Foreword: This idea is not meant to encourage griefing (ie: spawn killing or repeatedly assaulting the same ship over and over) so please do not jump in just shouting the idea down on that premise. Sea of Thieves is a PvPvE game and should and will always remain that way.
Notice: I’ve noticed that the details on how all this would work were pretty vague, so I’ve decided to completely rewrite the thread for the purpose of clarity.
As it is now, the game lacks any substantial reward for engaging in PvP. Not just from attacking other players, but also from defending yourself from other players.
I agree that one of the risks in engaging in PvP is that your target may not have treasure and you’re just wasting supplies by attacking them. I also agree that successfully warding off an attack and securing your loot is reward in and of itself, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting a little something to show for that excellent combat prowess you just displayed.
Remember, the entire mindset of this game’s progression is to make a name for yourself through titles and cosmetics to show off just what kind of pirate you are. With that concept in mind, I’d like to introduce…
Soul Tokens
Soul tokens would be a new currency implemented for participating in PvP. Acquiring soul tokens would be simple; Kill a pirate? Get a soul token. Once a player is killed however, there would be a 5 minute cooldown before that same player is worth another soul token. This cooldown can be eliminated by the affected player if they successfully damage another player.
The mindset behind this is: “A player who doesn’t fight back is not worth killing, but a player who retaliates desires the challenge.”
To further avoid spawn camping players for tokens or to prevent players from exploiting the system to farm tokens off each other all day, there would be a limit of 5 tokens you can receive from a single player in a 24 hour period.
PvP Faction Vendors
Players would be able to spend any soul tokens they acquire at the PvP Faction Vendor. He would function exactly the same as other factions, with reputation and ranks to earn that would unlock access to new cosmetics for clothing, ships, weapons and equipment. Specifically, items that would show everyone how much of a threat you are and whether they should run when they see you coming or rise to the challenge to try and take you down.
Players would also be able to take on PvP focused voyages in which they would be tasked to kill a certain number of players, sink a certain number of ships, or a combination of both. For example, you might be required to kill 3 players. These would have to be 3 unique player kills. Killing the same person 3 times will not work. The voyage would complete upon completing the objective and you would earn a number of soul tokens and reputation. As players raised their rank they would unlock more challenging quests (such as sinking multiple galleons within a certain number of in game days).
Reputation would also be earned in small part by just participating in PvP. When you kill a player and get a soul token, you will also receive an amount of reputation based on their faction rank in comparison to yours. So a Rank 5 killing a Rank 10 would earn more reputation for the kill than a Rank 10 killing a Rank 5. This would make attacking lower skilled players less rewarding, but attacking higher skilled players a worthwhile challenge.
Because of the new incentive for PvP however, the seas might start to get a little murdery. To help keep people from going overboard with the killing and the sinking, a notoriety system needs to be put in place.
Notoriety
The more pirates a player kills, the more their notoriety would increase. This notoriety would remain, after death and across sessions, until the player went a significant amount of in-game time not attacking anyone. At that point their notoriety would start falling gradually and eventually disappearing all together.
As players climb in notoriety they’ll be made higher and higher priorities for bounty hunters.
The Bounty Vendor
This would be a special vendor who specifically provides contracts for attacking notorious pirates. Unlike other voyage vendors, the Bounty Vendor would display a list of all the notorious players, sorted by their notoriety rank (Fiend, Terror, Scourge, etc…). The more notorious the pirate, the greater the reward. Players could sift through and pick a target based on how much of a challenge they wanted, but only one player could track another player at a time.
When a bounty contract is accepted the player would receive a wanted poster stating where the target was last seen (nearest island) with an image of the ship they are sailing (Sloop/Galleon and what sail design they have on). The player and their crew would then be merged into the same server as their target.
Once the players track down their target, kill them and sink their ship, they would be rewarded with a number of soul tokens and reputation based on the notoriety level of the target.
Benefits of this System
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I feel this would generate a more worthwhile interest in PvP and give people who don’t always enjoy the currently available quests a little something to spice things up.
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A reward is granted to both people who successfully attack another player and people who successfully defend themselves from other players. As it is now, successfully warding off enemy pirates just makes it so it took an extra 30 to 60 minutes to turn in that treasure you found.
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With the bounties, players would be able to seek out other players who are also interested in PvP while simultaneously acting as a sort of guardian for other players who stray away from the fights.
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Even people who don’t particularly like PvP would benefit from this. Since people are going to be attacked regardless, at the very least they can try and manage to get a kill and take something away from the scenario.
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This would effectively deter a large amount of spawn camping since in order to benefit from killing other players, people would have to give those players a fair chance to defend themselves.
Concerns
I understand people’s concerns about locking away content behind something and taking away player choice, but I really feel this doesn’t take away anything. If anything it adds a little more choice to the game and creates more venues for players to take their adventure on.
Each faction already locks content away behind their reputation grind. Yes, you can happen across treasures in the world and turn them in for reputation and gold. However, someone going hardcore into completing the Merchant Alliance voyages is going to rank up much quicker than someone just sort of dropping off random crates as they comes across them.
The same mentality can be applied to this PvP faction. You don’t need to be doing a PvP voyage to earn soul tokens and reputation with the faction, you’ll just earn them faster if you actively participate in the quests. Just like the difference between turning in a golden chicken to a random outpost and turning it in at an outpost that ordered it.
Not to mention it’s something that most players just sort of do every now and again regardless of your goals that day. Getting attacked just kind of happens sometimes and now people can actively gain from that. The community of this game is fairly helpful as well. If someone wants to do the PvP stuff, but isn’t particularly good at it, I’m certain there are people on this forum who would happily crew up with them and help them along.
Thank You to:
@VykarR - Increased cooldown time for soul tokens
@MoonMonster11 - Limited number of soul tokens per player per day
@AngryCoconut16 - Reputation gain from kills based on faction rank
