Rare started off with bi-weekly events with time limited cosmetic rewards. If you didnt play in those 2 weeks you missed out on them forever. So from the very start Rare was trying to create major FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) which is predatory game design. It took them months to move away from this strategy and just add stuff you can always unlock.
Seems like they have fallen back into the FOMO method, especially with seasons. Not that Rare invented seasons its a common thing in the industry, doesnt mean its a good feature though. The way Rare is doing the cosmetics is pretty awful though. You get 1 ship piece per season so you have to keep playing every single season if you want the whole ship set.
Basically I avoided season1. When I logged in and tried to browse through the UI to see the goals etc I literally felt Ill. As bad as this pirate journal was they just added more layers to it. You have to go like 15 tabs deep to find some stuff. I dont think a worse UI has ever been put in a game. Especially a game where you could get jumped any second. Youre better off just going to the website.
Season2 added the barrel emote which I thought was going to be a game changer. I figured they would prey on people with that too by making it like a $10 emote in the cash shop but when I saw it was a renown reward I figured I might as well get it in case I do decide to come back (since season1 pretty much had me serious consider quitting permanently)
Since I left the PvE discord due to not wanting to sit in que for hours to be able to play the game in a way that Rare doesnt want despite millions of people quitting due to the lack of... I grinded for a bit got to about renown 60 or so. Really wanted the Hull but at the same time I want to play other games and solo renown grind to 100 is pretty tedious.
So since I got sick of the grind to get the Season2 Hull now I will never be able to complete the set, Season3 adds the figure head to go with season2 hull. Which I dont have and it will never be back in game........ FOMO. At least with other games season passes they would have the full themes in the same season. This method it would be at least 6 seasons of the repetitive grind to unlock the whole ship set. As someone who grinded most of the tedious achievements just to make the game last longer in the early years its kind of like being punished.
Ive always thought time limited stuff was dumb. People who come in later would be put off by seeing things they can never obtain. Though it could always kill the FOMO trap for them too since well hey I missed 3 years of cosmetics who cares if i miss more?
I decided hey if I finally give up and miss out on some cosmetics then it would help me finally quit this game like my friends wisely did 2 months after release. They have never looked back. Not once considered joining me on the seas again. I kinda wish I left with them. But I bought into the FOMO hard.
I think all the cosmetics from the seasons should be shifter to the gold shops as they havent really added much to them over the years. You could jack the prices up similar to the new Pirate Legend set as a way of being like "you didnt earn it when it was free, now you have to pay" though one could argue the time spent to earn the things equates to real money as time IS money. And grinding the FOMO content can be a full time job in a lot of cases.
This is a bit of a rant and I'm sure no one will read it or it will just get hate just due to the topic title.
But if it isn't obvious I love the world, I love the mechanics, I love the art style, I love the game, I dont love the way the servers are. Rare likes to compare themselves to the (past) success of World of Warcraft because they reached a 20 million player mile stone. But WoW at its height had over 14 million subscribers. That was people paying a monthly fee for the game. That doesnt mean all of them were active but safe to say the majority wouldnt be paying for the game if they werent somewhat active. Rare knows their true metrics. They know how many people actually still play. They also know how many people want PvE servers. (WoW had PvE from the very start, it didnt prevent PvP servers from being hugely popular) They have pushed away many players, and given up on millions of dollars in microtransaction sales. All for the sake of a ship rolling up on another ship and pretending they are going through a Wendys drive thru.... They love to repeat these fun stories from the early days...... Ever notice they use the same 3 year old stories? You never hear anything new because thats not the game and the Devs have checked out in terms of community engagement. These FUN stories could also happen in a PvE environment. I would argue they would get more of the fun stories they love so much if you had the freedom PvE would allow. PvPers are scared PvE would remove their easy prey. No more 4v1 fights where they talk trash to the solo sloop for being bad at the game and not being able to solo a full double gunning galleon crew. Ive never been worried about losing treasure in the game. But if someones chasing me and I have no loot on board but I have say 300 wood, 600 canon balls, a bunch of cursed canon balls and fire bombs I would run for hours because I dont want to lose the time I spent stocking my boat. Heck thats my ideal version of SoT. I log off whenever I need a break, When I come back my ship is as it was when I left. Fully stocked ready to play. Ive easily wasted over 100 hours stocking ships alone. In terms of reputation and gold progress...... who cares? its for cosmetics which hold no level of prestige any more. It literally means nothing if youve gotten them from grinding on a PvE discord or in the current mode.
TLDR (i guess?)
Since I skipped the season2 ship hull reward I cant ever complete the set if I started now and tried for the figurehead. So why even play the game? FOMO content = trash
