[Mega Thread] The Arena Feedback

  • The Sea of Thieves Anniversary Update has officially released! With the wealth of updates the update has brought to the game, we know that you all have plenty you want to discuss with each other and feedback to us.

    This thread has been set up so you can do just that for expanded ship damage, combat and everything else related to the The Arena.

    You can also refresh your memory on everything else the Anniversay Update adds to Sea of Thieves by checking out the latest Release Notes.


    As you participate in this thread -

    Keep to the Pirate Code
    As a reminder, the Pirate Code is more than just guidelines (though the reference really never gets old), but the rules of the community and game that we expect all members to abide by when participating on the forums. Any member who fails to abide by the code may find themselves put in the brig, or removed from the community.

    We also have Forum Rules, which we moderate to.


    This thread is for feature discussion and feedback only. If you're looking for help with anything then head over to the following threads.

    Looking for Arena Hints and Tips? Look no further!

  • 131
    Posts
    97.9k
    Views
  • First of all: I love it. Such a tense and exciting mode.

    It is quite early to provide detailed feedback and I expect I will have a lot more as my number of games increases and I get a better feel fro the ebb and flow.

    The main problem currently is the length of time it takes to get going. I love the little room where we meet up, it's great but unless games take less than a minute to start, it's going to get pretty old fast. I wouldn't be against a menu based queue if it meant matching people faster.

    It would be useful if there were an alert sent when a crew member disconnects. We had one pirate go missing and it took us 10 minutes to realise they had gone. We had thought they were sneaking on a ship. Just would be useful to know so we can change strategy accordingly.

    A minor one, but I wish I could mute individual pirates in the lobby. Some screaming people ruin the general vibe.

    I hope in the future Rare are considering other ship sizes for Arena. I love a galleon, but its difficult to muster 3 friends at all times of the night. My buddy and I would love to do this same mode but with sloops.

    I like the lack of RNG involved in arena, and I hope that remains, I think the decision to exclude cursed cannon balls was a wise choice. It might be nice to experiment with timed events however, occurences that happen during a match that would cause a dynamic change of strategy, such as a special chest appearing in the world or what ever. Something to break up the meta.

    I will add more over time.

  • IMO, galleons just aren't right for the current setup. If it were just straight up ship combat they would be fine but for chest hunting they are just too cumbersome.

  • The wait times are still a bit too long here.

    I understand the Arena is meant to be a PvP mode, but why not just make it so you could (not always but could) start a contest with 2 or 3 ships instead of 5 so more contests could take place?

    You could have one member from each crew vote to start it early after X amount of time has passed if there still isn’t a full game available yet.

    If contests could have the option to start a bit faster if all crews agree I feel like this mode will be more enjoyable for all!

    Edit: Load times seem to be better, but would still like to see some improvements to this.

  • I love the gamemode! My first game was a lot of fun!

    However, (and this is a big issue for me) I think it is incredibly naive to introduce what is effectively a competitive pvp mode and not have a leavers penalty. After my first game i played 3 games in a row where we had a rough start and 2 crew mates left the game within the first few minutes. I then had to spend 20 minutes just two of us wasting our time in the hopes other people might replace them, which they did not. There is currently (as far as i am aware) no reason to stay in a losing game which defeats the whole point of arena. The first team to sink a ship shouldn't automatically win the game because multiple other crews just abandoned the match.

    I am aware that the game does heavily encourage playing with friends but when you have only a little time to spare and you want to hop into some pvp it really doesn't provide a good experience and doesn't keep me coming back for more.

    I have no idea how you would introduce a leavers penalty in a game like this but at the moment it seems like it is alienating solo play.

  • First of all:
    The gamemode really is a lot of fun, and very tense, especially in late game as everyone is fighting each other.
    But the matchmaking and loading times are a big issue. It is a lot faster to quit SoT via Alt+F4 and rejoin then waiting to get into the lobby/tavern, as the loading screen is really long. Also the waiting times in the tavern are just to long and leaving and trying to join an existing crew via the menu is a lot faster.

  • You acknowledge that Mouse and keyboard have a combat edge over a controller and yet you lump us all in the same game together. Thanks. What's the point if we are to be fodder?

  • Oh, and another thing. Now I'm forced to play with 4 players, there is always some absolute fool in my squad who goes out of his/her way to ruin the game for everyone else.

  • Some other things I noticed other than matchmaking:

    • A common tactic is boarding enemy ships and dropping the anchor. This isn't really fun for both sides, as it makes the fight static and abrupt and boarding alone is always a suicide mission. I think enemies should not be able to lower the anchor of your ship or it should at least require more time to do so. As it is also now possible to shoot the capstan with a cannon to destroy it (and drop the anchor), this should be the only way to do so IMO.
    • Ramming damage should be based on ship speed relative to each other, and ramming at slow speed should not do that much damage
    • Adding more ship types would be nice. Not even one gamemode per ship type, but mixed could be fun if balanced decently.
    • Make the intro auto skip after the first time. PLEASE.
  • I love this mode so much when I have a group four. With that said anything less than four in the arena has been a completely bad experience for me. Sometimes games start when there's 1 or 2 people on a team. On a brig or on sloop this would be fine but on a galleon it's damn near hopeless. If the team is going to be smaller at least give them the appropriate ship size or wait for full teams of 4 please.

  • You have to give us the option to turn off cross play.. it is simply not fair or fun to get destroyed over and over. The hand to hand combat is so bad.. where is the overhaul and where is the option to turn off cross play? Both were promised .. how could you release the Arena without at least the cross play option turned off. I can see the potential of fun in the mode but it is just not there yet. Wait times.. forced to go to gallons so you get randoms who do not care to work towards an objective and cross play that just destroys xbox players.

  • Three Matches last night in Arena....with 1 friend and 2 randoms. 2 of the three battles had one random drunk in the first seconds of spawn. 2 of the three battles saw one of my crew drop anchors withing seconds of raising anchor. No ships in reach of ours. We joined the first battle on a boat with only 1 other player. People abandoned the boat before even getting involved. It was a $%!T shows frankly.

    I will not play Arena without closed crew of 4 committed to finishing a match.

    I suggest a 100,000 gold bond to be put up by all players, fully refunded to the player once they complete the match. 24 minutes, committed to making it work....or you lose 100,000 gold.

    Why join competitive mode if you're there to troll. Why join competitive mode if you quit halfway through.

    A bond of 100,000 gold win or lose, you complete the 24 min, you get your bond back.

    Right now as a Random, Arena is just frustration. There's no penalty for wasting your team's time in any manner. If you're gonna be a jerk, at least let it cost you something, like 100,000 gold!

  • @paskinat0r said in [Mega Thread] The Arena Feedback:

    I love the gamemode! My first game was a lot of fun!

    However, (and this is a big issue for me) I think it is incredibly naive to introduce what is effectively a competitive pvp mode and not have a leavers penalty. After my first game i played 3 games in a row where we had a rough start and 2 crew mates left the game within the first few minutes. I then had to spend 20 minutes just two of us wasting our time in the hopes other people might replace them, which they did not. There is currently (as far as i am aware) no reason to stay in a losing game which defeats the whole point of arena. The first team to sink a ship shouldn't automatically win the game because multiple other crews just abandoned the match.

    I am aware that the game does heavily encourage playing with friends but when you have only a little time to spare and you want to hop into some pvp it really doesn't provide a good experience and doesn't keep me coming back for more.

    I have no idea how you would introduce a leavers penalty in a game like this but at the moment it seems like it is alienating solo play.

    Totally Agree. Players should have to put up a 100,000 gold bond! finish 24 min win or lose and you get your bond back.

  • Storms need to be taken out of Arena.

    If I wanted to sail for 24 minutes in a storm while trying to tap a chest I would play PvE.

    Anything that can damage ships other than rocks, islands, and players (canons, barrels, etc) has absolutely no place in the Arena.

    I've spawned in the middle of the storm and it instantly sets you behind as you're now trying to battle the environment instead of players etc.

    Problem: Storms are in arena
    Solution: Take storms out of arena

  • will we have the choice of the three ships in Arena

  • Competitive full ships is an issue. Most matches there are two ships left. I hate to say it but really think some sort of competitve option after rank 20 might be the way to go.

  • It's very very complicated to do ANYTHING with Galleon when playing with a random crew.

    Brigantine would be much more manageable, because even if not all of the crew is cooperative it's still relatively easy to angle the sails/bail the water etc compared to the slog that is Galleon.

    Unfortunately it's a no from me until there are smaller ships available.

  • Best Update ive ever seen!

  • @macdoland

    Yes, we need a sloop Arena mode!

  • @lifenomadic sagte in [Mega Thread] The Arena Feedback:

    Storms need to be taken out of Arena.

    If I wanted to sail for 24 minutes in a storm while trying to tap a chest I would play PvE.

    Anything that can damage ships other than rocks, islands, and players (canons, barrels, etc) has absolutely no place in the Arena.

    I've spawned in the middle of the storm and it instantly sets you behind as you're now trying to battle the environment instead of players etc.

    Problem: Storms are in arena
    Solution: Take storms out of arena

    I honestly liked the few storms I have been in in the Arena so far. They added an additional element to the fight.
    But both times we got into a storm while fighting with another ship. Just the storm alone would have been an experience as bad as you described it.

  • I don't get why the game has problems to match the people. There are a lot of players playing Sea of Thieves. Arena only needs to match 4 or 5 teams, other games match 100 players instantly. :-/

  • What if you do a vote system to help with arena matches. Place a scroll near the wheel. And once a majority of a ships crew votes it is marked as ready and provided a score sheet and list of crews ready, once 3 crews are ready a timer begins before launch. If you don’t ready up in time you remain in the tavern until the next round. Once a round is over the crew would need to ready up again. This may increase time for some but would prevent solo players being dragged into a session without their crew ready and allow more time for those groups wishing to continue tavern festivities. May also consider a single tavern load in location and allow more than one session to return to a single tavern instance allowing for an increased selection pool for the 3-5 crews needed. Once a session launches another session may begin after x amount of time.

  • I just thought i write a Feedback for Arena and saw the Megathread and were baffled when i saw it's only 23 posts.
    Whaaaaaat?
    I remember Megathreads with 23 pages at minimum :D

    Ok, but anyway....

    Arena is completely a mess with randoms, but like Advenure mode with randoms mostly is painfull.

    We made the experience that some teams are really underpowered or lack crewmembers etc.
    Some players seem to be good players, but talk toxic like nothing, insult personally and trash talk all the time.
    Although they were a challenge, we switched server ue to toxicity in speaking.
    Made some 1st and 2nd places, sometimes its about luck or bad luck where you spawn who is coming for you, where are the most treasures easy to get etc.
    All fine - we mostly had fun until.

    Most people are not good at sailing and shotng cannons tbh.
    We attack from far and a most people cannot fire back on long range.

    What i'd like is different Modes for Crewsizes and ships.

    I'd be very interested to have 1 Man Sloop Contest.
    and of course also 5x duo sloops and Briggs.

  • The core mechanics in Arena are very solid (like Adventure when it first launched). I played some rounds over the weekend and can see the potential. Potential is the best thing I can say about it because for me, it's an unplayable, simply horrible game play experience until two things are introduced.

    1. Option to opt out of cross play. I play on both PC and Controller and the speed and accuracy aiming advantage with a mouse is HUGE. It's simply not a competitive mode for Xbox players until they can opt out of cross play.
    2. Galleons only is just terrible. If you play with Randoms, good luck. Or if you spawn in with less than 4 in your crew - good luck.
      In short, if you’re a PC (or Xbox with mouse and keyboard) player in a regular 4-person crew, Arena would be awesome. For everyone else it's rubbish.
  • The incredibly long black screens are a huge problem. I suspect a lot of people quit out during this screen because they think the game is frozen or don't want to wait without knowing why.

    I know that I have loaded in because I can hear the ship, the waves, etc... It appears as if the game is locking everyone into the black screen until everyone else is ready to go. For fairness this makes perfect sense and I agree that it should work this way, but you need to change the screen to show WHY you are waiting.

    Show a list of crews competing, show how many people you are waiting on, show something other than just a black loading screen.

  • Feedback: Storms will put a hole in your boat and fill up your boat before you load in if you load into a storm. Almost sank before we started a couple of times, lol.

    Starting locations: This is fine for a non-ranked game mode but there can be a "luck of the draw" factor like wind, island proximity placement, etc...

  • I have to report a big bug here.

    We were just transfered to a new lobby server while being in the arena lobby.
    This caused my character appearance to "reset" (don't know how to call this otherwise).

    This "reset" causes all vanity items and clothing to be unequipped... while this alone would not be bad at all, since you can just requip everything, the skin tone of you char and everything which was only possible to change during character creation, was reset as well!
    This includes things like default skars or beard-stubbles, which are not part of the vanity chest, and cannot be changed.
    Meaning the character looks completely different now.

    Relogging or restarting the game, will not resolve this issue.

    Bugreport ticket is open.

  • Fishing needs to be disabled during arena.

    I've joined at least 3 boats today where some people have done nothing but fish. I've reported them, but it still is a waste of my time.

  • After playing quite a few more games of Arena I have a couple of further points to add:

    As others have alluded to, open crews in Arena is more times than not a poor experience. I'm all for teaching newcomers and less experienced sailors the ropes, but a competitive scene is not the time or place when you are matched up against experienced crews.

    I now exclusively queue up for Arena with friends and pirates through discord.

    A few proposals:

    First of all please add a training/tutorial mode. Even if that is just a single ship, in a 24 minute round where they try get as many points as possible without PVP. This is where we can spend time showing people the ropes.

    Secondly please add some form of personal rank, perhaps on a monthly reset with some rank based rewards. I'm not ultra competitive, and don't often reach the top of ladders in games but I think it's necessary for a couple of reasons.

    • It discourages sore loser behaviour of disconnecting early or self sabotage.
    • It allows banding, so that Open Crew becomes useful again once you elevate yourself outside of the newcomer/troll banding
    • It softens the entry curve as new crews aren't immediately being destroyed by seasoned pirates
    • It provides further motivation to play your best and prove your worth

    Lastly I would welcome a close combat review, particularly chain jumping and bouncing around. It was a problem in Adventure Mode, but since combat was not always common place it was easy to overlook. Now that it happens regularly with Arena, it's just annoying to fight everyone on pogo-sticks.

    Cheers

  • Arena would be perfect with Xbox only option. I am getting 'double shot'. When Xbox only I will return to arena.

  • i'm actually lvl 17 and play lot of time alone in PVP, and i'm … really annoyed.
    40% of games i begin alone on my ship, i see 1/2 others ship full or 3 man and 1 or 2 other don't mooving, no one players i think.

    Just WHY?, why i spawn lot of time alone??? why i begin a game alone when i'm in tavern too? it's just so annoying to play like this! and i don't speack of spawn at 10 min on a boat sinking/crew trolling/doying nothing/not full/ or just bad cause they begin to play the game…..

    Really guys change this mode, he's so frustrating as solo player and i think he's not competitive for crew.

    all my game (70%) 1 team burst others teams at score….. because they are just 4 at the beginning and know play correctly.

    i just Love normal mode, but this one is maybe my worst experience since somes years at solo player.

  • One thing I think is a bit of a shame in Arena, is that you can see the other ships on the map. It negates the need for a pirate in the crows nest completely and makes sneak attacks hard to pull off.

    I feel that spotting and map awareness is a skill that is really benefitial in Adventure mode and it is a shame to see that skill being redundant when someone can just stare at the map for the same information.

  • First of all the arena mode is great.
    But instead of going into detail what’s so great about it, I want to bring up some possible improvements from my point of view and things I don’t like.

    1. Things I don’t like

    -the sword hit penalty that makes you unable to move takes to flow out of the combat

    -more equal spawn locations in the beginning(not always the case)

    -show us who the winners are! There is not really a way to say for sure who it is. Give them some kind of feature to make them visible after a match in the tavern.

    1. Possible changes in the future

    -more gamemodes that could allow you to play with a crew of 3 or maybe even less.
    Furthermore you could implement different types of gamemodes (ex. last ship standing, pure pvp on an island or who can sink the most ships)

    -more things to do in the tavern. This could go from implementing a legend hideout or coming back to more pvp mentioned earlier in form of giving us a way to do 1v1 sword Duells or some other kind of pvp Duell.

    I would love to hear the opinions of other players and if you think that some of these ideas could improve the game even more in the future.

  • can we please have Sloop-only and Brig-only Arena ?

131
Posts
97.9k
Views
33 out of 131