So far. As Ive gone over past posts on this very topic.
Its all mostly people who played mainly a few months maybe 1 year at best.
Spend most there time in SS, because that on Rare. You have PvE only wannbe players a safe haven, Carrot. Now they want more because they did it once, why not again.

Wanting a simple game to be more complex.
Want a MM system for a PvPvE game, which would break itself.
You wanna be in servers with people your own skill, Well that "Skill" changes on a drop of a hat everyday. One moment you sink a lot from others, next you are the one sinking everyone.
(Most the sunk ships are ones not moving.) Never combat.

Your making a simple chill game into a problem. Like complaining Arc about other players, or the Mobs are too hard. That is by design! Not every game caters to you or everyone, and those does, were having a blast by the random stuff that happens. Win or Lose, at least something happens!

As for Hourglass which still believe is the problem. Just...stop..playing it. If it such a headache, play the rest of the game. Do something else...many other things to do. Role play! Rowboat around the map and do stuff. Sneak on a player ship.

Remove Hourglass from the game, and fight a random player. It gonna be the same result! Win or Lose.
Just play the game as it is and trying make it sound as the game hates its players/pve groups.

I am a Solo, PvE stuff is my fancy, PvP just happens. Someone comes to attack me, I defend or run. Win or lose, it was fun.

I play even playing on new profile for the sake of restarting. Why am I having more of a thrill, and others are making things seem bad when it isn't?

@marinemike said in Forcing PVP without SBMM is not smart:

I will never understand why you developers want to force PVP so much when you have absolutely zero built-in skill based matchmaking or reporting.

It's bad enough that you match up swabbies with gold ghost curse players in hourglass - so I'm sure in high seas lobbies the balance is even worse.

You really expect people to fight over world events against players with 10x their skill/time - then wonder why nobody is doing or enjoying them?!

Rare needs to get over their PVP obsession and start focusing more on their PVE community - if not at least add some SBMM to make things fair.

I know everyone wants to cry about the name of the game being sea of THIEVES but you can add NPC thieves (like smugglers on their own sort of skelly ships) that chase after you instead of real life reaper players. Then you could still have the element of risk vs reward - without worrying about hackers with auto aim or top 10 pvp players wiping everyone off a server.

Who’s “crying”? Sure it’s not you?

It’s a PvPvE game, you bought it knowing that. Other people are going to be better than you, some very much so. Play to your abilities, you’re not entitled to everything in the game simply because it exist. You have to fight for things against other players, if you think you’re not very good at the game, maybe don’t go to the big name event with a cloud advertising itself in the sky expecting to be successful when it’s contested by other players.

My first few months in the game were spent avoiding players, doing things that I thought I had a good chance of successfully completing. To me that meant Athena shipwrecks in the roar, hundreds of them. It was a blast, eventually I got better and attempted higher game. Now after practice and experience gained I feel confident doing anything in the game with reasonable expectations of success. That’s one mentality, yours is another. Yours is the feeling of entitlement that all rewards should be yours regardless of your skill level. You should be able to 10 stack fort of the damned and if anyone contest your session, they must be hackers or top ten players, right?

My guess is that you can’t tell the difference between a hacker, top ten player, or someone who’s barely any good but can still sink you.

Play to your abilities, lose the entitlement. It’s a video game.

@burnbacon said in Forcing PVP without SBMM is not smart:

it's just GG mode if the larger crew has literally any level of competency at all.

Which never happens as you might think. Havnt found a single Galleon on the servers to even notice "Well oiled machine" to see if they are dangerous.

Solo crews...are the things that scare you in the dark.

Galleons are indeed rare to see a skilled crew. Brigs, however, are the meta and there are plenty of them sailing the seas.

it's just GG mode if the larger crew has literally any level of competency at all.

Which never happens as you might think. Havnt found a single Galleon on the servers to even notice "Well oiled machine" to see if they are dangerous.

Solo crews...are the things that scare you in the dark.

In my opinion, it's not about SBMM (never had been). It's about crew-size based matchmaking - specifically for solo players.

The solo life is becoming more and more unplayable against larger crews. Even to the point that legendary solo-sloopers like Beardageddon have started to call it out. For the longest time, it was just "hard mode"...with the addition of the grapple gun, bad game performance, removal of the one-blunder, and multiple other things, it's no longer hard mode; it's just GG mode if the larger crew has literally any level of competency at all.

I'm shocked Rare hasn't bit on the Solo only server option, yet.

I never figure out how people know someone is skillful or played longer than you. When they can run default items and disguise themselves.

“ i was sunk so they are better than me”