honestly.. just more confirms my decision that quitting is the right idea. insane that the twitch drops just going live now are better looking than any of the doubloon removal fomo items they just added. them admitting the doubloon reset was a mistake but at the same time sticking to their guns on it..... why not just delete doubloons altogether? all for the sake of adding a weekend event of recycled content pve discords can cheese? like the idea behind the reset was to make the old returning cosmetics a long term goal but they are going to allow people to farm all the doubloons they need via some tedious cargo voyages which everyone already disliked. we dont like cargo... ok add smugglers as a reskinned cargo.... oh people dont like smugglers. ok delete their doubloons and make them do smuggler voyages to regain doubloons but also lets give them enough doubloons in 1 weekend to buy ALL THE THINGS.... i thought this was a long term fix? also adding a cap... promising they wont do it with gold... ok well i just went to take a look at the shops to finish off my remaining doubloons and everything that has a gold price is so cheap it might as well be free..... get it together man.
the fact that season20 has no content now as well. the gutted half of the hunters call update. they gutted half 2/3 of this seasons update. season20 is all about making old fomo stuff into recurring events. the decision to make custom servers open to everyone is a mixed bag. i think very few people would have paid for more than maybe a month to check it out. it mostly would have been for streamers to host some events but at the same time streamers are too busy streaming to put in the effort to design those events so it would rely on community members to design the event for them.
so having custom seas free to everyone will certainly get more people to play with it. but this game, and the industry as a whole right now has brainwashed us to play for the dopamine hits. we need to collect those cosmetics! games arent about just logging in to have fun any more its about chasing down that achievememt, unlocking those skins, cosmetics baby!!! sea of thieves is insanely guilty of this as the only thing that kept some of us around in the early days with no content was that bi monthly update to go farm some fomo.
so what we have for new content is actually less new cosmetics as we are putting the cash shop on a rotation so now instead of needing multiple new sets per season we only need maybe 1.... and even then maybe only parts of 1 as the new season pass (which actually is a nice change) is going to allow you to kinda pick your own reward between old stuff you dont own rather than having to introduce new stuff. and kind of push you to be like "well i got one item, it looks neat, i should goto the cash shop and complete the set!" we got old season cosmetics on a rotation with the pointless doubloon reset. they have stopped doing emissary ledger rewards for most emissaries. the hunters call set was probably done at the time that patch was released and they are just drip feeding those ledger rewards.
i still say they could charge a monthly fee for full progression safer seas. hate on the idea all you want PVP fans but guess what? that is a massive amount of players that quit the game due to not having them. and as pointed out in the community direct... they need income to keep this ship afloat. and pushing away a vast amount of the player base because of some flawed concept that having this pvp world is MANDATORY. which is why they dont ban people like me who play on pve discords. which is why they havent gone after discords charging people a monthly fee to play on pve servers. IMO this is stealing money from rare. i would rather they actually support it. but we know they cant even balance their own game in terms of item values, currencies, etc. like i think the 30% progression on safer seas was a fair trade off for not having to worry about threats. instead they lowed the reputation cap to an even sadder level. made it full gold/rep for selling... and just made it even more pointless than it already was. without captaincy, without sovereigns, emissary ledgers, and dont try to argue that emissary ledgers are some kind of competitive status symbol. anyone whos played this game has seen the top person on the leader board has like 30+ million points 1 hour after a new month rolls over. pve servers been cheesing this for literally years. heck i reach ledger goals every month i play and thats just playing like 2 days
so yea with custom seas its weird though. because of the reward structure sea of thieves and many other games have imprinted on our brain whats the point in a mode that just gives us freedom to make out own events? theres nothing to gain from it other than just fun. perhaps making a mode neat enough rare might take notice and do something official with. then we look at how warcraft3 had a map editor in it. same concept.. the whole MOBA genre wouldnt even exist if it wasnt for the players having been given such powerful tools to be able to create DoTA.... so is the hopes that having custom seas open to everyone that maybe some fans will help craft something so great that the developers can kinda take that idea and mold it into something official?
custom seas arent custom enough. they are going to give the option to manipulate a lot of stuff... cool. but its not a map editor. dota only exists because not only could we set map triggers IE invisible boxes a player steps in to make something happen. it allowed you to create the whole map. custom seas seems to have a lot of options but also sounds like the host would be more a dungeon master kinda deal where they can manipulate world assets but cant change the actual world. IE removing all the rocks from the water, making our own islands.
all irrelevant though if they dont address the issues which have been plaguing this game since launch and that a huge light was shined on during the fight nights weekend. letting any random troll on the internet have the power to find out the IP of the server anyone playing the game is on and they can easily DDOS that server? not cool.
if we look at the reality of the situation though. custom seas as a feature behind a paywall wouldnt have worked. they have invested well over 2 years into working on this. with the content cut out of season19 and nothing planned for season20.... the choice was obvious. make custom seas the season... so again another season with lack of content. custom seas will be hyped for about a month before the majority of the people are like.... oh i cant make any progress, it takes effort to set these things up.... its kinda pointless. that being said there will surely be a small handful of people passionate enough to make do something neat with custom seas. but honestly.. not enough to be worth it. and unless they are going to add some kinda of custom seas only reward structure.... which i doubt they would do because people could just cheese that. only thing i could see is rather than streamers doing a raffle for their twitch only codes they could maybe make a mini game on custom seas. winner gets the prize. but they clearly are moving away from adding much for new cosmetics to the game.
basically... this game needs money. letting discord pve servers steal a monthly fee that should rightfully belong to rare seems to be a solution. the pvpers will cry about it. but those same pvpers arent buying anything to help fund this games future. pve players have, and would. the number of whales i knew in my time on pve discords who bought every emporium item that was added every single month. but those are also the same people the developers have actively been designing the game to push away.
