Thread title pretty much says it all.
5 v 1 PvP. Grappling hook Tokyo drift. Cannon launches for players (c'mon... that's the dumbest mechanic in history). Insta-kill shotguns. The product is, frankly, unimaginative, milktoast trash to begin with, but the honorless playerbase makes it on all levels infinitely worse. 90% of the time it's a single player or 2-person game interrupted by mobs of 7-Eleven register jockeys descending on you from out of nowhere - not because they're after your gold (as the vast majority don't even bother to loot your wreck), but just to stomp on you repeatedly until you drop server.
Slaughtering someone 5 v 1 is not PvP. I didn't even lose that much in the encounter this time (10 minutes at most), and I simply turned the client off. What would be the point of continuing to play? To get victimized by the next gank squad? Pass.
I understand that Youtube personalities like Captain Falcore routinely post "ideal scenario" solo sloop vs. packed galleon encounters where they escape the latter. But the vast majority of my run-ins with large groups like this don't present opportunities for happy endings - they involve getting pinned in a harbor while I'm raising the capstan, or unloading treasure at a town. I consider myself to be on above-average alertness - I spend the majority of my time between islands perched in the crow's nest, scanning the horizon. But your eyes cannot be everywhere at all times - especially when you're ashore. And, contrary to what Falcore and his ilk claim, many of the encounters between sloops and packed galleons aren't survivable scenarios, or moments where you can drop 5 chests into a rowboat and skedaddle.
And the answer here is not "well then don't solo." Outside of PvP, every other element of the game experience can be accomplished readily by your lonesome. If the solo experience was some smash-your-head-against-the-wall trial by fire, I'd be more inclined for forgive horrid "PvP" slaughter-fests because the rest of the game was doing everything possible to push you into a group. But that's not what Sea of Thieves is like (and, moreover, why should I have to sail with strangers just to play? I'm not social. I don't want to be that social) - the vast majority of it is just open water sailing beaneath clear skies. I don't need a crew for that - I shouldn't need a crew for any of it.
I'm not asking for a PvE game because it would be boring. But I'm tired of desperately unequal odds being the rule rather than the exception. The "socialization" presented by...
"AHOY"
"AHOY"
"AHOY"
Cannon fire.
Ship sinks
... simply isn't worth it to me. Those are the only encounters I have with players, and they might as well be mindless bots. I'd rather play with nobody (or, as things stand, play less and less until I'm simply not playing at all) than play against that.
