First I’m going to lay out the problem, why it’s a problem, compare the present to the past, and then present some potential solutions.
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Players are not invested in the server that they’re on. Players are more incentivised to dive to a better server than to make the most of the one that they’re on.
This is a problem for several reasons; most of which are related to player interaction.
The system selects for dead servers. All servers relatively quickly become inactive. If you play a fair amount you’ll definitely have noticed that sometimes the server just dies, you can’t see anyone around, the world event is unoccupied, and there’s nobody really doing anything. All servers die, and then stay dead for an extended period of time, because players dive away. Before diving, and before portal hopping, players would make the best of the server they were on in order to preserve their supplies and possibly their emissary flag. This nearly guaranteed a certain amount of activity on any given server. Somebody would be doing something. People would complete world events to cycle them; interacting in the process. People would interact with content other than what was newest.
Player interactions are transient. You are very unlikely to see the same ship repeatedly during a session. This kills most opportunities for non-PvP interactions. Back in my day (old salt that I am) players would often run across each other repeatedly as their voyages brought them into proximity. If those interactions were civil, or even friendly, then after the second interaction the crews would become more comfortable with each other. Maybe they’d be happy to do their separate tasks at the same island and maybe they’d talk. I made friends this way that I still talk to and game with. I haven’t had this happen in a long time. This problem is deeper than server investment and has many contributing factors; one of which being that the reworked basic voyages are, to put it politely, “bad”.
Players are pushed away from each other into parallel experiences. It takes active effort to seek out other players. If a player engages with the voyage system as intended most of the voyages put them into a closed loop. Raid voyages and the basic voyages will isolate the player. Diving to a world event will select a server with an inactive world event. The raid is unlikely to entice players if they’re already disengaged. Diving to a voyage will (try to) avoid surfacing a player close to another and the non-dive basic voyages will always select the closest available island that’s more than 1.5 squares away. This will put a player far from other players and then isolate them in a small loop of islands. This makes non-PvP interactions pretty much never happen. The only players that will interrupt their loop are server hopping reapers out emissary hunting. The system causing a higher proportion of PvP interactions makes players understandably shy. New players don’t get to have the social experience that I did and I don’t get to have that experience anymore either.
Tucking is basically dead. You can’t really hide on someone’s ship to steal their treasure later anymore (or just be nosy). I’ve tried. They just dive after a few minutes. Tucking is now only for fotd and FoF. I haven’t seen a veil in a year or more. I tried tucking on reaper voyages but most players seem to give up half way through, sink themselves, or dive at the first sign of trouble. It’s a shame because tucking essentially saved the game and can lead to all kinds of fun interactions. I’ve got memories of tucking on people and then helping them and becoming allies. It’s an extra shame because Rare put a lot of effort into giving us more tools for tucking for it to just not really be a thing anymore.
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Potential solutions:
Diving causes your emissary flag to reset to level one (and drops a copy of your original flag like the portals do). This addresses a few issues. Adding a cost to diving incentivises staying. It also reinforces the intended loop of an emissary session and the intended risk/reward design. It also reinforces the intended design of the reaper emissary. This next bit is said as someone that enjoys emissary hunting as a reaper: it’s too easy and it’s not fair on the people that I hunt. I shouldn’t be able to just turn up in a server and go murdering without warning… and my potential prey shouldn’t be able to dive away before I get to them without cost.
Diving can only be done near an outpost. Players wouldn’t be able to dive away at the first sight of sails on the horizon to preserve their flag/supplies (I’ve seen it plenty, it definitely happens). It also adds a soft cost to diving that might incentivise players to engage with the server they’re on without entirely removing the ability to server hop for their preferred destination.
Longer voyages. Basically just bring back the old multi-island, sometimes multi-chaptered, voyages and remove the single island voyages. Sea forts and skelly camps exist for the “shorter session” people and there’s nothing from stopping those people from just doing one or two of the islands if the voyage is longer than they have time for. The old voyages were better and brought players into proximity instead of isolating players in a corner.
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I’m not 100% sold on my own solutions if I’m honest (except maybe the flag one). There are some good things about diving that should be preserved. There should be a balanced solution. Maybe a combination of solutions. Probably some solutions that I haven’t thought of. Idk.
Everything above is also an oversimplification. There are a lot of interacting systems in SoT and each affects the others in complex ways. SoT has many problems and they can’t be solved as simply as I’ve laid out. Any solution to SoTs problems needs to take a holistic approach.
