That Podcast…

  • RiftenWatcher
    Master
    Insider

    I think it’s safe to say that this game has worried some of us lately. With the issues surrounding Season 14 and issues with other updates in the past, it was really refreshing to see the developers talk about the issues and the improvements they’re making.

    It’s great that developer updates are back and have their own video and I love the idea of a podcast each season.

    After months of being worried about this game, I feel hopeful again. Thank you for putting that podcast out there, it was like a breath of fresh air I needed.

    Can’t wait for future podcasts and seeing how you guys improve the game from here.

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  • DrFauli
    Captain
    Insider

    It is nice to see that the devs are motivated to work on those bugs.

    They know what they want from the game and how the gameplay experience should be.
    If they keep on improving all those issues, SoT can become even more enjoyable and less frustrating to deal with. ;-)

    Good decision to bring back the regular podcasts and dev update videos!

  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    Only ones worried were the ones who havnt played enough. :p
    Meanwhile im just chilling

    But it also seems people are still not satisfied with the podcast (reading YT comments)

  • WolfManbush
    Legend

    @burnbacon said in That Podcast…:

    Only ones worried were the ones who havnt played enough. :p
    Meanwhile im just chilling

    But it also seems people are still not satisfied with the podcast (reading YT comments)

    It's more the opposite.

    People that have played a lot and/or do play a lot just wanna find a reason to be confident in the future and the devs.

    Long term players are more and more wondering,

    "will these features ever be fixed?"
    "will this content ever get the TLC it needs?
    "will combat ever get back to performance and not so much about which crew gets the least amount of bugs"?

    Results are most impactful but when there aren't results it helps to at least try to boost morale.

    That is mainly the benefit to a podcast or other form of communication.

    As far as feedback/comments go I am sure they are mixed but anyone that is looking to be fair about it is gonna side with "at least they are publicly addressing it."

  • TheBlackBellamy
    Legend
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush Good communication is always welcome. Transparency is always welcome.

    But we had "good" communication before and the game was never really "healthy," it was just healthier regarding server performance.

    End of the day, actions speak louder than words. Prioritizing the dupe glitch was a good move. Auto-detecting/kicking for exploits is a good move. A focus on optimizing the content before rolling it out will be a good move. Stuff like that matters the most.

    As long as they can back up their words with actions, I think they'll do alright moving forward. Though I'm remaining hopeful without holding my breath.

  • WolfManbush
    Legend

    @theblackbellamy said in That Podcast…:

    @wolfmanbush Good communication is always welcome. Transparency is always welcome.

    But we had "good" communication before and the game was never really "healthy," it was just healthier regarding server performance.

    End of the day, actions speak louder than words. Prioritizing the dupe glitch was a good move. Auto-detecting/kicking for exploits is a good move. A focus on optimizing the content before rolling it out will be a good move. Stuff like that matters the most.

    As long as they can back up their words with actions, I think they'll do alright moving forward. Though I'm remaining hopeful without holding my breath.

    They would say stuff before and it kinda went back to business as usual until the next escalation.

    They are changing safer seas around after monitoring it and they are completely flooding the game with reward (even much much more of it coming soon) while bringing back podcasts and dev updates.

    There is always a point in business where stuff doesn't slide as much anymore. The game is probably getting closer to that point if it's not already there.

    Things tend to get done when there is more on the line. That was always the unfortunate part about SoT not having any true competition as an adventure sandbox game, specifically.

    Imo it seems like they are pretty aware (by what they have been doing recently) that they probably can't let as much slide for the last few years of the game (or however long it lasts).

  • Smuntface
    Master
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush said in That Podcast…:

    Long term players are more and more wondering,
    ......
    "will these features ever be fixed?"
    "will combat ever get back to performance and not so much about which crew gets the least amount of bugs"?

    Exactly. The game in my part of the world is a rubber-banding experience currently.

  • Karkona
    Captain
    Insider

    A couple of interesting things I wanted to see if I was hearing it correctly. Hearing the engineer department talk about the joke about how they ran out of memory 6 years ago seemed to foreshadow that they will likely not bear much fruit as they comb over and look for ways to save memory and so the game will continue to get worse as they keep adding more to it? Also sounded like the captains supplies and merchant crate and commodities scam that every single player bears witness to every time they login to play seemed to fall into a category of it was nobody's job to fix it? I am intrigued and I want to see more.

  • Veronik5682
    Seafarer
    Insider

    I'm going to play devils advocate here:

    • That podcast imho doesn't change anything when it comes down to the reality of it.
      It's just a PREFERRED public format to address the player base, just like any other format such as a post made by devs on the forums.

    • How many times have they mentioned about ''dedicated teams'' working on issues, yet we barely seen any improvement when it comes to AC and big issues such as game performance. 15:00 mins in the video for ref.
      Just because it's said on a video podcast people are all of sudden going to believe it's different this time!?!? Apparently so by the looks of it...

    Of course the ''It's going to be a slow and steady continual progress'' has been said on repeat in previous podcasts.

    I'm a logical person I would say, people are kinda fed up with it all. It's like they purposely procrastinate on issues that have been raised up a year ago, and our only now addressing the issue when the damages have been done.

    It also doesn't help when you have people in communities who will die on a hill defending RARE even though deep down they know the game could be doing better.

    I think this is the classic case of, “I’ll see it when I believe it''
    And you can't really blame players for that mindset, because it's true in a lot of ways regarding this games direction.

    All im seeing is a dwindling (Shout out to Flameheart) player base backed by steam stats.

    It's a new month today which gives us metrics, Playerbase has hit just above 5k avg players. It's definitely not a dead game by any means, but it definitely could be hitting those 10k player marks that we saw earlier this year.
    Proof is in the pudding.

    Also like @Karkona mentions which is ridiculous things that like these bugs that pile up in a game session that deters players from playing the game long term...

    Also sounded like the captains supplies and merchant crate and commodities scam that every single plays bears witness to every time they login to play

    The fact that bugs like these have been present for YEARS, (AS in multiple years). For a triple A studio really questions how motivated they are in fixing these issues.
    They try and nerf supply exploits from primarily hourglass users, yet in doing so they create issues for every other player out there for merchant supply crates and shipwreck supplies, because they are hyper focused on having this seemingly petty agenda against the PvP crowd...
    Same deal with the weapons, bringing in these sneak nerfs, in return you have countless weapon bugs that affects everyone as a consequence...

  • WolfManbush
    Legend

    @veronik5682 said in That Podcast…:

    It's a new month today which gives us metrics, Playerbase has hit just above 5k avg players. It's definitely not a dead game by any means, but it definitely could be hitting those 10k player marks that we saw earlier this year.
    Proof is in the pudding.

    The real struggle with an older risk/reward game losing some interest is that they get stuck in a constant bonus loop for rewards that only hurts the economy of participation long term.

    To bump those numbers up they add incentives but then it leads to that becoming the norm so they gotta boost on top of boost the reward, which just puts more and more distance between organic play and those that turn it into extreme reward.

    Players will rarely call it out because that's how reward works, when it benefits people directly they are less likely to push back against the counter productive things going on.

    It's also way easier to balance an environment with too much risk than it is with too much reward. People don't like when they feel like something is being taken away, even for balancing.

    Drop in activity in a game like sot isn't just performance related or because of cheating/exploiting, it's also because players are less attached to the experience. Too many bonuses plays a pretty big part in that.

    They spent 3 seasons trying to repair the damage done from too much risk. Season 8 they addressed the metas, Season 9 they brought down the risk, Season 10 they had safer seas. And that's to address the easier of the imbalances.

    Lack of balance leads to a lot of extra effort down the road, and that takes time and resources away from other things.

  • Lem0n Curry
    Champion
    Insider

    @karkona said in That Podcast…:

    A couple of interesting things I wanted to see if I was hearing it correctly. Hearing the engineer department talk about the joke about how they ran out of memory 6 years ago seemed to foreshadow that they will likely not bear much fruit as they comb over and look for ways to save memory and so the game will continue to get worse as they keep adding more to it? Also sounded like the captains supplies and merchant crate and commodities scam that every single player bears witness to every time they login to play seemed to fall into a category of it was nobody's job to fix it? I am intrigued and I want to see more.

    A comb-over might not give much more memory, but maybe they're looking into decreasing quality of some things (which may result in less memory usage).

    For all we know, the current stacked fruit found on beaches is a test and not a bug, as perhaps only the top one is rendered and takes up less memory. They could do the same with loot coming from a skeleton ship or a meg, so instead of having to render a dozen or so items floating up, a heap is rendered as one item.

  • EastThread51441
    Castaway

    If they need memory they can start by getting rid of ammo pouches and gold pouches.

    They can have raw animal meats that aren’t picked up off the ground within 5 mins despawn.

    They can remove the main Coral Fortress and the other mini ones that can spawn from the high seas and make that into a dive to an instanced server.

    They can remove the Shores of Gold and make that into a dive to an instanced server.

    What they shouldn’t do is try to reduce the loot piñata aspect of the game by reducing the quantity of treasure you get from completing voyages and events.

    Players like to see vaults full of treasure. Players like a little rng as to the length and rewards of voyages.

    Skeleton fleet and ghost fleet raid voyages are so terrible as far as the quantity and quality of treasure you get they simply aren’t worth doing. They do not feel rewarding even though you get one piece of treasure worth 15k base value. An orb is worth 20k.

    I’m not sure who decided to make all of the voyages exactly the same when you repeat one of the same time. Same number of digs every time. Same rewards every time. No rng. It’s like this with every voyage now whether it’s an OG or a raid voyage.

    Rare effectively made PvE’ing less fun and less rewarding.

    Yesterday I did an experiment to see how many treasure maps it would take to reach grade v as a gold hoarder emissary.

    It takes 13 pirate’s maps (2x sailor’s chests on a small island) or 9 captain’s map (3x sea master’s chests on a large island) to reach grade v.

    It took me roughly 65 mins x2 to complete them both. Half of that time was spent sailing to the next destination rather than digging up treasure because the quantity of digs per island is set so low.

    I can’t be the only one who thinks the revamped voyages are a downgrade over what we had before.

    I love having access to all the voyages on my ship but this new approach of let’s make the number of things to do per island as little as possible really wastes a lot of time sailing.

    I would much prefer having rng as to the number of digs per island and rng as to the type of chests you can dig up.

    Small islands maybe 3-6 digs and large islands say 5-10 digs.

    I don’t think small islands should only be sailor’s chests and large islands should only be sea master’s chests.

    You should be able to find both plus other types of gold hoarder treasure on either voyage.

    Vaults aren’t that good anymore.

    Why is a sailor’s chest worth more than a captain’s chest. It doesn’t look like it should be worth more. To me a sailor’s chest should sit between a seafarer’s chest and a marauder’s chest.

    Of course Rare didn’t bother buffing any of the more worthless loot like castaway, seafarers or marauders they even decided to nerf captain’s chests and then they created new loot for no reason and now that’s the best.

    And yet vaults don’t get any of the new, more valuable loot.

    Please go back to when vaults were full of treasure.

    This idea of one piece of highly valuable treasure will never feel as good as for example how it feels to complete a non-raid voyage skeleton fleet and all that sweet, sweet treasure floats up to the surface.

  • Veronik5682
    Seafarer
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush said

    The real struggle with an older risk/reward game losing some interest is that they get stuck in a constant bonus loop for rewards that only hurts the economy of participation long term.

    What 'economy' are you talking about, because there isn't an economy when it comes to SoT at all, you can't trade and there's no marketplace for items/cosmetics like CSGO or MMO have in comparison which are REAL micro economy's in games.
    Just because an item gets gold nerfed or new cosmetic prices goes up, I wouldn't call that an economy in it's pure sense. It's really not that hard to get mass amounts of gold compared to the first 3 years of the games inception.

    To bump those numbers up they add incentives but then it leads to that becoming the norm so they gotta boost on top of boost the reward, which just puts more and more distance between organic play and those that turn it into extreme reward.

    Eh, eh, i'm not entirely convinced by that, sure some players really play like that, but I would wager it's in the very minority and definitely NOT a core reason for why the majority of players left/quit the game.
    Look a the forums btw, once in a while a rage post crops up and signals a real reason why a player quits the game, I also been in several communities for this game and came across not-exaggeration thousands of players, and not once did I see someone quitting the game because of some ''economy'' I genuinely think you are over reaching with that statement.

    It's also way easier to balance an environment with too much risk than it is with too much reward. People don't like when they feel like something is being taken away, even for balancing.

    I agree, but devs come a certain time and point need to grow guts and know it's better for the game overall, on the flip side of saying people don't like when they feel something is being taken away, they also adapt quickly, and in this particular scenario, once again, I think majority really wouldn't care/mind.

    Drop in activity in a game like sot isn't just performance related or because of cheating/exploiting, it's also because players are less attached to the experience. Too many bonuses plays a pretty big part in that.

    No, I genuinely think from talking with friends directly and seeing social media posts as to reason why people quit, the biggest complain IS performance (Lag, Bugs etc) and the direction of the game not aligning with what they want/agree on.
    And please do remember that when a friend stops playing the game, this also has a big impact on the rest of the group as to if they are going to continue playing the game at the same pace.
    I for instance get demotivated to play whenever someone in my galleon crew quits the game for good, to the point in late 2024 after having several galleon crews in the past, I solo/duo sloop.
    It's really really sad that I can no longer play gally because my former crew mates quit, because of the frustrations that this game brings...

    ONCE AGAN I don't think I've seen a single encounter of someone quitting because of the gold eco in this game, like at all...

    They spent 3 seasons trying to repair the damage done from too much risk. Season 8 they addressed the metas, Season 9 they brought down the risk, Season 10 they had safer seas. And that's to address the easier of the imbalances.
    Lack of balance leads to a lot of extra effort down the road, and that takes time and resources away from other things.

    Really the only pattern I've seen the past 2 years is making the game really beginner friendly where they toned down/removed/nerfed mechanics to the ground so they can bank on Timmy hopefully learning the basics day 1, which keeps them invested and hopefully buying the Emporium...

  • WolfManbush
    Legend

    @veronik5682 said in That Podcast…:

    @wolfmanbush said

    The real struggle with an older risk/reward game losing some interest is that they get stuck in a constant bonus loop for rewards that only hurts the economy of participation long term.

    What 'economy' are you talking about, because there isn't an economy when it comes to SoT at all, you can't trade and there's no marketplace for items/cosmetics like CSGO or MMO have in comparison which are REAL micro economy's in games.
    Just because an item gets gold nerfed or new cosmetic prices goes up, I wouldn't call that an economy in it's pure sense. It's really not that hard to get mass amounts of gold compared to the first 3 years of the games inception.

    A dramatic but very good and relevant example of an economy of participation is the BB.

    People rushed their comms and benefited by others rushing their comms. The exploit part is irrelevant because a bunch of early bonuses would of have the same effect.

    The BB is largely abandoned organically. Hopping for them specifically might find a few good targets but it's not in good shape for people to work on their comms for it.

    It works that way for any piece of content in SoT. The quicker people get it done and abandon it the worse it is for everyone else in organic play.

    It harms the activity and potential in everything in SoT.

    Exploit or mass bonus still has the same effect long term. It's extreme non-organic play that worsens the experience organically and that worsened experience makes it less appealing to invest time.

    The quicker they hit pirate legend the faster some leave.
    The quicker things level the more they abandon content.
    The quicker gold becomes irrelevant to a person the less they care about engaging in combat or selling treasure.
    On and on.

    It's why they balance reward in new content, it's why they started rollbacks in some cases. The unfortunate reality is that decisions are being made for short term numbers at a sacrifice to long term play.

  • Veronik5682
    Seafarer
    Insider

    @wolfmanbush

    I understand now.

    The unfortunate reality is that decisions are being made for short term numbers at a sacrifice to long term play.

    Which isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to what you have mentioned above, a big complaint even from hardcore players is how some commendations take too long to get potentially demotivating players to even try.
    So to no ones surprise a balance is needed.

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