A way to show your ship has good intentions?

  • Is there a method of signaling to others that I'm not approaching to attack? Say, at a skull fort.

    I propose keeping the lanterns lit at night, maybe flash them on and off if you're approaching? In the daylight, since lanterns won't be useful, flash a reflection from your spyglass a bunch of times?

    In both cases, use game chat to announce your presence. Do not board the other vessel until they acknowledge you.

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  • @solemagician506 Matey, I've tried this so many times: flashing our lanterns, other ship did the same. Then broad sided us. Tried firing a crew mate onto the island to negotiate for us; he got a pistol between the eyes.

    Unfortunately the sea be filled with pirates, of the blood thirsty nature. I don't blame them, if I'm hungry and get a wiff of treasure, I am pirate too.

    It requires you to drop your guard in order for this social behaviour to occur, and time after time it's resulted in us getting sunk. Even with a white flag, pirates would raise it just to get an advantage over you when you drop guard.

    Again not saying that is bad, just pointing it out. With little penalty, people have no worries in risking open combat, so shoot on sight isn't a hard consideration to make. If they have treasure to lose, they'll likely shoot you down or flee rather than risk it.

    That being said, I'm still eager for cooperation, I'm just hugely sceptical based on experience thus far.

  • @solemagician506 good tips, I'm usually no longer hostile from the start and don't shoot unless see their guns are out or they shoot a cannon. Have had the luck of teaming up with 2 crews so far. I think the hostility is going to die down a bit as people realize that sometimes a sea fight can be more time consuming than getting the treasure yourself.

  • I trust no one anymore. Someone got on my ship and started singing, only to run off my ship with a skull. There is no cooperation at all, and I have no trust for anyone. There needs to be a penalty for attacking ships with no loot. Match should start with the flag at the top of the ship white. If they sink someone else it should turn black signaling they are aggressive. But really there is no cooperation between other teams as long as one team can just steal everything. Outposts need to be actual safe zones. Or if you decide to be a camper the island should have cannons that auto fire if you are being a d**k. Otherwise I don’t see anyone ever getting along. Two crews need to actual like be allied or none of the teamwork stuff will ever work. Two ships can team up with the team splitting if one ship goes a certain distance away. The multiplayer aspect of the game at the moment is completely just troll anyone and take there stuff.

  • here comes my shameless plug:

    https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/41285/the-game-needs-a-bounty-board-daily-objectives

    this is a thread i made with a discussion including factions, the both promotes PvP but uses a faction based sail to warn others your intentions.

  • @favouritebroom

    Alternatively, the game needs to offer a way to offer, accept then enforce a truce. Imagine you could raise a flag of parley, and if another player reciprocates, the game enforces neutrality between you for a period of time, allowing you to safely co-operate, or search an island without fear of attack (from them, at least).

  • @macdoland Yea, I understand that no matter what gets "agreed upon" by the community there will be those willing to take advantage of it. S**t, my crew called a truce and opened fire a few minutes later after the vault opened. I'm...not proud of it. If we didn't, and both crews parted amicably, we would have all gotten a larger payout. We probably got 4k over a two hour engagement, and we ended up with more than they.

    After that, we all had a good long look at ourselves lol.

    Maybe people need to realize it themselves, but I'd like there to be a way to signal to those that already have. I'll be flashing lights with my mic channel open until a better solution is presented.

  • Aye the truth be said

    I'm torn with it, on one hand I like the threat and the potential back stabbery scenarios that can play out. I wouldn't want them to water it down with safe zones etc.

    But on the other hand, there is no real incentive to cooperate outside of skeleton forts.

    The mechanics don't support it.

    I engaged on a galleon who was chasing a sloop, as a sort of mercy aid, and the sloop started firing on us as well.

    Trust no one, but open to be proven wrong.

  • @solemagician506 I think it would be good, if the small white flag on the top of the ship could be changed to black to indicate you attend to attack, and white to say you are friendly.

    of cause I would use this as a trap :-S though lol

  • There just has to be a actual truce formed like the above guy said. No one trusts one another. This game is like anxiety simulator when another ship shows up. Besides that it is just who can one shot with the blunderbuss first.

  • A couple of days ago, I was sailing around a fort where two galeons where fighting, waiting for one of them to sink so I could get in the fight. While I was doing so, a sloop was doing the same as me, so I slowly went to them. And at the same time we both asked if they wanted to make an alliance.

    So we did, and we managed to sink both galeons. After that, we went on the island trying to finish the Fortress, but a galeon kept coming, we sunk it again but one of them managed to get to the island when the Captain died. We were the one sinking the galeon with my friend, and when we got back to the island, they said the ennemy that came on the island might have stole the key. Since they couldn't find it anymore.
    So I want back where we sunk them, search around and couldn't find anything, same on the island itself. So for a moment I thought they had the key and were hiding it. But after looking for it, I found it in the most obvious spot, the tower, right in the middle.

    When I told them they laughed because they didn't even look here since it was really obvious. Then we opened the vault and made two piles for each crew, trying to share as equally as possible. And we went back to an outpost together to sell the goods.

    Just wanted to share my story. In these kind of games, most people are aggressive because they don't want to lose their stuff. Because they probably trusted someone before and it ended up badly. So yeah, there is not much to do about that.

  • Sad but true....I was approached by a ship yesterday and I let them get close to me since they were always flashing their lantern and i got no loot so nothing to loose...well....upon fire range they started immediatly but thankfully their aiming was horrible so I was able to escape for 30 mins all around the map until I saw another sloop. I thought that we could together finish the other ship that was following me....but no that second sloop started firing as well immediatly and it did not care what symbols I used to signal my peacefull intensions.
    Got away since I was too fast and these 2 actually fought each other :/
    Then they started camping the Outpost but I did not care since I had to log off and wanted to finish my merchant quest. So I went full "yolo" and even got the quest done since they thought I had chests not chicken XD
    one guy was waiting for me trying to kill me...couldn't do it and the other guy fired upon my ship...I got on their ship and killed the dude and rammed their ship into the Outpost....
    sad but true there is NO think before you kill....and many people do not realize this is not pirate acting! If pirates were to immediatly attack each other they would not have survived that long and got themselves a name :D :P I mean no offense if a ship actually approached me and we would argue how we can sail off peacefully and with a little threatening...that would be AWESOME!!!! :D

  • The thing with the fort is. You don't really need more than one crew to clear the fort.. Don't expect a galleon to be friendly. Split the loot of around 13k makes it almost a waste of time. When me and my crew are parked at a fort we don't want to share but we are not hiding our intentions. If a ship comes close it gets a warning shot if it doesn't turn away its all hands on deck.

  • @derklotz2000 Agreed, but sometimes it's nice to think that cooperation could occur to avoid the inevitable 2 hour war of attrition that currently occurs with the respawn mechanics.

    But you are correct, in order to promote cooperation the event should be barely manageable by a single crew. Otherwise there is no other reason to cooperate if you really don't care about fighting for as long as it takes.

  • Simple solution:

    You get free flags to swap between at ports. The flags like the sails represent the different guilds currently in game, and two new flags are introduced.

    1. The Jolly Roger
      With this flag you engage every ship on the ocean, just like today. Only ship you cant engage is the ones with a newbie flag
    2. The Newbie Flag
      This flag Can be used the first 24 hours after Pirate creation. With this flag noone Can engage you.
    3. The guild flags
      Those flags all do the same. They remove your ability to attack any ships but the Ones with a Pirate flag.

    Game mechanic works by identifiyng crewmembers and thier current flag. Ones ‘flagged’ any attack be it with cannons, weapons and/or ramming is counted as zero damage unless the attack comes from a crew flagged as Pirate or is against a crew flagged as Pirate.

    So you could still shoot or ram anything, it just wouldnt do any dmg unless someone is flagged as Pirate.

  • Maybe a good way is to be able to equip black or white sails. If your white sails are used, there is no possibility to make the first shots at other boats. If you get attacked, the cannons become functional.

    Black sails go without saying.

    On the other hand, we usually sail with all lights dimmed. Few days ago we snuck up next to a galleon at a skeleton fort. Since we trust no one for the reasons mentioned in this topic, we silently boarded their ship, stole all their cannonballs including the ones loaded in the cannons so they would have no chance if they would chose to engage us. They chose to engage us so we raised their anchor, lowered the sails, damaged the hull and let the ship sail off alone. Then we went on and killed their crew.

    Just to illustrate it's not easy to show others if you are friendly or not.

  • Wave at the enemy ship with the emotes

  • I second this, as someone who does skull forts often it's pretty safe to say that anyone approaching is probably there to sink your ship and take the loot for themselves. Yesterday me and my buddy were doing a fort and we were approached by four sloops, we shot heavily at all of them, two of them were indeed here for that purpose. The first of the latter two however after shooting one of them off his ship came to the water beside our ship like "Woah woah! We just want to help, if you don't need help we'll go away." I told him we were almost done and didn't need help and they did go away. The second came just as we killed the captain of the fort and again I shot him off his ship and he came in range to ask if we'd finished it and that if we hadn't wanted him there we could've told him to go away rather than sinking his ship. I felt kinda bad in both cases (sorry if you were those people) but if you do forts regularly you'll quickly learn that 9/10 ships that come up to you don't mean well and it's rarely worth the risk.

    Until there is a signal or something you can do that will tell another ship you mean well know that if you come up to me at a fort you're going to get shot at, let me know over voice or text chat that you're not here to try grab the loot for yourself and I won't sink you. Probably won't share the loot if we're mostly finished but you can leave with your ship relatively intact or stick around as long as you don't try anything. If I see the flashing lights I'll at least let you approach, in a game where it's mostly kill on sight it's a breath of fresh air to have friendly encounters.

  • in searching for "flags" i found there are a few others that have posted similar threads including myself. SHENRONLP, @treblucfayle, @ELJAMMOS, @IMMORTALCOAG
    I absolutely think some version needs to be implemented.

  • @the-r***y-duck create a proximity from other ships where it cant be switched. maybe just out of canon range.

  • me and my crew tried going around looking for slops being attacked and tried to help... we would flash the latterns and attack the attacking boats... It was fun but then the little ship we tried to protect attacked us lol we had to sink them too

  • @brutalpandax My crew knows naval battles can definitely be time consuming and we don't care - it's wayy more fun that way. Psh AND we get the treasure. No quarter!

  • @solemagician506 I see they are adding flags in this update. Not sure the mechanics behind it yet but its kind of exciting thinking that possibly some of our ideas were used.

  • @immortalcoag said in A way to show your ship has good intentions?:

    @solemagician506 I see they are adding flags in this update. Not sure the mechanics behind it yet but its kind of exciting thinking that possibly some of our ideas were used.

    Its completely meaningless/pointless to try and use cosmetic items in this way. ITs a pirate game. You think I'm going to put up a flag that says hey I'm going to attack you? NO, I'm going to roll with the "I'm friendly" flag all day every day, then sink you anyway.
    Really ill just pick whatever flag I think looks cool regardless of what its intended meaning is, because it really wont mean jack

  • @shuoink I agree depending on what rare has in store with it. Until I play it, who knows. I only came up with my idea based on the complaints around social media. I am quite happy with the pvp as is. I may shoot 2nd most of the time. But its rare we lose a fight.

  • @solemagician506 If I am at a fort or am loaded down with treasure I don't care about a ships intentions. Ill shoot if they get close. If they leave that's fine I won't chase but I do not need assistance even if I am playing solo at a fort. As a 4 man crew me and my friends finish in 10 minutes. Solo, 20, 25ish depending on if I am having a good day. I can't see anyone rolling up on me at a fort as anything less than a threat.

  • Play "Good Intentions" through the new speaker trumpet.

  • "Man the cannons!" usually works

  • Way to revive a 2month old thread guys

  • @immortalcoag @SoleMagician506

    Flags! Discover a new way to signal your intentions to other crews. Forge new friendships, or find new foes…

    https://www.seaofthieves.com/the-hungering-deep

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