I have put forward the question as to whether or not players think hopping of any sort is a good thing and the overwhelming majority believe it is, but I feel like the concept has been skewed over time and I would like to see if I can get some more constructive full answers about the subject here and I'll do so by first covering the subject, my thoughts and then see what you think about it.
Portal Hopping/Server Hopping - What is it?
Server hopping is when a player leaves the game/server via menu in the hopes when they start fresh they land in a new game world with new events and ships to play with. This discards the need to wait for a natural merging of the servers and effectively allows you to browse for certain player emissary's (through tables) or Reapers (via map) and events (via the sky).
Portal Hopping is when a player uses a the new tall tale checkpoint to open a portal wait a few minutes and cancel putting their ship into a new server on the run with the same benefits as Server Hopping with the added bonus of keeping your Emissary flag and rank, as well as supplies. Its worth noting any loot will not come with you and a copy of your Emissary will be left behind in the portals location, So if any ship was chasing you they will still be able to collect your loot (if you had any) and a copy of your flag.
Why I think is this a bad thing for Sea of Thieves overall
At first glance it seems these are perhaps good things it allows player to have the content they want somewhat on demand, But it diminishes and devalues the normal gameplay for everyone and I believe as time goes on this will push out new and inexperienced players which in turn will push out veterans and people who only seek PvP.
Firstly is having to leave a game/leave your loot or supplies in some cases behind go through menus and load screens truly sound like a solution or a band aid fix to a larger issue, What other online game requires or advocates you to jump servers as often as possible in order to find the best content or the most PvP would it not be better for good content and satisfying PvP being on the seas with you already be better?
Secondly this has undoubtedly become an unhealthy META of sorts and Emissary leaderboards tell this story loud and clear, To be a high rank of a PvE Emissary you are heavily encouraged to find Alliance Servers through discords which is related to this issue and on the flip side PvP Reaper Emissary's were already encouraged strongly to hop in order to find the most people who have completed a lot of in game content to maximize how much they can steal and now with Portal Hopping they can effectively sift through dozens of potential people who have done plenty of in game/in server content at Reaper 5, speeding up an issue that already was doing damage to the game.
Because less experienced new players are far less likely to ever find themselves finishing a vault or a fort or serious adventure of any kind inside normal Sea of Thieves servers, Why? Because players have been and are being strongly encouraged to hop in order to maximize there effectiveness. So instead of the odd sails on the horizon who may be an inexperienced or veteran player you are incredibly likely to have to fight very good players to get anything serious done. By no means is this a guarantee I'm merely stating because of the hopping mechanics its been increased, a lot. These players who hop all the time for content stand to lose very little if anything at any point in time as they aren't the ones collecting loot just browsing for players to steal from, Now this is a fine philosophy to have Piracy only but when you add the ability to quantum leap into new realms and experience what effectively is hundreds of hours of peoples effort and events they get to exist in a sort of Sea of Thieves + Plus and at no real risk or cost to the massive gain and let me be clear this goes for any crew experienced or not, even exceptionally bad players would benefit from hopping as they are more likely to come into good events and more likely to run into players worse than themselves because they are simply browsing more players quicker.
Now the crux of the issue is most players in Sea of Thieves are new or inexperienced at least in my experience its far more common to run into people new to the game I believe this is due to allot of these issues being ignored for extended periods of time, new content brings in a new batch but left in a world with issues that filters them out eventually. So these new players find themselves fighting people who often have no loot and more often than not are more experienced, They more often can't get things done so they will either seek the also very bad but growing exponentially (Because of this) Alliance Discord Servers, Or they begin to Portal and Server hop themselves thereby increasing the amount of people who only steal but don't do content (Increasing the number of ships with nothing to fight for) or thirdly they don't become aware to these "solutions" to there issues at all and simply decide the game isn't for them if they don't stick around long enough to get better and reduce those outcomes that is.
Now in my time playing I believe in dealing with what the Server gives me and it gives a fun and natural feeling rate to the experience until more recently, I love PvP myself and PvE Emissary or not its very common for my crew to chase and engage in Piracy as often as possible so please don't misunderstand. I feel if I were to hop to find players as opposed to just doing content and sinking the players that exist around me until a natural merging occurs that hopping would diminish the experience for other people as it does for me. As soon as Portal Hopping became available to more veteran players its becoming far more common to fight people who have nothing to lose repetitively. Its created an increased feeling of dead servers ironically as well because everyone's hopping to find a reaper 5 or a fof or fotd you can go around quietly as soon as an event appears you'll likely run into 10 different ships before it ends because of how many hop in and out hunting for that specific thing.
Its turned what felt like a sandbox pirate game into blank lobby with people warping in and out with nothing to lose so quickly that often the events they are chasing despawn because there's to many people to fight before they can even finish it.
This stems into again more advanced versions of the same issue Streamers using viewers to find servers with Reaper 5's or Good events/Stacked people. Its like Server farming for content on a mass scale, Yes its "advantageous" to those people for a time. But when such strong METAs exist word spreads more and more people jump onboard and before you know it we have created a world where PvPers roam server to server with nothing to lose to only end up find other PvPers trying to do the same thing, Nothing left to pirate because people doing the content have either 1. increasingly left the game 2. Joined the PvP hop train 3. found a way to access alliance servers thereby creating a pseudo divide in PvP and PvE. This in turn will lead the PvPers to leave as Piracy and the feeling of stealing loot was their true drive and content.
I want this game to keep being PvPvE and feel most of the community and perhaps Rare themselves is ignoring what I consider to be a growing cancer inside Sea of Thieves.
I'm not one to post these thoughts at all really but I feel strongly about this game and this problem, I hope I came across somewhat coherently and am happy to discuss or answer any questions.
Thanks for reading.
