[Mega Thread] - Safe Zones
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@knightx13 thats really nice idea but without that "return to port" when you are on the edge. You could be followed by other ship and just dissapear in front of enemy what would make every battle against players who won't fight useless
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@jonatomm
What defines one: Time played.
Your tags tell me you don't have any, that is why tags are useful. -
@jetorchidee97 in game npc for reporting sounds awful. I find most people who report people in games are absolute psychos. Most grown ups just move on to a new lobby, turn off game chat, etc.
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@avecrux Not if it is treated like leaving the Dark Zone in The Division, where you cannot bring unrecovered caches out with you - chests and other bounty items could be forcibly dropped before you leave the area.
Another option would be to leave from an Outpost via the Shipwright.
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@jonatomm Personally, I think that making all outposts safe zones eliminates a lot of the tension in the game. It also gets rid of the inherent risk-reward dynamic. Currently, if you fill your ship up with chests, it takes longer to turn them all in and you're at risk of being attacked and losing your chests. At the same time, heading back to the outpost after finding a single chest takes a lot of time.
The tension between these two ideas is at the heart of the game. I get more and more nervous as more chests accumulate on the ship. But the next chest is always close by, which makes me want to find "just one more." This forces player choice and provides consequences for those choices.
Safe zones take that risk out of the game. Ship speed means that whoever is in front will get to a protected area first and then be free to take as long as they want to cash in chests. Crews can still fight if they run into each other on the seas or at other islands, but a large percentage of ship chases will end anticlimactically when one ship gets to a safe zone.
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@spent-d I don't mean report to xbox or microsoft, it's just in the instance. Like the brig if you prefer.
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@summer-scholar I see and can identify with your point. The only option I am, have been proposing is not being able to be killed. A group can still go aboard a ship and take chests off of it, thus "Pirating" the ship, but what is being done currently in game is abusive un-needed Player Killing. Endless PKing of players. If you read up further in the posts, you will see a more detailed post of mine describing some ideas I propose.
@wTurok you're, idk what to call them, I suppose discussion points you provide offer no real solutions to the griefing solution nor do they address reason why they can be exploited, outside of because you are more experienced than the rest of us so you know better than us and speak for all of us experienced players? Again, you dont speak for me, and I would encourage you to read my post further up where I also directed @Summer-Scholar as to possible solutions to stop griefing/camping/harrassment and PKing. Unless you can provide points which are tangible (other than I am me therefore I know best) and addressable, I consider our discussion, @wTurok, closed.
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For Me, No Safe Zone. The World has no safe zone. Only John Wick has the Continental Hotel. Pirate that he may be, and code of conduct they well may have, this is a game. You wanna camp and seal club noobs, go for it. If the game comes out with worthwhile goals, campaigns and voyages that will take preference over spawn camping and seal clubbing. Eventually Seal Clubbers get tired and hopefully the game has more to offer. The Beta is not the full game, map or resources, upgrades, who knows what else they have in mind.
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https://youtu.be/5vZiSBu4gzI?t=135 Starting some near 02:20
4v4 battle where enemy ganked us at outpost while we were selling(00:00-02:20) our chests. Good crew can defend themselves everywhere.
Just watch it and think about that you really need safezone or pay more attention to your surroundings
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@sprungnickel427 said in [Mega Thread] - Safe Zones:
For Me, No Safe Zone. The World has no safe zone.
The world also has a penalty if you're super aggro, try to kill, and fail.
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Safe zones seem like a truly terrible idea for this game. Outpost should not be safe zones at all. In this game your "Safe Zone" is to play smart and keep moving until you lose whoever is chasing you before anchoring up at an outpost. Heck there are even mechanics that can be abused so you never have to anchor at an outpost to turn in chests. Pirate games dont need safe zones. Period.
I do like the idea of a social hub. Like a central location that is "the place" to go to if you want to go socialize with other crews. I see absolutely no reason this needs to be a safe zone either though. What are the consequences of dying?? oh thats right, respawning shortly after. So go to the unsafe social hub and have some ales, and get in a bar brawl with another crew, die, and do it again, or make friends. No reason for a safe zone. If you bring a ship full of treasure to a thieves hangout you're an idiot and deserve to have it stolen.
Aside from the above which is my opinion on safe spaces. Part of the beauty of SoT is its simplicity. There are no contextual rules anywhere. You start playing around with safe spaces, and where they are, and I can take these chests from him but not the one hes carrying. All this stuff just clutters the game up and created artificial boundaries to actions. For those that fail to see it, the lack of these artificial boundaries is fundamentally why this game is so fun. Please do not change that. -
@kinggzanga said in [Mega Thread] - Safe Zones:
'Safe' Social Zone
This certain zone in question, would not allow the cashing in of chests or any other trade company missions. Nor would this island allow any chest within its safety radius, in order to stop people fleeing and camping with das loot. This island would strictly be a safe place for socialising and games. Maybe a great place to buy better cosmetics and a place to trade with other players. Poker to play and bet against other pirates, put your gold on the line in other mini games against players such as blackjack or some creative twists on mini PvP games. Just some island or place in which pirates can just kick it back and relax rather than worry if there ship on port is receiving plentiful of cannonballs to the hull.Personally I feel like the ideal way to implement something like this, would be to add an island that players can travel to in order to socialise. Our very own pirates paradise, a vibrant Tortuga where rival crews can drink grog and new friends can be found. If a player was being griefed, this could be an escape or refuge from said people perhaps. Seek help in the social hub port town. The other suggestion was making it into an instance, which I can see working. However I feel like that takes away from the romance it could bring. A well lit port city after a long and successful voyage to travel to in order to spend your gold with more exotic cosmetics and purchasables being here etc. Fellow crews docking in the port, painting their vessels with expensive paint. The potential is huge.
Love this idea
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I don't think that having a few, some or all outposts be non-conflict zones diminishes anyone's gameplay. In a typical pirate environment there are towns and cities. These towns and cities usually have some sort of law enforcement present to keep the peace. To this point SoT doesn't have an NPC gendarmerie to fulfill this function, which I think is fine, because in truth what we are talking about here is a very small portion of the game and other mechanics should be taking precedence.
And that is the key word here, game. This is a game, it is supposed to be fun. Fun and challenging and exciting and all the other things that have brought us here to it. Of course what players consider to be fun varies. But because a solo player in a sloop is logically and practically at a significant disadvantage when facing a galleon crew on the water, and perhaps even more so disadvantaged when in town at an outpost; what is so wrong with creating a place where that solo player can perhaps meet and make new friends to sail and adventure with, or maybe be able to just get better prepared to enter the lopsided battle to come?
If a group of players' enjoyment is diminished by not being able to gank other players while they try on new clothes at the vendor, or wait for friends to get logged in, or simply want to chat with someone they just met, and the payoff for a few's diminished enjoyment is that more players have fun and meet and make more friends to play with, then I think that is an excellent game design compromise.
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i loved the idea of having some kind of starting isle for solo and beginners where you cant attack each other (i am not talking about outposts they are fine as they are in my opinion).
On that you could include some gambling games like black jack and or other things to play with other people in this shared world. maybe you can work out a place like that would be actually fine for me tho. But please dont bring safezones to all outposts that wont fix anything these playes would just circle around that zone then and wait for you to sink you there :D -
Put in safe zones and the people saying they need them will never leave because the safe zone is the new place to camp , then the safe zone crowd needs a bigger ssfe zone.
Its a vicious circle that never ends.
If its about protecting chest there needs to be a better way. Anything from locking chests at a certain spot on map to a invulnerability cooldown that last just long enough to get from boat to vendor.
Anything is better than safe spaces. -
@MisterDoomed I encourage you to read my post further up in the thread (the long one), I addressed your concerns regarding player camping inside the safe zone and outside the safe zone, and possible fixes.
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@misterdoomed said in [Mega Thread] - Safe Zones:
Put in safe zones and the people saying they need them will never leave because the safe zone is the new place to camp , then the safe zone crowd needs a bigger ssfe zone.
Its a vicious circle that never ends.
If its about protecting chest there needs to be a better way. Anything from locking chests at a certain spot on map to a invulnerability cooldown that last just long enough to get from boat to vendor.
Anything is better than safe spaces.WHAT? just because you u have a safe area does not mean people eluld not play the game? do people i division just stay in safe houses? no! it just gives you a place to sort your charector misdions etc without some kids trying to kill you. this is a GAME it should be fun for ALL not just the gank squads thats post there garbage all over fotums trying to ensure devs dont make them have to play the game instead of just bully less expirianced crews.
tbh unless they annlunce safe outposts or something similar i will be cancelling my preorder. not that i care i can look after myself but my kids wanna play and as it is in the beta all that happens is they finally get treasure and it gets stollen by a group of bad mouthed idiots. fair play if it wasnt while handing in every time. -
Would safe outposts be out of place, perhaps. Is loading into the game to a mermaid out of place, definately.
I like the idea of a main port, a Tortuga den of thieves where we all hand in our weapons, form crews, play our tavern games and use it as a loading area to the outposts we have now. Also like the idea of quick matching where it takes you straight to the outposts bypassing the port. Would this port be in the physical world you can travel to & from or a virtual tavern as it were?
What of the taverns on outposts, would they become redundant? They may do if you just get killed while all you want to do is drink and play tunes, you would just teleport to the main hub and play there. It would be nice to enjoy each outpost's unique charms and play tavern minigames there but it would have to lock out all combat.
The same applies to being killed while in merchant menus. It would be nice to look at your leisure but I guess you've got to be constantly on the lookout, in-select-out. So maybe just the tavern as a no weapon zone or even extend out to merchant menus.It would be nice if outposts were more of a hive of activity. It feels natural that they would be policed by npc's and have manned cannons at the port to protect the civilians of the outpost and the port waters. Hand in your weapons at the port and go about you business in peace. Sail a few yards out of port waters and you can be a target. It would add a little extra to the experience and tactics to the attacking party. Close ship combat set to shooting hand guns, hand to hand and stealing off the ship could be still possible.
Just a thought, it could work but all depends on whether outposts will be expanded and allow you to spend more time there and take it all in or whether player numbers will increase and combat just becomes a race over beach or jetty.
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OK, after sinking some hours into this closed beta, I think that there definitely should be safe zones. I don't know if this closed beta map is the whole map, but if it is there is simply not enough outposts out there to prevent toxic players from camping the quest givers. "Let pirates be pirates", sure out on the open sea, but in reality outposts in pirate era were heavily guarded, and nobody waited in front of trading company doors to kill you and take your loot. If you leave outposts to be free for all, the map should be approx. 15 times bigger than this in order for 100 players (I read somewhere that this would be server max.) to have fun, and not to spend hours of treasure hunting just to be robbed blind 5 meters from quest giver. If this is the true map and there are no safe zones, you will lose half of the interested players simply because they don't see anything fun in camping. Just look GTA5 for example, there are thousands of posts how to "cheat" server in order to be alone on it. People are downloading netlimiters just to be alone. Why? there is no fun when somebody kill you with guided missile while you're driving a slow van required by mission. So, at very least, some outpost should have safe zone around them, OR the map itself needs to be a lot bigger than this.
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I definitely think that there needs to be safe zones. I’m already almost too frustrated to play at all. As a solo player I cant bail water out of my ship and shoot an entire other crew AND shoot my cannons. All while trying to dock just to I can turn in my booty. On the open seas, fine. Best me at sailing as I race towards a safe zone and you can have my loot. But give me a break devs! This is online gamers. No one is following a pirate code. I can’t even spawn without ( at an outpost) without my ship being scuttled by filthy bilge rats. At the risk of sounding childish it simply isn’t fair to smaller crews.
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My four penneth. Don't change the current Outpost design.........
But do give players an entrance and exit lobby, which by definition is a Safe Area.A real Pirates haven with Bars, Casino, Tattoo parlour, Bath house, Clothes and Gear Shops all being places you can spend your loot from current or previous voyages.
You could even have a hell fire temperance Preacher who will try to convince you to change your drunken ways, a Surgeon who will fit a hook/peg leg/glass eye, a Governors mansion where you can dance with the handsome Son/pretty Daughter in all your finery, and dare I mention the Bordello for those who want to (rest) having been at sea for far too long.The main purpose of this (Port/Town) area is a place to chill out and swap stories with people you sailed with/ battled against before you leave the game or a place to find a crew and start your next adventure.
How you get round the fact you could have fifty + Pirates all on voice chat in a limited area is a problem Rare would have to solve.
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I'm a mostly PvE player, but this game is supposed to be PvP. I like the idea of having a pre-game area with message boards and grog drinking to find a crew and do quests together. I am concerned that having a safe zone would ruin some of the excitement. Maybe having something like other MMO's. PvP servers and PvE servers (not sure how your servers are) World of Warcraft is going to change how they do their PvP and PvE by turning it on and off in a major city. So maybe before you go into the game, you choose to PvP or not. idk, it is a pirate game.
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I'm going to start by saying, to those who are requesting no safe zones, to please stop typing for a moment, and consider what you're defending in your own opinion. Consider it from a brand new player's perspective, and from Rare's as well. At the end of the voyage, Rare has to make a profit... before any of us. So, lets really look at the options.
- Central Hub - An NPC Traders city, similar to Port Royale or other famous historic port where some pirates were accepted.
- Safe Zones - Starting area Outposts where new players logging in would be "Under the protection of the Bretheran."
- Bounty System - A in-game policing system designed to flag any pirate breaking the Pirate Code.
- PvP & PvE optional Servers - Pretty self explainitory.
I believe these are the four most common options brought up as alternative ideas. Each one has pro's to it, and each one only has one con. It defends, in one form or another scaliwags & single solo captains against being attacked and/or killed.
Now, normally this is where the Pro-PvP only supporters say things like "Just go to another port!" or "Rare said they would never do this so drop it!" or just the (no brains required) answer of "Get Gud!" A lot of these remarks didn't take any more thought than to parrot others who enjoy the No-Limits PvP idea. But now, I'm going to ask you to think of this from the perspective of a Brand new, Under 18, player who has Not done any research at all before they got this game.
That is going to be the market for a vast majority of people when it launches. There have been a lot of players across a lot of games who didn't know anything about it before they bought it. Or, someone got it for them as a gift. Or a friend recommended it via voice/text and said "Yeah, Try it You'll Love It!" The people walking through that random gaming center in some store are going to see the title, think "Oooo a can pretend to be Blackbeard!" and buy it without another thought. This, quite literally is the only reason I've picked up Pirate title games in the past. It stirred my imagination, and I wanted to enjoy that feeling more.
So now, the question is; if this is you: brand new, no research, etc., and you join into this game with the current policing (aka None) that's in the game, are you going to really enjoy being repeatedly killed while standing in the Outpost tavern? Or having your brand new ship blown out of the water because... "Hey! We wanted to make sure it was safe." (I mean, that last arguement alone doesn't make sense, but alright.) Will you enjoy some Griefer trolling you while you attempt to learn the controls, figure out how to switch to weapons that help, or looking in the shops or quest givers? Repeatedly attacked?
This Is what is happening, even if it's not to everyone, it is happening. And, though you may be fine with this, or even love it, your style of play is not Everyone's style of play. We're not asking you to stop playing your way, we're asking you to play that way in another area of the game world. Want to Trollolol people, catch them on the seas, various islands, or other Outposts.
But that first starting zone? That should be a safe haven to new players. They should be allowed to not have to look over their shoulder before getting that first taste of the game. Also they should have an NPC telling them things like, "Beyond these waters is the open sea, and all the storms that ride it. It's no safe place for a Pirate, but who ever said pirates wanted to be havin' safty now?" And so, for those first few quests, they can safely do what needs doin'. Learn the controls, climb aboard their first ship, learn how to pilot it, where the planks are, how to patch holes, etc. There is honestly a lot to learn, and it takes time. I'm an experienced player who has been following this game, and it still took me a full 20 minutes to really learn where everything was.
You cannot expect a new player to "Get Gud!" if they're under attack the moment they join the game. They can't "Go to another port!" ?! They Just got here!! anyhow. I digress. This game, as epic as it could be, with the current playable system it contains, is Not going to make Rare as much money as it could once the reviews hit.
They (Rare) might love the game, but they never tested it the way all of us have. Some of you completely agree with them, and thats fine, but that is not how everyone who would really love this game as much is going to think. Right now, after reading the countless arguements for and against this idea, the numbers still tell me that about 2/5ths' of us love the current game, about 2/5ths' of us want a few changes. And this is only taking into a account those that even read the forums (So roughly 15% of the community who would play.)
None of the ones who want safe zones are being PvE only minded, we're not 'carebears', we just want a bit of fairness to the new player.
On a Sub-note to this: There has to be a reporting system for foul language over mic, in text, etc. I didn't appreciate my 16yr old being called a N-Word, M-er F-er Over and Over again by a bunch of kids who chased him all over the seas before he escaped by skuttling his ship. He's slightly autistic, and doesn't even understand this level of mindset. It scared him! So Rare, if this is the behavior you support, I'll make sure to include this fact into my review when asked by places like IGN, or GamePro's questionaires. Just sayin'. And I highly doubt I'll be alone. Do something about this.. Before launch. Thanks.
Okay so, sorry for the book. I was going to include more about my thoughts on the above list, but I think this information had to get out more. Please, if you're going to Copy/Paste to quote, just use the prevalent lines you disagree with. (Makes it easier on other readers not having to be spammed by my book. lol) -
@cheatingpirate That's a weird mehanic with interesting ramifications.
Imagine being in the middle of a fight and dodging a blunderbuss shoot to the face by staying completely still and activating the afk mode with a macro then moving again to finish the job.
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Not a fan of adding safe zones, or rather I was not a fan. Still hesitant about it, but.... Once I got into the longer voyages, I started realizing, a small area, in the tavern or something, would be an ideal place to safely AFK for a bio-break or a quick smoke, take an incoming phone call, etc. I seriously doubt something like that would "ruin" the game.
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@kinggzanga Though you idea is fantastic, I'm tending to agree more with a few of the people here arguing for no safe zones. Here's why:
Like some people have said, I think it would be rather frustrating for people to just run away into an imaginary dome where nothing can touch you; along with the comment of zone camping.
I think the solution to this would be a community-driven pirate pact, where outposts are "safe zones". The ideas about PvP activities other than killing each other is brilliant, and I think every outpost should be outfitted with these features. If not every outpost, then a "central" outpost, or the largest one.
As of right now, my friend and I have a policy where we don't attack docked ships at outposts if they're visibly "perfectly" docked, just as your ship is perfectly docked when you spawn in. This policy extends to ships that are leaving outposts. These ships we leave alone. However, ships that aren't perfectly docked or are heading to outposts are free game. They might have loot or are unloading their loot, and we want that loot. So we'll go and take it, as pirates are known to do. I believe that this is a fair policy to hold. You have that fear that someone might catch you unloading or heading back to an outpost, but you don't have that fear when you're heading out with an empty hold.
However, I think that it should be up the players to decide which outpost is the biome's "safe zone" without invoking the hands of the devs to forcibly create a safe zone. This would preserve the essence of Sea of Thieves, while also bringing the community together to decide something themselves. Create a pirate code of our own, so to speak.