[Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion

@gtothefo
What makes you think that SOT should have to be everything to all people?
Its ok to not feel like playing one game and to go play another, or god forbid, not play a game at all.

The unpredictability of SOT and the risk of pvp is what I love about the game, but sometimes I just don't feel up to the task, so I don't load up the game.... and this is perfectly fine.
I have no idea where this notion that games have to appeal to everyone, in every mood, at every minute of the day. It's ok to play something else, do something else, It's probably healthier for ourselves and SOT too.

@cdr-alfonso If you scroll back through this thread, you will see many people have explained why SOT cannot sort their players by intent.

@stormwind81 Discussion and agreement are two very different things.

@stormwind81 Hot topic means that there is debate and opposing opinions. That is the very opposite of "often agreed and desired".

@stormwind81 Mate, go back and read the past comments.
Yes there is plenty of discussion, but that comes with disagreement and differing opinions and viewpoints. Again, discussion does not equal to agreement.

@cdr-alfonso

Again your forming your notion that Rare want to change the core design of the game. They don't. They have stated countless times that it is going to be a PvPvE environment. There is multiple YouTube Links across the forum pointing you to these exact points.

The Arena is still part of the adventure mode (you can win without engaging in PvP) but a smaller condensed version designed for those who don't have such a long window of oppurtunity to play. The Maiden voyage was added to help the new pirates get used to the mechanics. When I started playing Sea of Thieves there wasn't half the content there is now so I understand the need for the Maiden Voyage. I also specifically said in my earlier post that I feel it should be expanded to include other aspects (including combat!) to further assist newer players.

You seem also to be forming your points based on the point of that the game needs to appeal to everyone, at every single point in time, no matter their mood, which it does. What it doesn't do however is give people a way to earn the only rewardable content in the game (gold/rep) in a manner against it's core design mechanic (PvPvE).

Again, you're also basing your discussion on Solo play, which again isn't how the game was intended to be played. Ever wonder why you can't see directly ahead from the wheel (be it the sails/mast)? By choosing to play the game solo, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. There are plenty of ways to form a crew away from 'Open Crew' (LFG/Discord etc)

We also seem to be getting to the crux of your issues with the game. You didn't fully understand what SoT was about before you bought it. The games advertising is very clear that it is a 'Shared Open World Experience' and that the question is if other crews are 'Friends or Foe'. Also based on your original statement of you have played around 50 hour's, this would suggest that you didn't buy the game on Day 1 of release? Did you not research the game before you bought it? There are countless YouTube videos/reviews which clearly indicate what to expect from the game and that you're going to be sharing the seas with other players!

You're clearly not understanding the point of the game if you believe I'm saying that 'the point of the game is that at random intervas you get to lose any progress you haven't saved yet' Can that not be said about every single video game?

The point of the randomness is that when you log on, you don't know what is going to happen on that server. You could log on, be dropped into an empty server and spend 3 hours not finding another crew. Alternatively you could log on, find that there is an active FOTD, with multiple crews fighting over it.

As I've always said on these PvE Server posts, majority of the time, it's people who haven't researched what they are buying properly and instead of realising their mistake, come to to forum's to complain that the game isn't what they want and that Rare need to do something to appease them.

@Stormwind81

Hot Topic really doesn't mean it's the agreed/desired suggestion. Hot Topic simple means that it is a debateable/diverse point. You'll find that the majority of the comments are AGAINST the introduction of PvE Only Servers. You'll also find that on the majority of the previous threads for PvE only servers you'll see a trend of the following:

1. The account posting it is new to the forum
2. They always argue that they lost hours of work because they got sunk (Suggesting that they had hours without having another player attack them)
3. They often have fewer than 50 miles sailed/haven't completed the maiden voyage
4. Don't contribute anything further to the forum after their OP

There is also the fact that some LFG Discord's ask potential joiners to post a PvE Only post in the forums (Because they know it's such a diversive topic) before they can join.

@scarecrow1771 I'm not saying that it has to be everything for all people, or that it has to over-ride all other things in life. However I'm saying that it would be good for its long-term health as a game if it achieved the same long term capture rate of all player types in a roughly equal fashion rather than lose PvE leaning veterans at an increased rate over PvP leaning veterans, and one of the ways that it loses such vets is from gradual drift off to other PvE game on the gaps mentioned.

Nothing is going to make me play Sea Of Thieves when I want to do something else, but it might be good for Sea Of Thieves that when I want to play Sea Of Thieves I play Sea Of Thieves, rather than when I want to play Sea Of Thieves and have at least a 2-3 hour window of time.

@gtothefo

There is no need for a PvE Adventure mode, although a Tall Tale type server would be great for casual PvE players stretched for time and would run very well alongside Arena for that purpose.

I am in full agreement they could do things to incentivise more friendly interactions in Adventure mode though. And I don't mean some bounty system which I think would actually encourage more PvP.

Out of interest have you ever watched Beardageddon stream? He has many more friendly interactions than the average player due to the way he behaves and greets other Pirates. Quite enlightening viewing really, mostly everyone gets a chance to be friendly and they get to visit the depths more often than not if they aren't..

@cotu42 said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

Thank you, this was an interesting read and shows more where you are coming from. You view it more from the long term perspective with the two opposing strategies, of which one will eventually overwhelm the other (for those that don't know the Hawks vs Doves). While in my view the main demographic of the game are those that switch between these two strategies those have the tig-for-tat mentality and the lack of a PvE mode keeps it from going to far to one side. The world lends itself towards that shift of players between the strategies and the balance it creates, by not offering the PVE to have a world suited for themselves.

Yes, although I think that the issue is that while players may intend or begin by using tig-for-tag strategies, if the game drives away players who wish to do so or trains them to use more hawk like options the trend will be towards hawks. One of the issues is that tig-for-tag only really applies as a strategy among two combatants that have roughly the same chance of perceived victory and the same amount to lose, if you perceive that either party might have far more to gain from confrontation then both parties will tend towards confrontation. With the empty ship issue of Sea Of Thieves the overall trend will therefore be towards Hawk since there will be some people who would naturally Dove but the mechanics push them to Hawk, while there will never be people who naturally Hawk but the mechanics push them to Dove.

The issue, if it arises (and it honestly might not) is that Hawk vs Dove populations have tipping points. Just as a full PvE server has a chance of pulling Doves away from the main mode and creating an accelerated tipping point, the tipping point still exists and if the game pushes Dove or tig-for-tag players towards Hawking that tipping point will still eventually arrive.

In terms of the balancing I do believe some work can be done, as I do agree with that there isn't much for the social type, as it relies too heavily upon them to create it themselves and lack of extrinsic motivational factors to stimulate it. Yet the greater sense of endowed loss is where I believe the game actually doesn't do a bad job, especially if you compare it to the PvEvP genre in general. Yes PVE will always have a greater sense of it, but the pure brutality of these losses are really minimal and largely in control of the crew out doing the PvE added in the horizontal nature and the session based premise it doesn't feel brutal to me. Yet I also come from a preference for the PvEvP genre, where most losses are way more devastating than anything this game can create and also believe that PVP players are more accustomed to losing in general. I am not sure how the Monty Hall problem comes into the equation here though.

The Monty Hall problem is more of an example of a well studied and replicated case of how endowed loss can cause people to act in a provably irrational fashion. I would say that if one of the intentions of Sea Of Thieves is to bring in a wider range of players than other similar games it has to accept that endowed loss is an issue and its a significant driver of player behaviour. Given or earned rewards have a greater level of immediate endowed loss than taken rewards to all but a tiny range of the population and that endowed loss is a powerful motivator, particularly for PvE leaning players if it does drive such players towards more PvP leaning strategies it again advances the tipping point of the game. Combatting such shifts should be the same as combatting a full PvE server for those who consider the possibility of a PvP tipping point in the main servers to be an issue.

In regards to the Nash equilibrium, is where I believe your skills as a negotiator and your positioning comes into play. It is also why I think that the social aspect relies too much upon the players execution and intrinsic motivation to do it. Currently to have someone swap strategy, you have to be very convincing that it is the best course of action for them. How to negotiate from a power position and usually being the one that approaches the other, convincing a party that is on the offensive strategy is far more difficult than one that has alternative goals as well. It isn't impossible, yet it is the most difficult skillset to learn because of the lack of motivational factors in the game to help you in that negotiation.

Yes, and also I think because of the lack of inherent reward within that behaviour. If I go and dig up a chest I will certainly have more than I had before digging it up. If I trade with another player to take a crate that is more convenient to deliver for me or to swap a treasure chest to a gold hoarder emissary in return for a bounty skull the result is much closer to a zero sum gain, even if you're a very canny trader. It wouldn't seem unreasonable that the merchants should give a greater rep bump to items that have been traded between players, that is sort of what merchants do after all, and it would be nice to see emergent merchant networks spring up within the game. Its also an issue that there are some people who, without being full PvP players or unreasonable people will shoot first and negotiate later. Its one reason that proper signal flags that are better supported in the community would be a nice idea also.

One issue though is that the inherent idea of "Pirates Lie" automatically undermines any set of signals, which I do think is a pity because the only reason that its so easy to lie in Sea Of Thieves is that it has a greater population than Russia did at the time it was set. In reality the cost of deception would be far higher for someone within the much more limited population of the Spanish Main in the 1600s and is unlikely to arise emergently within the population of the game. That's likely to be just one of those things because I suspect there would be strong resistance to external pressures against misusing such a system, so such is life on that one.

I don't believe that the requests for PvE servers are heavily coming from the long time players, but mainly from players that came into the game with wrong expectations, as I do believe people do not grasp the PvEvP concept, as it is a less explored and more niche market in general - so many people come in without understanding it. Rare is trying to mainstream the concept. Even among MMO's there are few that are really PvEvP and those that are tend to be brutally punishing when you lose. The natural selection process is less strong than in other PvEvP games because of this, I believe and is why I am more inclined to look at the player types. The others that request it are those unwilling to master their own strategy or play around the PvP element of the game. To be honest the PvE side has way more control than people give it credit, if played properly.

As I said above, the thing is that if the vision for the game is to mainstream the concept of PvPvE then there needs to be a certain amount of work done to mainstream it. The thing with the pure PvE server requests is that they're one end of the debate, and the other end of it is frankly no more reasonable and just as much coming from people with little experience of the game. The issue though is that extremely veteran players will equally self select out to trend towards people who think there's nothing wrong with the game at all. Someone who plays the game for 1000 hours and doesn't think its pretty good would be quite odd, so we should also be wary of an attitude that x amount of experience is needed before offering comment. Fundamentally I believe that the game does need tweaking but most likely doesn't need a massive overhaul and I suspect that if you were to map the majority of players and the bulk of the waist of the playtime you'd find that to be the prevalent attitude. But then, I would think that, or I'd adopt a different point of view wouldn't I?

I don't necessarily believe that the rewards being to low in terms of gold/reputation or that it is that binary if you are actively playing in a social manner. The issue lies more in my opinion that there is nearly no need for it from either end. Alliances are one of the most lucrative aspects you can do in the game, yet there is no reason other than the coin/reputation rewards to do it. The benefit or necessity to group together and work together towards a common goal is non-existent even for pirates that aren't very good.

I totally agree, and that's what I meant by the rewards that those players are actually seeking. There are a range of players who never really seek gold and reputation rewards, they pick them up to unlock and see more of the game, but not in and of themselves.
If there was an event that required a bunch of players to get together and stand in a particular spot to get no more reward than seeing a weird lightshow in the sky getting it to happen is the reward that Social Players, Achievers, Experimenters and a whole gamut of that end of the attitude spectrum are looking for. When I say that such interactions are binary I mean that you sail up, and you either enter into a trade and alliance or you don't, there aren't many emergent or sliding forms of interaction. You don't learn new sea shanties from other crews, gather information about weather patterns or coming events, there isn't the range of peripheral events and occasions that would make such encounters into more layered situations. In the real world the sharing of information was what bought ships together since its a sort of trading that can be done without making either party poorer.

Oh, I would love more of these little niche things. I don't believe that they shouldn't be added, yet I also don't believe they will have much impact upon the overall balance. These type of things make the world in general more interesting and I believe that is always a good thing in games.

Funnily enough, I really think that although small they would have a surprisingly large impact on the balance of the interactions in the world. In the end, people need relatively little impetus to do the things that they incline towards naturally, at the moment I have had people who sailed up to me to literally just show me their pet monkey or say hello and I think that if there were even just a tiny nudge to accept that sort of interaction the effect of player activity would be disproportionate to the on paper nature of the activity. Though as we're saying, there's no good reason not to do such a thing, whether the effect would be large or small.

Well my argument isn't that it won't be possible at all. I am one of these insanely stubborn players that will go at it for hours solo to eventually beat it. Yet if it is sufficiently difficult that grouping up actually makes sense and social interactions are desirable to engage with the gameplay and defeat the boss in a more timely manner. Where sure the highest skilled or stubborn people might still do it solo, but more people would be open to doing it together. Currently everything is so easy that it is far more a liability than not.

I think that at the moment one of the issues with the world events is that since they are hard but possible by a single player, if I see from a distance that one player is, for example attacking Flameheart I assume that either they're A) well out of their depth and will be dead before I get there to help them or B) skilled enough that they will take down the whole fleet and take any attempt by me to help as a shot at stealing their rightful loot at which point they'll attack me and there's a pretty darn good chance they'll win, and even if they didn't I'd be unhappy to nab their loot when I wanted a shared experience. Personally I think that something relatively simple like a board in the taverns where people can declare their intent would help with that sort of balance.

My perspective is that its not the difficulty of the tasks that stop many players from organizing against them so much as the difficulty and risk of organizing against them. In the end, no matter how deadly an in game threat is, it will almost certainly be less deadly than the player next to you when fighting it, and if it drops open treasure then the risk of betrayal will always be too off putting to organizing against it.

Sure, using a galleon as a solo is more difficult... yet that is more self-inflicted than anything else. I really haven't enjoyed the scalability in difficulty, as someone that enjoyed the tenacity and skill required to do those things in the past as a solo. I think overall the approach of everyone should be able to do it by themselves hurts the game more than it helps. It actually makes the more aggressive strategy stronger overall in my opinion.

Sure, but all difficulty levels are sort of self inflicted aren't they? I mean, if you pick insane rather than standard at the menu screen, that's still self inflicted. In the end, whether or not people agree with the game not being co-op only, the choice has been made for it to be sold as soloable, so that proverbial ship has rather sailed. My point is that it comes up fairly often on this thread how easy the PvE modes are, and there is a pretty easy fix to that. I'm not certain that people making that claim haven't soloed a Galleon to take down the burning blade while trying to deliver a perfect standard crate of rum, but I do suspect it. In the end, the game is meant to be emergent in the nature of its challenges and there are plenty of emergent PvE challenges that are pretty extreme.

Yeah anything to help communication between crews would be great. A correction I would like to make in regards to PC players, yes they use discord and such to communicate and not hot mic it up, but they always still hear and are able to use the game coms at the same time. I played a bit with Xbox parties with some of the Xbox players I know and it is insane how much less friendly interactions we would have had if I wasn't on PC and couldn't have been able to hear and use the in-game coms. Like me having to tell my crew to not attack, because they seem cool and are reaching out to use over voice coms. It helped me develop my negotiation skills on the seas quite a bit, as I was the only one that could negotiate in the crew.

Fair enough. I sometimes unplug my mic since it can cause interference and find myself having to communicate with mime and repeated Aye!s until I get it back in place when a conversation is sprung on me unexpectedly. And even then said conversation is often conducted in sinister non-baby waking whispers. Personally, a set of flags that said something like, willing to trade, prefers typed comms or something like that would be a help.

@iceman-d18 said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

We also seem to be getting to the crux of your issues with the game. You didn't fully understand what SoT was about before you bought it. The games advertising is very clear that it is a 'Shared Open World Experience' and that the question is if other crews are 'Friends or Foe'. Also based on your original statement of you have played around 50 hour's, this would suggest that you didn't buy the game on Day 1 of release? Did you not research the game before you bought it? There are countless YouTube videos/reviews which clearly indicate what to expect from the game and that you're going to be sharing the seas with other players!

To be fair, the game is also advertised as having a range of emergent player interactions that create various different and interesting stories, and that's not really the case most of the time. One of the issues is that when the question is friend or foe, that when the answer is friend nothing particularly interesting happens.

Also, on the whole solo play situation, on the Steam page for the game it does say "Whether you’re voyaging as a group or sailing solo...". It doesn't say "Whether you’re voyaging as a group in the standard difficulty level or sailing solo in the not particularly balanced and mechanically not the way the game was designed to be played difficulty level..." if it did then there would probably be fewer complaints from people who thought they could play the game solo. Should people have done more research? Maybe, should the page selling the game not imply that solo sailing is a solid option if its not meant to be a solid option? Maybe, but at least there should be a balance of blame there. In the end, there are plenty of games who take a demographic hit by being co-op only, and Sea Of Thieves isn't one of them. That does mean that when the non-co-op demographic turns up and slaps down their money there is a fair question to be asked there.

@wagstr Honestly, I really don't think that there are many serious commenters here who think that a full PvE Adventure mode is a necessity anyway. I don't for one, I think that some of the objections against it happen to be false, and I say so when they're raised because I think that they have a chance of knocking down other good ideas. Mostly I think that the "full PvE adventure mode is an absolute must or a I'll burn Rare to the ground position" is about on the level of the "Git gud or you deserve to have all your play sessions ruined forever and I'll be the one to ruin them" end of the scale.

I'm iffy on the bounty system, I do think that something which scaled your reward based on the relative stats of you and your opponent would be a nice idea if implementable, but it would be system demanding. Like, if a crew with zero player kills can take down a crew with 100 player kills the gear they get would be worth more, and equally when an experienced full galleon crew does sink a solo slooper with 10 hours in the game it would be pretty much literally useless. That's only because evening out the risk/reward scale would be a nice thing and since it would reward what (I personally think) should be more core skills of the game, reading player behaviour at range. The idea of getting an actual bounty on your head I agree would probably encourage PvP behaviour. I mean, I've never actively PvP'd, but if I got to be a notorious Pirate known across the seas for doing it, I'd seriously consider it. Ultimately it would pull more experimentally inclined players into being active PvPers which I think would be self defeating.

I'm not big on watching streamers generally, I'd never done it particularly until starting playing Sea of Thieves to be honest and I've already found that you can lose more time than I'm comfortable with on it. If I find that I'm on there again I'll look up Beardageddon.

@gtothefo

I'm not certain that people making that claim haven't soloed a Galleon to take down the burning blade while trying to deliver a perfect standard crate of rum

And who in their right mind would choose to solo a galleon when soloing a sloop is:

a) the recommended ship type whist playing solo..
b) so much bloody easier..

I think the main reason some people don't see your emergent player interactions is because they're too busy running away, the blame can't be laid at Rare's feet for that because I certainly see them.

You think that people need hand holding far too much, just because they haven't explicitly been told to either do or not do something, doesn't mean they are not allowed to use some common sense.

@cdr-alfonso I'll preface this by saying that I'm fundamentally on the side of some form of PvE only Sea Of Thieves experience and I have said before that if it was a choice between a PvE Server or nothing, I'd vote for the PvE Server. However, I do think the PvE Server is a bad idea, I just think that nothing at all is a worse one. But I will say why I do think that a full PvE adventure mode is a bad idea, and there are a couple of reasons.

A big one I think is the workload to reward level for Rare. Firstly, if it is true that PvE mode would increase the number of hours that the number of players were on the servers for that increased load isn't nothing. I know its a bit of a champagne problem, but its not nothing. I've personally lost more progress from being blackscreened out than being sunk, and I can learn to get around the sinking, the blackscreening is the enemy that none of us can defeat. For Rare, even if you accept the possible loss of faith of their community from what will look to be a back-peddle on what they've said to some of them as being an acceptable loss, you have to accept that there will be some weight of programming and negotiation to the new servers. Clearly they can't have Reaper's Bones in them and they can't have nothing in them, somewhere between those two is a level that still won't please everyone anyway, do Emissaries go in for example? Do the same world events trigger the same rewards? When they released Megalodons it came with a world event that required direct crew co-operation, would that sort of planned future even need to be different? Unlike others, I don't think the creation of a PvE server is an insoluble game design problem, but I think it might be an insoluble social design one, and even if they manage to thread the needle and find a full adventure mode that actually pleases everyone it really won't be as fun as the full mode and it won't actually fulfill what most PvE leaning players want.

That's the biggest reason that I don't think it would be a good idea actually, I don't think that what most PvE players want is actually Sea Of Thieves without PvP interaction, I think that what most of them want is a Sea Of Thieves with better PvP interaction, more varied, interesting and with the potential to be social and beneficial and a reduced non-violent arena mode for carrying out some casual play when they don't have the time or the will for a full session. I think that creating a PvE Server would be acceptable if it was as an experiment or filler towards such a move, but if it were used as an excuse not to make such a move it would be a bad thing for the PvE leaning community, and I suspect that if it were done it would be used as just such an excuse. Even without other players, full adventure mode is still an unwieldy beast with occasionally brutally unfair losses of hard work and removing the other players wouldn't really fix that.

In the end, they'd be putting a lot of work into annoying a lot of their core community, for a solution that wouldn't fix the fundamental problem of a game without emergent player interactions, which is a far bigger issue with a game that promised emergent player interactions. Solo play still wouldn't be as balanced and satisfying as it should be.

I agree, I don't think that a PvE server would kill the game or the community, I really don't, and I think there are a lot of good reasons for why one should be created, I really do. But I don't think that its the premium solution and I think that if it were created it would kill any chance of a premium solution to the problems, that's the reason that I'm personally against a PvE server, because its a jury-rigged solution to a more subtle problem and that I want a better solution that I think it would mean I wouldn't get.

@gtothefo

One of the issues is that tig-for-tag only really applies as a strategy among two combatants that have roughly the same chance of perceived victory and the same amount to lose

It is untrue that a PVE strategy has a lesser chance of victory. Frankly the majority of the claims have multiple hours of playing pure PVE before the first battle even starts. The ability to avoid conflict and drop off selling are victories in their own right. The better pirate wins, I have been on both sides of the coin and truly believe that the one not wanting to engage in combat is actually stronger overall.

To be honest, the sense of achievement, victory and loss are very subjective in nature. I feel great satisfaction for defending myself or selling that Athena chest in the face of my opponent that was chasing me as much as when I sink someone and see a big haul float up. The value of the treasure we find is pretty low in the grand sense of things, they have little to no influence on the gameplay. Also, people that I sail around that came in for the attack, react just as salty and angry as those I sink and plunder. Trust me, they feel as big of a loss as the guy that lost their collection of treasure.

The empty ship issue applies to both ends though, there are enough PVP crews that complain that people flee without any treasure on board. Just as that enough people that sink assume the attackers have nothing and because many people minimize their risk and sell. Hardcore PVP crews tend to hold onto the loot they gather, but they do start out empty.

There are two types of doves though that we have to separate here, the PVE crews that avoid interactions. Who play hours on end and have a pretty strong mechanical support system in place and the social friendly ones, who do not have such a structure or game mechanics. The division isn't split between 2 specific strategies, there is a third. Between the PVE and the PVP pure forms I believe a decent balance has been struck. It is the social more friendly strategy that is suffering and could use some love. PVE servers don't really address this, unless it would for instance be specially crafted for that purpose, while I would rather have it in the shared world to conquer its own spot upon the waves.

I have sessions where I am the negotiating type, just going out and looking and figuring out what others do and see how they respond to it. Been met with aggressive and friendly behavior, but it is truly the hardest style to play and nothing other than the intrinsic motivation to do it.

Sea Of Thieves is to bring in a wider range of players than other similar games it has to accept that endowed loss is an issue

Yet this is where I believe that the understanding of a PvEvP genre comes into play. Rare already has tackled many of the brutality and devastation of these losses. However, PvEvP games will always have a sense of loss when you lose. It is a powerful motivator and aspect of these games and yet also a big part of the genre.

PvEvP games, even ones like Sea of Thieves which minimalizes the impact by not having it affect gameplay, is simply not for everyone. The ability to have a sense of loss, makes the sense of victory more rewarding. I disagree with that it pushes people into PVP, I believe the lack of challenging PVE is more the culprit of that fact. People get bored with doing PVE and want the interaction, the friendly version of interaction is poorly supported.

The merchants

I like your idea that the merchants maybe should have some redesign to favor friendly social interactions. It would also make it that if you see merchants, it becomes more lucrative to engage with them in a friendly manner than just sinking them... which is partially the case with animal voyages. Sinking people that are carrying animals on board isn't lucrative at all, but alliancing with them can be pretty profitable. Having this message more enforced with mechanics would I agree make a lot of sense.

"Pirates Lie"

Deception is a strong tool, that is mainly based on the awareness and prepared nature of the one you try to trick. It is hard to build systems around it though, as usually they are easy to flip onto the other end. I personally was against the name color change of alliance members, as I truly believe it creates a false sense of security and makes plays from a third party impossible.

Funnily enough, I really think that although small they would have a surprisingly large impact on the balance of the interactions in the world.

Big or small we might judge it differently, it wouldn't hurt in any case. So, you have my vote on adding those type of things to the world. It makes it more varied, which I enjoy above all in the game.

I think that at the moment one of the issues with the world events is that since they are hard but possible by a single player.

Actually, they aren't hard and that is a big issue. A single crew, good or bad have a very reasonable and pretty time efficient manner in clearing these events.

I do think if you would create more crews falling under your A) category when trying to engage in these situations that they would be more likely to seek out others to do it with or accept help.

The crews that fall in the B) category, which truthfully will include me... will consider you more a threat than a help and would use the threat of the world event to help sink you.

I am someone that has rolled up to world events a lot, either to do them myself or to contest those that are there. Many times as a solo and the responses are pretty varied. Smaller groups or inexperienced ones are likely to respond kindly to a speak horn call out or even will plead for help when you approach, while the experienced or galleon parties tend to respond with cannon fire. It does help in many cases that I am solo, people view me as a 'non-threat' usually not in their favor, as for the majority of times I am heading there because I want to fight.

Personally, a set of flags that said something like, willing to trade, prefers typed comms or something like that would be a help.

We have flags, they even have descriptions and even the ability to team up with. Yet unless there would be restrictions placed on when and how to use them, they won't get any true meaning as to many abuse these type of systems.

You can put up an alliance flag, but to me it shouts more: "Betraying backstabbing pirate" than "Want to group?"

Yet the willingness to communicate is paramount to friendly social interactions. Sadly not enough people are actually willing to engage in it.

(I cut down the quoting a bit, because these posts are getting really big - if you believe I missed a section in my response let me know)

@gtothefo

I disagree. I've found that a little communication can go along way. I had an instance where a random crew rolled up on me as I was exploring, tried to sink me, we had a bit of a battle, but after boarding I saw they were on a tall tale and simply wanted to be on the island I was. I communicated this across to them, the fighting stopped and I helped them complete the tale. I shared some of the knowledge I had and everyone had a laugh. Granted that not every encounter will be like that, there are those on the seas who want blood.

By all means, Solo play is a solid option if you know what to do. I very often sail solo. But I agree that it doesn't make that clear that there is a level of skill/experience required for solo play based on the blurb.

@wagstr The point I was making about soloing a Galleon is that some people complain that PvE is too easy. My point is that some PvE is too easy sure, but there's plenty of things you can do in PvE that are waaay too hard, and soloing a Galleon is one of them. I was just saying that complaining that PvE is too easy doesn't make much sense until you've done the hardest version of PvE.

I'm honestly not sure that there are emergent interactions even available in the game, and I think that you can see Rare realizing that as the game goes on, hence the addition of gifts and instruments and I suspect that you'll see more added in the future. I don't think that part of the game is fulfilling what they ever intended at this point. I agree that the potential for what interactions there are is severely restricted by the fact that the Risk/Reward for them is heavily stacked on the Risk side causing people to flee from them, but I absolutely think that the weighting of that equation is the job of the devs. Players constantly sail towards danger, that's the basic principle of the game, if they think the reward is worth it.

I don't think people do need hand holding, but I think they need the tools to be able to engage with situations in a sensible manner. Flags to signal intent at a safe range seem like a reasonable ask, the option to actively signal Outpost presence to avoid accidental aggressive encounters, a general facilitation of player interaction, I don't really see the argument against it.

@gtothefo said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

@wagstr The point I was making about soloing a Galleon is that some people complain that PvE is too easy. My point is that some PvE is too easy sure, but there's plenty of things you can do in PvE that are waaay too hard, and soloing a Galleon is one of them. I was just saying that complaining that PvE is too easy doesn't make much sense until you've done the hardest version of PvE.

PvE is very easy unless you're the sort to do daft stuff like soloing galleons.. That's a bit like saying "you can't complain levelling up in this game is easy unless you have made pirate legend with only a rowboat and one life". Although possible it isn't necessary and it doesn't make much sense either.

I'm honestly not sure that there are emergent interactions even available in the game, and I think that you can see Rare realizing that as the game goes on, hence the addition of gifts and instruments and I suspect that you'll see more added in the future. I don't think that part of the game is fulfilling what they ever intended at this point. I agree that the potential for what interactions there are is severely restricted by the fact that the Risk/Reward for them is heavily stacked on the Risk side causing people to flee from them, but I absolutely think that the weighting of that equation is the job of the devs. Players constantly sail towards danger, that's the basic principle of the game, if they think the reward is worth it.

Define some of the emergent player interactions you were expecting to find in this comical pirate fantasy game being as you have already dismissed playing shanties and usual friendly stuff.

I don't think people do need hand holding, but I think they need the tools to be able to engage with situations in a sensible manner. Flags to signal intent at a safe range seem like a reasonable ask, the option to actively signal Outpost presence to avoid accidental aggressive encounters, a general facilitation of player interaction, I don't really see the argument against it.

So you suggest it is unfair to expect players to be aware of their surroundings and they should instead be able to rely on in-game notifications or some traffic light system or something?

Sorry, it just keeps on boiling back down to the fact that some experience and common sense is needed in pretty much equal measures to reduce frustration in Sea of Thieves.

I think there should be pvp servers as well as pve servers. Everyone should be able to choose their playstyle whether they want to pvp 1 night and the next grind out their commendations. Would be nice for the devs to consider, also make them free as a lot of us aren't working atm and can't work due to health conditions with covid shutdowns and covid being a threat to some of us who have chronic asthma and other lung issues.

@cortenay said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

I think there should be pvp servers as well as pve servers. Everyone should be able to choose their playstyle whether they want to pvp 1 night and the next grind out their commendations.

Everyone can already do that, nothing is stopping you to engage in the type of activity you want to do, so will others. That's a shared world for ya.

Would be nice for the devs to consider, also make them free as a lot of us aren't working atm and can't work due to health conditions with covid shutdowns and covid being a threat to some of us who have chronic asthma and other lung issues.

Oh please what does that even has to do with anything? If you don't want to pay extra just play the game you already bought, the way it was meant to be played, it's that simple. Some people don't even have the luxury or health to even play anything at all, so quit using a situation like covid to pass an agenda or to beg, that's just shameful.

@bloodybil Right? I have health issues and lost my job due to covid, what the heck does that have to do with PvE servers??????

In no particular order, a few thoughts on this now i've played the game for a while. I don't think PvE servers are a good answer - PvP is fun, in the form Rare intended it. But there does need to be some balance in Adventure mode:

Since there's a Twitch giveaway currently, some feedback from the perspective of how new players will see the game.

In the 20 minute window to get rewards, I tuned into a streamer who had tucked on a players boat to the outpost. The players were either new or low skill as they had no idea what was going on. In the 20 minutes I was tuned in, the streamer spawn killed them as they got off the boat for the entire time.
Not really good advertising for the game.

Also from another point of view, again that i've seen when watching streams... If Rare wants to sell goods on the Pirate Emporium, having the viewpoint of "You have a glowing ship and bright pirate, you deserve to be at a disadvantage when PvPing, you should have a dark ship and plain pirate" seems really odd?

Don't get me wrong though, I don't think PvE servers are the answer. PvP in this game is massive fun when it's proper fighting at sea or on islands, chasing objectives and loot. But there needs to be some sort of investment from the PvPers side as well, to avoid this whole 'Log in, don't care about loot, only care about killing players till they ragequit' streamer approach.
This boils down to the risk/reward. Lets say the PvPer loses this fight - the PvEr gained nothing. The PvE player actually still lost! They wasted time fighting back someone with no loot, no flag, no achievements or xp gained. So the PvE player either just runs away forever, or if it's early in a session and there's aggressive 0 loot PvP ships on a server, the optimal move is to quit and rehost on a different server. This is what needs to change - perhaps some sort of Bounty system where as your account kills players/ships, you get a bounty on you. When you die, the bounty is claimed. That would give PvP a new angle, and is really fitting for the pirate theme - the pirating community would take out those who preyed on their own. This would create a whole new grouping too perhaps - a new faction that hunt dishonourable pirates.

It'd also improve the PvP experience by encouraging fighting. I see plenty of people complaining PvP is boring when your opponent just sails away into the wind, and never fights back - give them a reward to fight back, and there will be more PvP as well.

@debrightlord said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:
Your game literally forces me to accept a playstyle I dislike.

It's refreshing to read this from the other side of the argument as we most often see it from the PVE end of the spectrum.

Pvpve games aren't meant (in my opinion) to be played the same way as other type of games. You cannot force your objectives in a session. It's a great starting point, but then the game takes the wheel. You can start your session thinking : I'm gonna start a Fort of the Damned. You cannot expect that you will be able to finish a FotD without being attacked by another crew. You can start your session thinking : I'm gonna do a full Reaper pvp run. You cannot know in advance if players will fly an emissary flag or even fight you.

Just go with the flow of the session. Don't try to force the game, take what it is offering you.

@cotu42 said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

It is untrue that a PVE strategy has a lesser chance of victory.

I agree, but the issue is that the likely reward of a victorious Hawk encountering a Dove is higher than that of the Dove encountering the Hawk. In the end, a Dove that successfully runs from Hawk has no Loot gain from their success, some personal thrill and at a potentially significant time cost. The thrill from running is good a few times in a session, but it can wear thin on a crowded server and if that time cost can be sufficient to cause them to actually lose the Loot. Purely on "Loot gained from encounter" a running Dove is always at the bottom of the matrix.

The irony of the Nash equilibrium is that a population of only Doves acquires overall more reward at less cost than any population with Hawks in it, and yet the equilibrium population is one with only Hawks.

Also, people that I sail around that came in for the attack, react just as salty and angry as those I sink and plunder. Trust me, they feel as big of a loss as the guy that lost their collection of treasure.

To me its far less to do with people who actively hunt or actively run though than it is to do with the times when people attack "just because". Whether because attacking a docked ship is safer than waiting to see if the Pirate behind it is peaceful or not or because they think the reward of sinking a stranger is likely to be far greater than the reward of talking to them. Honestly, if I had the chance to turn off my ability to attack other players I think I'd use it more often than turning off their ability to attack me.

The empty ship issue applies to both ends though, there are enough PVP crews that complain that people flee without any treasure on board. Just as that enough people that sink assume the attackers have nothing and because many people minimize their risk and sell. Hardcore PVP crews tend to hold onto the loot they gather, but they do start out empty.

Again, I think that one of the major skills of the game is reading player behaviour and learning the positions of important locations. If PvP players are chasing and sinking empty ships, I'd say that they haven't learnt the most important PvP skills.

There are two types of doves though that we have to separate here... It is the social more friendly strategy that is suffering and could use some love.

I think this where the nub of the issue comes. Social Doves have to run a much higher risk and are much more likely to get a disappointing non-material reward than even a Running Dove. I strongly believe that a lot of the players who come on complaining that the game is not what they were expecting are more from that end of the scale and I really think they have a bit of a point.

Yet this is where I believe that the understanding of a PvEvP genre comes into play. Rare already has tackled many of the brutality and devastation of these losses. However, PvEvP games will always have a sense of loss when you lose. It is a powerful motivator and aspect of these games and yet also a big part of the genre.

I agree, and the overall world has been amazingly set-up, but I think that a few value tweaks on items would really help to set off some of those issues, and make sense in the in-game world. Something like that the more times something has been sunk or been on a ship that has had a cannonball shot at it the less value it has, or a percentage loss of loot when a ship sinks. Even the chance to trap chests would give a certain sort of player satisfaction (loading a chest with a gunpowder barrel that set's off when the chest is opened would, I suspect, be a very popular addition). Just something to off-set the fact that PvE players often seem to feel like they're taking all the emotional risk.

I agree that the possibility of loss is important to the reward of victory, but at the moment that balance seems to be a little bit off for quite a few players. I'm not advocating for its total removal, but I do think that it could be shuffled about to feel less oppressive for new players at the very least. I'd be interested to see the actual statistics, but I'd bet that the game suffers quite a high early drop off because of it.

I disagree with that it pushes people into PVP, I believe the lack of challenging PVE is more the culprit of that fact. People get bored with doing PVE and want the interaction, the friendly version of interaction is poorly supported.

I'd say that there's some sort of percentage including both those motivators and probably a few others. Most likely quite a few new players shift their expectations to be more PvP than they thought, or PvE players drop out rather than push through the skill wall, and then others drop off due to the lack of challenge or depth in PvE of the game. We all agree that a PvP player imbalance is not great for the game whatever brings it about though.

I like your idea that the merchants maybe should have some redesign to favor friendly social interactions.

I think it would fit the faction in the game and neatly model the way these things happen in the real world. Paying one guy to ship your crate halfway across the world is nothing like as fast or efficient as setting up a trading network. If you saw a merchant ship and knew that you could talk to them and take some of their deliveries for profit or sink them and be looking at a bunch of chickens worth ten gold each (personally I'd rather that a load of empty cages floated up because, well, chickens in a cage in a sinking ship don't generally do well) I think it would really offer a way of building a social class and offer protection to certain new players. It would be a guild that you'd need to be actively self destructive or plain dumb to want to sink, in a totally emergent and organic manner.

Deception is a strong tool, that is mainly based on the awareness and prepared nature of the one you try to trick. It is hard to build systems around it though...

Its really tough, any effective communication method requires a certain amount of accountability, but Sea of Thieves is built on a principle of non-accountability, which is a tough circle to square.

It makes it more varied, which I enjoy above all in the game.

Agreed.

I do think if you would create more crews falling under your A) category when trying to engage in these situations that they would be more likely to seek out others to do it with or accept help.

The crews that fall in the B) category, which truthfully will include me... will consider you more a threat than a help and would use the threat of the world event to help sink you.

The question then becomes how to tweak that balance. It might be that reducing the rewards for repeat completion or the damage output of the event based on aggression to other players might help, but they feel complex to implement. I'm fine with solutions that still allow true griefers to grief people, because I think that they are the minority, but I'd like more ways for people who don't want to actively grief people to interact, and more motivation to do so.

We have flags, they even have descriptions and even the ability to team up with. Yet unless there would be restrictions placed on when and how to use them, they won't get any true meaning as to many abuse these type of systems.

Yes, but you can only fly one flag at a time and their meanings are not exactly hard and clear messages that are useful in game communications. There's no inherent reason that if I want to communicate that I shouldn't be able to fly a range of signal flags and that their set meaning shouldn't come up as a prompt when you get them in your spyglass. Again, I accept they could and would be mis-used, but at least they'd also be used, and they could be combined with player behaviour to suggest likelihood of accuracy. Like, a signal of looking to trade from ship that's keeping you in their broadsides and has a set of crew stood behind the cannons could probably be taken with more of a pinch of salt than one that has its cannons pointed at the sky and its ship anchored while pointed to shore and a stack of trade goods lined up on its canvas.

Yet the willingness to communicate is paramount to friendly social interactions. Sadly not enough people are actually willing to engage in it.

As I say, there seems too few inherent rewards in it. There's a big count of ships sunk on your profile, but nothing about trades made, despite the fact that the trades are a more impressive achievement (at least to my mind). Just the risks of even attempting to engage in communication seem so significant, it seems that at the moment it relies on approaching someone who is pretty much totally helpless, parking next to them so that they can see you have them bang to rights with your cannon but you're not firing and then you have a small chance of them realizing that you're friendly and you mean it. Even then there's a non-zero chance of them boarding you and attacking anyway.

(I cut down the quoting a bit, because these posts are getting really big - if you believe I missed a section in my response let me know)

No, that's fair enough, I've tried to cut down too, but frankly there's enough space given to discussions less likely to get anywhere already that I don't feel too bad about this one getting a little room.

@gtothefo said:

I don't know if it counts as veteran, but I'm over 100 hours and I still engage with the PvE side far more than the PvP side, at least directly.

At less than 5 weeks experience and only 100(?) hours playtime you have barely dipped your toes in lad, never mind counting yourself as a possible veteran..

IME brand new players invariably have the strongest opinions on how to 'fix' the game.

@wagstr said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

PvE is very easy unless you're the sort to do daft stuff like soloing galleons.. That's a bit like saying "you can't complain levelling up in this game is easy unless you have made pirate legend with only a rowboat and one life". Although possible it isn't necessary and it doesn't make much sense either.

Again, isn't that true for all hard difficulty settings in all games? I mean, they're all easy unless you do daft stuff like not playing them on the very easy mode aren't they? Everyone engages with the level of difficulty of the game that they choose and it really doesn't make more sense to complain that its too easy than to complain that its too hard. If you only engage with the events that you find easy in a way that you find easy then yeah, it'll be easier.

Define some of the emergent player interactions you were expecting to find in this comical pirate fantasy game being as you have already dismissed playing shanties and usual friendly stuff.

The comical pirate fantasy pirate game full of endless emergent action? Racing being more than a one time commendation pop reward. Merchants that reward traded goods or goods that come from different parts of the map resulting in an emergent trade network. In game calls to action against world events set by players. Trading of information as well as goods, Reputation bumps for communicating with high grade Emissaries to represent a high ranked pirate putting in a good word for you with their guild. They'd be a nice start.

So you suggest it is unfair to expect players to be aware of their surroundings and they should instead be able to rely on in-game notifications or some traffic light system or something?

No, I suggest that there should be a flag that I can fly actually telling people the sort of interaction I'm actually looking for before either of us come within cannon range of each other.

@wagstr said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

At less than 5 weeks experience and only 100(?) hours playtime you have barely dipped your toes in lad, never mind counting yourself as a possible veteran..

IME brand new players invariably have the strongest opinions on how to 'fix' the game.

Since it was in response to someone who suggested that having 100+ hours made you a veteran you'd probably be best directing that comment at them rather than me.

New players are likely to have more opinions about what about the game could be altered to raise the capture rate of new players, since veteran players have self selected out as people captured by the game as is. If you had 1000+ hours and then listed the things that put you off playing the game before clocking many in game hours that would be pretty weird wouldn't it? Veteran players are likely to think that less needs to be fixed not because little needs to be fixed, but if they thought more needed to be fixed they wouldn't have become veteran players would they?

Absolutely not! Half of the thrill involved with pirating is the not-knowing of who might be around the corner or just over the horizon. The whole PvPvE element of the game is one of the factors I love the most. The tension created and the steps players must take as a result make the game what it is. A key concept of pirating is the idea of pirates competing for scores, if that's removed, you remove a central idea of piracy and, in turn, the game.

I understand some people don't enjoy the idea of working hard for their loot and having it all taken away from them at the last minute but usually that is down to their playstyle. Rare has specifically designed the game with so many different variables that if you stop and think, use what tools and the environment you have around you, the options are endless. It's all about the strategy and taking necessary precautions rather than just charging in and giving up.

@gtothefo said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

@cotu42 said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

It is untrue that a PVE strategy has a lesser chance of victory.

I agree, but the issue is that the likely reward of a victorious Hawk encountering a Dove is higher than that of the Dove encountering the Hawk. In the end, a Dove that successfully runs from Hawk has no Loot gain from their success, some personal thrill and at a potentially significant time cost. The thrill from running is good a few times in a session, but it can wear thin on a crowded server and if that time cost can be sufficient to cause them to actually lose the Loot. Purely on "Loot gained from encounter" a running Dove is always at the bottom of the matrix.

First, the victory goes to the better player. The one that is better at their strategy over the other. The success rate is purely determined by this factor.

Successful running means you get to keep the treasure that is on board, if you cannot see that as a victory or reward than you are one of the people that claims that because I gathered it, it is mine! Treasure is subject to change of hand, preventing that means you earned the reward you cash in. Part of being a pirate is being able to hold on to the valuables you collected. Treasure is only yours after you sold it!

This is a PVEVP game with a shared world environment, so the demographic is those that do both. Yet you are stating here...

The irony of the Nash equilibrium is that a population of only Doves acquires overall more reward at less cost than any population with Hawks in it, and yet the equilibrium population is one with only Hawks.

They do not want a pure population of either. Also, out of the 6 ships on the seas... the majority are not all that aggressive or filled purely with hawks.

Also, people that I sail around that came in for the attack, react just as salty and angry as those I sink and plunder. Trust me, they feel as big of a loss as the guy that lost their collection of treasure.

To me its far less to do with people who actively hunt or actively run though than it is to do with the times when people attack "just because". Whether because attacking a docked ship is safer than waiting to see if the Pirate behind it is peaceful or not or because they think the reward of sinking a stranger is likely to be far greater than the reward of talking to them. Honestly, if I had the chance to turn off my ability to attack other players I think I'd use it more often than turning off their ability to attack me.

Why... the people that attack, just because are usually the ones that do both sides. They attack when the opportunity is there, while they are out and about doing their own thing. They are also not empty unless they spend time on selling it.

The empty ship issue applies to both ends though, there are enough PVP crews that complain that people flee without any treasure on board. Just as that enough people that sink assume the attackers have nothing and because many people minimize their risk and sell. Hardcore PVP crews tend to hold onto the loot they gather, but they do start out empty.

Again, I think that one of the major skills of the game is reading player behaviour and learning the positions of important locations. If PvP players are chasing and sinking empty ships, I'd say that they haven't learnt the most important PvP skills.

Yet, most people are whining that we aren't supposed to tell people to get good. The amount you lose and how much you have gained as a PVE crew is also 100% reliant on learning the most important skills of PVE. Being aware of your situation and selling when you are carrying more than you are willing to lose. Yet that is considered by you as being at the bottom of the matrix.

Here is where we significantly differ in opinion. You believe that fleeing doves are not the ones in control. While in reality, the one being chased can by playing better than their opponents ensure that they too do not ever lose a single bit of treasure. Learn to do drive by selling at outposts with the ability to dictate the course of a chase and you can literally sell every single bit of treasure you have before you engage in battle.

If you are losing big hauls of loot as PVE player, you also have not learned the most important PvE skills.

There are two types of doves though that we have to separate here... It is the social more friendly strategy that is suffering and could use some love.

I think this where the nub of the issue comes. Social Doves have to run a much higher risk and are much more likely to get a disappointing non-material reward than even a Running Dove. I strongly believe that a lot of the players who come on complaining that the game is not what they were expecting are more from that end of the scale and I really think they have a bit of a point.

Well, then that showcases that you haven't been on these forums for long. It isn't the social doves that are the bulk of the complaints at all. It is that of the fleeing ones that avoid all pirates, but just aren't good at it.

Yet this is where I believe that the understanding of a PvEvP genre comes into play. Rare already has tackled many of the brutality and devastation of these losses. However, PvEvP games will always have a sense of loss when you lose. It is a powerful motivator and aspect of these games and yet also a big part of the genre.

I agree, and the overall world has been amazingly set-up, but I think that a few value tweaks on items would really help to set off some of those issues, and make sense in the in-game world. Something like that the more times something has been sunk or been on a ship that has had a cannonball shot at it the less value it has, or a percentage loss of loot when a ship sinks. Even the chance to trap chests would give a certain sort of player satisfaction (loading a chest with a gunpowder barrel that set's off when the chest is opened would, I suspect, be a very popular addition). Just something to off-set the fact that PvE players often seem to feel like they're taking all the emotional risk.

If the PVE people believe they are the only ones taking the emotional risk, they need to learn to defeat their PVP brethren. I have reaped the salty tears of PVP crews often enough to know that this is just an assumption from one side that doesn't play the other. Play both sides of the coin and you would know this is a false statement and the game does not need to adjust to rectify fiction.

I agree that the possibility of loss is important to the reward of victory, but at the moment that balance seems to be a little bit off for quite a few players. I'm not advocating for its total removal, but I do think that it could be shuffled about to feel less oppressive for new players at the very least. I'd be interested to see the actual statistics, but I'd bet that the game suffers quite a high early drop off because of it.

Helping new players, having a better tutorial... sure, helping people get better at the game and especially in an established title is always useful. Yet this is the nature of all games, veterans beat newbies.

I disagree with that it pushes people into PVP, I believe the lack of challenging PVE is more the culprit of that fact. People get bored with doing PVE and want the interaction, the friendly version of interaction is poorly supported.

I'd say that there's some sort of percentage including both those motivators and probably a few others. Most likely quite a few new players shift their expectations to be more PvP than they thought, or PvE players drop out rather than push through the skill wall, and then others drop off due to the lack of challenge or depth in PvE of the game. We all agree that a PvP player imbalance is not great for the game whatever brings it about though.

Yet is there really a PVP player imbalance or just people that do not want to embrace the PvEvP nature of the game or go through the learning curve of it?

Deception is a strong tool, that is mainly based on the awareness and prepared nature of the one you try to trick. It is hard to build systems around it though...

Its really tough, any effective communication method requires a certain amount of accountability, but Sea of Thieves is built on a principle of non-accountability, which is a tough circle to square.

Actions speak louder than words. It isn't about non-accountability it is about people upholding their own. If you don't listen, if you do something against the agreement, the crew needs to punish the other end for breaking their word.

People want the system to take over their responsibility.

I do think if you would create more crews falling under your A) category when trying to engage in these situations that they would be more likely to seek out others to do it with or accept help.

The crews that fall in the B) category, which truthfully will include me... will consider you more a threat than a help and would use the threat of the world event to help sink you.

The question then becomes how to tweak that balance. It might be that reducing the rewards for repeat completion or the damage output of the event based on aggression to other players might help, but they feel complex to implement. I'm fine with solutions that still allow true griefers to grief people, because I think that they are the minority, but I'd like more ways for people who don't want to actively grief people to interact, and more motivation to do so.

Why are you talking about griefing? Tweak the balance of rewarding teamwork or promoting teamwork through the difficulty level. Will this include the risk of betrayal, sure... yet that isn't griefing. The system cannot ever be out to punish the PVP end, it is part of the PvEvP aspect after all.

We have flags, they even have descriptions and even the ability to team up with. Yet unless there would be restrictions placed on when and how to use them, they won't get any true meaning as to many abuse these type of systems.

Yes, but you can only fly one flag at a time and their meanings are not exactly hard and clear messages that are useful in game communications. There's no inherent reason that if I want to communicate that I shouldn't be able to fly a range of signal flags and that their set meaning shouldn't come up as a prompt when you get them in your spyglass. Again, I accept they could and would be mis-used, but at least they'd also be used, and they could be combined with player behaviour to suggest likelihood of accuracy. Like, a signal of looking to trade from ship that's keeping you in their broadsides and has a set of crew stood behind the cannons could probably be taken with more of a pinch of salt than one that has its cannons pointed at the sky and its ship anchored while pointed to shore and a stack of trade goods lined up on its canvas.

I don't understand where this idea of:

• Pointing your cannons up is 'friendly', instead of just a cannon.
• Anchoring your ship is 'friendly', instead of just plain bad strategy.
• Pointing your ship at an island isn't just an indication that they want quick access to loot with their harpoons?

Flags have no meaning, because they can be used for any means. If flags for instance would be bound to the voyage on the table, it still could be misused, but would require more effort and might be a limiting factor.

Yet the willingness to communicate is paramount to friendly social interactions. Sadly not enough people are actually willing to engage in it.

As I say, there seems too few inherent rewards in it. Just the risks of even attempting to engage in communication seem so significant, it seems that at the moment it relies on approaching someone who is pretty much totally helpless, parking next to them so that they can see you have them bang to rights with your cannon but you're not firing and then you have a small chance of them realizing that you're friendly and you mean it. Even then there's a non-zero chance of them boarding you and attacking anyway.

There is few reasons to team up, therefore most people don't even bother. Yet the approach and idea behind it is already bound to fail.

1. When approaching a crew you must make sure to call out to them and open up a line of direct communication asap. Just rolling up and parking next to them in silence is an act usually followed by cannon fire!
2. Do not board the other party and prevent them from boarding you! Keep your ship safe and show that you are able to defend yourself. Make clear what the terms are and position yourself in such a way that there is no easy way to attack you.
3. Not everyone will be willing to be friendly, so be ready to fight.
4. Those that are friendly, might not be for long... so stay alert.

(I cut down the quoting a bit, because these posts are getting really big - if you believe I missed a section in my response let me know)

No, that's fair enough, I've tried to cut down too, but frankly there's enough space given to discussions less likely to get anywhere already that I don't feel too bad about this one getting a little room.

@cotu42 said in [Mega Thread] PvP and PvE Playstyle Discussion:

Successful running means you get to keep the treasure that is on board, if you cannot see that as a victory or reward than you are one of the people that claims that because I gathered it, it is mine!

The issue is that running requires higher investment in the same result as having no encounter at all. The result is something like:

Dove with no encounter: X time X reward
Running Dove with successful encounter X+ time X reward
Tig for Tag with successful encounter X+ time X+ reward
Hawk with no encounter X time X- reward
Hawk with successful encounter X time X+ reward

Meaning that in a world with encounters Doves are always at the bottom end of a Nash equilibrium matrix. The only stable strategies in such an equilibrium would then be tig for tag or Hawk, which is not a healthy state for the long term continuation of the system.

They do not want a pure population of either. Also, out of the 6 ships on the seas... the majority are not all that aggressive or filled purely with hawks.

No absolutely, but the Nash equilibrium suggests that over time that balance will continue to shift. Even here its not unusual to see many veteran players talk about the fact that they trend towards PvP over time. If the Nash equilibrium of the system results in even a tiny percentage shift towards Hawk of the population over time, eventually that balance will shift, which is highly problematic.

Why... the people that attack, just because are usually the ones that do both sides. They attack when the opportunity is there, while they are out and about doing their own thing. They are also not empty unless they spend time on selling it.

What I mean here is the people attack without caring if they get anything out of it. Rolling up on a docked ship and destroying it not because they're threatened by it or think it has anything aboard but just because its easier to destroy it than to check either way.

Yet, most people are whining that we aren't supposed to tell people to get good. The amount you lose and how much you have gained as a PVE crew is also 100% reliant on learning the most important skills of PVE. Being aware of your situation and selling when you are carrying more than you are willing to lose. Yet that is considered by you as being at the bottom of the matrix.

It is at the bottom of a Nash equilibrium matrix, since its part of a non-stable population, mathematically speaking. I'm not saying that its not part of a set of worthwhile and successful strategies.

In this case I think that for many newer players the embittering moment is being told to get better at things like FPS skills that have just been ported over from other games when they have no interest in acquiring those skills. One of the issues is that the transferability of those skills can mean that players who know very little about reading the game and have very little experience in it can be a real menace while not grasping that they're really not achieving very much for either party.

Here is where we significantly differ in opinion. You believe that fleeing doves are not the ones in control. While in reality, the one being chased can by playing better than their opponents ensure that they too do not ever lose a single bit of treasure. Learn to do drive by selling at outposts with the ability to dictate the course of a chase and you can literally sell every single bit of treasure you have before you engage in battle.

No, I think that a Running Dove can be a highly successful individual strategy, but I think its part of an unstable equilibrium. Dove strategies almost always result in greater rewards over time as an individual strategy but they're always unstable for the system as a whole, its a tricky to grasp apparent paradox that makes Nash equilibriums hard to follow, but its been recreated and proven time and again.

Well, then that showcases that you haven't been on these forums for long. It isn't the social doves that are the bulk of the complaints at all. It is that of the fleeing ones that avoid all pirates, but just aren't good at it.

We could only conclude that if there was a reasonably healthy population of Social Dove interactions. All we know is that the body of complainants are people who didn't want to engage in PvP and failed at the alternatives offered them, which is a different thing. Some of them might be pure solo grinders, but as has been said again and again, it would be quite odd for them to buy a PvEvP MMO, I think that oddness is more likely explained by their being frustrated Social players.

If the PVE people believe they are the only ones taking the emotional risk, they need to learn to defeat their PVP brethren. I have reaped the salty tears of PVP crews often enough to know that this is just an assumption from one side that doesn't play the other. Play both sides of the coin and you would know this is a false statement and the game does not need to adjust to rectify fiction.

That's still a situation where the loser of a PvP combat is the one taking the emotional punishment though. Its still a case of a non-combat player having a more to lose than a combat player.

Helping new players, having a better tutorial... sure, helping people get better at the game and especially in an established title is always useful. Yet this is the nature of all games, veterans beat newbies.

Sure, helping them to understand how and why they lost and giving them somewhere safe to train is a big part of reducing unnecessary complaints though. New players just don't feel prepared for the full game, and many of them can't see where they can acquire the skills to be prepared, something to change that would reduce a huge amount of the unneeded complaints here.

Yet is there really a PVP player imbalance or just people that do not want to embrace the PvEvP nature of the game or go through the learning curve of it?

Again, that's one of those things that we're all sort of guessing at on this end of the equation and really only Rare can know. In the end, if there's no imbalance at all then its pretty much all good and there will most likely not be any changes, its all good and the game will be able to roll on more or less as is forever. We've really only got anecdotal evidence here, but it does seem to suggest that A) new PvE leaning players have a high drop off rate before learning to get into the PvPvE groove and B) veteran players seem to lean more towards PvP as their game experience goes on. All it takes really is for those two things to be true and if there was a balance on launch day or even launch year, there won't be a balance forever. The other major evidence we have for what the back end of things is what Rare have done so far to update the game, namely, add on a training area in the form of Maiden Voyage and an area that, successful or not, players can burn off some PvP energy. Those look a lot like moves to correct a PvE leaning demographic drop off, which does suggest that such a drop off is what Rare are reacting to from their end. None of it is hard evidence, but I'm not sure what other pattern it would imply.

Actions speak louder than words. It isn't about non-accountability it is about people upholding their own. If you don't listen, if you do something against the agreement, the crew needs to punish the other end for breaking their word.

But that punishment can only ever be short term and is still dependent on might makes right as part of an agreement. So long as the person is willing to drop off the server after whatever betrayal takes place they'll avoid any possible punishment, and fundamentally in any given agreement one party will be more skilled than the other, in which case the other party is stuck with nothing but trust to rely on. Its a strange thing that in a game where reputation is the name of one of the major advancement areas about Pirates of legend, pretty much everyone you meet on the seas you'll have no idea of their actual reputation or their personal story.

People want the system to take over their responsibility.

Again, I don't think that's the case, I think that people just want the system to model some of the features that similar systems in the real world require to be effective. Sea of Thieves generates a form of anonymity that no real world Pirate could ever have benefited from, and due to that absolves players of their responsibility to be held to their word. Sure a given player can hold you to a punishment for your betrayal for about half an hour, but only as long as you're willing to stick around and be punished. Effective communication does rely on an ability to hold people to account on a longer term basis, and its for that reason that communication is so ineffective and difficult to utilize in Sea of Thieves.

Why are you talking about griefing? Tweak the balance of rewarding teamwork or promoting teamwork through the difficulty level. Will this include the risk of betrayal, sure... yet that isn't griefing. The system cannot ever be out to punish the PVP end, it is part of the PvEvP aspect after all.

I don't have a problem with betrayal, as I say its more to avoid the situation where someone gets sunk just for trying to engage with the game. If we join up against a terrible force and then you betray me at the last minute and I have to hunt you down to exact vengeance, that's cool as hell, I'm down with that. If I sail in because I see an event going on and get sunk by another player so I don't bother trying to engage with it next time, that's a little disappointing. I mention griefing because I accept that there will always be some players that will sink other players first just because they like to know that they're sinking a human more than a computer programme, what I want is for people who aren't of that disposition to welcome the presence of more players into the mix, at least for a time. If its a loot multiplier the more players there are in the range of the event, a difficulty step up where even if other players just provide ablative armour they're still a huge help I don't really mind. Just something where if someone turns up just to engage with the game they're rewarded for more engagement, and if that reward is just an interesting experience that's fine, but being sunk out of hand by another player before you ever get to see the core of the event really isn't that.

I don't understand where this idea of:

• Pointing your cannons up is 'friendly', instead of just a cannon.
• Anchoring your ship is 'friendly', instead of just plain bad strategy.
• Pointing your ship at an island isn't just an indication that they want quick access to loot with their harpoons?

Anything that makes a ship unable to react to an attack is an indication that the ship doesn't intend to fight, which is a pretty clear indication of being friendly. Its the same as showing your hand to be empty by saluting or waving as a friendly indication.

Flags have no meaning, because they can be used for any means. If flags for instance would be bound to the voyage on the table, it still could be misused, but would require more effort and might be a limiting factor.

At the moment yes, but it would be pretty simple to put up a flag that had the attached meaning of, for example "Doesn't engage in spoken communication, text only" and a range of commonly intended communications for players, I really can't see any reason that someone would misuse such a signal. "Will attack anyone that comes in range, Won't chase.", "Won't fire first, Will chase if attacked", things of that nature would help a lot of misunderstandings. Personally I'd love a "Nothing worth stealing, but feel free to check" flag. As it is the flags are nice, but they're not much use to communicate the things that you really want to tell people who catch sight of you at spyglass range is all.

1. When approaching a crew you must make sure to call out to them and open up a line of direct communication asap. Just rolling up and parking next to them in silence is an act usually followed by cannon fire!

I've been away from the ship plenty of times and been on an island to see people roll up on my stern and anchor without attacking. I know they could sink me if they wanted, and they know I know that, to me actions speak louder than words and that comes over as a far clearer indication that they're not looking for combat than anything they might say over loudhailer.