PvP and Penalties for Aggressive Play

kill enough people and the pirate police comes for you

I'm no way competitive, like I wouldn't start a fight. but I like pvp. It doesn't have to escalate to full combat sometimes the threat is good enough.

Had my two best sessions today. One where I was playing with a bunch of Germans. Fairly normal questing then we see another galleon not sure if they were aiming at us or accidental. But only one thing to do. Both ships getting in position to fire. Then we just sat there sailing side by side not wanting t be the first crew to fire. Quality suspense. Eventually we went on our way. But it's that build up which was great.

Second session playing solo on sloop, full of treasure. spotted (maybe) by a galleon who knows. Go to turn and the turn the same way. Bunch if collected rocks obscure line of sight. I switched direction and dropped anchor between them hiding like a little fish. First sign f their ship coming round the corner and off. Keeping the island between me and them as I head off to an outpost.

This is still pvp. No shots fired but it was pretty tense both times.

I got the game on game pass as I thought it was overpriced for where it is at the moment. But every hour you spend on it you are increasing its value say compared to cinema or a movie rental etc. Like fallout and the witcher are bloody good value for example.

Also I can see this is more excitement from the sandbox environment and players rather than repetitive quests but it was good fun today.

@liquidusblue I'm not looking for limits on PvP, I'm looking for people to be smarter about their suggestions in the forums. A lot of people approach what they perceive as a problem with aggressive players with suggestions to punish people for engaging in PvP. Most of these suggestions end up putting a similar, if not worse, burden on the players who are simply defending themselves against said players. PvP is a two way street and both parties are killing each other and sinking ships. It doesn't really matter what side of a conflict you're on, you're performing the same actions and there's no real way to implement a system that can detect aggressors and defenders. Anything that punishes players for playing aggressively will likewise punish players for playing defensively. Nobody seems to be taking this into account, however.

For instance, I don't know if duvelsuper2's comment above was in jest or not, but I've seen that exact suggestion on the forums before. Problem is, people who rack up more consecutive kills tend to be larger crews who are good at defending themselves. Take the scenario where a ship is trying to do a raid on a skull fort. Then end up having to fight off the same ship over and over again when they keep coming back with each respawn. The larger ship sinks an attacking sloop 3 times trying to get them off their back and then THEY end up having a high bounty and having to avoid NPC "pirate police" as they try to get back and turn in their winnings. The system suggested ends up punishing the very people it's supposed to be helping while the harassing party gets by without anything because they were repeatedly killed.

This is a surprisingly frequent problem with these kinds of suggestions, but I'm seeing a lot of people making them, anyway. I just want to draw people's attention to the fact that, while on paper and in your head, punishing people for playing the game in a way you don't like may seem like a good idea, you need to broaden your view of how that impacts other players. Most systems of punishment can be abused to make games more frustrating, offer further opportunities for griefing, or make the game crushingly difficult for weaker players.