Milestone and Trinket Changes

They might just be done with long grinds and will take the feedback L for a while until people move on the something else.

Season 7 was a flop as far as interest went. Long grinds that not many did, all the surrounding issues lead to less people getting attached to the grinds. Very low organic participation in season 7

Season 8, another long grind that was a flop from a participation view. Low participation since day one in HG, they had to make a few huge design changes just to get people in matches.

Might just be moving on from serious grinds because there are so few of us left that actually do them, they've always struggled with smooth changes in direction in this game, they make extreme changes and just wait for the dust to settle for the most part.

Any serious grind after this is going to have a very very very serious interest issue, maybe they are done with it and going full casual mode in future content.

Keep in mind that Captaincy was the long term community request and HG was the big partner pvp content thing, and a whole lot of people avoided both.

@wolfmanbush said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

They might just be done with long grinds and will take the feedback L for a while until people move on the something else.

Season 7 was a flop as far as interest went. Long grinds that not many did, all the surrounding issues lead to less people getting attached to the grinds. Very low organic participation in season 7

Season 8, another long grind that was a flop from a participation view. Low participation since day one in HG, they had to make a few huge design changes just to get people in matches.

Might just be moving on from serious grinds because there are so few of us left that actually do them, they've always struggled with smooth changes in direction in this game, they make extreme changes and just wait for the dust to settle for the most part.

Any serious grind after this is going to have a very very very serious interest issue, maybe they are done with it and going full casual mode in future content.

Keep in mind that Captaincy was the long term community request and HG was the big partner pvp content thing, and a whole lot of people avoided both.

I don't think people avoided captaincy. I sailed with a swabbie just yesterday who had 2 weeks in the game and was nearly PL. We sailed on his ship. He gave us a tour and was proud of his table and trinkets. I think the prices of trinkets were insult to injury after what it took to get some of them, sure, but I feel all we wanted from captaincy was naming our ship and saving cosmetics. The trinkets were always icing on the cake to me.

Yea, they were long term goals, and I don't really think most cared much. Check the shipwright every so often to see if you can upgrade them, but really we just enjoyed playing the game and when we got fun trinkets all the better.

I actually think I have more decorations on my ship than trinkets. I keep the stack of wood by the stove, extra pans on the shelf, tankards on many shelves and emergency grog everywhere it will fit. That says more about my crew than the "I've sold millions of gold worth of treasure" painting I have some place...

@lordqulex said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

I don't think people avoided captaincy. I sailed with a swabbie just yesterday who had 2 weeks in the game and was nearly PL. We sailed on his ship. He gave us a tour and was proud of his table and trinkets. I think the prices of trinkets were insult to injury after what it took to get some of them, sure, but I feel all we wanted from captaincy was naming our ship and saving cosmetics. The trinkets were always icing on the cake to me.

Yea, they were long term goals, and I don't really think most cared much. Check the shipwright every so often to see if you can upgrade them, but really we just enjoyed playing the game and when we got fun trinkets all the better.

I actually think I have more decorations on my ship than trinkets. I keep the stack of wood by the stove, extra pans on the shelf, tankards on many shelves and emergency grog everywhere it will fit. That says more about my crew than the "I've sold millions of gold worth of treasure" painting I have some place...

That's definitely not common. Casual/new players without in game connections take quite a long time to get to PL even with all the additions to the game.

Personally I don't care about prices being nerfed at all or getting gold back I'm always more focused on environmental impact and direction involved with major decisions.

good news, only thing money really is for is skins in the game

i guess u can buy 10 mil in storage crates but idk if i would do that

@klutchxking518 said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

I just want the milestone requirements for trinkets to be 5/10/20/40 to keep the distinction between those who unlocked something on accident and those who unlocked something by seeking it out.

At 5/10/20/30, people will max out trinkets without even realizing.

It’s fine if people can naturally level up their trinkets to the to the tier three trinkets, but the tier four upgrade should require a bit more effort to show that the owner sought it out and put in a little extra elbow grease to get it.

I find this sentiment to be inconsistent as I see it floated around social media

It's saying "it's ok to take away from those that did the grind as it was for the last 9 months but don't nerf it too much because I still want my significance to count"

This isn't a 5% or 10% or 15% nerf this is a dramatic and extreme change to the design of Captaincy.
When this change is made the foundational significance is being removed from the content/feature so at that point 30 is fine and is appropriate for not building more resentment in the community by picking and choosing winners and losers with these major decisions.

@klutchxking518 said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@wolfmanbush I’m not trying to pick any winners or losers here, i’m just trying to keep a semblance of the original scale intact.

I like the idea of making it easier for everyone but I don’t like the idea of the different tiers to unlock at a flat rate after the first tier. People are gonna accidentally max out trinkets without even knowing. I think the maxed out ones should have a larger gap between them and the tier three ones just to keep the idea of having to put in thought to unlock the final tier.

If they were nerfing from 100 to 60/70/80 and people were trying to keep 70/80/90 that would make sense as there is still actually significance in the design at that point.

This is turning content from a grind into casual play reward so trying to keep 40 or 50 is people trying to keep their significance at a much lower time requirement while accepting sacrifice of experience from others.

If they are going to casual play (which they are) it should be a casual play design, which is around 30. It's a negative for morale of the community to kinda sort do things and regularly sacrifice the experience of those that committed to something as it was designed.

They are well within their freedom to make a casual play game out of a game that once had built in significance but it will build more resentment in the community by not fully committing to it at the extreme nerf level that they have decided on.

This is 9 months in, there are a lot of people that did a lot of long term grinding on these reward and milestones. If it were early on like the first it wouldn't matter nearly as much. When people are just now and recently hitting their 100's or other high levels this is gonna keep people real unhappy for a while and real unmotivated, do the damage now, fully, and then move on consistently.

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but to be honest having those trinkets is not special, no one even notices. It is for personal satisfaction.

@sairdontis4317 said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@foambreaker said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but to be honest having those trinkets is not special, no one even notices. It is for personal satisfaction.

They can be fun to show, but by no means would any I know or myself will lose sleep over some cosmetics here and there.

Yup, and I sure wouldn't get upset if someone else gets them, to me that is somewhat selfish.

@foambreaker said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@sairdontis4317 said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@foambreaker said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but to be honest having those trinkets is not special, no one even notices. It is for personal satisfaction.

They can be fun to show, but by no means would any I know or myself will lose sleep over some cosmetics here and there.

Yup, and I sure wouldn't get upset if someone else gets them, to me that is somewhat selfish.

People get the cosmetic at level 10. Nobody was left out.

This is nothing more than a very common strat in this game, which is to sacrifice longevity to hit short term activity bumps/goals

There will be an artificial activity bump early on when people do things they don't want to do because the reward is so easy (complete contradiction to how captaincy was sold) and then it's over. There is nothing else there, they are abandoning years worth of goals to hit very short and temporary bumps in Captaincy activity.

It's like watching someone sell the tools for their craft for an ice cream cone.

New/casual players quit because they don't enjoy their experience, not because Captaincy was grindy for fancier versions of cosmetics they can get early on.

@ninja-naranja said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@foambreaker just because cosmetics don’t matter to you doesn’t mean they don’t matter to anyone. “If you don’t think like me you’re selfish” is a very closed minded view.

Of course that is not what I said, just what you read.

@nitroxien said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@magic508 Then no change is made, people want the last level it's that simple. And lvl 100 for a lot of the milestones is frankly unfun and impossible to achieve. Rare should have listened to the community who was screaming that the milestones were way too high in values and made this change at the start of captaincy.

None of it was impossible. The fishers made strong progress and some finished it

I did the emergent spawns which are the most difficult because of spawns being out of our control.

Other people grinded out all the random stuff that took a long time.

People that wanted stuff earned it, it's that simple.

You're right about one thing, changes should have been made early on in captaincy and then left alone, this doesn't only effect what is getting nerfed, there is no legit reason to have confidence in the HG grind which negatively effects participation.

Short term cheese for a long time sacrifice to confidence in requirements. People aren't going to trust in grindy requirements in the future. Why would they? call it too hard and wait a couple of seasons for dramatic nerfs.

Casual play is necessary but running out all of the long term proven contributors to enable lack of effort is an unreliable strat even if people don't find it a change that disrespects time and standards of effort.

@captain-fob4141 said in Milestone and Trinket Changes:

@wolfmanbush the only issue on captaincy is that they didn't take your existing stats and apply them so it was like restarting from zero for some people

The real issue imo is they just ghosted our overview stats. People would have adapted in a few weeks and fell back on their overview stats. They not only started people at zero after years they just wiped out people's stories through their stats. That was the activity killer in season 7 and a big part of why Captaincy flopped long term.

People needing to do more stuff for more rewards is fine. All they needed to do to get people over the first few weeks is keep overview stats and maybe build on that.

Running off the people that played every day to bet the house on new player investment (no history of reliability) was never giving it a chance from the start.

Once that confidence is gone people just find other things to do. It's no coincidence that people from sot got heavy into a few other games and started streaming other things more during season 7. A lot of long time contributors moved on at that point and them moving on put sot content creators in a situation where they needed content which lead them to more variety in streaming. (which is good for the individual streamers to focus on more than just sot) but it's not good for sot's focus on streaming as marketing.