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I encountered my first alliance server today I was doing the cursed rogue tall tale solo and another solo slooper made anchor next to me and told me to join an alliance. I said 'oh im just doing tall tales' expecting him to leave me alone, but he was insistent. Having only had violent encounters with other pirates so far i thought it might be a trick but I joined his alliance. I didn't really understand why at first, i just kept on doing my tall tale. He seemed nice so I helped him kill the skeleton captains he was fighting on the island. I sailed away to continue the tall tale. I became a bit scared when I saw like 4 reaper boats all near each other, and thought maybe the trick was the reapers can see me so they'll come kill me. That didn't happen and after about 20 minutes later the alliance started selling things and I made about 100k for doing nothing. Later, I was at a shipwreck and came to the surface to find a guy on my boat. He played his instrument, said hi in text chat, gave me a mermaid gem and fired himself out of a cannon back to his boat. I met a reaper ship at the plunder outpost and offered them to join the alliance. It's funny how people work. Once there's a vague sense of cooperation and being on the same side, everyone becomes super nice. I googled 'alliance servers' when i was finished and apparently this is controversial and some people think it's ruining the game. There seemed to be 8 boats, all allied on my server. Fun stuff! dodgeblan fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 17, 2021 23:51
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I'd play the game everyday if there was a passive mode. I love just sailing and figuring out the maps with a podcast on. But I've never not ended a session being trolled by a player. Just gets tiring knowing I spent two hours for nothing. Are alliance servers passive?
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Jul 17, 2021 23:56
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As far as I can tell, alliance servers are just servers where the majority of players have all voluntarily allied. I think people set this up by server hopping or just getting lucky. So if someone wanted to troll and murder on an alliance server they could, it's just not really beneficial because you get so much passive income by joining the alliance. I'm sure there's some labor intensive way to try to force the game to spawn you into one of these alliance servers but i don't know how you would do it.
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Jul 18, 2021 00:01
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Generally speaking the people setting up alliance servers do so by initially getting a couple ships on the same server, either by server hopping or by getting someone to give them their ship. Then they use their 2 ship superior firepower to roll around, bullying the other ships into joining by spawncamping them til they leave the server if they refuse. This is generally regarded as a dick move.
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Jul 18, 2021 00:05
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Back in my day we bribed other ships with the prospect of good voyages but I guess pirates aren't as nice as they used to be. Also I do know these days VPNs make setting up such a server a lot easier. Chev fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 18, 2021 00:10
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dodgeblan posted:I encountered my first alliance server today I've found that if you're being attacked and you don't want to fight, often the best tactic is to just pull out the bullhorn and ask nicely for them to stop, works like half the time.
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Jul 18, 2021 03:47
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Dracula Factory posted:I've found that if you're being attacked and you don't want to fight, often the best tactic is to just pull out the bullhorn and ask nicely for them to stop, works like half the time. Yep. I've politely asked people to leave us alone because we were in the middle of a Tall Tale, and more often than not they've apologized and left. The rest of the time they sink us. But it's worth a shot if it's not a fight you think you can win. I usually leave people alone if they ask politely, unless they're doing something dumb like leaving their boat anchored and unattended while ferrying a completed Fort's treasure down to the beach.
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Jul 18, 2021 04:05
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Chev posted:Back in my day we bribed other ships with the prospect of good voyages but I guess pirates aren't as nice as they used to be. Nowadays, alliance servers are setup by just having 12+ people set their VPN to the same location and server hop until they have all 6 boats (the maximum) on a server. Then just rotate in new people whenever others are getting off. It varies per fleet group how strict they are in their rules - some just have "do what you like, except no pvp" and others have assigned one task per ship that you have to do (like Athena, GH, World Events, FotD etc). Setting up an alliance server by convincing other ships to join your alliance doesn't work that well in my experience. Also yes, lots of players have Very Strong Opinions about alliance servers, because they feel entitled to steal & murder everyone, or something.
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Jul 18, 2021 06:21
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I mean, they are entitled to rob and steal... They're pirates
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Jul 18, 2021 13:56
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Sywert of Thieves posted:Setting up an alliance server by convincing other ships to join your alliance doesn't work that well in my experience.
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Jul 18, 2021 14:51
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It’s nice if people want to do alliance servers but I guess I don’t see the point. This game only has cosmetics to spend money on and you’ll pretty rapidly run out of them to buy if you just play normally. The events themselves are not difficult—maybe Flameheart but that’s an attrition thing—save for the threat of other players. Earning gold in SoT rapidly becomes less valuable than HOW you earned the gold. Like I’d much rather earn 40k gold after a lengthy and challenging chase than a million by left clicking skeletons over five hours
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Jul 18, 2021 15:33
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Pattonesque posted:It’s nice if people want to do alliance servers but I guess I don’t see the point. This game only has cosmetics to spend money on and you’ll pretty rapidly run out of them to buy if you just play normally. The events themselves are not difficult—maybe Flameheart but that’s an attrition thing—save for the threat of other players. Earning gold in SoT rapidly becomes less valuable than HOW you earned the gold. After my first week, I’m seeing this is 100% true. I started off just doing PVE and avoiding players, but your best stories aren’t going to be the time you blew up 4 skeleton lords with a single keg, it’s going to be when you stole someone’s dinghy loaded with treasure, then ran with them in pursuit, only to be ambushed by a skeleton Galleon, which both ships fought to sinkage, with both player boats sinking along the way, but the fight continuing on the others boat. Then, equitably distributing the stolen loot, because you made a new friend. There is seriously some deep emergent gameplay beneath the fairly simplistic seeming mechanics. But then - I guess having a hippie commune of everyone working together, making gold together could also have some fun vibes?[
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Jul 18, 2021 15:47
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Pattonesque posted:Like I’d much rather earn 40k gold after a lengthy and challenging chase than a million by left clicking skeletons over five hours My casual friend was rather enamored with alliance servers, he can only play once a week or so and really enjoyed sailing around, knocking out voyages. The notification screen lights up like a pachinko machine. He shot way past us progression-wise, has a ton of money and the glitterbeard stuff. Its kind of funny, he's like the 'rich friend' who has everything but is a tad unsure on how to use it. And I won't lie, I have some miserable aspect of me that thinks alliance servers are for pansies. But I would never say that because I don't want people to know how small I am.
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Jul 18, 2021 15:48
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Nah organic alliance servers are fine. The thing people don't really like are the servers that are organized via discord and have 1 person sitting on every ship so the ships never despawn until server maintenance come up. When you are organizing things so you have full control of who comes in the server so you can just go gremlin grinding, it goes against the spirit of the game.
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Jul 18, 2021 15:48
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Although I don't agree with the idea of passive servers I do get the complaint which is you can click skeletons on your own schedule, while if another crew targets then the lengthy chase might be, well, lengthy and unlike skeleclicker the only mean to reliably disengage on your own timetable is to scuttle and leave the server. It's a hard pill to swallow that once a crew over a certain size or level of competence has set your sights on you the only way to be sure you can squeeze another voyage the same evening is to abandon the current one's loot. I don't actually think it's a problem with the game's design, but I can see how it'd be for those who are enjoying it like it is Caribbean Truck Simulator.
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Jul 18, 2021 15:55
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Shuka posted:He shot way past us progression-wise, has a ton of money and the glitterbeard stuff. Its kind of funny, he's like the 'rich friend' who has everything but is a tad unsure on how to use it. The "Dark Adventurer" stuff is the go-to money sink. People recognize it as the ridiculously expensive stuff it is - like 500k to 2 million for a single piece. Chev posted:but I can see how it'd be for those who are enjoying it like it is Caribbean Truck Simulator. This is absolutely the case for me. It's a pretty game, it's chill to play and a lot of fun - the PvP part is just too stressful for me to enjoy.
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Jul 18, 2021 18:26
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At first I thought PvE servers should be a thing but as I actually played the game I think playing without the threat of getting ganked ruins the essence of the game. I like it a lot because it often feels high stakes similar to games like Rust, but unlike those games, when you lose a bunch of treasure you only really lose more cosmetics and stuff. So it feels bad to lose treasure enough to make fights really tense, but when you do, you aren't emotionally crushed that your good weapons and useful resources are now gone.
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Jul 18, 2021 18:31
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Raposa posted:Generally speaking the people setting up alliance servers do so by initially getting a couple ships on the same server, either by server hopping or by getting someone to give them their ship. Then they use their 2 ship superior firepower to roll around, bullying the other ships into joining by spawncamping them til they leave the server if they refuse. Not really, no. The regular alliance servers do it by server hopping with a big group using VPNs to get in the same region
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Jul 18, 2021 18:32
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An organic alliance is cool and nice when you want to counter a bully reaper or want some more assurance that you can finish your talk tale with less harassment. It is also fun to pop a server with 6-8 friends on two or three ships as you do Glitterbeard or Fort of the Damned. It is 100% the alliance servers that REUIRE you to be in the alliance or you are dead that suck.
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Jul 18, 2021 18:55
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My only request is that special Tall Tales area should all be instanced and not....mix and match. Sailing all the way out to an area, only to have someone follow me into a weird cave and just spawn camp me is not fun, it's not good, and it has nothing to do with pirating. It's bad design.
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Jul 18, 2021 19:16
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Shinjobi posted:My only request is that special Tall Tales area should all be instanced and not....mix and match. There are a number of ways you could have countered this. And it likely would have made for a good story. I get that not everyone wants to play like that, but the game is designed around the emergent experience of encountering other sea dogs. If you just want to play PvE I'd recommend black flag, it's got more compelling PvE content and no other humans.
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Jul 18, 2021 20:15
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a few more questions for you folks now that I’m getting the hang of the basic mechanics 1. is there any way to buy or otherwise find/keep an empty storage chest in my inventory? I had one I found on a beach but lost it after log off, and I’ve just been having to carry individual gems and poo poo to my ship one at a time, which doesn’t seem to make sense. unless I’m missing the obvious way to stick them in my pocket. 2. is uh, there any kind of progression beyond just the loop of collecting gold for cosmetics to wear while collecting more gold? 3. do enemies ever stop respawning on islands? the respawn rates seem insane. it doesn’t seem like there’s any way to avoid a mad dash to treasure while dodging getting butt hosed, even if you spend half an hour killing guys
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Jul 18, 2021 20:19
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No, no, no. Sorry, it probably sucks to hear this. Arguably for the second point are the various Tall Tales and a number of in-game achievements that give you different unpurchasable cosmetics.
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Jul 18, 2021 20:23
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life_source posted:No, no, no. nah it’s cool, that’s kind of what I figured, I just wanted to be sure. it’s really such a bizarre game, conceptually and from a design standpoint. like it’s got this really granular, almost quasi-simulation level of detail in the gameplay that you usually only see in something like a Red Dead or whatever where the aspiration is to build this deep living world, but it’s paired with this gameplay loop that’s so aggressively oriented towards sort of mindless casual grinding with basically nothing dynamic or alive there. it’s like one team built the base mechanics with the goal in mind to make this big deep pirate RPG then handed it off to a team who specializes in mobile temple run games or something. what a weird and fascinating title to be clear I’m not making GBS threads on it, I don’t know how much fun I’ll be able to have with it without a dedicated group of friends playing it because clearly the meat is the social element, but it’s been a good solo depression hole podcast listening game so far. im just so perplexed about the thought process that went into designing the game
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Jul 18, 2021 20:37
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Mandrel posted:a few more questions for you folks now that I’m getting the hang of the basic mechanics 1. I think you mean a collector's chest, the kind that will hold 3 of small treasure in them. Usually you'll find a few if you island hop to stock up at the beginning of a game just on beaches, or a skelly captain on a beach will drop a quest that will be a collector's chest full of random loot. You can buy storage chests at the merchant for 17k but they're empty until you start putting supplies in them. 2. Not really, higher levels in the companies open up different quests and emissary flag purchaseability but its trivially easy to get to level 20 or whenever those kick in. 3. Nope and it seems to get worse the higher level you are, or maybe I should say the higher level mission you might be on. Like on athena's runs the skellies are popping constantly. I don't know if it still works but if you start a tall tale after you start the athena's run or whatever mission the skellies aren't the 5-7 hit kind as usual but 1-3 hit skellies like on a tall tale. That being said unless its a pistol skelly you should be able to outrun it even carrying treasure. Solo slooping is an exercise in paranoia, even having just one other person to form a crew with on the regular improves the game substantially, bigger boats fully crewed with your friends is a blast. A game session is probably gonna be at least an hour, more often 2-3 hours though.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:07
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The only real goal to be working towards is reaching Pirate Legend (level 50 on any 3 trading companies), which unlocks a new trading company called Athena's Fortune, and its own type of voyage. Other than that, reaching goals just unlocks cool clothes, tools, tattoos, curses, titles etc.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:11
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Skyarb posted:There are a number of ways you could have countered this. And it likely would have made for a good story. Yeah, no. I am not asking for me to be impervious to interference as I am traveling from point a to point b. I am not asking to placed on a separate instance from the moment I slam the Tall Tale. I am saying they have a checkpoint system in place so that you don't have to redo all the traveling, and there are players who will follow you down into the noninstanced special cave in the second Tall tale, and just keep killing you until you quit. That's garbage, and the devs should have expected it the second they rolled it out. It's lovely design.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:12
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And as far as overall effectiveness/sailing profile/lethality a brig is your best ship. A galleon is in a lot of ways a gimped ship because it turns so slowly, has three monstrous sails, and repairs can be a really difficult task (particularly bailing). A sloop has a guaranteed escape when going into the wind and is easy to keep afloat. If you see a brig in ANY ship then you need to treat it as hostile #1.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:14
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Recommanding Black Flag isn't a solution. It's a very different game and doesn't really do the cartoon pirate truck sim bit. I think there's really room on the market for someone to make a solo or coop-only game ripping/riffing off SoT's mechanics and I don't think it should be a new mode for SoT. Let it be its own thing. --- Mandrel, it's easy to get the design once you take it from the angle of a multiplayer game. That's how it was designed and everything is in support of it (even the darn music instruments have multiplayer functionality), so the real core of the game is the time span where the loot is out of the ground or skeleton and available to steal by other players. It's grindy because when people are out of the loot loop they can be exclusively wolves instead of having to be loot-muching sheep once in a while, and once there are only wolves the wolves die of boredom. The commendations and fancy duds just are further ways to keep people digging. --- Regarding instancing for Tall Tales... I really don't know. It seems obvious they don't want to do it, only did it it because the dark ride-like areas couldn't be supported on the main map without interference. It's also kinda interesting that those instanced servers seem to lack support for some things (no waves, which already was a thing in the maiden voyage). Even then as long as they can put walls around you there's the kinda lackluster attempts of tales 2 and 4 to try the dark ride design in the open world too. I feel the PotC tales, as much as I do like some bits of them, are ultimately misguided and don't fit the general game's design. The less linear, puzzle-focused experiences of the Shores of Gold tall tales are much better than the ~cinematic experience~ of Pirate's Life and have more replay value too. I certainly hope for future tall tales they'll lean back towards that side of the scale. Chev fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 18, 2021 21:27
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Chev posted:Mandrel, it's easy to get the design once you take it from the angle of a multiplayer game. That's how it was designed and everything is in support of it (even the darn music instruments have multiplayer functionality), so the real core of the game is the time span where the loot is out of the ground or skeleton and available to steal by other players. It's grindy because when people are out of the loot loop they can be exclusively wolves instead of having to be loot-muching sheep once in a while, and once there are only wolves the wolves die of boredom. The commendations and fancy duds just are further ways to keep people digging. This is why as a near-exclusively PVP player I'm in favor of as many new PVE events as possible because otherwise there's nothing to steal
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Jul 18, 2021 21:38
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If you aint doing pvp by putting anything other than the actaul reapers Emissary and clowning on reapers when they come for your stuff i dont know what to tell you. Having a hold full of loot to protect and killing would be dread pirates is the game for me
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Jul 18, 2021 21:45
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Chev posted:Recommanding Black Flag isn't a solution. It's a very different game and doesn't really do the cartoon pirate truck sim bit. I think there's really room on the market for someone to make a solo or coop-only game ripping/riffing off SoT's mechanics and I don't think it should be a new mode for SoT. Let it be its own thing. I agree with this. I just am sick of people who don't like pvp buying a PvP game and begging the devs to turn it into something it's not. If another game wants to create a co-op only pirate game, go for it, but that is not what, at it's core, sea of thieves is.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:58
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Skyarb posted:I agree with this. I just am sick of people who don't like pvp buying a PvP game and begging the devs to turn it into something it's not. I'm not doing this. I am giving you a very specific example where there is zero incentive on one party's side to be a shithead, other than just being a shithead. And the devs are fully aware of this trend and still make a lovely tall tale where it can happen. With the original tall tales I didn't really have this problem since there was an understanding that everywhere you were going to, for the most part, was just another island so you knew that standard rules apply. But in these new tall tales I am going to an underwater place with dumb checkpoints, and I get stuck in a death loop because they half assed making it and forgot some people log in just to camp. If I were complaining about pvp I'd have been yelling about games that aren't Sea of Thieves for the past 20+ years. These are badly implemented stories, and they actively make me less likely to engage with whatever new poo poo the game makes moving forward. Shitheads spawn camping is a short term issue.
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Jul 18, 2021 22:25
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Skyarb posted:I agree with this. I just am sick of people who don't like pvp buying a PvP game and begging the devs to turn it into something it's not. This attitude, which is super prominent and vocal in the community, is why i just don't play the game. I have a limited amount of time and just want to engage with the ship and sea mechanics. The few times I've completed a mission, I wasn't let down because i didn't have a story because i had to fight off a jerk who just wanted to troll me. Being forced to fight because it's either that or not complete the quest isn't fun when the fighting mechanics are awful. If they had actually created a fighting system that's not 80% trading hits and dancing back and forth, I might want to fight. But since the community doesn't care, the devs don't, so I play other things.
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Jul 18, 2021 23:43
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bushisms.txt posted:This attitude, which is super prominent and vocal in the community, is why i just don't play the game. I have a limited amount of time and just want to engage with the ship and sea mechanics. The few times I've completed a mission, I wasn't let down because i didn't have a story because i had to fight off a jerk who just wanted to troll me. Being forced to fight because it's either that or not complete the quest isn't fun when the fighting mechanics are awful. If they had actually created a fighting system that's not 80% trading hits and dancing back and forth, I might want to fight. But since the community doesn't care, the devs don't, so I play other things. Cool I'm glad you do because I don't want to play whatever game it is you want this game to be because I want to play this game as it exists and is designed. The fighting mechanics could be better I guess but I find them very engaging. And like you said, even if the mechanics were better, you still only might want to fight, because realistically what you want to play isn't sea of thieves. It's similar but different, hopefully someone makes that game for you.
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Jul 19, 2021 00:01
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If the fighting mechanics were thought out like the ship and sea were, I'd be engaged and would play more. But I'm a fan of platinumgames, so basic click and hit is boring beyond belief. But also, it would mean I could work on getting better at it meaningfully, which you can't currently, it's all luck and connection, and good luck if you're on console getting sniped by pc players. But until they put the fighting mechanics on the level of the ship mechanics, I'm not wrong to point out they don't feel like they're mandatory for the game to work as is without them. And a passive mode wouldn't affect you, unless you need to be a jerk.
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Jul 19, 2021 00:13
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Shinjobi posted:I'm not doing this. Yeah that's totally fair. That is just poor design and hopefully they address it.
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Jul 19, 2021 00:14
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bushisms.txt posted:If the fighting mechanics were thought out like the ship and sea were, I'd be engaged and would play more. But I'm a fan of platinumgames, so basic click and hit is boring beyond belief. But also, it would mean I could work on getting better at it meaningfully, which you can't currently, it's all luck and connection, and good luck if you're on console getting sniped by pc players. I do want to be a jerk. Sometimes. I'd like as much meat for the meat grinder as possible. I really like the emergent gameplay that comes from playing with both players who want to PvP and those who don't. If a passive mode existed the normal mode would just become a PvP only mode because people would just assume if players were there and not in passive mode they must want to fight. I like both privateering but I also like making friends with emissaries and hunting down the reapers who harass them. I have made just as many friends as I have enemies. I've had fights that end in frustration and fights that end in triumph, hell some fights that end in mutual respect and alliances. I've given players gifts of treasure and I've tucked on ships just to help out when needed and at a funny time. That uneasy feeling of "can I trust this person or not" is a ton of fun to me. Adding a passive mode to the game changes that dynamic entirely. If you can't understand that what you want out of the game will dramatically impact the rest of the game entirely then I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry this isn't the game you want but not every game is made for you. Skyarb fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 00:20
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Skyarb posted:If a passive mode existed the normal mode would just become a PvP only mode because people would just assume if players were there and not in passive mode they must want to fight. bushisms.txt fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 00:23
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bushisms.txt posted:But that's already the assumption... Like this thread just talked about how you have to pull out a bullhorn and ask nicely to sometimes get respite. A passive mode would just mean that specific player can't be hurt by you, so theoretically they'd be invisible or a ghost image you can't mess with. And If there's that many people that want a passive mode, that the game is hosed, Then the devs obviously need to put in the passive mode because that means they have a giant rear end audience that they're not catering to. That's cool you want to be a jerk, But my time doesn't need to be spent wasted on you. I literally can't explain this to you if you can't listen. The tone and presence of the game would be forever changed if they added this. Yes players are often leery of other ships but we also don't always assume hostilities. Sure more often then not they are hostile but I'll take that over they are always hostile because anyone who doesn't want to be hostile will be playing passive mode. It's just a deathmatch at that point, the arena with extra steps. For the "audience they aren't catering to" I'd stop playing immediately if they made that change. Why is your want more important than mine?
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Jul 19, 2021 00:27
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