@muarembossi For now, yes... But hopefully not forever. It is 1005 the dev's intentions that the ship count will go back.

@musicmee so its 5 ships now

@wolfmanbush Unfortunately, I think 5 is the right call until some PvP metas are addressed.

As someone that loves PvP, it has become too easy, borderline boring. Today's session is a perfect example of how nuts it is. My buddy and I decided we were going to run Reaper. There weren't any other Emissaries on the server so we elected to just stack world events. We bought a storage crate, looted the Outpost, then went to the nearby fort and looted that before heading off to the first event. Leaving that fort, we assessed our supplies in anticipation that we'd be contested at some point. We had a wealth of cannonballs, a good variety of cursed cannonballs, plenty of mangos, some pineapples, and the cherry on top...28 chainshots

That took us about 10 minutes to amass those supplies.

If there were Emissaries on the server or if we were just out for blood regardless of Emissary flags, we'd have had no problem wreaking absolute havoc on the server.

Getting that quantity of the best PvP tool in the game should not take 10 minutes.

On top of that, by the end of our 2hr session, we had collected 57 chainshots...that's nuts, and if we were going for a longer session, we would have most certainly portal hopped as a Reaper 5.

The metas need to be addressed. They really do.

@pithyrumble said in Just a Question. What is the exact meaning of 'all servers are now with a limit of 16 players?':

SoT trying to force interactions again...

leaving out the performance part of the discussion
I think with the current size of the map and the general happenings of a typical server 6 will end up having the opposite effect intended
it just leads to the one or two actual producers on a server having more people to deal with, less events completed because of the interference happening more often with more ships.

Imo 6 ships doesn't really bring in more production is just creates more to deal with for the minority of players that are taking the big pve risks

Will pirates that only care about sinking any and every ship be happy? sure
Will it produce more substantive activity that gets more loot circulating? possible but I don't think so with how this community typically participates on a server.

A well tuned 5 is better imo but a lot of people will disagree on that.

SoT trying to force interactions again...

IMO, it doesn't matter how many actual total players are on the server or no. What matters is the number of crew aka boats.

I also don't think SoT is boring with less boats on the horizon. There is more to do in the game then only interact with other players. Interacting is a part of it, certainly but it is not THE ONLY thing.

It is an increasing problem people are getting this mentality, IMO.

@moldarius7202 said in Just a Question. What is the exact meaning of 'all servers are now with a limit of 16 players?':

[…] Not optimal but I think also possible
Galleon - Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine

Max crew size of 2 * 4 + 3 * 3 = 17: not allowed.

Also, the Not optimal list includes the ones from Optimal.

@moldarius7202 yup the goal is to create crew interactions. So you could have smaller varieties aks 5 sloops.

@captain-coel

aight then you have the following combinations

Optimal with 16
Galleon - Galleon - Galleon - Sloop - Sloop
Galleon - Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop
Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine

Not optimal but I think also possible
Galleon - Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop
Galleon - Galleon - Brigantine - Sloop - Sloop
Galleon - Galleon - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop
Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine
Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop
Galleon - Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop - Sloop
Galleon - Brigantine - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop
Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine
Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop
Brigantine - Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop - Sloop
Brigantine - Brigantine - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop
Brigantine - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop
Sloop - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop - Sloop

@moldarius7202 Yes, it's based on ship capacity and not current player count. Otherwise you could go over the player limit very easily by inviting players to ships.

@moldarius7202 while it is back to 5 ships the 16 player limit is a hard cap based on slots not actual players.

@d3adst1ck

If thats the logic which the game goes thats true, but then the server will never hit the 16 people per server.

It depends if you look at the capacity of the ship or the real players on it.

If the first is true, you will never meet more then 2 Galleons, but the server will probably never hitting the 16 player mark. (This means that on every ship the capacity must be 100%)
If the second is true, you can have more then 2 Galleons, but that is unlikely that this works because then you could do a solo galleon search and then there could be up to 20 players on a server.

They now reduce it from 6 ships, to 5.

So 3 Galleons with 4 players is possible, if they're 2 other Sloops with each 2 Players.

/edit I think they go with the maximum capacity per ship

So you have 16 players up to 5 ships.
Every ship reserves player-slots what the maximum of the ship could be
So if you go on a solo Galleon you downgrade the server to an maximum of 13 players.

Thats what I think the server do

@madfrito99 said in Just a Question. What is the exact meaning of 'all servers are now with a limit of 16 players?':

@d3adst1ck are you sure? if you are creating an alliance server and everybody hits set sail at the same time on a galleon what would stop 4 galleons being in one server? i think most alliances will switch to brigs anyway where u could get 5 brigs with 15 players

The player limit stops it. The server prioritizes 6 ships on a server, and you can't have more than 2 galleons without breaking the player limit.

You also can't have 5 brigs for the same reason because they are targeting 6 ships and a sloop as the sixth ship has 2 slots, which would be over the limit (17).

@d3adst1ck are you sure? if you are creating an alliance server and everybody hits set sail at the same time on a galleon what would stop 4 galleons being in one server? i think most alliances will switch to brigs anyway where u could get 5 brigs with 15 players

@movi3353 said in Just a Question. What is the exact meaning of 'all servers are now with a limit of 16 players?':

@movi3353 Some users simultaneously search for sessions and form alliances with 5-6 gallons. If the 16 player limit means a maximum of 4 gallons, you won't have a chance to get into an alliance session. Is this right? This change will at least make it easier to maintain an alliance server. (from 5 or 6ships to 4 Galleons) I'm not sure if this change is desirable from the point of view of the alliance server as a kind of ABUSING.

You'll never get 4 galleons. The maximum is 2, because you still need to fit 4 other ships on the server.

2 Galleons x 4 players each = 8 players
4 Sloops x 2 Players each = 8 players

Total: 16 players.

No other combo will allow 2 or more galleons using the player limit rules.

@movi3353 Some users simultaneously search for sessions and form alliances with 5-6 gallons. If the 16 player limit means a maximum of 4 gallons, you won't have a chance to get into an alliance session. Is this right? This change will at least make it easier to maintain an alliance server. (from 5 or 6ships to 4 Galleons) I'm not sure if this change is desirable from the point of view of the alliance server as a kind of ABUSING.

@movi3353 said in Just a Question. What is the exact meaning of 'all servers are now with a limit of 16 players?':

@musicmee I wonder this change really works as developers intended. Rather, I think that this change could reduce the encounter rates... which makes SOT be boring.

There will be as many ships as before so it won't effect how often you encounter others. Sloops are already populating most of the servers so having "more" of them shouldn't matter.

@movi3353 It actually has the potential to make encounters more balanced and frequent... the improvements to matchmaking into already active servers has the potential to change the game for the better, beyond what you can imagine!

@musicmee I wonder this change really works as developers intended. Rather, I think that this change could reduce the encounter rates... which makes SOT be boring.

@movi3353

Sea of Thieves servers are now able to optimise performance by enforcing limits on the number of players on a server. This approach allows servers to maintain an ideal number of ships to ensure encounter rates between crews remains high without negatively affecting performance.

The aim seems to be keeping up the number of ships and encounters on the server rather than necessarily the player count...

However, after overnight feedback, we've lowered the ship count per server from six to five, while maintaining the cap of 16 players. This allows for a wider variety of ship sizes per server, and our matchmaking system will work to deliver this while we monitor the impact on game performance.