Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game

@urihamrayne said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

I'd like to swap whenever I'm done with it, which is why you can't really lock players in a session.

Ah ok so they couldn't do it because you wouldn't like it.. got it, thanks....

Your right, server hoppers waste time playing the game as intended. Its a problem that RARE needs to address so people don't HAVE to be hopping servers all the time

True. this might be more of a carrot than stick thing. PVPers need more healthy outlets for their piratey ill-temper. But server hopping DOES kinda ruin the "flow" for those not doing it. Does that make sense? Not sure which way to fall on this issue.

Maybe just activate more forts more often, but give a little less loot. Then your angry blood pirates can hop from one kill-fest to another without actually "hopping" servers.

"Nice... hopping."

@nightmare247365 said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@Shuoink While I don't believe that it is ruining the game, I do heavily agree that server locking for a "predetermined" amount of time is required.

I think it solves many issues - It is a fix for Almondbeard errors where someone is sailing solo. It keeps their ship/vessel on the server until a time limit has been met or the user reconnects.

It "delays" server hopping. 10 minutes is not huge and there could very easily prevent server hopping to your "immediate" server, but you could still spend 30+ minutes fighting the fort and a group of server hoppers has waited out the timeout window and land on your server. Sure this could reduce the opportunity for it happening, but it is not entirely preventable.

The main issue though that this hurts versus solves is players who are being griefed into quitting. Sometimes there is just no escape but finding another server. Delaying them playing may make the quit to never return. There could, however, be a 1 timed click that someone could use every 3 hours that is an automatic report that they were being griefed and it allows a report to be sent directly to Rare about the behaviors. It triggers like the scuttle ship option where it is all or none.

While many have brought up they waste more time and they are the "only content" the thing is neither of those is true. Collecting treasure chests takes about 30 minutes for a 3 part voyage. Unless you get lucky and get a 6 chest map all captain's chests, chances are you are sub-1000 in gold by turning those in. We know the stronghold chest can fetch you 2K or more and if you clear the entire thing out can be as high has 15K. So fortresses are the best options for loot and upgrades. If I could get paid 2000 an hour or 15 K for 1 hour of course I am taking the 15k. It only becomes less valuable IF there is less money or it comes at longer times.

Appreciate the thoughts!
If your crew is grinding chests or OOS missions, you can EASY make the same amount that you can out of a skull fort, even double or triple doing merchant missions in an hour's time.

The whole situation that was the last straw for me was this: Was on a 4 man galleon for almost two hours grinding chests, had i dont know at least 40 -50 on the boat. One guy gets disc and another leaves, so two rando's show up on the boat. At the same time a skull fort happen to appear. These guys were server hopping for a fort, saw it, and basically took over the ship to head to the fort for a fight. Now on the boat it was 2v2 fighting over control. We wanted to turn in our loot we worked for, they wanted to simply hit the fort for a measly 10-15k.
With one on the wheel we couldn't stop them from sailing over to it (or vote to brig as it was now 2v2) and had to engage in a battle that took two hours. At one point they even tried to vote to scuttle to restock and hit the fort again which would have made us lose all the chests we had worked for up that point. They both kept constantly bringing up the "if you dont want to pvp then dont play this game" argument. We were fine with doing pvp the annoying part is spending two hours on a fort for literally now what is not really worth that much money for the time it takes. The fort itself was not worth the 2 hour battle both with our own crew and the other ships we had to sink. We came out on top but it took up hours of our time when we would have rathered just turn our loot in and let them have at the fort themselves. Its frustrating when people can randomly come into your game and take over like that. The time it takes to take a fort down now is not worth the pay off even though a lot of people somehow think it is still.

Ruining the game in its entirety? no,
it IS ruining it for ME, so i am sharing my frustrations with the devs as i know i am not alone, and appreciate everyone's insights as well. After that whole experience I have no desire to play again for a bit as it lost its fun for now, for ME

@shuoink I don't think sever hopping is quite the epidemic you're making it out to be.
Sure, maybe during peak playtimes forts are highly contested but as you suggest the fort payoff isn't worth a hours long investment, so just do voyages if that's the case.

Last night my crew and I were at a fort that had another galleon and two sloops, but just the night before we did a fort without seeing any other ships, so pretty much like everything else in Sea of Thieves it's just luck of the draw.

@sweltering-nick said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@shuoink said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

Skull forts are worthless now, the 2-3 hour fight it takes for 10k loot isn't worth anyone's time. Frustrating to have one pop up, go over, no ships in sight, then when the captain spawns three galleons show up out of nowhere that had obviously just server hopped. Wont be bothering with them anymore as i can make more grinding voyages in an hour than i can fighting off endless ships for 3.
They have lost their appeal to me, which sucks because its some of the only content in the game currently. I get why people do it, because there is nothing else to do... this is just my opinion. Incoming "Get gud" and "bye" posts, whatever. this is my opinion i am sharing with the devs.
Something needs to be done.
Make it so if you leave and then rejoin within 10 mins or something that it just puts you back on the same server, shouldn't be too hard. would solve the problem entirely, and make people play the game as intended instead of hopping from game to game.
Just my two cents.
I am fine with PVP. I think RARE underestimated human nature a bit when coming up with some of the concepts of this game. Hopefully the upcoming content will alleviate some of the hopping in some way and give us other things to do in general than spend 2-3 hours fighting non stop ships for a mere 10-15 k.
Good for you if you like 3 hour pvp battles, its a pvp game, I get it. Believe it or not though, some of us would rather move on so we have something to show for our time after 3 hours.

I normally would make an argument with a conclusion of "git gud" or something along those lines, but Rare have told people to stay in the server once they get in... To prevent the login servers from overloading...

I personally want a game where the ping is stable and at acceptable levels, so... I'm gonna have to agree with you... They should make it so if you server hop 3 times or something, you automatically disconnect and your account gets a 3 hour login cooldown... That would make server hopping for skeleton forts rather counterproductive... You could server hop twice, but if you don't get any skelly forts during those two hops, you might as well keep playing the game, because the next login on that same day is going to disconnect you and make you wait for 3 hours before you can play the game again. xD

Yep lets temp ban players from a game they paid for. That has to be the dumbest fix iv'e ever seen. Here's a fix add more things to do so that people don't feel the need to server hop.

@shuoink Instead of locking people out of a server, why not lock them in the server they join for a certain amount of time. It may not prevent server hopping but will drastically slow it down. And, it will also allow people to quit because your being grief and not have some sort of penalty timer. Locking them into a server that they enter for a certain amount of time will also cut down the log in glitches and such being that log ins have its own servers

I feel a fair fix to this is to just respawn the skull forts quicker. Instead of 3 hours or whatever the respawn timer is, reduce it to an hour or shorter. If/when they open up more fort location to be used, I wouldn't mind having multiple forts up at once. Maybe a major/minor fort deal, where you can choose to battle for a larger haul, or take a chance going for the smaller/easier fort. Is there any reason having more forts would break the game?

it takes like 12 minutes to down a fort completely with two people if you arent contested or have beaten back the other boats. boats respawn a lot further now, further enough that you should have no problem making progress on the skellie waves between pfights if you are methodical and smart.

though i dont disagree that the server-hopping that goes on could be addressed in a better way, the underlying tone of this and most messages like this is "wah wahhh wahhhh i want fort loot, and i want it to come easier."

@nebenkuh said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

Great, now the crew of new players who left the server because they were being griefed are stuck with their griefers. GG.
I wish people would think about their suggestions for more than a second. :)

Who leaves a whole server after being griefed? People usually scuttle and end up on the other side of the map far out of reach of the griefers.. I wish some people would think about their responses for more than a second

@bluewave1313 said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

Here's a fix add more things to do so that people don't feel the need to server hop.

Exactly

@legendary-bo said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

We already have problems with crews insta-brigging and griefers, it would be a terrible idea to impose a penalty on players who are trying to find a decent and non-trolling crew. If the problem with server hopping is in regards to the skull forts, then maybe we should put a limit on how many can be done in a time period.

Excellent point, i myself have joined and left games because the crew i got put with was sitting around doing nothing.
Good idea as well

@digital-twisty1 said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@shuoink Instead of locking people out of a server, why not lock them in the server they join for a certain amount of time. It may not prevent server hopping but will drastically slow it down. And, it will also allow people to quit because your being grief and not have some sort of penalty timer. Locking them into a server that they enter for a certain amount of time will also cut down the log in glitches and such being that log ins have its own servers

Thats basically what i was trying to say.. If they leave to get away from griefers and rejoin it would be on the same server but obviously spawn in a new location

@drbullhammer said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@shuoink this is interesting because it's been the opposite for me recently. Ships attack once and give up. It happened yesterday morning. A fort popped, I sailed over there around the same time as a duo sloop. I chose to stay on my ship to ride out the storm, but the other sloop sank and the crew decided to fight the skeletons. That is until one of them took a shot at me and then tried to board my sloop. I killed him, went to the crow's nest, then killed the other as he tried to raise my anchor, and never saw them again. A galleon rolled up right at the end. I sank and killed them because I wasn't sharing after clearing the whole thing by myself. They left me alone as I loaded the loot onto my ship.

It doesn't seem to have quite the draw that it once did, in my experience.

It IS a bit luck of the draw, its rare now to be able to do a fort without being contested, but it CAN happen. Every time i have done one that is contested though, the people never give up and it ends up turning into a few hour ordeal

@evasive-envy said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@shuoink Hey there fellow sailor. I know it's not always easy or practical but invest some time into finding some experienced players so that you can form a four-crew galleon. The crew I run with will complete the fort in roughly 15 minutes - obviously a bit longer depending on the PvP element. Compared to three hours it's a lot more productive. We don't server hop. We do voyages until a skull pops up.

Good luck out there on the open seas!

Thanks. I do have some regulars I play with most the time, and yes the skull fort by itself takes 10-15 minutes. BUT it can take a few hours when you have sloops and galleons showing up out of nowhere to battle it out almost every time because they are hopping servers intentionally for that purpose

@figmentspark said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

I feel a fair fix to this is to just respawn the skull forts quicker. Instead of 3 hours or whatever the respawn timer is, reduce it to an hour or shorter. If/when they open up more fort location to be used, I wouldn't mind having multiple forts up at once. Maybe a major/minor fort deal, where you can choose to battle for a larger haul, or take a chance going for the smaller/easier fort. Is there any reason having more forts would break the game?

Thats a great idea!

@nytevigh said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

Its the only thing keeping it alive for me. I'm level 50/50/50 and level 3 in Athena's. The first 3 factions get insanely repetitive and boring towards the late 30's (levels). I would of left a long time ago if it wasn't for the forts.

Helps prove the point, we need more things to do!

@slowmonutkick said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

Pretty easy to solve, never allow anyone to spawn into a server with an active skull fort.

Mind blowing idea!

@vapor1080 said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

you guys get on some packed servers I guess lol because most of mine are quiet

Its usually quiet until a fort appears, heh

@ericheirhead said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

But in fort hopping groups, there's a higher probability we're late to the party and there's going to be some action at the fort - which I find fun. You maybe don't like it if you're at the buttend of that interaction, but it's probably my favourite thing about the game currently.

Totally Fair and understandable. Look at it from the ButtEnd view though. You happen to be on a decently quiet server, go for a skull fort, then when the captain spawns three galleons show up out of nowhere and you lose all the work you just put in or have to spend an hour or two fending off boats for what should have been a 15 minute side quest. Its a tough situation to make everybody happy about. If you hadnt been able to server hop, the people looting the skull fort would be happy but you wouldnt because you would be on a server with no skull fort and be bored except for hunting lone ships for some pvp action, how do we solve that so both players are happy?

@mattydove74 said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@shuoink The whole reason I like forts is the possibility of a multi ship engagement. No to server lockouts. Just go do your quests and be thankful for the hour of peace...

Thats fair, i get that a lot of fun in the game for people is getting into ship battles.
We WERE doing quests, our boat got taken over by two randos who were server hopping and forced us into an engagement. We didnt want to leave and bail on everything we worked for up to that point. I think the Private/locked crews that are hopefully coming soon may help people in similar circumstances.

@urihamrayne said in Skull fort server hopping is ruining the game:

@Shuoink
"Ah ok so they couldn't do it because you wouldn't like it.. got it, thanks...."

this isn't a competitive game where teams need to be locked.

Your right, not talking about locking teams in place. Totally different concept, its alright if you dont get it. Please jump the post like you do servers