Remember the Arena? Yeah… This Isn’t It

Points actually meant something in the Arena.

Problem was, it didnt. The chest was the main focus of everything. It ended the match, but players didnt care and if you werent doing what everyone else wanted, Toxic behavior was a given.
It wasnt fun for everyone who wanted to score more and better, than just firing at each other, with near unsinking ships. Similar to how hourglass fights, Board, anchor and...that was it.

it was pure chaos.

That being the issue.

In the new mode, you can just hide at the edge of the zone

Until the circle forces you out, or someone finds you campy ship. Sinking you before you have time to move away. Silly gooses.

then fight whoever’s left one-on-one.

"Last ship standing"

That’s not strategy. That’s hide-and-seek with cannons.

Better than everyone lining up to be shot at like bull run. Messy fights with no clear goals. At least the matches ended on time with victory decided by "being out smarted"

Balance? Nonexistent. In the new mode, players can stockpile magic cannonballs, chainshots, pineapples—whatever—and then waltz into the battle with an instant advantage.

Yeah, battles are won for those who prepare before hand in battle. Intel is always better than raw strength.

Arena didn’t have that. Everyone started the fight on the same level.

Not quite. You either joined random crews and hope everyone work together, or no. Then you have those who play together and know how to play as one. Dominating the field. It was boring to see the same tactics and meta junk.

Pure skill.

Add a bonecaller and curses, and your Skill go out the door huh? xD Seems those skills arent as cracked up to be.

The Tavern.

Only thing missed.
Besides the loud mouths and whining texts of players. Nonsense.

Arena was wild, reckless, pirate insanity.

Players on big boats, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. "Insanity" yes.

Free to bring my own resources, and surprise people with my 30 curses, 20 bonecallers is wild and unpredicable fun.

The new mode? Just… soulless meat-grind.

Arena.

Yea it was extremely rushed, even though it was pushed back a week. It feels like they needed to push something to keep the peace... I wonder why...............

I haven't even played LSS. It looks so lame. I don't even like Hourglass much either although I have both curses and then some, it just feels mean spirited and a bit grindy and a bit boring, more boring than anything else honestly.

Arena was fantastic, colourful, cheerful, good spirited and far more nuanced. As a PVP mode in the game it made a lot more sense than what we have now for this game. It's a crying shame that it was taken away. I feel the game would have been better if they had just kept Arena because what we have now is abysmal.

What I don't understand is, other games have multiple different PVP modes that players can choose from: Control / capture the flag / TDM / all against all, why doesn't Sea Of Thieves just have that? Why does it have to be one or the other? If the game is so restricted by what it can have then that in and of itself is a real problem.

I have lost hope honestly.

I would have played Arena as a stand alone game tbh 🤣

hiding and waiting for third parties,
stockpiling supplies for unfair advantages,
winning through resource hoarding,
slower survival-style gameplay.
= LAME

constant pressure,
equal starts,
nonstop action,
mechanical ship combat.⚔️
= TRUTH

@burnbacon said:

Points actually meant something in the Arena.

Problem was, it didnt. The chest was the main focus of everything. It ended the match, but players didnt care and if you werent doing what everyone else wanted, Toxic behavior was a given.

The chest didn't end the match, [mod edit]. The whole point of Arena was to earn silver (i.e. points). Which were obtained through a variety of ways & in 2.0, PvP was the most efficient way. No one would have cared (or "given toxic behavior") if you sat there farming chests the whole game; though if they were trying to win, they probably would have focused you eventually to prevent you from getting a lead in points.

In TDM-majority lobbies, people were even encouraged to farm chests (plural) for the win, in exchange for leaving the TDMers alone.

One of the strats in sloop Arena was to get the chest & play keep-away with it so that other ships had to focus you.

You yap so much on HG posts, Arena posts, and immediately reveal how little you know about either feature. If "misinformation" was a reportable offense in the forums, you would've been bumped down to castaway ages ago.

What's up with all the EM dashes, double emotes, "it isn't just X, it's Y" in the original post? Clearly AI-made!

Riding the ring the entire time is also a pretty easy ticket to getting a loss, because everyone has already figured out that camping the middle of the zone and stalling while downing the other player's mast to wait them for a ring out is more consistent for winning.

AI can't larp as a professional opinion-haver on your behalf. Arena died because so few people liked it the way it was normally played, that is to say it was just a deathmatch-fest.

@satyr1039 said:

Arena died because so few people liked it the way it was normally played, that is to say it was just a deathmatch-fest.

Arena was unpopular because it didn't appeal to as many people is it could've.

Arena died because Rare didn't think to put the maps in their own instances. They had to constantly update the Arena maps as they added more clutter to Adventure. And that became too much work.

As for popularity... it could have had a chest-based mode that appealed to the 1.0 crowd, a naval combat mode that appealed to the 2.0 crowd, and a TDM mode that would have kept TDMers from occupying the other modes. It never had any content updates, no new cosmetics, no ledgers/rewards. Matchmaking/lobby bugs were never addressed & even full/closed crew lobbies would stall endlessly.

Like most other things Rare adds to the game, they released it and then let it collect dust. Never considered player feedback for improvements. It became a mode occupied only by dedicated regulars & the turnover of players who hadn't yet completed the commendations.

@pozitivmc Yea, wish we could discuss it…

Arena died because Rare didn't think to put the maps in their own instances. They had to constantly update the Arena maps as they added more clutter to Adventure. And that became too much work.

No...this so wrong.
It was it own little pocket, and had to be maintained for its own set of rules and requirements. Adventure had nothing to do with its changes/updates.
That is Hourglass.

@theblackbellamy

Honestly I can't remember exactly what level I am with servants or guardians but I am console using controller and I consider myself to be mid (most of the time) at PVP especially against sweats, K&M users and PC players etc but with all that being said, with servants I'm around 300 and with guardians I'm around 200, give or take a bit, I haven't looked in a while... What I'm trying to say is, I've leveled up because I really tried to like HG 😂

I honestly played HG hoping that it would be great or become great and I mostly played it solo too, more than that though, I played it because Arena is no longer there and I enjoy competive PVP modes in games but HG just feels so mean spirited and lacking by comparison to what Arena was and could have grown to be.

I can't bring myself to log into SOT right now, not even High Seas. Part of that is due to needing a break and a change of scenery but also due to frustration with how the game went from being ambitious and interesting, slowly growing and expanding to growing stale and samey. All good things come to an end I suppose? Nothing lasts forever 🤔

Arena, in all honesty was really only a game of capture the flag with extras, that's all it really was but it worked well and it didn't feel boring or mean spirited and it could have been developed further or had different modes of play introduced to it. Another missed opportunity. Another woulda shoulda coulda.

Maybe they should create a PvP game of capture the cursed skull with a racing element involved. Get skull from A to B, 6 ships fight over the skull as they race from one end of the world to the other 😂

@burnbacon said in Remember the Arena? Yeah… This Isn’t It:

Arena died because Rare didn't think to put the maps in their own instances. They had to constantly update the Arena maps as they added more clutter to Adventure. And that became too much work.

No...this so wrong.
It was it own little pocket, and had to be maintained for its own set of rules and requirements. Adventure had nothing to do with its changes/updates.
That is Hourglass.

Changes in Adventure had consequences in Arena; multiple times I couldn't dig up a chest on Golden Sands because it was under some construction work.

They needed to update the possible dig spots on one island - and they didn't.

@burnbacon said:

Arena died because Rare didn't think to put the maps in their own instances. They had to constantly update the Arena maps as they added more clutter to Adventure. And that became too much work.

No...this so wrong... Adventure had nothing to do with its changes/updates. That is Hourglass.

First off, next time @ me like I @ you.

Second off, this is from Rare's official message regarding Arena's closing:

...the overall Sea of Thieves experience with new mechanics, areas, quests and more has had an ongoing knock-on effect on The Arena, due to just how much is shared between the two modes. As a result, The Arena has required considerable development work just to keep it functioning in its base state, and would continue to represent a significant ongoing workload for us – which is ultimately what leads us to the decision we’ve shared with you today.

Once again, you're yapping without knowing anything about the subject. But go ahead and keep embarrassing yourself; it hasn't stopped you before, don't let it stop you now.

@look-behind-you how about routinely disinforming your fellow pirates, will that ever be considered against the forum rules?

If the forum mods never step in to do it, are users not allowed to call out when people are routinely disinforming others on the forum?

@look-behind-you thanks, I know how to flag a post. I've only tried one time before, and that was when I learned you couldn't flag a mod's post...

That doesn't answer my question. I asked if routinely disinforming others will ever be considered against the rules.

It clearly isn't at the moment, and hasn't been for the last 8 years. Just wondering if we have any hope for change in the remaining 2, if that.