Preface
This an informational post for those who are more knowledgeable than me in the ways of PvP to give constructive feedback for the development team.
This post contains are the values for different things I tested, the methodology I used to obtain those numbers, and a few opinions of my own (which, again, may be entirely moot because I am not all that skilled with PvP).
Bullet Velocity
I am going to start off with the speeds at which the bullets from the Flintlock Pistol, Blunderbuss, and Eye of Reach travel. All tests were done on a Galleon which is 60 meters long*, except for the Blunderbuss due to its random bullet spread, forcing me to do it on a Sloop which is 32 meters long*.
Using these lengths, I positioned the ships in calm water and recorded myself shooting from the very back of the ship at a keg positioned at the very front of the ship's bow at 1080p60. I then counted each individual frame that passed from the initial muzzle flash to the first hint of the hitmarker.
As you have probably guessed, there is room for error her, as 60 FPS isn't even remotely close to millisecond-accurate, so there is a margin of error of some amount (I am not sure what because math is hard. Feel free to put it in the replies if you know) for these numbers.
| Weapon Type | Bullet Velocity |
|---|---|
| Flintlock Pistol | 144 m/s |
| Blunderbuss | 91 m/s |
| Eye of Reach | 276 m/s |
"Reload" Speed
Just like calculating bullet velocity, I used frametime to calculate the time between successive attacks with different weapons.
I recorded myself at 1080p60 attacking with the various weapons in the game. For the Cutlass (Slash), I used the flash of the blade hitting a part of my ship as the start and stop points, whereas for the Cutlass (Combo), I used a sparking particle effect that plays when you hit an enemy as the start and stop points.
For the Flintlock Pistol, Blunderbuss, and Eye of Reach I used the first frame a muzzle flash appeared as the start and stop points.
Like before, this was all done at 60 FPS, which is not millisecond-accurate, so there is a margin for error of +/-0.016ms for these numbers.
| Weapon | "Reload" Time** |
|---|---|
| Cutlass (Slash) | 1.150 seconds |
| Cutlass (Combo) | 0.616 seconds |
| Flintlock Pistol | 2.333 seconds |
| Blunderbuss | 2.716 seconds |
| Eye of Reach | 3.116 seconds |
Weapon DPS
Using the known damage values of each weapon from the Sea of Thieves Wiki (https://seaofthieves.fandom.com/wiki/Sea_of_Thieves_Wiki), as well as the "reload" times of each weapon, I was able to calculate each weapon's damage output per second (DPS).
I have rounded each value to a whole number, as I am unsure if Sea of Thieves uses integers or floating-point numbers for its health and damage calculations, and decided to play it safe and just use whole numbers.
The Blunderbuss's damage depends on how many bullets hit, which is why it's a range, while the others are not.
| Weapon | DPS |
|---|---|
| Cutlass (Slash) | 22 |
| Cutlass (Combo) | 41 |
| Flintlock Pistol | 24 |
| Blunderbuss | 4-37 |
| Eye of Reach | 23 |
Personal Feedback
While I am not that good at the game, I do want to leave some feedback of my own. I am not going to take into account hitreg, or any other issues related to networking that are difficult to solve.
I personally feel like the Eye of Reach and Cutlass are in good places right now. They aren't oppressive, and currently seem to be the "meta" choice for people wanting to do PvP.
That said, I feel like the Blunderbuss has just one thing holding it back: the random bullet spread. If it was a fixed pattern, I feel like it would be a far more consistent and usable alternative to the Cutlass, rather than the option used to finish people off after they took a hit from an Eye of Reach.
Lastly, I feel like the Flintlock Pistol is in a weird spot. It's not a bad weapon by any means, but is completely overshadowed by the Eye of Reach. Unfortunately, I don't really have a good suggestion to fix it, because most changes I can think of would make it outright overpowered.
However, I do think there is an option that a friend of mine came up with:
- Increase the speed of its bullet to 75%-80% of the Eye of Reach (an increase of ~50%)
- Give it a very small amount of random deviation so that at range, it is unreliable to hit, but at about 40 meters (the length of a Brigantine), it is able to hit moving targets more easily.
* Numbers obtained from this video, which may or may not be accurate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaHT0ZLeMdU
** I uploaded a video of the "reload" times of each weapon as a source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaDxOv6KVYY
EDIT: Cool so markdown tables are broken when being displayed. Ah well, all the data is still readable.
