theres a lot of gamer mentality ruining peoples fun in the game. 9001% say i fit into that catagory. but is it a me thing or is the whole industry partly to blame? when games stopped being about fun but instead about virtual collections and trophies. season passes to make sure a game lives on forever and keeps people coming back to a cash shop. rather than just giving us new fresh experiences we just get minor updates to something we once loved to the point where our relation ship with what was a fun game becomes tainted.
but then the developers of the games we love fall into a similar trap of putting out content in an attempt to keep us interest but their mindset toward gaming which they used to themselves love and is why they got into game dev in the first place. their mind shifts away from what players find fun and meaningful and gets tainted by statistics. almost like game developers view their player count like a youtuber views their subscribers. they are always chasing that bigger number even if its crushing the souls behind what got them creating the stuff in the first place. so you have players mind set being tainted by the industry making our minds forget whats supposed to be fun about games, the developers also forgetting about whats fun but designing things to keep feeding the players mind set that has been twisted by the industry just further worsening the problem. and since the developers cant remember what fun even is they get hyper focused on the bad ideas or numbers. while the players are hyper focused on trying to mind max the cosmetic collection or trophy unlocks in the most efficient way possible.
honestly rare chasing the season numbers. them not focusing on the wrong data. or looking at the big picture of data. arena was removed because only 3% of the players were playing it. was that because arena was bad? no...ok so why is no one playing it? they looked at the current numbers of engagement instead of the why. now arena wasnt perfect but if you dont add rewards whos gonna play it? seems common sense. but because they are all hyper focused on what people are doing so they can try to deliver more of that specific kinda content... they just looked at whos doing what. arena was a flop so delete. but look at the history of arena. the % of players who unlocked cosmetics and when they stopped playing. coincidence that after they unlocked everything they stopped playing? or is that just common sense cause and effect? if you build it they will come, but if you let it rot and fall apart due to neglect?
im still more than annoyed about this doubloon situation. and the skeleton ship situation. these smuggler routes have got to go. im surprised no one else has seen a problem with it. but then again i guess most arent doing it on a chill pve server where they can casually grind a fort. i had to sink 4 skeleton ships from the smugglers route while doing my first garrison. also why is googling anything about sot so hard? players havent asked or answer the questions before apparently and ai over view is beyond useless. ai told me these garrison reapers bone chests would count for the chest of fortune reaper chest count. i was highly sus of that. but they did allow us to fast track chest of fortune commendation last season.. honestly they should have made this vault 3 og reaper chests and 3 ashen bones chests so you could work on 2 commendations at once
so yea i 100% get that this game isnt intended for solo players but its also well known and stated by rare most people solo. and my "fun" era of the game was when my brothers friends got me to play this with them. note i said brothers friends not my own friends. this game was all we had in common so after the quit its not like we had anything else to play together. not fully their fault. they did try. but im pver for life. and i have i dunno how many thousands of hours in this game. i dont think its an exgeration to say this is the most time ive spent in any game thats considered a purely pvp game. but thats thanks to rares "tools not rules" arpproach. though they keep flip flopping on that lately? ive always gone along with the mind set that if im cheesing something in some way. if its not impacting other players or their fun? then its a victimless pirate crime yea? i mean isnt that what being a pirate is all about. finding what every chance you can get to make things easier for yourself. why do the back breaking work to earn wealth when you can just steal it?
currently hourglass is the only infinite rep faction right? or does it actually legit end at 1000? having something pve side that is infinite could be good. but then it falls back on the mentioned above of needing goals, rewards, and the unhealthy mindset developers are manipulating players into forming. all i know is whenever i max out a faction i dont touch that loot again. it would be like ok everything for that companie now goes to reapers till i max them out. and even though they seem to have nerfed reaper rep sometime in the past. maybe as part of the burning blade over reaction punishment of innocent players? but i even managed to max out reapers without even 100% those commendations so now it feels icky even working on them cause im rep maxed.
i find it hard to get into other games now because my brain has been twisted to think "well theres no achievements in this game whats the point?" or "theres no cosmetics to farm so why bother?" so some of the older titles i have on steam its like... meh ill watch a lets play on youtube instead since theres no achievement to show i actually beat the game or accomplished anything.