[Mega Thread] - Play Anywhere, Cross Play and Balancing. (Part 2)

@weegee-x17 said in [Mega Thread] - Play Anywhere, Cross Play and Balancing. (Part 2):

My only concern (having only read the first page of comments here) is taking away mouse and keyboard would alienate alot of players... on top of that i imagine letting xbox players opt out of crossplay would massively reduce the player count on the pc version.

PC games reach no where near the player numbers as console games as far as ive seen, removing crossplay would risk killing the pc playerbase off.

Additionally, most of the pvp in this game is cannons and ship based from my experience atleast. I dont think mouse and keyboard gives anyone a particular advantage over others. Even though the facts are there, pc runs 60+fps, mouse alows much faster precise movement etc, those things just dont matter much and when they do its not a huge deal.

Im still a little salty about the ridiculously low sens of the sniper but ive accepted the low sens ads as a balance procedure at this point

Most PVP I've ever come across is people boarding ships to stop you repairin, in the midst of a cannon war the crew who boards the other, wins, so it matters a lot, I very very rarely ever sit on cannons, I swim over with explosive barrels, blast a hole and sit at the bottom of their hull killing or trying to kill people who repair their ships, people need to stop using Ship vs Ship as a comparison for balance, it's player vs player in all aspects other than PVE

So i join a crew got a stable 40-70 ping. Then suddenly after an hour of playing the ping spikes to above 300-400. Which makes fighting in this game impossible (against other players). I am 100% certain it isn't my connection. So i'm thinking does the game automatically swap you into a different server after x amount of time? Or if the player count goes below x in the server it swaps everyone into a more populated server? If so then please don't swap me automatically into a Australian server where my ping is like 300-400.

Any thoughts on this?

@peter-quartz sagte in [Mega Thread] - Play Anywhere, Cross Play and Balancing. (Part 2):

I have been seeing threads asking for PvE only servers and a split between Pc and xbox only servers. While some may argue over these topics, I honestly see no problem with the game as it stands (PvE,PvP, and crossplay wise). Although I do agree some damage balancing should be done.
People say they lose to PC players because PC players are accurate
This game does not have 1 shot head shots, therefore the difference is minimal. The problem is the lack of ability to hit moving targets. I Suggest blunderbuss if you can't aim any other gun, or practice playing any FPS.

Sorry dude, but to keep up with the guys from pc, specialy in melee range, there need to be a higher stick sensivity for me to choose. While on pc everyone can change his mouse sensivity up to what ever, on console there is a limit. You can compare the console sensivity to a speed of 1.4 on the pc. I dont need practice in FPS cause the most games on Xbox are actually FPS games ( overwatch, battlefield, CoD, battlefront, Halo, blablabla)

I dont think u realy understand the problems of the xbox players

I am fine with the cross-platform. Its rarely if ever going to be a pure PC vs Xbox matchup. Your going to have hybrid crews. I don't think it really matters what the control scheme is like for using the cannons or steering the ship or even navigating the islands on foot. The gun mechanics may give a slight edge to a Keyboard and Mouse but not to the degree where it ruins the balance. I play the game on my Xbox One btw.

It wouldn't take much to fine tune the balance as all they would need to do would be give or increase the aim assist for players using controllers or limit the gun accuracy or turn speed on PC. It can be balanced with feedback.

A meta that is starting to pop up for PC players is the Blunderbuss/Flintlocke combo. With no effort you can hit a blunderbuss shot, mouse wheel to flintlocke, shoot, kill. The victim's reload animation will barely start before they die. Then they will likely be spawn camped since there are only a couple spawn locations(Goldeneye PTSD coming on). This gives PC players a huge advantage and makes combat even more boring than it already is. So my suggestions would be one of the following:

-Lock the sword, and only allow players to carry one gun. It will be argued that this leads to less customization options but after 5sec of thought you realize if there's only one viable option in combat then everyone will use it, stripping away the customization you think you have.

-Increase ammo capacity to 8 if there are two guns equipped. The one not being used is unloaded.

-Increase health by 50% and increase switch time. This gives a sword user a fighting chance to get the best of their opponent.

Combat won't get better until things are added to it, but you shouldn't add to it until there's a balanced platform to build on. Right now it's severely unbalanced between PC and XBO, and with this instakill combo it's best to just avoid combat altogether. Please fix it Rare

Please don't take away crossplay. I don't often play online games but I've had loads of fun on SoT with my fiancée and two of our friends and that wouldn't be possible without crossplay - we don't own two TVs and two Xboxes and the ability to play together was a big selling point for us. I'm playing on a slightly clunky laptop using a controller, and my loading times are much longer than my friends on Xbox. I suspect I'm not the only fairly casual gamer who would be alienated if crossplay were removed.

@holyskin To those players that followed me around for an hour and a half so I couldn’t port and sell my stuff then log off, congrats. You win. I quit. Deleted the game, canceled my game pass, and will probably never play again.
At least Rare and Microsoft never got a penny from me for this Sea of Trolls so no big loss for me.
Just a suggestion Rare! Please implement a PvE server. I’m sure I’m not alone in the fact that I just don’t want to deal with the internet of people. Most people have nothing better to do than make other people’s lives miserable.
Thanks for the awesome puzzles, great graphics and sound, and sometimes the laughs.

@peter-quartz sometimes people just don’t want to deal with other f***ing people. And do really think the grind matters??? It’s so slow anyways. Who has that much time. I want PvE because I hate people in general because they’re mostly jerks. Looking to ruin your good time. Or waste it in a big way.

If Rare has to do something, then offering a controller only option is the only fair course of action. Don't cut off an already small population of PC gamers, we see the other games in the MS store and how dead they are without cross-platform. Simply offer a switch on both versions of the game - join controller only servers. That way, we PC gamers know that we won't end up with a dead game and the controller users can live free of the fear of being killed by superhuman pc boogeymen.

I feel like it is fair to say that no one wants the cross play to be removed from the game.
What most of the posts are looking for is an OPTION to disable.
The Xbox community tends to feel like there is a disadvantage when competing with PC players.
So far I have only seen one good argument against adding this option, and that was that a severe community split could cause the game to fail.
The counter to that argument is simple: "If people feel that they are at a disadvantage, they will go find their fun somewhere else". That disadvantage could be real or imagined, it may be great or small. However it is the feeling that matters.
Now watch as the replies turn to "quit whining and Git Gud", and "PC users are cheats and hacks."

@mulishamanl87 said in [Mega Thread] - Play Anywhere, Cross Play and Balancing. (Part 2):

A meta that is starting to pop up for PC players is the Blunderbuss/Flintlocke combo. With no effort you can hit a blunderbuss shot, mouse wheel to flintlocke, shoot, kill. The victim's reload animation will barely start before they die. Then they will likely be spawn camped since there are only a couple spawn locations(Goldeneye PTSD coming on). This gives PC players a huge advantage and makes combat even more boring than it already is. So my suggestions would be one of the following:

-Lock the sword, and only allow players to carry one gun. It will be argued that this leads to less customization options but after 5sec of thought you realize if there's only one viable option in combat then everyone will use it, stripping away the customization you think you have.

-Increase ammo capacity to 8 if there are two guns equipped. The one not being used is unloaded.

-Increase health by 50% and increase switch time. This gives a sword user a fighting chance to get the best of their opponent.

Combat won't get better until things are added to it, but you shouldn't add to it until there's a balanced platform to build on. Right now it's severely unbalanced between PC and XBO, and with this instakill combo it's best to just avoid combat altogether. Please fix it Rare

Surely you can hotkey weapon switch to an easy to reach button on console? I mean, you can in most games.

@legandj The weapon swap is fairly easy, it is a tap/double tap of "y". Fire swap fire is pretty deadly, even on the controller.
It still would not be quite as fast as a keyboard or worse, macro.

If you use a "crab" hold on the controller, you can make the swaps pretty fast.
If you are trying to hold it normally, your thumb has to come off the stick to make the swap, which looses your ability to turn. If someone is jumping a lot or "a,d ing" you have no ability to track them.

@peapaw-z said in [Mega Thread] - Play Anywhere, Cross Play and Balancing. (Part 2):

@legandj The weapon swap is fairly easy, it is a tap/double tap of "y". Fire swap fire is pretty deadly, even on the controller.
It still would not be quite as fast as a keyboard or worse, macro.

Can you remap the controls? I would probably map it to something like RB/LB, that way you wouldn't have to move from the stick.

@legandj
You can, (I think, I have only remapped the D pad), but such is the controller curse, you can only map so much. I had to un-map the sailor interactions so that I could put bananas as "up" on the d-pad.
Controller users simply run out of buttons pretty quickly. I am not complaining, it is the path I chose when I went console, but it can become an issue when trying to be competitive in a fight. Seconds count.
Heck, the 10 button pushes required to take cannon balls from the barrel during a fight feels endless...

@pikaaroon I am loving the game! I would like to suggest three things for balance of play. 1) When friends leave in a Galleon, say all 3 leave, and I'm left alone, but would like to continue playing, there should be a 5 minute timer to prevent new players who join my crew from locking me in the brig for no reason and taking over my once merry ship. This is annoying and not what the developers of the brig intended, I assume. This allows all my hard earned cosmetics to be used by players who I didn't intend to enjoy them. Very irritating and not fun. 2) We need not only the brig for benevolent crew members, we need an option to kick a player! Or again, a timer that once expired, if the brigged player does not convince the crew to release, than may be kicked. This solves not only the problem of say a 3 member crew who are already in a server who need a 4th friend to join, but also server hopping required if the brigged player stays and does not leave, sabotaging the crew. 3) The first legend player who reached this status in a much accelerated pace than expected, developers need to simply set a timer for each faction, Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, Merchant Alliance, to prevent unwanted grinding. For example, this so called "First Pirate Legend" was server hopping while having multiple crews in these servers prepare almost completed voyages, allowing this player to boost his/her reputation at this unwanted accelerated pace. One could put a time limit, say 1 hour, after a player has completed a faction voyage, i.e. Gold Hoarders, preventing the player from spamming voyage completions more than once per hour, per faction. This is one of many fair preventative measures, as most players cannot complete 3 voyages in an hour if they are taking one of each faction type. I hope I was concise enough and I hope changes can be made to alleviate some of these unbalanced topics. Thank you for your time and keep up the hard work Rare!

@nightmare247365
I don't know that boosting will really be an issue now that the "first" one has been done, but I do like the idea of slowing the hops.
Honestly though, if there are enough followers to a streamer, they could simply stand at a dock and people would bring him/her chests just to get their name on the stream. Nothing un-pirate about it. Lackeys would often bring gifts to the pirate king.

@legandj I have not played this particular game on PC, so I honestly have no idea and I don't know if anyone has approached it this way, but what is the button pattern for a basic PvP encounter on the PC? What I mean is, what would you have to hit in order to:

1. whip out your pistol
2. fire
   3.swap to blunderbus
3. fire
4. eat a banana
5. reload pistol
6. reload blunderbuss
   I will try it with the standard mapping on the controller and see what it would take.

@peapaw-z

1. roll mouse button - pistol

2. left click - fire

3. roll mouse button - blunder

4. left click - fire

5. press 3, left click - equip and eat banana

6. roll mouse, press r to reload - reload pistol

7. roll mouse, press r to reload - reload blunder

I mean the main buttons I use are mouse roll, fire, equip banana, reload and of course movement. I'd map those to the easiest to reach buttons on the controller and sacrifice a couple of lesser functions, if you find that it's limiting you.

i pre-odored the game and i STILL havent gotten my black dogs outfit could you please send me the code

Just dealt with a player who, solo on a sloop, decimated my four player crew in a galleon. While that sounds like he was a skilled player, let me lay this out.

Both ships anchored and firing on each other. One of ours constantly shooting his ships with canons, below the waterline, moving the canon to make different holes each time to spread it out. One of us below decks patching holes, bailing and restocking the box of canonballs we had on deck. The other crewmate and I were constantly storming his ship to kill him, which is why we know it was ONLY him. He was able to consistently one or two shot both my crewmate and I, each hit knocking us back as if each attack was a powered sword lunge if it didn't instantly kill us, while also patching all of the holes in his ship and bail water, over the course of ten minutes... which he then decided to switch to his canons and shoot each of us with perfect precision, even the crew member patching holes below deck. Before we were able to respawn on our ship, he managed to sink it... despite there not being enough holes or water below deck to do that before he killed our patcher, who had just grabbed a pail of water and said it was one pail away from empty.

Crossplay kills this game for honest players until they are able to prevent hackers from doing that level of BS. The option to play with Xbox players only would make it more viable, but going through that experience today just killed all remaining hope for this game's future.

"Hey Cortana, record that."
Get proof. Report the name.

@legandj
Seems pretty similar to the controller then.

1. Press Y
2. Right trigger
3. Press Y
4. Right trigger
5. Left bumper (for item wheel)
6. Up on left stick for bananas.
7. Right trigger
8. Press Y
9. Reload
10. Y again
11. Reload
    I'm sure someone will chime in if I missed something.
    Maybe it feels so much slower because we lose "look"/ tracking when equiping items from the wheel.