Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort

I actually sail to skull forts looking for a good fight. So the try hard server hop crews are more than welcome at any fort I’m contesting. It would be nice if they could up the reward on highly contested skull forts to make 3hr epic pirate wars more rewarding/worth the time.

I don’t actually server hop with a crew. I server hop solo into LFG’s with a active fort up.

More than likely with the upcoming addition to closed party groups. Server hopping will only get worse. With this new addition four people will be able to hop servers until skullfort is found & then invite their friends back into game through the closed group.

@brodycanuck said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:

Please make it impossible to join a server with an active Skull Fort.

The whole server hop thing has to go.

It ruins the experience of doing a skull fort when theres almost always a try hard group coming for it. Being on the server sailing around getting a feel for who else is on it, for hours, and then right when a skull fort comes up and youre half way through it, in strolls this try hard fully decked out legendary pirate ship that just server hopped in.

This just has to go...it ruins the game tbh.

I completely agree.

My son still plays SoT quit a bit. He made a buddy his age on PC. They solo sloop all afternoon hitting skull forts. I have seen them hit four forts in less than two hours. They normally ram and board, my son on xbox jumps on the enemy ship, causing chaos. His PC buddy rarely dies in combat and he keeps their boat up. Firing cannons when he can. They sunk the same 4 galleons all together 14 times two days ago. That's right 14 times. Now, I am hands down better at Sot then my son. After watching him and his PC buddy own galleons on the regular at the forts, I don't skull fort anymore. Frankly, I have discovered after many hours of gameplay I have zero chance of winning against a PC crew. These days when I play and a fort pops I don't even sail by to check it out. My friends on xbox are done with the game. Normally I solo now. I no longer pvp at all in SoT. I do voyages and run from every contact. I have sunk a couple of sloops chasing me. Most of the time I get away with no shots fired. I have turned my playtime into a pve game. No communication with other ships at all.

I feel like the community is split.

I somewhat agree with the OP. Server hoping ruins the spirit of the game.

It doesn't seem "right," when playing on a server for hours, with no skull fort and few other ships, that a skull fort [finally, after 3(?) hours] appears. You get there first, beat a few waves, then all of a sudden there's 2, 3, 4 other ships popping in to contest you. I don't mind PvP. I rather enjoy it. I enjoy the cheesiness of the gameplay too. But it's outrageously corny, and rather frustrating (in my opinion), that server hoppers come along and take all of the glory.

I guess, what I'm trying to say is, players that have been actively participating on the server for a longer time should be more entitled to the challenge & rewards of the skull fort. I mean... we're not straining the matchmaking system, causing more grief (for Rare) from a technical viewpoint, lol.

Another way to combat this, that I've thought a few times before, is maybe lessening the Skull Fort spawn time to 1.5 or 2 hours. Or maybe even spawning 2 skull forts at a time. I have a feeling though, that when the Hungering Deep arrives, it could alleviate a lot of this problem.

@wodyo The only problem is that now you would allow players who get sunk at skull forts to quit out and if enough players left the auto moving servers would just force a move to populate again. You would lose all progress just because trolls couldn't hang with the better crews at forts. It would open an entirely new type of "griefing" behavior.

@brodycanuck yea, i made almost the same suggestion in another thread about this. Basically they could add a feature to the matchmaking system to bypass active fort servers when loading into a game.

@rumham636 Server merges do not cause a loss of progress. Quitting the server because you got sunk from an instance of PvP fighting is akin to "rage-quitting." No offense, but I have a hard time seeing this, or understanding it from your perspective, lol.

@MacDoland I like your idea. Prioritizing the servers with active forts could really help out. I don't really think the servers with active forts should be closed (like the OP suggests). I just think it should be more difficult, nigh impossible, to just spam-join until you find a fort.

Does everybody remember launch day? I wonder how much of the issues we all had with connecting to the servers, were caused by server-hoppers? How much strain continues to this day?

I get it, that some people want to do what they want, when they want. I think the best ways to give them that, is to decrease the timers, and give them more of what they want. Like I said above, I really think the future content releases will take the focus off of Skull Forts. But in reality, I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing begin to happen for the new content as well (server hopping for the Hungering Deep).

@wodyo Then why after I get the 30 min notification that a server is merging and that 30 minutes passes I'm back to a loading screen? I cannot be the only one where server migration resets the server.

@rumham636 That sounds like a connection error. When the servers merge, a canned riddle appears over your screen. You're not sent to the menu, or the typical loading screen.

Edit: What 30 minute notification are you even talking about? Server merges happen as soon as the riddle appears. There is no waiting around for it to happen.
Edit2: Are you talking about the server-maintenance warnings? LOL

I actually want the opposite of this, I want more competition! 2/3 skull forts I complete are uncontested and I've completed over 60 of them.

@wodyo said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:

I somewhat agree with the OP. Server hoping ruins the spirit of the game.

It doesn't seem "right," when playing on a server for hours, with no skull fort and few other ships, that a skull fort [finally, after 3(?) hours] appears. You get there first, beat a few waves, then all of a sudden there's 2, 3, 4 other ships popping in to contest you. I don't mind PvP. I rather enjoy it. I enjoy the cheesiness of the gameplay too. But it's outrageously corny, and rather frustrating (in my opinion), that server hoppers come along and take all of the glory.

I guess, what I'm trying to say is, players that have been actively participating on the server for a longer time should be more entitled to the challenge & rewards of the skull fort. I mean... we're not straining the matchmaking system, causing more grief (for Rare) from a technical viewpoint, lol.

Another way to combat this, that I've thought a few times before, is maybe lessening the Skull Fort spawn time to 1.5 or 2 hours. Or maybe even spawning 2 skull forts at a time. I have a feeling though, that when the Hungering Deep arrives, it could alleviate a lot of this problem.

So you just assume every ship that shows up is a server hopper?

@mattydove74 No. I've literally watched them spawn in at nearby outposts.

Only problem with this is that it will lock out any legit new players joining server. What if there are only 3 crews on the server and nobody does the fort. people will be locked out of joining that server for hours. Not to mention if you are Trying to join your party and then all of a sudden the fort spawns they are shorted a player and you are stuck off server until its done. Bad idea all the way around. A better solution would be to put a cooldown on server swaps or lock you into a server unless you DC. So if you try to end game and rejoin to get another server it just sends you back to your original server.

@blam320

Alright then just make it impossible for new ships to join a server. People could still invite friends to their party if someone has to go.

@lotrmith lol, okay, thanks for the input.

@blam320 How is it unfair? Whats fair is everyone always having to join a server without a skull fort being active on it every time, so that is the same exact server entry for everyone always across the board.

If players are able to "hop" into the server that means there are under 6 ships in that server. A skull fort is nothing without at least 2-3 enemy ships contesting you.

If you can't take down 5 crews you don't deserve your loot.

@blam320 said

It breaks up the monotony of missions being able to log in and take on a Skull Fort, with the PvP interactions.

How is there monotony if you have only just logged in?

You close servers during skull forts and here is what will end up happening:

Crews will attempt to grief out all other crews during cloud essentially giving them a private server with no one to contest them ANYWHERE.

Congrats. You got your PVE server.

@brodycanuck said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:

Please make it impossible to join a server with an active Skull Fort.

The whole server hop thing has to go.

It ruins the experience of doing a skull fort when theres almost always a try hard group coming for it. Being on the server sailing around getting a feel for who else is on it, for hours, and then right when a skull fort comes up and youre half way through it, in strolls this try hard fully decked out legendary pirate ship that just server hopped in.

This just has to go...it ruins the game tbh.

Skeleton forts remain active for about 4 or 8 hours until someone completes the fort, or until the next fort is scheduled to activate.

This means, if nobody on the server bothers to do a skeleton fort... that server eventually gets PERMANENTLY locked, because nobody can join while a fort is active, and the forts remain active until the next fort activates, and that transition is instant... So, no players would get the chance to join that server to begin with.

Needless to say, that would be a huge problem, not to mention, if you are fighting enemy ships on that server long enough to win the skull fort for yourself, causing several other crews to quit the server, because after several hours, they're literally just done playing for the day... No new players would join, 'cus the fort is still active, and because the server is too empty, you would be forcefully merged with another server and lose that skull fort anyway.

Mate, try to run a few simulations in your head, and be sure to include all the variables, before you make suggestions like this on the forums... 'cus as your suggestion is right now, it's just a bad idea.

@el-dunco said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:

You close servers during skull forts and here is what will end up happening:

Crews will attempt to grief out all other crews during cloud essentially giving them a private server with no one to contest them ANYWHERE.

Congrats. You got your PVE server.

Add a timer on it then, for the first hour the skull fort is active, no realm hoppers can join it.

@gutterangel said in Disable Server Entry During Skull Fort:

This just reeks of entitlement. "Leave us alone and undisturbed to do the fort because we were here first". Lol! "We deserve it more" Blah blah. Nothing new here. There is no requirement to being on a server for a time period to be able to do a fort. You won't get one implemented.

Imo its entitled for people to think they should be allowed to hop from server to server just to do skull forts. They think theyre entitled to skip out on playing the game genuinely