Cursed Canon balls....

  • Sorry for long post but these cursed cannonballs need to be addressed ,

    I seem to remember the devs saying something about cursed cannonballs being a rare find in sea of thieves. Obviously with a huge advantage like that rarity is essential to avoid totally breaking pvp ship combat. Why in the name of sanity then are cursed cannonballs common as bananas? There will be at least one on every single island you visit, and often there are even 3 or more on the same island, sometimes even in the same barrel, I had a friend find 7 on one island in three minutes... why would the developers say these would be rare, then make them extremely easy to find?

    The issues with an overabundance of cursed cannonballs are all fairly obvious. Even fighting AI skeleton ships the issue of getting locked into a dance emote or sleep emote was pretty bad (Getting hit with a jig ball then getting hit with another right as you come out of it). Now that players have access to an overly abundant source of these, skilled crews can essentially stock up on jig balls, and continuously fire them at an enemy ship, preventing any form of retaliation whatsoever. From the enemies perspective, they get hit by one cursed cannonball, and then they are dancing right through the fight until their boat is sunk.

    PvP ship combat has been devolved into a simple game of "Who can hit the other ship with a jig ball first" and once you get hit, you might as well scuttle ship, because if you're fighting a good crew you won't be able to play the game again until your boat is sunk, regardless of how skilled you might be. It's just not fun to play like this and takes all the intensity and action out of the PvP combat.

    When encountering a docked ship, you can literally 1:Fire an anchor ball to raise their anchor, and 2:Fire a sails ball to lower their sails, then their ship is literally sailing away into the distance. In the past the sound of a cannonball would cue you to return to your ship and begin repairs, but now your boat could be sailing away within seconds of hearing the first shot. Only solution would be keeping a cremate on the boat at all times, which just isn't fun for the person stuck there, and impossible for a solo player. The game has never been ideal for solo players but now they may as well scuttle ship upon getting engaged.

    I don't have any issue with using the cursed cannonballs to develop strategies that ensure your crews victory, it actually adds and interesting and dynamic element to the game, but when they are so common you can find 7 on one island, they stop being unique strategies and situations and turn into repetitive griefing. I've already been in a few encounters where I've been hit by jig ball after jig ball and been unable to play the game until our boat was sunk, and I've already been on ships where we do the same to other crews. Since the cursed balls are so common I would bet a huge percentage of PvP battles are just going to be games of "Who got hit first?" and being attacked while you are on an island is essentially now a death sentence.

    Cursed cannonballs need to be rare, and the ones that cause the enemy crew to dance/sleep need to be even MORE rare if not removed entirely. Anchor balls should only drop anchor on a sailing ship and should not raise anchor on a docked ship, same thing with the sail balls as this makes solo play nearly impossible when it was already difficult in the first place.

    In my opinion PvP is effectively ruined until these issues are fixed, which is a shame because PvP was the main reason I bought the game in the first place.

    P.S: Lots of people are comparing the cursed cannonballs to powder kegs, which is simply not an accurate comparison as powder kegs cannot be fired from a canon and need to be brought directly to the enemy ship to use. Also powder kegs, despite being fairly common, are still harder to find than the abundant cursed cannonballs (Which will spawn at outposts).

    Overall I love the PvP ship combat in this game and I hate to see poor design decisions turn it into a boring broken mess, hence why I wrote an entire damn essay on the subject haha.

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  • I'm sure this is just going to be for this event to ensure people can get the commendations. I agree they are way too abundant, but I have a feeling they will become way more rare after this Bilge Rat Adventure.

  • Cannonball spawn rates are most likely boosted for the Cursed Crews event. Like every other event, the rates will be reduced once its over.

    To answer the Keg comparison topic, its due to people arguing having a disadvantage. To clarify, topics on this forum have claimed that since " They have Cursed Cannons, and we don't" things aren't fair. They aren't arguing the mechanics, but someone having the same opportunities on getting them like everyone else.

    I would also have to disagree on the abundance of kegs. Cursed Cannons are random, but kegs ALWAYS spawn on forts. Its a difference of randomness compared to reliability. Kegs are far from difficult to find, we know exactly where to go to find them.

  • I agree, they should have expanded the cannon shot types and added sail damage etc, rather than have done cursed cannoballs especially ones like the dance or sleep one. The anchor sails and helm ones i would have been fine with but not until a lot more of the game was expanded first..

  • @nabberwar

    You're probably right on that, increasing spawn rates for the commendations makes sense, it just makes PvP super annoying for this week. I also agree people complaining that it's "Not fair" are just whining, everyone has an equal opportunity to get the cursed cannonballs and anybody can choose to stock up and abuse them. The difference I wanted to point out between them and powder kegs was that they are much easier to abuse as they can be fired from a canon while kegs need to be brought directly to the enemy ship which requires stealth and skill, powder kegs also cannot be spammed while the cursed cannonballs are easy to spam. As far as their rarity, my personal experience has been that they are almost as common as the other standard supplies in the game, I find at least one on every island I visit, maybe I've been lucky but friends I have who play have had the same experience. I have to disagree on kegs being more rare, yes you are guaranteed to find kegs at a fort but so far it seems I'm almost guaranteed to find cursed cannonballs on every single island I visit, it's been extremely rare for me to find an island that has no cursed cannonballs, almost every single island I've been to has had at least one, usually they have multiple.

  • I'm sure they're increased for this event, but once it's over it would be nice if their spawn rates were reduced a bit. If the ship effect ones were a bit more common (but less than they are now) and the crew effect ones were relatively rare it feels like that would help quite a bit. At least then players wouldn't be incapacitated indefinitely and naval combat might be kept more on the ship level unless you manage to get on the other crew's ship.

    I think it's a great idea for the anchor and rigging balls to be changed so the anchor didn't raise and rigging didn't drop if a ship is within a certain distance of a dock/island.

  • I just don't find the use of cursed cannonballs fun, regardless of the spawn rate. In my personal opinion, it just makes it feel like your launching turtle shells in Mario Kart instead of playing a pirate game. It made sense for the skellys to use them because the A.I needed an advantage over cunning human players. I was ok with this. It made going against skelly ships more challenging; but how does us having access to them make sense with the lore even? Didn't messing around with the cannon balls turn Salty and Wanda into skellys!?!?! How are we handling them so much with no repercussions?

    I agree with you, I wish they would have added sail damage. In a different post on the same subject I suggested a grape shot or scatter shot round. This would do more damage to players up close on top of the ship and would have the ability to shred an opponents sails forcing them to repair them in order to keep moving. I just think there were a lot more options that could have been explored before falling back on what essentially feel like power ups. These cursed cannon balls just feel kinda gimmicky and cheesy.

    Obviously there is a huge influx due to the Bilge Rat adventure that is taking place so things will change again. I enjoy the other new features, even the new barrel UI didnt bother me that much cause I play on PC and this set up was originally what I thought it was going to be when the game first came out. Im just hoping for more serious editions like ability to start fires on enemy ships, boarding ax that lets you remove enemy patched planks, scatter or grape shot cannon loads ect, Instead of "I hit you with the blue shell so your stuck"...... Maybe its just me but doesn't anyone else feel this way?

  • I agree with the "make it a even rare resource" some guys are posting. In my opinion, if you could carry only 1 cannonball with you (with no way to store them), it would make it somewhat more interesting. You can carry only one cannonball and only chance it for a different type, being able to pick a new one only after using the one you have and finding a cursed cannonball again.

  • So now you have to choose the cursed ball acordding to your strategy/luck to find them and every member of a crew can do only 1 "magic shoot" before needing to hit the land and look for another cursed cannonB.

  • @skullmanbeard Yeah... I was wondering - with all this exposure to cursed cannonballs - why we aren't all skellies (or skellie parrots) by now.

  • @emperorass they are NOT that bad in terms of pvp. you can survive almost as easily unless the other crew is totally garbage and fires sleep-after-sleep or jig-after-jig at you.

    the only time we have sunk was when a ship fired EIGHT sleep cannonballs at us in succession.

    it is no different to what happened with our sloop last night. we had a galleon attack, and we sank them three times. after we left (a good while) they came back while we were off ship... still failed to sink us and finally rammed and ALL FOUR of them boarded to keep us down.

    Then of course the trash-talk began, and "we sucked" while they were "kings" at PvP. We lost a single captain's chest, and a seafarer's chest because we had just turned in.

    Killing a player is not your score kids. If your galleon sank to a sloop 3 times, you lost...even if you sank it once...

  • I personally abhor the concept of the cursed cannon balls on the basis of anything that actually removes your ability to actually play the game is straight bull c**p. On top of that sleep and jig remove any possibility of any counter play. The others you can at least work around and be clever but having something that locks you into an animation isn't fun and it's cheap.

    Take Ana's sleep dart from overwatch for example which could do the same thing in mayhem mode. At one point it was so bad you could actually be disconnected from the game due to inactivity. It was quickly changed.

    Don't have things in game that completely null your capability to play and counter play in a game that's all about an even playing field.

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