[Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep

  • It was fun but lacking in reward in my opinion but its content i think perhaps adding something along the lines of like a large shark tooth or even the loot from ships its taken down would be great

  • @katttruewalker Lol Thanks!

    Awkwardly, I read the tweet straight after posting.
    I hope I have a chance to kill the Meg before the end of the campaign. If anyone sees me floating across the sea calling out to ships, please come help me! :)

  • I've been playing the game since launch and I must say I have been enjoying every minute so far. I've seen all the criticism and complaints and I understand what people who dislike the game say. But I've been a huge fan of everything you have been doing so far and love the fact that you keep listening and improving.

    However I must admit that this past week it feels like you are not listening to part of the community and treating us as if we didn't exist. It's really sad and damaging for your game as we are still huge fans of it with a valid opinion and complaint.

    I've been trying since the launch of the Hungering Deep to kill the Meg. With 3 friends we did the campaign right when it launched, we couldn't get a fifth player (almost but they decided to turn on us and then logged off)... We helped another friend to do Merrick's campaign and then waited for hours to find another ship wanting to kill the Meg. Nobody came.

    The next day we tried again, waited at Shark Bait, nobody, checked T26, nobody. Came back at Shark Bait, we were 3 sloops: 2 - 1 - 1. We waited for hours, nobody showed up.

    Next day we decided to try that again with a friend and then server hopped and checked other gallions... Without success, we always got to meet friendly pirates, get to four people with a drum but never 5.

    Following day we finally managed to be 8 players! But... The other Crew had already done the Hunt and was just checking to help players get the drum but were not actually willing to fight the Meg again. They told us there was no point doing it again and we parted ways.

    It has been like this for more than a week now and yesterday we tried creating gallion, recruiting on Twitter and the app again... We managed to be two gallions... One turned on us while I was gathering supplies. I had died from a shark attack... And when I came back they had scuttled their gallion, killed my crew and were driving our gallion off the map...

    I usually really like your posts and videos were you talk about all the great stuff happening and the things you are working on fixing... Yesterday your video was actually almost painful to watch... I didn't need being told again that the event was ending in one week and all I had to do was Launch the game, find cool guys and defeat the Meg. As simple as that... In the end it was another night of waiting for nothing, finally another gallion checking the island... People who already killed the Meg, knew where to find naive souls stranded... Show off and kill us to further prevent us doing the quest. Great. It would have been nice hearing about all the positive experiences player had in the video if there was something for us stranded people to reassure us we had been heard and the devs were trying to figure out a solution... But no. It is as if everything was fine, our concerns were not valid and it is our fault for no trying hard enough...

    Are my friends and I the only unlucky pirates here?

    Anyway, thanks for the amazing game, I totally understand why you try to get people to get to work together and I love the idea!

    This event started like a lot of fun and for now it has been quite fun but also really frustrating even for someone as dedicated as me.

    Before that I could just login and watch the ocean for hours without doing much, now I just feel like I'm losing time trying to summon the Meg.

  • @assasquid I know exactly what you mean. I am kind of in the same situation, except I can't get my own friends to play anymore. The experience I had was kind of funny, as I wrote about it above. :D

    The thing is, and as I said, we should at least be able to join as allies on two different ships on the same instance.
    In addition, be able to recruit players we meet as allies by expanding the crew.

    I would recruit 8 players total, have 2 Galeons playing on the same instance every time and proclaim ourselves "Pirate Hunters". Then starting hunting ships that attacks moored sloops or Galeons at Outposts. Stopping Solo sailors on their voyage and ask them if they have been griefed. Then starting on the trail of the ships following their description. Oh boy, would that be awesome. Two loaded fulled crew Galeons on your tail. It's definitely make you reconsider your actions. :D

  • @thyroidalwall56 said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:
    It is such a glaring flaw that everyone has to go to the same place, so that a handful of players can immediately ruin the expansion for EVERYBODY by camping it out systematically. Keep this in mind for future expansions please.

    In my experience the first days the vast majority of players wanted to make the quest and it worked perfectly. It's the following days that it started deteriorating. That said, trolls won't gain anything from trolling, but if they had to gain something from cooperating it would be more interesting. Maybe a little of progress with one of the factions would be sufficient to keep most players opting to retry the quest (it's more fun than the average mission).
    Another thing that could help would be to have a second (not too far away) point to regroup with other ships. If Merryck is taken by trolls, then it should be possible to find at that 2nd place a ship to ally with and return to Merryck to beat the trolls.

  • @scurvy-gobl1n I agree with the progression - I think all three factions should give you a boost in reputation, afterall you are making the seas safer for the transporting of merchant items, treasure and souls skulls!

  • Honestly Rare, c'mon guys. Love this game, love add ons. Would LOVE PVE mode but here's my feedback on this expansion.

    I convinced Five of my mates who are parents hence their time is really valuable, who game fairly regularly to join me to attempt this new add on. We spent a few nights completing the quest lines to get the drums & tattoos ready to summon the beast. Now we did this in separate sessions as you know 5 of you can't join the same session without all the usual getting randoms to invite you to their ship etc.

    The five of us have since spent the last three to four nights trying to find someone to help us. Using the horn, sweet talking people, joining at the same time in an attempt to hit the same server with two separate boats etc. No deal.

    Tonight, the five of us tried again to meet up and do megaladon no luck. Couldn't join same server with two boats, couldn't find anyone else happy to help. Tried the horn, tried joining other boats. Everyone appears to have moved on and yet we still can't join the 5 people we had available. Yep, great waste of time for everyone.

    Please Rare...please see the obvious flaw in this. We've got to be able to join as a group or there is a tiny window of opportunity for your loyal fan base to achieve this. If you carry on with this forcing people to do quests with others I fear you're really going to lose a bunch of people who love the game. Did I mention PVE servers ;)

  • @bobyslick That would be amazing indeed. I would love that! That would bring a lot of fun to the experience. I guess they have plans for experiences like this...

    @scurvy-gobl1n totally agree with you. As there is no incentive to summon the Meg more than once... trolls are now just trying to prevent other people from doing it. Something that would motivate them to go summon it again... could actually change the whole experience and everybody would have a great time. We would definitely see more experienced crews helping the noobs or poor souls that didn't get the time / didn't manage to take the Meg down on the first day.

  • I have an idea, When you start up the game and want to find a crew to fight the Megaladon, when you are on the page that asks you to select, sloop or galleons, etc. There should be something to click on if you want to join others for the Megashark battle. I still havent been able to find a ships and crew of 5 while waiting at shark bait cove. just some bad luck for me.

  • I really didn't feel like reading through all 221 posts to see if someone already said this and I'm sure they probably already did but I think it's important enough to be reiterated.

    A lot of people have been asking for Meg to give some kind of reward so that there is incentive to fight her multiple times. I agree that this is something that would extend the replay value of future events (big content updates + weekly events).

    A lot of people have also suggested that this be implemented by Meg dropping rewards once you defeat her. This is where I disagree. I think the community event idea suggested on reddit where rewards are given to everyone based on their participation once the community has reached a certain threshold is a much better way to extend the livelihood of the event while also maintaining the community driven "alliance" gameplay that Rare focused on for HD. If Meg simply drops rewards then all we have is a mobile Stronghold.

    I like strongholds, and I like fighting other people for them, but we already have that. For the weekly events and the live campaigns that come with bigger "DLC", reward the community as a whole. This will give replay value and incentivise working together. Then, once the AI threats or new content is added as a permanent fixture to the game and the event itself is over, change the rewards to be a way to progress to pirate legend.

  • I loved this game but with the new update and new hacks of this game its a shame.
    5 guys to solve hungering deep?? we are a 4 People Lobby and we ask a bunch of pirates. all shoot us and/or ha
    ck us. Aimbot, invisible-, stun-, teleport-hack. If i could i would get my money back.

    No promisd content, no anti-cheat, no fun, not get my money back!

    Aimbot
    Enable Aimbot
    Gun Prediction (Pistol, Rifle, etc)
    Cannon Prediction (BETA)
    Visibility Checks
    Field of View
    Ping Correction
    FPS Correction
    BulletDrop Correction
    BulletSpeed Correction
    Stick to Target
    Activation Key
    Lock-On Message

    Misc
    Fast Cannon Repositioning
    In-Game Mouse Driven Menu
    Cheat Watermark
    Game FPS
    Game Resolution
    Current Time

    Protection
    Undetected by Game Client

    ESP
    Enable ESP
    Player ESP
    Message in a Bottle ESP
    Wildlife ESP (Pigs, Snakes, Etc)
    Treasure ESP
    NPC ESP
    Ship ESP
    Event ESP (Skull cloud, etc)
    Shark ESP
    Shipwreck ESP
    Traceline ESP
    Nametag ESP
    Distance ESP
    Health ESP
    3D Box ESP

    Settings
    Player Visible Color
    Player Invisible Color

  • I had a truly awful time last night. We spent an hour recruiting some nice people on a couple sloops and gathering supplies to fight the shark. When we got there the galleon joined us on our galleon to help play the song. As soon as the shark attacked our boat they turned on us while we were on cannons and killed us. So we couldn't repair the ship. And we sank. They did it just to prevent the other 6 of us from completing the event. We had no treasure no nothing. I don't want PvE servers. But I don't want to be on the same server as these guys. They are truly awful. Kill me when it serves a purpose not just to be an a*s. We need a better way to report this activity or join into a pact where a joined crew can't attack us for a period of time. Something. This event put me and my friends off the game. I'll be back I'm sure. Not so sure about the guys I brought along

  • Personally, i would have liked it if the journal entries would come with us, like the voyage contracts do. This would allow us to reread it and confirm the information as we go.

    Example.

    Find journal, set sail to an out post, realise it's the wrong outpost, reread journal, head to correct location.

    Thoughts?

  • Please never make content again that requires anything beyond a four person crew. You have to realize and respect that not everyone wants to play with other people all the time, and even if they do, requiring five people to complete a quest just doesn’t work for this game. I wasted two nights trying to complete the Hungering Deep to no avail. Totally wasted my time trying all night to find a 5th person to help our crew hunt the shark. Hope future content is smarter than this.

  • Who wanna help me kill megalodon? :)
    ClickDaHouseCat Xbox gamertag

  • Hungering Deep feels like the Hungering Dud after folks got their stuff. Now it's basically impossible to find a fifth person to get this event done. It basically just highlights all of the flaws that this game has as a PvP game that's attempting to try and encourage social cooperation simultaneously. There's basically no way to actually organize anything beyond a 4man group, and it feels like this is yet another example of Rare's good intentions behind bad game design which could have been avoided if Rare paid attention to the development of online games over the past decade+.

  • @sorenthaz said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:

    Hungering Deep feels like the Hungering Dud after folks got their stuff. Now it's basically impossible to find a fifth person to get this event done. It basically just highlights all of the flaws that this game has as a PvP game that's attempting to try and encourage social cooperation simultaneously.

    Thanks for that rather insightful post....

    But seriously this has been disproved repeatedly by players in the game so many times. So many people posting on Twitter and Facebook about doing this event with those that haven’t repeatedly

  • @braxkedren said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:

    @sorenthaz said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:

    Hungering Deep feels like the Hungering Dud after folks got their stuff. Now it's basically impossible to find a fifth person to get this event done. It basically just highlights all of the flaws that this game has as a PvP game that's attempting to try and encourage social cooperation simultaneously.

    Thanks for that rather insightful post....

    But seriously this has been disproved repeatedly by players in the game so many times. So many people posting on Twitter and Facebook about doing this event with those that haven’t repeatedly

    Confirmation bias based off of getting lucky. For every success post and upvoted picture on Reddit, there's probably several other folks who simply gave up on it because they don't want to bother with the ridiculously poor design.

  • @sorenthaz said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:

    @braxkedren said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:

    @sorenthaz said in [Mega Thread] The Hungering Deep:

    Hungering Deep feels like the Hungering Dud after folks got their stuff. Now it's basically impossible to find a fifth person to get this event done. It basically just highlights all of the flaws that this game has as a PvP game that's attempting to try and encourage social cooperation simultaneously.

    Thanks for that rather insightful post....

    But seriously this has been disproved repeatedly by players in the game so many times. So many people posting on Twitter and Facebook about doing this event with those that haven’t repeatedly

    Confirmation bias based off of getting lucky. For every success post and upvoted picture on Reddit, there's probably several other folks who simply gave up on it because they don't want to bother with the ridiculously poor design.

    Yes so poor that people are repeatedly posting screenshots and streams of repeatedly doing event with randoms.

    You’ve cried your daily tears for the day, you can leave now.

  • Looks like I'm not the only one who found this Update sorely lacking. I have no idea what could have made Rare think their first content update, in a game they design to promote screwing everyone in site, should require cooperation with enemy crews to complete. I have never met a friendly crew in this game and I have played since Beta and Day one.

    But that's not even the worst part about this update. The quest is not even a quest. You have to do basically nothing. No treasure hunts, no real riddles, no fights. What is the point of making us sail to four different places just to sale back to the start? It was a huge waste of time. The half riddles weren't even clever and the only thing that really mattered, the spawn location, was in no way obvious through completing the quest.

    Of course, just to be extra spiteful, my Fiance and I, who really loved this game, will never be able to get the Final Hungering Deep Reward because of how poorly this event was designed and rare saw fit to remove it from the game after two weeks. I don't think I could possibly be more disapointed with the way this turned out. I really hope future content updates are designed in a way that makes them even remotely accessible. At the very least they should add an in game way to form a team for events like this.

    I guess it doesn't really matter though. My Fiance is so soured by this event, we're probably never going to play again and that is the saddest part of all. We were having so much fun.

  • @kceb-enyaw
    So how many ppl have you sailed up to and asked? I have talked to dozens of ppl and used the megaphone and not a single one attacked. Most were just starting the quest or had no clue what to do.

  • Went in solo. Got a group of 4 between 3 other sloops. Beat the meg on nothing but 3 sloops (had to leave one behind so we could keep the shantie). Awesome expirience. It would be cool if the quest to get there took longer and involved booty but I had fun nonetheless!

  • @nwo-azcrack I've met two crews at the island, both attacked us. Never encounter a ship on the open water or an island that didn't attack immediately.

  • So after four hours of searching while in a galleon crew we finally managed to find a single sloop who was willing to help us summon the Megalodon.

    Here's more constructive feedback:

    The quest line leading up to everything was very fun. The riddles were nice though I feel like there'd be some benefit to having an in-game journal of sorts to be able to look back at all lore books read and whatnot.

    The actual Megalodon fight was a blast, felt really enjoyable and satisfying. Very well done, Rare. While the size of the thing didn't seem as impressive as the teased images, it still felt intimidating and exactly what I'd hope from an open world boss fight at sea. Felt sooo much better than the Kraken encounter.

    The frustrating part though was in-between that. Because I didn't jump into things within the first week it became a nightmare trying to find a single fifth player willing to help summon the bloody thing. It took way too long to find someone else, and I think there are a few reasons that it became so hard to find others:

    1. There's zero incentive/reward for repeat Megalodon fights. No gold, no sort of recognition for X Megan kills beyond the first, no nothing. This means once folks got done with it most didn't bother to do it again, as they have absolutely no reason to beyond being nice or wanting to experience it again.

    2. The event length. Two weeks just doesn't really feel like it makes any sense due to point #1. Sure people have extra time to try and do it, but again trying to actually find folks after the first week is ridiculously difficult and harkens back to the days of Vanilla WoW where you were stuck spending 30+ minutes to try and get a group organized for a single dungeon. There's a reason that group finders became a regular feature for online games over the last 10+ years.

    So my suggestion would be to either add some progression incentives (earning gold/reputation) and/or some extra milestones to pursue. That or make any possible future event like this only last a week, because 7 days should be enough for folks who want to check it out and that avoids the fatigue issues where it became incredibly difficult after the first week to find folks. Another option would be to have some sort of matchmaking preferences where folks that prefer doing the event content will get paired with others who indicate preference in pursuing the event as well.

    As for the 'rewards':

    Speaking Trumpet - Seems really niche and it's hard to tell how far it reaches. It's a nice tool still, but it's not going to be something super standout.

    Drum - Nice to have a percussion instrument but the whistling takes away from it to some extent imo.

    Tattoo - Looks great. Encourages me to run around shirtless.

    Figurehead - Also looks great, and it's nice that an expensive piece of ship customization was given as a reward for killing the Meg.

    Scar - Looks underwhelming as it's really hard to see the thing - it's basically just a shiny bite mark that you can only see if you have your shirt off.

    Titles - Meh. Titles are titles.

    So I guess overall for what it was, the Hungering Deep stuff was fun to do when I wasn't spending hours with three others desperately trying to find a fifth person to summon Meg. This could have been mitigated by adding incentives to repeat the Meg fight or simply making the event length shorter. I understand why Rare wanted things to feel organic, but the way it was set up just led to it being a hassle for anyone who didn't initially leap at the content within the first week.

    That said, I'm basically back to not really having much incentive to play the game after spending maybe 5-6 hours doing that stuff. If the game is only meant to be one where you casually drop in every once in awhile, then I guess this patch is successful in carrying on that idea. Otherwise it feels like this was an appetizer that left me Hungering for Deeper content.

    Also it just makes it clear how badly we need a Social Hub/Fleet system in this game.

  • @thyroidalwall56 I hear you Thyroidal.

    I don't view this forum often but just wanted to see if I was alone here.

    I would like to share my experience of trying 'The Hungering Deep'.

    Long story short but after nothing but negative experiences with this game (mainly to do with a very toxic playerbase - at least in the actual experiences I have had thus far), I thought I'd try this new expansion the other day and try and salvage some of the $$ I had spent.

    Anyway, I spawn on an outpost at the very top of the map. So I sail south towards Shark Bait Cove I think it is, and the wind is completely against me for the entire time. It took about 15 minutes just to get there so I didn't appreciate my time getting wasted.

    Anyway I get there, see 4 other players hanging around so I think I might have a chance to finally play this expansion. I go and talk to Merrick to see what the go is and start trying to talk friendly to the other players. Nope. They all start hacking at me and laughing even though I was literally in the middle of going through the options with Merrick. Good work.

    So I respawn and laugh it off and go over again, talking to Merrick. They start slashing at me yet again until I die.

    Repeat 3 more times.

    Then they decide to sink my ship. I respawn at an island really far away, therefore having wasted my time and only getting a sour feeling. Also I have the prospect of sailing all the way back to repeat this process.

    So I log off and try again later that afternoon, hoping for better luck.

    CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT PRECISELY THE EXACT SAME THING OCCURED YET AGAIN! Even the wind was against me the whole time again.

    So in this instance, the expansion for me was totally unplayable. This is a complete design flaw where I cannot even participate in something that I have paid for. I have wasted enough time and money with this, therefore I will not be playing this game ever again. So sour has this experience been, that when my Xbox live subscription finishes within the month I will be trading this in.

  • @ultimathule I've not even managed to give the event a go as everyone, and I mean everyone I was playing this game with at the start has quit. Out of the three of my sons and one of my daughters who were playing it, along with a load of other people who I had sailed with and who I'd hoped to persuade to come back and give THD a try have all said no, saying either its boring, or its too full of griefers for them to bother with any more, and these are people who a month ago were sailing the seas, having a good laugh and loving a good fight.
    I was tempted to try and have a go solo, but i'm not really one to play the game solo, or as a randomer on another boat as I prefer playing with people I know, and after reading the threads I decided not to bother.

    I'm glad some people are still finding it enjoyable though, that's good to see, its just a shame to see so many no longer having the same level of enjoyment, like all my shipmates, who it seems have now hung their cutlasses up on the wall for good and have moved on to other games.

    Ah well, cest la vie as they say...lol

  • As someone who sails solo quite often it would be helpful to move the flag selection box to the bottom of the mast. More people would probably use it and would lead to more accurate signaling. Would also help if Rare defined what each flag means in the descriptions in the selection box. Saw in another thread where people had a lot of different definitions of what each flag was for.

  • I don’t understand why people are having a hard time finding people for the Megladon fight. I’ve fought it three times in order to help several Xbox live, and real life friends get the achievements/rewards.

    When we encounter a ship, we try really hard to get them to join us. Even if they fire at us, we don’t fire back and yell with out horns “We’re friendly! Would you like to fight the Megladon with us!?” And then they usually back down and join us.

    If your having a problem with griefers, get all the other ships on the server together and obliterate the griefers. My favourite Megladon fight was when I sailed around the server and had my galleon, as well as 3 sloops together. We all sailed together and fought side by side on the galleon. I believe there were 8 of us, all peaceful. One of the solo sloops even had attacked us while we were conscripting the two other sloops and we still let him join after we sunk him. He apologized and had a blast with us afterwards.

    I suppose some servers are worse than others, but you can always server hop.

    Don’t give up if you haven’t been able to fight the Megladon yet! It’s a lot of fun and totally worth the experience imho.

    Tip: Any abandoned ships will be ignored by the Megladon. So if you park them in front or behind the galleon, they won’t get in the way and everyone can safely board the galleon and the Megladon will just swim underneath them. This way you are safe to be on top deck, and if you get killed, just respawn and swim back to the galleon with a fresh handful of supplies.

    Tip #2: Make sure the galleon is 100% full on supplies before summoning the Megladon.

  • See, I think we lucked out, but I was a bit worried there for awhile that we weren't going to find enough people to help us.

    What was frustrating was having a random crew set up.. and we were trying to get the quest going but people kept spawning in and out and had to keep starting over to get everyone on the same page.

    We did this so that it would be an incentive for people to play and help out with the Meg. However, one guy ended up not getting the rewards at the end.. which I could say is pretty disappointing that he seemed to have done everything, but it didn't give him credit.

    I too would like the ability to either be able to write down notes in game, or get a map from the seperate journals saying where to go next.

    Also, the ship map never seemed to update with progress of the main quest. It always had the rats on all the outposts. It made it feel like you were missing a step or wasn't progressing. Thats where the quest map/journal would be good.

  • Hello :

    Impossible to complete hungering deep because :

    • consumme a lot of waiting time just to "hope" seeing friendly crew
    • grieffers
    • everybody do the quest the first couple days... If you are not in, you can't.
    • event has no replay value, so when everybody get his reward, you wont see people doing it again. Good point for late comers.

    Please no more gameplay with other crew.

  • Wow.. congrats to everyone who got in on killing MEG! Neither me nor my mrs got the chance since no one wants to do the frikkin quest!!!

    I cant enjoy the experience becouse i cant find other people to summon the darn thing! 4 player crew spent around 10h total standing on a boat at T26 playing that stupid song and not a soul in sight.. Another 2 hours spent cruzing asking boats to join since NO ONE awnsers on the megaphone (Probable becouse of party chat) This is such a let down and im super p****d that we dont get the shot at it becouse of other players! RNG upp my behind!

  • Have not been able to find a group of 5 to do this with so am not able to do hungering deep. That's such a great event (sarcasm)! The fact that there is no reason for other people to repeat is the reason I'm not able to even try it. I miss out on hunting the megaladon and the rewards for doing so because of something I have ZERO CONTROL over.

  • I do not like temporary content. what shoud that? I bought the game. I do not want to be forced by you to play now. I want to gamble if I feel like it!

  • Yea, Rare pretty much blew this by not including some kind of reward for replaying. How bout some gold, at least, geez.

  • I absolutely love this game! The megaladon was the best yet couldn't wait to put that shark on my ship. Wish I could get the shark hunter sails but cost alot

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