@verone3784 said in Pirate Profiles:
But you're not being forced to start from scratch again.
The whole point of pirate profiles is that you retain all your current progress on your existing character, which as you said in your post, you have sentimental attachment to.
A new pirate profile gives you the opportunity to start fresh and try new things without having to lose your current character and start from scratch. The option was always there from release to start from scratch - it's located in the escape menu - "Delete my pirate profile."
The purpose of the pirate profile is not for cloning your character with a different look, it's a fresh start so that you can work on a fresh set of challenges, achievements and commendations.
What you are STILL not getting is that these pirate profiles are not "giving you the opportunity" to start fresh. They are FORCING you to.
That is the point OP made and I attempted (apparently unsuccessfully) to reinforce. What Rare SHOULD have done is give players the option with a new profile as to whether OR NOT they want to "start fresh and try new things" or simply do what SO MANY PEOPLE in past threads have suggested they wanted and give them the option to simply play a different pirate avatar with all progress and cosmetics they've worked for and earned over years of hard work already unlocked and available.
There are NUMEROUS games out there that allow this; it's not exactly a new concept. You ever play Grounded? Four different playable characters; all with different personalities and voice lines. You can choose AT ANY TIME during the story to swap between them with absolutely no penalty. No loss in storyline progression, no starting from scratch with the in-game currency to buy/unlock things, no losing any of the bases/structures you've built...but you can ALSO choose to start a new game from scratch with a different character to experience the storyline as a whole from a different perspective and make different choices. See how you have BOTH options available to make ALL players happy instead of locking the entire playerbase in an EITHER/OR situation...?
THAT is what the "whole point of pirate profiles" SHOULD be.
I am not disregarding your point here. Yes, profiles CAN BE an opportunity to experience the seas from the beginning in a new and different way. MY point is that it shouldn't be compulsory. The players SHOULD be given a choice by the "everyone has personal freedom to play how they want (except in a bunch of circumstances where you're forced to play how we want you to)" company.
You are literally arguing FOR players to not have personal agency in making full use of rewards they have already worked years and years to EARN with a relatively simplistic gameplay mechanic in favor of "game forces players to do tedious grinding OVER and OVER if they want access to the same rewards they ALREADY grinded for once and almost surely do NOT want to grind for again just to enjoy something they ALREADY earned on a differently shaped pirate model."
You REALLY think someone wants to play through Tall Tales FORTY FIVE damn times AGAIN to earn the gold curse a SECOND TIME? You're delusional.