@burnbacon said in Im sick of spending hours grinding only to lose sweats in seconds:
Recently, the game has been dominated by extremely high-skill “sweat” crews who constantly hunt down casual players.
It is not that. It is that many players will just play the game and have fun. You might be surprised how many enjoy playing this, and these kind of games, for the PvE. Honest, the PvP is not great IMO. Almost all of our encounters are at times when we loot. So either we leave someone on the ship, how fun, or we just get sunk. Common tactic is to swim over whenever so you cannot see them. Not pirate like ship battling but blowing up a bomb or doing something like that.
You mean Pirates?
Not so much. Pirates likely never jumped off their ship way out and tried to swim to another. And that is a very common thing in this game for all my crews I have ever been in.
These players often camp, chase for long periods, or immediately sink new or solo crews, making it very hard to enjoy normal gameplay such as voyages, exploration, or events.
It is partly, mostly, the devs fault. They could absolutely do a PvE mode that let people do all the levels in the emissaries of the gold, order, merchants, all that and allow people to have fun. But you will get those that WANT casuals in the game. Had a group on my wife and son and doing the typical grief. I jumped on and killed them myself. Could hear them in the game chat. This has happened a good number of times.
So the PvP part of the PvPvE game is what causing you problems.
Yeah, it does for many. I remember when they said the PvE only mode was not possible. I called garbage on that. Well, then Safer Seas. Yeah, they could but you know truth is hard. And then they made that handicap because hard to admit when wrong. On top of that, I read where it was talked about how Safer Seas lead to retention. Well, duh. Not everyone wants or needs PvP in this game. And really, it was a huge missed opportunity. And is a reason we saw Safer Seas added.
Casual crews stand no chance, and it discourages players from wanting to continue playing.
Yeah, ever single match we load in now high skill reapers. Players you can tell spend hours upon hours just sailing around. They will sit in site or ports and islands spinning around. I loading into one waiting for my son. I load in and grab a few items from the tavern barrels. Tales all of 30 seconds. I then go around to the emissary at the sovereigns. I hear a blast and go look. Player ship bombing my ship. Had literally just started. Feels a garbage tier as ARC Raiders loading me in to be shot before I can move. And here, I died to megalodon. Stupid AI pops up on us every single time a player ship comes near now. Literally not an exaggeration. It hits our ship and kills me. The player then shoots me as I am loading in. I can hear but there is a black screen. Dead and back on the ferry. Over and over. After our ship goes down I am on our ship and we went back over and took that crew out. They only got us because the AI battles always target us. Today a ship was chancing and a Kraken come up. These things NEVER hit the other players ships. Just ours for some reason. And so it puts us at a massive disadvantage. Last night it was a high tier megalodon. It hit us twice and we had to repair. Turning us right back at the player ship that was coming up. Sunk us too. I was in the water. Just left them alone to look. Makes zero sense but it has been ever single time. Several times it has been a megalodon AND large skeleton ship.
Well, Good News.
Safer Seas is the place you got to be playing on.
I would argue no. This is just so limited in what you can earn. Zero reason not to have all the emissaries go to 100 in that. Or any of that. It is a game. It is like the early argument that a mode like Safer Seas just could not work. Call that out for what it was and will be nice about that here.
Better skill-based matchmaking
It would work if they had a way to measure skill. But that would be hard in a game like this. I die a lot but to AI messing around. Blowing myself up with bombs. Even die to players as i have no interest most of the time. Though every time I am stuck hearing these people in game chat i end up taking them out because it is like a bunch of adolescent people if you listen to what they say, sadly adults.
But...your not joining a server based on matchmaking...
I mentioned above but it would probably be tough to determine in this game.
A protected mode or safer onboarding for casual/solo players
Yeah, they need to just make Safer Seas full leveling for those that want it. I like that for 2 reasons. Let the player play how they want. And 2, if i go into high seas then I expect to battle players that want to battle. Nobody should want to farm casual players. And so, if you have that separation like that you know you are getting players that want to, and will, engage in real battles. In my experience with this game over the years some do want real challenge fun combat. Most want easy casuals and to sneak over and blow your ship. Nobody with skill wants casuals all over. I will not every attack because there are just too many easy casuals that are not interested and I am just ruining their game. Plus it is boring. Sort of like playing old shooters way back. No SBMM or anything and you could walk all over lobby after lobby. If i got 2-3 like that I was done for the day back then. Boring and no challenge.
Explain. You have tools to protect yourself, many infact.
Not always. Imagine you are a person who just wants to play. The argument used to be to watch your horizons, etc. Sure, when you are sailing. But it can take a while to offload loot. It can take a while to get loot. So, the typical play for many is to catch you while you actually play the game. I was being told by those that farm casuals and talking like they are skilled that you should leave someone on the ship. And other boring stuff. I mean, not everyone wants to have someone forced to stand around. That is why there should always have been a Safer Seas but will full progression. Lack of progression is just a way to appease those whiners who care if someone else is unlocking something in the game.
Systems to discourage constant chasing or spawn-camping
The chasing should be discourages by the time. But you will get those that will chase for literally 2 hours. Had that happen. I was doing two things. Playing hearthstone on my phone and compiling some code on another PC. I was sitting there sailing around with nothing and a group comes along and chased me for 2 hours. They got nothing from my empty ship. I quit as soon as I was done with the compiling as I had some test runs to do. My 12 year old, was younger at the time, did this several times. Funny how easily entertained kids can be. But these were adults. I would join his crew eventually and be in game chat. They would talk their stupid stuff and say those immature things that a large portion of the gamers I run into do even though they are obviously in their 20-40s.
Nothing discourages, only makes the thrill of the chase. Heck...you Run = You have stuff, which is often why they chase.
Nah, some will run because they do not want to engage. And most fail to think that you can just leave and load back in. Seen it a bunch. Hell, when you do have loot what is the value? Many like to sell small amounts and not take the risk it seems. Makes sense. So you spent and hour chasing for 3 crates. Absolutely insane. Had a group do that to us last night, 12/6. We had 5 pieces of loot. 1 was something we needed to sell, low value though. Nothing worth anything really. We sailed from south east of Kraken's Fall to Port Merrick. Son jumps off and sells the book. That was it. Did not even defend the ship. 100% they would have chases for another hour or more. Seen it so many times. Would have been a better run to just go loot.
But again...You have Safer Seas...
Again, sure, but you cannot do the emissaries to 100. That is part of the game. Was beyond dumb to not have Safer Seas from the start. And is dumb to not allow players to level to 100 there. Sure, you will get some whiney players who think games should cater to them and all that. But it would 100% make the high seas more fun. I would enjoy that if I was sure everyone wanted to battle. Most do not and are just easy targets. What kind of fun in that? Never was sure why these people want these casuals as easy targets.
In the end High Seas would be much better for it if they had a full on Safer Seas all the way without the handicapping of that mode. 100% they would make more money as well. More kids would play and enjoy the cartoony pirate game and parents would likely be more likely to spend.
