@xd1rt-x-d1verx I'm all for save harbours, as long as there is an in-game reason for it, zones where cannon balls don't do damage or where you can't shoot people would be boring, but if you had a fort like the skeleton ones, but with more cannons and NPC guards, that would be great. You could have an inner safe zone, where every ship is protected, and then a bigger zone around it, where the cannons can reach, so if a ship is outside the safe zone and shoot in, they can still be hit by the cannons, and if they sailed in to the safe zone, they would get destroyed by the amount of cannonballs coming their way.
[Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion
@oldmansutii said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
@quickt1m3 said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
I think Ship Visibility is fine, if they can see you, you can see them. There should always be a sense of ships sailing around you. Adds to the tension and the excitement.
But that's partly the point of my post, they're so visible now there is no tension because you can see them ridiculous distances away without using the spyglass. It was more tense in the Alpha when you were looking at an object on the horizon and wishing for a spyglass to get a better look, because you were unsure as to whether or not it was a ship. Not once during the Beta did a ship manage to creep up on me, that occasionally did happen during the Alpha and definitely aided in maintaining a feeling of suspense.
Seeing ships going about their own business far away helps keep the game feeling alive. True it's possible with less visibility ships can approach randomly which is certainly tense.
But the opposite is also true, not seeing ships around you while sailing can replace tension with bordom rather quickly, this was actually a big complaint in the alpha, which is why they increased the visibility.
The beta really struck a good balance I thought.
@ant-heuser-kush
I think they need to do a level progression system to unlock better weapons and boats. It will be hard to stay in business without it, because the hype will die down fast. I'm thinking maybe make the servers level based. That way you don't come across people more thank maybe 5 levels or so higher. I would base items, ship, and crew off of whatever the captains level is. That should keep people with higher skill and time played at higher levels of people with more even footing. Maybe an infamy or bounty system for those pesky PVP peeps. To much infamy means you cant get new quests or something. They may not use any of this, but I would love to see more ships and make a bit more customization, that way we don't feel like were all just driving the same ships just different colors.Our problem here is that PvP aggression is too attractive, and PvE exploration is not attractive enough. Disincentivize PvP aggression by making death hurt more. Right now it's not even a slap on the wrist. At a minimum, you should lose what is on your person. If your ship sinks, you should lose any extra supplies. If that were the case, people would at least have to resupply before launching into another attack.
For PvE I think it would help tremendously to have environmental hazards/quests that required multi-crew co-op. Give people on the map something to do TOGETHER other than shooting at each other, and make it more worth their while than stealing from each other.@treblucfayle said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
One Idea I had thought of was a "Flag" system, of sorts.
You could sail with a white flag, or black flag.
Black flags are the free-for-all that we had during the beta. Anyone can attack or be attacked, and the stuff on their ships can be stolen.
White flags would mean the ship/ crew can't be attacked and ships can't be interacted with. Other players could get on your ship, but can't hurt you or affect anything.
If a white flagged crew attacks/ steals from a black flagged crew, they automatically become black flagged.
Crews would be able to vote to switch flags, but if they are auto flagged (as stated above) there would be a timer before they can switch again.
This kind of system would allow players who aren't interested in PvP at the moment to go and explore/quest without direct interference. But it would also allow players to hop into a PvP situation at will and not restrict them into playing one way or the other.
A solid idea.
@lucid-stew said
Disincentivize PvP aggression by making death hurt more. Right now it's not even a slap on the wrist. At a minimum, you should lose what is on your person. If your ship sinks, you should lose any extra supplies. If that were the case, people would at least have to resupply before launching into another attack.
This is a double-edged sword, because the ones getting attacked would also have to incur the penalties for death.
@treblucfayle said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
One Idea I had thought of was a "Flag" system, of sorts.
You could sail with a white flag, or black flag.
Black flags are the free-for-all that we had during the beta. Anyone can attack or be attacked, and the stuff on their ships can be stolen.
White flags would mean the ship/ crew can't be attacked and ships can't be interacted with. Other players could get on your ship, but can't hurt you or affect anything.
If a white flagged crew attacks/ steals from a black flagged crew, they automatically become black flagged.
Crews would be able to vote to switch flags, but if they are auto flagged (as stated above) there would be a timer before they can switch again.
This kind of system would allow players who aren't interested in PvP at the moment to go and explore/quest without direct interference. But it would also allow players to hop into a PvP situation at will and not restrict them into playing one way or the other.
That system, as suggested, will be abused.
- A white flagged ship can approach a black flagged ship, appearing non-hostile, and suddenly attack when it's in their advantage. Essentially, they'll always get the first shot.
- Black flagged ships engaged in a chase (no combat yet) can switch to white as it suits them to get out of a chase or reposition.
- Players will transport chests under a white flag and switch to black when carrying nothing, guaranteeing that most, if not all, black flagged ships engaging in combat will only ever be participating in a cannon ball exchange program with no reward.
A possible solution would be that both colors have to manually switch (no auto-switch from white to black) in addition to timer and proximity requirements and can't be changed once a voyage has started or a chest has been picked up. However, #3 is still a problem and can only be addressed by removing the switch capability entirely, requiring a flag be chosen upon entering the game session and at that point, you might as well have a separate server because why would anyone of either color want the other taking up space in their session (and that applies to the entire premise of a flag system). It also only addresses ship-to-ship combat unless that was intentional.
@treblucfayle said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
One Idea I had thought of was a "Flag" system, of sorts.
You could sail with a white flag, or black flag.
Black flags are the free-for-all that we had during the beta. Anyone can attack or be attacked, and the stuff on their ships can be stolen.
White flags would mean the ship/ crew can't be attacked and ships can't be interacted with. Other players could get on your ship, but can't hurt you or affect anything.
If a white flagged crew attacks/ steals from a black flagged crew, they automatically become black flagged.
Crews would be able to vote to switch flags, but if they are auto flagged (as stated above) there would be a timer before they can switch again.
This kind of system would allow players who aren't interested in PvP at the moment to go and explore/quest without direct interference. But it would also allow players to hop into a PvP situation at will and not restrict them into playing one way or the other.
I had a whole thread based around a flag system.
https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/24961/is-pvp-avoidable/5@mantis789 Unfortunately the Technical Alpha ended in December and the Closed Beta just ended yesterday. We will have to wait and see what is in store next to find out when your time on the seas will come!
@mantis789
No there isn't anyway to be invited to the alpha now!
You will have to wait until March 20th now, sorry.I love the world pve just as it is. Yes give them more content to get lost in so we have something to plunder. Cuz player verse environment should include other players trying to kill you when you are a pirate. There is no such thing as spawn camping in almost every pirate movie the outposts are constant battles of pirates killing each other and unfairly taking their stuff.
There is no QQ about some imaginary line your inadequacies drew in the sands of what land I or someone else has conquered. To the derps of hell while me mates pound this repeating bad dream into ye sol.
Maybe we could have the ability to select one spawn point at one of the battle forts for all out zerg death pvp without spawning ships on that island only. People could swing by with ships to kill pvpers on the island too since they have cannons and weapon reloads. Then choose to random spawn with ship like normal.
@quickt1m3 I do agree that seeing other ships incredibly rarely is undesirable, and as you say, this was one of the major complaints in the Alpha. The thing is they have effectively addressed that complaint from two directions at the same time by increasing ship visibility and implementing the spyglass. As Rare made no statement that they'd adjusted the number of ships per server for the Beta, it's not unreasonable to assume that that went unchanged.
I would have like to see them implement the spyglass alone to see if that would have been enough, then tweak the visibility independently as (if) needed. By doing both at the same time it's more challenging to gauge the impact of either on the problem, though I honestly feel the spyglass was essentially superfluous with how greatly the ship visibility was increased, I certainly never needed it during the Beta, but would have killed for it in the Alpha.
As for seeing ships just going about their business, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that happened. The majority of the time when a ship was spied it immediately changed course to intercept us, or we it. And it was almost impossible to disengage after defeating an enemy ship, as they could see you clearly from their respawn location - a separate issue maybe, but certainly compounded by the visibility and definitely a source of lots of complaints in this Beta.
I guess the main problem from my side is that the visibility as is now serves things up far too easily for those seeking PvP, and don't misunderstand me, I don't want to see a passive sea as I really enjoy PvP myself and the threat to your spoils it poses. But right now it's very easy (and little risk) to get my friends together and steal from others, with no skill or effort required to find victims, and no amount of skill possible on their part to evade notice.
@ant-heuser-kush As for me, there are some possible ways of making people interested in PvE rather than PvP:
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Adding hell lot of lore in the game. It would increase interest level of people in completing quests to find out more about an island they are searching for treasure on/an undead pirate crew which they'll have to send back to hell/an ancient tribe or underwater civilisation worshipping the Kraken or etc. Like it was in Skyrim, you know.
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Increasing the difficulty of quests(Or at least make AI more "intelligent", because as it was in beta, you could wipe out like hundreds of skeletons on your own) so it would be necessary to cooperate with your teammates and cover each others' backs in order not to get killed and complete the voyage
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Easter eggs. Hints for future updates. Something that will make people dive deep into the water without even knowing if there is something worth diving for it. Some kind of an intrigue, ya know. Like these "whale" noises players were able to hear during the beta.
that's all I can think of at the moment. Any thoughts?
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@signusm you could be right about your point... don't want it to get to a grind... but still think it would be a good way to go... you need to prepare and trow money into the safehouse to (maybe) get home safely... would make the chase so much more fun/intense for both players... lets say I feel greedy to even though I pre payed for safe outpost passage I decide to go to another far away normal outpost for that extra 100% profit on the chest and meet a pirate ship on the way... let the chase begin...
But i do see tour point...
I would just hate for the game to shift from 'pirate fun adventure with friends and online enimies' to 'naval twitch battle royale hardcore players allowed only'
After playing the beta I really hope Rare take a look at the game and add in a seperate PvE mode/server, as well as having it the way it is now. I had been looking forward to playing this game for so long but I got really disheartened quite early on at the way other players just wanted to slaughter me. And yeah i’ve seen it written countless times...”this is a pirate game”, and “the game is called Sea of Thieves”, and “you just need to be better at the game”...
Even though this is a pirate game, called Sea of Thieves, it’s deserves far more credit than a lot of players out there are giving it. Rare created a game with such a mind boggling graphics. The water or course, the sunsets and the sunrise, the islands are beautiful, yet there is no time to take any of that in and enjoy the game and admire the creativity and years of hard work that went in to creating the world we sail in.
After a few days of playing the beta, I saw a picture someone put up online of the night sky, and how amazing it was. I could not believe that I hadn’t even taken notice of it yet, as my time was solely dedicated to looking out for other pirate ships that would be wanting to just destroy me.
On my second day of playing, I wanted to start exploring underwater a bit. My first experience...I fought off a few skeletons, went for a dive, really was enjoying the exploration part, came up for some air and a sloop was full steam ahead at my sloop. I flashed my lantern, and played some music and they started destroying my ship, when I jumped on my ship to repair it, I was killed.
So by the end of the beta period, I felt I never really had time to enjoy the actual experience of exploration as I spent more time watching over my shoulder. Surely Rare didn’t build this game in mind for it to become an all out slaughter fest.
I really would like it If there were the 2 options, as I mentioned at the start, the way it is now, where you have that suspense and excitement of searching for treasure, but running the risk of having it all taken away from you, the true Sea of Thieves, and then the other mode, where you can just enjoy the environment and the world that Rare created, without having to look over your shoulder every 30 seconds.
I still think that in a PvE mode, there should be other pirates in that server that can steal from you, just not be able to slaughter you and sink your ship all the time. It would be such an awesome, and different social experience.
sry for my bad english
i would say its 50/50 ,but i did a rang 20 more than two days long voyage(7 map pieces) n it was nice.....two ships followed me at the end n i just flew away at on point one tiny ship was at my left n a 4 crew ship on my right,the cannons just flight over my ship n they damaged hisself. i flew away i completed the whole voyage, n island i had to visited two times, cause on crooked masts was a rush hour ,i just flew everytime n it worked,with the huge voyages u r more flexible , i go never in battles but i like the pvp gameplay,without pvp, people would say they want pvp action;)...
@ant-heuser-kush I understand killing you over and over, that's not cool. However attacking you in the first place is perfectly fine, they don't know what you have on board maybe you have chests maybe you don't.
Pirates didn't think to worry about whether the other guys wanted to fight or not, they rolled to the beat of their own drum.
So like you said always have your head on a swivel, no one is safe on the seas.
DON'T make this game YET ANOTHER PVE game for god shake ! There are a million pve games! Every damn game company listen to pve players and look where we got ! TOP games right now is ALL about PVP.. But no let's listen to carebears and people who want to be pirates for exploring AND being able to watch TV or whatever at the same time .. No ! You want to do something ? Put all your focus on that! If you are tiny bit smart you'll find ways to avoid griefers and ACTUAL PIRATES IN A PIRATE GAME ( damn.... ) . If when you die to someone all you can do is come to forums and moan you are a damn huge lazy a*s not trying to get better or even use your god blessed mind !
DO NOT TURN THIS GAME INTO A PVE GRIND ! IT WILL die in a matter of days ! What is fun about the game right now is the THREAT of being attacked ! Chased !
You get camped ? GO somewhere else ! You are being chased ? Learn how to use wind , ships and other tactics which im not gona reveal to so much lazy people ! Or you know .. you can even use google ! It's a crazy idea yea but it might teach you stuff! I'm fine with adding anything for pve like bosses and generally other pve content but leave pvp be as it is ! I'm ok with some better optimization on respawn mechanic which many have put some strong points on but please do not split community when they will just vanish after few days cause they don't even know what they want.
@trustedyak70131 said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
DON'T make this game YET ANOTHER PVE game for god shake ! There are a million pve games! Every damn game company listen to pve players and look where we got ! TOP games right now is ALL about PVP.. But no let's listen to carebears and people who want to be pirates for exploring AND being able to watch TV or whatever at the same time .. No ! You want to do something ? Put all your focus on that! If you are tiny bit smart you'll find ways to avoid griefers and ACTUAL PIRATES IN A PIRATE GAME ( damn.... ) . If when you die to someone all you can do is come to forums and moan you are a damn huge lazy a*s not trying to get better or even use your god blessed mind !
DO NOT TURN THIS GAME INTO A PVE GRIND ! IT WILL die in a matter of days ! What is fun about the game right now is the THREAT of being attacked ! Chased !
You get camped ? GO somewhere else ! You are being chased ? Learn how to use wind , ships and other tactics which im not gona reveal to so much lazy people ! Or you know .. you can even use google ! It's a crazy idea yea but it might teach you stuff! I'm fine with adding anything for pve like bosses and generally other pve content but leave pvp be as it is ! I'm ok with some better optimization on respawn mechanic which many have put some strong points on but please do not split community when they will just vanish after few days cause they don't even know what they want.
ye i can just agree with you, see games like League of Legends all about PvP and its still one of the most played games. Dont change the Game to a PvE game, my experience was, i had always more than enough time to explore the Island, if not i did kill the Person who wanted to attack me and then i had again like 20min+ to explore the Island. Dont change the Game for these PvE players, ofc you can add pve stuffs but its good how it is, if you watched some Pirate Movies, you will see also just PvP instead of PvE LUL, and there was times where i did search like 40min for a Ship, its really good how it is.
If you watch streams on twitch or on youtube, you see how many people had fun with this game bcs of the PvP System
I played the most time solo and everybody who did this knows, than there is less slaughter, than exploration hiding the ship and treasures etc.. But I really hope the don't split between PVE and PVP servers, even I prefer being solo PVE most of the time.
Why, somebody should do PVE on a PVP server if you split things up? And why the PVP player should PVP than? Destroying everybody for no loot seems fun in a 4-5 days Beta but not in a full title for 70 €, so it's geting boring on both server types. Personal I dislike the idea of PVEler wich could buy everything because getting the gold on an PVP free server seems to be an easy pice of cake right now.
Exploring and have the possibility of being attacked by others is the same as getting possibly hit by a storm etc.Only thing is they need to find a system, that deals with silly camping and toxic play-styles, I don't trust in a community based solution for this problem
@madame-ching said in [Mega Thread] - PvE versus PvP Discussion:
@ant-heuser-kush I understand killing you over and over, that's not cool. However attacking you in the first place is perfectly fine, they don't know what you have on board maybe you have chests maybe you don't.
Pirates didn't think to worry about whether the other guys wanted to fight or not, they rolled to the beat of their own drum.
So like you said always have your head on a swivel, no one is safe on the seas.
Real pirates did care very much about if an attack worth it or not, because if they got killed in the approach there was no respawn
Server pvp migration balance base on player/team skill average. The only issue I ever see in pvp is the bigger or more powerful constantly picking on the weak and new (not all of us, may have a regular group to play and master a game with). If you (or in this case the group) have a high pvp score/skill or high kill vs death ratio, then you should be migrated with players/teams that are similar in talent. This increases the challenge and hopefully enjoyment for those who love pvp. As well gives new players a chance to learn, fight similar skilled players/teams and not be turned off playing. But it needs to be seamless migration, so you don't realize/feel it. This would make the campers of tradeposts, realize they will be in a zone with better skilled players sooner than they planned. Pvp should not be removed from pve, that's what makes the game interesting and different every time. The balance may not always work out on quiet nights and you may get pounded those nights. We all have good and bad game sessions, but the good should always out weigh the bad. I have no issue being schooled by talented, creative opponents if I feel the playing field was fair. I will learn adapt and try a prevail for the next encounter.
@knifelife Instanced competitive matches with MMR would be good content for PvP addicts like me. With those urges satisfied I would happily play the MMO-part as a pacifist.
@samipe Thats a topic ive posted before also, it would be nice to have a scaled down version of the map where like 4 shipsbare spawned in and have a last team standing game mode.
It would definitely give the mpre hardcore PvPers something to sink there teeth into!
But nothing has been announced currently, i do like the idea of various mini games. :)
I'm interested to see how the game operates at launch. I hope they don't cater too much to the PVE crowd, as I think it will water down the game. However, I do hope they can cater slighly to the casual gamer who enjoys PVE so that this game can become what it has the potential to become. I see it evolving a lot like the way GTA 5 has, except in it's own way.
The Beta was really limited as far as content, so I think a good portion of the PVP encounters happened out of boredom. I found myself looking for ships after playing for a while, either to try to make friends or to have a nice battle. Never made too many friends though, most pirates I came across were shoot first and ask questions later.
In my experience, PvP in Sea of Thieves is sometimes competitive and sometimes just griefing. The tension of not knowing what another player will do is fun. Chases and naval battles can be a lot of fun. But there are times when PvP does nothing but steal time or force one person's playstyle onto another player. The PvP results in both great thrills and ruined play sessions.
The dynamic nature of the game means for some players frustration will precede fun. Sometimes back-to-back play sessions will not be fun because of continual loss and griefing. Ship respawning and pirate spawning need to minimize this by giving players an option to spawn very far from where they were just killed. Or, if possible, provide an option to migrate servers without backing out of the game. PvP encounters cannot always be voluntary, but player agency is the heart of any good game. If individual players can't generally direct their experiences, that's a problem.
I agree that the immense amount of planned PvE content withheld from the Closed Beta will help to mitigate PvP at launch. But of course there will remain plenty of griefers and players bored by the lateral progression (more satifying for some gamers than others).
A player bounty system would not eliminate griefing, but it would help to balance PvP and PvE by adding some risk to predation.
@ant-heuser-kush
I agree.. I had a blast playing with other people during the beta. It really brought back that feeling of couch co-op I had with friends back with Halo was first released. Really fun..However. As I am now in my 30s, I do not always have the same schedule as my friends.. and this is where I am starting to get concerned with SoT. Exploration in this game can be a lot of fun, but this fun can quickly turn sour when playing by yourself. The issue I ran into when trying solo play was that people were more interested in just camping on islands or sinking your ship just because they can. A specific example that comes to mind was when a group of 4 players were squatting on the main island where you return the treasure and pick up additional quests. Playing as a single person quickly became aggravating as I became hunted just for sport. I couldn't off load my treasure or pick up new quests just because they continued to hunt me and kill my character. They then proceeded to board my ship.. just waiting for me to respawn.
While I hope this is just a novelty due to the beta, it does raise a huge concern I have once the game goes live.
If there isn't some sort of toggle for single player PvP, and or a safe zone for players to pick up quests / drop off loot, this game can quickly become impossible for single players.
I don't mind a challenge.Feel free to chase me in my boat, and try to steal my treasure, but DON"T ALLOW CAMPING. If I lose, than so be it. HOwever, the camping of the 4 player ship really ruined my session and left a bad taste in my mouth.
I still plan on purchasing the game at launch, but the longevity of the game concerns me. Especially if single player play is not possible due to people only looking to ruin another persons day.
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