Hi to all pirates,
I am a long-term player, a fan, and pirate at heart. I love this game, and it's community. I am in love with the world of Sea of Thieves and I think as a community, our voices are often heard, and most importantly listened to. For what I'm about to say, I hope it sounds like positive and building, rather than sounding like this is baseless critique just to tear peoples hard work down.
I we are lucky to have dev's like Rare, and they are lucky to have us. It's mutual and I think we can all agree that we've built a shining example of what a community should be. Go us!
So to preface:
As a gamer all my life, and a fan of all games both competitive and casual, I've spent a lot of time mulling stuff over about how a competitive setting should work.
I've got a few things I'd love to open a discussion with the community on.
The Issues:
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I've noticed that over time, as a lot of people figure out that arena isn't for them, it's thinning out and you see a lot of the same people again and again, and usually that isn't a bad thing. It makes for gripping rivalries and fun encounters, but here's the real issue. It leaves arena pretty much farm-able to the usual suspects, and when a crew do decide to get their sea dog stripes, and earn some silver, they have a good chance to be ran into the ground by people who team up, 4 ships vs 1, to farm out commendations or for their own nasty take on fun.
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It's common knowledge that arena hosts a lot more toxicity than adventure. There is racism, homophobia and pretty much any type of hatred you can imagine in there, and it's rampant. It's open and brazen and there's no fear of action being taken against the ones spewing it out. Competitive games and settings bring out competitive people, so there's always gonna be healthy smack talk and fun and games between crews, but there is nothing fun about stepping into a lobby, saying hello, and being met with bigotry. If I get mocked for my Irish accent, then these people will have a field day on pretty much anybody. I've heard every slur in the book in arena lobbies, and I think it's time to look at moderating them.
What I propose:
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Make clear cut rules about what you can and can't do in arena.
4 ship vs 1 ship is not fair. It's meta-gaming, and in most competitive scenes would be met with harsh penalties. We all play for fun, and for the sport of arena. We don't expect to be camped into oblivion. No teaming. Your team is the good folk of your ship.
Abusing well known bugs is also something that people do, because there's no real punishment for it. We all know of bugs, we all (hopefully) report them, but to use them as an advantage is exploiting, and in my mind, and in a lot of players minds, not good. Last dude who did a serious bug to me told me a streamer does it all the time and nobody cares. That shouldn't justify it and I feel like streamers who use these bugs, or promote foul-play, should look at themselves and realise that they're the centres of this community for so many people, and have a part to play in keeping it fair. -
Make clear what is fun trash talk, and what is un-fun bullying. (Most important point I have.)
One of my crew mates, the lovely @QrtrMasterFilth regaled me a sad tale of a player he met in sloop queue recently, who saw his opponents name light up when he joined the lobby. This player who my crew mate was with said that this other player was toxic, and a bully. Who had followed him from lobby to lobby, and filled his Xbox messages with hate and cruel messages. That is not acceptable surely, and we know that many reports went in against this player. Well, after a few rounds the next week, I see the player in question, spewing hate out. Few weeks later, the same guy again. I hate to say it, but it feels like there is not enough done to really punish those who purposefully hurt others. I have a laundry list of videos of people saying outright hateful stuff that would land you a swift permaban on a lot of other games, and it's starting to feel like I'm wasting my hours of the day being a volunteer moderator bringing all this info and evidence to support, and it never seems to bring any justice. I do it because I can't bare to hear racism being used, homophobia being used and people being bullied and abused. I can't take it, so I do what I think every good member of the community should do, and report it.
But... I never get feedback about my reports. I feel like they could tell you action was taken, but no specifics. If you went and bragged to said player you reported, than you could face punishment too. Is it possible to appoint player council members, active in arena, with the aim for them to be exemplary in their behaviour, and people who you can trust to uphold the pirate code, and report players in breech of that code? If not, it is probably time that Rare dispatch their own moderation teams to arena lobbies. If not, I shall continue my one man mod team efforts with more reports and videos to support. When I say it's rampant, I mean I have about 50 Shadowplay videos of serious abuse and bigotry, from the last 3 weeks. We stood by you when you posted on social media about upholding values of human rights and equality for all. Lets not allow it to exist in our own lobbies. -
Take good and regular balance passes on the scoring of arena:
Spamming cannons into a ship while keeping them afloat, is worth thousands of silver, but you fight a pirate in a gripping 1 vs 1 on the shore for the chest? 5 silver. 5 more when they aren't revived. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. 2 minutes of cannon shooting is worth more than the chest, and most lobbies end up with multiple crews camping the only sell point. It makes for frustrating games of 1 ship holds the chest, nobody sells it and it's just a race to see who can camp the nearest ship the most.
With this, I must say, giving the players a taste for a competitive mode, but without the support behind it, doesn't work. Competitive settings are dynamic and fluid. What is over-performing? What is under-performing? These things need to be looked at, regularly, in my opinion. For Galleon arena all of the above is even worse. Chest's are almost meaningless. I actually think old Arena worked better for galleons. -
Take some balance passes on double gunning: (Please, go easy on me!)
I really think that double gunning is the biggest issue this game has. in Adventure mode, it's always annoying to come up against, albeit rarer, but in Arena, double gunning is obscenely overpowered, and commonplace.
You get onboard, and can bounce up and down their deck, grabbing ammo each pass, using your guns as a 1 shot to any re-spawning pirate. It isn't competitive and it isn't skill based. Sword requires you to get close, it requires you to position, and it requires game-sense. (When someone is reloading, when to strike, etc) Yes, you can spam attack and win sometimes, but it's a punishment for being caught out. You cannot be sword'd from ship to ship. You can however be in the water with someone who has 2 guns, and hits the sniper shot, only to lazily aim the blunderbuss in your general direction, and is only required to hit 2 pellets. It feels overpowered, and when you die to double gunning, there's never much learning to be done. Personally, and as I said, please go easy, I don't see the major problem with forcing people to carry 1 gun, 1 sword. Yes, it kind of goes against the freedoms of the game, but at some point something will have to be done, and I feel stuff like lessening the ammo pool or forcing long reloads, is walking around the problem, when the problem is easily fixed. -
How and where you spawn:
When I kill someone, or someone kills me, and I stay on their ship to make sure it sinks, I know that mostly, bar the odd spawn below deck on sloops, they spawn at the base of the bowsprit, or at the wheel. So if I don't sit there waiting, I'm going to let them get away and have a chance to kill me. That's using game knowledge.
BUT... I think we have a better and lore friendly way to do it:
You have this lovely animation for downed pirates who haven't been revived, slowly "ghostifying", why not re-purpose that in reverse so that pirates who are coming back do so in ghost form, slowly reforming into their pirates, to give them 3 or 4 seconds to position themselves and orient themselves to where they're safer to spawn? A small period of being able to be seen, but not being able to be hit. It still allows pirates with their eye on the ball to see where they went, but gives the defending pirate a few seconds to figure it all out. Most of the time people are coming off a loading screen with a sword already swinging or a shot impacting them from a pirate standing behind them. Not massively fair, in my opinion.
These are my few ideas on what I think Arena needs, and I hope that it reads as politely and as constructively as I mean it to. I love the game, and I respect the developers more than I can express, and I want it to be better in the aspects that I feel I know most.
Thank you for reading, and I hope we can have a polite and constructive discussion on the subject.
Thanks,
CaptainRPeaches (RustyPeaches), of An Morrighan
