3 man / 4 man sloop crews

  • Inbred Chimera

    Some mumblings around the forum about reports from high command of intentions of allowing more than 2 players to sail on sloops. I have some issues.

    Firstly, this a betrayal of design. If you give the sloop 4 players, you can't discredit giving the galleon 8 players. The game gets stoopid.

    Secondly, this is a complete betrayal of concept. Is it not gods own word around here that states that 'all players will be on equal ground, no one shall have an overall advantage?' So where is the equality between two sloops engaging each other where one has twice as many players on its crew? Solo play is going to become so much more brutal. What about 4 man sloop against 3 man galleon?

    Then there's the issue of adhereing to the reality of the game world. Players are given entities that look and act very much like humans, in a world very similar to our own. Humans require food, water, shetered space to sleep, and to function in this case they need tools, ammo, weapons and other equipment. How realisticly are 4 man crews surviving for long voyages on the sloop? Where is the food and water being stored. The galleon is big and has lots of space, these things could be anywhere, but the sloop is very limited in capacity. And these questions will play on people's minds when they play the game. And that will damage immersion. And damaged immersion is no immersion. And this game needs immersion, because otherwise all it's got is naval pvp and cosmetic unlocks, and that's nothing new. Immersion is fresh. Devs don't do immersion anymore.

    People are largely supporting this idea of 3/4 man sloop crews without considering the consequences. ALL solo and dual players have lost any advantage they had in having a lower profile and greater manouevrability. Galleons are even imbalanced since you'll have other 4 man crews who in combat are forced to engage in a boarding attack but also have the option of just avoiding you using their more agile boat.

    I'm really not convinced this alteration has been though out and i'm worried its simply an easy change that will get some players excited. And more poignantly I have not seen one discussion or suggestion on these forums for more than 2 players to be able to sail on the sloop. Am I missing something here? Does anyone have an solid info on RARE's intentions regarding this?

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  • Vampiergirl9945
    Marauder

    @inbred-chimera i dont have any solid info from RARE, but i want to tell that i think about it the same way. it would be to unfair and if you search (what i do, because im addicted to this game and scale test is over). you can find any information about it. i really hope, the ships stay this way, but who knows

  • CaseSugar401098

    In some videos Rare said they'd allow 4 on a sloop and even a single player on a galleon. However I Believe they reconsidered that decision. 4 on a sloop would be pretty OP.

  • DaLinoge
    Founder

    I honoustly believe the sloop already is stupidly overpowered with two players. Unless me and my crewmate only stumbled upon bad players, but we still havent got sunk by players. A lightning strike on an explosive barrel did the trick though l**o

  • SPYKUS
    Founder

    The sloop doesn't have enough to do for 2 players yet has to much to effectivity do for one player, I often find myself getting bored in 2 player games where I don't in 4 player ones.

  • Shyguy80Bln

    Whether you allow it or not with more than 2 players crew on the sloop does not matter. We sailed all time with 3 on the sloop. I've also met a galleon with more than 6 players. Just build Ally.

  • Lucid Stew
    Founder

    4 on a sloop isn't OP, it's pointless. 3 on a sloop would probably come from them trying to figure out how to work in 3-person crews. The idea being that you give the 3-person crew the option between sloop and galleon. 3 player galleon being more difficult than 4 player, and 3 player sloop of course being easier than 2 player sloop.
    I've said it before, but 3 player sloop would be a killing machine with a competent crew. However, people really good at the game would probably be bored by 3 on a sloop, so it would likely balance.
    What I'd like to see is a greater variety in ship types. A couple of options with slightly different attributes for 1,2,3, and 4 player would be nice to see.
    Although, what I'd ultimately like to see is flexible crew rosters, so anyone could join and leave crews any time they wanted.

  • Inbred Chimera

    @lucid-stew Yeah these all seem like very reasonable requests. A few people have suggested they'd like to see more ship variety, I guess it could well come as added content later on.

    I think 4 player sloops would mostly be pointless, except when boarding enemy ships. I think here it would be op because it have the agility to easily get a ram on the side of a galleon.

  • Lucid Stew
    Founder

    @inbred-chimera said in 3 man / 4 man sloop crews:

    @lucid-stew
    I think 4 player sloops would mostly be pointless, except when boarding enemy ships. I think here it would be op because it have the agility to easily get a ram on the side of a galleon.

    I don't think that makes it OP. If you're boarding that a galleon, that's likely a 4 on 4 situation, so no advantage there. Also, if you're ramming, that galleon is going to have the ability to react to that and place at least 3 guns directly in your face. Ramming galleons might be a thing people do at first, but once crews become a little more competent and organized, probably not so much.

  • Inbred Chimera

    @Lucid-Stew I guess with galleons being able to fire 4 players over at once as well is is pretty balanced.

  • CopeNhoggin

    When the crew menu pops up, we're constantly faced with an issue... friends on at the time of play. It always seems that there is an odd man out, or one too few. If we could do 3 to a sloop, or 5-6 a galleon this would be resolved. I'm sure there is a sensible way of maintaining balance as well as fitting some odd party sizes.

    Or... another idea would be to allow two sloops with 1-2 people each per party(so two sloops in one group). I'm sure there will be a few 'muh balance' comments following this, but give it a think-over.... Rare could do this, maybe not tomorrow or by release but it's definitely do-able. This kind of falls into the fleet category though, which I wouldn't really mind seeing either, but then 'muh balance' becomes a real thing. A fleet of ships would probably own a whole instance if not balanced in some way. Maybe a maximum fleet size per instance... I dunno just a thought. But this thought keeps coming back up due to the odd-man-out situation.

  • TuukkaTL
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    @inbred-chimera

    4 man sloop would be way too good. It would overpowered. In right hands its already scary good.

  • TuukkaTL
    Captain
    Insider
    Founder

    @inbred-chimera its not smart, had someone do that to our ship today. while they were playing around in our ship I swam in theirs with exploding barrel and sunk it.

  • Gintoki45
    Ship Mate
    Founder

    If you want to talk about immersion breaking, why are there only planks, bananas and cannonballs in this world? Where are the banana trees? Why are there snakes on a really tiny islands with no food. I could go on.

  • Ice Raleigh
    Sailor
    Insider

    I personally agree, 4 men sloop or 8 men galleon ia too much. But what about a maximum of 3 on sloop and 5 on galleon? At the end you are only adding one to both, but the game becomes much more interesting. The solo player can anyway easily excape from anyone, adding more pirates on a ship does not make it faster. A solo player excapes from a 2 men sloop anyway, if u are talking about balance the game is not balanced already, the solo player will always have to run away from anyone so, adding 1 more pirate to both i think would be only much more interesting and many players would like to play 3 men sloop trust me. Then you are talking about living on the ship, the water, the food, the space... but we are in a game where u eat bananas and cannot drink water so... i dont really see where the problem is actually

  • Kustho
    Ship Mate

    hundred threads about this topic in the forum with a hundred good answers on why a 3+ man sloop is not ok.

    To get a galeon going and be succesfull you need to think, outsmart other crews, use tricks and it can become a lot of work.

    A sloop is nimble, has a different time management...and is no work at all to get it from A to B.

    If...you dont want to put a little work with your crew into getting something done...why play? Is it to hard? Does one of you 4 need to think and give commands? Or do you think that maveuverability and being able to send 3 of your 4 players to the other ship to board would give you the advantage over others?

    People complain there is nothing to do and the game is to easy...making it easyer isnt a solution imho.

  • Kustho
    Ship Mate

    @inbred-chimera sagte in 3 man / 4 man sloop crews:

    @Lucid-Stew I guess with galleons being able to fire 4 players over at once as well is is pretty balanced.

    only the lowest IQ crews leave the ship behind all 4 to board another...nothing you can do to prevent the slowest sinking with a single canonball.

    Smart crews do better time management, keep one repairing, one at the wheel and canon and maybe 2 doing the Seals stuff with barrels.

  • thealcani

    i also seen a article about that and i think that is a pretty stupid idea. the only upside a galleon has is the high crew number, there is no other reason to use this big, slow turning and super stupid to handle ship than having the more players advantage.

  • Thermathule
    Marauder
    Insider

    I'm looking forward to 3 or 4 man sloop crews, I enjoy teaming up with other people, but dislike the galleon to the point that I'd rather play exlusively solo rather than set foot on one.
    this option allows me to team up with others and enjoy playing the game at the same time.

  • Totes Cerin
    Seafarer
    Insider

    @thermathule 3 or 4 people on a sloop is broken.

    2 people on dedicated maneuvering (sails and anchor)
    1 dedicated canon
    1 dedicated on wheel

    Nothing would be able to fight this unless they added something like a 6-8 man galleon.

    Now if they added a 3 man 2 sail frigate.... That would be cool.

    Other ideas to add are different types of shot to try and better disable enemy ships (firing people to drop anchor are pretty much the only ways to disable ships)
    Ships weak points (traditionally this is the powder reserves in a real scenario). you could make cannon ball barrels both explosive, and movable below deck.

    Swivel canons on the stern and bow would be a nice addition also.

    Right now I feel like hunting enemy ships is far too unrewarding for a pirate game. (And I dont even mean loot)
    Combat is very 1 dimensional. It comes down to sailing in circles/attrition, trying to fire a dude at the enemy ship to drop anchor (which is pretty easy to stop if your driver is remotely capable), or my favorite that I dont see many people do, Ram and Board (hit them head on at an angle that swings your broadsides facing each other. Two people wait on the bow to board, one mans canon, and one drops anchor and begins patching. Only really works on people who are parked/just getting ready to leave and island)

  • Scarrzy64
    Master
    Insider

    @inbred-chimera agreed, 3-4 player sloops would be completely OP and ruin the balance of the game. Seriously hoping they don't add this...

  • WC MattMon
    Marauder

    OK, so having a 3-4 player sloop would NOT be Op, there's still only so much to do on a sloop, one person on wheel, one person on cannon at Max, and one person bailing water and clogging holes and one person potentially boarding, sloops ONLY advantage over a galleon is it's maneuverability, which can be easily countered by raising anchor and sails and just sit someone on the wheel of the galleon, then you can have up to three people on cannons which will in turn throw out 3 times the damage, if the sloop manages to land a couple of hits, have two people drop below with wood and bucket, and unless you're blind you should be spotting boarders long before they get to your ship, and if they attempt a ram, all that does is present an easy target, sloop decks are small and you have up to 3 cannons trained on it, a competent crew of three or four on a Galleon will have no more trouble with a sloop of 3-4 than they do currently... And even if they do, drop their sails and go with the wind, they're infinitely faster than a sloop when they go with the wind... I can see and I can accept people's distaste for a 3-4 man sloop but honestly it's not really as strong as it seems, however, just like a LOT of other people, I think a ship on the midway between the two would be great, maybe a 2-mast ship with 2-3 cannons either side? Idk, but I'm keen as mustard for large sloop crews

  • Biter Wylie
    Seafarer

    @dalinoge said in 3 man / 4 man sloop crews:

    I honoustly believe the sloop already is stupidly overpowered with two players. Unless me and my crewmate only stumbled upon bad players, but we still havent got sunk by players. A lightning strike on an explosive barrel did the trick though l**o

    Hahaha that happened to me also! Blew me off the ship. Noob.

  • Grim042
    Marauder

    @wc-mattman I think the main issue is with the cannon damage compared to the fix time being exagerated by having 4 man crew on a sloop. It's a problem for dealing with two man sloops too, it's just people feel it would be worse with 4 man crews. I thought cannons would damage the people fixing the ship more, however I was wrong. It only knocks your health down a very small amount. It should damage them more though as that would help balance more then just the issue with the 4 man sloops, but the issue with the perception of having to board to guarantee sinking. This way you could kill the entire crew with cannons and that would alleviate a lot of concern. Might even encourage some differant tactics besides just boarding to sink a ship.

  • WC MattMon
    Marauder

    @grim042 see I focus the players mostly, because if I'm knocking them off cannons and wheels, then that buys me and my crew precious seconds to manage our own damage and sails, if the enemy dies, great, start hammering the hull, if they get knocked off their ship, do the same, but be mindful of potential boarders, the cannon damage itself is kinda poo I'll give you that, in all honesty a direct hit with a cannon ball should do at least as much damage as a close range blunderbuss, and obviously less for the splash damage, since people are forever moving direct hits are often hard to score and since there will often be something between you and them, wether it be their own cannon/hull/wheel/etc, it would balance out alright I think... But idk, I could be wrong, and I won't lie, I am a little biased in Sloops favour, I hate captaining my crew on a galleon, idky, I like a lot of things about it, but I just prefer agility, tight turns, smaller target

  • MythicMew151
    Marauder
    Insider

    I keep hearing rumors about 4 man sloops. I also agree, having a 4 man sloop is a horrible idea. Sloops are intended to be 2 player for a reason. Sloops are small and have less cannons and less players, but they are a LOT easier to maneuver than galleons, and if you know what you're doing on a sloop, you can easily take down a galleon. 4 player sloops would be too OP, and would effectively break the game.

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