Question for community members who want PVE only

Just started playing SoT a couple of days ago.

Sadly so far the PvP aspect of it has been somewhat ruining the PvE experience.

It's definitely fun at first encountering others, but so far we've not met a single friendly player.

Particularly when you're new it starts forcing you to play very conservatively and defensively.

Hopes of PvE antics and epic quests on the high seas are soon dashed by the harsh reality that when another player attacks you, they've likely nothing to loose and everything to gain. So they ARE going to attack you.

It's not that a PvP element is bad, but it hasn't felt balanced with a lot of other things. Take this example.

A crew and I of grogged up louts set off on the story missions, collected a handful of loot, fought a bunch of PvE battles and were generally having a great time.
Setting off from an island on the way back to port, we we're jumped by a Kracken which totaled the ship.

Most of us died, but one of the crew escaped in a rowboat with most of the treasure we had. They managed to escape the Kracken in the rowboat and made it to shore. Despite loosing the ship it was an amazingly tense and exciting experience. The rest of us scrambling to get a new ship headed back to the island for a rescue mission. This was amazingly exciting to play as we hand't realized something like that was possible, we had front row seats to some PvE free-roam wow factor.

Sadly a couple of other players had just seen all of it unfold, and subsequently swooped in on our stranded crew-mate. They did the expected piratical thing and shot him square in the face. Then made off with what for us was well over a couple of hours work.

This naturally left our comrade in a sour mood, he'd done most of the story mission working out, and found a lot of the treasure. His experience had been fantastic right up until then.

As we had been belting it back to the island, we weren't that far away and we're in sight of the players that had robbed us blind after the Kracken put us in such a vulnerable position.

We gave chase for a good 20 minutes, including them leading us past an active volcano. We got very close several times almost enough to go guns ablase, but again the luck of the sea was favoring the villainous. A few rock hits from the volcano, and stormy seas let them get far away again.

Not giving up we continued giving chase, finally catching up to them once again. Mere minutes from being in range, a final taunting was to be had. "This is unacceptable."

As funny as the whole story will be for us as well at a later date. That ending was absolutely gutting. Literally hours of sailing, searching, hauling, fighting, and putting a snake on the prow of the ship as a mascot. Undone by a couple of other random players with a pistol after the PvE element decided we didn't need our ship anymore.

Definitely a good story was to be had, it's just disappointing how even with the worst of luck, the only thing that actually ruined the experience was the PvP.

The kick in the teeth, and why I'm wondering about a PvE only mode. Is that after all that, the whole PvE experience was rendered fruitless and pointless by the PvP.

There is zero protection of investment in the PvE experience, and considering how relatively slow paced it is, that investment is often large for some quests.

The end result being we couldn't be bothered to fight on. The players that rinsed us now had nothing of value. (Seriously Rare an auto bounty for robbing other players or revenge system!), and while I'm sure they had a great time it left our crew with nothing to do but log out and accept a fairly brutal opportunistic rear end handing.

After that, I'm not sure it's worth even trying to continue because it could just as easily happen again and again. The more investment you put into a single game loop, the more the game starts to punish you for it.

The PvP game-loop is much swifter. Set sail, find the first target of opportunity, sink it or get sunk. Repeat. It's no where near as painful when you loose, and it requires minimal time investment.

Putting any time into PvE now even after just 2 days of play, feels like a waste.

You can loose everything so quickly and so brutally to other players that just gunned for the first sails they saw, that the experience takes a depressive tone rather than a tension building one. The payoff of cashing in a good PvE haul in no way compensates for loosing it all to chance. I'd liken it to high stakes gambling only it's even more obviously rigged against your favor, and this is something the predominantly PvP players aren't forced to deal with.

Random encounters with other players just aren't fun when you've been playing the PvE. It's instead stress inducing because you know the other players, and worse the game doesn't care that you just went through 90% of an epic experience and are all pumped up for a payoff.

It will happily allow others who've done nothing but wait for random chance to pull the rug out from under you at the 11th hour.

The sea be a harsh mistress, and she gives no care for your desire of a deeper experience. Eat cannon balls lowly PvE player.

TlDr; The core of the PvE experience is being undermined by the PvP one. A PvE player can loose hours of hard work to a PvP player who just does nothing but attack, re-spawn and attack again.

Things that could be done instead of a PvE only mode.

1. Lengthen the game loop for PvP, Start with less cannon balls, food and planks maybe. Give them something worth protecting, something to loose.
   Taking a PvE quest could automatically stock your ship, and then failing or ignoring the quest incurs a penalty. (That would be needed to stop PvP just taking and quitting quests to get around it.) This would level the playing field somewhat when encountering a player who's been doing PvE.

2. Give more structure to the PvP meta, contracts for sinking X amount of other ships, or stealing a certain amount of loot without being sunk yourself. (Privateers anybody?) This would also level the investment between the PvE and PvP gameplay, and PvP would actually have a serious challenging aspect to it, favoring players who take the time to get good at it rather than just shallow opportunistic aggression.

3. When any player looses a battle, don't rob them of all their investment. Let players take chests, plunder and pillage as they do, but when you re-spawn, have a portion of the treasure you accumulated still aboard. There's nothing I can see that would be broken by a winner of a battle keeping all their loot gains, and showing the looser some mathematical mercy.

4. A bounty system. Even if it's only automatic when you rob another crew (Somewhat like it is for crews that sink a lot of others? I've not encountered the red flag system much yet. But something that quickly flags you as a marauding player.)
   When that crew/constituent players are next defeated, a portion of spoils are sent to the players they robbed. You could take a privateer's contract (2.) to nullify this affect so that only marauding players have to deal with it.

5. If a PvE quest has taken a long time, give the poor tired crew half a chance. It can't be that hard to make the Kraken and Megolodon not attack barely away from the shore. Or to give a player that's just completed a hard quest temporary buffs. If a PvP crew really want's a ships hard earned horde they aught to work for it like the PvE crew just did.

So 2 days in. Lost the crew permenantly to the briny deep, sea is full of bl***y pirates, got attacked by a squid thing. Ate some leeches. Snake mascot bit everybody. Didn't get the achievement for playing on as the water flooded in, and I swear there we're two chests in the hold earlier...

@potato-lemming
I just wanna recommened not giving up. This was my experienve too when i first started. So i spent a long time mastering pvp to defend myself. It helped more than you will ever know.

You will come to a point where u realize loot and progression are meaningless. Its all about the fun that can be had in each session. Win or lose.

The seas are indeed a harsh mistress. Mastering all the tools and mechanics in the game will make your experience much more pleasing.

@lethality1
You do not gave that choice when you join a shared world online PVPVE game. You kinda already agreed to it when u installed the game
Nearly every encounter can be avoided if you know how to play.

@lethality1 said in Question for community members who want PVE only:

The game will continue to shrink until this is addressed in some way.

It will shrink over time no matter what. You have no data to back up that it will shrink faster by not implementing your plan. I can tell you, if they give players a PvE-only option as you have described then I am done with the game for reasons I have shared multiple times. I do not know if others feel the same way but I suspect I would not be alone, based on the forum replies I've seen.

@potato-lemming Excellent post! Welcome to the SoT community. In the future, do not keep more on your boat than you can laugh about losing later on if something happens. If you did not happen to have a rowboat on hand, then the Kracken, not other players would have taken your loot. I suspect you and your crew would not have been as upset over losing your loot to the Kracken, but I do not know for sure. Either way, you can make several thousand in gold an hour. I promise you, the loss of a couple of chests will not dramatically change your pirate life. No one stole the two or three hours of PvE time you spent together, they just got off with some loot that will take you much less time to gather next session.

@pithyrumble said in Question for community members who want PVE only:

Eventually we're gonna get private servers due to player attrition. Ever try to play Halo3 on 360? Dead. You're going to get private servers because the game is going to expire. 🧜‍♀️

I believe you are probably right about private servers at the end of the game's life. I just hope it will not happen for a while. And progress on a privately hosted SoT server like you are talking about would not carry over to the official servers (if they still exist). I'd never have guessed back in 2000 that there would be private Everquest servers, though now it seems was inevitable.

@dlchief58
And it would also make adventure mode a pvp mode, because all grinders would play on the free loot mode.

@gutterangel I wouldnt make the claim about growing just yet sure SoT has new players all the time but we dont know what the turn over rate is for the game

@nwo-azcrack which I think is the issue the bulk value of the game feels so meaningless. The interactions on games only hold so much value which might be why the only thing to do in SoT is blast each other. It gets a point as you said its all meaningless and pve has no value that its pretty much mainly a pvp based game mode.

@dlchief58
I wouldn't want to risk it with progression in them. I'm fine with progressionless private servers though.

@lethality1
Still its not Sea of Thieves without the thieves.
A pve server or private server with progression has no thieves.

Which is why there should be no progression on those types of servers.

@lobane
This. Thank you.
I have never understood players who bought a shared open world pvpve game, then come here and ask for a single player experience.

As others have pointed out, piratey themed open-world games are kinda rare. It's very pleasant. I spend most my time playing PvE Ark: Survival Evolved, Minecraft, Terraria, stuff like that. Awhile back I played Assassin's Creed 4, and loved the ship mechanics. I love the ship mechanics here. I also loved Windwaker even though pretty much everyone else I knew hated it because it was a deviation from the formula they were used to. I love SoT's environment (and haven't played it obsessively enough to burn it out yet). I want to spend time in the environment. And I think that's something most game designers actually want to hear. But if the PvP is too intense or crosses into the more toxic realm of griefing and trolling, it does get in the way of that.

"But there's supposed to be PvP in the game, the designers said so themselves!" Yes, I get that. And even though I am traditionally rooted on the PvE end of the spectrum... I am not against PvP entirely. It's not like Ark where the world is persistent and everything is PAINFUL to accumulate. I don't mind being expected to learn basic security measures (diverting to a different outpost if the one you're approaching has ship(s) at it already), keeping a better eye out for ships, learning to maneuver better, being quicker at things, etc. I also wouldn't mind getting roped into a little PvP and partaking in it. So I'm not anti-PvP personally. It's just, I think the game is somewhat designed around PvPvE. The voyages may not have aged well from the start of the game, but they were still designed and implemented. The devs added those PvE activities. I would assume they wanted a blend of the two play styles that would enrich each other. For me the problem arises when you have PvP purists who shift the delicate balance too far into the PvP territory for my tastes. If I wanted a PvP gladitorial bloodbath in a rich and immersive world, I'd play a PvP dedicated game like Fortnite.

And finally, for most of you PvP-enthusiasts out there, I don't think my problem is even with you in the first place. Extreme PvE activities do not interfere with your PvP activities, if anything it probably makes your PvP even more fun because now you have better loot to show for it. Extreme PvP however, dampens and damages the PvE. Some people don't seem to believe that its possible for PvP to become excessive at any level, but I would hope that most of you would understand what I'm getting at even if we wouldn't agree on where to draw the line. Creating this balance is really hard however. From Ark to Minecraft, Terraria to Warframe, and just about any MMO I've ever touched, the only enduring solution seems to be segregating the play styles and the game devs seem to have begun that already with the introduction of a dedicated arena.

I sense this whole debate is over how people want to see the game evolve. It really sounds like some people just want a piratey Fortnite. Some want a PvE co-op piratey open-world. I may be of the latter, but I'm legit excited to try a PvPvE balance and do a little combat. If that balance can't be adequately maintained however, then I'll become one of those people calling for a co-op PvE mode. I promise to be polite and not terribly demanding about it, but I didn't come here for pirate-fortnite and it wasn't really advertised that way to me when I got it.

So another day, another drop in the drink.

I've been playing solo as sadly the rest of the crew have added to the games bounce rate :/ (Yes I've tried matchmaking a crew a few times.... no...) but; genuinely enamored with the setting and discovery element's. I have tried to swash-buckle forth.

To actually try and answer the original question rather than ramble. @DrakeAraylin nailed it. "I want to spend time in the environment" SoT represents a rare case of a concept that's existed for decades but couldn't even begin to be done justice, until the technology finally caught up with it. Rather than something that has been slowly over many attempts iteratively refined. SoT could have easily been a Halo / (Insert ground braking game here) moment.

Imagine trying to do what SoT does just 5-10 years ago. Compare it to what was. How many games have you wanted to stand on the big dynamically moving thing, fighting other players on other big dynamically moving things. It's been done minorly a few times, but SoT made it work as a primary mechanic.

It's handling of physics, networking, graphics, and sound design are a masterclass in wish fulfillment. I'm genuinely annoyed with myself that I didn't early adopt when I was so psyched up by it's original E3 demo.

If anything; even in an earlier form of the game I would have been just as satisfied (and subsequently frustrated) as I have been.

Not in any way sadly, but it's game-play doesn't fully live up to what the rest of the game wants to offer. However, I see nothing but lessons SoT has had to learn the hard way in that. It's sailing uncharted waters in quite a few ways.

Nothing I know of plays like this and nothing offers what this tries to, save a few non AAA space sim games.

It's foremost in why it attracts players who don't fully buy into the 'philosophy of the original game'. @Lobane has a great point there.

I expect a lot of the bounce rate for this game were players expecting/salivating into their grog for something very close but distinct from what SoT offers.

Particularly with it's original marketing, I can see many who wanted to underway and off to see the world. My crew sure did. Only to discover a lackluster map size and content, filled with meaningless aggression, and lack of parrots. (Are there parrots?! I can't even find Cra***rs water buscuits!)

The players complaining; tbh myself included even when I love a straight fight.

We were sold on a potential role play golden sands. Harty Arrs, Shivvering timbers, and boots full of treachery. The crazier the better with margarita's at the midnight buffet. All filled with the backbone of a solid PvPvE mechanic where every PvP battle felt like a boss fight on both sides.

The reality being that SoT has shown a confused personality to me so far. One minute it lets you enjoy getting to know and personalize your ship and pirate.
The next it throws an impersonal and clear cut death-match vibe. Unceremoniously ripping any suspension of disbelief from you, and forcing you to try and defend your last few hours play against a foe you can't really prepare much against.

You may find the odd enchanted cannon ball, but there's no guarantee of it. The ruthless enforcement of PvP balance between a crew on 4 hours and a crew on for 20 minutes means that what should feel like a boss fight on both sides, just becomes a nightmare on one, and a trolly good time on the other. Regardless of the outcome either way.

Still, having had time for a think about it I wouldn't change the PvP inclusion for the world.

It's heart pounding and exciting, if still very stressful when other players show up. But it's a fairly unique experience and gets close enough to nailing the mythical 'it' to be frustrating more than disappointing. Segregating the player-base will fix none of that.

I'd reiterate what was bugging me originally, it dosn't feel like a conceptual problem, it feels like a balance problem.

Having spoke to my crew-mate who escaped on the row boat. (After he'd found his land legs again) Turns out he'd saved even more than I realized. Between the mixed comms blackouts and intermittent swearing as the Kracken took another shine to him. He'd saved not only our treasure from the wreckage whilst under squiggly tentacled attack, but even our snake mascot due to my cries for it's safety :/

The upshot for me at-least. Is the ship permadeath is brutal.

If I can fight back proportional to progress, with concessions for new players vs very experienced ones. (That's what matchmaking is for). I can take loosing a treasure haul in the spirit of the game. But the other players that robbed us also killed Mr Slithers.

This leads perhaps to the perceptual difference between PvP and PvE. Playing PvE, doing stupid stuff like desperately trying to keep the ship afloat despite it having more holes than a hollywood plot line. (We're out of repair planks but the outpost's only half the map away. She'll make it!!!) Un-democratically declaring a ships mascot then continually moving it because it wont stop biting everyone, and trying to all throw up on the deck in unison. Is half the fun.

That fun is shot in the head when any random player you come across has an even chance (skill level withholding) of wrecking your ship, and relatively anti-climatically permakilling your silly emotional attachment to a ship, it's adventure and a bitey yellow mascot.

Some re balancing of how PvP works, and not destroying the mental journey a player has been through when attacked may address this. There are a multitude of factors contributing but a lack of focus in PvP, and capacity for random chance and ruthless 'fair level fighting' to demolish a multi hour PvE play session still feels the biggest culprit.

So in conclusion, no. As a mostly PvE player, I don't want to see a segregated safe haven from PvP. I just want the PvP fights to feel like they mean something special to both sides, and to not be offered the banana of silly antic filled adventure with friends, only to be beaten with a peg leg for trying to eat it.

There is definitely a balance to be had in the middle somewhere. This is why I'd hate to see it separated to pure PvE/PvP. SoT has almost cracked mixing it.

I expect trying to find that balance is a large part of why the general and early 'quests' of the game are so narrowly scoped. It's an attempt to keep any potential deeper slower paced game, in check with the higher adrenaline fuelled formulated PvP system.

That if anything is the hard part. Keeping both the pacing of a PvP game, and the sense of adventure and 'organic' progress of a PvE game. It's easy to say that they can't coexist, you have to nerf one to make the other work, but there are easy compromises to be had.

Nothing has to stop fast paced marauding ships scrapping with each other. Give some map markers to other marauding ships when you become one, thus cutting the 'seek time' down to a minimum, whilst feeding into a recompense for jilted PvE players, and that's PvP improved instantly through loop time reduction. (We'll quit when we are good and ready to, not because of boredom searching for targets).

Just when they take on that treasure laden PvE focused ship, it should provide just as much of a heart racer to the attacking ship as it does the defender.

We can all still have the chilled walkover experience of trouncing a new crew through a bit of structure. (Game tutorial for new players. "So here's a level 40 ship and crew and they want your booty. The seas be harsh... Defend yourself."

*A moment's silence for Mr Slithers, he was un-careingly left to drown by thieves with nothing but doubloons in their eyes... The bitey venomous sod should have been thrown in a volcano.

@vachombre
Ya im guilty of this too

@brimstone-love said in Question for community members who want PVE only:

The question I would like to see answered though. PvP centric players keep claiming that PvE mode would kill adventure mode. The claim is that the majority of players would play PvE avoiding PvP. If this is the case, then doesn't that mean that the people wanting constant PvP are in the minority? If they aren't in the minority how would the smaller subset of PvE players ruin Adventure mode?

Democracy by majority vote never works because majority of people lack skills, maturity, knowledge and understanding to make correct decisions regarding most matters... in other words they're not qualified. As is the case with all these PVE-only requests.

Should your next door car mechanic neighbor be allowed to vote on what heart surgery procedures are and how should they be done? NO!
Is majority of people qualified to speak about heart surgery? NO!
Would majoritarian democracy work? NO!

Just because you got a heart doesn't mean you know how to fix it, just because you play the game doesn't mean you know how to design and balance it.

The problem isn't PVPVE environment, it is the lack of skill on part of PVE community that is making waves on the forums.

Every wise person sees it, every ignorant person denies it... naturally.