@d3adking Thanks for your input! You could very well be right, it may not do much at all for balancing. For this particular idea, I was mostly looking for something that might provide some small sense of PvP safety to PvE players, but definitely would not take away from any other play style, and it's quite possible I went a little too far down that road.
[Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion
@lagunavii you still dont get my point.
most of the time when i was engaged in pvp i didn't have chests. and after i was on their boat to confirm that they didn't have a chest, i let my ship sink!
why? because its fun to be sunken? nobecause i get more chests, if i end the fight quickly. I dont have a drawback for being sunken if i dont have anything.
this needs fixing, because i dont play the game, i stay afk for around 3-5 mins, then i am back with a new boat to continue my voyage. really nice gameplay!that's why i think you should automatically get a flag if you do a voyage, or got the pvp flag. The sunken ship loses the flag (and the voyage) and that flag can be returned to the PVP npc. that way we have (at least) small rewards for pvp players and almost every boat has something to lose. they just have to add it, that if you cancel your voyage, you still have the flag.
@d3adking So you are telling me, that if you engage in battle and neither of you have a chest its easier to just let your sink and move on and get on with voyaging? and want something to balance this?
well to be fair its your choice to do that - there are other options, such as fighting or running.
And sinking your ship you deprive yourself of all resources that you have collected you have to start again with limited balls, limited planks and limited bananas...
Ive told you before all boats always have something to loose and its not a reward or loot or anything like that - you loose your time, effort and resource and that is equal across the entire game - yes some might loose more resource and more time than others. but the commodity in what you loose is always the same
I'm sure that the largest proponents of adding PvE servers are the ones who feel cheated by spending time doing a voyage and losing everything before they can turn in. They feel their time was "wasted".
And to an extent, I agree.
But as has been said here by many people, just finding the chests/ animals/ skulls/ etc is only PART of the game. You still need to get them back to the turn in. That's where the Risk Vs Reward comes in. Do you finish a whole voyage and try to get back with 5+ voyage items? Or should you make pit stops and turn in after each island?
This still leaves a slight balance issue that the people who ONLY hunt ships can progress just as well as those trying to do voyages, as all the rewards are from the turn in.
I still believe the simple solution is to have a majority of the faction rewards come from the stages of the voyage, and only a small faction reward from the turn in. Gold rewards should ONLY come from the turn in.
This way, faction progression is tied more closely to the voyages themselves. So the crews that do the voyages will get something for the time invested. Getting killed won't be as disappointing and people will be more accepting that it's part of the game.
Also, more crews will be inclined to go do voyages for faster progression (instead of just hunting players). Meaning that when crews DO get into a fight, there is a higher chance of the winning crew finding loot.
@lagunavii i agree with this actually. also whats the fun in letting yourself sink? on top of losing resources you just gave up. lol only the most try hard and boring of pirates do that i bet.
@treblucfayle actually i tested that. i myself am rather proficient at the combat and my crew and i havent lost a battle yet. that being said. we tried this last beta only doing pvp and made very little progress. all the time spent searching and chasing to only get a couple chests and usually the people had none at all. its much more efficient and fun to do both. do the vayages and if you come accross someone while your in between chests or even if you have one or two its worth it to check them out. but no, you dont progress just as fast with just pvp
@toastywrath said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
@treblucfayle actually i tested that. i myself am rather proficient at the combat and my crew and i havent lost a battle yet. that being said. we tried this last beta only doing pvp and made very little progress. all the time spent searching and chasing to only get a couple chests and usually the people had none at all. its much more efficient and fun to do both. do the vayages and if you come accross someone while your in between chests or even if you have one or two its worth it to check them out. but no, you dont progress just as fast with just pvp
It IS more fun to do both, I agree.
But with the current system people get the same progress rewards for only playing half the game. If more people are "forced" to do voyages for the optimal progression path, then it not only reduces the PvP encounters for those who prefer the PvE part of the game but it also increases the chances of PvP being rewarding by having more loot on the field.
In terms of fairness as well, it makes sense to separate the the rewards.
Imagine you want a promotion at work. Your boss says, "OK. I need you to complete tasks A, B and C." You do both A and B but someone else rushes in and does C, preventing you from completing your tasks. Should they get the all the credit and the promotion you asked for just because they finished the final step? That wouldn't be fair in my mind.
But if your boss recognized your work on steps A and B (getting you closer to that promotion), and gave the other person different compensation for finishing step C, that would be more balanced.
@toastywrath if you are a guy that wants to do everything as effectively as you can, thats the best thing to do. because they are either noobs, and you sink them (and losing your oh so great resources) or you can sink your ship and you start again with a decent amount of resources. if they are as good as you are, and are not playing overly aggresive, then the fight will probably last a long time. it's the best thing if you know they dont have chests, and you have nothing to lose as well.
in that time i already returned some chest.do the calculation yourself.
@treblucfayle Thats kind of the whole point of the game man. if chest lost value just because you stole it from someone there wouldnt be any point to attacking at all. considering how long it takes to catch people and then all the time fighting them after its already not very lucrative. and you can protect your progress by just paying attention
say youve done most of your steps and are trying to get the last chest then some s****k comes in behind you and attacks your ship while you were on shore taking everything. there is no reason that person should have been able to get close enough to you to do that unless you just arent paying attention. you have several minutes once youve noticed someone on the horizon to get out of there before they get close and if you let them close you deserve to lose your progress. I think its fair. people just need to not be complacent or too trusting of other pirates.
@d3adking Yeah but its a game. if you would rather sink yourself and avoid combat then you probably belong with the PVE server kids. efficiency is important. but just refusing to participate because there isnt any reward (aside from taking their resources) is kind of lame. id rather sink them and kill them to prove a point. they usually arent as aggressive in the future
Hello,
My two cents on this balancing act, if you care to read :
I think that developpers should be tweaking some of what they already have at this point.
- In terms of pve, add diversity: more weather types, more chest types, mob types, more stuff to find through exploration... and other little changes that would go a long way, more diversity in environment interactions...
I've come across many good ideas on this forum, stuff as basic as enabling players to pick up fruits and wood from trees or adding fog or new moons for instance... these small changes would greatly enhance immersion and hence the overall pve experience. I mean, you could for instance increase the depths at which wrecks can be found underwater, and add more of them that are well hidden, not marked by birds above and that have greater rewards... you see, that kind of diversity.
- In terms of pvp: duels, a bounty system and a ranking system, maybe these two could somewhat be combined. Make it so that harcore players can also love the game for its competitive 'end game' if you want to call it that, which will mostly be pvp oriented I believe because the game simply isn't 'gear' oriented...
As I mentioned somewhere else on this forum, having a pvp 'ranking system' that simply does not take into account kills on or around outposts could mitigate ganking and sort other issues people complain about.
In any case, stealing 'basic' chests will get old, at some points hardcore players will (most likely) max out factions, will not need the gold because it's for cosmetic stuff, if they run out of pve content, they will pvp for the sake of it. If there is no pvp system that pushes these players to compete against one another, and not 'camp noobs' on outposts, the hardcore base will vanish in no time.
It is a 'simple marketing decision', not a development dead end. Yes, you can please both pve and pvp players with minor tweaks...
Cheers,
@treblucfayle You must really not read other posts in this thread because this has been addressed multiple times.
-
try doing PvP only with no PvE and find out how much gold/rep per hour you get. I can promise you it's less than PvE because I have done it on both scale tests.
-
if you make chests worth less than what they are PvP will be even less of an occurrence than it was in the scale tests. In fact I'm sure when the game releases PvP will be less than it was in the scale tests already because of the first point I made. Unless you get super lucky and find a ship anchored somewhere right away with a bunch of chests you are going to get less gold/rep per hour.
-
For me it comes down to making the game more competitive... I don't think that hanging out with friends just cruising around is going to cut it for long... unfortunately.
I do not see how pve would not run out of steam before pvp in this game. If it only takes about two weeks to reach the legendary rank for the most hardcore players out there, how long do you think it will be before many players are bored with 'pure pve'?
Since we don't know what rare has in kept from us, the only way I can think of balancing pve and pvp at this point is to make pve more competitive, for instance by adding different... ranking systems:
Say you only want to play solo and strictly pve, Rare would have to create a deep leveling system for those out there who love to farm... Mind you, it is possible to just create a pve ladder: resources, chests, artifacts, mob kills, distance, speed, anything you can think of can be used to create deep pve ranking systems.
Similar ranking systems could be setup for pvp... of course
People would then play the way they want, pve or pvp, competitively or not. The problem as some seem to see it is not about protecting casual from hardcores or pve from pvp, it's about taking away the focus from easy targets. You are worried about rewards?
Let's make it simple, make it so that a noobie or casual player should be of little interest to the most bad-mannered hardcore crew out there: stealing chests from and killing a casual players should not benefit hardcore players either in terms of pve or pvp rewards. What's a few hundred gold if end game chests give you 10 times that ? what's the point of killing a low ranked player if one does not even get it to count towards stats/rank ?
Pvp will not create much grief for the first two or three weeks. I would say that it's when hardcore gamers run out of things to do that the whole pve-pvp balance /safe zone issue will really come into light. That is why I am advocating ranking systems to avoid ending up in such a situation a few weeks after launch.
cheers,
@toastywrath said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
@d3adking Yeah but its a game. if you would rather sink yourself and avoid combat then you probably belong with the PVE server kids. efficiency is important. but just refusing to participate because there isnt any reward (aside from taking their resources) is kind of lame. id rather sink them and kill them to prove a point. they usually arent as aggressive in the future
Its very childish - not to mention a poor way to play. who cares if they dont have a chest - I'll take the experience of a ship battle anyday. That way when I do come across someone with chest I can take them with ease
@capt-baguette im only referencing part of what you said but i think the point is that pve and pvp arent supposed to be separate. unless i just misunderstood. the best progression is a balance of both.
not to mention it is an adventure game lol not a try hard competitive one. pvp is only half the experience same as pvp
@toastywrath in that example it's the most efficient way to handle that situation. if you sink them, it's likely that they sail to the same position again, just to attack you again. so you wont gain anything with fighting them, you just lose time. so it's not childish to avoid that fight.
if i have chests, i will fight ofc, because i can to lose progress. it was just an example, to prove that we should always lose something. so if we get a flag from the corresponding voyage (gold hoarders/"PVP flag") we will lose something when we sink. if i get destroyed, i will lose my voyage, if they lose they have to buy a new flag. that way you get a drawback.
i noticed in the last scale test, that some people just started sailing out of the map, so that when they sink, we can't get their chests. i think this needs a fix too.
@d3adking well first off idk why you are staying in one location for so long. i dont even stay in one spot long enough for someone off the horizon to get close to me let alone someone i just killed lol seems a bit ridiculous.
second thats not a bad idea. and it doesnt seem like its game breaking like most penalties would be. but its incredible inconvenient. that would severely limit when you can pvp and suck alot of fun out of the game. i think the way the game is currently may be "annoying" for some people who dont like pvp as much but if you allow people to get close to you. youre doing something wrong in the first place. overall i personally dont like the idea ^.^ but its just an opinion.
on your last point about sailing off the map. yes that is ridiculous and should be fixed i hadnt even thought of that.
P.S not trying to shoot any ideas down just sharing my opinions ^.^
@toastywrath we got near them, because we had to go to the same island. but because we came from an outpost (which was on the way) we dropped of our chests. the other guys wanted to fight, we sank them 3 times. but because we always had to sail to the island again, they were back. we had a map with 3 locations on that island.
@d3adking jesus lol thats unfortunate. i probably would have left after the second time and just came back later honestly.
@toastywrath
Sure I get what you mean, yet I am talking about specific features of the game, how pve and pvp worlds collide in the game, and how I see their interactions evolve over the course of the next few weeks. In that regard, I suggest that the adventure aspect of Sea of Thieves will remain at the forefront but that longevity for such an approach will obviously require developers to deepen certain aspects of the game. That's why I am trying to go into what sort of small features could make a difference in the long run.
@capt-baguette I see what youre saying and there is nothing wrong with that. however, i think we should just be patient and see what the full game is like.
Not only have we not seen the full game there is going to be DLCs as well haha. theres alot of potential in this game we just have to wait and see once its out. ^.^
@capt-baguette That's what ive been calling it lol. i keep getting bored of other games and coming on here XD
@d3adking said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
@toastywrath in that example it's the most efficient way to handle that situation. if you sink them, it's likely that they sail to the same position again, just to attack you again. so you wont gain anything with fighting them, you just lose time. so it's not childish to avoid that fight.
In regards to this little tid bit - the issue is known to rare at the moment and the respawn issue should hopefully be sorted out shortly after release. So it will difficult to sail back to you...
That being said - in an interview I read somewhere with rare they were very much for the other ship having a shot at revenge on you...
Yeah it sucks that they might come back and try for round two and the fight is pointless so to speak - but after you sink them, and gain there treasure. get hightailing to the nearest outpost and claim your reward - the saving grace about them coming to you is they will have limited resource. they will only have a minimum of 15 planks, and 45 cannon balls or a maximum of 35 planks and 85 balls (if every person on the ship was smart enough to max out there inventory with stock before going down.... though its unlikely) - is it enough to beat you - yeah probably. but if you have more than around 30 balls yourself you only have to land a hit with them all and they will be in a position not to be able to repair... It's foolish to come back... but then its foolish to stay.
@lagunavii said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
But segregation DOES NOT need to happen at all, there may be enough people asking for it, doesnt mean that its right - by that logic... once enough people ask for PvE servers on PUBG we should let them have it.
- there are enough people asking about a campaign on PUBG the devs made a comment about it not being in their plans at the moment, but in the future they might just make a single player campaign.
- this argument is nonsensical because PUBG doesn't have any actual PvE content whereas Sea of Thieves has a significant portion of PvE content.
@deusnecrotis said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
I'd like once again to try and take another approach to helping resolve the imbalance myself and others perceive in PvP and PvE. First, a bit about why I seen an imbalance. If someone wants to be a pure PvP player, they can. It seems like, at the very least, all players will always have access to the most basic sword, pistol, and ships, so there is never a moment when you are flat out required to do quests, progress towards Pirate Legend, or even sell booty seized as spoils of victory, in order to enjoy your PvP game play. On the flip side, if someone wants to be a pure PvE player, they really can't, since they are perpetually required to engage to avoidance strategies if they wish to have any reliable chance of getting their potential reward (emphasis on "potential") all the way back to port to cash it in. Avoidance strategies they may be, but they are still PvP centered activities imposed upon all PvE game play. PvP players experience no such imposition.
Thank you for stating it so eloquently. This summarizes my feelings about the whole situation, that this game is really a PvP game with PvE elements to entertain the PvP players between kills. I'm tempted to even forgo the traditional PvE label and call it something like environmental elements PvP players must contend with so the game isn't strictly a team deathmatch or battle royale like weather in PUBG can be marketed as a PvE element and suddenly it's a shared world. Come on in! We welcome everyone!
That's a bit hyperbolic but I think it illustrates my point that all this just feels like marketing noise and empty labels for a PvP game that wants to be something more than it really is at the expense of the PvE player who bears more of the burden. What does a shared world mean to a PvE player if PvP is forced on them? That's a PvP game. Call it whatever you want on the box.
@mrloadedpotato said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
@deusnecrotis said in [Mega Thread] - Balancing PvE and PvP to ensure a great experience for everyone - Discussion:
I'd like once again to try and take another approach to helping resolve the imbalance myself and others perceive in PvP and PvE. First, a bit about why I seen an imbalance. If someone wants to be a pure PvP player, they can. It seems like, at the very least, all players will always have access to the most basic sword, pistol, and ships, so there is never a moment when you are flat out required to do quests, progress towards Pirate Legend, or even sell booty seized as spoils of victory, in order to enjoy your PvP game play. On the flip side, if someone wants to be a pure PvE player, they really can't, since they are perpetually required to engage to avoidance strategies if they wish to have any reliable chance of getting their potential reward (emphasis on "potential") all the way back to port to cash it in. Avoidance strategies they may be, but they are still PvP centered activities imposed upon all PvE game play. PvP players experience no such imposition.
Thank you for stating it so eloquently. This summarizes my feelings about the whole situation, that this game is really a PvP game with PvE elements to entertain the PvP players between kills. I'm tempted to even forgo the traditional PvE label and call it something like environmental elements PvP players must contend with so the game isn't strictly a team deathmatch or battle royale like weather in PUBG can be marketed as a PvE element and suddenly it's a shared world. Come on in! We welcome everyone!
That's a bit hyperbolic but I think it illustrates my point that all this just feels like marketing noise and empty labels for a PvP game that wants to be something more than it really is at the expense of the PvE player who bears more of the burden. What does a shared world mean to a PvE player if PvP is forced on them? That's a PvP game. Call it whatever you want on the box.
Ahoy me lads! Surely ye have though of ways to change the balance ?
Hear me tale:
Me crew was poor at fighting other crews. So I though up of a way to create a safer environment for me crew.
I took it upon meself as captain to befriend another crew and show them we had access to treasure! We would dig up two treasures and share the spoil!Sure we could have betrayed one another at any point, for we be mere pirates!
Me point being that on the Sea of Thieves, there is great power in numbers for we are all equal in term of opportunities whether it is battling or sailing, same tools in our hands! We have some tools of communicating to other crews... although I would like more ways I could interact with them.
I be sure ye'll find some scaby waggies on these shores ready to fight for ye! Given they be on yer crew or into an arrangement with ye. Sharing the treasures between crews allowing more time at sea, TREASURE HUNTING ?
@mrloadedpotato someone explained this better than i will be able to, the main problem is that when the spirit of the game is not maintained (adventure-first sandbox) because they do not have any AI targets for PvP those who have participated in PvE have become the 'merchants' the pirates are to rob. So if you participate in PvE you are constantly inviting PvP and there's no way around it.
as i've said before, i don't know if they've considered that if one ship has chests (or even if they don't) and the attacker doesn't there's no situation where that crew will go 'maybe that's not worth the risk', because there isn't any for PvP. the risk is only in PvE - and outside of griefing i think that's where the main complaint about PvE-first stems from.
and while i understand why they didn't want to have AI ships, with good AI or with some sort of World Boss mechanic that would be a better target for PvP-first players. i'm hoping upon launch the skeleton fort events will be frequent enough that players get pulled towards that, but who knows how that will work with the instancing... wait and see i guess.
@saladbrains @mrloadedpotato Are you two kidding?, you are literally saying the same thing again? We have told you time and time again that this is wrong but you keep bringing it up.
- PvP players get less gold/rep per hour than PvE players (dont believe me? try and do PvP only for a day and compare that to a day doing PvE only) This has nothing to do with no risk to PvP because there is a high RISK of getting less loot for your time.
- As for the whole griefing thing, you say anyone that PvP's is griefing and it makes no sense, griefing is caused mainly by respawning issues which I believe rare has said they are going to fix.
- If you can't handle the balanced PvP of this game you don't have to buy it, RARE has already stated there will be no PvE servers no AI ships and no safezones.
@MrI1ama LOL you know this is going to come up a thousand more times before the games launch. its been an endless circle of the same topic im actually done posting in here. im confident that rare will stand their ground against these PVp is unfair people
1708 out of 1759
