The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice

  • Kapitan Klaps
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    So I've quit Sea of Thieves for a while because of the ridiculous grind. 3-4 hours to play daily wasn't really getting me anywhere. I've recently heard there was a drop rate upgrade so I've decided to try it out again. Last 3 days I've played 4h a day just doing voyages. I literally was only getting Marauders and Seafarers chests even from 4 step riddles. I hardly got any gold and my level went up only once from 25 to 26. Then I thought, hey, maybe they've boosted merchant alliance...so I took one voyage. I've spent two and a half hour chasing pigs, chickens, and snakes, and wasting tons of bananas to feed them. What did I get in return? 1,7k gold...I'm really trying to find the strength to keep on playing but the constantly c****y rewards make me wanna give up for good. If there really was an upgrade to the rewards quality, it's far from enough. I and my wife just wanted to upgrade the ship a little...but she gave up before we got even half of the money for the cheapest paint job. It shouldn't be this much of a chore to get there.

    Before anyone will say" Farm forts, switch servers" , "discard voyages with too few chests" etc - that's not really the solution. I don't mind that the way to 50 is long. I don't mind that there are items that cost 70k or 140k but I do mind that there's nothing in between. No middle ground. A player that doesn't devote his life to this game is stuck with the default stuff for a very long time, and when he'll finally save up for something, he won't find any strength to go again from scratch for another item. Rare, you need to do something about this. I'm really tried trying to convince my friends and family to play SoT with me =/

    Here's what needs to be done:

    • boost voyage rewards. At level 25+ I get only seaferers and marauders chests. Come on! It took me long enough to get to 25 already. I feel zero progression.
    • Add low and middle tier cosmetics for the ship. The gap is too huge. Even if I play less than 2 hours a day, I should be able to upgrade my ship every now and then. I need to feel that I'm constantly advancing.
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  • Tre Oni
    Marauder
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    Founder

    If they quit twice did they really quit twice?

    Weird you complained about mid tier reward payout at mid tier rank.

    You'll appreciate not getting fouls and castaways at 45.

    They also specifically added "low tier" sails. 7k for some fancy colours. Very reasonable in comparison.

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
    Insider

    At least with MA voyages you have an idea before doing them what to expect.

    If you're not getting enough from them, pick the good ones only (with a few gold and/or black animals). You might need to cancel a few voyages to find one worth doing but you'll make more gold that way. And there are plenty of resources online to tell you where to go to get which animals.

  • Flippin Loud
    Insider

    If u want better rewards find higher level friends who will drop missions for u, i mean if ur a solo sloop guy doing merch or whatever n pulling bad quests, i can drop quests for u im lvl 46/46/45 that shoud get u more money/better rewards

  • Hyaenu
    Captain
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    Founder

    @simplybutta I could really use that, hardly anyone does MA, and like OP my main group of friends have already gotten bored of the game so I pretty much HAVE to go solo to do em

  • Flippin Loud
    Insider

    @hyenanoises add me same gamertag as forum name as im sure we all are

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
    Insider

    The other good thing about MA voyages is knowing that if you get attacked and lose your haul, at least you know it's worth next to nothing for the other person! XD

    Small consolation but it's better than losing a bunch of Captain's chests :)

  • Kapitan Klaps
    Captain
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    Founder

    @realstyli @SimplyButta @HyenaNoises Thanks for the tips guys but I don't think you understand what I'm trying to say. As I've mentioned, I'm well aware that I can cancel voyages constantly to get a better one. I also know I can farm fort, and jump servers until I find another one with active fort. I'm also aware I can ask on forums for someone to come and share voyages with me (which is not a great workaround since my crew was always 4 man squad so no extra slots). What I'm saying is that it's a very bad game design. Players don't feel engaged enough if they don't advance. I'd compare it to bodybuilding. Most people quit on start because they don't see results. I had to train for 12 years naturally to get into really good shape without "workarounds". But this is a video game, not a real life. If I and my crew can't get anywhere without grinding 8 hours a day and doing some "tricks" or look for help on the internet (we should be able to meet people IN THE GAME in a social place and ask there if anything...you know...immersion) then there's something terribly wrong with the game. In SoT, if you have only 2 hours a day to play you better not even start. That's not good.

  • Flippin Loud
    Insider

    @captain-surgee i tried, oh well.

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
    Insider

    There's no denying that there is a grind in SoT but it's weighted just right, IMO. It's not a good game if you want to earn so much so fast that you have nothing to play for after a month. It takes some patience to get things.

    I did 5 hours of level 20 MA voyages today, 5 hours is about the max I play any day... my MA rep (which gets neglected when I crew with buddies) went from 20 to 24, and I earned around 32K gold. That's almost half a decent ship cosmetic in one day.

    So if you were playing 2 hours a day, you should easily be able to afford one ship cosmetic a week and deck out a whole ship within a month (less if each person buys one item)

  • Flippin Loud
    Insider

    @realstyli ill drop missions for u too if u want, boost those lvls

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @captain-surgee You are engaging in all or nothing thinking. You are lumping everything people are suggesting together into something they are not bringing up. If you want to hate the game, no one is going to stop you, but what you are describing is not making sense if you are using your time well. If you want to just jump on and do your own thing in your own way, more power to you. Just do not get angry that you are not getting anywhere. You do not need to touch a skull fort and you could still make about 5K an hour without much trouble if you focus only on the aspects of voyages that will yield the most results. If you want to spend time following the riddles for one chest each, go ahead, but you won’t get far and you will have to find acceptance for the results of your own choice. Let go of the inner completionist and just do OOS missions that have three or more bounties on an island, focus on MA voyages that have golden animals, and do not bother with gold hoarder maps with less than three treasures. No need to server hop or fort grinding. My wife and I jumped on this morning for a couple of hours and we made about 16,000 just doing MA stuff and we took it easy doing it. You are exaggerating the situation (possibly in your own mind) out of frustration.

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
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    @simplybutta said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    @realstyli ill drop missions for u too if u want, boost those lvls

    I really do appreciate the offer, thanks, but I'm honestly in no rush to reach LP. I think my stats today managed to convince my buddies that MA are worth doing though.

  • AlteredR0guE
    Marauder
    Insider

    @captain-surgee

    Your crew WAS a four man crew. Not trying to start an argument but what do you hope to accomplish here if you won’t accept the solution? Get a new crew that enjoys the game. It makes all the difference. Or with private crews you can get the voyage and put your guy back in if it has to be that way. Sorry you aren’t having a good time. Btw I get what your saying just not sure what you want out of it. Do some high level quests and a couple of hours will make a difference. Especially at 25. I know it’s a struggle to meet helpful people in game but your on the forum man. There are people willing to help.

  • BraxKedren
    Captain
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    @captain-surgee said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    Here's what needs to be done:

    • boost voyage rewards. At level 25+ I get only seaferers and marauders chests. Come on! It took me long enough to get to 25 already. I feel zero progression.

    Congrats already done. While it doesn’t remove those chests from you getting them the rate you see them goes down the higher Rep you are.

    • Add low and middle tier cosmetics for the ship. The gap is too huge. Even if I play less than 2 hours a day, I should be able to upgrade my ship every now and then. I need to feel that I'm constantly advancing.

    Congrats again, THD included some low level ship cosmetics for those of us slow leveling people with little to no income.

  • MrGrim67686

    Boring fetch quests with no payout aren’t fun enough for ya? You’re playing the game wrong!

    For real though, the time investment vs. payoff here is pathetic. The main quests are uninspired low tier filler. There’s really not much here yet. The apologists will disagree, but for an alleged AAA production the primary loop is pure trash.

    I just sink people and take their stuff. Can’t be bothered to grind. Not until something compelling comes along.

    This is just bad, rushed, and/or lazy design.

  • AlteredR0guE
    Marauder
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    @mrgrim67686

    You are my favorite kind of pirate to run across. Prob decent at pvp too if that is all you do. Your also part of the reason the OP can’t get any “immersion”... maybe. Most of that is on him and the creators but we all play a part. I admit it the quest loops can get a bit boring you have a point. We do need more content and some tweaks to existing content that will keep people engaged and others working together. That being said I love the basics of the game and can’t wait to see what it becomes. We do need people pointing out the flaws to reach full potential. But I have to ask, why so negative? Is it because your so grim lol? Looking forward to seeing you on the sea! I’ll be the one baiting you with all the shiny treasure on board.

  • DaddyMacDown

    @captain-surgee you can change your sails now for much less a price but they aren't as cool. The point of having ship upgrades is to show your hard work off. It wouldnt be as cool is everyone's ship was decked out and it wouldn't bring that oh s**t feeling when a fully decked out galleon has set course to pursue you.

  • BraxKedren
    Captain
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    Founder

    @mrgrim67686 yet you enjoy coming here and forcing people to read through you poor attempts at trolling on the forums.

    Another thread to ignore

  • MrGrim67686

    @braxkedren Try and stay on topic. I am not the topic. The laziness of the voyage design is the topic here. If it's fine for you, then great. Once you devolve into personal attacks, you lose. GG. Better luck next time kiddo. I'm rootin' for ya!

    @AlteredR0guE I'm in the same boat as OP. I convinced quite a few people to purchase this game on the beta promise of more and different content than what was on offer, and most quit within the first two weeks. It's frustrating and completely not the game we were expecting nor really very close to the game that was advertised, but eh. The defenders will defend it. I suppose I could use less colorful adjectives, but then I wouldn't be me.

    I do like the ship to ship combat though I feel there is room for improvement in pretty much every area of the game. I don't completely blame Rare. I blame M$ for rushing them but there is really no excuse for the state of the launch or even the current state of the game.

    I do hope to see the factions and voyages fleshed out in the coming months. We'll see. Hope to see you out there!

  • AlteredR0guE
    Marauder
    Insider

    @mrgrim67686

    I hear ya. I have a lot of friends that won’t pick it up for those reasons. Still have plenty that enjoy it though. Sucks you and the OP find yourselves in that position. Don’t be less colorful be true to yourself as I’m sure you will. Just wanted to see where you stand. Looking forward to seeing you out there as well! Maybe you will claim the grand prize 😝

  • Lucid Stew
    Founder

    @daddymacdown said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    It wouldnt be as cool is everyone's ship was decked out and it wouldn't bring that oh s**t feeling when a fully decked out galleon has set course to pursue you.

    Except that cosmetics are not an indicator of how good you are at sinking people. It's an indicator that you've run back and forth from a treasure chest and a ship, then a ship and a merchant 5 trillion times.

    If you could only get cosmetics by sinking ships, then maybe there'd be some intimidation.

  • MrGrim67686

    @lucid-stew ...and with more variety and customization, looking the same wouldn’t be an issue either. For the only prize being skins, there’s not very much on offer.

    If I remember correctly, Rare explained their exorbitant pricing by saying they wanted the crew to pitch in on the ship so it didn’t “belong” to any one player.

    Which is a goofy cop out and inapplicable once you’ve played beyond a certain point. A lot of it feels like an effort to buy time. Which I would be okay with if they would just come out and admit it.

  • Lucid Stew
    Founder

    @mrgrim67686 said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    @lucid-stew ...and with more variety and customization, looking the same wouldn’t be an issue either. For the only prize being skins, there’s not very much on offer.

    If I remember correctly, Rare explained their exorbitant pricing by saying they wanted the crew to pitch in on the ship so it didn’t “belong” to any one player.

    Which is a goofy cop out and inapplicable once you’ve played beyond a certain point. A lot of it feels like an effort to buy time. Which I would be okay with if they would just come out and admit it.

    I just feel like it's a really confused message. The way you show everyone how great a pirate you are is by how you dress and how you soup up your ship. But you obtain those things in a way that has nothing to do with piracy! No one is getting 50-50-50 by stealing. It's not so much Sea of Thieves as it is Sea of Gophers.

  • MrGrim67686

    @lucid-stew 100% agreed. I don’t see how you could attain legendary status without sinking a single ship.

    It makes no sense.

    Can’t open chests, can’t lose your gold, can’t customize your ship, no consequences for losing your ship...

    these design decisions are just baffling.

  • Kapitan Klaps
    Captain
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    @ghostpaw 5k an hour without fort? You must be very lucky or I am very unlucky. I keep on getting seaferers chests all the time. Cashing in even 20 of them will roughly give 2-3k. I still think you are completely missing the point. There is no middle ground when it comes to ship cosmetics. For anyone that is not a hardcore SoT player there isn't anything affordable. And no, I don't want to hate on the game. I've been playing SoT since 2016 in the first alpha wave and been active on forum since then. I just think this aspect of the game was very badly designed.

  • Kapitan Klaps
    Captain
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    @braxkedren I've only seen single colour sails. Are there cheap liveries?

  • Kapitan Klaps
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    @daddymacdown said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    @captain-surgee you can change your sails now for much less a price but they aren't as cool. The point of having ship upgrades is to show your hard work off. It wouldnt be as cool is everyone's ship was decked out and it wouldn't bring that oh s**t feeling when a fully decked out galleon has set course to pursue you.

    Nah, the point of EXPENSIVE and very cool designs is to show of your hard work. With a game that is all about cosmetics, anyone should have a chance to customize the ship and have a fair amount of choices. I am all for cosmetics that will cost even 10000000000, let those grinders enjoy their fancy epic designs but give us people with busy lives something to be happy about too. If the levels go so slow and I keep on cashing in seafearers forever, at least let me buy something for it. I've did more grind in this game than any other in the last few years and I feel I got nothing.

  • BogusMeatINC
    Marauder
    Founder

    I can understand your frustration with the high cost of some of the cosmetics versus the rewards in journeys, but I would like to suggest a different perspective in the game.

    I am not saying you are playing the game wrong, but maybe try shifting focusing from grinding for loot to buy cosmetics to interacting with others. I find that a lot of people's unhappiness with the game stems from their need for the defined progression systems of most games. I find that the most fun I have is when I stop worrying about loot and love the madness of intervening in a firefight and proclaiming via sounding trumpet that I am an interseas mediator and that we can, "Talk out our problems with the primal power of music therapy!" In some silly hippy voice.

    Just go crazy and embrace the absurd as you play with randoms and demand their undying loyalty to your banana-god, "Steve," that you keep in your pocket. Sometimes the reward is getting folks to laugh and come out of their shell.

    Again! Not saying you HAVE to do this, but sometimes we place too much importance on loot and gear and not enough on making folks have a good time on all sides of the screen.

  • NWO Azcrack
    Master

    @captain-surgee
    Im sorry mate i dont agree. It has been alot better since the loot boost.
    And u say u spend 3 hours a day and get nowhere? I spent 3 hours today going from 49 gh to 50 gh. Plus a fort and numerous sunken ships. You can get real far in 3 hours

  • SappyElephante
    Master
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    In case anyone is interested, since the game has come out I probably play an average of 5 hours a week. I have only bought a couple beards. I currently have 220k. It's been 11 weeks. So somehow my average is 20k a week or 4k an hour.
    Sometimes I make nothing though, and sometimes I'm lucky at get 10k in a day off a fort.
    But yeah, for those of us who don't have a lot of time to play games, the ship customization costs are a little high. They're probably that way just because there are not a lot of customizations and Rare wants to buy some time before they release more.

  • iDuskk
    Marauder
    Insider

    You're playing this game for the wrong reasons buddy.

    Stop focusing so h*****n the grind. Just sail and have fun. Also you can't quit something twice. If you quit something, then do that thing again, you never actually quit.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @lucid-stew said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    @daddymacdown said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:
    If you could only get cosmetics by sinking ships, then maybe there'd be some intimidation.

    You can, you just have to select targets with something valuable. Thievery means you took something of value. Just killing a crew and sinking thier ship is simply murder.

  • Kapitan Klaps
    Captain
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    @bogusmeatinc said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    I can understand your frustration with the high cost of some of the cosmetics versus the rewards in journeys, but I would like to suggest a different perspective in the game.

    I am not saying you are playing the game wrong, but maybe try shifting focusing from grinding for loot to buy cosmetics to interacting with others. I find that a lot of people's unhappiness with the game stems from their need for the defined progression systems of most games. I find that the most fun I have is when I stop worrying about loot and love the madness of intervening in a firefight and proclaiming via sounding trumpet that I am an interseas mediator and that we can, "Talk out our problems with the primal power of music therapy!" In some silly hippy voice.

    Just go crazy and embrace the absurd as you play with randoms and demand their undying loyalty to your banana-god, "Steve," that you keep in your pocket. Sometimes the reward is getting folks to laugh and come out of their shell.

    Again! Not saying you HAVE to do this, but sometimes we place too much importance on loot and gear and not enough on making folks have a good time on all sides of the screen.

    Funny enough that's what I was doing until now. Since 2016 alpha until now I was doing PVP or just interacting with others, helping out. Then my crew though about finally upgrading our ship and pirates and everything went downhill from there.

  • ItsPorkchopFu
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    @bogusmeatinc said in The awful voyage rewards and no lower tier cosmetics made my whole crew quit SoT - twice:

    I can understand your frustration with the high cost of some of the cosmetics versus the rewards in journeys, but I would like to suggest a different perspective in the game.

    I am not saying you are playing the game wrong, but maybe try shifting focusing from grinding for loot to buy cosmetics to interacting with others. I find that a lot of people's unhappiness with the game stems from their need for the defined progression systems of most games. I find that the most fun I have is when I stop worrying about loot and love the madness of intervening in a firefight and proclaiming via sounding trumpet that I am an interseas mediator and that we can, "Talk out our problems with the primal power of music therapy!" In some silly hippy voice.

    Just go crazy and embrace the absurd as you play with randoms and demand their undying loyalty to your banana-god, "Steve," that you keep in your pocket. Sometimes the reward is getting folks to laugh and come out of their shell.

    Again! Not saying you HAVE to do this, but sometimes we place too much importance on loot and gear and not enough on making folks have a good time on all sides of the screen.

    I cringed when you described how you play, as that type of goofy ‘fun’ is not fun for me and IMO ranks up there with troll squeakers shouting the n-word on their new megaphones. However, I’m glad you found a personally entertaining way to play.

    Myself and many others are not trying to make the game a grind, but if you don’t enjoy being silly or imagining your own content, what else is there to do but pvp for no rewards or follow the core game loop to grind missions for gold? I’m short, that is it.

    We don’t have tools or environment manipulation to support creative sandboxing, no class/hero ability variation/customization like in overwatch/LoL/hots/tf2, no rotating set of objectives/maps/goals/land sovereignty to fight for to organize pvp, no resources to gather and use in crafting, no player driven economy or merchant trade routes, no variety of ship classes or sidegrade customizations (eg thicker hull but slower speed), etc.

    What we have is a barebones pirate themed vr chat lobby, with some poorly implemented fetch quests and overpriced cosmetics, where people either need to imagine exciting content or pvp for the sake of killing to find fun.

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