Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?

  • I love this game. I have been playing since the testing phases and wear my Brave Vanguard title with pride.

    But the "Adventures" updates have been absolutely murdering any ability for me to enjoy the game of late and a good bit of that is the FOMO aspect.

    Now I am all for timed events under the right circumstances. The Halloween sea of the Damned event and things like that were awesome and I loved them, but they also had a REASONABLE time period to do them in and I could do them with my crew... and in the long run weren't super lore or story critical

    But now you are moving story along and doing things regarding Flameheart and the greater story of the Sea of Thieves without any recourse for those of us who miss it. I can still go back and do all the old tall tales and Heart of Fire and such to get the story so far... but now with the "adventures" being time limited rather than started up and played like a Tall Tale, much less when I have to have other crews involved or I can't see it at all.... I'm finding my desire to pursue my Piratey career waning.

    The Megalodon event was just terrible. Not only was I limited to a very short time, but I had to rely on the good grace of other players outside my crew to complete the story and see everything. The Sea Forts event before that was annoying mostly just for the three week time limit and the randomness of finding every single villager from Golden Sands. But the bigger issue with ALL of this that I have is that you are stuffing BIG bits of lore and such into very VERY short time periods.

    I really do want you to tell these stories, but can we go back to Tall Tales or something? Because I don't like missing story because I'm busy with work or can't organize my crew within a 3 week period. (Or have to rely on "Community engagement" Try playing without people knowing you are devs or something and see how fun getting camped by griefers while trying to do the Meg shanty is and never getting to see the thing because you keep getting stabbed in the back by the 5th player)

    I know It's possible to keep this stuff around longer than 3 weeks. I KNOW it's possible to keep lore and story around both in an isolated quest and in the live world with other players because A Pirate's Life did it wonderfully

    And I Can Still Play All Those Quests I can still start up Pirate's Life Tall Tale 2 and go out to where the Pearl is sunk. Players can STILL show up and mess with me, but I can still do it to this day. I am NEVER going to see the end of adventure 3 because every time I tried I couldn't get a 5th player to do it and now it is done.

    Why can't I go find Belle somewhere and replay the "oh, the sea forts are kidnapping people again, go rescue them" and still see what they say and what lore is there? Because you decided it was better to not let people experience the story? I wouldn't even care if I don't get the cosmetics. I like playing the quest and enjoying the proverbial ride.

    Why can't I have a "merrick is still trying to hunt the Shrouded Ghost" and start that quest to collect Meg souls and fight the thing still?

    I get wanting to do time limited cosmetics or something, sure, but FOMO on STORY????!!!

    That just sucks and I hate it. And having missed some of it I dread the idea of MORE story being blocked off and it just makes me not want to bother playing.

    That's all

  • 40
    Gönderiler
    16.7k
    Görüntüleme
  • I would even settle for being able to do the adventures at will on a private/custom server with no rewards because THAT WAY I COULD SEE THE STORY.

    Give custom servers an option to fire up whatever adventure they want through a special NPC that's only there in custom servers. Easiest solution to not reworking your entire world.

  • I don't think reasonable fomo is damaging. I think it can help with activity.

    I think that overwhelming rng and cooperation requirements are an issue.

    The issue being that it puts stress on the very people that the content is designed for and needs in order to thrive.

  • @wolfmanbush said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    I think that overwhelming rng and cooperation requirements are an issue.

    This was the thing that really killed the last one for me and has me dreading coming back with the "Mystery event will require community involvement"

    If it's just a murder so many skeletons involvement, that's cool...

    If its "You need 8 people to play a shanty and it's limited to 3 weeks" (I did eventually manage to do Glitterbeard, but that was after MONTHS of trying) I'm going to be annoyed

    And believe it or not I agree with the whole bit about stress on the players. The reason a Pirate's Life did so well (aside from disney) is it catered to the more casual players and wasn't super demanding like the Adventures are. Which brought a TON of people into the game.

    I could play Pirate's Life with my kids or friends at a pace that worked for them. Not so much with this stuff.

  • Ok.

    First thing --RANT INCOMING--

    FOMO IS REALLY REALLY BAD. It is literally gaming in 2022. Tons of games do it, generally because they run out of ideas for engaging content or something and resort to cheap stuff like FOMO and Battle Passes and time limited Item Shops to make people play. Notice use of the word MAKE.
    People might not WANT to play. But many feel they HAVE to. Adventures having the FOMO stuff is sort of OK I guess since it's generally random cosmetics and a title I'll never use. But the adventure themselves? Why FOMO it? It's so stupid. All it is is to get people to play RIGHT NOW. And it keep players, it just draws them back for a weekend and then they are gone again. Stop with the FOMO in games in general and keep players by giving them repeatable stuff. Like LotV.

    -- End of Rant--


    I would quite like to see an 'Adventure replay" thing. Maybe activated in the Tavern. When you start it, you get the jazzy curscene thing they put in YouTube and then you play the adventure like you would a tall tale.

  • @c0rewolf here id the ironic thing; if you listen to their last podcast they dont think they are doing fomo at all lol

  • @c0rewolf for me Tall Tales are the worst. They offer limited to zero reasons to replay them. For the shores of gold they become boring rhe 2nd run through and they want you to do it 5 times for a cosmetic.

    I would rather have time limited chunks if story. Hopefully they start really leaving their mark on the world.

  • @captain-coel

    Not always thrilled with the 5 times per cosmetic thing.

    But I'd rather be able to play them when I want vs not being able to at all because I "missed" it.

  • Tall Tales were abandoned because they take a lot of work to produce, get used once and then left alone. It's a lot of effort for not a lot of replayability, and the story slows to a crawl because it takes forever to put them out at a decent pace.

    If the Adventures are supposed to change up the world, as can be seen by the current destroyed / fogged state of Golden Sands Outpost, it's not possible to have these events replayable so it makes even less sense to have them as Tall Tales.

    They need to reduce the RNG elements and get rid of the forced cooperation all together so that people can just do the Adventure at any point during the 3 week time period at their own pace. The adventure should either be checkpointed, or be able to be completed within 1-1.5 hrs. I think that is more than reasonable.

  • @d3adst1ck said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    They need to reduce the RNG elements and get rid of the forced cooperation all together so that people can just do the Adventure at any point during the 3 week time period at their own pace. The adventure should either be checkpointed, or be able to be completed within 1-1.5 hrs. I think that is more than reasonable.

    I could even settle for this stuff.

  • @c0rewolf said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    @captain-coel

    Not always thrilled with the 5 times per cosmetic thing.

    But I'd rather be able to play them when I want vs not being able to at all because I "missed" it.

    Experiencing the Shrouded Deep created memories that the Tall tales never did. If having that means people miss it, I want people to miss it.

    We had so few time limited forced co-op events I dont mind. The rng from the 2nd adventure was just bad.

  • Honestly these things are just that: events, they happen, they last a little while, and then they end, just like real life.

    The impact these adventures have had on the world have been very slight, if not, barely put into action at all or right away. We have yet to suffer consequences of our actions, and even then, we haven't hit that fork in the road yet.

    If you want to re-experience these adventures in their most entertaining form: A very trusted and dedicated member of the community has been documenting and creating videos to forever immortalize these events and where they could lead the world in future events and situations.

  • @c0rewolf if they kept them in-game, every time something new is updated it would require testing to make sure it still works. it would literally litter the world as well, since there would be a belle, lorinna, duke, etc. everywhere. golden sands would just be shrouded forever. Merrick's ship would be in the middle forever. it's a game as a service, it changes just like others do. if you want to see what happened, lots of people record themselves going through the adventures. fortnite and warzone don't have events that you can go replay if you missed it that I know of, and it's been this way for 4 years

  • FOMO is good for business, to start out, because it keeps crews coming back and checking out new things.

    Also, time limited events reflect the story that is real life; nothing is static, and nothing stays around forever. Stories have to progress, and you can always catch up on lore on their Youtube channel and speak to those in the community who are experienced and keep track of the ongoing story.

  • @gallerine5582

    Which would be fine if time limited wasn't 3 weeks plus you need another crew to actually not grief or be silly to get it done.

    I was fine when the time limited stuff was 3 months or so like we had a while back.

    When people have to sprint to finish, they get burnt out faster too. FOMO on too short a schedule is NOT a good thing.

    And again, if we are comparing what is good for business, pretty sure the permanent adventure of A Pirate's Life got more sales and players in than these short adventures.

    FOMO just keeps established players coming back, which might get some money from cosmetic sales, but can also drive new people away and holds less appeal for new people. Someone hears "Well yeah, this was a really cool thing but you can't do it now" you get "Oh... well... I don't think I'll buy it then"

  • @gallerine5582 FOMO is good for business... short term. It exhausts the majority of people and only keeps the addicts coming back after long enough. Keep pumping the FOMO and eventually all you have is whales and an otherwise dead game.

    Yes, time limited events are like real life. But we're not playing games to experience real life. One event after another becomes exhausting, and the game starts feeling like less of a game and more of a chore with deadlines. Less of a game, and more like WORK. I have friends who did the first few adventures, but missed two and now see no reason to continue doing them. It's ALREADY exhausting people.

    You know what stories have progressed WITHOUT us needing to go look it up? The Tall Tales. Plenty of story and lore stored in those, and I don't have to go out looking at some external source to learn it. MOST PEOPLE don't want to be bothered to go look something up on some YouTube channel or wiki. The game Destiny had this exact same problem, where no one cared about the lore because to access it, you had to go to an external site.

    I was actually excited to have more tall tales that explored the Flameheart story. But now it's all these stupid FOMO adventures that I don't have time to come do. I did the Megalodon one only because I got lucky and happened upon a crew that wanted to do it. I didn't do the sea fort one because it was a long grind with no checkpoints like a normal Tall Tale would have. And the effect that's had on me - and I imagine I'm not alone - is that I'm suddenly no longer interested in the Flameheart story. I have better things to do in the game, and frankly, better games to play at this point if the game is going to continue this direction.

  • @c0rewolf How do you expect things like Golden Sands being destroyed to not be time limited? What happens if in the future, say 10 Adventures down the line we repair Golden Sands. How do you have both a repaired and destroyed Golden Sands at once?

    How could you replay Adventure 1 again if the only island that is shrouded today is Golden Sands? Shipwreck bay is no longer covered in green mist, it wouldn't make sense. How can you rescue the residents of Golden Sands from the seaforts if again in 10 Adventures time they're back at the shops on Golden Sands?

    It would be like if you could do Cursed Sails again. It doesn't make sense that Captain Warsmith would be invading the Sea of Thieves again with her skeleton ship armada because it already happened.

    The story needed to move along at quicker pace than one update every three months, and the only way they could have permenant story updates would be if they were small, unimpactful updates.

  • @jmcafreak said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    @gallerine5582 FOMO is good for business... short term. It exhausts the majority of people and only keeps the addicts coming back after long enough. Keep pumping the FOMO and eventually all you have is whales and an otherwise dead game.

    Yes, time limited events are like real life. But we're not playing games to experience real life. One event after another becomes exhausting, and the game starts feeling like less of a game and more of a chore with deadlines. Less of a game, and more like WORK. I have friends who did the first few adventures, but missed two and now see no reason to continue doing them. It's ALREADY exhausting people.

    You know what stories have progressed WITHOUT us needing to go look it up? The Tall Tales. Plenty of story and lore stored in those, and I don't have to go out looking at some external source to learn it. MOST PEOPLE don't want to be bothered to go look something up on some YouTube channel or wiki. The game Destiny had this exact same problem, where no one cared about the lore because to access it, you had to go to an external site.

    I was actually excited to have more tall tales that explored the Flameheart story. But now it's all these stupid FOMO adventures that I don't have time to come do. I did the Megalodon one only because I got lucky and happened upon a crew that wanted to do it. I didn't do the sea fort one because it was a long grind with no checkpoints like a normal Tall Tale would have. And the effect that's had on me - and I imagine I'm not alone - is that I'm suddenly no longer interested in the Flameheart story. I have better things to do in the game, and frankly, better games to play at this point if the game is going to continue this direction.

    We have only had 3 adventures so far. So there is no way your friends did thr forst few and then missed two.

    Tall tales told a story but they didn't progress the world. The adventures about the world no longer being stagnant. This going to be good.

    The adventures take 1 to 2 hours to do and have had a 2 or 3 week window so far. Its only different than events in the past because it tells a story instead of just giving away a cosmetic.

    I hope they stay. Im having fun with them so far.

  • For the people that truly are in it for the lore and story experience, here's what I would propose.

    We have these wonderful tunnels of the damned. Maybe there's a way they can be used.

    After a LIVE Adventure has concluded, the content for it is enabled in an instanced form that can be accessed via the tunnels of the damned. Once you emerge into the new post-adventure "Tall Tale", you can run through the content if you want to. Same as normal servers, there would be the opportunity to have up to 5 (or 6) other ships there with you doing that Adventure. Outside of the content from the Adventure, there would otherwise be zero progression in these instanced servers. No loot. No world events. Nothing. You would just be able to experience the adventure in the form of a tall tale.

    There ya go, you can have your Adventure but just miss out on any opportunity to simultaneously progress in any other way.

  • @sweetsandman Which would then require continuous maintenance like arena for a very small group of people and funnel 5 to 6 ships into a small selection of islands causing the 'griefing' experience to be even worse then it is now, also would dismiss the entire point of the adventures which is experiencing the world evolving around you over time. Not to also mention would render the Shrouded Deep almost completely unplayable, there is no way there would ever be enough people doing it at once.

    As great as it would be the moment they'd make these be permanently playable would be the moment that people realize that without the aspect of things happening around you in normal gameplay these aren't all that great. Instanced permanent versions of these just would miss the entire point. I get fomo sucks but at least they're doing it with an actual artistic intent. I mean what would happen when we get the adventures that we make choices in, how does that work in a permanent and instanced state?

    The time limited structure of these allows Rare to be able to do anything with them, they could be pvp focused, they could require an extra crew, so if they stayed they'd then have to develop these around the fact that they need to always be doable and thus they might as well just be tall tales at that point. Fomo sucks but this is the first time I've actually seen a game warrant something being time limited.

  • @sweetsandman I'm sure someone will correct me if im wrong, but one of their reasons for removing Arena was so that they didn't have to continuously update both maps.

    If what you're proposing is feasible for Rare, then they potentially could have kept Arena servers running on a separate "older" version of SoT, without needing to carry over (or remove) changes from Adventure.

    So on principle, I'd rather not see separate servers to host older versions of Adventure. Bring on the FOMO.

  • @peony7185 @theblackbellamy Fair enough. So they would either need to

    -A) scrap world changing adventures....

    -B) make them so easy and boring that any player could complete it in an hour even as a solo

    or..

    -C) say screw it and keep doing them and don't bother trying to cater to people that suffer from FOMO.

    I would vote C. I've rather enjoyed the adventures and their ever-changing impacts to the world thus far.

  • @sweetsandman Yeah I get and agree that fomo sucks a lot but the uniqueness and value of how they're doing these is so great for the game I feel. I'd much rather a cooler way of catching people up on the adventures other then just reading text in the menu.

    Perhaps they could use the tunnels of the damned to show something sort of like cut scenes, like in a pirates life, that just catch you up on what's been going on by showing you memories of the events? Maybe after each arc, if they even do these things in story arcs, there could be one. I don't think that would require as much matinence or work compared to the other options at least but I don't know.

  • @peony7185
    Aren't there content creators who put out videos of them doing the Adventure(s) ?
    It may be less immersive, but at least you won't have to spend minutes in the Tunnels.

  • @lem0n-curry That's true I just think it would be more user friendly to have an actual in game way of catching up, just makes it easier for someone getting into the game

  • @mferr11 said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    @c0rewolf How do you expect things like Golden Sands being destroyed to not be time limited? What happens if in the future, say 10 Adventures down the line we repair Golden Sands. How do you have both a repaired and destroyed Golden Sands at once?

    I don't.

    I am not saying "don't change the world" Or I'd take issue with A Pirate's Life putting up the Tunnels of the Damned all over the world.

    All I want is the ability to be able to play the adventure somehow or another again.

    This COULD be done using the tunnels. You go to some ledger in the tavern like a Tall Tale, start an "Adventure" and it takes you through the tunnel to a "wrecked" version of Golden Sands to talk to bell to or whatever, or just gives you a letter from Belle that says "Go to this island and do this part of the quest" And it could spawn the enemies and ghost visions that you see during the adventure without needing the deep fog or whatever.

    I'm not saying don't change the world, I'm saying "Hey, let me at least see the stuff that was on Shipwreck Bay with The Masked Stranger wandering around doing stuff and fight those things".

    As for doing the adventures at the sea forts, suspension of disbelief, same as larina being at EVERY tavern at once (not possible, but happens) The residents don't have to leave golden sands to spawn at a designated sea fort you sail to or something.

    I don't need them to not change the map, I want them to make this stuff continually playable even if that means having a "Tunnel of the damned time travel" mechanic that puts you onto a specific section of the map (or in programming terms, a preserved chunk of it for the purpose of the quest"

    Or just, you know, spawn stuff on an island and let me see it like I can for ANY other quest.

  • @sweetsandman

    Your Tunnels of the Damned idea is brilliant by the by. Even better than the custom server idea I tossed out.

  • @peony7185 said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    @sweetsandman Which would then require continuous maintenance like arena for a very small group of people and funnel 5 to 6 ships into a small selection of islands causing the 'griefing' experience to be even worse then it is now,

    How would this require any more maintenence than say Tale 1 of A Pirate's Life with Sailor's Grave.

    That area is DONE and requires minimal upkeep and maintenence I'd imagine.

    The idea isn't to funnel 5 or 6 ships into this one bit of map or story, it's to let new players or those that missed it SEE the story, even if it is no loot/no progression with cosmetics.

    One ship, individualized map just for that quest. Just like Pirate's Life

  • @c0rewolf Which then limits the design of said adventures, shrouded deep wouldn't be possible like that. Also his idea was to funnel 5 to 6 ships into a server together which would be needed for adventures that require multiple crews. I also wouldn't be surprised if it would take way more work then you and I think it would to make this possible.

    You're just asking for more tall tales, that's not what these are fundamentally by design. The benefits of these being time limited like they are let's them do whatever they want with them like I said, what would they do if they were to focus an adventure around pvp? How do you create an instanced solo version of that? You can't.

  • I agree, the way I see it, is that if they are going to do some new epic adventure that introduces a new mechanic or content, they should just go all out in one epic scenarios, all guns out, all hands on deck, the ship is going down guns blazing, a giant vortex opened up and the islands are out of water and flying like kites. Otherwise, they can introduce and catch people up through tall tales or some form of playable adventure memory journals. Make actual interesting and exciting adventures with puzzles and platforming sections, across different islands that tell the story of the events that have led up to where we are now in the story.

    Since day 1 I have been stating how "limited time" stories DO NOT work for any game as it ends up confusing or loosing the players. There is just no way for players to follow a story that end up having its parts removed throughout the game's life. So far they have managed to add those stories in as journals found throughout the game but since some of these events are so important to the overall story of the game, many players will be lost. It's not right that new players can't have the opportunity to figure out who, as an example, "Wanda" is or how she came to be and must go exploring for basically a 2ndary objective to figure out pieces of the story as it pertains to her. I've always complained about the organization of this game, it just feels that because the devs basically come up with things as they go along, a lot of things become disorganized or unplanned, which ends up ruining the overall potential that the game might have in certain aspects such as story telling or reward mechanics.

    Regardless going back to time sensitive adventures, at the end of the day, we are left with a new mechanic but ultimately, the game continues to lack in story telling and voyages/ adventures because they get removed after a while of being active. Furthermore, the fact that they are time sensitive means that the devs will always end up scrambling to produce new content that is mediocre or shallow (because they can't over do it knowing that it's meant to be removed in the future), which then gets removed, which then leaves them scrambling for yet another disposable story, rinse and repeat. I must wonder if they don't get annoyed by the fact that the know some, if not most, of their work that they are doing will be scrapped in a couple of weeks of being released

  • @sweetsandman said:

    screw it and keep doing them and don't bother trying to cater to people that suffer from FOMO.

    I see nothing wrong with this at all.

    Though I do think they should take some of the major criticisms into consideration regarding RNG and cooperation requirements. But from what I heard in their latest self-congratulatory podcast, idk how likely that is.

    Of course it shouldn't be too easy, but if this stuff is meant to cater to casual play, then it shouldn't be as demanding either.

    Give people their checkpoints or keep it so that deeds can be split into sessions, so that one could take their time with it over the 3-week (or however long) period.

    I understand the significance of player interaction, but this could be achieved by creating a single POI that draws the server together, but doesn't require that they cooperate.

    Let folks camp the location, defend the location, help others complete it, or betray each other at the end. And if no one else cares to participate, it shouldn't prevent the crew who is interested from doing so.

  • @peony7185 said in Can we stop with the FOMO/time limit on lore and adventures?:

    You're just asking for more tall tales, that's not what these are fundamentally by design. The benefits of these being time limited like they are let's them do whatever they want with them like I said, what would they do if they were to focus an adventure around pvp? How do you create an instanced solo version of that? You can't.

    No, I'm literally asking for them to make the adventures possible to do however they can. And that COULD be done on the main map same as Pirate's Life Tall tale 2 or five.... Or even, you know, like a "Go to this island and kill skeletons" or "Go to this spot and dive for a sunken ship" is now

    If they have a PVP quest, you get something out of a logbook and a cutscene plays giving you the lore, then you go find people to shoot in the face.

    They could do this NOW. literally right now minus the glowing green fog around Shipwreck. There is NOTHING stopping Rare from being able to give me a little note from belle after interacting with "Belle's Logbook" or "Belle's Bouy" outside a settlement and getting a quest same as talking to an Order Of Souls rep and buying a quest.

    That note says go to shipwreck and do things, I go do them. I don't get the glowy atmosphere, but I can still run around and light fires that spawn on the island to see the cutscenes. If I get rolled by another player who sees my boat, then it's like ANY OTHER QUEST OR TALL TALE that currently works on the main map.

    These are fundamentally one off quests that operate under the same basic principles as a "go kill skeleton crews" quests but with cutscenes. Considering the only difference between Adventure 2 and rolling to a Sea Fort is literally seeing belle first and getting a note in your inventory, then having people spawn in the jail.... You can't say that it is "impossible" to implement as they could just have the villagers spawn in a nearby fort same as they have a sunken ship randomly and immediately spawn in the world for a merchant quest

  • @c0rewolf They're not the same though, do you want to know why every Pirates Life tall tale takes place in a new location? Because creating permanent story content in certain locations makes them completely unable to do anything else with that location. They can't say remove the Blackwhyce from shipwreck bay because the tall tale requires that it stays, they can't do dramatic world changes while also permanently keeping the story content in. And no I'm not going to act like every adventure has been a perfect example of that, Forts of the Forgotten was extremely stupid. You're making it out to be way more simple and easy then it actually is

  • @peony7185

    If they can randomly cause NPC's to spawn on set islands for quests you get from the various vendors and factions, they can cause NPC's to spawn on an island to kill or on a sea fort to interact with via dialogue after picking up an adventure from a book.

    Those things are possible. Because they already happen in game.

    Telling me "you can't do that because it's too complicated" makes no sense when it is the founding property of the PVE game and is already being done.

    NONE of the adventures require actual permanent changes to the map OTHER than the Sea Fort adventure (Adventure 2) There is no reason that you can't sail from Golden Sands to Shipwreck bay and see phantom images of the Reaper cult walking around. Nothing on shipwreck actually changed other than a fog, and you don't NEED golden sands to look wrecked or look whole to get a quest log from there.

  • @c0rewolf Adventures are far more then just NPCs spawning on islands lol anyways I'm done here

40
Gönderiler
16.7k
Görüntüleme
15 / 40