Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion

I have sympathy for solo sloopers who are new, they do need to be able to enjoy the experience more and have it slightly catered towards them if that's possible at all.

But as discussed many many many many times before, normal veterans don't attack new players doing voyages for 3 hateful skulls or 3 seafarers chests. People who do, would just create a new account to continue doing so. So I don't think RARE will do anything as there is not much that can be done easily, besides the game is doing just fine.

Everyone else who has a crew/crewmate better buckle up for the ride and stop asking for PVE servers, there are alliance servers where you can have exactly just that.

@huggydeathbunny or hear me out. We leave it exactly like it is. PvP isnt a problem. It's a part of the game design. An MMR fractures then player base just a bit more, and for what? a little protection. Using the numbers you proposed, people would be top tier so quickly it doesn't help them.

@huggydeathbunny said in Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion:

We've all heard the arguments for and against forced PvP in SoT. Whether you abhor the notion of player based combat, or feel it is part of the "charm", we want to cater for as many as possible while retaining the core game mechanics.

So, I propose a very simplistic MMR (MatchMaking Ranking) system, using these fixed ranks:

• Any player who has less than 10 PvP kills
• Any player who has less than 50 PvP kills, but more than 10
• Any player with more than 50 PvP Kills

The idea here is that new players will stay with new players and immediately we remove the "seal clubbing" that raises people's hackles.

We then also have a middle group of those who are happy to engage in PvP combat, but are not that good yet, and finally we have those that actively chase such activities. A factor will need to be applied for Ships Sunk vs Players Killed, i suggest 0.25-0.5 for ships, as this allows those not keen to still try defend themselves + removes penalising accidental sinking seen commonly in new players (ramming etc)

The issue will arise with players who are new, but want to play with experienced friends, this system will put them into +50 servers.

Essentially the friend would be a mentor, and an entire mechanic can be introduced where you could queue for people willing to teach PvP techniques, and be paired onto the +50 servers directly.

This is NOT a proposal for PvE Servers, but rather a method to ease people into the PvP world. Any trolling of this proposal with new accounts would be negligible

I don't think that really works. This is a game that has PVP, but is not a PVP game. There are ALOT of issues with trying to do even rudimentary match making like that. Primarily, ships sunk is not the same as skill in PVP. Why? This is a uniquely team based game. Me? I play on brigs and galleons. In PVP, I tend to be in the bilge repairing and bucketing. My PVP skill, in and of itself is lacking. Put me in a sloop and match me? I'm not going to be skilled at all. In addition, most of the sinks in PVP I've been apart of are not due to my skill, but the desires of my crews that I have psuedo randomly ended up with, and am supporting in playing the game.

Skill based match making makes sense in HG, as PVP is specifically the focus. But it's not for the main part of the game.

The PvE server threads are evolving.

Yeah i'm sorry but this post hits the nail on the head.

People know they cant talk about it so will make suggestions trying to separate people from the "lower/higher skilled" players. No-one learns this way. Rare have the right idea to ignore these suggestions.

@huggydeathbunny we’re pirates, not gentlemen.

The idea here is that new players will stay with new players and immediately we remove the "seal clubbing" that raises people's hackles.

So if I continue to lose, I’ll be paired against other “new” players until I start winning. But again that is if I start winning.

We already have this type of system, by win/lose not kills which pretty much the same thing.

@huggydeathbunny said in Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion:

@captain-coel With 250k players active daily, I'm not sure how fractured one would find a ranked server system....I'm proposing simple numbers as to implement server side is not insanely complicated.

To do a true MMR system, with time degradation and taking into account grouping and boat types....well sure that could end up fracturing the player base.

The devs have clearly stated they will not be doing PvE servers
https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/136693/pvpve-the-team-s-thoughts/1

My desire is to be able to separate the toxicity experienced from the numerous encounters I've had in my time in game from new players, as well as perhaps have the chance to distance myself from such people, its rare you get Gentleman Fighters

Where did you get your numbers? Cause they aren't available so you likely made them up.

What is a "Gentleman Fighter"? This is a pirate game. You are meant to be both predator and prey.
PvP is not toxic.
Sinking someone and taking their loot is not toxic
Chasing someone for any amount of time is not toxic.
Tucking is not toxic.

Don't confuse designed gameplay as toxic.

Toxic is using comms to be hateful.
Toxic is spawn camping with no intention of sinking.

Players do not deserve protection. This is a shared world PvEvP game.

@huggydeathbunny said in Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion:

@captain-coel https://steamcharts.com/app/1172620

Alex  /  Dec 13, 2019

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Those numbers are from over a year ago and from an unofficial source. They are a guess.

A Toxic Environment, is one in which any human being feels oppressed or targeted on a personal level.

You consented when you signed on yo be hunted, killed, and stolen from. Not liking that doesn't make it toxic. Your definition is way off base. Toxic is being sabotaged by your own crew. Toxic is being verbally harassed.

A Gentleman Fighter, would be one displaying sportsmanlike qualities, such as complimenting good performance in ones opponent.

You only get a GG if it was a good fight. If you run, I'll mock you a bit, my preferred name to call people is landlubbet.

Why would a player not deserve protection? Why would you WANT people to hate their experience instantly only to quit having had a terrible time?

Because they consented to pvp when they signed on. It is a core part of Sea of Thieves. I don't want them to quit. I want people to know the game they are playing.

So if veterans want to throw on "easy mode", they fire up a server with a solo dummy account so that it's in the "PvP less" servers, join on it and then have it leave, then either rampage PvP or knock out more PvE successfully than they would in under their own MMR.

If you think that wouldn't be aggressively abused, you've clearly not seen how much this community loves to cheese things.

Something else to consider, the toxic side of this community often play on multiple alts or make new accounts to avoid bans. Theyll be paired up with newer players. Not really a great idea. The only change that may be beneficial is to take the Elite Dangerous approach where new players start in a secluded area with low activity and risk. Once you leave you're out in the open. It may be beneficial but I wouldn't say necessary or a priority.

@zeromoderation Excuse me, but for a guy who 'doesn't play the game anymore' and only has 4 posts, all of them are either calling people here out, criticizing the developers, or just pure complaining about everything to do with this game, not offering any solutions or adding anything worthy to the discussion. You do see yourself as a sensible person, who does not waste his own time?

Quitting and being done with a game =/= coming on to game's forum and starting arguments and complain. It means you find something better to do and leave us be :)

You are literally that meme ''QUIT HAVING FUN''

If this game affects your mental health that much, browsing here won't do you good either.

Have a good day, mate. Peace.

@zeromoderation Fair enough, but you did mention it, so I was just under assumption that the game does affect it - therefore the overwhelming negativity towards it, apart from aesthetics.

So people who are defending everything without consideration are called gatekeepers, just curious what is their antonym. Google says there are no categorical ones. ^^

Anyhow, take care sailor!

@zeromoderation That is true, however there are more variables and given new implementations like Hourglass it would be hard to achieve what you are asking for imo. Sure as I have mentioned earlier, solo slooping new players should have easier experience and not get matched with really experienced pirates. But you do realize that for majority of veterans a player with 1 hour, 10 hours or 100 hours is still a new player (without going into exceptions or details). Where as for each new pirate of that category the next one would look significantly more experienced, especially if their background in gaming is different.

I don't know to which category I would fall into exactly, but I have 1k hours, got the guardian curse in 2 weeks when we started grinding for it, however, I am not a PVP sweat by any means. New players would feel safe doing voyages in a server where I am sailing, unless they are after world events that me/my crew wants to do. Also new players are sometimes asking for it.

We were doing tall tale yesterday and saw a ship literally going to an island we needed to go, so we waited...They were there for like 20-30 minutes, we started sailing towards it as bedtime was approaching, they saw us and left...and went right into another island where our tall tale was directing us to next (forced interactions by game design - massive dislike)...Anyway, we stopped by a seapost to catch some fish, and once again they spend there a long amount of time.

So we decided to approach them. We parked our ship away from theirs, we have text to speech enabled, we greeted them, told them we are friendly and not after them, a fight or their treasure and announced we are doing tall tales. The way they were parked we could have sank them in less than a minute.

So what happened next, they started shooting us with sniper, I did not even bother to move, or fire back as they missed every single shot on their way out. They immediately started being hostile to us first and a lot of players do this out of fear of being sunk. So I would imagine a lot of seasoned pirates would have 'taken it personal' and taught them a lesson, we just scanned the horizon in case they decided to come back to attack us.

A month ago, we were doing a tall tale and a galleon that shoots worst than a sea fort tried to fight us, thankfully their helming skills were worse than their cannon ones. Do I want to waste resources/time in fighting them - no...Did those new players wanted to fight anything in sight - yes.

Two days ago, was just cruising around doing cursed treasure voyage, without a care in the world, just relaxing. I sold some sorrow chests at Ancient spire and was on my way to the next island, when I realized that I was not alone on that outpost(another sloop). As soon as I arrived on the next island, I see that the same sloop is sailing towards me. Due to experience, I know what to expect when this happens, so once I got to my ship and started getting ready for a fight, I hear on voice comms:

''You f****** p****'' ...after which about 10-20 seconds later his ship was on the bottom of the sea, as when firing cannonballs towards his ship, I hit a keg which for whatever reason this player kept next to his helm.

So back to my point, we will never reach perfection with segregating parts of community. I do agree there are a lot seasoned pirates that are not sensible and try to boost their ego by sinking less skilled crews, smaller ships etc. but I doubt most 'gatekeepers' here resort to such things. And not every new player want's to peacefully solve riddles and experience this game to the fullest, these few examples from my most recent memories is a good example why it might not even be worth the effort to try this. I believe a lot of pirates here don't bother giving examples as they have done in the past, therefore seen as rude or gatekeepers or whatever.

@huggydeathbunny said in Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion:

We've all heard the arguments for and against forced PvP in SoT. Whether you abhor the notion of player based combat, or feel it is part of the "charm", we want to cater for as many as possible while retaining the core game mechanics.

So, I propose a very simplistic MMR (MatchMaking Ranking) system, using these fixed ranks:

• Any player who has less than 10 PvP kills
• Any player who has less than 50 PvP kills, but more than 10
• Any player with more than 50 PvP Kills

The idea here is that new players will stay with new players and immediately we remove the "seal clubbing" that raises people's hackles.

We then also have a middle group of those who are happy to engage in PvP combat, but are not that good yet, and finally we have those that actively chase such activities. A factor will need to be applied for Ships Sunk vs Players Killed, i suggest 0.25-0.5 for ships, as this allows those not keen to still try defend themselves + removes penalising accidental sinking seen commonly in new players (ramming etc)

The issue will arise with players who are new, but want to play with experienced friends, this system will put them into +50 servers.

Essentially the friend would be a mentor, and an entire mechanic can be introduced where you could queue for people willing to teach PvP techniques, and be paired onto the +50 servers directly.

This is NOT a proposal for PvE Servers, but rather a method to ease people into the PvP world. Any trolling of this proposal with new accounts would be negligible

With this proposed system in place you're essentially making PvE servers by proxy, even though that may not be your intent. But with the MMR brackets being based on something like "less than 10 PvP kills" well that pretty much guarantees a mostly PvE server.

Because there are players who will stay under the 10 kill and certainly under the 50 kill bracket for pretty much eternity. This creates two problems. One; players will cheese this system to create PvE servers without even having to organise it via Discord anymore. And two; new players could theoretically play on these peaceful/very low chance of PvP servers for a very long time which will give them a false impression of the game. And goodness knows the marketing for Sea of Thieves is already quite misleading about the PvP aspects of the game. Then one day they enter the "above 10 kills" bracket just through sheer virtue of sinking some ships over time by ramming or etc. And all of a sudden PvP is more prominent now. But by that time you've given that player a very misleading impression of the game.

In my opinion players need to be allowed to experience SoT the way the game is intended. PvP should always be that threat looming on the horizon. This game is built upon the core foundation of always giving the player the opportunity to take more treasure than they should and challenging them to take that risk in an environment where PvP can be just around the corner. In many ways SoT pioneered the extraction game mechanics long before Escape from Tarkov was a thing. But SoT built a much, much more fleshed out sandbox around that mechanic rather than have loot extraction be the end all, be all of the game like Tarkov.

If an environment where PvP is a constant looming threat is not to a new player's liking then that's fine but they need to know this relatively quickly after buying the game. So they can have a chance to refund it if need be. I'm not a fan of disguising or hiding the PvP aspects in SoT like most of the game's marketing already does. Because that's just not fair to the customer as it hides the "real" product they just bought until it is too late to refund it, should it not be to their liking.

@zeromoderation Well I won't argue about the overcoming part as I certainly started out as a massive noob. Got sunken many times, Alt F4'd many times, did breaks many times.

But I think this game only lacks the correct 'label' - hardcore to have things clearly communicated to everyone.

Where it falls short, is polishing the PVP aspects to cater the top 1% properly.

All hardcore games are either hate it or love it. The problem with sea of thieves its a niche game where you get to live out a pirate fantasy. Every other game genre has lots of games to chose from from a casual shooter like Battlefield to hardcore ones like CSGO, realistic games like Hell Let Loose or Arma . There is nothing like Sea of Thieves, this is where the problem comes, people from all backgrounds have different expectations...And then there are many players like me who would adapt no matter what, because I truly like this game. Just like you mentioned earlier.

The only way I see Rare providing these tame waters, is if they had more involvement in Alliance servers, basically nationalizing them. Reduce the payout, but allow players to get good at fundamentals and experience all aspects of PVE. Problem is most will get bored quickly. That human feeling of being afraid and on edge is what makes our journeys on the seas exciting. Taking that away would do more harm than good.

And as you said it yourself, man. There's always degrees of everything - just like I tried to mention earlier - all degrees and personality differences of new players and their backgrounds. Segregating them from players with more hours, would not make any difference.

@zeromoderation said in Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion:

@vakrisone

The only way a PvE server would exist is if player on player(ship) combat was disabled. That’s it. If player combat is an option it’s not a PvE server. Period point blank.

So please don’t even try the PvE server by proxy argument as it has no ground to stand on.

The proposal is a system for grouping up players that rarely if never engage in PvP and putting them in the same server. It's basically an Alliance server by proxy. Alliance servers usually mean low to no chances of PvP.

You're free to disagree with the observation.

Just for the record, Sea of Thieves is a PvPvE sandbox game where players are free to commit piracy against other players while at the same time players are also free to voyage or complete events to acquire treasure or both. There is no wrong way to play Sea of Thieves so long as the pirate code is respected and you don’t break any Xbox code of conduct rules.

Just for the record, I never said there is a right or wrong way to play. Perhaps you're replying to someone else here?

I elaborated on how this proposed system will mislead newer players into thinking Sea of Thieves is a different game than what it is designed to be.

@zeromoderation That's why I specified and classify this game as hardcore. None of such games hold your hand, you either want it or not. You learn the basics, which don't even reflect the degree of difficulty and off you go! Think about all the hardcore PVP games, all the fps shooters, all the strategy games. Playing against AI is just a tutorial compared to PVP.

Besides being matched with exclusively new players, won't make you improve under pressure as you will happily crash into islands, shoot cannons over their heads etc. Obviously you might improve slightly quicker than if you are sunk in 1 minute, but I don't think this is ideal at all.

If you guys suggested to improve the 'tutorial', to expand it so player would feel some pressure doing it, or to create separate servers for players with less than 20 (as an example) hours (no progression) before being matched with everyone else than its a different conversation. But segregating them by amount of shots fired/ships sunk etc would just not work at all.

This could also be a clash of different generations. When we were kids, we wanted to learn and improve and earn our spot under the sun in hardcore pvp games, newer generations feel like they need a safe space and everything handed to them on a silver platter with giant green markers 'go here' (not calling you out or anybody here, just thinking out loud)

@zeromoderation said in Removing the disparity in PvP Skill Levels - A matchmaking suggestion:

New players would be sailing with players who aren’t confident at PvP.

New players who haven’t been jaded into believing that they cannot be successful at PvP.

Therefore PvP would of course occur no matter what. The frequency of PvP may be less on servers with players who are either new or have chosen not to PvP very much but saying it’s a PvE server by proxy is a lie because it isn’t unless PvP is disabled.

It's not a lie. It's an opinion. You don't have to agree with it or even like it. Calling it a lie is hyperbolic and comes off as if you are just trying to push your own agenda in an attempt to build a strawman for you to have a pretend fight with.

Sea of Thieves is designed as a PvPvE sandbox with no right or wrong way to play or to enjoy the game. That’s the reason I brought it up because people on this forum cannot fathom enjoying the PvE in this game by itself even though it’s easy to enjoy voyaging and completing world events. They were designed to be enjoyed.

Assuming that everyone on this forum adheres to a certain stereotype of your choice is probably not the best way to go about interacting with people. That's how you get to the level where you are accusing completely random people of lying simply because you don't like reading their opinion and you allow yourself the arrogance to assume to pigeonhole an individual based on a single post you read from them in one thread.