but the spread change??? That killed the weapon and made it so we lost as much diversity as we gained. AND YES we don't want to have to learn how to play an all new weapon after 6.5 years because of a balance change. Obviously that's an issue that is going to drive many players, who put 1000s of hours learning tricks with it, away. And [redacted] event I'll get banned for talking about, showed Rare doubling down rather than reverting bad changes, and directly attacking the comp community. So yeah, we have some reasons to be mad.

@Jusey1z this all goes for you too.

@fysics3037 said in Why Sea of Thieves is Dying::

@guildar9194 quick swap shouldn't have been removed cus it had been 5 years. Now that it's gone, the damage is done and shouldn't come back.

Crud/fish/whatever else launch was just fun while it was in the game, and the fundamental mechanic of directional movement out of cannons should return in some other way. It wasn't balanced and I'm not sad to see it go. But I'll be ecstatic to see it return.

Now that I've clarified my stance on the matter, I hope you don't see me as an "exploit loving no good sweat that should be banned" Any further attacks on me with that claim will just make me ignore you, so I hope you refrain from that.

What I mean by "taking stabs at our community" is the egregious balancing changes that have been implemented. While some parts of them were changed for the good, that I supported and even suggested, many aspects were ridiculous and have only further simplified the games combat. I mean removing the one shot from blunder did wonders for the diversity of the game, but the spread change??? That killed the weapon and made it so we lost as much diversity as we gained. AND YES we don't want to have to learn how to play an all new weapon after 6.5 years because of a balance change. Obviously that's an issue that is going to drive many players, who put 1000s of hours learning tricks with it, away. And [redacted] event I'll get banned for talking about, showed Rare doubling down rather than reverting bad changes, and directly attacking the comp community. So yeah, we have some reasons to be mad.

@wolfmanbush in saying "I'd be ecstatic to see it return" I was referring to an official implementation of a similar concept, being able to air strafe while launching out of cannons. I don't expect it to return, and even though it didn't the beginning of the season most of us ignored it. Also if it makes you happy, I've been aware of the exploit you talk about since S9, the reason it hasn't spread? Because we chose to leave it dead.

@look-behind-you did you read what I said? I mean you completely missed the point. Unless you think one blunder was an exploit... In which case I don't know what to say.... And even then you missed the point.

@look-behind-you ok well I still think you missed the point. If an entire community, arguably the community with the most concentrated power of balance feedback, disagrees with a change, you'd expect the developers to be willing to listen. Rather what we got was even more than no change happening, it was an outright attack. You guys wrote statements saying you didn't care what we had to say, shutdown feedback avenues, and banned many of us from your official areas for less than noble reasons.

We have every right to be angry, unsatisfied, and pour more feedback on your heads. Attacking further by baselessly spreading information on how we are overreacting exploiters is shameful, and shouldn't be the actions of a moderator.

Once you're interested in actually responding to my feedback on balancing or helping shut down baseless and offensive claims that target a certain group of players, I will continue this conversation. You should either be a moderator or a rule follower, not an average user that's ignorant of the rules or trying to push the boundaries of the rules. All of what I've been trying to do is defend the peers in my community from slander.

@wolfmanbush Sure. I mean it's Rare's job to ensure that these vulnerabilities aren't in the game, and their job to fix it. I think absconding them from blame isn't correct. Ultimately bugs have been the bane of this game for a long time, and the main reason for the game "dying"

@wolfmanbush yeah. I just want to make it clear it's not fair to say it's high level players using these exploits. Did we use something that was in the game for 5 years? Sure. But not most of these cheesy things we don't need. I don't enjoy logging onto the forums to see myself and many of my friends slandered over and over, especially when proliferated by a mod. A perspective I hope you can share.

@look-behind-you said in Why Sea of Thieves is Dying::

@fysics3037 "The community with the most concentrated power of balance feedback" is the whole Community.

Imagine a Bell Curve, 100% PvE on one end, 100% PvP on the other....NEITHER is the majority, regardless of what they may think or believe about themselves or 'the other side'.

The math is actually that if you split your game balancing to focus equally on the three main pillars; high level, casual, and new players, you should end up weighing each of these pillars of feedback equally. You can then extrapolate that into estimates of how many people are in each player base (5% at the top, 60% casual, 35% new for instance). And then you can find that an individual at the highest end should have more individual "feedback power" than another person. The next that would follow is the new players then the casuals.

Each group gets 10 votes determined by a vote among their community. One group has 5 players, the next 60, the next 35. You can see all groups of players have the same number of votes, but the individual vote of a person in the group of 5 is more powerful (worth 2 votes) than the individual vote in the group 60 (worth 1/6 of a vote).

You guys clearly don't value each group of players equally, something you should fix. Else you risk losing more high end players than you already have. And please tell me I don't need to explain why high level players are important for game health, but do if I need to.

@look-behind-you you should look into how the US Presidential elections work. It's the same concept. The point of weighing all tiers of play equally is so that you can create a game that appeals to all of them fairly. There should never be a reason to wrong one community for another, unless there's an imbalance. Rare has clearly never leaned too far in the PvP side of the community, maybe you could argue the arena days, but those are long gone. Forcing the high end players out has made cheating more prevalent, hurt hourglass, and hurt the community. Turning the community against itself is sad.

@valor-omega said in Why Sea of Thieves is Dying::

@tesiccl I always love the tired out excuse of "other fps games allow for exploits/techs, therefore SoT should..."

Or when they try to rebrand them as "skills" or "techs" (as you said) instead of what it really is...cheating.

The game is not "dying". We've heard that since year one and now we're approaching the 7th Anniversary.

The numbers ebb and flow but it has remained consistently popular overall. It has always appealed to casuals, even during PvP.

Despite what "hardcore" players want to think, it's a silly cartoon pirate game where Rare want you to goof off and not take things seriously - either doing PvP or PvE. For this reason, the game has never had any real matchmaking based on skill and that's why mechanics get adjusted, exploits get squashed, and the skill gap is shrunk. It's all about balancing the sandbox and ensuring more fairness in combat and progression.

Arena wasn't popular, that's why it was shutdown. Hourglass also isn't popular and a lot of folk only suffer through it to get the curses. The grand majority of players just aren't that into the sweaty PvP side of the game, and would rather just have fun going on adventures, hanging with friends, and get into the occasional PvP scuffle with like-minded pirates. The sweats (and, yes, the cheaters and exploiters) drained the fun from Hourglass for many and turned it into an absolute soul-destroying slog.

TL;DR - It's a silly goofy cartoon pirate game, not Sea of Duty. Maybe don't see it as a ranked FPS game, and just have fun.