More incentives to keep playing the game/Upgrades that WOULD NOT EFFECT PVP

It's sandbox pvp so it all effects pvp or didnt you pvp and got a Meg or were in DR pvping and having hot water around?

I say no and i dont need incentives to play.
I dont grind i play, because i have fun. Nothing else.

@hynieth First, sure, it barely changes the balance. If people could see SLIGHTLY further and better in the shroud, they would have a MINOR advantage to others. It would be slight enough to make a difference. Chances are though, if the requirement was completing tall tales? Just about anyone could get it easily. Making fishing easier as you go? Would do nothing other than stock your barrels and give you more food, which, with the limit on food you can carry in the first place, would mean nothing but faster fishing.

@Bugaboo-Bill @Amancebacabras
I need to make this very clear. You don't need incentives to play? that's okay. Let's be very real with ourselves for a second though. Outside of new updates that keep people around for a bit, the game is played by streamers and... not a lot of people. You want a game to actually have a population? You need people to want to continue playing. Unless you're Fortnite and you're consistently pumping content, unless you're a MASSIVE fan of repeating the same exact things, the same exact way, for months on end, you have to realize there needs to be something besides Mastery and "bleh" cosmetics. I'm sorry, but when the best cosmetics are locked behind weeks upon weeks of grinding, and the ways you grind are always going to be repetitive, there's nothing keeping a casual player around. Good mechanics are great, but when you're doing the same thing over and over, it means nothing.

@hynieth said in More incentives to keep playing the game/Upgrades that WOULD NOT EFFECT PVP:

@Amancebacabras I totally agree with you, it seems more and more that people need an abitrary grind to like a game in stead of a game that's fun to play imediately. Play a game and have fun playing it, don't play a game because it gives you virtual rewards with no real life values.

An arbitrary grind is exactly what Sea of Thieves is... it literally gives you virtual rewards with no real life values for doing things. The entire point of videogames is entertainment. Playing a game and having fun playing it with zero point towards anything is, fun for a couple hours. You look at all of the great games, Dark Souls, Cuphead, Doom, Fable, Minecraft, Forza, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Division, Destiny, Skyrim, Battletoads, Halo, hell, a bunch of old Rare games, do you know what they have in common? A genuine reason to keep playing. With call of duty, you get upgrades/new perks, but everyone can get perks. Never have I ever seen anyone complain about that, because it's called balance. Halo, you might think to yourself "well that had no perks/upgrades" and you would be right. (I don't count Halo 4-5 as Halo) Do you know what it had? A reason to keep playing. A consistent supply of content, Multiplayer in which there actually was a sense of mastery, a steady supply of great cosmetics, a story people cared about. Dark Souls, one of the greatest games of all time IMO, has a dedicated PVP fanbase to this day. You know what the developers did with that? They said screw it, if you're going to put in the time and effort, you should be better equipped then that guy that hasn't beaten the game. It didn't make players feel bad, it made them want to get up there with the rest.

You know what I see when I see my achievements I unlocked for completing tall tales/doing Arena things? Rare achievements. 0.03% completed Shores of Gold, and I honestly don't expect it to go higher then 1% for at least a month. 1.87% of all Sea of Thieves players even did Shroudbreaker. 2.88% burned a piece of food. Before the update there were days when I saw less then 20 LFG posts. Lets be clear, multiple days. There isn't a reason for people to stay unless they're a hardcore fan, or they have friends to play.

I truly appreciate their attempts to keep the game going, but the truth is that the game needs a fundamental shift when it comes to vision, and if it weren't for Game Pass, I would wonder if it would even still be updated now.

My point is, there's a difference between vertical upgrades, and upgrades with balance. At this point, it's a copout so they don't have to balance around upgrades.

You can complain all you want about balance, but the truth is balance doesn't matter when in the Sea of Thieves the Ocean is still quite empty. I don't even remember the last time I got into a real fight with a ship that wasn't trolling. (outside of Arena) The rare ship I saw before the update just minds their own business, and balance doesn't matter at all in a game mode that has optional pvp where barely anyone attacks, and when there's an actual pvp mode now.

@DiStuRbedxOnEs

I'm really a little special about my aproach playing games.
I'm older and started in the 80ies already.
I allways wanted an MMORPG without levels, no power gaps, no itemization, just fluffy stuff and features, but all gamemechanically same.
Achievements an Titles are also not what i'm after, but cosmetics are cool. I also would like to evolve my character by doing things ingame for the community and really roleplay in a mmoRPG.
And to me RP doesnt mean to skill up and equip stuff.
RPG is often considered as some mechanics, the excel warriors made. You can play an RPG by organizing Stats and Attributes etc., but then you don't RP, you just tweak a character without any soul and forget to enlive him with things that aren't written down on your character sheet. Except you write up a very detailed bio etc. ;)

I dont want to derail... What i want to say is i since i was a game master for some years i had 2 types of groups playing.
The one were the roleplayers, they didnt care for Numbers or levels and they of course appreciated that new sword or that shiny armor, the mysterius book and whatnot, but they were interacting and roleplaying. They were playing at least!

Later i had another group, these were more of the type of achievers. They asked themself if it's "worth" to kill this or that, or asked stuff like: What do i need to do to get enough XP to level up.
I designed my Sessions another way, i didnt tell them you killed an ork and you got 200 xp for that. I made notices and in the end i also gave some bonus xp at will, if someone did something funny, hilarious or just authentic with his oder her character i rewarded that. You couldn't plan such things, they appear while playing a game when you don't concentrate on efficency.

Yesterday - Shores of Gold...
i'm the oldest in the crew, we made fun about the old fat man failing to overcome some traps, when i had different strategy to overcome it one said: Watch the old men doing it, what a clever guy he is. And all laugh, me included and then i die to a mistake i made while laughing.
These moments wont appear if we do all efficient or dont RP light our pirates.
We all got some "nickames" over he past year or at least are known for epic fails we did or epic luck or success we had.

Someone did a cannonshot during the Throne event at Marauders Arch and was lucky like no one else.
1 shot, hit!

I play to have such moments and to me levels and power gaps in games seperate players, stoke jealousy, make progress mandatory and people start to rush all and everything while the magic moments don't happen that much.
People arent playing they are working it off.
It's all and only about rewards.

I played sensibble soccer with friends for hundreds of hours.
The game has no progress. no levels. no rankings, nothing.
Today if you play Fifa or whatever its about unlocking this, get rewarded for that...

Rare created an oldsql game to some degree, but a lot of the gamers of today work commendations off and miss to play the game.
The World of Warcraft Generation is only out for more rewards, better equip, rankings, rush things to be the first one who killed Boss X, looted this, double, tripple, quadruple kills and to unlock the new region, the better ironsight and all that.

I am maybe a little bit strange about my aproach, but todays gamers are asking very often for things that let me facepalm and cry for more playful things and less grind or "incentives".

So, and how do you know this game isn't played by a lot of people?
Some Streamers made it even worse about the community with their quiatinable aproach playing games. Camping is not playing a game. To be that serious about PvP is not playing it's seriously competing and therefore we have the gamers exagerating and insulting like it's normal to play 10 hours a day and call others names and insult them.

If that is the population we are talking about - leave me alone and give me an offline or coop version of the game and i'm fine.
I'd miss the threat of PvP on the open Seas to some degree, but i'm looking for friendly and playful PvP and not an ESL counterstrike tournament or some raging kids exagerating ^^
btw. i was a decent CS1.6 player back in the days :D

about repeating and grind etc...
If you like something you don't feel you are doing work or grind.
People play pinball games for decades, i cannot imagine a more repetetive game. Or what about Tetris. What about racing games?
Thing is this. If people work off tedious things, they dont play for fun, but to unlock X or Y and to shine and then say: look what i have accomplished.
I never did. When i played Vanilla WoW and realized what they want me to do in the Raid Dungeons, i quit playing it.
It was fun 1 time, but it is not fun 100 times to me.
And in the end it was only about these scores to be valuable to the group with your equip etc.
What i said before they extracted the exel tables from RPG and became Exel Warriors and lost the soul of RPG.
Baldurs Gate was different just to say.

since the millenium games evolve more around progression, achieving, open worlds that are so big, that no normal player will ever see it entirely. They are full of "work" to do and have less and less soul. I think even the younger gamers will agree.

This Game has more soul and less to grind off!

If you dont like to immerse and play SoT then just don't.
I needed 11 month of casual play to get to PL and i am close to A10, but i never worked on it or grinded, i just played and let everything happen by the way.

I refused to play many, many good games i really liked until i found something when i was more familliar with the game or hit "endgame" and then realized what it is about - Progression only, not interaction or RP in a RPG and a gameworld.

I created gameworlds by myself as a Pen and Paper GM and if i think of some Gameworlds and how people just work them off and don't try to immerse and become part of it and also give something back to the developers the Art Designer by enliving these game world by interacting in them and give it some soul i allways feel a little sad.
call me a romantic fool :D

@amancebacabras sagte in More incentives to keep playing the game/Upgrades that WOULD NOT EFFECT PVP:

@disturbedxones dijo en More incentives to keep playing the game/Upgrades that WOULD NOT EFFECT PVP:

to keep playing... there's nothing to grind for.

There's something very wrong in these days with videogame industry...

yeah it got worse when you needed to unlock the next ironsight in Battlefield and raid dungeons 500 times to complete item sets and have enough DKP and such...

SoT is a little bit oldsql and more about playing than about progressing. Progress is thank god completely optional!

I wonder if we see some more games to play for fun, but have it not only be some casual coffee games, but big gameworlds with plenty of potential to immerse and enlive the gameworld, many features for social interaction and playing around.

Do you know what i said to a friend in the very first days when the Hungering one came?

We have no world chat, people asked for that to organize 2 ships to do it, but we got a speaking trumpet.
That was the strike of a genius in gamedesign!
But many people didn't get it.
AH's also killed players interaction and there are so many things what became normal today in games, but what distract you from playing a game and interact with players, NPC and such, but make it more comfortable to work it off.
They often create treadmills and not games to play.
Today with lootboxes for real money - lol.

Anyone tried Black Desert?
Ridiculous, when i realized i needn't run to X, but my character runs automatically and then understood the fishing mechanics and workers i immediatley deintalled it.

@amancebacabras I appreciate the thoughtful responses. I think I need to approach my mindset differently as I'm being told I'm "Elitist". I'm far from it. I've grown up on games that don't have upgrades, and those are fine, when the content is diverse enough and the gameplay has a sense of mastery. Halo, classic Mortal Kombat, etc. I've played games where you're supposed to tell your own stories.

I'm sorry, but the difference between those games and Sea of Thieves is that to me least, and a lot of others since launch, the game isn't diverse, nor is there much in mastery.

I still maintain two things that are very crucial to my argument:

There's a dedicated pvp system in place where balance can easily still stay, as in adventure mode there's rarely any fighting in the first place...

Secondly, there's balance options. Just because there could be additions, doesn't mean all of a sudden one team would stomp the other.

You mention WoW classic, and all I have to say to that is that there's a reason it's one of the most played games of all time, most loved game of all time. People took pride in all of that. There's nothing wrong with having a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm completely fine with this being that type of game where you make your own stories. I am. I was one of the people at launch that used to defend this game heavily at launch against the naysayers. But this game doesn't have enough diversity, nor any form of skill curve IMO. Even with this giant update it's more repetitiveness.

@amancebacabras

@amancebacabras said in More incentives to keep playing the game/Upgrades that WOULD NOT EFFECT PVP:

@disturbedxones dijo en More incentives to keep playing the game/Upgrades that WOULD NOT EFFECT PVP:

But this game doesn't have enough diversity, nor any form of skill curve IMO.

Thats the problem when you've played since launch, but every single new crew member that joined us have shown me that is not that easy. Plus, I think that there're a lot of "tricks" to know that no new player learn in less than hundred hours and can be a decisive factor in a fight (for example, before the "real" test of ship speeds of weeks ago, not a lot of captains knew exactly what ship was faster in what scenario and that put me in a lot of advantageous positions fighting other crews).

I share, though, that still there isn't enough "content" in the form of assets, so the histories that one can develop started to be limited months ago. This new update alleviates that a little with fishing and cooking, but with the rest, despite loving them, I think tall tales are less time eficient for rare than working in things like a dice game, tobacco, improvements of the core quest loop like introducing the new tales mechanics in gold hoarders quest, or stuff like that just like we enjoyed rowboats, drums or fishing rods and harpoons now (because tall tales, once are done, are done, and are not very replayable if they can't surprise you another time).

And imo is exactly this scarcity in real toys for the sandbox what is making the game a bit repetitive, one can experiment all the things the sot have in a pair of play sessions. But working in goals and guided campaings (despite very fun for us) is a time ungry trap for rare, and a carrot for us that masks the real problem here: their sandbox is still empty of toys.

This is a well thought out reply as well. You're right, the sandbox is empty of toys. That's exactly why I suggest some form of upgrades. @they-sank mentioned the legendary captain update, that was supposed to be one of the first updates. That may not SOUND like upgrades, but the ability to customize the layout of the ship IS an upgrade, there will be a meta if it ever happens. It will be something that gives legendary captains a distinct advantage. It may not be completely vertical, but it is an upgrade. That sorta goes against Rares whole "no upgrades" policy in the first place. Maybe that's why it was postponed, but personally that was something I was looking forward to.

With the sandbox being void of enough toys, there needs to be some carrot on the stick that isn't bitten off in a week. That's exactly what progression is meant to be and a cosmetic only progression simply isn't cutting it. Having new content available to players as they continue to do the game is crucial. Like, a easy compromise would be adding things like a chess board AS an upgradeable thing. Playing a certain amount of Arena matches could unlock it. Or, getting DIFFERENT types of voyages as you level. Especially pirate legend voyages. By god, it's tiring knowing it's just the same exact thing when you're pirate legend. It's why I stopped trying to become one, and just played with others that had the voyages already.

At the end of the day I want to feel like me doing something in the game isn't completely meaningless and right now it does. As someone who fully bought into the game, Limited edition controller and all.. I wanted this to be a pirate game that made me feel special. I don't feel like my adventures in the game have much to show for it like other games. I want to be clear, I want this game to be the very best it can be. I have defended it to people that have trashed it all the way. I love the game. I just want reasons to come back to it.

I know it's going to sound cheesy, but in WoW, I started that game in Burning Crusade, and levelled up my hunter. Then once I hit 55 Wrath of the Lich King came out, so I became a Death Knight and I LOVED it. That was something I felt accomplished about because I unlocked the right to different gameplay. But my story doesn't stop there, Icecrown Citadel, the Shadowmourne legendary weapon was one of the hardest things I ever tried to get. Do you know how long it took me? 7 or so years. But to me, that was a carrot on the stick for me. Sure I took months at a time off, but I got there. Yeah, it was basically just cosmetic by the time I got it, but it was a badge of honor nonetheless knowing it was this ridiculously powerful weapon. That's what drove me to get it in the first place, and even after it became useless, I was still driven to have it.