State of the Barrel 2.0 Address

  • Ahoy Mates!
    The older sea dogs among you probably remember when Rare changed the Barrel System from a single button press system to a menu system.
    Example Picture
    Picture is historically accurate

    The change was made for the Cursed Crews Bilge Rat Adventure some 3 months ago in September.

    The Cursed Crews Bilge Rat Adventure added a slew of new features, the most notable of which were the following:

    • Cursed Cannonballs
    • Reaper's Mark Flag
    • Inventory Quick Menu
    • Barrel 2.0

    The final addition (Barrel 2.0) caused quite the little stir indeed...
    Many players were very much disgruntled by the sudden/drastic change & had little difficulty in expressing their opinions on the matter.

    They brought up many valid points against the new Barrel UI, saying it was slow, clunky and destroyed the perfectly good old system.
    Some said the change ruined the game for them and they left.
    Others defended the new system, arguing that the system will allow Rare to add more items to the game in the future.

    The community's uproar at the Barrel 2.0 controversy escalated so high in fact that it prompted Rare to send out Design Director Mike Chapman to address the community's concerns.

    He explained to the community in his Thread that the changes were for the Game's future & that they intend to add more Food/Ammo types to find in Barrels some time down the road.

    He also promised improvements to Barrel 2.0 such as Take/Store All, and an empty tag on Barrels with no resources in them.
    These changes he promised were added to Barrel 2.0 and the system is objectively less clunky than the way it was on launch.

    His thread seemed to address some of the Community’s wows and things settled down bit.

    -End of History lesson


    And here we are in modern times long, after the changes were implemented.

    So here's my question:

    Do you still dislike Barrel 2.0 or do you like it now?

    My thoughts on the matter:
    I feel it's come along way from where it started thanks to all the improvements, and it has such potential for growth.
    Aslo I've gotten used to Barrel 2.0, so I don't miss the old system as much now.
    Bunusk


    Anyways mates, let me know your answers in the Comments!
    Until then see ya on the seas!
    alttext

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  • The implementation of the system was terrible. The Take/Leave all feature should really have been in there at launch, but it wasn't, and we all suffered for it.
    It was a pretty big blunder, but, Rare knows it, they sent in Chapman to address it, and we had a chance to learn more about game development, how and why they did this etc.

    And in the end, I believe the new system is much better. Once you get used to it, and with a little practice, it is far faster, and allows more options for gameplay. And of course, in the long run it leaves open so many more options for Rare to add new items with new functions we can use.

  • @sgt-palooggoo I like it just wish they would make a slight change.

    Before we had a button that would grab items and another button to store items.

    I wish they would implement that system again. Leave barrel 2.0 but when I open a barrel I should be able to press 1 button the just grab whatever is in the barrel or press another button that would just store whatever I have in my inventory.

    For PC its was

    F - To grab items
    R - To store items

  • I like Barrel 2.0.

    I still want the ability to take a single item out of a barrel by pressing the dedicated "take item"-button and not having to open the submenu to do so though.
    I miss the "on the fly"-grabbing while running around an outpost or island.
    If a barrel holds multiple items i don't even care what i'm grabbing, i'm fine with grabbing something at random, just let me grab stuff while i'm on the run.

  • At first it annoyed me but now im used to it and it works fine and without error now. Could still improve by not being able to open empty barrels i often accidently open empty barrels thats all

  • The barrels were good before, now they're great! How good is it now that barrels have multiple different items in them? Fantastic! Change for the better just requires some practice and many people just don't like change at all.

  • After the follow-up changes (take/store all and "empty" labels), and once my muscle memory and mental reflexes adjusted - the current barrel system is fine and does allow for greater things in the future. I still don't feel so great/comfortable opening up barrels in combat, but that's okay with me.

    I have only two complaints:
    As mentioned above, having two different keys/buttons to take or store items was fantastic and would tremendously improve the current system. Instead, they used the old "store" key/button to be the new "take ONE" command. That was disappointing and I still dislike the way that one aspect of this system is handled. I think this might be better handled on controller, but I find it clunky on keyboard and mouse, because every rare once and a while, for some reason, my inventory is highlighted, instead of the barrel window... and I mistakenly start storing my items, instead of picking up new ones. This CAN result in storing your resources into a quickly sinking barrel in the water... and you can witness all your personal store of cursed cannonballs disappear at the sea floor... (Theoretically, because I would never, ever, allow such a thing to happen... okay?? Yeah... okay... it did finally happen to me, lol).

    ALSO, I dislike how the game-world's sounds lower in volume whenever you open up a barrel (because it puts you in a window UI, and, for some reason, they've made it so that always lowers your game volume). I really dislike that and I think it removes the player just a touch too much from being within the game, during those moments.
    Listen to the ambient sounds of the tavern, lowering and raising, as you grab supplies from the barrels. Me no like!

    Other than those two things... yeah, the changes they made are fine. I never freaked out about them when they initially rolled out. I quietly gave them a chance... and found I disliked it, haha... but the follow-up changes improved it enough to be okay. Remove the two issues I've listed above, and add the banjo, and I'm perfectly happy, haha. ;)

  • @tundra-793 said in State of the Barrel 2.0 Address:

    The implementation of the system was terrible. The Take/Leave all feature should really have been in there at launch, but it wasn't, and we all suffered for it.
    It was a pretty big blunder, but, Rare knows it, they sent in Chapman to address it, and we had a chance to learn more about game development, how and why they did this etc.

    And in the end, I believe the new system is much better. Once you get used to it, and with a little practice, it is far faster, and allows more options for gameplay. And of course, in the long run it leaves open so many more options for Rare to add new items with new functions we can use.

    Aye, I should've mentioned in the original post that the system was implemented pretty poorly, and was quite buggy on launch.


    But yeah I agree that I like the new system far better than the old system.
    To be honest I never really liked the original system anyway.

  • There are still a couple things that need addressing:

    1. Get rid of the mouse over activation. Depending on where your mouse cursor last appeared it can often make you select the wrong side of the UI; if you're trying to take things from the barrel quickly, you'll end up dropping stuff into the barrel first instead. We have the Q/E keys for swapping sides of the barrel already - if the mouse needs to be able to select which side of the UI is activated, make it a click activation instead.

    2. Let our bound movement keys navigate the inventory in the barrel (along with all NPC dialogs). WASD (or whatever movement is bound to) should be able to move around items on the selected side of the barrel UI, with Q/E switching sides.

  • @sgt-palooggoo Barrels 2.0 on release was utter trash. As you have stated, they have made a few improvements since then and now the system is okay. I still have 1 MAJOR issue with it and 1 minor issue with it.

    Major issue:

    The way I use the new barrels (on PC) is I press 'F' on the barrel, and the immediately press 'E' if I want to take items or 'Q' if I want to put items. Then I mash 'F' like a madman if I am taking items to grab everything or simply press it once if I am storing items. This is because 'E' moves you to the barrel inventory and 'Q' moves you to your inventory. The problem is, sometimes, even though it moves me to the inventory I want (and I can see the entire inventory highlighted in green), for some reason it does not select any items in the inventory. So I'm sitting there mashing F and nothing is happening. In order to fix it I have to physically move my mouse to the item and click (which is slower). I have not identified a pattern to this yet. It seems completely random.

    Minor issue:

    In order to exit the barrel menu I have to press escape. Which means I have to remove my left hand from WASD and then put it back. Sometimes on Rare (hehe) occasions I put my hand back on the wrong keys. Really I just need to get better muscle memory to remember where to put my hand every time (I'm probably 95% accurate) but it would be nice if I could hit space with my thumb or right click with the mouse or something to close it.

    EDIT:

    I remembered one more qualm I have with it. The empty indicator is nice but I wish it would also make the 'Press F' or w/e text under the EMPTY text gray instead of white. That's how it used to be and when I see a barrel I read empty but it doesn't register with my brain before I enter the barrel because the text below is still white.

  • @d3adst1ck said in State of the Barrel 2.0 Address:

    There are still a couple things that need addressing:

    1. Get rid of the mouse over activation. Depending on where your mouse cursor last appeared it can often make you select the wrong side of the UI; if you're trying to take things from the barrel quickly, you'll end up dropping stuff into the barrel first instead. We have the Q/E keys for swapping sides of the barrel already - if the mouse needs to be able to select which side of the UI is activated, make it a click activation instead.

    2. Let our bound movement keys navigate the inventory in the barrel (along with all NPC dialogs). WASD (or whatever movement is bound to) should be able to move around items on the selected side of the barrel UI, with Q/E switching sides.

    These changes would make me a very happy person.

  • @xcalypt0x
    Hmmmmm, I've only ever played SoT on Xbox so I'm oblivious to any PC issues.
    The system is quite fluid now on Xbox but as you've mentioned: on PC it's still needs improvement.
    Hopefully @d3adst1ck's suggestions will be implemented to help out PC players some time.

  • @sgt-palooggoo Yeah his suggestions are really good but I'm not sure if they will fix the issue I'm talking about. I think there is a slight difference in what we are experiencing (but I could be wrong).

    It sounds like he is interacting with the barrel and pressing F to take items because it defaults to the barrel inventory. However, his mouse was previously on the left so it selects his inventory and deposits instead.

    When I interact with the barrel I deliberately press E even if I am withdrawing so that I know 100% the barrel inventory is selected. The inventory (either one because it happens when I press Q as well) will be highlighted green but I can't store or take anything. The F key does nothing, so it's not a matter of having the wrong inventory selected. I'll have to go test this again more thoroughly because maybe the F key is actually working and I'm just capped on that resource or something.

  • @Sgt-Palooggoo

    I am glad you posted this. I saw a post a few days ago from a returning player that asked the question of what the heck happened with the barrel inventory menu. The first reply explained what happened and everyone got use to it. I did not respond then because I wanted to give it some thought. My spouse and I rewatched some our recorded game play sessions comparing then and now in the last few days.

    Now that I have, I can firmly state it is still the worse communicated, most poorly designed change to come to the Sea of Thieves. Yes, we can still play the game, however it changed the simplistic, fluid style of gameplay that was so perfect to the unique and exciting gameplay Sea of Thieves offers. It was not even necessary at the time and still is not critical to have the updated version in place.

    It was to basically give us cursed cannonballs and maps in a barrel. Any pirate who knows what they are doing simply keeps all the cursed cannonballs in their personal inventory. All the extra maps just litter up our voyage menu. Some will say wait! It also puts bananas, planks, and cannonballs together. So what. There was never a problem collecting things hat required it all be placed in one barrel.

    The biggest issue is opening the new barrel inventory menu is like pressing a [PAUSE] button right in the middle of playing the game. It completely changed the look and feel of the game. Sea of Thieves gameplay at it's best was fast and fluid. The exciting, nail biting, and pulse raising moments of swords clashing, guns firing, and cannonballs raining down on your head and ship are now muted while covering up and graying out what use to be so smooth and seemless.

    What made Sea of Thieves truly standout as a shiny sandbox full of tools for us to play with was both how we chose to use those tools and the simple, yet intuitive way we used to moved through the world around us as we constantly interacted with it. Now it has a big menu that no longer fits and makes the world less exciting at all the wrong moments.

    There were three parts to a mega thread dedicated to the barrel change and countless loose posts that passionately spoke to the immersion in the moment breaking change. There were many ideas and suggestions proposed to bring back the great flow and feeling that was lost. Sadly it all has been ignored and archived.

    Take all and an empty indicator were good and necessary tweaks to the new inventory system. It should not have stopped there. The old system does not have to return entirely replacing, even though many players would want it to, the new barrel inventory menu system. A blend of the two would keep the new functionality and bring back the best feel of the old system.


    Proposed Enhancement to Barrel 2.0:

    Have each barrel have a Grab option. Approaching the barrel it shows the top/first slotted item. It would say Grab Bananas or Grab Planks depending on what is on top. Each tap of the Grab button pulls out one of that item. That item is now in your hand ready to use like before. It is a quick way to spot and grab what you need exactly when you need it. If possible, maybe the rest of the stored items could move up to quickly grab as well when the first slot is empty.

    Talk All is still an option. However, pressing and holding the Grab button opens the barrel menu to look deeper inside showing all the items stored in the barrel. No menu opening up over the entire screen when you do not want it to.

    On our ships we have dedicated banana and plank barrels. There should be no reason to open a menu to pull the only item out of those barrels right now. However, to keep the barrels the same, the same Grab option allows us to just "reach in" for a banana or planks. If we get more food and more wood types for planks, the top/first slot option will allow us to ready the particular item for a quick grab when needed.

    Storing items in a dedicated barrel should not prompt opening a barrel menu. If we can place only one item in a specific container, then we should be able to dump that item in that container quickly without the need to open a menu and select the only that can be stored.

    An alternative would be to have a mixture of dedicated barrels and combination barrels. Barrels marked such as bananas or cannonballs let's us grabs items from it the old way. Plain, unlabeled barrels open the new barrel menu.

    No matter the method used blending the old and new ways of interacting with containers, the sound level needs to remain the same. The screen wide menu that grays out what is behind it, needs to be replaced with two small character and inventory menus.


    There are other ideas out there. I hope Rare will revisit this and make the feedback everyone gave have value. Thanks for the opportunity you gave here to revisit this topic until then.

  • @x-crowheart-x
    No problem mate, I'm glad we can come back to this Topic.
    I aslo really enjoyed writing the history lesson part of this thread, maybe some returning players will see that and understand why the change was made.

  • @x-crowheart-x Excellent post and suggestions.

    @Sgt-Palooggoo Another problem that I thought of (they keep popping into my head as I think about it more) is that, along with getting a UI shoved in your face that muffles sound and breaks immersion, you are frozen in place. Before, in the middle of a firefight you could "dance" around the barrel while grabbing resource and making yourself a harder target to hit.

    This is a big reason why the major issue I talked about earlier is so bad. If I get that bug it takes me a second to realize that pressing F is doing nothing, and another second to move my mouse to get the item. Which results in me standing still for a good 2-3 seconds which gives enemies, be they pirates or skeletons, much more time to shoot/hit a stationary target.

  • @xcalypt0x
    Aye, not being able to move for a few slit second after looking into Barrel needs to be looked at.

  • It never bothered me when it was launched to be honest. I think I was one of the very few aha!

    But to be honest I haven’t thought about it at all, it took a couple of hours to get used to it but I think overall it’s a good change. Just purely for what they can do with it in the future.

  • @xcalypt0x said in State of the Barrel 2.0 Address:

    @sgt-palooggoo Yeah his suggestions are really good but I'm not sure if they will fix the issue I'm talking about. I think there is a slight difference in what we are experiencing (but I could be wrong).

    It sounds like he is interacting with the barrel and pressing F to take items because it defaults to the barrel inventory. However, his mouse was previously on the left so it selects his inventory and deposits instead.

    When I interact with the barrel I deliberately press E even if I am withdrawing so that I know 100% the barrel inventory is selected. The inventory (either one because it happens when I press Q as well) will be highlighted green but I can't store or take anything. The F key does nothing, so it's not a matter of having the wrong inventory selected. I'll have to go test this again more thoroughly because maybe the F key is actually working and I'm just capped on that resource or something.

    Yep, the problem is that the mouse hover makes the barrel UI inconsistent. Since the cursor is only active on menus that require it, and hidden in the background while you are playing, your interaction with the barrels is not predictable. If your mouse is on the right side of the screen when the barrel UI opens, then pressing F works fine and you grab the items. If the mouse is on the left side, then you are taking stuff out of your inventory and putting it into the barrel. If you try to force predictability by pressing E as soon as the UI opens, sometimes you end up in a state where you have confused the UI (likely because you pressed E before the UI loaded properly - this could also be related to which side your mouse is on when the UI opens) and even though the barrel inventory appears like its selected, pressing F won't do anything.

    If they remove the mouse hover and always have the barrel inventory side pre-selected, there won't be any problems. If you need to grab stuff from the barrel, you know 100% of the time that the correct side will be selected when the UI opens. You also know 100% that you can press Q to switch to your inventory if you want to put stuff into the barrel. It becomes muscle memory at that point and much closer to the original system in terms of speed.

  • @knifelife said in State of the Barrel 2.0 Address:

    It never bothered me when it was launched to be honest. I think I was one of the very few aha!

    You can count me in on that number too. About halfway through my play session I'd gotten used to it and kinda stopped even thinking about it.

    Until I got online and found people losing their freakin' minds over it. =P

    Heck, I kinda liked the fact that multiple items in the barrels increased how much I could stock my ship at whatever outpost I spawned in on.

    A slight digression; is "immersive" that right word? I mean, pop-up menus aren't terribly immersive, but neither is running by a barrel and teleporting four bananas out of it in under a second.

    Maybe I've got the wrong definition for "immersive" in my head, and if that's the case, please forgive me. Looking it up would require me to open a new tab in my browser and I'm a bit too lazy for that.

  • However I felt about it when it first came out, I don't mind it now at all - especially with the "take all" functionality. It's just second nature.

    My only issues with it concern the sheer amount of stuff you can carry, with potentially thousands of cannonballs in play. I would hope that future updates will deal with contents so there is a practical limit (rather than an impractical one) to how much you can store.

    Originally, the barrels were supposed to store 100 of anything. Wither it's planks, bananas or other foodstuffs, standard cannons and cursed cannons, all in, 100 total should be the limit. Just for balancing sake.

  • Barrels 2.0 are just okay. Agree with those above on changes that are needed.

    There is no sense in being able to hold 10 cannonballs of each type, but only five bananas and five planks. Why even use the cannonballs barrel when we can hold most of the cursed? I assume it will be the same with the food and planks.
    It makes the barrels pretty useless when we can hold more of each type. Our pockets will be full of 5 of each food type and 5 of each ship mending type as well as all the cursed cannonballs.

    This was brought up during the long debate but we need to limit what we can hold and allowed to mix and match as we like on the item types.
    There should be a limit of items held on person (20 items or so)regardless of what the items are. This way we can specialize on ships and are forced to make difficult decisions. This also forces us to use the barrels. If fighting from ships I would want to carry 15 cannonballs and 5 planks. If boarding ships, I would want 20 bananas. If i have a sailor with me who is already carrying 5 planks to patch, I could carry 20 cannonballs decreasing my run time back to the barrel to restock.

  • I love them. I think they work perfectly fine now that there is a few updates to them under the belt. I don't even miss barrels 1.0 and I especially do not miss on the fly grabbing as it makes combat much more balanced without it.

  • Tier 0 of the barrel system was great

    Tier 1 was terrible

    Tier 2 is better... but still lacks of what Tier 0 had.

    The whole system needs a rework.

  • I've gotten used to them enough that it's not as big of a deal as it was at launch. The only gripe I have as a PC player is I wish they would let me re-keybind the exit barrel from X, my controls are set up so that its closer to hit escape than x so I will miss press sometimes. I think it might currently be the only key you are not able to re-bind.

  • @xcalypt0x said in State of the Barrel 2.0 Address:

    Minor issue:

    In order to exit the barrel menu I have to press escape. Which means I have to remove my left hand from WASD and then put it back. Sometimes on Rare (hehe) occasions I put my hand back on the wrong keys. Really I just need to get better muscle memory to remember where to put my hand every time (I'm probably 95% accurate) but it would be nice if I could hit space with my thumb or right click with the mouse or something to close it.

    You may know this, but you can also use the X key to exit the barrel windows.
    I used to use ESC and it was causing me a few issues. I then realized I could use X. After a few sessions of forcing myself to remember to use X, it finally shifted into automatic mode for me and I'm much happier now.
    It works great for me, so I figured I'd mention it.

  • People will always question this barrel system if they're not able to move while looting the barrels.

    That's what most of us want back!

  • @dotcomrobots said in State of the Barrel 2.0 Address:

    People will always question this barrel system if they're not able to move while looting the barrels.

    That's what most of us want back!

    I always felt this made combat unbalanced when you can hop around barrels and banana spam and let's be real, that's why most people want it back. It swings way too in favor of PC users and being a PC user, I hope they never bring it back. It is not needed. With current barrel mechanics, you know everyone has to slow down at least the same minimum of time to get resources.

    I personally never liked the barrels 1.0 and I think it was a terrible implementation that shouldn't have made it passed Alpha. The barrel system we have in place should have been in place during the Open Beta and have had all upgrades by launch that way barrels 1.0 was never a thing to the generalized public and it was just a relic of testing.

  • @sgt-palooggoo I've always been ok with them really. It took a little getting used to, but muscle memory soon set in so getting in and out of barrels very quickly became easy.

    Since the store/take all was added, i'd say I can open/grab/leave a barrel at almost the same speed I could before barrels 2.0.

    I'm sure improvements can be made to them, but at this stage they are just the norm for me now.

  • @pdt-mindstream I did not know that! Thank you so much :D

  • @PersonalC0ffee

    Running around while looting was an art. It didn't felt hard to catch someone if you knew what you were doing.

    Xbox vs PC is kind of a dead topic, if you use it as an argument here, you can pretty much use it on everything... :/

    The pill would have been easier to swallow if Tier 0 Barrel system didn't made it on launch indeed.

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