Why Sea of Thieves is Dying:

@Fysics3037

If an entire community, arguably the community with the most concentrated power of balance feedback, disagrees with a change, you'd expect the developers to be willing to listen...
...The math is actually that if you split your game balancing to focus equally on the three main pillars; high level, casual, and new players, you should end up weighing each of these pillars of feedback equally...
...And then you can find that an individual at the highest end should have more individual "feedback power" than another person. The next that would follow is the new players then the casuals.

The problem is thinking that Rare is obliged to treat these segments and serve their interests equally, it actually doesn't need to. If these players are the minority and/or Rare has no interest in meeting their desires to maintain their own vision of what the game should be, since they are the developers who designed it, why would they meet the desires of these supposed 5%?

If you and these players can only enjoy this small part of the game, the problem is not with Rare's decisions.

The point of weighing all tiers of play equally is so that you can create a game that appeals to all of them fairly.

They don't have to please all players, that's the thing... when this game came out, when I saw it at E3, I always had the expectation of a game with vertical progression, being able to improve your equipment, ship, become powerful through the evolution of the character, this frustrated me at first and I had to decide, Would I play the game even though I didn't like that aspect or would I just play another thing? I decided to stay and learned to like several other things about it.

I've asked for the removal of the double gun several times here, it would make PVP more enjoyable IN MY OPINION, but it's never become an obstacle for me to enjoy the game. The day it becomes a severe inconvenience I'll simply stop playing, as I've done before, and come back later or not... There's no obligation for the developers to please me.

Imagine a Bell Curve, 100% PvE on one end, 100% PvP on the other....NEITHER is the majority, regardless of what they may think or believe about themselves or 'the other side'.

And in fact this "math" does not refer to casual vs hardcore players... It shows that most people consume the game as it is, that is, PVPVE, players who only play PVP or PVE, who ask for separate servers are the minority. Even in this topic, no one here is against PVP, everyone who disagreed is specifically against the vision proposed in the topic, a PVP aimed at serving competitive players.

This isn't true. S7 & S11 both made adventure PvP harder to execute and gave runners many more tools to escape... Diving also effectively removed loot stacks. There wasn't every anything introduced to rebalance the game back towards the PvPvE nature after these updates, and I'm not holding my breath that there ever will be...

This same mechanic allows Reapers to quickly switch servers to seek out new targets, finding emissaries more quickly. It makes PVP enemies able to spawn unexpectedly on the PVE player server, having a Reaper 5 enemy appearing out of nowhere and seeing you on the map seems to me like a PVP facilitator in adventure mode, not an obstacle... everyone who dives to escape will only deny you their own flags and resources, since the loot will be left behind.

It's not that these are all inherently bad changes. Like for a casual the knives, blowgun, and harpoon gun are fine. But from the standpoint of a top player, most of these changes are meaningless or do more harm than good. To claim that "PvP is getting plenty of attention" is ignorant of the different tiers of PvP players. For a top level player, it's meaningless

Again, the game has never focused on pleasing "top" players, and it's not Rare's obligation to do so either... It's also funny that all of this is just about TDM, naval PVP continues to work fully for both "top" and casual players, the problem is that naval doesn't seem to please those who expect SOT to become a Call of Duty.

There is no argument that diving hasn't had a negative impact on the PvPvE nature of the sandbox.

There actually are, I mentioned a few and as was said in another answer, there is no evidence that most are diving and selling in an infinite cycle, if I were to cite any personal perception, mine is: I keep seeing the same number of ships full of treasure, doing activities or being AFK/having no idea how to farm as there has always been since the beginning.

Having top players around is very important. We're content creators that remind people of the game. We're "goals" that players aspire to reach. We're "cheat catchers" that provide a barrier between cheaters and newer players in hourglass. We're "exploit busters" that take down players abusing bugs. Getting rid of us hurts the game.

1° You speak as if all SOT content creators are DG users who do TDM and preach that this is a necessary aspect of the game.

2° Which players aspire to be in this category? The vast majority just want to play the game and have fun, some even want to stay away from PVP just because of the "top players" and ask for PVE servers.

3° I've already talked to you about this in another thread but I'll say it again, most "top players" or TDM double gunners may not be cheaters, but the HUGE majority of cheaters are in these categories.

@mslechtic15

I’m not saying players can’t be good without things like QS, but they no longer enjoy the game as much, and it bothers them.

If it bothers them to the point of abandoning the game, if that's all that keeps them in SOT, isn't it easier to just go play something else?

I mean, assuming Rare one day removes the Double Gun completely, will these players abandon the game? Even if everything else remains the same? I'm sorry to say, but these people don't like SOT. There's no point in changing the game to please them.

QS wasn’t unfair, everyone had it, only bots were crying… and honestly, QS is still in the game, and people find ways to use it even without cheats – and funny launch was never fixed either.

"Exploits are not unfair, everyone can use them"

Rare hasn’t tried to balance the community. After the Arena mode ended, Rare focused almost solely on PvE and new players, neglecting long-term and PvP players. All updates are centered around PvE. Rare doesn’t care, for example, that the PvP community wants private servers for TDM, which wouldn’t affect game balance

Was the hourglass PVE content? In short, Rare hasn't released anything that fits what you think PVP should be in Sea of ​​Thieves... PVP continued after Arena and will always remain, it just doesn't have to be the way you want it to be.

This is classic casual cope. The game wasn’t always just a “silly goofy pirate game,” but Rare has slowly pushed it in that direction by constantly shrinking the skill gap and throwing obstacles at those who actually want to improve.

In fact, it always was. The game always had a proposal to be inclusive, it was never sold with a proposal to be competitive. The gameplay allowed for TDM and competitive gameplay, but that was never intentional. No one entered the game expecting to use Double Gun to do TDM. Little by little, this became the meta and in a short time, Rare inserted the delay in weapon switching to nerf the DG. You use the Arena as the great example of the peak of PVP when in fact you were using the mode in the wrong way, the Arena didn't exist for TDM, it was a competition based on points that involved more Naval and Maps than spawnkilling others.

This is typical casual cope. Yeah, the game isn’t purely a deathmatch or naval combat sim, but PvP is an integral part of it. Every PvE-focused update automatically creates more opportunities for PvP – whether casual players want to admit it or not.

Everyone here has said that the game involves PVP, but again, it's just not the kind of PVP you want.

Do you think anyone actually uses the new weapons 💀? And what other changes have we gotten in PvP? It’s mostly just nerfs.

Yes, several people use it. Like all of his statements, this one is also based solely on personal perception.

Take back that pro players play with blowpipe – you probably don’t know who a pro player is, and against pro players, you’d get crushed without using double gun ... That’s impressive, but you’d still get destroyed by a double gunner, and spamming the cutlass feels cheap.

@Fysics3037 It seems like he's saying that Double gun has an advantage over the sword... you better explain to him how that's supposedly a lie.

Short-term players may be good for growing the player base, but they will never keep the game alive in the long term. Those who come for a brief period have no real investment in the community, and their activity is only superficial. They aren’t interested in maintaining the game at a high level because their involvement is temporary. On the other hand, long-term players who focus on PvP are the ones who truly create a stable foundation and push the game forward. Without them, Sea of Thieves would quickly lose its appeal...
...It’s not about PvP being “better” than PvE, but about Rare completely failing to find balance. Instead of keeping the PvP community, which led the game for years, they systematically undermined it and catered to PvE players and newcomers...
...I know people who have thousands of hours in the game and have played both a lot of PvP and PvE, and they absolutely agree—it’s not just the PvP players, but all long-term players agree with this.

And what about all the people with thousands of hours who disagreed with you on this very thread? In fact, the oldest people in the game that I know are not players in this hardcore TDM category... Following your logic, your argument has less value because you have fewer hours of play than long-term players who disagree with you, this doesn't make sense.

And the ones who keep the game going are the PVPVE players, not just PVP, much less TDM.

@fysics3037 All of your arguments can only be sustained under two premises, which you tried to establish, that Rare needs to cater equally to their category of players as well as casual or new players, Or that the game will die if they don't.

The math is actually that if you split your game balancing to focus equally on the three main pillars; high level, casual, and new players, you should end up weighing each of these pillars of feedback equally.

you should look into how the US Presidential elections work. It's the same concept. The point of weighing all tiers of play equally is so that you can create a game that appeals to all of them fairly.

Both premises are false, I only addressed your misconception that all categories of players have to have their space, they don't, pleasing everyone is definitely not a necessity. Much less leveling the "power" of certain players' feedback to have representation. There is no equivalence with a nation's voting system, lol, people are not forced to continue playing if the game displeases them.

Regarding the game dying, I don't think I even need to talk about it at this point, there is no precise data to confirm that it is dying, much less that it is dying because of Rare's "negligence" towards a minority part of the community.

Wow. Long read indeed.

First off, exploits should go overboard.

Second it's tru that we kinda lacking new voyage machinc and its sometimes make game boring.
Nowadays I just drop for few hours each drip feed of content.

Steamcharts cloud be usefull for general trends, sure thing it's friction of PC players but still probably enough to see it.

It's not like folks who bought game on store or use gamepass didin't drop it for other new titles.

For pvp side I would love to see boost for HG defending side like pioritise them for match.

@mslechtic15 burning blade? Dope event killed by whines who cloud not chase slowest ship in the game.

@mslechtic15 when I and my crew play we most time do pvp.

I dont give dime about fov
I dont give a dime about weapon swap speed. I belive that ttk is broken nowadays by pineapples.
I dont want tdm servers couse they stupidly strain on reosurces.

But i miss old sword.
I miss old spread of blunder.

Sorry to say that but all it sound more like stuff you want, without puting tought how feesable it is,not some statment from imagined community.

BB and SoSS was desinged to be conested like you know with pvp. How that paned out and whybis another story.

@r3vanns same sad whing about good chesters in RDO like somebody can't cope with depth of being such looser and build ideology around it.