Season 12 features, ranked and graded

  • Prescafatty
    Commander
    Insider

    #1. 6 ships per server — A+
    I didn't realize how much I'd missed six ships. A new ship on the horizon every 5 minutes or so, the game feels so alive.

    #2. Scattershot — A
    Opens up a whole new dimension of ship to ship combat—the close quarters game.

    #3. Bonecaller — A
    Another SoT game changer. Completely changes the boarding calculus. Fun and versatile.

    #4. Harpoon Tightropes — A-
    Fun to use, funny to fail at, and near infinite in its applications which, IMO, is the SoT formula at its best. Also, speeds up gameplay.

    #5. Horn of Fair Winds — A-
    Also quite fun and provide a lot of utility. Love that you have to quest to find them—gives us a reason to finally explore those shrines and treasuries. More of these types of treasures, please!

    #6. Ziplines — B
    Fun, speeds up gameplay a bit, but kinda inconsequential tbh.

    #7. Throwing Knives — B-
    I get the utility of a ranged / melee weapon, and they are fun to use, but not quite as effective as the OG weapons. We quickly switched back.

    #8. Double Barrel Pistol — C-
    The only miss. Not sure the thinking here—doesn't fill a needed gap or adds anything. TBH, feels like unnecessary clutter in a game that thrives on tight wound gameplay loops. I'd remove, if I were Rare—it waters down their great game.

    All in all, one of the best seasons yet. Makes me extremely excited to the next "utility update" in Season 14, when we get harpoon guns and more sandbox tools. Great work Rare!

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  • knurd9369
    Commander
    Insider
    Founder

    @prescafatty said in Season 12 features, ranked and graded:

    #1. 6 ships per server — A+
    I didn't realize how much I'd missed six ships. A new ship on the horizon every 5 minutes or so, the game feels so alive.

    Can't agree more about this. 6 ships is amazing, both for making the seas feel alive, and for the multi-ship battles!

  • GoldsMen
    Captain
    Insider

    I think everything is good, even the double barrel, i think they just messed up on all flow it could have. If it wasnt so fiddly to use, it would pair so well with blunder and actually be functional. As it is now, its only functional against low level skeles that walk at you in a strait line.

    As for ziplines, most are not in the greatest spots, but some are such a huge convenience, especially on thieves haven. What i would have given to have ziplines at thieves when i was doing thieves haven runs.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    Everything is good other than the comm requirements being so extreme in amounts.

    The effect of that will mainly be that the people that have been taking months off the game at a time will probably do so this season, after they had some fun for a few weeks.

    Really doesn't make sense to make the game so casual and then repeatedly add extreme comms that people are either going to cheese/exploit to complete or just ignore entirely and play less. Add in some stuff not counting and the rng of things and it's not going to be worth it to a lot of people, even the hunt for the horn.

    It really just incentivizes all the non-organic stuff that people do season after season to rush it.

    The rest of the stuff is all super fun.

  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    Six ships was a full on go? hm...never noticed a difference and I been playing for 6 hours. Only spotted 2 other ships.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    @burnbacon said in Season 12 features, ranked and graded:

    Six ships was a full on go? hm...never noticed a difference and I been playing for 6 hours. Only spotted 2 other ships.

    The cof being moved back to the fof and ps5 hype are way bigger of a deal than 6 ships for activity.

    Cofs were easy to cheese/complete last season, both due to bugs and location and design of the fleet

    Fotd is a terrible spot for it because it's player controlled

    FoF is what really leads to a lot of the multiple ship activity.

    and right now there is just a bunch of comm farming for grindy requirements involving other ships.

  • TheBlackBellamy
    Champion
    Insider

    @prescafatty only two I disagree with on your list are the bone caller and the DBF.

    Bone caller availability should have been tied to fort and/or fleet completion. I've always felt specials like cursed balls should be tied to activity, rather than things you just stumble across. I didn't like that they made fire and blunderbombs purchasable.

    I'll see some folks comment that they prefer naval combat, and that Rare should lean into naval combat. Then the same folks are in favor of things that completely take the skill out of naval combat lol.

    Imo, tie throwables (bone, fire, blunder) to forts, and tie chains and cursed balls to fleets. Then take them outta the shops. Acquiring them shouldn't be easy, and with raid voyages now, it won't be too difficult either.

    The horn must be nice. I haven't found a single one in either of my sessions so far haha. And so I agree with your rating there. I've seen videos on how useful and powerful a tool it could be, so it's probably good that the sea isn't littered with them.

    The DBF, I'd give a B- just like the throwing knife. A little wonky but I think the firing just takes some getting used to. People say its usesless in PvP, but I can see it being useful in some CQC situations when combined with a blunderbuss.

    The knife might also take some getting used to, but I feel like they could have made some of the animations a bit more fluid when swapping between stab/throw states, sprinting, and swapping between weapons. I think a B- is fair.

    I haven't yet experienced an increase in interactions since we were back to 6 ships. But I will say that the servers didn't seem worse than before. Servers didn't seem better than before either, but at least the issue causing a lot of folks to crash has been resolved.

    Merchants and Shipwrights still robbing me when I buy crates/sups. I know it was designed to be a gold sink but come on.

  • Prescafatty
    Commander
    Insider

    @theblackbellamy I love it when they tie items (like the horn) to specific things. I like when they tie items to specific locales as well. Like you go to shipwrecks to get meat and chainshot, you go to forts for gunpowder barrels, cursed balls show up more often at outposts, etc. Bone callers don't seem quite so powerful that they should only be gated behind an event—but maybe if you complete an event you get 3 of them, whereas specific areas you'd have a chance of randomly finding 1?

    The DBF—you might be right, we're still getting used to it. Maybe it has value that will reveal itself in time.

  • VaughnSilver
    Master
    Insider

    6 ships per server — A+
    Scattershot — C
    Bonecaller — B
    Harpoon Tightropes — A+
    Horn of Fair Winds — B
    Ziplines — F
    Throwing Knives — D
    Double Barrel Pistol — F-

    Feel free to copy and post your own rating, but Double Barrel Pistol must stay at F-

  • AnimeOwl0807
    Marauder

    here's my ranking:
    6 ships per server — B+
    Scattershot — B
    Bonecaller — B
    Harpoon Tightropes — A+
    Horn of Fair Winds — A
    Ziplines — A-
    Throwing Knives — A
    Double Barrel Pistol — C

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