"Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback

@d3adst1ck I would have preferred diving nerfs rather than the ability for it to be used to dive upon unsuspecting players literal metres away without warning. There's a difference between "in sight" and "in cutlass range" 😅

This just made diving needlessly overpowered

currently how close players can spawn to you is insane and completely game breaking.

i had had 3 instances of this since it was introducted.

one where a gallon dived up like 2 sloop lenghts away from me. in full broadside of me. while i was at an outpost. it was clearly diving to barincal cay nearby but even though every other direction was clear the game decided to put it in a range it could very easy drop the anchor and sink me while preping with supplys. luckly they were new so by the time they stopped i was able to get away.

the second time. i was diving up to morrow peaks outpost. and ended up very close to a brig in there cannon range. luckly they werent alert so we were able to pull out before crashing into them. but another case of this shouldnt happen.

the third one was the worse. i was watching the hoirzen at Flintlock Peninsula while my crew did stuff. on a brig. a sloop dived up behind me so close all i had time to do was go to the sail pully and click to attach myself to it. i didnt even get a chance to get the sails down before i was being fired on. chained. and had them already able to board. we lost a 3 hour stack not due to any failures on our end. but becuase the game decided that a sloop lenghts away from me behind me but them with prefect cannon angle is an approate spawning location for a level 1000 hourglass duo sloop.

this is completely nuts how the system is working. a minimum distance away needs to be implimented. at least the next island over. so when people dive up if your on watch you have a chance to actually react to this. this has been the most game breaking situation ive seen in over 4000 hours of playing. and is the first time ive honestly considered quitting the game if it isnt fixed. it is so bad for every player. you arent even nose facing like you are in an hourglass match its always one player is caught out for not pre knowing that a ship was going to dive up with no music que. no visual que. they just should know that something is going to dive on you with no pre warning. its such bad game design. and will burn off players who experince. if your a swabbie to even the most hardcore its frustating to be on the reciving end of this. it can be bad both as the dived on or diver. minimum distance and audio que are a must for this. and frankly it needs to be disabled until this is fixed.

Dived to an Ashen Garrison and there was a Sloop making its way to the same Garrison - 2 squares away maybe but clearly visible.

Waste of my time as a Solo and they ended up sinking me as I did Fort.
Also not a great experience for someone who has perhaps sailed a fair distance to just have the event invaded by me and trash loot spawned(hopefully no Mega).

I rarely dive and Dev's need to stop unnecessarily encouraging it by creating commendations that require it.
A raid voyage should be a choice not an obligation.

@ablepirate

I'm more concerned about the complaints I've been seeing about these server merges. I read a recent post where players are about to sneak over to an active FotD, and get merged out. A video I saw today on Twitter, showed a player completed a garrison and was on their way to sell, got server-merged, d/c'd, spawned back in to find their ship docked at the outpost. All their loot-- gone.

Something's wonky with the system, and players are getting frustrated here.

@europa4033 I hope they'll be able to address it soon, same with the major ashen garrison bugs and the hourglass cheese. Shame there hasn't been any public recognition of these issues being known (if they are known) like in previous cases

@ablepirate

At least put a timer shown on the rowboat displaying how longer until it despawns to appear back with the ashen garrison. Heck how about a "Your server has the option to be merged. Accept? Y/N." so players can choose whether to lose their FotD steal, or the loot in front of them.

@europa4033 All the issues with the ashen garrisons makes me wonder how bad it was pre-delay...

the rowboat bug somewhat similarly seems to happen with the ashen keys too, where the keys can snap back to their original spawn position after you pick them up the first time. this hasn't happened 100% to the time to me nor can i pin point a specific cause but i have had ashen keys go missing not even spawning back to their original spawn position on the garrisons

really hoping for a hotfix. Just hope they get time to address it with all the restructuring of seasons and stuff going on the back end that we heard about in the last developer direct. because I feel like these issues are really going to kill ashen garrisons the further they go on.

The threat of being diven on right now by any ship anywhere makes stuff like shrines and treasuries and the garrisons themselves less enjoyable to do because you could be away from your ship from a minute and then a brig dives out and sinks you losing all your progress

@ablepirate

I've seen images of players who die to the Custodian, he despawns and now the fort is soft-locked. I've seen screenshots of the key bugged behind a wall where a boss died. I've had it happen to me where I've turned invisible. One of my forts, the rowboat floated up, went thru the ceiling and lodged between the wall and a table in the main room. Gates are not there making the room appear it's opened but you can't go in them, so you open them with the capstan which makes the gate close the room but you're able to go thru the gate.

I definitely do think they need to make some exceptions and add some flags that prevent people diving onto you. For example as the post mentions it shouldn't allow someone to dive onto an outpost while a player is present, especially not if that player is a fresh spawn. Also should not allow a player to dive onto an Island that another player in that server is at, and already has a quest for.

@d3adst1ck That has always been a thing with diving, if they spawn on the outpost at the same time as you are diving to it

I will go on the record to say i think the seas were very dry and it does seem a bit better now, but the server merges are too aggressive sometimes

So everyone complains they see no one on the seas so they made it to where now you spawn directly next to someone and now everyone is complaining they don't want to be near other ships. So which one do you want? Diving didn't make the game mode dead. There were tons of people on it and you sailed by people constantly still. Safer seas has made the game dead. Get rid of that mode and see how many people show back up on the seas. Either they learn to play as it was intended or they leave cause they don't want to learn the game.

@ablepirate You missed one of the ways they could resolve the issues.

• get rid of diving

If there are 8,000 players playing, and let's just say for argument's sake that 7,000 of them are on Safer Seas, there's still no reason why there can't be 6 ships on a server. However, hourglass is going to take up 2 of those spots, leaving just 4 ships per server. Of those 4 ships, how many are just supplying up and diving? Or, your server gets a new ship, they don't see anything worth doing, and dive out again? We don't know how many are coming and going, but hourglass reserves 2 spots, or 30% of that total server.

@elmo6842 There's a difference between being able to see and encounter other people on the seas then being dived upon by another ship without warning to the same island as you. I'd rather they find a way to keep player retention on the same server.

@sweetsandman Based, but I don't think it's ever going to happen at this point

@sweetsandman said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

@ablepirate You missed one of the ways they could resolve the issues.

• get rid of diving

Don't see them outright getting rid of it, but there are certainly reasonable changes they could make to diving to make it less viable as a way to constantly server hop.

@elmo6842 said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

So everyone complains they see no one on the seas so they made it to where now you spawn directly next to someone and now everyone is complaining they don't want to be near other ships. So which one do you want? Diving didn't make the game mode dead. There were tons of people on it and you sailed by people constantly still.

I never saw the seas as dead, even when people were complaining, until Season 11. There were always ships on the seas, but I think Rare are listening too much to content creators who want constant action and are "hunting". The problem is that they're not very good at hunting, and are lazy.

Safer seas has made the game dead. Get rid of that mode and see how many people show back up on the seas. Either they learn to play as it was intended or they leave cause they don't want to learn the game.

Nah, Safer Seas kept players playing that would otherwise have left completely. There are plenty more games out there that they would go play instead. Removing Safer Seas won't increase server population on High Seas, because servers should scale to the size of the playerbase.

Rare have it half-right with their analysis but for the wrong reasons. Diving is leaving spots behind on servers that aren't back-filled, so rather than deal with the cause (diving) they are trying to treat the end result, badly.

I feel like this change doesn't necessarily increase player sightings - just the chance for guaranteed player combat when players dive up upon each other at an extremely close range.

Well, got to break a few eggs to make a omelet. Need to see more players, players like to Dive alot. :p

Guys i actually have a revolutionary fix for diving. Remove diving, BUT, and heres the big but here...
Double, maybe even triple the speed of all ships. The big problem is getting places is slow, the other problem is, nobody is around, well the fix to both is removing diving (you stay on ur server) and doubling ship speeds, stops complaints about places taking too long to get to, plus i thin ships speeding around would be fun and funnier than what we have now.

I literally saw vault loot get silent merged away from me on an island I was on while my shipmate saw the Galleon we chased away pop into nothingness (it didn't sink, it popped away).

I saw more people on X having the same issue, and SoT Support said "they are aware".

Something with the merge mechanic is currently broken. Honestly, I'd rather see no ships than have to fight a Galleon for an hour and see my loot taken from me just because said Galleon plays "shoot and run" with a sloop.

@realstyli said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

Don't see them outright getting rid of it, but there are certainly reasonable changes they could make to diving to make it less viable as a way to constantly server hop.

• Aye - remove all dives apart from events that are faction specific loot that has loot tied to that event : Sea Forts, Skelly Forts, Fleets etc

• New event's don't get Faction specific Raid Voyages. You want Krakens Teeth? Get 'em in the existing events. Don't need them in Ashen Garrisons. No diving to Mega Stashes.

• Stop creating Diving Commendations : Diving to Hunters Call Voyages, Diving to Ashen Garrisons etc

• Emissary Flag reverts to Grade I on a dive

@ablepirate I agree, there needs to be some adjustments made to how player merging/diving works. I reckon if a player is diving to an Outpost (for a Tall Tale), the Outpost should have no ships in general there, thus allowing freshspawns some breathing room, and players who are selling their loot to not have the surprise of another ship rocking up randomly from the depths (as opposed to been jumped because of not paying attention to the surroundings for other ships).

Outside of that, I will admit the servers feel much more alive as of late, especially on OCE (which is usually quiet), so I am liking that. So overall good changes have been made, they just need to be tweaked as... they haven't quite hit the mark. :)

@pc-monkfish said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

@realstyli said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

Don't see them outright getting rid of it, but there are certainly reasonable changes they could make to diving to make it less viable as a way to constantly server hop.

• Aye - remove all dives apart from events that are faction specific loot that has loot tied to that event : Sea Forts, Skelly Forts, Fleets etc

• New event's don't get Faction specific Raid Voyages. You want Krakens Teeth? Get 'em in the existing events. Don't need them in Ashen Garrisons. No diving to Mega Stashes.

• Stop creating Diving Commendations : Diving to Hunters Call Voyages, Diving to Ashen Garrisons etc

• Emissary Flag reverts to Grade I on a dive

There have been so many ideas on this that would work better than what they have done.

Personally, I would like to see the cooldown on dives increased, regardless if it's completed or not... so something like 20 mins cooldown by default and 10 mins if it's completed. This would, in most cases, mean a crew using them as-intended should be able to dive again once they sell or soon after. It removes the viability of lower tier voyages being used to hop servers frequently.

A similar cooldown should be applied to portals.

Regarding the Emmisary Flag, I don't think it needs to revert to Grade I, as even dropping down by one grade each dive should be enough to incentivise staying on a server. (I realise they would need to lock the Emissary voyage once it's claimed, until the flag is lowered, to prevent people exploiting it.)

@drbensei said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

I literally saw vault loot get silent merged away from me on an island I was on while my shipmate saw the Galleon we chased away pop into nothingness (it didn't sink, it popped away).

I saw more people on X having the same issue, and SoT Support said "they are aware".

Something with the merge mechanic is currently broken. Honestly, I'd rather see no ships than have to fight a Galleon for an hour and see my loot taken from me just because said Galleon plays "shoot and run" with a sloop.

Out of interest when was this? The latest game update announcement they released a few hours ago has said it has been fixed last week

@realstyli This would be a good change to diving, I was always confused on why they added a feature based off of APL server hopping, and not add any restrictions. I don't remember there being any pushback at the time either

@ablepirate

Yep, and it's also faster than APL/MI portals, as it's only one way. Players are players, and will use all the tools they're given to make life easier, even if it's not the intended usecase. So this really should have been predicted.

@realstyli Don't the APL/MI portals drop your emissary flag if it was raised too?

@ablepirate said in "Increased Player Sightings on the Seas" Feedback:

@realstyli Don't the APL/MI portals drop your emissary flag if it was raised too?

I haven't checked in a long time but I thought they made it so it drops a copy for anyone persuing, rather than dropping it outright? If I were at home, I could log in and see.

@realstyli
Yea it drops a copy.

@dermasterbob

Thanks for the clarification.

Hopefully something like this could be done for diving

@ablepirate Saturday, so might have been before the fix. I wrote my post before the fix was announced. But as suspected, they said it was due to wrongly merged ships!