Great game, just needs a few tweaks.

  • Atiden
    Founder

    This game is extremely fun, but a big problem with this game is the simple fact that PVP feels shoehorned in. Killing other players gives you nothing and losing your life or ship doesn't penalize you. And the only time you get a possible reward is if the other players have treasure on-board their ship. It essentially forces active pvpers to become griefers in order to get any reward. This leads to situations that other players have reported (outpost camping), or to a situation which myself and my fellow crew ran into today.

    A 2 player sloop constantly followed my galleon around waiting for us to do voyages. They normally stayed off in the distance just watching. But occasionally, when we anchored at around our second or third island and went off hunting for treasure, they would come charging in. This forced us to run back to our ship in a scramble, toss any treasure we found into the hold, and run to raise anchor and fire cannons as the sloop suicide rammed us. The first couple times they tried it, they managed to jump on board kill a few of us and generally be a nuisance until their ship sank, and we managed to get away (yay for us). But, they never stopped. Every time they found us, they repeated the process, until finally they wore out our supplies and sank us. Leaving 7 treasure chests floating off the coast of an island (we were doing a "More than a day and a half" length voyage). So they managed to take our chests and sail away.

    My point from this retelling of this experience is that PVP has no point other than to be a nuisance to other players. You lose nothing when you die, or when your ship sinks, so you can suicide against another ship until they run out of supplies and sink themselves. Leaving the suicide ship to take the treasure and leaves nothing for the target ship, making them want to do nothing but give up on the game.

    PVP needs to be in this game (or else you end up with a big empty sandbox of players waving to each other as they pass by). But, it also needs to be tweaked. You should get something for managing to kill or sink another ship, regardless of if they have loot or not. But you also should lose things if you get killed or your ship gets sunk. Also, committing PVP in an outpost should have penalties. For example, temporary banishment from the outpost. This is an outpost after all, it's a safe haven for pirates to trade and rest, so there should be a penalty for disrupting it. This Forces PVPers to be more cautious about who, where, and when they engage in a fight. But, since there would be a guaranteed reward for being successful in a PVP fight, there would still be risk/reward.

    As a side note, it would be nice if voyagers at least received reputation with their faction if they manage to complete the voyage (find the treasure for instance), that way if they get killed and their loot is taken, they at least get something for the money they used to buy the voyage.

    Just my two cents after playing alpha and beta.

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  • LynchMafioso

    @atiden
    I agree some specific reward to be gained for entering in the PvP realm is necessary outside of potential chests. I think some sort of notoriety, and equipment/skins etc. would be nice for engaging in the PvP aspect especially geared towards successful boards/kills/loot taken/ships sank.

  • ZizoJK

    @atiden i think maybe a faction like the gold hoarders and the skull people, for PVP. like every 10 kills you can hand in for a chest or something along those lines.

    also i was thinking about the dying and losing stuff. maybe if you lost the cannon balls/bananas/planks you were holding on you. because at it stands, i fire my self at a ship. steal all their cannon balls. die and there is no issues, i wait a few seconds and end up on my ship again, with 10 new cannon balls. pretty broken tbh.

  • Atiden
    Founder

    @ZizoJK yeah, there is definitely no downside to doing suicide runs as of yet. You should definitely lose all of the supplies that you are carrying. But just losing supplies isn't really enough to stop the suicide runs. Maybe for every time you die, or your ship is sunk, you lose gold. And if you run out of gold, then you start losing reputation (after all, who wants to work with a pirate that gets killed all the time?).

    I like the idea of getting a certain number of kills and then turning them into a faction for a reward. Perhaps it would be like this though. For every kill you gain a silver coin with a skull on it, for every ship sunk you get a gold coin with a skull on it. And for killing an entire crew and sinking their ship you get a jeweled coin with a skull on it. Each coin is worth exponentially more than the one below it.

    But it wouldn't make sense for you to be able to turn in these coins to a normal faction (since you are essentially killing their members). So it may be a good idea to create a new faction that is strictly pvp. You gain reputation and gold for turning in these coins and eventually unlock new items just like with the other factions. The faction could even present bounty posters. It picks a random ship in your session and then creates a bounty poster for them, which you buy and it gives you their most recent location at the time you bought it. Thus giving you a reason to leave the outpost area and hunt down other players.

    This new faction would truly integrate pvp into the game, giving it an actual reason to exist other than "arr we be pirates and killing is what we do". Though a new faction may be a bit much considering how close we are to release, so just turning the coins in to a normal faction might be as far as it goes.

    In either case though, the loss of gold and eventually reputation for dying and losing ships, accompanied by the coins and their rewards, would give pvpers enough of an incentive to purely pvp, while also keeping them on their toes in regards to the fights they pick.

  • ObeMike
    Master
    Insider

    I hear the OP. There needs to be consequences, sounds very frustrating!

    Here's an idea... a mini game! If you lose your ship, regardless of offensive or defensive. You get transported to a shipyard across the other side of the map. With no resources, you and crew have to take part in a game of "liars dice" to win a new ship. For every game of liars dice you lose, you acumulate debt and have to seek future treasure, or shipyard quests to pay your debt.

    Now you have won a new ship, and let's say you also lost a game of liars dice. You have a certain amount of time to pay the debt by taking a shipyard mission. Consequences for not paying the debt will be a Navy ship that will eventually hunt you down and take all that you own. Putting you and your crew back to square one at the shipyard + debt.

    Additionally, having an NPC naval ship around could be a huge bounty if sunk.
    And those who have not paid there debts could be more profitable targets for other players.

    Open to ideas, doesn't have to be a Naval ship. You could have done a deal with a ghost pirate that all fear... I'm just taking ideas from PotC.

    Gwent works in the witcher, lets have liars dice (if allowed)

  • Atiden
    Founder

    @ObeMike I can't tell if you are being sincere or sarcastic. But I'll assume you were being sincere.

    I love the idea of gambling in SoT (even if it just becomes a simple time waster). But I think gambling to get back into the game would be overkill. A debt, while interesting, could be very frustrating. If I get sunk to the point that I have a massive debt of 10 some odd chests that I need to find to pay it off, I as a player looking to have fun, may just quit due to not being able to progress (especially if I keep getting sunk).

    As for the ship and crew to the other side of the map. That won't help that much either. While it is a good punishment for losing (because who likes to waste time getting back to where they want to be?), it doesn't do anything more than that (besides giving the winner time to leave or prepare). Since if you are doing a voyage and your ship gets sunk, chances are you are going to go back to the island you sunk at and continue your voyage. This gives griefers the ability to camp your voyage sight, killing you repeatedly until either they run out of supplies and sink, or you just give up and move on.

    I do like the idea of a navy ship roaming the seas though. The navy and pirates don't exactly get along, and it is only a matter of time before the navy starts sticking its collective noses into our business. So a Navy ship roaming around hunting down pirates would be interesting, especially if you get a reward for sinking it. Maybe a ship customization, or clothing? along with any gold and rep of course.

    Liar's dice was a game before Disney's Pirates made it famous. So I doubt there would be any licensing issues. If I recall correctly the first Liar's dice set to be sold in stores was way back in 1974. It used to be a casino game as well (still is in some countries).

  • ZizoJK

    @atiden i agree with you, completely!
    i meant a whole new faction also! i love the coin idea too!
    We are nearly 2 months away from release, i dont think making a new faction would be the hard part, i think giving us a coin from the kill would be a hard part, because (in the beta atleast) they dont have any indication of getting a kill. we have no way of knowing how many people we killed or who it was who killed them. i dont really know if that would be very hard to do or not. but maybe it can be post release. i hope they consider everything to extend the longevity of this game.

    im super excited for the game, but like many, my fear is that the game may lack longevity. I felt this exact way when i played the Destiny 2 Beta. That didnt work out so well, 3 days of gameplay and nothing. a month after the PC release, they released a paid DLC... i hope rare dont take that route, if they want to add something a month after release, they must have known it wasnt enough content! dont charge us more because you failed to fill your game!

  • TrackerRoo
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    I like the idea of a combat faction, and penalties for suiciding. Let's combine them so you're given a task that rewards you for hunting pirates, every ship sank ten gold, every pirate killed 5 gold, every time your ship sinks lose 5 gold from the reward, every time you die lose one gold. So it's possible to cut yourself down to no reward and therefore have to start back at square one, improving tactics and combat skills. Reward/penalty values I gave are just an example, but you get the idea. Could even go for more gold for galleons than the smaller ships. You could sink a smaller ship and get half the value, or go for strictly galleons and get more, or even stacking bonuses for each consecutive galleon sunk.

  • RustyPyrate
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    @atiden As for rewards, I think there would be a new guild that allows you to hunt pirates down and bring back their proof. once that happens, you get rep and money.

    As for the outpost camping, I think that if you get a chest or skull back, and you kill someone on said outpost, they won't accept the bloodied chest or skull. So, you gotta sail to another outpost to cash it in.

    with the ships sinking, I think you should lose all your cannonballs/planks/bananas upon respawn. And where it did sink, barrels float to the top, allowing the successful crew to resupply.

    As for the respawn, they plan to add penalties in the Ferry of the Damned.

  • Atiden
    Founder

    @CheatingPirate The idea of a "bloodied" chest/skull is awesome. Forcing people to have to go to another outpost to turn in a bloodied item is a good start to reducing outpost camping. Maybe make it so they have to travel 2 outposts away from the outpost they stole the chest/skull from, before they can sell it (That would be about a half hour of travel I think). They can say that rumors have spread about "blank" item, and no one will touch it, until you reach an outpost far enough away to not have heard the rumors. I think this would make outpost camping more of a fringe thing that only happens every few days at most.

    I also like the idea of having supplies float up to the surface above a player wreck. It would definitely give a nice bonus to surviving a ship to ship fight (especially considering it can take up to an hour to fully restock a ship after a big battle).

    @NaoShadowpaws I like the idea of an increased reward for killing players or sinking ships while on a bounty mission, while also reducing a reward if you die or get sunk. The only downside to this is if it is the only way to benefit from PVP. I still like the coins for kills and sinks idea. That accompanied by your idea would make PVP profitable enough for everyone, even for the people on the defense (like the people with the bounty on them). Profitable enough to incentivize random PVP as well as semi-planned PVP, and make sure that boths sides have a reason to sink the other ship (other than survival of course).

  • Atiden
    Founder

    @QM-Ginger-Beard True, right now, the people avoiding the fight are people who just have no interest what-so-ever in fighting. They see it as a waste of time, or they just don't want to PVP, or as you said, they are protecting their treasures. The risk/reward system may actually change that though.

    As I said before, PVP currently doesn't have a purpose, it just seems to be there to waste time and be a nuisance, so people try and ignore it. But, if you start rewarding PVP as well as applying risks to it, you will probably see more strategic fights that, while they happen less often, are much more enjoyable. You could even consistently run into scenarios where they initially run, but then turn the tables on you by circling behind an island, or leading you into a storm to fight.

    The point of adding risk/reward would be to increase the frequency of the good fights, while also reducing frequency of attacks on random people who have no interest in fighting.

  • ObeMike
    Master
    Insider

    @atiden, was being sincere :)

    I was exploring ideas as to how you escape the griefing you experienced. After all the pirating and sinking of a another vessel is part of the game. But maybe not the consistent bullying part.

    A consideration would be that once a ship is sunk it is spawned to a new server instance, and therefore the pirates that sank you (or vice versa) can go find a new target, thus removing the griefing but still keeping the pirating element alive in the game and maybe encourage a more strategic approach than just blatant suicide ramming over and over.

    • Those that sank on the high seas IRL would not have spawned a new vessel to keep up the attack.

    Agree with your Outpost ideas. I've heard of players camping at the outpost to steal the treasure that comes back.

    I'm well aware of Liars Dice being around before Disney, I just thought it would be easier for those not familiar to look up the most recently famous use of the game. I was first introduced to it before disney, with a board game called Perudo.

    I've seen a few people throwing around ideas of the Navy (NPC) and how it could be an event, to team up with other players to take them out for big rewards and rep.

  • Atiden
    Founder

    @ObeMike Sorry, when I responded to your post I was tired, so it was hard to tell lol.

    I like the idea of changing servers, or sessions, when your ship sinks. This would add to the sense that the world is bigger since you would have new players and ships come and go around every few hours (besides people logging in and out). As well as doing what you said, which was keep people from constantly hunting each other down griefing or just being annoyances to each other.

    The only downsides I can see is that the time it takes to switch servers/sessions could end up being upwards of 10 minutes. The other downside is that if you end up making a fleet with another ship (as I have done on numerous occasions) you would be permanently separated from them upon being sunk.

    On a side note, I am liking this thread so far. A lot of good ideas with no arguments. It is refreshing to see people have polite discussion, especially with all the arguments and insults going on in other threads. Keep it up.

  • ObeMike
    Master
    Insider

    @atiden All good, I'm not the greatest writer. I have lots of ideas and they can get lost in translation and jummbled when trying to get them written down.

    Anyway, having caught up on all the SoT dev diaries now, it's been hinted on numerous occaisons by Rare that the map in the final release is 'potentially' ginormous compared to the beta. So chucking a griefer to the otherside of the map once sunk may give you a few more precious minutes to get your voyage done and dusted or salvage some supplies ready for the next attack :)

    In essence, it may not be worth their while to try and find you again.

  • Sashlyr
    Marauder
    Insider

    I'm loving all that ideas!

    A bounty sistem could do the trick here and add more fun!
    I'm not a native english speaker, but i'll try to explain my idea as best as I can:

    A crew start to sink ships, when they reach 10 in a row, then they have a price on their heads. Their ship changes in apareance, so any other people can tell that they are experienced pirates AND have a price on their heads, so you can figth them to get the reward or just avoid them.
    If someone beat them (sink the ship and kill the crew), then they no longer have a price on their heads once they respawn, and the ship is back to normal.

    Also, I don't know if this is because is in Beta, but is annoying loosing active quests because you had to quit the game for real life stuff. (or the game crashes, have internet issues, etc). I understand loosing any chest, but please no the entire active quest.

    And another idea here: make the pubs in all the outpost a safe place, so you can have a place to leave your character afk if you need.

    Hope this game keeps improving :D

  • Atiden
    Founder

    @Sashlyr A bounty system that functioned off on its own would be interesting to see. Maybe cut it down from 10 to 5 sunken ships though. That way it happens a bit more often (I rarely see 10 or so ships as it is) and maybe make the kills count for double if it is the same ship two or more times in a row. While I like the idea of marking the ship so that random passerbys can tell if it is wanted or not, I think it should be a small mark.

    For instance, instead of changing the entire ship, maybe just change the flag on the mast to a noticeable pirate flag. The current flag used is basically just a wind sock so you can tell which direction the wind is going. So it doesn't have any markings or real color to it. Changing it to a normal sized pirate flag would make it noticeable enough that if you look for it you will know they are wanted, while also making the ship's crew kind of feel rewarded for playing like a pirate. You could also make the flag an item you have to pick up and turn in just like a chest.

    I also like the idea of making the taverns a safe place to go afk without having to worry about someone being bored and killing you. It would also give players a nice place to socialize. I guess it would give a whole new meaning when someone says to take a fight outside too lol. Making the taverns safe shouldn't affect people wanting to fight in or near outposts, especially if you make it so loot (reward items likes chests and skulls) would be dropped at the door. Maybe have a sign that pops up saying that you will drop loot when entering, just like when you use the mermaids.

    As for the quests thing, yeah it is a little annoying to lose the quest. You can pick up the quest and keep it if you haven't finished voting on it yet, but after it is voted on and activated, the quest is just counted as part of the ship I suspect. Voyages are something you have to be sure you are going to finish before you start them (which is why they have a "takes this long to finish" in the description). But, as long as someone stays on your ship to keep the voyage active, if you crash or have internet issues, you shouldn't lose the quest.

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