Idea for a "slightly" less toxic community

As long that alliance can be broken drop of a hat. Sure.

@burnbacon ...after the quest or event, sure, but it would be pointless if 2 ships could activate an alliance specific event, and then one ship immediately drop alliance so the other ship could solo. That would make the concept of cultivating a cooperative game experience futile. Especially if the alliance events had loot that could accommodate multiple crews to incentivize a communal event.

@captain-pwnsy

They did this in the past when Adventures were a thing. It required 2 ships to summon the shrouded ghost, and while it was fun, there was almost always a betrayal or a 3rd party ship would come in. My friends and I always loved it because we love PvP chaos and would always predict/be ready for one or the other. There were plenty of forum posts from those unhappy with their experience.

During the Hunter's Cry Adventure, ships would arrive at a special Sea Dog's tavern instance. It required multiple crews to sink ghost ships, plus you had to do parkour, to free Merrick. You'd have 5 ships in a tight area, with galleon PvP crews decimating and locking it down. Sinking their ship was pointless since they'd respawn right there. After about a week, since many weren't able to complete the achievements (the PvP was fun though), the devs turned off all damage to players, including cannons, removed the ghost ships, which made the event incredible easy.

That was the absolute last time they tried this.

Now you're hoping to bring rewarded teamwork to the game, and after these experiences, I have a feeling that history is going to repeat itself. 2 ships do something that provides treasure, one decided to sink the other, drops the alliance and sells all the loot, causing a repertoire of distrust about said event, and forum posts of unhappy players.

@europa4033 i did not get a chance to play the Sea Dogs instance. However, just because the devs didn't do it right the first time, is no reason not to do it better the next time. I have given this all of 20 minutes of thought, but here are 2 ideas that would reward teamwork and remove the instant betrayal.

1. Perhaps the 2 or more ships are required to accomplish something on different islands. Each task completion is required for victory, and posits treasure in 2 or more different vaults. Even if one crew were to circle back and backstab their alliance, they would be leaving either undefended gold in the vault from the island they were supposed to do, or they would fail the quest for both players, and no one would get anything.

2. A fleet battle, or grand scale raid that requires multiple crews, but doesn't provide treasure at all (since treasure is actually useless). instead crews that finish could get heavy rep rewards, special skins and ship sets for teamwork achieves. And even if one crew backstabs another, whatever ships took on the quest and contributed X amount to the tasks, would get the rep/rewards regardless if their ship was still standing.

Im not a game developer, but in 20 minutes I think I came up with better ways to incentivize team ups than Rare did in the Sea Dogs fiasco. I would be happy to give this a lot of thought and present detailed ideas to the team if I didn't think it would fall on deaf ears.

Thanks for responding and pushing my idea forward.

Something this game is sorely missing, is a reason to work together. I know pirates and backstabbing and what have you but we need something that makes it worth it to not backstab. As it stands right now there is no reason to work together because fighting someone and taking their stuff is more profitable than alliancing. I don't think they should make alliances more worth it, I think they should either introduce a set of voyages or another type of alliance that have more encouragement for working together. An alliance emissary flag type deal maybe? Something where the longer/more you work together, the more it's worth, and because all the alliance ships show up on the allianced ships map, you as a person outside of the alliance could locate all the alliance ships and hunt them to gain their alliance emissary flags, making it worth extra value for hunters as well as the people in the alliance.

@captain-pwnsy

A few questions about #1-

• Can I leave a crewmember behind to bury the treasure at our island, while we go sink the allianced ship?
• What if 2 members of my crew tucks on their ship, waits for them to open their vault, and then attack/sink them?
• If my ship completed our voyage and opened our vault while our allianced ship is having a battle with a seperate ship and they sink, would all the treasure in our vault suddenly vanish? How is that fair to us?

The only issue I see with #2, is that it's predicated upon Rare creating special skins, ship sets, new cosmetics (I'm guessing?), and heavy rep rewards (the latter making voyages, world events and certain time-limited events like Merrik's Recipe redundant and suddenly no one is doing them anymore), which, based on their recent trackrecord, they're not interested in doing. Just as a quick example, they reduced the Pass by 50% this season, and are now offering emporium cosmetics, voyages, and ancient coins (if you already have what's offered) with just one unique cosmetic. It's been promised that the gold shops will get the much-needed love they've needed for a long while now, (you can see how that's turned out). Not even going to mention the amount of reskins released, like this month's smouldering Pegasus set (and I'm sure there's more to come as well). Rare isn't going to be motivated to create special skins, ship sets, whatever, to those who alliance for a particular voyage (that has a chance to punish both parties if one side sinks), just to try and change player's behavior in this game.

@captain-pwnsy said in Idea for a "slightly" less toxic community:

My suggestion is this. Alliance specific events or quests. A series of activities that require at least 2 boats to activate, with plentiful rewards. Something to encourage players meet new people, and work together. Cultivate a community that isn't necessarily seeing every single ship on the sea as an instant enemy.

Instant no from me. I am an evil Pirate and I don’t like being forced to work with other players for content. (Yes, forced to do the content to get the rewards, I have to clarify this or some goof tries using it as a point)

Just because people like attacking boats doesn’t also make them instantly toxic, I actually find more people being unpleasant after I sink them than I do people being unpleasant also trying to sink me.

@europa4033

-there are obviously ways to prevent either back stabbing scenario you posited. Maybe the islands are too far apart. Maybe the alliance quests require the number of players on each crew to be present at their vault to open it, like 3 vault keys that need to be used at the same time.

• it could be arranged that an alliance event is locked to the alliance. Or that ships on an alliance event have a "short" distance respawn. As for, that is irrelevant. Is it fair that you do a FoF and 2 brigs show up, and while you are escaping a kraken sinks you all? If the rewards are good enough to counter the odd quest failure, it doesn't much matter if you occasionally flub.

My suggestion is to incentivize more alliances and teamwork. Maybe a way for alliance ships to send each other messages at a distance to call for help. Maybe more rewards for alliances. Maybe alliance fleet war servers, with double the number of ships per server, automatically placed on teams. Heck how about an hourglass fleet map where you can load in as Athena or Reaper and get auto placed on a full server, where the fights are always brewing.

Currently, only betrayal is incentivized. It is basic game theory, sinking them before they sink me is safer than trusting anyone. And while that does have it's fun, when the game is ONLY about betrayal, it is not cultivating a community, it's manufacturing toxic encounters, daily, on every server, by everyone.

@boneheart1237 and you are of course welcome to jog on. I am not suggesting anything to be mandatory, just incentivizing a "slightly" less toxic community, as my original post says .

If you don't want to work with strangers, don't. Teamwork rewards obviously aren't suitable for evil solo players anyways. The game already has nothing but rewards and incentives for hobgoblin troll pirates.

• it could be arranged that an alliance event is locked to the alliance. Or that ships on an alliance event have a "short" distance respawn. As for, that is irrelevant. Is it fair that you do a FoF and 2 brigs show up, and while you are escaping a kraken sinks you all? If the rewards are good enough to counter the odd quest failure, it doesn't much matter if you occasionally flub.

Don't see how the other allianced ship would take the news that even though they were successful, they still lost because of what the other ship was doing, or not doing through no fault of their own (and just that fact alone opens the door to trolling).

My suggestion is to incentivize more alliances and teamwork. Maybe a way for alliance ships to send each other messages at a distance to call for help. Maybe more rewards for alliances. Maybe alliance fleet war servers, with double the number of ships per server, automatically placed on teams. Heck how about an hourglass fleet map where you can load in as Athena or Reaper and get auto placed on a full server, where the fights are always brewing.

"HG fleet map where you can load in as Athena or Reaper and get placed on a full server where the fights are always brewing," so.....Last Ship Standing but with teams now? Not sure how hourglass would be awarded if that was the case.

Currently, only betrayal is incentivized. It is basic game theory, sinking them before they sink me is safer than trusting anyone. And while that does have it's fun, when the game is ONLY about betrayal, it is not cultivating a community, it's manufacturing toxic encounters, daily, on every server, by everyone.

Not always "sink them before they sink me," more like, "Why do I need to alliance with them, when I can take their loot and sell it for myself?" Also, betraying an allianced ship isn't manufacturing toxic encounters. Rare doesn't tolerate toxic behavior, nor should anyone else. Record and report the toxicity. PvP, alliance betrayals, stealing, sinking another "for no reason," hiding, boarding with kegs, etc. are all not toxic. Players aren't toxic because Rare isn't forcing them to be nice to one another doing an allianced voyage.

@europa4033 Fleet maps could be a separate reward system. Guild wars or faction wars, that result in faction rep rewards. Maybe instead of a shrinking circle, it could be zone control, or some sort of capture the flag, or king of the hill. There are plenty of ways to apply team fights and make it fun and rewarding.

As for "Rare does not tolerate toxic behavior" I think you know that is not accurate. If they banned every toxic player they would lose half the community straight off, from cursing and swearing when they lose a ship, or trash talk when they win. I have reported dozens of people from racial slurs and other seriously offensive behavior, and all I ever get back from Rare is "more information is needed". If they game is capable of speech to text, they should easily be able to access game chat logs and confirm reports. But Rare couldn't be bothered to police their game beyond stopping cheaters from using 3rd party software.

@captain-pwnsy said in Idea for a "slightly" less toxic community:

@europa4033 Fleet maps could be a separate reward system. Guild wars or faction wars, that result in faction rep rewards. Maybe instead of a shrinking circle, it could be zone control, or some sort of capture the flag, or king of the hill. There are plenty of ways to apply team fights and make it fun and rewarding.

As for "Rare does not tolerate toxic behavior" I think you know that is not accurate. If they banned every toxic player they would lose half the community straight off, from cursing and swearing when they lose a ship, or trash talk when they win. I have reported dozens of people from racial slurs and other seriously offensive behavior, and all I ever get back from Rare is "more information is needed". If they game is capable of speech to text, they should easily be able to access game chat logs and confirm reports. But Rare couldn't be bothered to police their game beyond stopping cheaters from using 3rd party software.

More information is needed because you have to record and report. Otherwise you could report me for anything (cheating, toxicity, etc.) when I simply sank your ship. With all the issues surrounding server stability, glitches, lag spikes, ping spikes, etc., there's no way they can turn back the clock to see who said what to whom (for the record, the word "jellyfish" used to be censored, so good luck with trying to figure out what was said).

I've sunk a number of ships in the time playing this game, and I've been told and called a slew of adjectives, nouns, phrases, slurs, life advice, health predictions, hopes for my children's futures, it goes on and on. Every one I've clipped and sent, I've received emails back telling me actions have been taken. I've never had an issue with reporting anything that goes above and beyond being called a body part 😂.

I've been sunk many times in this game, and never once have I ever said anything remotely close to the toxicity others have said to me. There's zero excuse for it, and I do what Rare says to do: record and report. So far so good after all these years.

@captain-pwnsy said in Idea for a "slightly" less toxic community:

... My suggestion is this. Alliance specific events or quests. A series of activities that require at least 2 boats to activate, with plentiful rewards. Something to encourage players meet new people, and work together. Cultivate a community that isn't necessarily seeing every single ship on the sea as an instant enemy.
... Sometimes pvp as part of an alliance is fun too!

Agree! We just had a hostile seas update and a lot of reaper-related updates. Could now use a "friendly seas" content update - for balance. Incentivize friendly encounters with something more than bilge rat weekenders.
I made a related post a while back: https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/184557/suggestion-for-friendly-guardian-seas-update-athena-expansion-with-bodyguard-protection-commendations

@captain-pwnsy said in Idea for a "slightly" less toxic community:

... As for "Rare does not tolerate toxic behavior" I think you know that is not accurate. If they banned every toxic player they would lose half the community straight off, from cursing and swearing when they lose a ship, or trash talk when they win. I have reported dozens of people from racial slurs and other seriously offensive behavior, and all I ever get back from Rare is "more information is needed". If they game is capable of speech to text, they should easily be able to access game chat logs and confirm reports. ...

If you recorded/screenshotted every toxic player and sent in the evidence, they would be suspended. I've received such updates on 10+ players.