Revisiting how leveling companies works

losing all progress when sunk

I didn’t know you lost progression when you sunk! :o I know I lost loot and resources but my progression!? Wow…. Very sad

As someone that has also maxed out for the most part, I agree with this.

However, I would only want to see something like this implemented with a prestige system.

Allowing newer players to achieve PL and subsequently max out even faster than is already possible just creates a quicker end game for the casuals you just described...and then leaves your dedicated base wondering why Rare made that change and why all their hard work is being marginalized.

Implementing this type of change along with a prestige system would definitely make casuals feel better about being sunk, and implementing a prestige system would allow your dedicated base to continue on under the new mechanics.

@burnbacon dijo en Revisiting how leveling companies works:

losing all progress when sunk

I didn’t know you lost progression when you sunk! :o I know I lost loot and resources but my progression!? Wow…. Very sad

If you loose your loot you can't sell and earn rep, so yes, you loose everything, including time if your Life that never returns to you.

@burnbacon I highly doubt you didn't get the point, but I'll try to explain myself differently: if you get sunk while doing a voyage you won't make any progress into companies. New players and casuals usually get frustrated at this, my idea should make their experience a little bit better.

@galactic-geek ha detto in Revisiting how leveling companies works:

Also, maxing out companies and becoming a Pirate Legend has never been a sign of skill or experience,

Didn't use it as way to say I'm skilled or experienced (even tho I consider myself both skilled at the game and experienced for many reasons but I do not feel like it is necessary to prove it in this discussion), it was a way to say "I am not biased" "I'm not asking this for me", as this change wouldn't change anything for me, as someone who don't need to level up stuff anymore.

Your idea is somewhat flawed because you're rewarding pirates for not turning in their loot. Even with a much reduced XP-gain, many a pirate would abuse it to level up and simply abandon the often tedious turn-in portion of the game. The last thing I want is a growing population of Lazybeards.

Is it? even tho a data analyst at Rare would surely be able to balance it better than me, my blind guess of making only 15/20% of the reputation coming from activities seems quite discouraging, make it 10 if you wish; It would still take AT LEAST double the time even if you found out a very efficient way of farming said activities, which I highly doubt is in the casuals and new players play style anyway. Also, buying the promotions still costs so they'd still need to farm some golds to get the items and emissary flag (which also cost gold btw).

Also, even if they'd enjoy farming rep without selling, what would be the issue? Isn't the game about a big sandbox where you choose the way you play? Am I lazy because I prefer stealing from other players since it takes me less than 2 minutes to board an average SoT player ship, drop his anchor and spawn kill him until his ship sinks? No, even if it was nerfed and stolen loot was worth 1/4 of what is worth now I would still steal the majority of the time because that's more fun to me, I like fighting people not mindless skeletons. Why is it a bad thing trying to make the game more fun to every slice of the player base, specially when it doesn't ruin the game for the rest of it?

Seasonal progress is confirmed to also be something that helps new players and casuals make some progress by just playing the game, if we can make more systems like that it would just make their experience better, making them get into the game and maybe start putting in more effort to live the pirate life as we do.

Learn to live with loss, and then overcome it. Such is life. A Pirate's Life.

Games without a matchmaking for new players often mean losing all the time, because they are new and are thrown in session with players that have many more hours than them. It's hard to find fun in this specially since new players are still deciding if it's worth to put their time and effort into the game or not, they are not fully engaged with the game yeat and it's not appealing to a new player, it's frustrating and it's an issue in SoT's new player experience.
When new players sink it's not like they just had to play it a little better and they could win, they are missing dozen or hundred or thousands hour of experience that their opponents have on their back; just being constantly overwhelmed by other players doesn't help them getting better or even give them the motivation to want to put effort into the game and get better.

Imagine you get in a game with rankeds like League and the first 10 matches the game puts you against gold+ players (probably even silver players would be enough to discourage a new player), imagine starting to learn boxing vs people that have been doing it for an year or 2, imagine starting training by trying to lift weights way above your strength, imagine making your first Minecraft run an hardcore run. That creates a barrier between the new player and the game, it doesn't help him getting into it.
Telling new players what the game is about and to accept it from the start, before they are engaged with it, isn't a good thing on itself. Once they get interested in the game and its concept they may want to put more effort and time into getting better and being able to enjoy the game even with his harsh sides, making them a plus instead of a frustrating thing, but they need to get interested in it first and a softer new player experience can help this.

I strongly believe that systems that softly insert a new player into the game's world and mindset greatly increase the % of new players that will stick with the game.

@burnbacon said in Revisiting how leveling companies works:

losing all progress when sunk

I didn’t know you lost progression when you sunk! :o I know I lost loot and resources but my progression!? Wow…. Very sad

Apparently the joke went over two peoples heads.
You in fact dont lose any progression when you have are sunk. The sinking part is not true, you dont lose progress.
Keep moving forward.

If you loose your loot you can't sell and earn rep, so yes, you loose everything, including time if your Life that never returns to you.

• Time in my life isn' t lost to me. Its a video game, as such the grind shouldnt be a grind if you simply "dont care"
  Leveling up will come to me.

I highly doubt you didn't get the point, but I'll try to explain myself differently: if you get sunk while doing a voyage you won't make any progress into companies. New players and casuals usually get frustrated at this, my idea should make their experience a little bit better.

• Again not true. Im a casual player and I find none of this frustrating. Only players who dive too deep are the ones who lose on the best part of this game.
  They are a pirate and its there Story!

I like your reasoning, though I think I disagree with your proposed solution. A better option, I think, would be to give a small amount of rep for completing a Tall Tale. The checkpoint system would keep them from getting too discouraged, and would give them some incentive to get into the lore and get more interested in the game.

@galactic-geek ha detto in [Revisiting how leveling companies works]

Heh, this will be a mess to answer to... I'll just try to answer to the key points.

But you did - and in any case, your correlate. and experiences has nothing to do with your biases. It's possible to be skilled and experienced and still be biased - they don't really correlate.

I either explained myself badly you keep not understanding what's the correlation I meant: I do not need to level up companies anymore = This addition is not for me, I'm not biased.

You'd be surprised - all it would take is a single invite to an alliance server.

Which doesn't make it faster

That it affects the other pirates in their own crew perhaps?

What kind of point is this? Whatever activity a member of a crew wants to do affects the whole crew, what do you mean?

Isn't the game about a big sandbox where you choose the way you play?

Yes, but that only extends out as far as socializing with other pirates goes.

While I do believe that interacting with other players and PvPing are the most fun aspect of the game it doesn't need to be like this for everyone and, unless for some events, the game doesn't force or require a player to socialize. That's just something you are deciding, one can have fun by running away from other crew and trying not to interact with them while doing PvE stuff.

Not everyone is you.

It leaves more work for the non-lazybeards.

I don't get the point of these answers. In the first case I made an example with a point, you just denied my point because I used an example... like what? answer the point don't tell me my example is just one out of many like... I know, I can't make 20 examples just because there are more play style. The point was "if someone has fund doing something, what's the issue with that? why call him lazy? let him have his kind of fun!". In the second case it again seems like you decide what the other players should behave like and judge them for a play style. You cannot do that! Playing the way you like is part of the game.

Only if done well.

Ty Sherlock, I surely intended that they should make bad systems.

I never suggested doing away with matchmaking.

What? SoT has no matchmaking, it just puts you in a server. It doesn't decide which server based on your skill or the skill of the crews in the server, it's fully random (and please don't misunderstand me here, I don't want matchmaking in sot, it's impossible to tell the skill of a player here. I was just pointing out an issue of not having a proper matchmaking)

That is often quickly overcome as they adjust and learn.

But in order to learn they need the motivation for doing so, which a player that is feeling frustrated with the game usually won't have ^^

When new players sink it's not like they just had to play it a little better and they could win,

Actually, it is.

they are missing dozen or hundred or thousands hour of experience

That's a bit over-exaggerated.

It's not and is it? Have you ever played with new players? Sea of thieves is a very complex game and in a fight it requires you to keep in mind many things and react quickly, a player with even just a month of playing will still get destroyed by the players that played 3 or more, he's still learning. It's not just about playing it a bit better because a new player doesn't have the knowledge and experience to do that, your asking him to have the same knowledge and experience of people that have at least double their play time.

Not knowing how skilled your oponents are prior to your interactions with them is half the fun! It keeps things dynamically interesting.

As a wise man once said "not everyone is you".

That is entirely subjective to the individual pirate(s) in question.

At this point I'm getting kind of frustrated of reading your sentences, you give me arguments like the last one and then proceed to deny mine as "subjective". My arguments tho are base on the typical new player experience, what I heard about friends that started to play before me, player that I'm currently getting into the game and people on the forum. It is subjective, I do agree, but when most of the people gets frustrated over something maybe we need to start doing something. Don't abuse denying arguments telling they are "subjective", otherwise you 1) deny half of your sentences in this post. 2) I can start telling you ridiculous stuff like "Pirate Legends activities aren't boring, it's subjective" "the hitreg problem is just subjective, some people don't like PvPing and enjoy the fact that it adds more randomness lowering the skill cap and giving them more chances to win" probably there are some people who truly believe in these sentences, but how many?

Only the strong survive.

What is this ahahaha, this answer genuinely made me laugh. Yeah, the game won't survive tho when the player base will start to shrink. You seem talking like an elitist of the Hardcore PVP MMORPG communities, fun fact: most of these games do not work and die because of how little their player base is, the problem is not even the game being hard, I like them, I've played some of the for a lot of hours but I do recognize that the new player experience need to be softer while introducing new player to the harsh world. The reason why WoW made boom is because it made it more of a casual experience compared to the MMORPG before it. Many games are successes because they are able to attract casual gamers which are a very important part of the gaming market and the most crucial part of onboarding is the new player experience, if the average player is not enjoying it he won't stick with the game.

No - dynamic and unexpected experiences that leave a lasting impression on their memories are what does it.

You do not agree? do a search on game design related to the new player experience, look at studies, check out what experienced people that work in the industry have to say. But it's just logic tbh, surely something needs to be impress you to really make you interested in it, I do agree with that, but if the Sea of Thieves' new player experience impress the average new player by making him frustrated about losing all of his loot while having made zero progress in two hours, let me tell you that he's more likely to quit than staying because a random guy on the internet replied to his raging post with "it's not about the gold".

@burnbacon

Apparently the joke went over two peoples heads.

It didn't, seems like sarcastic "I highly doubt you didn't get my point" went over yours, I was just trying to ignore your joke and answer to what I expect to be your point, which you explained right after confirming what I was thinking. In fact I have already answered to your "don't lose any progression" making it "you don't make any progress"

You in fact dont lose any progression when you have are sunk. The sinking part is not true, you dont lose progress.
Keep moving forward.

A player that is still not interested in the game will hardly stick to it if that's the mindset at the start of the game. He will eventually be able to enjoy it too once he's engaged and willing to put some effort in. I do play with your same mindset, I mostly play reaper and hunt emissaries.

• Again not true. Im a casual player and I find none of this frustrating. Only players who dive too deep are the ones who lose on the best part of this game.
  They are a pirate and its there Story!

Are you? I was sure to have seen you here and there in the last year or so, but not wanting to make a gaffe I checked: someone who spent so much time on a game's forum isn't really playing the game as a casual. But anyway, you are one among many.

I'm gonna tell you my story since, I too, am a one among many:
When my friends introduced me to the game I liked the world and wanted to learn more about it, we used to play on weekend by doing the tall tales, so when I felt like it during the week I used to log in and solo around, not doing voyages (because even tho my friends had showed me them, I forgot about them) just wandering around and trying to sneak on other sloops. I didn't know about all the tuck content that already was on youtube, so I got to learn some strategies by myself, and I really enjoy learning by myself. I was forged through solo practice and fighting for forts with my friends, I got to level 40 of the 3 main companies just by doing forts. I got the core ide of the game quite early, I wouldn't have cared a lot about the change I am suggesting today, it would still have felt nice to me too, and today I it won't affect me in any way, since I'm capped. Why am I suggesting this then? because I know that even tho my experience has been this, most of the player do not share the same experience. I am just one among many players, one that, even tho some loss frustrated me, kept enjoying the core idea of the game among many that are not getting it because they are not willing put effort in the game. But who's fault is it? Look, we are on the same side, the only thing that makes us different is the way we are trying to express our love for the game.

Some are elitist who don't care about new players, the ones who would just want them to leave. Which is stupid since that means indirectly making your game worse: less players = less money to make stuff.
Some, like you, are in my opinion close minded. You know what the game is about but you do not try to put yourself in the shoes of players that have had a different experience from yours. you just pretend they do not understand and force them to accept the game as it is, but you know what? I truly think this has the opposite effect of making these player stay. I feel like that when a new player comes on the forum to rage he leaves feeling even less understood.
What I try to do is to understand these players, who have had a different experience from mine, and enhance their so they'll have chance to understand and enjoy the game I love as i do.

PS: I don't also don't feel like I ad the "typical" new player experience because I cam from League of Legends where, I was Diamond 1 (at the time about top 0.08%) and used to compete on a "low level" (compared to professionals) italian league, I also used to coach other players and did it for about 2 years. That experience made me learn a lot about learning and players motivation. Maybe you do not know League, but rankeds works like this: it's a team game and if you win you get some points, if you lose you lose them. This hits even harder than sot since if you lose a game you actually lose progress. People that just want to play and to win do care more about the short term, losing a game frustrates them; and when you are at your elo start having about a 50% wr, which means that every 10 games you lose half of them, which to "stuck" players start getting very frustrating. When you get to focus only on learning to you start to see the bigger picture, you don't care about losing a game because what matters is that in 20 games you will be a better player than now and will win more, but a good mentality is hard to keep and we shouldn't give it for granted. Also, in order to keep a mentality where we care less about losing we need to be motivated, we need to care about what we are doing and we need to put effort into it. Most players do not care about a game when they start playing, they do not care about putting in time and effort, they just wanna have fun; open worlds with PvP always on like sea of thieves require a good mentality and the player to care for the game but also frustrate most new players before they are engaged enough to care.

@metal-ravage While I do agre with you, most new players do not feel like putting in the effort to play with this mentality because they still are not interested in the game. If the game could get them to be interested in it first by being a bit softer, they will be more likely to stick with it even with his harsh side.

@galactic-geek

IT'S BUGGING OUT SO I'LL MAKE A PART 2

What is ha detto?

Sorry that's when I answer to a comment sometimes the forum automatically writes "said" in "ha detto" which is the italian translation ahah.

Btw please, don't make it harder for me to answer with all those short answer to every sentences I make :( I'll just skip the sentences that I think are not relevant to the subject or are stuff that do either not against what I said/I think or assumption on stuf I've said. I don't want to do this an escape to stuff I don't want to answer to, it just that I like to answer extensively and that takes time, so if you think I've skipped something important just feel free to bring back the argument.

Which doesn't make it faster

But it does make it easier.

Which isn't a bad thing in this case. Gold pouches and gold found inside collector chests are there for the same reason, progression without selling. Do you hate these mechanics or think they make the game worse? Well, Rare thought of them specifically for the issue I'm talking about which you deny existing at the end of your comment, if you don't believe in me and my research skill, believe in Rare's data analysts and community and social managers (or who ever do these kind of investigation for them).

If you have millions of gold and don't want to sell hours upon hours of loot, but just want the XP, you can leave the crew with less gold and XP to do all of the dirty, bone-breaking work of turning the loot in. Because you do not help them, the likelihood of them being attacked at turn-in increases significantly. It affects them, not you.

It still doesn't make sense to me: if you are in a crew with friends you decide together what to do, if you are on open crew you either decide what to do together on end up having a bad session, the issue is about open crew and players who do not want to collaborate, not my solution. I also wouldn't think this would happen if it does is just a bad decision, not a flaw with the system.
Are shipwrecks flawed because I can leave my crewmates alone while looking for fish? let's remove fish from shipwreck guys! otherwise people will have a bad experience. No, it doesn't work like that... if my crew sink because I went looking for fish it's my bad. To make this example even more specific as you like to do while trying to prove your points: maybe all my crew already even had all the commendations and plenty of the specific fish I found and plenty of golds so I literally made my ship sunk for egoistic purposes.

It doesn't make sense, but even if it made sense why are you using a higher risk situation as an argument against me if you think that's part of the game. Risk makes it funnier, sinking is part of the game, am I right?

How one overcomes their own frustration is a personal issue, not an issue of the Sea.

It becomes an issue when the game is losing possible customers that could stay if some systems were refined.
It's not about overcoming your own frustration, people do not have reason to overcome frustration that comes from a game they do not care about, they can just leave the game and find something more appealing to them, which is an issue for the game.

Knowledge is power and experience comes with time; this process can be sped up based on your connections with other more experienced pirates (both friendly and unfriendly).

Yeah, and this applies to both the players with 1 month on their back and the ones with 3 or more, which makes people with more playtime stronger on average, specially when we talk about short time span (like less than 6 months).

I come from league, when I reached diamond I knew a lot of players who had been playing for longer and overall had even more than double of my games and still were silver players. I coached many players for years, I know that the time spent on a game on the long run is irrelevant and has no correlation with skill if the motivation to improve isn't there, but on short terms time is still relevant.
I could talk for hours about skill development and psychology studies applied to League (and games with a rank system overall), I could even link some of them to you, but we are getting out of topic here.

You can't assume that, as one pirate's typical new pirate experience may differ drastically from another.

As said before and explained in the next quote, I didn't just "assume it", or at least... my assumption are based on data personally collected (from friends, in game reaction when I sink people, forum and youtube videos talking about the game made by new players) AND Devs statements that may even have more value to you. I'm confident to say that the average SoT new player gets frustrated at sinking.

what I heard about friends that started to play before me, player that I'm currently getting into the game and people on the forum. It is subjective, I do agree, but when most of the people gets frustrated over something maybe we need to start doing something.

I do - I teach them, either with a friendly word or a pointy sword.

Which is arguably not gonna help them stick with the game, but that's a discussion for another time.

PART 2

Don't abuse denying arguments telling they are "subjective", otherwise you 1) deny half of your sentences in this post. 2) I can start telling you ridiculous stuff like "Pirate Legends activities aren't boring, it's subjective" "the hitreg problem is just subjective, some people don't like PvPing and enjoy the fact that it adds more randomness lowering the skill cap and giving them more chances to win" probably there are some people who truly believe in these sentences, but how many?

You can deny facts all you want; it doesn't make them any less true.

I'm not denying any fact, I'm actually trying to explain extensively what is wrong with the opinions of yours that I think are wrong. In fact it's you that answer to my arguments with "it's subjective" "I don't want player to play like this" and other stuff that adds no value to the discussion. A matter being subjectively likable or not doesn't mean there's no room for discussion, there's data to look at, how many players like that or not, if that fit the game's identity, etc.

The piratebase has continued to grow steadily over the past 4 years - Rare themselves have attested to this, and they have the numbers that we don't have access to.

Don't use data without brain. If you are referring to player milestones those are just PR stuff, you should know that those count in every single account that ever joined the game, even if a player just opened the game once and never came back again. 20 millions players? wow very cool! 27% of the haven't eaten a banana, 60% of them didn't even complete 10 commendations, 76% of this 20 million players haven't bought a single ship cosmetics yet. Just check the Xbox achievement page (which count for all account microsoft, which means both PC and Console, not sure if it counts in Steam players too, doubt it).
Do you realize less that 15% of all people that ever opened SoT got 10 titles? it means they quit the game as new players.

Is the game going good? The PoTC stuff brought in a lot of new players, but how many stayed for the Sea of Thieves and how many did quit the game after finishing the tall tales? (if they finished them). Unfortunately we can't see Xbox users, but the steam chart is free to look at and it's official data, you can clearly see that the peak with that update was 60k players on steam but then fell off quickly, the average player per month got halved and it's falling under the 10k, which means it's getting worse than september 2020. Season 4 had a peak of 25k. Xbox players are much more but they should behave similarly, I expect it had a greater peak on June because of PoTC and the game pass but even a greater fall after that.

If a pirate doesn't reward themselves either with their loot or their experiences within 2 whole hours, then they're setting themselves up for failure. Failure rewards the ignorant and lazy; Success rewards the educated and inventive.

This thing alone is making me not wanting to reply anymore tbh. I guess you are just another elitist with blinders after all. You talk a lot about subjective stuff but you seem able to see only your path.

@pellahh

Honestly I don't know why people are giving you such a hard time for this. It's a number enclosed in a box, and you get some cosmetics during the process.

Personally it's not any encouragement for me to really play the game. But if you think it encourages your friends then by all means...

Looking Steamcharts and moving the data to Xbox and Windows Games with the same % of joining/leaving players.... Sot looses 820 players and gains 100.... So how can you say that the Game is fine now? XD

@galactic-geek

I have seem others use this argument before. The problem is that the stats and achievements for Xbox have been shown to be innacurate at times, so it's not entirely reliable.

To me and my friends achievements always update instantly so I don't know what you are talking about here, when was has it been inaccurate?

But let's say it's wrong by a 5% margin, it would make it so that 20% of the player base has 10 titles, even if it was 25% is still a very bad %.

Also we got some official data like that in June 2020 3.3 million players played the game, but the total count was up to 15 already.

As for your last statement, it doesn't mean they quit, necessarily. They could simply be waiting for the next big thing.

Yeah, but how many of them are just "waiting" and how many are quitting? Let's just analyze the data, the total player count keeps going up, but monthly players are the same as 1 year ago, this to me only tell one thing: people is coming but is not staying.

I don't think the question is if new players are staying or not, they are not. The question is how to make them stay.

@galactic-geek Sorry, had to specify it: I was talking about the steam player count.