Maiden Voyage update

  • Highwayman7718
    Seafarer

    Today Maiden Voyage Tall Tale shows only a small bit of the true content of the game and doesnt give you any actual information about what to do in the game.
    All you learn is basic controls and mechanics, and how to complete the easiest task in the game - X-Marks-The-Spot mission.
    But what about PvP? What about lore of the game? New players can be just demolished by the amount of things they dont even know. Especially in Season 8, when almost every ship is willing to fight.
    So maybe Maiden Voyage needs an update.

    1. All the current content of the MV can be left on its place, BUT there is one thing - there should be some tips on how to use your Pirate Log:
    • Small Introduction to Commendations, with guide to the Maiden Voyage tab, so people can complete all the tasks at the 1st time. This will help people to find out that they can can go fishing and cook meat even faster.
    • Season Tab Indtroduction. This will help people to find out what those "strange text blocks at the upper-left corner of the screen" mean.
    1. The part when you actually start to sail your ship can be improved to show you almost everything about your ship and combat.
    • There can be a Skeleton Sloop with bad shooting AI that misses almost every shot but the Anchorballs and Jigballs, so this can be a small tutorial about Cursed Cannonballs and using your cannons.
    • In the end you can say something about main factions (Athena and Reapers), about other crews and about world events through the Ramsey's Speech, like "Sea of Theives is the wonderful place for every pirate, but there are also a lot of dangerous things, like blah-blah-blag..." and etc., and then you show the final cutscene with the Ramsey's and Flameheart's silhouettes in the sky.
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  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    Maiden Voyage Tall Tale shows only a small bit of the true content of the game and doesnt give you any actual information about what to do in the game.

    What it does

    • How to explore an island
    • Fire Cannon
    • Follow a Map
    • Dig up Stuff
    • Speak with Npc
    • Cook on Fireplaces
    • Fish
    • Find and use Rowboat
    • Repair Ship
    • Raise anchor
    • Set Sail
    • Use interactive devices. Switches and Levers
    • Defeat first skeleton
    • Find Journals/Read
    • Safe encounter Water Threats. Meg, Skeleton ship & Kraken.
    • Once you reach the SoT, your first encounter is mysterious stranger who hints you to speak with the factions on outposts, first small voyage.
    • Use Map table
    • Voyage Table/Voting
    • Sail to island, Locate treasure
    • Deliver Loot to correct faction.

    It does a "Fair" tutorial. Everything else it more like, you don't have to learn it unless you want to know about it. You are not entitled or forced. Majority of what makes the game different, it doesnt (shouldnt) hold your hand and explain everything. Learn at your pace. Explore the vast islands & open sea. It your first day....take your time.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    I would add some phantom fighting and 1 and then 2 deck fighting pirate bots so people can practice sword and guns, something they can practice as much as they want

    and then I would add a suggestion box to use sea forts as a place to practice close combat with different weapons against phantoms.

  • RedEyeSith
    Vanguard
    Insider

    I would agree that I feel a bit more should be done in the Maiden Voyage these days to help onboard aspiring Pirates.

    I've always felt Combat needed a better rundown than it gets, and this has been from the beginning. The single immobilized Skeleton you kill at the start isn't quite enough I think. Having a very small spawn of say 2 Skeletons with very toned down AI when you dig up the Chest could be good to let players get used to some footwork and healing (and how often when you dig up Loot in game you'll get a spawn on you). I would also like to see the Skeleton Galleon sequence have a little more back and forth, with you needing to go and repair up again from the exchange (1 or 2 assured Hull Shots).

    I like the idea of adding something about navigating the menus now that we have a lot of those with all sorts of different information (this could come in during the in game portion, but I do like the idea of having the player look at the Commendation for the Maiden Voyage as well so it could also be split a bit, like guiding you to the Season Tab once you first get in main game, or the Adventure Tab the first time you try an Adventure - assuming you haven't looked at them already).

    To me this is less about hand holding and more about guiding new players through the mass of information this game now has. We old timers are spoiled in that we have had these things come slowly over time. We didn't get any guidance to start, but we also had only a pittance of the options the game now has. Most people don't go through past patch details on a game generally speaking, so a lot of this will easily escape or overwhelm them without some guidance - the same guidance we got as these features were rolled out slowly to us.

    I also encourage reminding the players of the shared world experience beyond - or as you phrased it "the dangerous world beyond"). This tends to be a huge sticking point for people - so I think it would behove the game to provide a reminder of this fact before you port off to the main servers. Let them know they will be in a world that has other Pirates just like them in it too, and that they my be friend or foe - helping you gain more coin through cooperation or trying to sink you to remove the competition or steal from you to maximize their own profits. And what kind of Pirate will you be out there on the Seas?

    So I do think the Maiden Voyage could certainly use a little touching up to help facilitate the onboarding process for new players coming into all of this where it is now as opposed to back at the start. It is a much deeper world out there then when we first embarked, and it can be very overwhelming to not at least have a bit of guidance through all of that.

  • boredmen
    Marauder
    Insider

    I'm with the OP. I'm not a well-seasoned veteran like many on these forums, but I have had my fair share of encounters on the seas and also came into the game a little too trusting of my fellow players. I'd agree that we need to have more practice on naval and PVP before thrusting us into combat with sweaty PVP gods who have no mercy or desire to encourage learning (as should be expected).

    I think it would be nice to make the trip through the veil a little more hostile and get new pirates used to fighting for their ship and repelling chance boarders, as not having this knowledge makes the early game incredibly frustrating, especially after a player has worked for hours on an objective.

    Every other game I've ever played has done a good job of setting expectations before the player is put in a situation, but Sea of Thieves is still lacking in my opinion. I hope they make some changes as we have suggested.

  • Lem0n Curry
    Vanguard
    Insider

    @boredmen said in Maiden Voyage update:

    I'm with the OP. I'm not a well-seasoned veteran like many on these forums, but I have had my fair share of encounters on the seas and also came into the game a little too trusting of my fellow players. I'd agree that we need to have more practice on naval and PVP before thrusting us into combat with sweaty PVP gods who have no mercy or desire to encourage learning (as should be expected).

    I think it would be nice to make the trip through the veil a little more hostile and get new pirates used to fighting for their ship and repelling chance boarders, as not having this knowledge makes the early game incredibly frustrating, especially after a player has worked for hours on an objective.

    Every other game I've ever played has done a good job of setting expectations before the player is put in a situation, but Sea of Thieves is still lacking in my opinion. I hope they make some changes as we have suggested.

    It would be really disappointing getting NPC boarding on the Maiden Voyage and not in the actual game. Or are you suggesting some people can join someone else's Maiden Voyage ?

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