A lot of players enjoy the pleasures of TDMing on islands. They do not earn rep or gold or anything to do this activity, they just do it for fun. Why not impliment a TDM feature while ACCOUNTING for the FARMING of kills for rep or gold. The arena could be an island and you'd be sorted based on crew size.
TDM as a feature
@h0b0jo0e yeah naval gets stale once you start beating everyone and realize you're just spending your day going in circles clicking 3 buttons to operate the cannon. TDM might get stale if there was a mode, but you could at least alternate.
Probably won't happen because tdm and much of the tdm community have been stigmatized and labeled toxic/not welcome in this design and I can tell you exactly why.
The middle sized fish always had a problem with bigger fish in the sea, doing to them what they do to the smaller fish, and they spend a lot of time on social media trying to pad stats and push narratives about it.
This is one of the reasons that often won't get brought up about the blunder change. They couldn't stand getting wiped by a tdmer once in a blue moon so that's been a big part of that campaign to get it changed.
Ya see, when these brig and galleon social media crews flex on casual adventure sloops/solos/crews that's all good, part of the game, "get good" and now "go to safer seas".
But when they lose once in a while in very similar ways? No no no, that's too sweaty for this game, we gotta nerf, they gotta find a new game, they are part of "toxicity".
This was always about arrogance and ego and influential people that want to win 95-100% of the time on op boats and op crews not wanting to lose to a random sweaty tdmer/crew,
Completely fair for them to run the game how they wanna run it, but there has always been a tremendous amount of inconsistency and hypocrisy around tdm and high skilled tdm in the game.
The sweats will play, which will drive away all the new and casual players.
When all their prey is gone, the sweats will move on to hourglass or ship hunting or anything else.
Then it will just sit their, unused.
@europa4033 it's honestly crazy to me we don't have a friendly fire toggle in the big 25. Especially with safe seas being a thing.
@wolfmanbush it's not like tdm is the cause of the toxicity. Correlation ≠ causation. Encouraging tdm by adding some official implementation is not going to increase the amount of toxicity in the game. If someone is toxic/cheating already then it might give them a new platform like Hourglass did, but counter measures exist for that. I'm not saying you said this, but it's wrong to say that adding tdm is going to make the game super toxic all of a sudden.
@il-truth-li said in TDM as a feature:
Hero.
I've always been transparent about the bias I have here. It's for the organic experience and for the underdog in risk/reward.
It largely wasn't tdmers that made 7 years of content messing with new and inexperienced players, hopping non stop for easy treasure wins.
No matter how it worked out there have been very real attempts by many in the tdm community to create combat that is challenging, not just wreckfests of casual players.
Do they get in drama, create drama, and do everything else that the other regs do? absolutely.
There is a very big difference between a tdmer sailing over to my boat because I wave a good boy and have thousands of hours of experience to attack me and making content out of players that have never or barely ever fought. I'm always fair game to clip. Call me bad, say I stink, doesn't matter because I've already experienced the game and figured out my place in it. I know not to react, I know how to handle the situations.
Tdm hasn't caused significant harm to the organic experience.
People that take tdm seriously are largely either in their own competitive worlds or are specifically looking for experienced players. Whether it's for drama or not is irrelevant to me as long as it's not specifically targeting individuals. Lots of people create drama in SoT for all kinds of different reasons and in all kinds of different ways.
Complacency within experienced pvp is damaging to the overall environment imo. There are 2 groups that are regularly engaging in challenging activity. Solos and/or competitive players.
@wolfmanbush to add to this, having a TDM experience that is tailored towards learning/practicing is exactly what the game needs. Being able to have a space, whether it's in the Sea of the Damned or inside the GSDT, where people can either TDM each other or simply fight their own crew would be very beneficial to help everyone. New players could learn from their veteran friends or mess around with other crews. Players could use a TDM area to warm up before a session, just to hang out and fight others for fun, or a place where people can go to settle scores if they really wanted...
I like comp games, but I think having the TDM non-comp might be best. Instead, player orgs could do their own comps if they wanted, but the base TDM feature for everyone should just be a for fun feature.. Rare could still add comms behind the addition, like spend X amount of hours on TDM island and get X amount of pistol kills, etc.. People would surely cheese this stuff, but I would wager many of the comms in the game can already be cheesed, so at least give players a few reasons to try it out and have some cosmetics/titles behind it. At the end of the day, Rare desperately needs a place for players to practice TDM, because it gets annoying having half the community mad they always get stomped at PvP and call it toxic and the other half just wants to scratch the PvP itch and that either involves them sinking any player they come across or partaking in Hourglass.... Instead give us a place to practice and at the same time incentivize players who might be PvP shy to give it a try.@thamb0 if they brought back the sea dog tavern in the sea of the damned, I'd main this game again.
A no-holds-barred FFA where any ship can portal in to PvP, play how they want, leave when they want. No stocking up. Respawn right at the dock lol.
Yeah I'm not gonna lie
A TDM feature is just about as egregiously bad as asking for private servers with 0 hostile players and all the commendations, levels, and achievements to gain from it
This game is very blatantly trying to stew all kinds of players together and just praying that people can just meet in the middle of this "tools not rules" PvPvE game.
Private servers for pure PvE grinding is one bad end of the spectrum, TDM features/servers are the other end, and arguably, more volatile due to the nature of the game's performance, the players that engage with it, and the forced environment the game is not really trying to set itself in.
Just... not worth it, not one bit. Play for fun, start bothering players with blow darts and throwing knives or something, actually try to do something sick with that useless double barrel, anything than making the game feel so much more same-y for the frequent players/veterans.
@nex-stargaze FPS is one of, if not the, largest gaming markets in the world. Appealing to that more isn't going to be a hinderance on the game, rather it would bring a whole new audience to the game.
Also I don't agree with your comment
tdm features/servers are the other end, and arguably, more volatile... due to...** the players that engage with it...**
Players are not toxic because they interact with tdm, they are already toxic and choose to interact with tdm. Toxicity and TDM are correlated, TDM does not cause toxicity. So increasing the number of players in TDM would only decrease the amount of toxicity in the area. It's not going to magically make the entire game toxic, rather it would more likely decrease the amount of toxicity by allowing players to actually practice and "draining the swamp" of tdm toxicity. It would likely be a platform for cheating and toxicity like hourglass was, but that can be remedied with anti-cheat, especially with how far along it already is.
Is it the direction Rare seems to want to go? No, not really. But I don't think it's a direction that should be ignored because the benefits are clear and it is a fairly popular idea among the player base. It could bring a new audience to the game, allow new and casual players to catch up to the "competitive" players, and give SoT a broader appeal it could definitely use.
@ghutar I'd argue the skeleton camps are the perfect tdm arenas. Interesting and diverse areas, merm statue is already there, makes sense in the lore, has plenty of food/barrels, and is really far out of the way. Would be super cool if the children's puzzle was reworked into a tdm showdown area between a Reaper and Athena side.
@fysics3037 said in TDM as a feature:
@nex-stargaze FPS is one of, if not the, largest gaming markets in the world. Appealing to that more isn't going to be a hinderance on the game, rather it would bring a whole new audience to the game.
Arena brought a whole new audience to the game, and many non-Arena-mains have slowly regretted it once those arena players were not super consistently "cared for" within a simple short-form Adventure styled PvP mode. One that broke often when new content was added to the game, one that had beyond annoying and spawn-camping-encouraging commendations, and the lack of new content made for that mode that then lead to the TDM landscape Rare never wanted to head for in the first place.
Yes, it is Rare's fault ultimately for causing this and letting it be enabled for too long (and then getting diminishing returns because Arena servers were 3rd party hosted for some reason???), but their solution was to cut what they could and hope that people would realize what Sea of Thieves truly was, and so the Rare/Support team (or what was left of it in 2022) could get left alone about the ridiculous PvP nature of Arena.
So increasing the number of players in TDM would only decrease the amount of toxicity in the area. It's not going to magically make the entire game toxic, rather it would more likely decrease the amount of toxicity by allowing players to actually practice and "draining the swamp" of tdm toxicity.
Nope.
Sorry to be a debbie downer here, but the worst thing you can do to a group of people who engage in an activity you don't prefer, is enabling it. We are already seeing how bad it's getting with the introduction of Safer Seas, and for the most part- The current state of Safer Seas keeps the people purchasing on the emporium happy.
You pull a TDM mode in the game in its current state? They're gonna be grasping for more. Tournaments, leagues, factions, money prizes, basic play requirements to enter, weapon requirements to play, etc. These people aren't gonna buy the flashy outfits made on the emporium, they're not gonna buy any ship sets, they're probably gonna avoid the weapons because they're teenagers with no allowances but too much time on their hands.
And you think that won't carry into Adventure mode? Okay sure, then explain why Arena mains were hunting for (and spawn-camping) Reaper Vs even while arena was still around? They got bored, and they're gonna get more content/fun salt mining the weak than competing at the same level like it's Overwatch, especially when there's no ranks or elo to separate players with more experience than others.
A TDM Mode is a lose-lose for Rare and its players.
It's why there's more pushback against that, and the playstyle it's encouraging than support for it. It's not that fun, Sea of Thieves is not supposed to be super sweaty when they expect (overworked) parents with 7 year olds to play on the same seas as some teenager who's min-maxing their game experience over doing anything else a teenager this day and age would be doing.
@fysics3037 Oh I agree with this 100%
I remember I spiked a server with a friend crew and we TDM on islands all day, was so much fun.
I also found out that there's also a TDM community, but my god is it filled with toxic questionable people in those discords as well as massive egos, they also don't bother to hide that they are blantly cheating in their montage videos for everyone to see, whilst accusing one another of who's using the most closeted cheat, it's super ironic...I truly wonder if they were the reason RARE decided to cut off Arena, whilst throwing in the good players in the same basket, sure seemed like it when the outcry of Arena's removal was happening. NAL naval competitive players on the other hand were some of the coolest and nicest folks around that also got heavily affected by Arena's removal, to the point a lot of them quit the game which I really despise the result of...
Back to the topic, I think it's to far gone to even have a TDM mode somewhere.
Probably won't happen because tdm and much of the tdm community have been stigmatized and labeled toxic/not welcome in this design and I can tell you exactly why.
And that's a lie?
I also found out that there's also a TDM community, but my god is it filled with toxic questionable people in those discords as well as massive egos, they also don't bother to hide that they are blantly cheating in their montage videos for everyone to see, whilst accusing one another of who's using the most closeted cheat, it's super ironic...
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@lleorb said in TDM as a feature:
Probably won't happen because tdm and much of the tdm community have been stigmatized and labeled toxic/not welcome in this design and I can tell you exactly why.
And that's a lie?
There are unpleasant people in all groups in SoT, it doesn't make the activity a problem in SoT and it doesn't negatively mark those that are not involved with drama/unkind action.
Pve, RP, Screenshot takers, content creator/streamer communities, discord communities, this clique or that clique, it all has individuals within the network that make the game and those activities less pleasant.
5 minutes in any SoT social area and you could find a mountain of drama and unkind activity that has little to nothing to do with TDM itself. Individuals are responsible for their actions, not everyone that shares the same hobbies. There is nothing inherently bad about a combat style in a game, there have been many events in SoT over the years that were positive and supported that included some version of tdm in it.
@nex-stargaze tdm mode does not need to be and shouldn't be on separate servers. It's not a hard feature to implement into the normal servers just like HG is. So no, it would not go the way of Arena where "it breaks every update" or "has to be removed from the game"
And your "nope" doesn't mean anything, it's not even an argument. All of my points still stand there.
And while people might ask for expanded competitive features, Rare doesn't have to act on any of that and people will likely create community run things before any official action, which has already happened with naval and every other fps game on the planet.
Most of your points just don't even make sense, make assumptions, or are just "nope".
@veronik5682 I definitely don't like most of the tdm community, I agree with you on that front. But adding tdm is not adding it for the tdm community. It's adding it for everyone else that would also like some official tdm implementation. Pretty much every high tier naval player also wants tdm, all of those NAL players enjoyed it as well. And I believe most casual/new players don't explicitly hate hand to hand combat, which is my point with fps being the most popular game genre. Tdm is currently so far out of the way that only the very edge cases would ever have a desire to regularly participate in it, which is why the community is so radical.
Making tdm more accessible would bring tons of other players from all skill divisions into it. New/casual players would be able to easily practice to get better (if that's what they want to do). Competitive players would have another avenue to participate in the PvP side of the game they enjoy, allowing new tdm leagues to be founded and helping prevent burnout. It'd widen the appeal of the game, allowing SoT to bring in a whole new genre of players, helping diversify the seas and create a good mix of skill levels in servers.
Tdm is not too far gone, it's too far away. And until Rare gives it a proper spot, the toxic tdmers will continue.
@wolfmanbush
There is no denying that toxicity exists among all categories of Players, but for me it is also undeniable that within this specific category there is much more of this behavior.If you enter a discord of cheaters I am absolutely certain that the vast majority are Double Gunners TDMs, a significant part of the "top players" who do TDM are toxic as was mentioned there by someone who supports the idea of the topic, if Rare announces any change that affects their type of gameplay they will do everything to repress this decision by any means they can...
There is a very clear example of this that unfortunately I cannot mention here so as not to break the NDA.
I bet if there is an announcement about a sword nerf there won't be 10% of the noise and complaints that there would be and in fact there already was with the changes that affected the Double gun, even though sword players are the majority...
@lleorb LoT is not a tdm server and they ban all cheaters that are discovered. Dunno why you're constantly trying to sell that idea. And nobody in LoT would complain about adding a tdm mode, we might have suggestions, but we wouldn't complain.
Also just because all squares are rectangles doesn't mean all rectangles are squares.
@lleorb said in TDM as a feature:
@wolfmanbush
There is no denying that toxicity exists among all categories of Players, but for me it is also undeniable that within this specific category there is much more of this behavior.If you enter a discord of cheaters I am absolutely certain that the vast majority are Double Gunners TDMs, a significant part of the "top players" who do TDM are toxic as was mentioned there by someone who supports the idea of the topic, if Rare announces any change that affects their type of gameplay they will do everything to repress this decision by any means they can...
There is a very clear example of this that unfortunately I cannot mention here so as not to break the NDA.
I bet if there is an announcement about a sword nerf there won't be 10% of the noise and complaints that there would be and in fact there already was with the changes that affected the Double gun, even though sword players are the majority...
A tdm encounter isn't a whole lot different than any other encounter. The principles of staying out of drama and away from trolling/farming are the same.
- Don't take any bait, if there is bait.
- Don't play holier than thou with some random person in a video game.
- Don't talk down to people.
- If they are yappers, let 'em yap to themselves.
- Don't give a lecture to a random person in a game.
- Avoid all the passive aggressive stuff, nobody really looks good doing it. It just makes the person doing it an easy target.
- Move on peacefully when it becomes a problem.
Where people often get themselves into a lot of drama is when they don't stick to any of the above, then their friends excuse and enable their conduct and nobody walks away. Gotta always be willing to walk away without sacrificing principles of peaceful coexistence, or everyone involved loses. Personal internet/game fights are never worth it.
@fysics3037 said in TDM as a feature:
And your "nope" doesn't mean anything, it's not even an argument. All of my points still stand there.
Your points are also an assumption by nature of my counter-argument. Assuming toxicity is gonna be drained out to a section of the game where players who are min-maxing their gameplay and movement is such a wild take, and a complete detachment to what the true nature of an unhinged and unmoderated competitive landscape is.
It's not going to stop, and you ought to have known that just typing out that original response.
Rare wouldn't go in that direction either way because it doesn't involve sailing, fighting monsters, finding treasure, decorating oneself (literally most of the stereotypical TDMers have little cosmetics on, if not the sailor set), and worse of all: Causing an even louder and worse outcry towards the game's already waning performance, making more people throw suggestions (and probably even threats) to fix combat (which let's be honest, I'm far too skeptical of their capabilities from the output of Seasons 12-15 to assume they'd even buckle down and "fix" issues for a TDM feature).
Maybe you can't see it, but it's what I can see from the way the devs are currently trying to output the game.
LoT is not a tdm server and they ban all cheaters that are discovered. Dunno why you're constantly trying to sell that idea.
I didn't mention this server at any time... I said that on cheater servers the vast majority, if not all, are Double Gunners TDM.
And nobody in LoT would complain about adding a tdm mode, we might have suggestions, but we wouldn't complain.
Again, I didn't mention that server and I said that even though this class of players is a minority within SOT, they are the loudest, any change that negatively impacts the double gun will cause a disproportionate and alarmist complaint, by all possible methods, this is not an assumption, it has already happened. Any change in PVE or even a nerf to the sword would not cause even half of the complaints that this minority part of the community makes.
Also just because all squares are rectangles doesn't mean all rectangles are squares.
And as I've said many times, I don't think most TDMs are cheaters, but I say with conviction that most cheaters are Double Gunners TDMs...
And about toxicity, I also don't think that most TDMs are toxic, maybe they are but I wouldn't be able to say that just based on my perception, but I say that a considerable part of them are, so that if it were possible to divide each segment of players exactly, I would say that proportionally the majority of toxic players are among the TDMs or "top players".
That's why I disagree that it's an unjustified stigma like @WolfManbush said
Just to mention the LoT server, it's not because there is no explicit toxicity or cheaters there that the players present there or even others who share the same views on PVP don't use cheats or are toxic, usually these people express these things in their private, guild or friends servers. I'm not accusing them of anything, I'm just saying that if they were cheaters or toxic they wouldn't show that side there.
@nex-stargaze People are not toxic because they play TDM. That should be clear. It's just tdm communities are more often toxic than not, giving them all a bad wrap. Encouraging normal players to do tdm is not going to make them toxic. You're falling into a classic correlation vs causation fallacy. And nothing says Rare can't moderate the "unhinged and unmoderated competitive landscape", they just haven't put effort into shutting down toxic tdm communities since the Arena days. And as for bugs, they are already supposed to be fixing them. Players should already be holding Rare accountable, and many of us already are. Just because you might choose to be ignorant and praise Rare regardless of bugs doesn't mean others do, and doesn't mean others shouldn't. It shouldn't be an issue to add features people want because it might highlight issues that are "being worked on." If they are truly being worked on and progress is being made then the features could be released when the bugs are in a good place or released with continual improvements being made.
A tdm encounter isn't a whole lot different than any other encounter. The principles of staying out of drama and away from trolling/farming are the same.
I'm not talking or arguing based on an isolated encounter with these players, I'm talking about the behavior of this community in different places and situations, whether in the game, on this forum, on social media, streaming... the obvious conclusion for me is that there is proportionally much more toxicity in this segment than among new players, PVE players, casuals, "sword lords". And honestly, isn't it expected that a segment that focuses almost entirely on PVP would have more toxicity? Aren't these behaviors more common in games and competitive scenarios?
And regarding your list, I agree with every point, but it doesn't counter anything I said or support your claim that the TDM community is toxic to the same extent as all others.
Where people often get themselves into a lot of drama is when they don't stick to any of the above, then their friends excuse and enable their conduct and nobody walks away. Gotta always be willing to walk away without sacrificing principles of peaceful coexistence, or everyone involved loses. Personal internet/game fights are never worth it.
And isn't it precisely in PVP where this happens the most? And isn't it the TDM community that focuses more on PVP than the any other aspect of the game?
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