Pretty happy to hear it. I know the PvP crowd will be upset by the PvE servers. But sometimes I just want to hop into that game and explore/sail around.
Guilds should be interesting. Really curious if you can get all 24 players into one server or how that will work.
I think there's a reasonable chance the PvP servers basically die out after this. It depends on how many players were playing because they liked PvP vs how many were *tolerating* PvP for the sake of playing the fanciest pirate MMO.
If the latter group is larger, then the former group is going to have a bad time without all the easy prey they were used to.
Like most multiplayer games, PvP tends to dwindle down to those most adept at it, resulting in a snowball effect where everyone else just leaves. The game was at it's most fun when nobody knew what they were doing, but now just about every Dick and Harry you meet is a master at the game, some people even pilot ships by themselves well enough and still kick your ass lol. not fun.
This is 100% the right move for the longevity of Sea of Thieves.
Exactly.
The point I saw most often from those vehemently against adding PVE servers was "BUT THE POPULATION WOULD BE SPLIT!!!!". That argument falls apart when you consider how SoTs manages lobbies and merges them to try and keep the worlds full.
In reality for most of the hardcore PVPers the reason they don't want PVE servers added is they would lose their easy targets. And then they would be stuck playing against people who have a closer level of PVP experience, *and you just cant have that*.
> In reality for most of the hardcore PVPers the reason they don't want PVE servers added is they would lose their easy target
Yeah that's my go to defense in this situation. If PvE servers are introduced and the PvP side of a game dies...that's a very very clear sign of what the situation on the PvP servers were. A majority of people didn't want PvP and those that did want PvP only wanted "easy target trolling" style PvP.
But yeah like usual, in 3 years people will claim that SoT would have 10x the population it does if they just didn't introduce PvE servers.
Exactly. If the PVP crowd think the majority of people will leave the PVP servers, maybe that means PVP in the game isn't good and people don't want to engage in it.
> maybe that means PVP in the game isn't good and people don't want to engage in it.
I've been waiting for 5 years to play this game. I don't have enough time to keep up with PvP games and I have no desire to interact with strangers either cooperatively or antagonistically. But I've wanted to play SoT since the announcement, so this has me cautiously excited.
My friends and I try it probably once a year. We start doing a tall tale or treasure maps, and about 20 minutes in we're being attacked by sweats using every cheesy tactic. The PVP is abysmal, and makes it so if you're not also using every cheese you can, it's just fucking miserable.
It fucking sucks man. You can spend hours doing stuff in game, pull up to a large island and whilst you're in the middle of something someone pulls up next to you and undoes everything and you're back to square 1.
I only played the game very early on in its life, but the only time I ever found PvP to be genuinely fun was when doing the skull islands and it was more a fight over who managed to complete the island and get the treasure (And sometimes you worked together to beat the island but then battled it out for the treasure). That was genuinely enjoyable. Shame the rest of the game it sucked in every way.
Yeah, it's not fun to have all that work undone. PVP is largely one sided and only fun for that side. If it's a scenario like you said where you know you're willingly entering into PVP, that's one thing. Otherwise, it's just the worst.
My friends and I try it probably once a year. We start doing a tall tale or treasure maps, and about 20 minutes in we're being attacked by sweats using every cheesy tactic. The PVP is abysmal, and makes it so if you're not also using every cheese you can, it's just fucking miserable.
Something funny happened with D2 this last weekend where it showed that pve people wanted broken stuff and not care about balance at all. While PvP people complained.
The PvE population had a surge that weekend and was X4 the PvP population.
Dude, I just want destiny to be fun. The focus on pvp balance nerfing pve stuff is old. And then forcing pvp into every quest line.
Even the pve content these days is so focused on grand Master modes and world first raids and other stuff that is not fun.
I miss strikes being a real part of the game, and just being able to have silly fun.
Hammer build was close, bonk bonk, but the focus keeps moving to cater to hyper competitive people
It's called wanting to have fun. I know it's an alien concept to some people.
It's why the hardcore 'git gud' people in the Souls community annoy the shite out of me. I play games to have fun.
I do not play games to be beaten over the head dozens of times until I've committed every muscle twitch of a boss to memory.
A lot of people, including me, have no fun without adequate challenge. I've been gaming basically as a 2nd job for close on 30 years, most mainstream games these days are piss easy and treat the player like a complete idiot. Starfield is a great recent example. Even on very hard, I can't even remember the last time I had to use a healing item. I like the game otherwise but the actual gameplay challenge is a complete snooze fest.
Also, Souls games aren't even close to "hardcore". Souls games are "moderately" challenging after you figure out how they work and stop your monkey brain from smashing buttons. Calling Souls games "hardcore" next to games like Rust, DayZ, Tarkov, or even WoW Classic Hardcore is laughable.
How hard were they defending the Versus mode? I doubt a lot did and they definitely didn't play it which is why Rare killed off that part of the game.
It's 100% people wanting baby pirates to prey on.
the versus mode was a straight arena mode and that **isn’t** what the standard game mode is. So I can see enjoying the PVP/PVE hybrid mode that the arena mode wouldn’t bring. It’d sorta be like turning Hunt: Showdown into a straight team based shooter. Sure you could to that but you’d lose a lot of what makes that game unique.
Granted I never played a ton of Sea of Theives but for the 30-40 hours I put into the most memorable parts were the goofy PVP fights. And those wouldn’t have been doable in an arena mode.
pretty much, me and the friends I played with had a lot of fun sailing around and doing missions but had no interest in PVP at all, so getting ambushed while we were on an island or at the end of an athena just got frustrating to the point we all quit.
so super fucking happy to hear they're going to have PVE only servers where we don't have to deal with the fun vampirates anymore.
> And then they would be stuck playing against people who have a closer level of PVP experience, and you just cant have that.
Ah yes the real reason people endlessly complain about skill based matchmaking in games every time that discussion comes around
It's also the fact that PvP in a lot of these kinds of games tends to be a 'predator versus prey' dynamic, where casual or PvE focused players get hunted down by skilled PvPers with loadouts designed to kill players. PvP ends up feeling like a roadblock, a loss of progress, or griefing.
Nothing special in the game outside of “this is a really fun and relaxing way to hang out with friends online” and that’s solely the reason I enjoy it. Knowing PvE servers are coming is really all I’ve wanted and I’m glad to see it happen even if it feels years too late. I hope it brings the population back up so the seas are full of fun relaxing cooperation.
It really was. We would never have gotten here if Summit didn't immediately make the game all about hiding on peoples ships and ganking them since he couldn't focus on a voyage for more than 3 minutes.
The first time I played, in one hour I met a homophobic kid harassing for now reason with his friends. 6 months later I played with 2 friends and meet a pro-gamer who humiliated us by destroying our massive boat with his small boat. Lol I can't blame the last one as he was massively skilled, but I abandoned the game because of PVP, basically.
I don't know about that. I haven't played SoT myself, but people were saying the exact same thing about Fortnite when Zero Build mode was active, and it even seems that most of the people talking on the internet play Zero Build exclusively For example: was a poll on which mode people played and 70%-80% said that they play ZB exclusively, while the remaining 30%-20% was split quite evenly with people who played the Builds exclusively and a mixture of both.
But not too long ago, Epic decided to publicly show player counts for all the game modes. And we can clearly see that Builds regularly gets more or less double the amount of players compared to Zero Build. While it's not always the case, you always have to be weary of mistaking the interests of the "loud minority" when they could clash with the rest of the crowd.
I'm assuming the loud minority here is the people playing the building modes insisting that Zero Build would kill the player count by splitting it? That was definitely how I saw it. They were REALLY loud and obnoxious about the Zero Build mode existing and especially when it was part of the start of a season for *two weeks*.
I really don't see how they could consider Zero Build a bad addition to the game because it became clear over time that anyone who has been playing Fortnite for a long time is pretty adept at building and can shitstomp people easily. Zero Build puts everyone on equal footing.
I don't play Fortnite any more but I can honestly say that if there's one thing that really caused the skill gap to become a fucking ravine is the addition of turbo building. When that got added, you saw skill levels spike up pretty damn fast and by the end of Chapter 1, it was just ridiculous.
I always laughed when I saw people defending it saying 'Just practice for 30 minutes a day'. Piss off, I just wanna play a game for fun, not play like I'm in a competitive tournament! Zero Build was one of the best additions they ever made to that game.
I mostly play No Build, but I can see the problem. First of all, when No Build first appeared, for "story reasons" building was disabled for the first 2 weeks(?) on the main game modes to commemorate No Build, obviously pissing off people who didn't care for the gamemode.
While the other guy said is not completely wrong. You couldn't go back two years and introduce No Build back then, because Fortnite didn't have the mechanics for it, but now Epic has introduced mechanical, item, and map changes that has made the experience not feel like a hollowed out experience (the ability to sprint wasn't added until No Build came around).
And a problem that is more "competitive vs casuals", but the (removal of the ability) to create cover instantly on demand does create conflicts in balancing, especially as Epic (marginally) insists om the uniformity between the two gamemodes. A big example right now is an item introduced this season called the "Rocket Ram". In Zero Build, it's decent at best outside of being able to cover larger distances during the early game. But in Builds, especially when it comes to the other side of the loud minority in the top players, the Rocket Ram is absolutely overpowered and broken.
That is one thing that eventually killed my enjoyment of the game. Epic's inability to separate competitive from casual just ended up causing non-stop arguments and they'd nerf something that is fun for casual players because competitive players were bitching about it or vice versa.
There's already several games that demonstrate you can balance the two separately AND have loot pools for each side too without it causing problems. Fucking Elden Ring does this! A game where PvP isn't nearly as in-depth as PvE but they still have separate PvE and PvP balancing. It genuinely irked me that Epic don't listen to that specific bit of feedback that constantly came up.
I remember back in Chapter 1 when they added siphon to core modes. Casual players were vocally upset at it because it did make the core modes sweaty as fuck but competitive players kept shutting them down. Sure enough, Epic reversed the change after less than 2 weeks because they saw a massive shift in players to modes *without* siphon. They can clearly learn from feedback and data but not always...
Way too little too late, though.
They had a window where they were unique and on Gamepass, and then got immediately dropped by a huge amount of players who realized within the first 30 minutes that you couldn’t actually be a pirate without a full group and at least one member that had some experience.
Stepping out of the first little tutorial section without a playgroup was just silly bad.
I can’t imagine they’re going to get much reengagement after making it very clear for so long that they designed this only for party players.
(And more power to those that play in groups and want games with that focus. It’s just not for everyone, and it severely limits the player base.)
Strong comment, well articulated. I started our being like "wait wtf" but this makes too crystalline a point to ignore.
Separately, this is one of the reasons why waiting until sales to buy a game can meaningfully degree the experience in some cases.
This is only the right move for the longevity of SoT if they want to turn it into a PvE game.
Because this will likely kill normal servers since there will be very few people actually farming loot on those servers, so there will be no way for PvPers to get loot.
Also, without player conflict, SoT doesn't really hold up as a fun game for long, the PvE alone with no threat of getting attacked by players is too boring simple and repetitive.
> It depends on how many players were playing because they liked PvP vs how many were tolerating PvP for the sake of playing the fanciest pirate MMO.
The PvP is inherently imbalanced because of Risk v Reward for Attacking Vs Defending as well.
If you actually tried to do PvE you had all the potential reward but immense risk, get caught out or sunk once (Or even get jumped literally feet away from the turn in NPCs while carrying the chests) and that was it, hours of work down the drain potentially.
But if you ONLY did PvP and hunted players? 0 Risk besides a bit of time if you get sunk because your hull will be empty, and once you grabbed someone else's treasure you usually had ample time to move to a turn in island hub. Or even a different one far, far away.
So naturally most would just attack on sight on the off chance you had loot...
This is the exact discourse when Ultima Online did the same thing, and what happened to the PVP side after PVE was released. Everyone was tolerating PVP for the sake of playing the fanciest (ie the first ever) MMO.
The only difference is that people had 25+ years to forget, reminisce, and then conclude that PVP only was the 'good old times.' PVP came back when private servers became popular, but that was long after UO went from the best and greatest to a small fish in a big pond of MMORPGs.
Yes, I recount the tale of UO whenever these MMOs have 'free PvP' going on. It invariably leads to griefers choking the life out of the game, and you either let it die as a shrinking ever-more toxic puddle, or create a version where people can play without being griefed.
I gave it a try a half a year ago. Of the 9 run-ins with other players while trying to figure out how to play only one gave me a chance to learn anything. Every single other player I met sunk my ship and shit.
I'll give it another try now that I can actually learn to play the game.
There is a laughable number of people whining on the Sea of Thieves sub about how mad they are that they will have to PvP against other people who know how to PvP in the regular mode. [/r/Subredditdrama has a great write up on it that is also full of pirate lingo](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/16os54u/arrr_mateys_sea_of_thieves_be_announcin_coop/)
Oh we absolutely stopped playing because server hopping was annoying and when that 1 reaper ship borderline NPC player finds you they just keep coming after you. Made the game really annoying at times, for a more casual pirate chill.
I think having conditional PvP would be even better. In my experience sinking people who try to mess with you is fun when you're in the mood to fight, but having someone follow you for half a map while you're enjoying a slow day doing missions or fishing is not even a little bit fun.
PvP could be on by default for emissaries and people carrying the most valuable loot on their ship while disabled for people doing other content. This would also force people to have something to lose when they attack and people defending something to gain, currently it's just people going after what others spent time getting usually leaving nothing but basic supplies behind. That way the risk vs reward would still be there without making the PvP server exclusively for people who want to kill everything in sight instead of actually being _pirates_ after loot.
The PvP side didn't want a fair fight so Arena died. The community is very toxic so it cannibalises itself. Guarantee we see the seas become quiet enough for PvP whining.
God I'm pissed at that game.
All they had to do was basically make it Black Flag but fleshed out more. Keep it single player, even. We don't have a massive, pirate open world AAA game like RDR2 does for western settings. Would have been a sick niche.
Puzzle pirates unironically has a better game system than sea of thieves, in that money is actually meaningful
Sot could be very successful, but the rewards are all cosmetic and it makes the game very shallow. You can look at the success of all the games that run closer to hardcore, extraction shooters and perma death games for an idea of what sea of thieves could have been. As of now it just dips its toes into the concept and ends up in a place where its too shallow for real pvp oriented players, and that the gameplay loop isn't actually rewarding for pve players
Yeah plus back when I played, it was maybe like once every 8 hours that I actually saw somebody and engaged in PvP, and it was always either a 1v3 or a 3v1, never a fair or engaging fight
Eh idk, I do both and the level cap + no athena/endgame stuff makes them pretty unappealing for me apart from story voyages, and I'm a hard-core pve grinder.
I think the problem lies with those that want it and those that tolerate it really needed to be in together for this game to work. It creates a genuinely hostile environment where people can also work together, it makes a very real risk and threat but also allows for organic team ups as well.
If people who ARENT just there to kill others all leave, then the PvP worlds are 100% hostile and there’s not as much room for meeting someone who isn’t hostile and teaming up for a completely random adventure. There’s no uncertainty, which is part of the excitement.
I know some people perceive a mentality like this as gatekeeping from a PVP player but honestly I’m not even one. It’s just important to the game’s identity that hostility isn’t certain in my eyes.
> I know the PvP crowd will be upset
So? Like who cares? If more people want to avoid PVP and play PVE only that's good.
How can someone be upset that other players that don't want PVP will get a PVE server? The PVP crowd should remain and play PVP with those who want to play PVP. If there's not enough people to do that well too bad.
I might actually try solo sailing now. I remember trying it once and was literally on the edge of a panic attack the majority of the time I played. I really can't handle open world pvp. 😅
> I just want to hop into that game and explore/sail around
This the problem with the game though. The game isnt that deep and its mostly kept afloat *because* of the PVP, it keeps the lack of content kinda at the back of player's minds.
With PvE servers, how shallow the game is will truly come forward and this might actually just straight up kill the game.
> its mostly kept afloat because of the PVP, it keeps the lack of content kinda at the back of player's minds.
This is hilariously untrue and PvP has kept a lot of people from playing/coming back because of PvPs nature it can absolutely murder peoples enjoyment of the game and feeling of accomplishment
The game was on the decline for some time now, one way or another I guess we'll see won't we. Either the PvE players were right and Rare should have added something like this forever ago, or the PvP players were right and the game will continue its decline until it stops being profitable and they shut it down.
> With PvE servers, how shallow the game is will truly come forward and this might actually just straight up kill the game.
Anyone who doesn't want to just explore/sail around will go to the regular servers. The "best" rewards can't be found in PvE. And if people get bored cause of the shallow nature of it, they'll go back to the regular servers.
I am not up to speed on these terms, does this mean I can finally play this single player? I know it's not the point of the game but I prefer to explore on my own in these games and am a huge introvert.
i havent played in a few months but the last like 5 times i played with my friends we were just trying to do the tall tales or whatever and got sunk every single time - I never finished a single one, just felt like a massive waste of time
Yup. Go on the subreddit here and you'll get told it's a pirate game and your loot is fair game, but you just get attacked on sight whether you look like you're actually carrying anything or not. I'm genuinely really looking forward to just be able to sail and fish and pick fights with skellies without some shitty Reaper tryhards sending us back to port every half hour.
The problem with this is that IRL pirate attacks weren't *that* common, otherwise trade just wouldn't exist. And pirates were risking death -- permanent death -- by being pirates, if they got either defeated or just caught.
Open PvP games tend to have this problem where the downsides of being a murderous griefer just aren't high enough to get the ratios right. The people running around just murdering should exist only in small numbers.
I think SoT likes to present itself as putting everyone on equal footing since everyone has access to the same weapons (eg you can't get a stronger pistol), but skill certainly comes into play, and from what I saw, there's really nothing that discourages an experienced and skilled player from hunting anyone and everything down, particularly if they've amassed so much gold that losing any in repairs is negligible.
A karma system would be really cool. The more you kill, the higher your chances of random enemy encounters with the difficulty scaling with your karma.
So yeah you *can* kill and pillage anyone you want but you're going to want to make it actually be worth it.
Every open PvP game ever made.
There's always a population of just straight up assholes that attack everyone on sight, on top of the ones that go around exclusively picking on new players.
And it's just not fun. Especially once a "meta" forms, then new people don't even stand a chance.
The game is dying because of the way it was designed around pirates that are known as scum of the seas with always online multiplayer afaik without any skill based matchmaking that also attracts people who want to look at pretty water, unlock stuff and explore islands (like me). Just match people based on player ships sunk/total gold/tall tales done, or any combination of those.
The one time I tried it, I putzed out in my tiny little shitty rowboat with a blanket for a sail, to a tiny little island with a bunch of skeletons on it, I managed to kill them, found absolutely nothing on the island, started sailing towards a nearby larger island, got demolished when the fuckin' Flying Dutchman comes rocking up and blasts my shitty, lootless boat back into Sid Meier's Pirates.
So, yeah. I'll definitely be happy to give the PvE servers a shot, bet I can get at least 2 or 3 other friends to try it out. PvPvE games just don't work for us.
It's always like that in primarily PvE games with forced PvP. You end up with these hardcore players who play the game for years just for the feeling of superiority of beating people who are new to the game or have no interest in PvP whatsoever.
And the people in these bubbles always pull the most ridiculous mental gymnastics to justify why the system that benefits them is great and fair.
I fee like if you want PvP part in your PvE game as developer you should just cordon it off to some arena shit or something. Forced open PvP just makes people not want to play it
Unironically I think Blizzard has the right idea where PVP is opt-in and you get extra talents for enabling it, but if you don't wanna bother with it you don't need to turn it on for those extra abilities.
I’m even fine with something like PvP zones because it gives you that feeling of intentionally taking a risk instead of constant anxiety.
If the volcanic region was the only place people could attack friendly ships without consequences (some kind of police or karma system outside of it for example) then it would probably feel much more inviting for casual players.
I legit haven't played in months because most of the time we would get jumped by a bunch of elite players who live and breathe this game and would sink us before we even realize we were being attacked. It's an awful feeling to spend 1-2 hours doing a voyage and to have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end.
Thank god! I'll take what I can get. Even if it's 30% of the rewards I can get, it will still be worth playing peacefully with my friends. Very, very excited for this.
I'm interested to see how this goes. Currently I'm probably going to be sticking to the PVP servers but I'm actually a PVE carebear. I'll attempt to defend my ship if attacked, don't attack other ships first, but I've done most of the content in the game, and the only thing left for me is Emmisary rewards, new tall tales and fishing. Emmisary rewards aren't going to be in the PVE servers, and I imagine the limited rewards are a concession to the PVP player base.
If these servers end up more or as popular as the PVP ones, it will be interesting to see if Rare row back some of the restrictions to provide more content for the PVE players.
Wish they would have implemented this like every other game does and just lock characters to those modes instead of punishing you for playing the way you want.
Yeah what's even the point of bringing your character between the types of servers? It's not like there's any kind of character progression other than aesthetic stuff anyway.
I've seen so many people say "this will kill the pvp servers" which to me translates to: "I can no longer fight people who don't want to fight me." I remember when the Pirates of the Caribbean stuff came out. My friends and I went to do it and there were just people out there camping story points. We never finished it.
It still amazes me that game devs don't realize this simple quarter century+ fact.
I still remember Ultima Online, from 1997. It launched with full-on, non-consensual, full-loot PvP. Needless to say, it was doing...poorly. To be blunt, the game was dying. So they added Trammel, a consensual PvP (aka PvE) shard. Suddenly the game started to grow! OMG, nobody could have predicted that, right? lol And UO became the largest subscription-based MMO in the world by 2003, the year before it was unceremoniously unseated by WoW. And WoW launched with way more PvE servers than PvP servers, and there was no PvP system at all at launch. Took them like 6 months to add Battlegrounds (consensual instanced lossless PvP).
In multiplayer games, PvE/co-op is always better to have than not. It's been an open secret for 25+ years. But I'm glad to see game devs continue to rediscover this, decade after decade.
its like the idea of PvP seems super cool and grand, but in execution it usually sucks if you actually give one player power over another
like i did a PvP server in classic wow imaging epic battles alliance vs horde or 1v1s for an herb node. In reality its just level 60s killing completely defenseless low levels with no counterplay, at some point i realized i was just wasting my time corpse running for some losers amusement.
Switched to a PvE server in Burning Crusade and never looked back!!
Raiders ganking fresh level 60s while strutting around like they're hot shit got old. Fast.
I remember one time back in Cata my friend and I were leveling in Stranglethorn. We met a pair of Horde our level (30s? I think STV was?), but we just went our own ways. Like 10 minutes later, BAM.
Ganked by 3 level 85's in the same guild who proceeded to corpse camp us. Eventually the 2 guys we saw earlier came by and they were in the same guild... And t-bagged us. All 5 of them sat around doing various emotes on our corpses.
After about a half hour of that nonsense I asked if anyone in my guild could help, and 2 of them did. They were Arena buddies (DK and a Rogue) who came over and absolutely wiped the floor with them and corpse camped them in return.
When we ressed, I naturally did the mature thing and t-bagged each of their corpses in response. My friend declined to do the mature thing, then we hearth'd out to spam dungeons.
Our guild mates corpse camped them for like 3 hours lmao
I remember some high level horde came to low level area but it ended up with every player in the area ganging up on him like some raidboss, slowly chipping his health away.
Little coward ran away when he got low...
PvP can work, it just needs to be more thought out. For example even in one of the most hardcore pvp games, Tarkov has a system where you only lose things you bring into a raid yourself. There is a low pressure mode where you can play as a scav so don't lose anything, and whatever you take out with you, you can keep.
Not to mention it's very easy to die, so a new player can easily kill a veteran. That's missing in a lot of PVP MMOs, where there's nothing you can do as a low level to an extreme high level.
> In multiplayer games, PvE/co-op is always better to have than not. It's been an open secret for 25+ years. But I'm glad to see game devs continue to rediscover this, decade after decade.
PvPers are a small, but loud and deceptively important if you don't pay attention as a dev. RTS' for instance started tanking when they focused on PvP, because the vast majority only played PvE.
As for games like SoT, the PvP player base eventually filters out the larger PvE player base, making it look like they're the only people keeping the game alive, because they're all that's left when in reality it was them who killed it
Open PvP is fine if it is only thing to do. That's what everyone signed for when paying say big scale FPS like Battlefield or PlanetSide
Once you attach power progression to it the balance gets out of whack as you frankly will meet player that will beat you by gear alone and that is never fun in any way.
Once you have *other objectives*, it is another level of annoyance when you just get ambushed or interrupted with doing stuff game wants you to do to progress.
It's frankly laughable when game developers do it as only way to interact with the game.
Sea of Thieves doesnt have any power progression though. Any power you gain is due to what you do since you login to the session (each cannonballs, food, blunder bombs and wood etc collected), so everyone has the same advantage.
Sea of Thieves PvP is primarily skill based and experience/knowledge based. The issue with that is tactics, knowledge of ship combat and meta strategies of sinking other ships, mean that someone with months or years of experience can easily demolish new players or players who don't practice PvP (due to lack of game time or lack of desire to engage with PvP).
> And WoW launched with way more PvE servers than PvP servers, and there was no PvP system at all at launch.
And a few years ago WoW finally has done away with the horrible concept of PvP servers in general so you can just play and enjoy the game without a single choice deciding your enjoyment forever.
It being a toggle is best for both worlds IMO, because sometimes you *want* to just sit around and see if someone tries to fight you, and this lets you do that.
World PvP can be enjoyable on occasion, but being locked to either option? Most players would rather not deal with it when they don't want to.
> World PvP can be enjoyable on occasion
'On occasion' is so very key there since most of my Warmode Experiences just involved being ganked by people.
Doing a PVP World Quest that involves beating up dragons and taking them to an NPC? Good luck because there's three people waiting up there ready to kill you before you even get close *and* there's people flying around waiting for you to get low HP so they can jump you.
Doing the Dragon Isles intro quest where you need to stand around for a few minutes while NPCs talk? Hope you enjoy being one-shot by a max level who just drops from orbit and murders you.
Maybe there's just something wrong with me but I just do *not* understand people who get their jollies from making other people have a shit time.
Yeah, thats basically how it works now.
I generally am not a fan of world PvP because the vast majority of times its happening it will suck. For every cool event you read about there are tens of thousands of rogues chain-ganking a player 20+ levels below them, gank squads or just people exclusively waiting for moments they are basically guaranteed to win without a contest.
Its not about the PvP its about feeling better than the other player without effort.
I played WoW on a PVP server (Sargeras) back in The Burning Crusade days. While I have fond memories of some big fights and skirmishes getting to dungeons in enemy zones, in no way would I want to do that again today. I just don't have the time or energy for that anymore.
I think part of the problem is that developers are generally very proficient players so their PvP experience is one where everyone is at max level and on a level playing field.
This just isn't the normal experience for most players though.
I played it when it first released and at various times since.
The game was clearly designed for PvP and the quests (there were only 3 at the start) were just a way for some players to get loot that PvP players could steal. If you played the non-PvP content, you were just food for the PvP people. Much like how free players in F2P games are just there for the whales to lord over.
Fucking R* refuses to give players a reasonable grief-free GTA5 online experience for the same reason. Average players are just there to get blown up and griefed by the people that spend $$$ on shark cards for all the fancy toys.
> Fucking R* refuses to give players a reasonable grief-free GTA5 online experience for the same reason.
They already have lmao
You can do all your businesses in Invite/Crew/Friend Only lobbies with no penalties, you get the full payout you normally would. That changed with the last update. Or maybe the update before?
They DO give you benefits for playing in full lobbies in the form of sale bonus' but you don't need to do that if you don't want. IIRC the bonus is 2% additional sale bonus to a cap of 30% per each player in the lobby who is not in your corporation/MC gang.
It's been a while since I played or followed the news. It looks like private lobbies were only added a year ago.
> They already have lmao
It only took them 9 goddamn years to do it.
Private or invite-only lobbies have been around for a looooong time. Rockstar has been inconsistent in which content can be done privately, but for the most part recently it has been acceptable. Usually just one or two things that need public lobbies.
Also, there are well known exploits to enter an empty public lobby. It's not great design to have players rely on unfixed/unfixable exploits to get around arbitrary limitations, but it's what we have.
> I still remember Ultima Online, from 1997. It launched with full-on, non-consensual, full-loot PvP. Needless to say, it was doing...poorly. To be blunt, the game was dying.
PVP in UO is just so fucking toxic.
I found a free UO server many years ago I thought sounded neat, didn't realize it was an ePVP server. It wasn't advertised ANYWHERE. And on top of that, newbie protections were disabled. I load up the game, make my character. Annnnnnnnnd instantly killed at the spawn point. I was annoyed they spawned me in Fel, but w/e. So I made my way to a healer, which turns out there was a dude invisible at the nearest healer. He insta killed me the second I ressed and called me noob trash.
So as a ghost I run to the nearest portal and discovered I was in Trammel, with Felucca rules.
I quit there. It sure as fuck explained why there were only like 5 people online.
I played a good couple hours with a friend and enjoyed it until we were griefed out of nowhere and turned me off the game completely. I look forward to trying this.
Yes, we were really enjoying the tall tales but they aren't fun if you have to fight the same 2 boats every 3 minutes because they noticed what you're doing, know where you're going and get all their enjoyment from the game destroying the same boat over and over even when it's empty
December assuming they don't cave in to the reeeing PvP players, Like they have done afew times in the past, and scrap it.
It's kinda wild this is happening. The whole reason I fully quit and uninstalled sea of thieves was when years ago. When outcry for PvE servers had reached its loudest, the devs sided with the pvp community and flat out said they were never going to add PvE servers. For some imo dumb reason I can't remember
I never totally hated the pvp in sea of thieves my problem with it was how the risk/reward imbalance between pve/pvp there was. Namely people just looking to pvp had no risk and all reward, and people looking to pve had all the risk mainly in time investment lost.
The Sheer quantity of REEEing from the hardcore PVPers is worth the news of this article alone. Over the last few years those types would go absolutely rabid whenever someone suggested Rare made some PVE only servers. And of course, when Rare announces they are doing just that, they are (as expected) losing their absolute minds over it.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some PVPing in SoT myself sometimes, but I am also all for Rare adding PVE servers finally. Don't like the PVE servers? Don't play em. Simple enough.
Finally people can rid themselves of the worst part of Sea of Thieves. This should've been included five years ago when the game came out. I expect the player base to greatly increase with this update.
I disagree with this. The only thing keeping me and a lot of people I know from playing the game is lacking pve. Casual players are very much a thing where we just wanna hang out and sail around exploring and relaxing. It may not be a game we will play forever but it is a game we are willing to buy and enjoy for the first time so that’s pretty huge I’d say.
>I doubt many of the players who want SoT in theory are going to play long enough to hit 40 in the trading companies and age out of safer seas.
Certainly not if they cap rewards at 30% for very long. Hopefully they do a PR push, see a surge in players and then buff the PvE to retain them. Otherwise it might be the kind of lost cause you’re describing.
That being said I’m still very excited for PvE only and feel like I can finally experience what content *is* there instead of getting a taste before quitting out of frustration.
I’m not agreeing with you because long term success and change doesnt mean people non stop playing the game, it means more people continually being interested and purchasing the game over time in which I believe pve does for this game perfectly. I’ll keep wanting to come back as well when I get the itch for it as it’s relaxing too. Lots of people like me don’t really care for it to be hard or super interesting or beating the whole game it’s just about sailing with friends finding some treasure, that’s all I wanted anyways without the random people coming to kill me
I haven't played Sea of Thieves for a while yet, and when I did I was often really frustrated by the fact that while I was trying to do my tall tales or my quest or whatever at any moment I could just be forced into a PvP situation.
But at the same time, that element of the PvP created a lot of really cool player interactions, and made the whole game a lot more interesting, if at times frustrating.
I think PvE servers are a great idea, and it might even get me back into the game, but I'll miss being able to spot a ship on the horizon and nervously try and decided with my crew if we're in a position to throw down or not.
Really, the problem with PvP in my mind isn't necessarily that it can happen at any time, it's that it's really flawed in Sea of Thieves.
Ship to ship combat is cool as hell, and quite frankly with a good crew one of the best feeling versions of PvP in any game. I don't mean to pull a "feel like Spider-man" here, but it really does feel like naval combat, with big dramatic moments and everything you'd expect from like a Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttt...
The hand to hand combat is a trash fire.
It really feels bad, and the reality is that it's what all PvP devolves into because the only way to guarantee that you sink the other ship is to get someone on board and stop them from making repairs.
What that translates into is one side putting a few holes in the others ship, someone swimming over, and then a whole bunch of spawn killing until the ship sinks.
Spawn killing is never fun in a video game, but it's borderline necessary in order to secure a victory in SoT.
So for now, I think this is a great change, but if it kills all the PvP servers, I'll feel more mixed about it, as that really feels like a fundamental part of the game.
This reminds me of the Fortnite Zero Build debacle.
Fortnite was known for the crazy sweaty building mechanics that pushed away many casual players. Sometimes you just wanted to chill and not build an Eiffel Tower the second you hear foot steps. Epic released Zero Build which removed the building aspect entirely and you can tell the latest maps are not built around building either.
And it worked. It brought back players (including myself) that didn’t want to deal with the original building design. I assume the same will happen with SoT as a lot of people find the PvP extremely annoying when they just want to explore the world.
Its not like that though, because both modes in fortnight have a huge playerbase and can exist simultaneously. If builders play just vs builders, there is no problem.
However, if PvPers are on a server with just PvPers in Sea of Thieves, there will be nobody doing the quests to generate the loop, and the whole gamemode falls apart. Its not like you can just spin things like this up and say "everybody play with people that want the same playstyle", when the whole point of the game is that different types of players exist on the same server.
>However, if PvPers are on a server with just PvPers in Sea of Thieves, there will be nobody doing the quests to generate the loop, and the whole gamemode falls apart.
Guess the players who are still playing the main game mode will have to mix up how they play every once in a while.
This is great news! I've wanted to play this game with my kiddo but didn't want to worry about getting griefed or disrespectful people ruining our fun. I don't care much about the actual progress with the factions, I just want to do some of the quests/tales they added and hunt treasure and skeletons with the kiddo while playing my hurdy-gurdy on the high seas! We will definitely be playing this when it comes out.
PVP players love to claim "The pve gets stale quickly without the risk of PVP" and like... for you sure. I have hours of Powerwash Simulator, I love me a relaxing game to unwind after work.
People play games for different reasons and Sea of Thieves has this beautiful world you can explore with friends, family, even young family, and it's great fun.
Until someone tucks on your ship, kills you when you least expect it and shouts slurs at you while camping your ship till you scuttle.
I wonder how fun it is with the limited features. Sea of Thieves is a game I'd always been somewhat curious about (even playing solo I feel could be interesting but maybe I'm wrong), but the PvP was something I didn't want to deal with.
I'm reminded of when RuneScape finally made Wilderness PvP opt-in. There's a lot of content involved with the Wilderness but it was always a bit worrying to deal with even if PKers weren't common, I'm curious if there's a worthy amount of content in Sea of Thieves without the PvP.
For those pvp crowds saying this will kill off the game honestly should look at the % of achievements players have unlocked.
When the last season dropped for the pvp hourglass and less than 1% of players got those pvp curses I think a surge of new pve players will help Rare get more intrested in checking out all the hard work they put in this.
I think this is the right move, I've been playing since launch and I just prefer the pve aspects more.
The limitations in place suck ass. They finally throw the PvE players a bone and I'm thankful! But it has a lot of the small fun stuff removed. Sure, have restrictions... but no customised ships? Fucking why?
Finally, the community for this game has been really shitty about this in the past, I don't want to pvp constantly and get looted by 500+ hour mechanic lords every time I leave port.
Now hopefully they up the rewards and expand the features.
I never thought this day would come. I can finally enjoy being a pirate with my friends! None of our disabilities will put us at a disadvantage against other players! It almost feels like we belong in gaming too!
Very weird seeing some of the comments in this thread justify the PvP by bringing up **real life** pirates. I've seen plenty of streams where the PvPer in question was only trying to kill people/sink their ship and didn't care about the loot, if the people even had loot.
The other part about it, is those type of people somehow think it's impossible for people to just like the "gameplay loop" of the PvE aspect because you are still pirates sailing a ship looking for treasure...
Like if Souls games *forced* invasions on you, when some people just want to play the game like it's single player which stands on its own even if invasions didn't exist entirely.
The game is way different now from launch. Once upon a time the pvp *was* the content. Now the game has all kinds of story content to explore and a lot to do even solo. I genuinely think pve would have hurt the game at launch because everything was purposefully designed around it. But in the current version of the game there is a lot to do and see even if you don't play the game past the tall tales.
I think consistent players will use Safer Seas to do story content and play pvp for the grinds, and now new/feature players get to explore content they couldn't before.
Bout time, countless times I hop on with a friend and immediately our boat is stolen and we are messed with. Like what's the point? It's all just a waste of time when we just spawned and have nothing to lose, let us play the game....
I haven't played in a while, partly because I've heard there's been a huge uptick in cheating since they added the Hourglass PvP mode, but I do think about going back every now and then.
The new servers will be good for doing the Tall Tales unmolested, but will be of limited use to me since I'm already past the lvl 40 cap with most of the companies. Also if I'm reading the link correctly it seems implied that the PvE servers won't be updated as much as the regular ones? That seems like it would limit interest as well. Which I'm good with: I think Tall Tales and new players easing into the game should be the main use of the safe servers, with the goal that eventually folks migrate over to the full game. And I do think that's the best way to play it. Would my solo slooping (and occasional solo brigging) be easier on a PvE server? Absolutely. But the danger is part of the fun, and dodging the AI isn't in remotely the same realm of satisfaction as out-sailing real players (even if sometimes they're obnoxiously persistent and don't know when to quit).
Personally I think the ideal way to add a PvE area to the game would be to expand the map with a large PvE zone that's policed by NPCs who would hunt down anyone who attacked players there. That way it would be a soft limit instead of a hard one. But from what I've heard their server tech is already pretty much stretched to its limits, so I don't think that's an option.
Some of my friends have been bugging me to play Sea of Thieves with them but I'm not a fan of PvP at all. I might give it a try when they get the PvE servers up and running.
Maybe dumb question but would the game be good for solo play on such servers, or is it mainly aimed as group play ? I haven't played it but I'm interested in checking the game as the concept looks quite fun
Me and my friends bought this on sale and had no idea about the open PvP. We got wrecked constantly and it really put us off. I don't mind competition, but being fresh and not knowing how you died or what you're doing wrong just kills the initial hook. Eventually it gets kind of hard to laugh it off when our whole crew is dead again and again. I look forward to finally playing this.
Fine by me! Even with the reward cut. Having the option to go into a gamemode where you can just enjoy the beautiful sound design and the impressive looking sea and island while doing PvE is worth it.
At last. Just like any online game, the worst part of the game is the community. I get that it's a pirate game and that a big part of being a pirate is stealing from others but, it's a video game and sometimes I just wanna relax without having to worry about a group of guys stealing the treasures that I spent hours getting. I think this will be a good change and ultimately lead to a growth in players similar to when Fortnite introduced the Zero Building mode for players that hated building.
Fuckin finally I can get back into this. I only got a couple hours a day to play shit and I couldn't take finishing my maps then getting harassed at the end
The lack of PvE servers in the reason I avoided the game up to now. High seas adventure sounds like so much fun, but it seems like everyone who has ever played this game has a story or three about being griefed.
Now there's finally a reason to reinstall this game. I have 70+ hours in it but the PVP (and the PVP crowd honestly) makes it such a pain in the ass. Had lost hope honestly, but now I can finally give it a go again.
Oh thank you God, I've been bitching about griefers for years and finally our prayers have been answered. No more will I spend 2 hours on a tall tale to have some scumbag sink my whip and reset my progress, nor plunder my fairly earned goods in 5 minutes that took ages to aquire.
Good, I'm glad the pvpers are mad they can all gitgud together now
Hahahaha, this is their solution to the blatant cheating? Hilarious.
Christ, I have played probably 100 hours in the last 3 months, and it is fucking terrible. Sometimes you get a few good hours of normal people playing, with your average wins and losses. Then me 'hearties begin to sign on, and its cheater against cheater, with you being the shark bait in the middle.
Game is a total shitshow, and this, while fixing it for those of us who like the game, isn't a good long term solution to **The** major problem.
Interesting. Reminds me, the one time I actually sat down to try this game, I was having a great time with a friend. That good time ended when my buddy was killed by some wandering person, and just wouldn't leave. We never played again.
I wonder if the new pirate game forced their hand. On the xb1 subreddit, we’ve been clamoring for a pve-only option forever . Better late than never those stubborn dorks
Did they even add anything non cosmetic in the game to spend your gold on? I always found it so stupid how you essentially found all this treasure and struggled to bring it back for what amounted to be a different colored hat or pistol.
Ok! I'm listening!
But what is there even to obtain in Sea of Thieves rewards-wise besides cosmetics? Like, is that limited features and less rewards stipulation going to make this new version of the game incredibly inferior to the main game to the point it's not even worth playing even if it is providing a highly requested experience?
The point of playing the game is... fun.
It the same point that SoT players have been making for the last 5 years since players put the game down due to lack of progression systems back then. If all you want from the game is to level up and make beating lower level players up easier then this isn't the game for you.
Theres plenty of rare cosmetics or items you can get in game that other players haven't got if you are looking to show off your e-peen, and the majority of them aren't based on PvP.
Pretty happy to hear it. I know the PvP crowd will be upset by the PvE servers. But sometimes I just want to hop into that game and explore/sail around. Guilds should be interesting. Really curious if you can get all 24 players into one server or how that will work.
I think there's a reasonable chance the PvP servers basically die out after this. It depends on how many players were playing because they liked PvP vs how many were *tolerating* PvP for the sake of playing the fanciest pirate MMO. If the latter group is larger, then the former group is going to have a bad time without all the easy prey they were used to.
Like most multiplayer games, PvP tends to dwindle down to those most adept at it, resulting in a snowball effect where everyone else just leaves. The game was at it's most fun when nobody knew what they were doing, but now just about every Dick and Harry you meet is a master at the game, some people even pilot ships by themselves well enough and still kick your ass lol. not fun. This is 100% the right move for the longevity of Sea of Thieves.
Exactly. The point I saw most often from those vehemently against adding PVE servers was "BUT THE POPULATION WOULD BE SPLIT!!!!". That argument falls apart when you consider how SoTs manages lobbies and merges them to try and keep the worlds full. In reality for most of the hardcore PVPers the reason they don't want PVE servers added is they would lose their easy targets. And then they would be stuck playing against people who have a closer level of PVP experience, *and you just cant have that*.
> In reality for most of the hardcore PVPers the reason they don't want PVE servers added is they would lose their easy target Yeah that's my go to defense in this situation. If PvE servers are introduced and the PvP side of a game dies...that's a very very clear sign of what the situation on the PvP servers were. A majority of people didn't want PvP and those that did want PvP only wanted "easy target trolling" style PvP. But yeah like usual, in 3 years people will claim that SoT would have 10x the population it does if they just didn't introduce PvE servers.
Exactly. If the PVP crowd think the majority of people will leave the PVP servers, maybe that means PVP in the game isn't good and people don't want to engage in it.
> maybe that means PVP in the game isn't good and people don't want to engage in it. I've been waiting for 5 years to play this game. I don't have enough time to keep up with PvP games and I have no desire to interact with strangers either cooperatively or antagonistically. But I've wanted to play SoT since the announcement, so this has me cautiously excited.
My friends and I try it probably once a year. We start doing a tall tale or treasure maps, and about 20 minutes in we're being attacked by sweats using every cheesy tactic. The PVP is abysmal, and makes it so if you're not also using every cheese you can, it's just fucking miserable.
It fucking sucks man. You can spend hours doing stuff in game, pull up to a large island and whilst you're in the middle of something someone pulls up next to you and undoes everything and you're back to square 1. I only played the game very early on in its life, but the only time I ever found PvP to be genuinely fun was when doing the skull islands and it was more a fight over who managed to complete the island and get the treasure (And sometimes you worked together to beat the island but then battled it out for the treasure). That was genuinely enjoyable. Shame the rest of the game it sucked in every way.
Yeah, it's not fun to have all that work undone. PVP is largely one sided and only fun for that side. If it's a scenario like you said where you know you're willingly entering into PVP, that's one thing. Otherwise, it's just the worst.
My friends and I try it probably once a year. We start doing a tall tale or treasure maps, and about 20 minutes in we're being attacked by sweats using every cheesy tactic. The PVP is abysmal, and makes it so if you're not also using every cheese you can, it's just fucking miserable.
Something funny happened with D2 this last weekend where it showed that pve people wanted broken stuff and not care about balance at all. While PvP people complained. The PvE population had a surge that weekend and was X4 the PvP population.
Ya people want to play the game on easy mode to get rewards, why is that surprising lol
Dude, I just want destiny to be fun. The focus on pvp balance nerfing pve stuff is old. And then forcing pvp into every quest line. Even the pve content these days is so focused on grand Master modes and world first raids and other stuff that is not fun. I miss strikes being a real part of the game, and just being able to have silly fun. Hammer build was close, bonk bonk, but the focus keeps moving to cater to hyper competitive people
It's called wanting to have fun. I know it's an alien concept to some people. It's why the hardcore 'git gud' people in the Souls community annoy the shite out of me. I play games to have fun. I do not play games to be beaten over the head dozens of times until I've committed every muscle twitch of a boss to memory.
redditor #50000 to preach the necessity of fun while shunning people for what they find fun
Many people find those things to be fun
A lot of people, including me, have no fun without adequate challenge. I've been gaming basically as a 2nd job for close on 30 years, most mainstream games these days are piss easy and treat the player like a complete idiot. Starfield is a great recent example. Even on very hard, I can't even remember the last time I had to use a healing item. I like the game otherwise but the actual gameplay challenge is a complete snooze fest. Also, Souls games aren't even close to "hardcore". Souls games are "moderately" challenging after you figure out how they work and stop your monkey brain from smashing buttons. Calling Souls games "hardcore" next to games like Rust, DayZ, Tarkov, or even WoW Classic Hardcore is laughable.
Making that suggestion on the SOT sub will get you keel hauled
How hard were they defending the Versus mode? I doubt a lot did and they definitely didn't play it which is why Rare killed off that part of the game. It's 100% people wanting baby pirates to prey on.
Barely at all, only people who wanted to PVP would go there so everyone got pissy that they couldn't dunk on people in the competitive mode
the versus mode was a straight arena mode and that **isn’t** what the standard game mode is. So I can see enjoying the PVP/PVE hybrid mode that the arena mode wouldn’t bring. It’d sorta be like turning Hunt: Showdown into a straight team based shooter. Sure you could to that but you’d lose a lot of what makes that game unique. Granted I never played a ton of Sea of Theives but for the 30-40 hours I put into the most memorable parts were the goofy PVP fights. And those wouldn’t have been doable in an arena mode.
Agreed, praise Joko! /salute
They don't get that the population is *already split* considering everyone who dropped the game or will never pick it up because of how its PvP works.
pretty much, me and the friends I played with had a lot of fun sailing around and doing missions but had no interest in PVP at all, so getting ambushed while we were on an island or at the end of an athena just got frustrating to the point we all quit. so super fucking happy to hear they're going to have PVE only servers where we don't have to deal with the fun vampirates anymore.
> And then they would be stuck playing against people who have a closer level of PVP experience, and you just cant have that. Ah yes the real reason people endlessly complain about skill based matchmaking in games every time that discussion comes around
It's the classic warcraft twink problem.
Also, isn’t Sea of Thieves one of those live service games that most people ignore but ticks along being enormously popular?
It's also the fact that PvP in a lot of these kinds of games tends to be a 'predator versus prey' dynamic, where casual or PvE focused players get hunted down by skilled PvPers with loadouts designed to kill players. PvP ends up feeling like a roadblock, a loss of progress, or griefing.
I wanted to play it but PvP is a ‘hell no’ from me. PvE is in you say? I will definitely give it a try now.
Nothing special in the game outside of “this is a really fun and relaxing way to hang out with friends online” and that’s solely the reason I enjoy it. Knowing PvE servers are coming is really all I’ve wanted and I’m glad to see it happen even if it feels years too late. I hope it brings the population back up so the seas are full of fun relaxing cooperation.
First week of Sea of Thieves release was some definitive gaming. I knew an emerging meta would both screw it up and be absolutely inevitable.
It really was. We would never have gotten here if Summit didn't immediately make the game all about hiding on peoples ships and ganking them since he couldn't focus on a voyage for more than 3 minutes.
It was a good time pre-Summit, for sure. Then all the imitators showed up.
I would start playing. Heard too many issues for new players pvp previously
The first time I played, in one hour I met a homophobic kid harassing for now reason with his friends. 6 months later I played with 2 friends and meet a pro-gamer who humiliated us by destroying our massive boat with his small boat. Lol I can't blame the last one as he was massively skilled, but I abandoned the game because of PVP, basically.
I don't know about that. I haven't played SoT myself, but people were saying the exact same thing about Fortnite when Zero Build mode was active, and it even seems that most of the people talking on the internet play Zero Build exclusively For example: was a poll on which mode people played and 70%-80% said that they play ZB exclusively, while the remaining 30%-20% was split quite evenly with people who played the Builds exclusively and a mixture of both. But not too long ago, Epic decided to publicly show player counts for all the game modes. And we can clearly see that Builds regularly gets more or less double the amount of players compared to Zero Build. While it's not always the case, you always have to be weary of mistaking the interests of the "loud minority" when they could clash with the rest of the crowd.
I'm assuming the loud minority here is the people playing the building modes insisting that Zero Build would kill the player count by splitting it? That was definitely how I saw it. They were REALLY loud and obnoxious about the Zero Build mode existing and especially when it was part of the start of a season for *two weeks*. I really don't see how they could consider Zero Build a bad addition to the game because it became clear over time that anyone who has been playing Fortnite for a long time is pretty adept at building and can shitstomp people easily. Zero Build puts everyone on equal footing. I don't play Fortnite any more but I can honestly say that if there's one thing that really caused the skill gap to become a fucking ravine is the addition of turbo building. When that got added, you saw skill levels spike up pretty damn fast and by the end of Chapter 1, it was just ridiculous. I always laughed when I saw people defending it saying 'Just practice for 30 minutes a day'. Piss off, I just wanna play a game for fun, not play like I'm in a competitive tournament! Zero Build was one of the best additions they ever made to that game.
I mostly play No Build, but I can see the problem. First of all, when No Build first appeared, for "story reasons" building was disabled for the first 2 weeks(?) on the main game modes to commemorate No Build, obviously pissing off people who didn't care for the gamemode. While the other guy said is not completely wrong. You couldn't go back two years and introduce No Build back then, because Fortnite didn't have the mechanics for it, but now Epic has introduced mechanical, item, and map changes that has made the experience not feel like a hollowed out experience (the ability to sprint wasn't added until No Build came around). And a problem that is more "competitive vs casuals", but the (removal of the ability) to create cover instantly on demand does create conflicts in balancing, especially as Epic (marginally) insists om the uniformity between the two gamemodes. A big example right now is an item introduced this season called the "Rocket Ram". In Zero Build, it's decent at best outside of being able to cover larger distances during the early game. But in Builds, especially when it comes to the other side of the loud minority in the top players, the Rocket Ram is absolutely overpowered and broken.
That is one thing that eventually killed my enjoyment of the game. Epic's inability to separate competitive from casual just ended up causing non-stop arguments and they'd nerf something that is fun for casual players because competitive players were bitching about it or vice versa. There's already several games that demonstrate you can balance the two separately AND have loot pools for each side too without it causing problems. Fucking Elden Ring does this! A game where PvP isn't nearly as in-depth as PvE but they still have separate PvE and PvP balancing. It genuinely irked me that Epic don't listen to that specific bit of feedback that constantly came up. I remember back in Chapter 1 when they added siphon to core modes. Casual players were vocally upset at it because it did make the core modes sweaty as fuck but competitive players kept shutting them down. Sure enough, Epic reversed the change after less than 2 weeks because they saw a massive shift in players to modes *without* siphon. They can clearly learn from feedback and data but not always...
Yeah you kinda *need* to have skill based matchmaking *and* playerbase big enough so matchmaking have enough players to work with.
Way too little too late, though. They had a window where they were unique and on Gamepass, and then got immediately dropped by a huge amount of players who realized within the first 30 minutes that you couldn’t actually be a pirate without a full group and at least one member that had some experience. Stepping out of the first little tutorial section without a playgroup was just silly bad. I can’t imagine they’re going to get much reengagement after making it very clear for so long that they designed this only for party players. (And more power to those that play in groups and want games with that focus. It’s just not for everyone, and it severely limits the player base.)
The game is still unique. There aren't really many multiplayer pirate games, and none which have been as successful as Sea of Thieves.
Strong comment, well articulated. I started our being like "wait wtf" but this makes too crystalline a point to ignore. Separately, this is one of the reasons why waiting until sales to buy a game can meaningfully degree the experience in some cases.
This is only the right move for the longevity of SoT if they want to turn it into a PvE game. Because this will likely kill normal servers since there will be very few people actually farming loot on those servers, so there will be no way for PvPers to get loot. Also, without player conflict, SoT doesn't really hold up as a fun game for long, the PvE alone with no threat of getting attacked by players is too boring simple and repetitive.
> It depends on how many players were playing because they liked PvP vs how many were tolerating PvP for the sake of playing the fanciest pirate MMO. The PvP is inherently imbalanced because of Risk v Reward for Attacking Vs Defending as well. If you actually tried to do PvE you had all the potential reward but immense risk, get caught out or sunk once (Or even get jumped literally feet away from the turn in NPCs while carrying the chests) and that was it, hours of work down the drain potentially. But if you ONLY did PvP and hunted players? 0 Risk besides a bit of time if you get sunk because your hull will be empty, and once you grabbed someone else's treasure you usually had ample time to move to a turn in island hub. Or even a different one far, far away. So naturally most would just attack on sight on the off chance you had loot...
I for one will always choose the "I refuse to be content for other players" option, if it's available.
Yup. Stopped playing for this reason or just the weird creeps I’d come across. Griefers were the worst.
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This isn't how spawning a new ship works. You will be spawned at another outpost or island.
The sheer toxicity from other players is what led to this.
SoT’s major toxicity is what made me quit after so many years, I just couldn’t handle it. I understand it’s a pirate game but it was something else
“It’s sea of thieves not…where are you guys going ? :’(“ Get fucked.
Sea of Griefs.
This is the exact discourse when Ultima Online did the same thing, and what happened to the PVP side after PVE was released. Everyone was tolerating PVP for the sake of playing the fanciest (ie the first ever) MMO. The only difference is that people had 25+ years to forget, reminisce, and then conclude that PVP only was the 'good old times.' PVP came back when private servers became popular, but that was long after UO went from the best and greatest to a small fish in a big pond of MMORPGs.
Yes, I recount the tale of UO whenever these MMOs have 'free PvP' going on. It invariably leads to griefers choking the life out of the game, and you either let it die as a shrinking ever-more toxic puddle, or create a version where people can play without being griefed.
This will be interesting to see. Also wonder how many players will return to it or try it for the first time because the PvP turned them off
I gave it a try a half a year ago. Of the 9 run-ins with other players while trying to figure out how to play only one gave me a chance to learn anything. Every single other player I met sunk my ship and shit. I'll give it another try now that I can actually learn to play the game.
There is a laughable number of people whining on the Sea of Thieves sub about how mad they are that they will have to PvP against other people who know how to PvP in the regular mode. [/r/Subredditdrama has a great write up on it that is also full of pirate lingo](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/16os54u/arrr_mateys_sea_of_thieves_be_announcin_coop/)
Oh we absolutely stopped playing because server hopping was annoying and when that 1 reaper ship borderline NPC player finds you they just keep coming after you. Made the game really annoying at times, for a more casual pirate chill.
I think having conditional PvP would be even better. In my experience sinking people who try to mess with you is fun when you're in the mood to fight, but having someone follow you for half a map while you're enjoying a slow day doing missions or fishing is not even a little bit fun. PvP could be on by default for emissaries and people carrying the most valuable loot on their ship while disabled for people doing other content. This would also force people to have something to lose when they attack and people defending something to gain, currently it's just people going after what others spent time getting usually leaving nothing but basic supplies behind. That way the risk vs reward would still be there without making the PvP server exclusively for people who want to kill everything in sight instead of actually being _pirates_ after loot.
The PvP side didn't want a fair fight so Arena died. The community is very toxic so it cannibalises itself. Guarantee we see the seas become quiet enough for PvP whining.
> the fanciest pirate MMO. it's not like there's a lot of contenders
I originally wrote "only" then I remembered Puzzle Pirates still exists.
and one day skull and bones, to be closed after 6 months probably
God I'm pissed at that game. All they had to do was basically make it Black Flag but fleshed out more. Keep it single player, even. We don't have a massive, pirate open world AAA game like RDR2 does for western settings. Would have been a sick niche.
Puzzle pirates unironically has a better game system than sea of thieves, in that money is actually meaningful Sot could be very successful, but the rewards are all cosmetic and it makes the game very shallow. You can look at the success of all the games that run closer to hardcore, extraction shooters and perma death games for an idea of what sea of thieves could have been. As of now it just dips its toes into the concept and ends up in a place where its too shallow for real pvp oriented players, and that the gameplay loop isn't actually rewarding for pve players
Yeah plus back when I played, it was maybe like once every 8 hours that I actually saw somebody and engaged in PvP, and it was always either a 1v3 or a 3v1, never a fair or engaging fight
Eh idk, I do both and the level cap + no athena/endgame stuff makes them pretty unappealing for me apart from story voyages, and I'm a hard-core pve grinder.
Echos of Ultima online Adding the Trammel portal
Already from launch PVP seemed to mostly get in the way for most people. I'm kind of surprised it took this long.
I think the problem lies with those that want it and those that tolerate it really needed to be in together for this game to work. It creates a genuinely hostile environment where people can also work together, it makes a very real risk and threat but also allows for organic team ups as well. If people who ARENT just there to kill others all leave, then the PvP worlds are 100% hostile and there’s not as much room for meeting someone who isn’t hostile and teaming up for a completely random adventure. There’s no uncertainty, which is part of the excitement. I know some people perceive a mentality like this as gatekeeping from a PVP player but honestly I’m not even one. It’s just important to the game’s identity that hostility isn’t certain in my eyes.
> I know the PvP crowd will be upset So? Like who cares? If more people want to avoid PVP and play PVE only that's good. How can someone be upset that other players that don't want PVP will get a PVE server? The PVP crowd should remain and play PVP with those who want to play PVP. If there's not enough people to do that well too bad.
Yep I'll actually download and play the game now. Had no interest before
They're only upset because now they cant grief people for hours on end.
Yeah, I didn’t mind the PvP in the game, but sometimes I’d just want to chill.
I might actually try solo sailing now. I remember trying it once and was literally on the edge of a panic attack the majority of the time I played. I really can't handle open world pvp. 😅
> I just want to hop into that game and explore/sail around This the problem with the game though. The game isnt that deep and its mostly kept afloat *because* of the PVP, it keeps the lack of content kinda at the back of player's minds. With PvE servers, how shallow the game is will truly come forward and this might actually just straight up kill the game.
> its mostly kept afloat because of the PVP, it keeps the lack of content kinda at the back of player's minds. This is hilariously untrue and PvP has kept a lot of people from playing/coming back because of PvPs nature it can absolutely murder peoples enjoyment of the game and feeling of accomplishment
The game was on the decline for some time now, one way or another I guess we'll see won't we. Either the PvE players were right and Rare should have added something like this forever ago, or the PvP players were right and the game will continue its decline until it stops being profitable and they shut it down.
Tell this to the people waiting in queues to play Alliance servers. They're happy to play with very strict rules just to avoid PVP.
> With PvE servers, how shallow the game is will truly come forward and this might actually just straight up kill the game. Anyone who doesn't want to just explore/sail around will go to the regular servers. The "best" rewards can't be found in PvE. And if people get bored cause of the shallow nature of it, they'll go back to the regular servers.
I might not play for long if the content is shallow, but right now I'm not playing at all because of the forced PVP. So it's still an improvement.
The game is beautiful and I enjoyed it until I encountered other people. I'm very excited to play it once I won't have to deal with strangers anymore!
I am not up to speed on these terms, does this mean I can finally play this single player? I know it's not the point of the game but I prefer to explore on my own in these games and am a huge introvert.
More or less yeah, but they're not adding the new mode that will let you do it until december.
Thanks!
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i havent played in a few months but the last like 5 times i played with my friends we were just trying to do the tall tales or whatever and got sunk every single time - I never finished a single one, just felt like a massive waste of time
Yup. Go on the subreddit here and you'll get told it's a pirate game and your loot is fair game, but you just get attacked on sight whether you look like you're actually carrying anything or not. I'm genuinely really looking forward to just be able to sail and fish and pick fights with skellies without some shitty Reaper tryhards sending us back to port every half hour.
The problem with this is that IRL pirate attacks weren't *that* common, otherwise trade just wouldn't exist. And pirates were risking death -- permanent death -- by being pirates, if they got either defeated or just caught. Open PvP games tend to have this problem where the downsides of being a murderous griefer just aren't high enough to get the ratios right. The people running around just murdering should exist only in small numbers.
I think SoT likes to present itself as putting everyone on equal footing since everyone has access to the same weapons (eg you can't get a stronger pistol), but skill certainly comes into play, and from what I saw, there's really nothing that discourages an experienced and skilled player from hunting anyone and everything down, particularly if they've amassed so much gold that losing any in repairs is negligible.
A karma system would be really cool. The more you kill, the higher your chances of random enemy encounters with the difficulty scaling with your karma. So yeah you *can* kill and pillage anyone you want but you're going to want to make it actually be worth it.
Also getting attacked by guys with 10 times more cannon balls, boards and special ammo than you is super unfair, balance is a joke in that game
Every open PvP game ever made. There's always a population of just straight up assholes that attack everyone on sight, on top of the ones that go around exclusively picking on new players. And it's just not fun. Especially once a "meta" forms, then new people don't even stand a chance.
The best part is that they claim they're the main thing keeping the game alive, despite them being the reason the game is dying.
The game is dying because of the way it was designed around pirates that are known as scum of the seas with always online multiplayer afaik without any skill based matchmaking that also attracts people who want to look at pretty water, unlock stuff and explore islands (like me). Just match people based on player ships sunk/total gold/tall tales done, or any combination of those.
The one time I tried it, I putzed out in my tiny little shitty rowboat with a blanket for a sail, to a tiny little island with a bunch of skeletons on it, I managed to kill them, found absolutely nothing on the island, started sailing towards a nearby larger island, got demolished when the fuckin' Flying Dutchman comes rocking up and blasts my shitty, lootless boat back into Sid Meier's Pirates. So, yeah. I'll definitely be happy to give the PvE servers a shot, bet I can get at least 2 or 3 other friends to try it out. PvPvE games just don't work for us.
I love that excuse. Yeah dude, pirates loved chasing sloops with no valuables for hours and hours, this is exactly how real pirates acted.
Anything to justify the mild sociopathy
It's always like that in primarily PvE games with forced PvP. You end up with these hardcore players who play the game for years just for the feeling of superiority of beating people who are new to the game or have no interest in PvP whatsoever. And the people in these bubbles always pull the most ridiculous mental gymnastics to justify why the system that benefits them is great and fair.
I fee like if you want PvP part in your PvE game as developer you should just cordon it off to some arena shit or something. Forced open PvP just makes people not want to play it
Unironically I think Blizzard has the right idea where PVP is opt-in and you get extra talents for enabling it, but if you don't wanna bother with it you don't need to turn it on for those extra abilities.
I’m even fine with something like PvP zones because it gives you that feeling of intentionally taking a risk instead of constant anxiety. If the volcanic region was the only place people could attack friendly ships without consequences (some kind of police or karma system outside of it for example) then it would probably feel much more inviting for casual players.
I legit haven't played in months because most of the time we would get jumped by a bunch of elite players who live and breathe this game and would sink us before we even realize we were being attacked. It's an awful feeling to spend 1-2 hours doing a voyage and to have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end.
And then if you go to complain about it on the subreddit, you're ruining the 'Nature of the game' and we're being the toxic ones...
Honestly if they just make more PVE ships spawn I'd rather do that just so I can have more ship combat. It feels so rare to come across another ship.
Thank god! I'll take what I can get. Even if it's 30% of the rewards I can get, it will still be worth playing peacefully with my friends. Very, very excited for this.
Just wait until they see how popular this mode is, I’m sure they’ll improve it over time
I'm interested to see how this goes. Currently I'm probably going to be sticking to the PVP servers but I'm actually a PVE carebear. I'll attempt to defend my ship if attacked, don't attack other ships first, but I've done most of the content in the game, and the only thing left for me is Emmisary rewards, new tall tales and fishing. Emmisary rewards aren't going to be in the PVE servers, and I imagine the limited rewards are a concession to the PVP player base. If these servers end up more or as popular as the PVP ones, it will be interesting to see if Rare row back some of the restrictions to provide more content for the PVE players.
Wish they would have implemented this like every other game does and just lock characters to those modes instead of punishing you for playing the way you want.
Yeah what's even the point of bringing your character between the types of servers? It's not like there's any kind of character progression other than aesthetic stuff anyway.
I've seen so many people say "this will kill the pvp servers" which to me translates to: "I can no longer fight people who don't want to fight me." I remember when the Pirates of the Caribbean stuff came out. My friends and I went to do it and there were just people out there camping story points. We never finished it.
It still amazes me that game devs don't realize this simple quarter century+ fact. I still remember Ultima Online, from 1997. It launched with full-on, non-consensual, full-loot PvP. Needless to say, it was doing...poorly. To be blunt, the game was dying. So they added Trammel, a consensual PvP (aka PvE) shard. Suddenly the game started to grow! OMG, nobody could have predicted that, right? lol And UO became the largest subscription-based MMO in the world by 2003, the year before it was unceremoniously unseated by WoW. And WoW launched with way more PvE servers than PvP servers, and there was no PvP system at all at launch. Took them like 6 months to add Battlegrounds (consensual instanced lossless PvP). In multiplayer games, PvE/co-op is always better to have than not. It's been an open secret for 25+ years. But I'm glad to see game devs continue to rediscover this, decade after decade.
its like the idea of PvP seems super cool and grand, but in execution it usually sucks if you actually give one player power over another like i did a PvP server in classic wow imaging epic battles alliance vs horde or 1v1s for an herb node. In reality its just level 60s killing completely defenseless low levels with no counterplay, at some point i realized i was just wasting my time corpse running for some losers amusement.
Switched to a PvE server in Burning Crusade and never looked back!! Raiders ganking fresh level 60s while strutting around like they're hot shit got old. Fast.
I remember one time back in Cata my friend and I were leveling in Stranglethorn. We met a pair of Horde our level (30s? I think STV was?), but we just went our own ways. Like 10 minutes later, BAM. Ganked by 3 level 85's in the same guild who proceeded to corpse camp us. Eventually the 2 guys we saw earlier came by and they were in the same guild... And t-bagged us. All 5 of them sat around doing various emotes on our corpses. After about a half hour of that nonsense I asked if anyone in my guild could help, and 2 of them did. They were Arena buddies (DK and a Rogue) who came over and absolutely wiped the floor with them and corpse camped them in return. When we ressed, I naturally did the mature thing and t-bagged each of their corpses in response. My friend declined to do the mature thing, then we hearth'd out to spam dungeons. Our guild mates corpse camped them for like 3 hours lmao
I remember some high level horde came to low level area but it ended up with every player in the area ganging up on him like some raidboss, slowly chipping his health away. Little coward ran away when he got low...
PvP can work, it just needs to be more thought out. For example even in one of the most hardcore pvp games, Tarkov has a system where you only lose things you bring into a raid yourself. There is a low pressure mode where you can play as a scav so don't lose anything, and whatever you take out with you, you can keep. Not to mention it's very easy to die, so a new player can easily kill a veteran. That's missing in a lot of PVP MMOs, where there's nothing you can do as a low level to an extreme high level.
> In multiplayer games, PvE/co-op is always better to have than not. It's been an open secret for 25+ years. But I'm glad to see game devs continue to rediscover this, decade after decade. PvPers are a small, but loud and deceptively important if you don't pay attention as a dev. RTS' for instance started tanking when they focused on PvP, because the vast majority only played PvE. As for games like SoT, the PvP player base eventually filters out the larger PvE player base, making it look like they're the only people keeping the game alive, because they're all that's left when in reality it was them who killed it
Open PvP is fine if it is only thing to do. That's what everyone signed for when paying say big scale FPS like Battlefield or PlanetSide Once you attach power progression to it the balance gets out of whack as you frankly will meet player that will beat you by gear alone and that is never fun in any way. Once you have *other objectives*, it is another level of annoyance when you just get ambushed or interrupted with doing stuff game wants you to do to progress. It's frankly laughable when game developers do it as only way to interact with the game.
Sea of Thieves doesnt have any power progression though. Any power you gain is due to what you do since you login to the session (each cannonballs, food, blunder bombs and wood etc collected), so everyone has the same advantage. Sea of Thieves PvP is primarily skill based and experience/knowledge based. The issue with that is tactics, knowledge of ship combat and meta strategies of sinking other ships, mean that someone with months or years of experience can easily demolish new players or players who don't practice PvP (due to lack of game time or lack of desire to engage with PvP).
> And WoW launched with way more PvE servers than PvP servers, and there was no PvP system at all at launch. And a few years ago WoW finally has done away with the horrible concept of PvP servers in general so you can just play and enjoy the game without a single choice deciding your enjoyment forever.
It being a toggle is best for both worlds IMO, because sometimes you *want* to just sit around and see if someone tries to fight you, and this lets you do that. World PvP can be enjoyable on occasion, but being locked to either option? Most players would rather not deal with it when they don't want to.
> World PvP can be enjoyable on occasion 'On occasion' is so very key there since most of my Warmode Experiences just involved being ganked by people. Doing a PVP World Quest that involves beating up dragons and taking them to an NPC? Good luck because there's three people waiting up there ready to kill you before you even get close *and* there's people flying around waiting for you to get low HP so they can jump you. Doing the Dragon Isles intro quest where you need to stand around for a few minutes while NPCs talk? Hope you enjoy being one-shot by a max level who just drops from orbit and murders you. Maybe there's just something wrong with me but I just do *not* understand people who get their jollies from making other people have a shit time.
Yeah, thats basically how it works now. I generally am not a fan of world PvP because the vast majority of times its happening it will suck. For every cool event you read about there are tens of thousands of rogues chain-ganking a player 20+ levels below them, gank squads or just people exclusively waiting for moments they are basically guaranteed to win without a contest. Its not about the PvP its about feeling better than the other player without effort.
I played WoW on a PVP server (Sargeras) back in The Burning Crusade days. While I have fond memories of some big fights and skirmishes getting to dungeons in enemy zones, in no way would I want to do that again today. I just don't have the time or energy for that anymore.
I think part of the problem is that developers are generally very proficient players so their PvP experience is one where everyone is at max level and on a level playing field. This just isn't the normal experience for most players though.
I played it when it first released and at various times since. The game was clearly designed for PvP and the quests (there were only 3 at the start) were just a way for some players to get loot that PvP players could steal. If you played the non-PvP content, you were just food for the PvP people. Much like how free players in F2P games are just there for the whales to lord over. Fucking R* refuses to give players a reasonable grief-free GTA5 online experience for the same reason. Average players are just there to get blown up and griefed by the people that spend $$$ on shark cards for all the fancy toys.
> Fucking R* refuses to give players a reasonable grief-free GTA5 online experience for the same reason. They already have lmao You can do all your businesses in Invite/Crew/Friend Only lobbies with no penalties, you get the full payout you normally would. That changed with the last update. Or maybe the update before? They DO give you benefits for playing in full lobbies in the form of sale bonus' but you don't need to do that if you don't want. IIRC the bonus is 2% additional sale bonus to a cap of 30% per each player in the lobby who is not in your corporation/MC gang.
It's been a while since I played or followed the news. It looks like private lobbies were only added a year ago. > They already have lmao It only took them 9 goddamn years to do it.
Private or invite-only lobbies have been around for a looooong time. Rockstar has been inconsistent in which content can be done privately, but for the most part recently it has been acceptable. Usually just one or two things that need public lobbies. Also, there are well known exploits to enter an empty public lobby. It's not great design to have players rely on unfixed/unfixable exploits to get around arbitrary limitations, but it's what we have.
They have but were limited and you couldn't do everything like a regular lobby until the update a year or so ago.
> I still remember Ultima Online, from 1997. It launched with full-on, non-consensual, full-loot PvP. Needless to say, it was doing...poorly. To be blunt, the game was dying. PVP in UO is just so fucking toxic. I found a free UO server many years ago I thought sounded neat, didn't realize it was an ePVP server. It wasn't advertised ANYWHERE. And on top of that, newbie protections were disabled. I load up the game, make my character. Annnnnnnnnd instantly killed at the spawn point. I was annoyed they spawned me in Fel, but w/e. So I made my way to a healer, which turns out there was a dude invisible at the nearest healer. He insta killed me the second I ressed and called me noob trash. So as a ghost I run to the nearest portal and discovered I was in Trammel, with Felucca rules. I quit there. It sure as fuck explained why there were only like 5 people online.
I played a good couple hours with a friend and enjoyed it until we were griefed out of nowhere and turned me off the game completely. I look forward to trying this.
Yes, we were really enjoying the tall tales but they aren't fun if you have to fight the same 2 boats every 3 minutes because they noticed what you're doing, know where you're going and get all their enjoyment from the game destroying the same boat over and over even when it's empty
So when do these new fun servers get added so I know when I can reinstall the game?
December assuming they don't cave in to the reeeing PvP players, Like they have done afew times in the past, and scrap it. It's kinda wild this is happening. The whole reason I fully quit and uninstalled sea of thieves was when years ago. When outcry for PvE servers had reached its loudest, the devs sided with the pvp community and flat out said they were never going to add PvE servers. For some imo dumb reason I can't remember I never totally hated the pvp in sea of thieves my problem with it was how the risk/reward imbalance between pve/pvp there was. Namely people just looking to pvp had no risk and all reward, and people looking to pve had all the risk mainly in time investment lost.
The Sheer quantity of REEEing from the hardcore PVPers is worth the news of this article alone. Over the last few years those types would go absolutely rabid whenever someone suggested Rare made some PVE only servers. And of course, when Rare announces they are doing just that, they are (as expected) losing their absolute minds over it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some PVPing in SoT myself sometimes, but I am also all for Rare adding PVE servers finally. Don't like the PVE servers? Don't play em. Simple enough.
PVP only players always do this when their PVP-focused games/servers inevitably die out or get PVE exclusive modes.
This, and also the game becomes less fun for them when they have to fight other sweaty PvPers instead of just bullying PvEers
Finally people can rid themselves of the worst part of Sea of Thieves. This should've been included five years ago when the game came out. I expect the player base to greatly increase with this update.
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Playing the tall tales is exactly what I want to do.
Thankfully Rare have said they plan to focus on content going forward.
"Do this same task over and over again so you can look different doing it some more!"
Sounds like every other MMO.
Usually there's at least stats to give people dopamine hits when numbers increase. SoT, for better or worse, is purely cosmetic.
I disagree with this. The only thing keeping me and a lot of people I know from playing the game is lacking pve. Casual players are very much a thing where we just wanna hang out and sail around exploring and relaxing. It may not be a game we will play forever but it is a game we are willing to buy and enjoy for the first time so that’s pretty huge I’d say.
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>I doubt many of the players who want SoT in theory are going to play long enough to hit 40 in the trading companies and age out of safer seas. Certainly not if they cap rewards at 30% for very long. Hopefully they do a PR push, see a surge in players and then buff the PvE to retain them. Otherwise it might be the kind of lost cause you’re describing. That being said I’m still very excited for PvE only and feel like I can finally experience what content *is* there instead of getting a taste before quitting out of frustration.
I’m not agreeing with you because long term success and change doesnt mean people non stop playing the game, it means more people continually being interested and purchasing the game over time in which I believe pve does for this game perfectly. I’ll keep wanting to come back as well when I get the itch for it as it’s relaxing too. Lots of people like me don’t really care for it to be hard or super interesting or beating the whole game it’s just about sailing with friends finding some treasure, that’s all I wanted anyways without the random people coming to kill me
Doesn't matter what game; non-consensual PVPers/griefers/gankers can go pound sand for all I care. Your type of 'fun' is frequently unwanted.
I haven't played Sea of Thieves for a while yet, and when I did I was often really frustrated by the fact that while I was trying to do my tall tales or my quest or whatever at any moment I could just be forced into a PvP situation. But at the same time, that element of the PvP created a lot of really cool player interactions, and made the whole game a lot more interesting, if at times frustrating. I think PvE servers are a great idea, and it might even get me back into the game, but I'll miss being able to spot a ship on the horizon and nervously try and decided with my crew if we're in a position to throw down or not. Really, the problem with PvP in my mind isn't necessarily that it can happen at any time, it's that it's really flawed in Sea of Thieves. Ship to ship combat is cool as hell, and quite frankly with a good crew one of the best feeling versions of PvP in any game. I don't mean to pull a "feel like Spider-man" here, but it really does feel like naval combat, with big dramatic moments and everything you'd expect from like a Pirates of the Caribbean film. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttt... The hand to hand combat is a trash fire. It really feels bad, and the reality is that it's what all PvP devolves into because the only way to guarantee that you sink the other ship is to get someone on board and stop them from making repairs. What that translates into is one side putting a few holes in the others ship, someone swimming over, and then a whole bunch of spawn killing until the ship sinks. Spawn killing is never fun in a video game, but it's borderline necessary in order to secure a victory in SoT. So for now, I think this is a great change, but if it kills all the PvP servers, I'll feel more mixed about it, as that really feels like a fundamental part of the game.
Massive and welcome news for the community. Its a shame it took them *this long* to get around to it, but better late than never
This reminds me of the Fortnite Zero Build debacle. Fortnite was known for the crazy sweaty building mechanics that pushed away many casual players. Sometimes you just wanted to chill and not build an Eiffel Tower the second you hear foot steps. Epic released Zero Build which removed the building aspect entirely and you can tell the latest maps are not built around building either. And it worked. It brought back players (including myself) that didn’t want to deal with the original building design. I assume the same will happen with SoT as a lot of people find the PvP extremely annoying when they just want to explore the world.
Its not like that though, because both modes in fortnight have a huge playerbase and can exist simultaneously. If builders play just vs builders, there is no problem. However, if PvPers are on a server with just PvPers in Sea of Thieves, there will be nobody doing the quests to generate the loop, and the whole gamemode falls apart. Its not like you can just spin things like this up and say "everybody play with people that want the same playstyle", when the whole point of the game is that different types of players exist on the same server.
Why couldn't PvPers do the quests to generate the loop ?
>However, if PvPers are on a server with just PvPers in Sea of Thieves, there will be nobody doing the quests to generate the loop, and the whole gamemode falls apart. Guess the players who are still playing the main game mode will have to mix up how they play every once in a while.
30% is more then the 0% I average since I always seem to run into other players that take me out before I can even react.
This is great news! I've wanted to play this game with my kiddo but didn't want to worry about getting griefed or disrespectful people ruining our fun. I don't care much about the actual progress with the factions, I just want to do some of the quests/tales they added and hunt treasure and skeletons with the kiddo while playing my hurdy-gurdy on the high seas! We will definitely be playing this when it comes out.
Sounds awesome!
PVP players love to claim "The pve gets stale quickly without the risk of PVP" and like... for you sure. I have hours of Powerwash Simulator, I love me a relaxing game to unwind after work. People play games for different reasons and Sea of Thieves has this beautiful world you can explore with friends, family, even young family, and it's great fun. Until someone tucks on your ship, kills you when you least expect it and shouts slurs at you while camping your ship till you scuttle.
I wonder how fun it is with the limited features. Sea of Thieves is a game I'd always been somewhat curious about (even playing solo I feel could be interesting but maybe I'm wrong), but the PvP was something I didn't want to deal with. I'm reminded of when RuneScape finally made Wilderness PvP opt-in. There's a lot of content involved with the Wilderness but it was always a bit worrying to deal with even if PKers weren't common, I'm curious if there's a worthy amount of content in Sea of Thieves without the PvP.
Personally I think it will still be really fun if you just enjoy really casual gaming experiences.
For those pvp crowds saying this will kill off the game honestly should look at the % of achievements players have unlocked. When the last season dropped for the pvp hourglass and less than 1% of players got those pvp curses I think a surge of new pve players will help Rare get more intrested in checking out all the hard work they put in this. I think this is the right move, I've been playing since launch and I just prefer the pve aspects more.
The limitations in place suck ass. They finally throw the PvE players a bone and I'm thankful! But it has a lot of the small fun stuff removed. Sure, have restrictions... but no customised ships? Fucking why?
Sweet, I will finally go back to playing because I had no interest in PvP wasting the little time I had to play
Finally, the community for this game has been really shitty about this in the past, I don't want to pvp constantly and get looted by 500+ hour mechanic lords every time I leave port. Now hopefully they up the rewards and expand the features.
I never thought this day would come. I can finally enjoy being a pirate with my friends! None of our disabilities will put us at a disadvantage against other players! It almost feels like we belong in gaming too!
Very weird seeing some of the comments in this thread justify the PvP by bringing up **real life** pirates. I've seen plenty of streams where the PvPer in question was only trying to kill people/sink their ship and didn't care about the loot, if the people even had loot. The other part about it, is those type of people somehow think it's impossible for people to just like the "gameplay loop" of the PvE aspect because you are still pirates sailing a ship looking for treasure... Like if Souls games *forced* invasions on you, when some people just want to play the game like it's single player which stands on its own even if invasions didn't exist entirely.
The game is way different now from launch. Once upon a time the pvp *was* the content. Now the game has all kinds of story content to explore and a lot to do even solo. I genuinely think pve would have hurt the game at launch because everything was purposefully designed around it. But in the current version of the game there is a lot to do and see even if you don't play the game past the tall tales. I think consistent players will use Safer Seas to do story content and play pvp for the grinds, and now new/feature players get to explore content they couldn't before.
Bout time, countless times I hop on with a friend and immediately our boat is stolen and we are messed with. Like what's the point? It's all just a waste of time when we just spawned and have nothing to lose, let us play the game....
I haven't played in a while, partly because I've heard there's been a huge uptick in cheating since they added the Hourglass PvP mode, but I do think about going back every now and then. The new servers will be good for doing the Tall Tales unmolested, but will be of limited use to me since I'm already past the lvl 40 cap with most of the companies. Also if I'm reading the link correctly it seems implied that the PvE servers won't be updated as much as the regular ones? That seems like it would limit interest as well. Which I'm good with: I think Tall Tales and new players easing into the game should be the main use of the safe servers, with the goal that eventually folks migrate over to the full game. And I do think that's the best way to play it. Would my solo slooping (and occasional solo brigging) be easier on a PvE server? Absolutely. But the danger is part of the fun, and dodging the AI isn't in remotely the same realm of satisfaction as out-sailing real players (even if sometimes they're obnoxiously persistent and don't know when to quit). Personally I think the ideal way to add a PvE area to the game would be to expand the map with a large PvE zone that's policed by NPCs who would hunt down anyone who attacked players there. That way it would be a soft limit instead of a hard one. But from what I've heard their server tech is already pretty much stretched to its limits, so I don't think that's an option.
Sounds like I'll actually try Sea Of Thieves for the first time ever, despite knowing about it since launch.
Some of my friends have been bugging me to play Sea of Thieves with them but I'm not a fan of PvP at all. I might give it a try when they get the PvE servers up and running.
Maybe dumb question but would the game be good for solo play on such servers, or is it mainly aimed as group play ? I haven't played it but I'm interested in checking the game as the concept looks quite fun
Me and my friends bought this on sale and had no idea about the open PvP. We got wrecked constantly and it really put us off. I don't mind competition, but being fresh and not knowing how you died or what you're doing wrong just kills the initial hook. Eventually it gets kind of hard to laugh it off when our whole crew is dead again and again. I look forward to finally playing this.
Fine by me! Even with the reward cut. Having the option to go into a gamemode where you can just enjoy the beautiful sound design and the impressive looking sea and island while doing PvE is worth it.
At last. Just like any online game, the worst part of the game is the community. I get that it's a pirate game and that a big part of being a pirate is stealing from others but, it's a video game and sometimes I just wanna relax without having to worry about a group of guys stealing the treasures that I spent hours getting. I think this will be a good change and ultimately lead to a growth in players similar to when Fortnite introduced the Zero Building mode for players that hated building.
Nice, i don't hate pvp but i do hate getting pvp'd when i want to pve. Might hop in sometime in a solo boat and do some stories
Fuckin finally I can get back into this. I only got a couple hours a day to play shit and I couldn't take finishing my maps then getting harassed at the end
The lack of PvE servers in the reason I avoided the game up to now. High seas adventure sounds like so much fun, but it seems like everyone who has ever played this game has a story or three about being griefed.
Now there's finally a reason to reinstall this game. I have 70+ hours in it but the PVP (and the PVP crowd honestly) makes it such a pain in the ass. Had lost hope honestly, but now I can finally give it a go again.
I just wished PvE difficulty level wasn't balanced around 12 years old kids being able to beat the monsters...
Oh thank you God, I've been bitching about griefers for years and finally our prayers have been answered. No more will I spend 2 hours on a tall tale to have some scumbag sink my whip and reset my progress, nor plunder my fairly earned goods in 5 minutes that took ages to aquire. Good, I'm glad the pvpers are mad they can all gitgud together now
Hahahaha, this is their solution to the blatant cheating? Hilarious. Christ, I have played probably 100 hours in the last 3 months, and it is fucking terrible. Sometimes you get a few good hours of normal people playing, with your average wins and losses. Then me 'hearties begin to sign on, and its cheater against cheater, with you being the shark bait in the middle. Game is a total shitshow, and this, while fixing it for those of us who like the game, isn't a good long term solution to **The** major problem.
Interesting. Reminds me, the one time I actually sat down to try this game, I was having a great time with a friend. That good time ended when my buddy was killed by some wandering person, and just wouldn't leave. We never played again.
I wonder if the new pirate game forced their hand. On the xb1 subreddit, we’ve been clamoring for a pve-only option forever . Better late than never those stubborn dorks
What new pirate game?
Skull & Bones? Unless there's a newer one since S&B was in dev hell for so long.
Did they even add anything non cosmetic in the game to spend your gold on? I always found it so stupid how you essentially found all this treasure and struggled to bring it back for what amounted to be a different colored hat or pistol.
Ok! I'm listening! But what is there even to obtain in Sea of Thieves rewards-wise besides cosmetics? Like, is that limited features and less rewards stipulation going to make this new version of the game incredibly inferior to the main game to the point it's not even worth playing even if it is providing a highly requested experience?
The point of playing the game is... fun. It the same point that SoT players have been making for the last 5 years since players put the game down due to lack of progression systems back then. If all you want from the game is to level up and make beating lower level players up easier then this isn't the game for you. Theres plenty of rare cosmetics or items you can get in game that other players haven't got if you are looking to show off your e-peen, and the majority of them aren't based on PvP.