@xdreegan not like really - pre diving voyages was made in that way that it was putting crews in way that they will meet or be near eachother once a while.

It was archived by voyages pointing same or near island - that way with less cluttered seas, pre diving, tell talle portals and other stuff you had enough time to spot other ship and decide how to proceed.

It was much less vicious back in the days because we all was leveling sl loot and gold and resources were similar stake to everyone.

Of course Rare being Rare in Rare fashion dismantled that working model bits by bits leaving us in current state.

Some decisions look like it were made to make content creation easier, other were QOL that in long time hindered core game loop (soverings, auto harpoon, reapers, buyable resourves) much off that is pure neglect of gold shop and overall bad design decisions (new voayge system).

Trough years they chopped game so much I'm curious how much of original Devs are left here.

@d3adst1ck im essence it was what SoT Devs did with their player base - feed folks to streamed biasing game meachic into way that make content creation easier.

It's just slowy, step by step burning your house to heat yourself. Now there is not much house, it's still cold, and there is very surprised yellow rat inside.

The last few seasons have seemingly ramped up the number of things that track you on the map. I know they are trying to force players together to generate an interaction, but the problem is that it's forced interaction and that never works in a satisfying way.

Yeah, for real. But according to long-time players in here, that's all they really care about. Which is really sad for me, because this game's combat system is really sub-par for being as old as it is.

My honest, cynical opinion is that Rare deems the PvP as the "Sandbox content". And since to them, "Sandbox" just means "Make your own fun, quit bothering us" instead of "Here's all kinds of useful tools that have different, meaningful reactions with the world", things make a little bit more sense. That way they can essentially get away with copy-pasting everything they put in this game because so long as PvP is an ever-present, ever-hanging threat in this game, they can rest easy knowing that the Players are gonna make the "content" for them.

Molten Sands is just Fort of the Damned + Fire. The new Ashen Garrisons are just Sea Forts + Fire. Redmaw was Megalodon + Fire.

Content gets more tedious, seemingly to burn more time, and just make you more vulnerable to "The Sandbox" aka PvP.

@ghutar said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

• overuse of map pointers and reaper V ability - system was broken form the start, being visible is not counterweight to see everyone else it was lazy dealing from start that removed whole tension from adventure and stemaline it into :
  spawn - chase dudes - dive.
  Or
  Spawn - there is reaper - dive.

This is the biggest issue, and diving (or using TT portals before that) only facilitates that kind of play. There is no interesting counterplay to being marked on the map. You can't outmaneuvre anyone because they can instantly see you changing direction, and you can't sneak up on anyone because they know exactly where your ship is. You can't even use game mechanics designed for this exact purpose (fog is useless when you have a mark or tracked item on board).

The last few seasons have seemingly ramped up the number of things that track you on the map. I know they are trying to force players together to generate an interaction, but the problem is that it's forced interaction and that never works in a satisfying way.

@tintintheboy nvm the forum is so long it went onto a second page

@karminiumsot I don't know, which one are you referring to?

@bellcurve9279 If I had to point from with issue steamed downroll of interactions I would point:

• first of all broken economy - there is no stakes or only stakes for part of player base when I don't care much about loot on my board I would probably go for only thing that left - PvP.

• diving that shattered servers micro cosmos. Using talle talle portals was bad as it took nothing and give everything to reaper V. Diving is even worse, back in year one you kinda know by cosmetics and after capitnacy by ship name what you cloud expect from crew and how to plan accordingly.

• overuse of map pointers and reaper V ability - system was broken form the start, being visible is not counterweight to see everyone else it was lazy dealing from start that removed whole tension from adventure and stemaline it into :
  spawn - chase dudes - dive.
  Or
  Spawn - there is reaper - dive.

That way one party is not adventuring at all and second one is not guessing what horizon brings becouse they already know and run away away.

I believe game would be better if reaper V would give more subtle advantage without being mark like - 3x ship sails render distance to spot ships easier, but not instantly.

• overckluned sees with meaningless actives. What adventure it is when horizon is clogged with point of interest?

I believe that shrines, spanish forts should be spawned only by voyages. Like final one of medium or longer old voyages.

Also Raid voyages are mistake that took away anything fight worthy for them.

If I would be in Devs skin I would bought crate of liquor set year one server and play with it full for few hours. Then divide same crews into current broken world and see how they experience difference. They should check with base game from 8 year ago and see with additions work and with not.

If we resting currency then sky is the limit.

Remove content, revamp voyages, chop down diving, add new voyages, give capitancy to everyone but remove soverings harpoon.

Adventure is basically gone right now so why not go wild if its last shot?

@tintintheboy did they fr delete my post?

@europa4033 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

LOL I'm having World of Warcraft flashbacks, when people kept spamming those forums, wanting mounted combat (I fly on my dragon, and can spew fire on you or on mobs from the safety in the air).

Well we got a whole expansion of that and it was both cheeks. 21 years and I called it quits for Midnight.

Sorry, but 21 years to give "The Hero of Azeroth" a house is too much.

Let's get back on topic, since we are having some conversational drift here.

It seems like missing the mark is pretty common with the team when they take "everyone is happy" half steps that don't break with 'their vision' none of these goals are compatible, as clearly demonstrated by recent developments.

Eg, Diving, is a way to make PvE faster for people not interested in the core of the game, it is implemented in a half step so that the PvP community is also placated. However, since avoiding full servers is an art, players do just that, thus Devs are forced to find a way to merge servers and force players together due to a condition they created by allowing diving in the first place.

Thus, player interaction is dead. It is PvP or nothing. The demand for dedicated PvE servers go up, Alliance server participation goes up and the seas continue to drain no mater how much engineering happens.

Gone are the days of sharing a deck and shooting eachothers pets at skellys on shore, because Rare chose instant gratification.

Instead, get rid of quick hits. That's what Treasuries and Forts are for. The approach needs to be make losses hurt less, respect the players time.
Simple to understand, easy to implement, does not run afoul original vision for the game, encourages players to risk interacting because losing loot will never be a total loss.

@bellcurve9279 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

@europa4033 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

The issue is (without going into specifics via the warning from the moderator), if I want flying dragons in this game, and I'm saying that flying everywhere is much more accomodating, fun with friends, etc., flying dragons defeats the point of having ships/sailing.

I'm having Atlas flashbacks.

LOL I'm having World of Warcraft flashbacks, when people kept spamming those forums, wanting mounted combat (I fly on my dragon, and can spew fire on you or on mobs from the safety in the air). Blizzard kept having to lock threads, quietly remove them (that caused a massive conspiracy-drama feedback), and players were enraged at not being listened to. Thirteen years of WoW was enough for me lol.

@europa4033 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

The issue is (without going into specifics via the warning from the moderator), if I want flying dragons in this game, and I'm saying that flying everywhere is much more accomodating, fun with friends, etc., flying dragons defeats the point of having ships/sailing.

I'm having Atlas flashbacks.

@bellcurve9279 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

Here's the thing...I truly don't believe they're ignoring feedback. I think they listen too much. I also believe that they like making changes "their own" and that's why it always seems like they're missing the mark.

Nailed it. Sometimes they listen perfectly. They took the remaining Molten Sands requirements out of the Adventures at Sea commendations for S18. Proof they are listening to "Wow killing this same boss 20+ times is buns."

Likewise, during community weekend, developers were stream hopping took feedback and we got immediate changes from it. Small ones, but changes, good ones none the less. Again, changes to the commendation UI most havent noticed (unless you're a completionist) are most notable. It also seems like the HG change of re-queues and standardized resources started here (despite years of demands, but maybe the deaf ears were cough earmufs.)

Indeed. There's been a lot of changes they made on Insiders years ago (when the NDA was still in place) that players didn't like ("Place 70 portable cannons on other crew's ships," was reduced to just one plus many different plans concerning double-gunners that got scrapped). They listened.

The issue is (without going into specifics via the warning from the moderator), if I want flying dragons in this game, and I'm saying that flying everywhere is much more accomodating, fun with friends, etc., flying dragons defeats the point of having ships/sailing. So, since they're not putting flying dragons in the game, it means they're not listening to me. And I've said this before so I'll repeat myself again: don't associate them not putting flying dragons in the game with them not listening. It seems many fail to make that correlation, and make broad accusations towards the developers. Then they lock the thread with a reminder that this game isn't about flying dragons, and people get angry about it, thinking, "See? This proves it right here that they're not listening. We should get the developers' phone numbers and call them personally with our ideas. Every opinion matters at this point."

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

Here's the thing...I truly don't believe they're ignoring feedback. I think they listen too much. I also believe that they like making changes "their own" and that's why it always seems like they're missing the mark.

Nailed it. Sometimes they listen perfectly. They took the remaining Molten Sands requirements out of the Adventures at Sea commendations for S18. Proof they are listening to "Wow killing this same boss 20+ times is buns."

Likewise, during community weekend, developers were stream hopping took feedback and we got immediate changes from it. Small ones, but changes, good ones none the less. Again, changes to the commendation UI most havent noticed (unless you're a completionist) are most notable. It also seems like the HG change of re-queues and standardized resources started here (despite years of demands, but maybe the deaf ears were cough earmufs.)

@roborob-r66y Here's the thing...I truly don't believe they're ignoring feedback. I think they listen too much. I also believe that they like making changes "their own" and that's why it always seems like they're missing the mark.

You can probably pick almost any non-content related change (read: not new world events, voyages, or bosses) and find corresponding community feedback that it was at the very least influenced from, if not directly addressing.

We could probably create a list of changes we don't individually care for and quickly find complaints or suggestions that the community was nagging them about and go "aaahh that's what Rare was trying to solve for."

Now, I think their stubbornness with which they concoct these changes and don't want to waiver based on further feedback is a whole other topic, but the baseline has a "patient zero" not from within Rare.

should stick to watching captain falcor for being a shill and blindly agreeing with every decision rare makes and their justifications for those decisions and ignoring any rational/intelligent argument against rares announcements. seeing so many passionate people calmly and rationally explain why things shouldnt happen and how rare could actually make the game better. it all falls on deaf ears. they started letting banned players back in because the player base is at an all time low and they realized they cant keep kicking people out of the game thats struggling to stay afloat. meanwhile they keep ignoring and alienating the people who are still here. its weird that changes happened early in this game. they were listening to our feedback. like they said ai ships would never exist in this game. now we have multiple kinds of ai ships because the players asked for it. i dont know why these companies start to decide to ignore players. i know this game was way more successful than they ever though it would be. even now at an all time low i think the player base is hundreds of times their initial projection of how many people would be interested in a nieche game. so at the height of its popularity i can understand community feedback was probably an overwhelming thing to try and look at.

a sad fact, we as a whole gave rare a bit of a hard time, and still do, when every update would come out broken. we would talk like we know a thing about the complexity of programming and comment on "how do they keep breaking the game on every update". the reality is its was a 2 fold problem, 1 fomo time limited rushed content, having a 2 week turn around time on new features that were only active for 2 weeks, it was never meant to be permanent content, they wanted to create tavern tales we could tell our friends in the future of days long gone... neat concept but when your game lacked content kinda flawed. and then their internal testing methods are a bit flawed. i think they test how they intend for things to work, is it functional? did it do what we wanted? can you hand a piece of fruit to another player? yes.... do we need to test doing this in water not just on land? nah... who would do that... bug achieved lol. what a weird bug that was. harpoons on ships. its meant to grab loot and players. it grabs loot and players. cool working as intended... can we use the harpoon to pull our ship all the way to the top of galleons grave? who would do that? we dont need to test such things... so guess what the players did? lol though i would argue stuff like that was just purely fun. i wouldnt have removed that. however with the addition of hourglass keeping that would have been bad. but that was years away. i think our comments on their struggle to release bug free updates was also the whole point of insiders nda. they didnt want people making fun of the bugs and developer textures and decisions being made behind closed doors. while the happens even in other games without ndas those comments are easy to ignore out of peoples lack of understanding that development is a buggy process. though i also suspect the nda was also to hide how a lot of bugs making it to the live version of the game had been reported on a lot on the insiders forums. showing that even a smaller subset of players on a slower moving forum were being ignored on issues actually important to the upcoming content releases. if they cant even read and respond to the people they have bug testing their game you can be certain they dont read the suggestion forums at all.

though i heard another developer of a small company doing a seasonal "games as a service" model that was massively successful with millions of players. he said that millions could quit. as long as they kept putting out stuff that kept even 30,000 of the whales around. those people who bought every cosmetic etc. they were enough to keep the game profitable enough to pay all the employees and keep the new content coming. so the reality is the player base can drop very low and become a small niche/dedicated audience and still be successful. so i imagine games like this or as much as people mocked world of warcraft for being a dead game. im sure they had a number where "if player count drops bellow 1 million then go free2play" blizzard has been double dipping on their audience for a while with the cash shop on top of making people pay a monthly fee to even be able to play. seems like rare is trying to do that with their upcoming private servers but without the ability to progress that subscription model would only appeal to streamers. and the most dedicated sot streamers i followed have abandoned this game at this point because rare is even pushing them away.

im sure drew actually does hear a lot of the feedback though. and i imagine the reason they chose or he volunteered? to be the new public face of the game is that he has thicker skin? or brushes off/dismisses things more easily and is like "we made our decision, it is law"

i know they have a community manager who is more likely to read stuff. and thats gotta be a stressful job. so much so that they even disabled feedback on steam altogether, though valid as most those comments were repetitive "bring back arena" and not really constructive the fact they want to hide anything but likes from public view is... odd. its like going to a companies google reviews and seeing 100% 5 stars... well thats odd. theres always going to be at least 1 angry customer. this seems sus. i think all platforms need to bring back the thumbs down button. youtube still has it shown because youtube looks are overall numbers. they dont care if you thumbs up or down a video. the fact you evoked the viewers emotions enough to trigger a + or a - is all that matters. its good content wether its generating negativity or positivity. its the same reason youtube does shadow banning vs blocking people from comments. a shadow ban on youtube means you can see your comment. so you feel vindicated that the content creator and other viewers can also see your comment. in reality only you can see your comment. you have ben banished to a void to talk to yourself. (you can check this by posting on a video, opening that video in a different browser with a different account or no login, or just private window and sort comments by new and see yours doesnt exist) so all that to say most of the steam sot community is probably considered the most toxic and thumbs down most postings. everything looks super positive because all that is allowed is positive thumbs up!

rambling a lot so no one will read. but basically i think the community manager might have too much on their plate and be too connected to the coworkers and company to view things objectively. it would be really cool if some of the dev team, the community manager and some of the more well spoken and rational streamers could have a little fireside chat kinda thing where they can have an honest back and forth with some questions about the choices, why feedback seems mostly ignored, get some real and honest and good arguments as to why some things are happening and others arent. [mod removed] in 2024 they were boasting over 40 million life time players (prior to playstation launch) so lets be generous 45 million life time players. if we look at last seasons most completed achivement, and this seasons most completed achivement. last season had 940,500 active players (impressive for a game this old), this season had about half that at 459,000 players (even thas impressive honestly). this is based off xbox achievements for "smuggler at sea" which was finding one of the new smuggler tomes on islands, the most completed of last season, and Vanquish of the eternal, defeating 1 eternal guard which has been the main objective for 2 acts of this season. according to chatgpt xbox achievement numbers are a total from all platforms as in order to play sot you need a linked account so xbox achievement count is the true completion % you wouldnt need to add steam, playstation %s to the xbox %s. so assuming thats acurate and considering i padded the lifetime players by a generous 5 million i think that might account for the players who avoid the pve portions of updates and purely pvp.

i tried and failed to tldr that... so tldrdr
have some devs and level header streamers do a stream together alongside the community manager. have some honest back and forth about the development issues so far, where we are going, why player feeback is almost universally ignored, try to come up with a way to allow players feedback to have more visability on the dev side. we all have our opinions and they disagree but we are clearly passionate about the game or we wouldnt be wasting so much of our time posting here. we want to love you, we want to keep loving your game. stop pushing us away. "youre tearing me apart, lisa!!!"

What even is this post about anymore guys?

@bellcurve9279 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

Semantics at this point. I'm trying to be more distinct about who I am referring to. It takes a very specific flavor of player to get bored of the amount of content in SoT, since, if you actually take a step back, there is an overwhelming amount of content. The trouble is that playing SoT is a bit like going to the same All-You-Can-Eat Buffet every day, quite quickly you tire of all 200 dishes.

So, slowing the pace at which players can complete events and making the voyaging more rewarding, even in loss, would have a paradoxical effect. Give players a course dinner, not a buffet and much of the content remains fresh. Players will naturally compete for rare content without the need for "Forcing" like map markers and giant uggo clouds.

The buffet vs multi-course meal is relatable.

Think about a GH or OOS voyage back before Season 11. You never knew if you were going to get a single map single chapter voyage, or a multi-map multi-chapter voyage. Often times your voyage would take you all over the map, sometimes covering multiple regions. You had to navigate, plan a route, and most importantly keep your eyes on the horizon and change plans as the horizon changed. You were adventuring, creating your own mini-story, often uncovering side-quests along the way.

Now, it's just "here do this one thing at one island as fast as you can, get that completion dopamine hit, rinse and repeat. Oh and you don't even have to sail there anymore." There's no more encouragement of adventure. There's no more nudging you to create your own story.
_

Setting aside our speculation, I went back and took a trip down memory lane. Reading through the old Developer Update thread for the diving content and voyage rework content is a sad trip.

Rare stated that the goal was to: provide rich short session experiences, give players more control, and to make sea of thieves more approachable [for new players].

So many people called out the negative impact diving and shortened voyages would have on the SoT experience. There were also plenty of others that said it would be great for the game.

Quoting myself here:

Hopefully it doesn't remove anything from those that prefer the current play loop.

Boy, did I have no idea how much it would remove.

Another notable one:

...Voyages need a rework, but not in a way that completely removes them AND sailing to an objective from the game. I might be a little premature, but I don’t see who this is made for. This won’t attract new players and it’ll take 40% of the game out for veterans.

Yowza. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it sure does feel weird when the hindsight was actually foresight.

PvErs need a PvE game mode

PvErs need to go play a pve game then. This will always be a pvpve game. Nothing half this way or that way.

Anyone who says otherwise or those who only do one over the other more. That is a choice but you’re restrictioning yourself.

@look-behind-you said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

If this turns into a PvP vs PvE Thread it won't be locked, folks will just sit on the naughty step.

I know you're just doin your job and stuff but that is not what is happening.

SweetSandMan is expressing who they feel is being over catered to and through this conversation him and I are trying to establish a dialogue on what specific aspect of the community it is.

If this turns into a PvP vs PvE Thread it won't be locked, folks will just sit on the naughty step.

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

I would argue that the grinders are the PvE crowd, they're just the absolute most extreme form of it (sure there's PvP grinders, but they literally have only one thing to grind in the whole game). Diluting the adventure experience down to a point where anyone can complete the core gameplay loop in under 15 minutes successfully 9/10 times or better was a PvE focused change. That's not debatable.

Semantics at this point. I'm trying to be more distinct about who I am referring to. It takes a very specific flavor of player to get bored of the amount of content in SoT, since, if you actually take a step back, there is an overwhelming amount of content. The trouble is that playing SoT is a bit like going to the same All-You-Can-Eat Buffet every day, quite quickly you tire of all 200 dishes.

So, slowing the pace at which players can complete events and making the voyaging more rewarding, even in loss, would have a paradoxical effect. Give players a course dinner, not a buffet and much of the content remains fresh. Players will naturally compete for rare content without the need for "Forcing" like map markers and giant uggo clouds.

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

Providing a full experience Safer Seas would have been not just listening to the PvE crowd, it would have been giving them exactly what they want and completely abandoning their vision for the game.

Sometimes, a dev's vision for a game is wrong. Notch's vision for Minecraft was to make up for decisions he didn't like with Wurm Online. Thankfully the rest of the Mojang team changed his mind.

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

The changes they made - including the addition of Safety Seas - was Rare bending to listening to the PvE crowd.

Again, in the most bare minimum, gritted teeth "okay fiiiiiine" way. I don't know how much time you spend in Discord, but the PvE swabs are food for the rest of us, and with our current ecosystem thats just not sustainable.

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

I think we would both agree that they largely failed the PvE crowd with their execution. Worse yet, the changes they made resulted in failures for the other crowds as well. We all lost, but there's no debating who they were listening to.

Either no one, 'the data', or simply the wrong people.

@bellcurve9279 said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

And who exactly do you think they were catering to when they were concocting those changes? For sure not the PvP crowd.
Definitely not the PvPvE crowd as they're by far the most true to the original design of the game. That leaves one crowd left...the PvE crowd.

Grinders. Not PvErs, but Grinders, and in the worst way possible. In a way that leaves no one happy and the people they were trying to target even more bored and unhappy because their expectations for a good haul are so fast and high now.

I would argue that the grinders are the PvE crowd, they're just the absolute most extreme form of it (sure there's PvP grinders, but they effectively have only one thing to grind in the whole game). Diluting the adventure experience down to a point where anyone can complete the core gameplay loop in under 15 minutes successfully 9/10 times or better was a PvE focused change. That's not debatable.

@sweetsandman said in Captain Missing D. Mark:

Now, one could argue that SOT in its current state is not really what the PvE crowd was asking for, but to say that Rare wasn't trying to cater to them is just turning a blind eye.

PvErs need a PvE game mode with reasonable rewards relative to reduced risk, not but not loaded inconvenience as punishment. PVErs would nver-to-rarely be interested in PvP or PvPvE unless you deeply incentivize them.

Providing a full experience Safer Seas would have been not just listening to the PvE crowd, it would have been giving them exactly what they want and completely abandoning their vision for the game.

The changes they made - including the addition of Safety Seas - was Rare bending to listening to the PvE crowd.

I think we would both agree that they largely failed the PvE crowd with their execution. Worse yet, the changes they made resulted in failures for the other crowds as well. We all lost, but there's no debating who they were listening to.

@BellCurve9279 REALLY can't believe it need saying...AGAIN....

Report them in a support ticket via Rare Player Support.