[Mega Thread] Balancing Exploration and Player Combat - Part 4

  • Did you not read the 3rd line of his post. Its starts: you would be able to play alone. Sounds like pve to me

  • As I'm sure Rare already knows - the balance between Exploration and Combat is heavily driven by incentives.

    The best consistent PvP Combat in the game right now occurs around Skull Forts.

    Why is this:

    (1) there is a large tangible reward for winning the event
    (2) there is a visible indicator in the world so that everyone knows where to go for the event

    For Player Combat I would love to see more in this direction - more visible events that players can congregate at and fight over a valuable reward.

    For Exploration I would love to see some kind of log that tracks world locations you have found. Something like a drawing book that you copy the paintings at different locations or take rubbings/etchings from ruins. When you complete the log you get some reward (gold or cosmetic) then you can turn it in and collect a new log and keep going.

    There are currently many cool things to find in the world, but finding them isn't going to be "its own reward" for most of the player base so the content goes unused.

    If the incentives and rewards are managed, the balance between PvP and Expoloration can be found. Not enough PvP in the game - increase the frequency and incentive for the congregation events. Not enough exploration - increase the reward for discovery activities.

  • @khaleesibot
    I definitely want more reasons to explore. It would be fun to come across more items (for both reward or something useful). I also want to be able to stumble onto more lore based situations. Like walking into a destroyed camp and finding a note talking about a legendary pirate harassing them or some mystical creature sighted nearby.

    I saw on another post discussing how to make the islands more dynamic. In other words, having more to interact with like being able to use pulleys and draw-bridges. This could be an added effect to add puzzle solving elements to get from one area to another or make things more difficult for pursuing pirates.

  • PvP would be balanced if we could separate the platforms. PC has an enormous advantage over xbox as far as PvP interactions. At close range specifically.

  • Ok, I had this idea for awhile and i should've said it sooner.

    Stronghold chicken?

    We have a stronghold chest/stronghold skull from forts, Why no love for merchants?

    Legendary forts?

  • tl;dr:

    • Game needs PvP opt-in of some kind.
    • Create Safe Area. Can't be sunk, and your stuff can't be interacted with in the safe area. Leave the safe area? You're opting in and it's just like the game is now.
    • Safe area let's players interact and collaborate in more ways than shooting by allowing for peaceful contact.
    • Create flag signals. Hostile, friendly, etc. Use it to track crew behavior and allow fighting in the safe area.
    • Allow custom flags and ship skins, make them sharable. Can be used for forming fleets.

    Hey Rare,

    I've been playing the game with 3 other good friends. So far, we've had a grand time sailing around and doing adventures together. Working together to sail a ship and run the voyages is a lot of fun, but our mutual experience is badly dampened because we ultimately lack any choice in whether we wanna fight or not.

    Now I'm a PvP'er type. I'm ok with involuntary fighting cuz I find the PvP quite fun! My friends are PvE'ers and would prefer the fun experience of sailing around together as friends peacefully. They're not opposed to fighting, but they need to be able to opt in for it to be proper fun. I don't blame them.

    I understand the arguments against splitting up the player base, and I also understand that there's something of a Social Contract you "sign" when you log in to play a game like this: namely, that it's a free for all and that you better be ready to fight. I understand that one of the big goals of the game is to force players to encounter each other and interact, which is the main thing driving the game's dynamism right now.

    But I also understand that players should be given a choice to PvE or PvP, so you can accommodate the different play styles of your player base. PvP'ers still get fights if they're sailing against players who have explicitly chosen to fight, and lose nothing but unchallenging easy kills if the PvE'ers are off doing their own thing.

    I think that there are a few of things that could be done to synergize these two viewpoints. I don't know how much effort would be involved, but I think that the benefits could be enormous.

    1. Make a Safe Area. A big one, the same size as the map's current various regions. EVE Online did this with High Security Space (https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/System_security#High_security). Players generally understand that they are safe to PvE to their hearts' content in this area. As long as ships are in this area, they can't be sunk and their stuff can't be interacted with by other crews without consent. This'll give PvE players the opt-in that they need without splitting up the player base.
    2. Create a freeport in the Safe Area. Players can show up here to peacefully interact with others, collaborate, form fleets (maybe PvE'ers can team up this way?), pick fights outside the safe area, etc. This will drive player interactions a lot more than they are now; seeing as pretty much all interactions right now are driven by mistrust and shoot-first-ask-questions-later. More dynamism and collaboration opportunities = a good thing.
    3. Create some kind of flag signalling system. Lamps don't cut it. Ships should be able to signal whether they're peaceful or hostile to each other in a clearer way. In the safe area, use this to let people duke it out if they want. Outside the safe area, anything goes! Let players be sneaky if they want, but use the flags to gather statistics about how crews play and build your algorithms around it. Maybe crews who sink too many friendly flag flying ships - or who sink others while flying friendly flags - can't go into the safe area for a certain amount of time, longer if they do it a lot? Maybe set it up so that they have fewer encounters if they don't behave?
    4. Let players create their own ship skins and flags, and let them share with each other. They can form fleets if they fly the same flag, for instance! Make it so that they still have to buy each custom skin/flag they make using the in-game gold.

    I think that changes like this would give everyone a little of what they want while preserving the game's core mechanics, while at the same time driving more player interaction and more types of interaction, which would make the game more fun for everyone in the long run.

  • i love the exploration part and the pvp that said i hate the annoying lev 50 x 5 skellies that follow pirate legend to every island that if you dont kill more and more spawn i have a screen shot where i had 25+ skellies chasing me in the water they are driving me nuts

  • I love PVP I played WoW on a PVP server exclusively for years. I am seeing something different in Sea of Thieves people playing not for treasure or quests or the fun of it. They do it for one reason only and thats just to hang out in outpost and kill people as they unload or to sink ships just because and they dont wait for the treasure they just kill and move on. I love sailing and getting into a battle when its a fair fight but when you are collecting treasure and someone sinks your ship just because or when you are trying to turn in items for treasure and someone kills you because your hands are full = zero fun and eventually all the players who play for the beauty of it will be leave and when they leave the people who play just to gank will also leave because no more ganking and then the game will die.

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