The Boarding Meta, Merfruit, and Naval Combat

Boarding is plenty risky against high tier crews.

@fysics3037 In what way? You either get on their ship and disrupt them or you get killed and are back on your ship a minute later. Or, even faster if you miss the board entirely and catch a mermaid.

Remember when we use to be able to place items on our anchors? That was fun tactic XD

But now we can simply fill our ship with storage crates or collector chests which also stops certain actions XD

Now we have traps we can use on our own ships…Trap + Sleep XD

@fysics3037 if it was, we wouldn't see it spammed to the degree that it is. Especially at high level play you can see people attempting boards with little to no set up. Beyond that, there is still no way to counter boarding through Naval. The counter to a boarding attempt is hand to hand combat. Once they get started there is nothing you can do that would make them get recalled to the ship. Your Naval combat is crippled by one successful board.

@burnbacon traps haven't been added yet

@captain-fob4141 said in The Boarding Meta, Merfruit, and Naval Combat:

@fysics3037 if it was, we wouldn't see it spammed to the degree that it is. Especially at high level play you can see people attempting boards with little to no set up. Beyond that, there is still no way to counter boarding through Naval. The counter to a boarding attempt is hand to hand combat. Once they get started there is nothing you can do that would make them get recalled to the ship. Your Naval combat is crippled by one successful board.

"There is no way to counter boarding trough naval".

That is objectively false. If enemy ship has enough holes then they wont be able to board in the first place or it's going to get extremely risky to do so.

I'm not sure what high level play you are refering to, but people in high level "spam" boards only on high pressure difference.
If you let someone get a successful board without any setup then this is straight up your fault.

I think the balance is fine as is.

@e3pos this is absolutely false.

In a sloop a single crew member uninterrupted will be able to keep the ship afloat with maximum hole saturation. You have to board or kill them and if they are smart they won't be killed by a cannonball. Meanwhile their crew member can board you and counter your Naval play.

In a brigantine, a solo can keep a ship afloat with 1/2 maximum saturation, two can keep it afloat indefinitely if they are not killed or boarded, leaving 1-2 players open to board you.

In a galleon 1 can handle 1/4, two can handle lower deck and three can keep it afloat indefinitely, again leaving 1-2 open for boarding.

There is no ammount of Naval pressure that will sink the ship alone especially since curse balls became rarer.

If you do not board you are relying on the enemy to make a mistake. If they are able to turtle and board you that single boarder can neutralize your Naval capabilities. No ammount of Naval alone can neutralize their boarding capabilities.

@e3pos said in The Boarding Meta, Merfruit, and Naval Combat:

@captain-fob4141 said in The Boarding Meta, Merfruit, and Naval Combat:

@fysics3037 if it was, we wouldn't see it spammed to the degree that it is. Especially at high level play you can see people attempting boards with little to no set up. Beyond that, there is still no way to counter boarding through Naval. The counter to a boarding attempt is hand to hand combat. Once they get started there is nothing you can do that would make them get recalled to the ship. Your Naval combat is crippled by one successful board.

"There is no way to counter boarding trough naval".

That is objectively false. If enemy ship has enough holes then they wont be able to board in the first place or it's going to get extremely risky to do so.

I'm not sure what high level play you are refering to, but people in high level "spam" boards only on high pressure difference.
If you let someone get a successful board without any setup then this is straight up your fault.

I think the balance is fine as is.

It seems that you're willfully ignoring the fact that it really only takes around 1.5 dedicated crew to keep a ship afloat for the majority of a fight. Once you hit the point where it takes 2 or more the fight is typically over, and you normally get to that point because the other crew has successfully boarded you.

I agree with OPs assessment and the suggestions are interesting ones, especially the mermaid rework. I really like that idea.

@e3pos consider this, All things being equal:
Supplies
Repairs
Crew sizes

If a crew that was perfect at Naval, hit cannons from maximum range and capability, but was terrible at hand to hand, stood still when boarded, went against a crew that was perfect at Boarding, landed deck shots when able and could not be killed once on your ship but could not hit a cannonball to save their life, in hourglass. Which crew would win? I would wager 9/10 times the boarding crew would win. All they have to do is maintain distance and get one boarding attempt to stick and the fight is over.... they sail you off the map and it ends.

Yes, this is an extreme scenario and the more common experience is that a crew can be worse than average at Naval but significantly better at boarding and still win 7/10 times against the crew significantly better at Naval but worse than average at boarding. A single boarder can cripple your ships movement, repairs, and cannons whereas cannons can't push the ship to the point where the enemy can't try a boarding play.

@captain-fob4141 ig the high tier play has gone down since everyone quit, but yeah you'll figure it out eventually

@fysics3037 dive in HG see how many wins you can get without a single boarding attempt vs without a single cannonball.

Look around at how many posts consist of pvp complaints. Somthing is wrong with the meta whether you like it or not. Instead of a safe space or just trashing the game I'd rather see improvements to the meta.

Beyond that, since boarding doesn't matter and isn't unbalanced it shouldn't effect you if it is nerfed/rebalanced. If the statistics show I'm wrong it'd be easy to revert the change.

@captain-fob4141 the meta is bad yeah but boarding still isn't good. Unless you're talking about solos, in which case that's your fault

@fysics3037 Do you have a better solution on how to improve the meta then?

@procyon-mage I do, but Rare isn't gonna listen and I quit SoT :)

@fysics3037 Why troll around the forums then?

@fysics3037 that's a pretty pessimistic attitude. Hope you find a better game to enjoy playing

@procyon-mage I'm not trolling lol. The balance changes I suggested were all implemented into the game poorly, and they banned me for talking about them before release (even tho I had no way of knowing they were in Insiders). I was talking about it because Rare had a tendency to mess it up and I saw a massive trap the balance team could fall into. I decided to never share any balance suggestions again and move on from the game after that. However I can tell you that boarding isn't as good as you think, and that at the pinnacle of skill in this game you almost never even climb a ladder. I'm sure there are some old streams from high tier players that you can see this in.

@fysics3037 ah, so you didn't choose to quit, you were banned and had no other choice? How long have you been banned? Because I can assure you that I haven't once been sunk by a crew that hasn't sent boarders.

Beyond that, the true pinnacle of boarding is deckshots, dolphin dives for a while, and ladder juking to set up the board.

@procyon-mage I quit the game, got banned from the discord. I quit like 6 months ago. And needing a boarder to sink someone is fine. You cant just win via boarding in high tier matches, which is how it should be. You should have to be good at everything in the game to win matches.

@fysics3037 said in The Boarding Meta, Merfruit, and Naval Combat:

@procyon-mage I quit the game, got banned from the discord. I quit like 6 months ago. And needing a boarder to sink someone is fine. You cant just win via boarding in high tier matches, which is how it should be. You should have to be good at everything in the game to win matches.

You keep talking about "high tier" matches and play. While Rare should take those players into account, they can't design and balance their game around the top ~5% of the player base.

Tell me you don't know how naval works without telling me you don't know how naval works... So let's have a PvP lesson. The meta currenlty (and propably for as long as SoT continues existing) is to demast the enemy ship and circle around it filling it with holes. Only when this is done, boarding becomes efficient in order to secure the sink. In every other scenario boarding is a liability and only works against crews of lower skill level. Let's imagine two ships start a fight and someone tries to board immediately. What will end up happening is that their team will have -1 member for shooting cannons/repairs/adjusting sails,etc with the tradeback that if they manage to board and drop anchor they might gain the upper hand. All it takes to counter this is a simple ladderguard and with traps being added later in the season, propably not even that, to turn that board into a disadvantage. If someone is able not only to board, but kill another crew repeatedly chances is are there is a big skill gap between them, and this doesn't have to do with naval or hand-to-hand combat design.

@gosva5434 actual high level play:

You are demasted and being circled. Two people can keep a brig afloat indefinitely if they're alive. You go over to the circling enemy ship and they stop firing to deal with you or you are able to ladder juke and get on board.

Now that you are on their ship they have to stop Naval to deal with you and you have with one player taken away their advantage. Anchoring being the dumbest play if done properly still gives your crew time for full repairs and gets them moving. Speeding up, dropping their sails, means they have to either manage the ship or drop their own anchor to prevent being sailed off or into a rock/island. Or kill you and take control. The boarder does not need to kill anyone a single time to supress the crew and prevent Naval.

By contrast, once you have a boarder on deck you can take no Naval actions to shut them down. You have to engage in CQC

I'm not saying boarding doesn't take skill, but that high skill in boarding disproportionately increases your winrate over high skill Naval.

Again try seeing how long of a streak you get without firing a cannonball compared to only firing cannons and not leaving your ship.

@captain-fob4141
You seem to miss a very important point. No high skilled player is gonna let someone board for FREE. The game offers 3 sound cues to warn you that someone is about to board your ship. These are the sound of a player getting fired from a cannon, the mermaid, and the sound of the ladder being grabbed. If you have demasted the enemy ship and you are doing a death spiral and you manage to miss all those 3 sound cues, let alone get baited by ladder jukes, we are talking about a massive skill issue. Also two people cannot keep up a brig afloat forever. It's the job of the main cannon to try to oneball people that are bailing water, use curseballs, and fire sniper shots as well. After grinding Hg for many levels (370 to be exact) and having a very PvP heavy playstyle, in my 1400 hours, i have yet to encounter someone that manages to board spam so effectively that it outperforms good naval skills. Again you don't seem to understand how naval works in this game, let alone the ''high level'' gameplay you describe. A good naval crew will demast and propably oneball half the enemy crew within a matter of seconds, which not only makes it impossible for someone to board them but most of the times it's an instant sink. What you describe happens in very specific situations amongst high skill level players and not exactly the way you think, or when there is a massive skill gap between crews...

@captain-fob4141 In high level gameplay, there is no such thing as death circling a brig tho... Thats only a thing with sloops. And with sloops, if you send a person to board the enemy vessel while getting circled, your going to sink nearly 100% of the time. The time it takes to board the enemy vessel is used to pummel yours, keeping your only other crew member occupied in bucketing, unable to do anything else. This eventually leads to too many holes that a single person cant out bucket and you sink. The only other time people really go for boards is when both masts are down and you are sure you have less pressure than your oppositon.

I'm defintiely not the best at cqc but its a skill you need to have to prevent sinking. It IS part of the meta, but not overbearingly so. It only becomes devastating when the opposition is less skilled then you. Nerfing it will only make this game more boring, especially in the way you suggested with holes. Who wants to repair in this game lol? Naval is used to get your opponent in a critical positon and boarding is used to finish the fight. I do agree with you in some aspect where a good cqc crew can just tank for eternity on a sloop. But that is only the very top players that can do that.

@captain-fob4141

Using your thought experiment, we have two crews of equal size, resources, and both are fully repaired. Then we min-max their skills so that one crew is all-naval (A), and one crew is all-pvp (B), yes?

How "all-pvp" is B? If they lack even the most basic naval gamesense, they could potentially sail OOB or into an island, or get wedged into rocks, etc. Or are we assuming they at least have an understanding of how to keep their ship in a safe position?

How "all-naval" is A? Are they unable to guard their own ladders, even when they have no repairs to make? If B is strictly spam-boarding, then it's not like A has other pressure to deal with. So what's stopping them from watching their ladders with blunderbusses and bombs? Do they lack even that level of skill? If they are that knowledgeable in naval, why are they putting their ship in a position where they even can be boarded?

We are talking about naval combat in a naval game.

Boarding is supposed to be something you do after you've already won the naval fight.
Not something you need to do as part of naval fighting.
This game provides pretty much the opposite experience of how ship battles should work.

I'm still wearing my day 1 eyepatch from playing this game before it was even officially launched.
And I have never seen the game in a state where naval combat wasn't at least 75% boarding, and only 25% or less anything else.
Even while being death spiraled, a ship is not sinking without someone boarding to stop them from bailing and repairing.
You simply cannot sink a ship without boarding it, unless you're just harassing an unmanned ship while the crew is in a cave somewhere.

@the-old-soul800 we are talking about naval combat in a pirate game.

Boarding is supposed to be something you do after you've already won the naval fight if you want to finish the sink however, can be done anytime.

some videos where people naval more than 25% of the time:

Sea of Thieves Brigantine Hourglass PvP (HELM POV)

How we Recovered against a PRO CREW

We Fought One of the BEST Cannons!

All you have to do is look at ANY competitive gameplay and it will prove you wrong. Of course you can sink a ship without boarding, it is a core mechanic of the game. This isnt a ship vs ship game, its a pirate crew vs pirate crew game, simple as that. I suggest the brand new really fun skull and bones if you just want naval combat because that is a naval game. Lets not overexaggerate things here, boarding is not overpowered, a bigger crew vs a smaller crew is. You cant just neglect a huge aspect of this game and expect to sink skilled crews just because your cannons are better.

@haughtyfern4707
That 75% 25% isn't time spent, it's contribution to victory.
You can spend 90% of the fight's time on naval without boarding, but your victory will still be 75% due to what you did as a boarder.

If the other crew is still able to use their ship to act against you, or repair their ship to resume doing so, you haven't won the naval fight yet.
SoT has made sinking the ship the only state in which you've won the naval fight.
When I say boarding is something you're supposed to do after winning naval, I'm saying that in a game that designs naval combat right, you board after you've already rendered the enemy ship incapable of doing anything. A non-sunken defeated state. Like in AC Black Flag, when the enemy ships become incapable of all action and just sit there waiting for you to activate the boarding prompt.

As for Skull and Bones, there's plenty of reasons why it hasn't been received well, but besides that, it is a game where you control the ship, which is very different from a game where you control a sailor on a ship.
If you wish to recommend games as alternatives to Sea of Thieves, you should stick to ones where you control a sailor.

@haughtyfern4707 if you sink without having a crew member killed (one balled or in CQC) you are a bad crew. All three ships if fully crewed can turtle indefinitely (supplies permitting)

A sloop can do so with 1
A brig can do so with 2
And a galleon can do with 2~3 depending on damage saturation

Meaning all three ships have 1 extra crew member to return fire, deal with top deck damage, or board.