Hi, how are you?
I want to offer 1 idea to improve the game: It's actually very simple. It would be very cool if you increased the number of players on 1 server, made more ships, probably it would be possible to make 2 types of servers, this is for 12 ships and for 6 ships. This can even be done as a separate item when starting the game, for example, "Would you like to have more pirates in the same sea with you?". This would open up many more opportunities, the game would become more dynamic, more interesting, it would be possible to create an alliance of pirates and fight against another alliance of pirates, can you imagine? If you have the opportunity to bring this idea to the development team, then please do so. Sincerely, GrinD, a pirate who seeks refuge!
More players on the map
@grind2018 the thing is, the servers cant handle that.
They have only recently been able to get back to 6 ships on a server without the servers having a stroke.
The ships in and of themselves are a major load on the servers because of how physics intensive they are
@grind2018 sadly there isnt just yet, you can have a look at the recently posted documentary in there is basically a statement explaining the issue.
At launch the game was already running into issues with running out of RAM (memory) or CPU power. And everytime the developers and designers thought of something new to add they had to go back and see where they could free up some space in the pipelines.
The mere fact of the ships being completely physics based objects that interact with: the sea, islands, rocks, wind, players, loot etc etc etc is what is so taxing on the system and that is not even counting all the other things that can interact with each other.
The amount of calculations going on for that alone and to communicate that to all game clients constantly for each ship on a server is the main (but not the only) limiting factor.
They talk about the memory bottleneck. More players means more memory.
Memory is already at capacity. Only way to have more players would be removing things from the world.
I wonder if reducing the number of shrines/forts could help free up memory.
Just having a maximum of 1 active/available at a time? Like a mini world event
@grind2018 said in More players on the map:
My idea is not based on the technical knowledge of the game, I think that it would just be cool to make more players on the map, but I didn’t think how to implement it, because I’m not a developer. Isn't there technology right now that can do this?
Im not sure how exactly to word this, but things arnt just as simple as just increasing the number, it takes a lot of work and there are a lot of limits to what can be done with any game, especially one with advanced physics like this.
I agree that you can remove a certain number of islands and make a warning that this mode will require more memory and processor power, I remember there was such a mode - Arena, and it would be nice to do this only without a time limit and with a choice of ship (which ship you need), limit the part of the map, remove a few leftovers so as not to load the computer so much and make it a separate mode.
@grind2018 said in More players on the map:
I agree that you can remove a certain number of islands and make a warning that this mode will require more memory and processor power, I remember there was such a mode - Arena, and it would be nice to do this only without a time limit and with a choice of ship (which ship you need), limit the part of the map, remove a few leftovers so as not to load the computer so much and make it a separate mode.
That's not how it works, and Arena was discontinued because they didn't want to use developer resources to maintain a separate mode.
@d3adst1ck Maybe it doesn’t work that way, I don’t know (because I’m not a developer), but it seems to me that the idea is quite worthy of attention, even if you make not 12 boxes, but at least 8 or 10. It seems to me that most people get pretty bored after 50 -60 hours, they want to test themselves as pirates in battle but can't find players on the map because the map is huge and only 6 ships on it is quite difficult to meet, my friend just stopped playing after he had to swim for 10-15 minutes to to meet someone and the pvp mode cannot make up for those feelings during a real battle on ships.
@grind2018 said in More players on the map:
My idea is not based on the technical knowledge of the game, I think that it would just be cool to make more players on the map, but I didn’t think how to implement it, because I’m not a developer. Isn't there technology right now that can do this?
Possibly yes it is doable. But it would mean these theoretical 12 ship servers - aka a maximum of 48 players - would be unavailable for last gen consoles as they would not be able to run that version of the game. Plus the game world would need some serious scaling back to free up memory. For example underwater shrines would need to be removed as they are a big load on the servers. World events would probably need to be reduced or scaled back significantly, the PvE enemies in general would need to be reduced and/or mostly removed. Maybe the Spanish Forts could be kept but the amount of phantoms spawning in them/on cannons would definitely be reduced. And etc.
It would honestly be easier to build the game from scratch with 48 player servers in mind than it would be to redesign the existing server infrastructure. A Sea of Thieves 2 would most likely be able to accommodate 48 player servers with present day tech but that means no last gen consoles.
It's easy to forget that Sea of Thieves was actually an absolute feat of technological ingenuity for a game launched in 2018. Most games studios back then would only ever have been able to produce the concept of SoT as a tech demo running on a private server(s). And yet Rare made an actual playable game with a solid foundation that could be built on. Sea of Thieves is still to this day a very impressive technological achievement. Considering the fact it's running based on 5 year old hardware/software limitations it's actually incredible with the features they continue to add.
@grind2018 said in More players on the map:
@d3adst1ck Maybe it doesn’t work that way, I don’t know (because I’m not a developer), but it seems to me that the idea is quite worthy of attention, even if you make not 12 boxes, but at least 8 or 10. It seems to me that most people get pretty bored after 50 -60 hours, they want to test themselves as pirates in battle but can't find players on the map because the map is huge and only 6 ships on it is quite difficult to meet, my friend just stopped playing after he had to swim for 10-15 minutes to to meet someone and the pvp mode cannot make up for those feelings during a real battle on ships.
That's what the hourglass is for; finding ships to fight.
@d3adst1ck An hourglass can't quite make up for the feeling of a full fight, where every chance plays into the full fight, and the hourglass is more of a duel than a full fight.
@vakrisone Maybe it is, but it seems to me that it is quite possible to make at least 8 ships, or to make 12 ships, but like this: 3 galleons, 3 brigantines, 6 sloops. Because 48 players is really a lot.
@grind2018 said in More players on the map:
@d3adst1ck Maybe it doesn’t work that way, I don’t know (because I’m not a developer), but it seems to me that the idea is quite worthy of attention, even if you make not 12 boxes, but at least 8 or 10. It seems to me that most people get pretty bored after 50 -60 hours, they want to test themselves as pirates in battle but can't find players on the map because the map is huge and only 6 ships on it is quite difficult to meet, my friend just stopped playing after he had to swim for 10-15 minutes to to meet someone and the pvp mode cannot make up for those feelings during a real battle on ships.
Most players are bored after 50-60 hours? im at around 500 hours last i checked and im far from bored, and i know plenty of people with even double my hours that have yet to get bored of the game.
You ask for more ships for the sake of having pvp being more on demand, yet say that the hourglass cant make up for it? It is exactly the idea of having pvp on demand, and is absolutely a real battle, often some of the most intense and challenging of battles that you will find compared to a random fight on the open sea, while other players can still come in and interfere as always.
You are asking for changes that are more intensive than the game can handle just because the hourglass is not to your liking, yet keep saying that you dont understand the limits of the game or its development because you arnt a dev, and it really confuses me considering its been stated a few times that it goes against the games limits.
@grind2018 said in More players on the map:
@vakrisone Maybe it is, but it seems to me that it is quite possible to make at least 8 ships, or to make 12 ships, but like this: 3 galleons, 3 brigantines, 6 sloops. Because 48 players is really a lot.
Why? Do you have more experience in programming and server loads than the good folks at Rare and Microsoft?
If they only just got the game working with 6 ships after limiting to 5 for many months due to server issues, why do you think that 8 or 12 ships is no big deal to implement? They also limited the types of ships on servers as well so you could not have a full server full of galleons anymore (and those limits are likely still in place) to improve the game performance. The One is not holding this back either as the servers do not care what you are running the game on so discontinuing support for it is not going to magically make it possible to up the ship count in a session (in case you were thinking that as many uneducated players like to claim here from time to time).
Besides the server limitations, the game world was really designed to handle only 6 ships anyway from a balance standpoint. You aren't supposed to see a ship every time you turn around.
Just stop already, all you are doing is continuing to show your ignorance. If Rare thought they could do it and it wouldn't upset the balance or the feel that they are striving for, then they will. At best with the current map size they would add only 2 more ships, doubling the current cap would be stupid as you would run into ships all the time and get nothing done. But even 2 more ships is pretty far fetched at this point, whether you think so or not.
