It's Like Rare Isn't Even Trying Anymore

::slow clap::

Bravo...nailed it!

@xcalypt0x

I don't want to give up on this game, but I refuse to play it until significant improvements are made. @RonFromBurbank and I have hundreds of hours of experience, and there is nothing that either of us could have done differently tonight to counter the environmental and skeleton related nonsense that we experienced tonight.

Quite honestly we were both (on some level) looking forward to exploring the new region, only to quickly discover that this new region essentially actively encourages players to spend as little time exploring as possible.

Again, this would be different if any of this stuff was counter-able, instead it's just the same old cheap nonsense in the base level game except stacked even more so that you can literally encounter situations where everything that could go wrong both with AI and environmental mechanics and the game just insta-kills you. Because "(mod edited)" for even trying to explore this region using anything short of a galleon. And quite honestly the only reason galleons are at an advantage is because this game's AI is so poor that it doesn't "understand" water line shots, therefore the majority of environmental and AI damage is just mid-deck, which again has nothing to do with skill.

Maybe this will give you a laugh, even though it may be sad at the same time because we all had the same enthusiasm or more as the main character in the video, for this game for so long.

click at your own risk if you love this game

Sometimes i wonder if we didnt offer so many more complex and downright good ideas than we see ingame during our time on this forum where this game would be.... it sadly feels like they are avoided out of spite or jealousy that they cant accomplish thinking of or designing any of them themselves, not that i could do the latter either, and the truth is probably just bad company policy and lax deadlines, such as how they split a small studio into smaller teams, all seem to have isolated offices and spend more time on PR and marketing than actually designing anything.

But apparently adding a bunch of empty islands with nothing new (except the rowboat that was suggested before the alpha and should have been made by launch, just like advancements for mermaids and the ferry, which were “first iterations” that never changed) into a game that already had a bunch of empty islands with no variety of gameplay is enough according to half of this forum, and if you say things like “whats the point of having new islands when there are no new enemies or harvestables or activity of any kind” (except like you said running around in circles and giggling like an idiot when a geyser hits you or the ground shakes) people will respond with posts like “the islands are the danger what dont you get?” And be dead serious about ignoring the main point of your post and defending a blank canvas as if it were a picasso.

This whole thing has become an exercise in futility for anybody who had any sort of hopes for this game based on the “vision” we were told was being created and that we were told we could have a hand in.

I so badly want to love this game and want it to be something i look forward to every update and have a great time, and im still grateful to have made friends like you and many others, but that is all thats getting most of us back into the game at this point.

@williamherschel the barrel update would likely have been something that would have been widely accepted and praised had they actually designed fully to the point of it feeling good to use instead of forcing it into the game unfinished because of the inclusion of arguably the worst addition to the game, cursed cannonballs, which could have been done in a much fairer way than randomly finding them and half of them are terrible stunlock nonsense that just plain isnt fun.

That said things like the helm ball or ballast ball or the sail ones or even the limp grog and venom arent as bad as i first imagined.

Edit: to not sound so negative, seaposts and more npc on islands for cargo runs are good ideas, cargo runs as they are designed im not so sure, we are still light years away from any real sort of economy or trading scenarios.

Again i want to love this game but the reality is that the negatives outweigh the positives by a large amount and pretty much have since launch.. or if im honest even before that but atleast then we had hope that some part of the original vision would be captured, im not as hopeful at this point..

@a-cranky-eskimo

The game needs serious UI/UX improvements. The latest design trend in multiplayer UI is the "free cursor", which perhaps wouldn't help the current barrel situation, but would certainly be a better way of managing and grouping cosmetics. The tedium of managing spreadsheet menus and endless tabs is something that feels seriously outdated, and is one of the many reasons why SoT continues to feel like a budget title and not a Microsoft first party exclusive.

I maintain that they are simply trying to do too much with barrels. It's just so janky from a design perspective that identical-looking barrels could have any number of different consumable item types (or none at all "empty").

The game should stick with the original simple format of grabbing using a single button, but figure out more ways to organically integrate these items into visually distinct containers within the world. There is literally no reason why this game needs a complex UI/UX to manage a system that was conceptually supposed to be simplistic, intuitive, and easy to learn.

@williamherschel yeah it dosnt make any sense at all that we have specific barrels on our ship for things when in the world that isnt the case, beyond the fact that scavenging for items in random barrels that are just sitting around everywhere isnt well thought out, and we also have random barrels on our ships that literally just get in the way and arent used.

Even just giving players a certain amount of gold per day if they are below a certain threshold and allowing resources to be purchased up to a point and removing this pointless part of the gameplay loop would make more sense, or earning resources through a variety of quest types, or having crafting of resources like planks and cannonballs be a thing, almost anything would be better than the way the game works now..

My favorite part so far is that the "story" wants you to find out what happened to the first crew to find the Forsaken Shores, so you have to hunt for skeletons on some islands... and then the geysers are erupting all over so you can't see anything.

I found one at least, and figure that there were other ones on two of the other big islands I was near but the volcanoes kept going off so I'd sit and wait them out. Then I approach the island and start getting hit with a cannon skeleton. I shot him 3 times with the EoR but I assume that the server was not registering my hits so I had to pull away and repair and then the volcano starts up again. Moved on to the next small islands to collect the doubloon commendations for those instead.

I agree on the UI problems. In a lot of cases, the UI doesn't respond to my key presses, or lags behind. The menus are all disjointed, and can have keys active on 3 separate sections of your keyboard - ESC to exit, Q/E to move one tab, Page Up/Down to move another tab. The mouse or arrow keys to move selection, however if your mouse happens to be over the wrong item when you open the barrel and hit F you'll run into problems.

Another issue is that the key action to pick up items is also the same one that will trigger the barrel UI even though one is a hold and the other is a press. This is most noticeable when swimming through a wreck and trying to grab a banana or plank, and your character stops to look into the barrel.

@personalc0ffee

Thanks for the PR spin. Always appreciated. Glad you're having fun with the title!

No Herschel they do not. They are busy developing them. Most developers do not play their own games. The fact you are even questioning this, is baffling. If a developer is too busy playing their game, that means they aren't developing it. That is what they have QA and play testers for.

Why is it that you feel the need to pick apart every little criticism that anyone has? Like it'd be one thing if you offered counter arguments, but you literally just defend everything in this game as if there is nothing wrong with this title. Do I think developers are playing the game non stop? No, certainly not. But to suggest that developers never play their own game is completely asinine. It took @RonFromBurbank and myself like an hour of playtime to discover how horrendously bad the new section of the game world is, and as he stated above, the biggest issue currently is the volcano projectiles.

You have had it explained to you multiple upon multiple, upon multiple times that this is not possible due to technical limitations. And that complicated AI like you keep asking for, will further hurt performance of the game and is not easy to implement.

You have no idea what you're talking about. One person in a thread many months ago who doesn't work at Rare and claimed to have game development experience told you that AI improvements are potentially hampered by technical limitations. You latched onto that post and took it as proof that the AI in this game is what it is and will never improve. This is by no means, a given. I've also said all along that Rare needs to dedicate more resources to performance improvements and base level mechanical improvements instead of adding more arbitrary content.

You are REQUIRED to park the boat out away from the island and use the row boat to get to the island.

You are either living in a fantasy of your own making about how this mechanic works, or you haven't spent any significant amount of time playing this update.

UI was built with scale in mind, Herschel. Not resource barrel hopping. Those days are beyond us. You can not have simple and minimalist UI design with depth of gameplay and scale, they are two opposites. To have one you must trade off the other.

This is just gobbledygook and you know it. Your deep/complex gameplay excuse is, just duct tape game design to accommodate this new consumable in the easiest possible way rather than developing new containers or mechanics that contribute to the overall game flow. Burying players in menus is so clearly antithetical to how this game was pitched on a conceptual level.

@ronfromburbank

I (or someone else) can go into more detail on other issues if you like, but one example that you chose to defend is the volcano eruptions and rowboats. Do you mean to tell me that Rare had a meeting where they decided players should find a randomly spawned rowboat, attach it to their ship, sail towards an island but stop at a range where its details are barely popping in, deploy the rowboat to shore with all (or most) of a crew, survive the hazards of the island (which, again, the skeletons who spawn within aggro range every 60 seconds, often with an explosive barrel, are not affected by), load the loot onto the rowboat, and then spend 60-90 seconds rowing it back to their ship? Which is parked out of even cannon range if their die on the island where they left their rowboat? All of this, of course, completely irrespective of other players interfering in the experience?

Thank you for your eloquence here, it's 1:14AM and I have to be at work at 8AM so I have no idea why I am still posting in this damn thread. I encourage everyone to simply ignore my previous post, and read yours instead.

@personalc0ffee said in It's Like Rare Isn't Even Trying Anymore:

@williamherschel said in It's Like Rare Isn't Even Trying Anymore:

After watching yet another Rare Weekly Stream where Joe Neate and company wander around aimlessly and laugh about things (like getting drunk and playing a handful of prerecorded songs) that have existed in the game since the alpha, I'm seriously starting to wonder if Rare even play tests their own game.

No Herschel they do not. They are busy developing them. Most developers do not play their own games. The fact you are even questioning this, is baffling. If a developer is too busy playing their game, that means they aren't developing it. That is what they have QA and play testers for.

Some next level reasoning right here. So this game is like one of those “really artistic” paintings of smudges and splatters and rare didnt even bother to look, signed it, sold it, and we poor negative nancies just dont get it? I see...

First of all, if Rare is serious about wanting players to explore islands they need to completely overhaul skeleton AI and spawning. I'm so tired of fighting off wave after wave of skeletons that endlessly kite towards your character and auto replenish health as you're going in for the final death swing.

You have had it explained to you multiple upon multiple, upon multiple times that this is not possible due to technical limitations. And that complicated AI like you keep asking for, will further hurt performance of the game and is not easy to implement.

Who are you joe neate?? Nobody that mattered has ever told us this “multiple times”, and if its true they should have.

Oh and I want to emphasize how stupid the falling volcano rocks are. Unlike skull fort towers, you can literally do nothing except wait for them to stop. You can be off doing a voyage on an island only to be essentially auto killed by a falling rock which both auto targets your character and the ship. If you're slooping good luck getting back to your ship in time get those repairs in especially if one of the auto killing falling rocks sends you to the ship of the damned. If you respawn on your ship and it is sunk, hope you enjoy your new spawn on the western side of the map. I suppose you can always go do dishes or something while you slowly chart your course back to the forsaken shores.

You are REQUIRED to park the boat out away from the island and use the row boat to get to the island.

Yes and based on the pvp design this is just plain a stupid idea.

I fixed the rest of your post for you, you dont have to thank me i know you appreciate it.

Oh and don't even get me started on the stupid new inventory management system. Perhaps it's marginally better now that you're able to "grab all", but it doesn't change the fact that it's significantly more cumbersome and honestly antithetical to design concepts around simplicity and non intrusive UI.

UI was built with scale in mind, Yet there arent any reasons besides rushing to add cursed cannonballs, to scale at this stage. You can have simple and minimalist UI design with depth of gameplay and scale, To have both is accomplished through creative problem solving.

Simple=Easy to understand meaning
Complication=Many variables without meaning
true depth=any number of variables with continued value
The more true depth something has, means that even if something is simplistic in nature, it has meaning and continued value, and can have many variables while remaining simple in design, such as simple controls and visually distinct containers rather than clunky UI.

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Rare needs to take classes in software development and programming. They need to understand the processes behind the things they create so they can understand why it truly sucks in its current state and why the games biggest fans and their greatest free assets and think tank, criticize so harshly.

They will very quickly see you can just slap things together if they work efficiently as a studio, and fixing control scheme imbalance is as simple as a toggle.

@lady-aijou

Totally fair. I thought I was walking the line without crossing it, but I appreciate the reminder and will be more aware of that going forward.

@boxcar-squidy and miss out on the commendations and exclusive cosmetics??! But who would take our criticisms seriously then? Oh wait.... at this point we are all basically just repeating ourselves over and over only for it to be drowned in a cacophony of ignorant praise, and occasional aggressive denial.

I dont want to live on this planet anymore.

Bing

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@lt-swag-johnson to be fair we dont know what they have planned for when they introduce cargo runs and then “week 4’s commendations” or whatever they said in the patch notes.

But i agree rather than going on an epic voyage today was a travel checklist with a few hidden skeletons. There was no reason to be there other than that list, to make us feel any thrill when trying to avoid eruptions etc.

The thing this game lacks across the board is incentive, meaning for players actions, and repercussions and rewards that are affecting gameplay. We just horde gold that we get from fetch quests to then buy meaningless cosmetics. These are supposed to play into the social aspect to give them meaning but then we see all sets are priced the same for each item and that goes out the window...

where are the extended respawn timers for pirates who attack merchant players and are killed but not sunk, bounties for sinking said ship that increase based on how many players they killed or ships they sunk or loot they stole, activities that allow players to create their own voyages through decision making rather than a-b fetch quests. Ai monsters that arent floating blobs that i can stop in their tracks by jumping into the water with or ones that actually have bodies or ai ships that dont move like they are on rollercoaster track...

@lt-swag-johnson apparently make friends in a pirate game to then fake drink and fake play music with while you stand around and giggle, and i guess the view.

Atleast they actually have that last one going for them.. everything else i said sounds like something an 8 year old might enjoy. If they are immature for 8.

Edit: oh, or go around and pvp regardless of enemy ships loot because that is the only thing left that is any fun. But they did everything they could to allow the fleets of cowardly pirates, who apparently flock to an open world pvp game to then avoid it, every opportunity to run away and turn things in on every other island, because every other island is an outpost that accepts all forma of loot, dont want to fight? Jump off and turn a chest in and take a mermaid! Cant handle losing? Sink your own ship from the menu! Create your own epic story of running away and making sure neither party has any fun! The gold dosnt matter anyways! You either cause grief by attack or cause grief by running away! Sea of Griefs for game of the year!

@lt-swag-johnson oh i know im being dramatic lol... have made a lot of friends due to this game and if it otherwise completely fails atleast they had that going. i just meant they want everyone to make friends with other crews, which can sometimes be fun in all honesty, but shouldnt be encouraged so much, it should be a real risk that you dont trust until you know the person. But yeah the rowboat and cargo runs are both things that should already have been in game a long time ago imo, and i would prefer a real form of cargo runs and trade routes that can change etc and only have certain locations that can do certain things or accept certain items, rather than all outposts being universal.

@lt-swag-johnson they could have had wild boars and larger snakes and larger predatory birds as dangerous reskins for the animal types that would still use the same cages, they could have reskinned a couple items like skulls and made the kraken and meg drop teetb that had to be collected to progressively be able to buy those 2 sets. There are a lot of things that you would think arent that hard to accomplish that they dont seem to even think about.