I have never been so excited about an update for sea of thieves before, however I just want to point a couple of things out in this update because its kinda starting to get disappointing.
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Firstly, getting to level 100 allegiance with any of the newly added factions is such a slug fest, the level requirements increase vastly per level (at first 1 sink would give you 1 level but I am at level 17 and now I get half a level from a sink, I can't imagine how or when am I going to get to level 100 in my lifetime) (I mean to say that the required allegiance xp to level this is increasing vastly so early, which I honestly hope you guys fix, because not every player in the game is a streamer that can no life this game, and if I as a common adult (I have a real life job yes) player would need to quit my job just get to 100 to just check the new cool curses in their respective hideouts then whats the point of trying to begin with)
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Second point on levelling allegiance is a slug fest, if I sink from a player that is way higher than me in skill/mmr I get the same amount of allegiance xp as I sink from a new player ( same goes for me sinking a low skilled player vs a high skilled player, both wins give me the same amount of allegiance xp) which is also very bad, why because matches with high skilled players take A LOT of time (yes it can take up to an hour or two just fighting 1 ship, and this happens frequently btw)
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Third point on levelling allegiance is a slug fest, as I have mentioned before, some battles can take up to 1-2 hours long sometimes not because you're facing a highly skilled player, but because you are facing a running reaper style combatant, so they would just keep on running away and trying to stall till you quit, this is quite boring and very frustrating, I honestly don't know what to suggest here, either make the area circle smaller to begin with, or make it get smaller with time (until it reaches a point), because right now battles can get very frustrating (and its also not rewarding at all to fight such long battles, please guys respect our time)
This is my feedback regarding season 8 update, I have never been so excited to get into PvP before, but however there are a couple of hiccups, from the numbers mentioned above you can get a rough idea about how much play time is required of an average player is going to take to reach level 100 of allegiance on any faction, I hope that Rare targets its balancing towards most of their player base rather than the top 0,0005% of its player base which comprises of streamers and players with no life (both of which play the game for more than 4 to 8+ hours a day), please encourage the average player to join in and have fun, make getting to level 100 allegiance reachable for the average joe so that they can play and populate the PvP pool rather than seeing this as a goal that will cost them their real life to reach.
This is an edit on the main post just to gather other clarifications on my points regarding my feedback on the current progression system of pvp in the game in one post to make it easier for the readers.
I just wanted to clarify that I love the new update and I love pvp, I have played this game for 1.2k hrs and I believe that I am an average skilled player in terms of pvp
I don't mean to rush the content in 2 days, I will illustrate my point in a different way, with numbers, at first I thought you would need to sink around 100 ships to get to level 100 allegiance because you got 1 level per sink at the beginning 10 levels I recall, however right now I am 17 and I am getting half the level from a sink because allegiance xp requirements increase per level, this means that you might need to sink somewhere between 500-300 ships maybe to get to just level 100 just to get access to the hideouts where to just be able to check how much more grind you have to do to get your rewards from there (obviously you would need much more sinks to get from 100 to 200 for example to unlock whatever rewards are there, so on and so forth)
and as I have mentioned, some fights take way too long, depends on if you're facing a sweat lord with DA sails on, or a running reaper kinda opponent, 1-2 hrs per fight, lets be optimistic and say 1 hour, an average to time to get into battle and sink a ship might be between 10-30 mins, lets say 20 mins for simplicity, and on average I get a sweatlord or a running reaper ever 3-4 battles, so that is somewhere between 2 hrs of play time, just to get 3-4 sinks (assuming you win them all), I will be optimistic and say that I sink the sweatlord (which currently doesn't happen because I keep getting matches vs way stronger players) so that would be 4 sinks every 2 hrs, which equates to 2 sinks per hour, divide 500-300 sinks needed by 2, you would find that you would need to put in around 250-150 hours to just get access to any one of the hideouts, lets say an average working guy like me finds time to put in 4 hours a day dedicated only to playing pvp in SoT, I would need somewhere between 63 to 38 days (divide 250-150 by 4hrs a day) just to get access to one of the hideouts. (and I would have to win each match)
to clarify this more, you need 63-38 days of none stop WINNING pvp games in SoT only for 4 hrs per day, I can't even imagine how long would it take an average person that wins and loses matches, let alone the poor beginners.
Obviously there are mechanics like the streak system which would ease things a bit on you, but it only works in favour of the extreme sweatlord player, I just checked MixelPlx's stream right now and he's at level 80 allegiance atm, yeah I know its been what, 2 days after the release of the season, the guy has a top streak of 31 sinks, he is very good (if not the best that I have seen), and he's playing this game full time if not more, I just want to point out that currently, levelling the allegiance seems to be in favour of people with enough skill (and luck, because the game currently gives them noob players to face many times, I know the MMR system will work later on) like MixelPlx which is a huge minority in this game (which makes the game way less grindy for people of that skill level, for you grind lovers) and it is currently incredibly grindy and demanding for the rest of the player base.
You can note that highly skilled players will currently reach very high streaks of wins because the match making system is not currently working properly, like for example the 31 ships that Mixel sank are not all at the same skill level as he is, so its uneven matches all the way until now, and this gave a HUGE advantage to skillful players to level up very fast on behalf of the poorly matched lower skill players (which wouldn't be the case in the future, since you would be matched against people of the same skill as you are "Hopefully")
- Fourth point, currently playing long matches rewards you with the same amount of allegiance xp as short matches (meaning that if you win a 2 hrs match, you will gain the same xp as you get when you win a 10 mins match, same thing with losing, if you lose in a 2hrs match, you will gain the same amount of xp as if you have lost a match in 10 mins), I honestly think they should put the match time into account here, the longer the match takes, the more rewarding it is for both players, rather than punishing the player that is fighting tooth and nail to get the better of his opponent,
Some argued that this can be exploitable, I would reply with Rare could encourage players to finish off their matches faster by adding a reward multiplier on a streak of matches played rather than matches won, this would encourage players to play more matches and end their current ones faster rather than wasting other's time (running reaper kind of a player)
- Fifth point, why a player wouldn't be rewarded for his actions during a fight? because right now, the winner takes a good amount of xp while the loser hardly takes anything, even if the match toke an hour of difficult fighting, since Rare added milestones, I know that this implies that they have analytics/metrics, why not use them per fight, I will give you 2 examles on this,
Example 1, two strong players against each other, and the battle takes a long time, due to their skill, why would the winners and losers of good battles be rewarded the same way as 1 pirate that sank the other in 5 mins? the reward should account for the actions that these pirates have done to try to attain victory, and even if one sinks he should be rewarded according to his actions (you can see this in Dead by daylight, that game respects its player's time, if you play well by its rules, you will be rewarded, I don't want to explain all of its rules right now because it will make this post unnecessarily longer)
Example 2, defeating a running reaper kind of a player, surely such a boring fight would take a long amount of time, but defeating a player that is trying to unnecessarily elongate the game should reward the winner more, and obviously since the reaper was just running and not engaging or landing hits, they wouldn't get a boost on their reward.
and thats the thing, I believe that if you show skill you should be rewarded for it regardless if you've won or lost, a skillful pirate who fights tooth and nail for an hour and sunk should be rewarded more than a pirate who steam rolls his opponent in 5 mins.
TLDR, levelling the new faction allegiance is taking way too long than it should be for the average player to just reach level 100 with any of the factions and get access to the cool rewards of season 8 (of getting into the new hideouts/ getting the new cool rewards/curses), and I am not even mentioning the rewards that requires you to get to level 1000 allegiance, the current pvp progression system is flawed, its favouring the high skilled players (2% or less of the player base) over the lower skilled players because it is currently matching them towards us, they're getting far more streaks than us, and we are just getting extremely low allegiance xp by being matched against them.
and lastly, no one is asking to unlock the rewards in 2 days, but just getting access to the main content of season 8's update and checking out the rewards over there taking 63-38 days of nonestop winning is way too damn long, I would appreciate it if Rare respects our time, and award us accordingly rather than punishing us for playing the game and specifically the game mode that we love.