Alliance ship amount (why isn't it capped?)

@nitroxien said in Alliance ship amount (why isn't it capped?):

(…) People making alliance server has no effect on how you play the game. All this change does is limit how others can play the game. (…)

@valor-omega said in Alliance ship amount (why isn't it capped?):

@jumli7 I'd be very curious to learn how exactly alliance servers negatively impact the game.

As I've mentioned, there's no economy to the game, therefore the gold earned in an alliance server in no way takes away from gold that can be acrued in regular servers. (…)

Just as PvE servers would - they take away more friendly crews or crews who have for a session no interest in fighting per se, away from the pool of players in the real Adventure servers thus making the composition of these servers more hostile.

People doing their grinding / earning money / levels / whatever on a pre-made alliance / PvE server are also decreasing the loot being able to be stolen from crews on standard servers (though they probably would turn in more often when not in a secure environment).

The events where you have to be friendly or where it's more useful to be friendly (e.g. the putting treasure on other ships or other crews turn in your chests, or what have you) - easy to do in the PvE servers - it happens there thus making it more difficult to find a coorperating crew while sailing the real Adventure servers.

So it impacts people who are after PvP, people who are after PvE but don't want to join a pre-made alliance server and it impacts people who do PvPvE play.

Apologies if this has been a topic at some point, haven't been aware) ... (probably has)

It certainly has!

My own solution, which I proposed here long ago, was to change the profit-share that arises from alliances. When I started playing this game, shortly after its release, I was surprised that each member of the crew got full value for loot handed in, regardless of whether you were on a four man galleon crew, or a solo-slooper. The situation got even sillier with alliances, where an alliance of five fully-crewed galleons effectively earns 1200% as much as does a non-allied solo-slooper.

My suggestion then is that the value of the loot (and XP) is SPLIT between alliance members, rather than being boosted by 50% for each additional ship.

Under this scheme, the value of anything sold is roughly split by the number of ships in the alliance, plus one. The ship selling the loot gets two shares, and each alliance partner gets one share. Thus, we get something like this:

• No Alliance: Selling ship: 100%
• Two Ship Alliance -- Selling ship: 70%; Alliance partner: 30%
• Three Ship Alliance -- Selling ship: 50%; Each alliance parner: 25%
• Four Ship Alliance -- Selling ship: 40%; Each alliance partner: 20%
• Five Ship Alliance -- Selling ship: 32%; Each alliance partner: 17%
• Six Ship Alliance -- Selling ship: 30%; Each alliance partner: 14%

Each ship gets their own emmissary multiplier applied, if applicable to the goods sold. So, if two ships are allied, and the one flying a GH emmisary flag sells a foul skull, they get a flat 70%. But the partner ship, flying an OOS emmisary flag, gets their current multiplier applied to their 30% share of the value.

Let's see how popular alliance servers are under such a scheme!

@jumli7 I think we are playing vastly different games here Rare gave us a sandbox to have fun in. Everything here is meaningless there is no actual progression. You progress as a player in skill and that's really it the rest are just cosmetics. This game is fun because it has no rules.

Nothing can be bypassed some people can just do them differently I don't care how they choose to unlock cosmetics. I personally don't want any of mine unlocked in a PVE server since its less memorable to play them. But I really don't care how anyone else gets their cosmetics or achievements.

And what do you mean how else do players use the tools? TDM in arena, getting like 5 people on one sloop, I have done Flameheart with 8 people on a galleon with a random ship we just met sailing around. I spend time with my friends trying to see how much of the pirate life tall tales you can skip with sword lunge jumping. This game is an incredible open world sandbox filled with tools to play with! Keg catapulting, tucking on players ships while messaging them, trying to ride over islands with harpoons!

This is not a competitive game no one cares what commendation you have or how you got them just let everyone play how they feel like and have fun how they see best fit. Rare does not have PVE servers since it is not part of the game but they DO promote an alliance server on their discord. Rare provided a sandbox and lets the players do as they please in it.

Stop sweating in a cartoony game where most of us just want to joke around and role play as pirates making good experiences with others we meet.

@lem0n-curry People who play on alliance server probably won't play regular adventure. If you are so keen on alliance servers being removed then I hope your not a hypocrite and want server hopping gone as well in all capacities? If we play this game how it was designed everyone should constantly be doing voyages and having loot on them and PVP other ships just as they come around not hunt them down.

NO ONE WANTS THIS! Stop being a hypocrite I am a PVP player I spend my days hopping and hunting other ships but that is how I choose to play this sandbox game why should I ruin how others play the game and just force them to be fodder in my way of playing.

Using your reasoning the more people server hopping the less people on a server getting loot for others to PVP in this PVPVE game. I think people are forgetting this is not just a PVP game but a PVPVE game.

@nitroxien said in Alliance ship amount (why isn't it capped?):

@lem0n-curry People who play on alliance server probably won't play regular adventure. If you are so keen on alliance servers being removed then I hope your not a hypocrite and want server hopping gone as well in all capacities? If we play this game how it was designed everyone should constantly be doing voyages and having loot on them and PVP other ships just as they come around not hunt them down.

NO ONE WANTS THIS! Stop being a hypocrite I am a PVP player I spend my days hopping and hunting other ships but that is how I choose to play this sandbox game why should I ruin how others play the game and just force them to be fodder in my way of playing.

Using your reasoning the more people server hopping the less people on a server getting loot for others to PVP in this PVPVE game. I think people are forgetting this is not just a PVP game but a PVPVE game.

I have only server hopped when I encountered a toxic crew or a crew that used the double gun exploit back in the days.

Server hopping for content that suits your mood for the day or the same thing over & over ? I hope Rare will take some action on that as well.

Change servers because the fighting gets scarce because you sank every crew that was willing to fight - fine with me.

@jumli7 I mean the people who enjoy playing in said servers clearly do, and should be allowed to play in that manner if they wish.

I wish people would stop using the "but other games don't do x" argument. This isn't other games.

@lem0n-curry Respectfully, what evidence is there that alliance servers are causing what you propose?

I find it a fairly far reach that a couple of alliance servers are causing any sort of significant effect on regular servers. It also isn't as if there are tons of these servers going constantly. I only know of two active servers, and I couldn't even say if they are still as high traffic as they used to be.

@valor-omega said in Alliance ship amount (why isn't it capped?):

@lem0n-curry Respectfully, what evidence is there that alliance servers are causing what you propose?

Logic.

Didn't you follow what I wrote ? If crews or people who want to accomplish things go on a different server the other servers will be more hostile. Is that hard to understand ?

Lets go with marbles.
Take lots of red and blue marbles, but a bunch of the blue ones in groups of 6.
Now the remainder red and blue - create groups of six randomly.
The average red2blue ratio of those is 'hostility'.

Now do the same but without creating the blue ones first
The red2blue ratio is lower... less hostility.

It's a simplified example, in reality some blue ones might turn red when they see lots of loot or when they encounter a red one.

I find it a fairly far reach that a couple of alliance servers are causing any sort of significant effect on regular servers. It also isn't as if there are tons of these servers going constantly. I only know of two active servers, and I couldn't even say if they are still as high traffic as they used to be.

You got me there … I don't have the numbers, and yes, one group of 15 people trying to have a 3 hour session together doing whatever - the rest of the people on servers wouldn't notice.

But there have been several alliance servers around claiming to have 1000+ members, my guess is that on most of these servers the Galleon is most prevalent (as why go through the trouble of getting 6 ships together for 12 people when you can have the same amount of trouble for 24 people). Grinding goes faster when there are more, one pre-made alliance PvE server has more people in it than the average adventure server. So if we would take an average of 3 hours per session and some efficiency of trying to have no empty places, one server would help less than 200 ((24 hours a day / 3 hours per session) * 24 people : 192) people per day.

Still almost nothing compared to the large numbers of people playing SoT every day ... my guess would be one popular Alliance discord has multiple servers going on, there are several such discords - it adds up to quite a nice number that it does (in theory and my opinion) affects the composition of the normal adventure servers, wouldn't you say ?

What would, in your opinion, be the ballpark figure that it would be significant ?

Then there are the groups of people who are not part of a public Alliance discord, but set up one between them to boost their emissary or whatever but a couple of those and they add up to the thousand or more from the group ones.

Oh yes, emissary leaderboard : another way they impact others, forgot to mention that in my other post.
Those that just missed a nice reward for their ship or weapons, guess what - without people gaining their emissary reputation in a save environment, you probably would have gotten it. Better luck next month.

@lem0n-curry

Sorry, but I don't follow your logic.

You're acting as if a huge number of players are playing in an alliance server, causing regular servers to be full of PvP only players. There's quite literally no evidence to support this idea, and is entirely conjecture. In fact, every normal server I've been on in the last few days has had more players fleeing from me, than there was people who stayed and fought when I engaged them.

Let's say there's an alliance server active right now. At most, that's six galleons, with 24 players in total, at any given time. One full server out of who knows how many regular servers, where players are playing normally.

I'm glad we could partially agree on that at least.

The discord servers themselves have tons of members, but not all of those members are all playing at once. From what I've observed from the one I played in once, they had one server, and a que of people that cycle out. So if I had to guess, and judging from how long some were in que, maybe 200 max per day without even taking into account not always getting a full server, or slow days.

I would, and still vehemently disagree that the already dwindling number of these organized servers has any intrinsic effect on regular servers. Granted, there used to be a lot more active alliance servers, but they take a lot of organization and upkeep to keep them going. Sea of Thieves just recently hit over 20 million players. Now sure, that isn't 20 million online all the time, yet despite that, I still cannot believe that a few straggling alliance servers have any effect on the tons of regular servers.

Now, I know the Microsoft store doesn't project their online numbers, but Steam does, and there's typically anywhere from 40k-65k online players, again without taking into account time of day, day of the week, etc.

Without knowing exactly how many regular servers exist, it would be hard to pinpoint when regular servers would be in jeopardy from alliance servers. However, and in my opinion, there would have to be hundreds of constantly active alliance servers before we would see any sort of absence on base servers.

I'm a bit confused on your second to last sentence. Are you referring to alliances made in normal servers? I'm also not sure where you're getting your "thousands" number from.
The only issue I can even slightly see with the leader boards is people cheesing their actual emissary value. Even then the issue is very minute, considering there is no way to discern whether someone earned their value in regular servers or an alliance server. As for earning the emissary cosmetics, and as I said before, people will earn them gradually, alliance server or not.

I would understand and be upset if players earned emissary value from other crews turn-ins, or if players earned commendation progress from what other crews in the alliance turn in, but neither are the case. You only get emissary value and commendation progress for loot that your own crew turns in.

I've been playing since the beginning, and I'm almost exclusively PvP (save for when I just want a chill session, and I'll sail around and do whatever world event I see, etc) and the entire concept of alliance servers have never bothered me. I always saw it as another medium for people to enjoy the game. Some people love PvP, some love to do PvE, some love both interchangeably. I believe that there are/should be mediums for everyone to enjoy the game, as that is the nature of a sandbox game; player agency.

@valor-omega said in Alliance ship amount (why isn't it capped?):

@lem0n-curry

Sorry, but I don't follow your logic.

You're acting as if a huge number of players are playing in an alliance server, causing regular servers to be full of PvP only players. (…).

I am not saying that at all. Not even allude to it, just that without these Alliance PvE servers it would be less hostile on the seas or with more of these servers it would become more hostile.

(…) I would, and still vehemently disagree that the already dwindling number of these organized servers has any intrinsic effect on regular servers. (…)

We don't know how many there were or how many there are now. It'll be more than one less than 100 ? - can't get any more precize than that.

Now, I know the Microsoft store doesn't project their online numbers, but Steam does, and there's typically anywhere from 40k-65k online players, again without taking into account time of day, day of the week, etc.

I haven't looked at those numbers to be honest, thought that would be more the daily number of players.

Without knowing exactly how many regular servers exist, it would be hard to pinpoint when regular servers would be in jeopardy from alliance servers. However, and in my opinion, there would have to be hundreds of constantly active alliance servers before we would see any sort of absence on base servers.

Not saying absence of "friendlier" players, less off.

I'm a bit confused on your second to last sentence. Are you referring to alliances made in normal servers? I'm also not sure where you're getting your "thousands" number from.

I did not say thousands, I said thousand or more, it came from if there would be 5 organised alliances, would be (with around 200 players on 1 server per day); I picked a lowball number.

With the groups of people I was talking about groups of people who just try to get a server for their Wednesday game grinding night as opposed to players who join a discord of hundreds of members. So they can play together and have more control of what they are doing (for example).

The only issue I can even slightly see with the leader boards is people cheesing their actual emissary value. Even then the issue is very minute, considering there is no way to discern whether someone earned their value in regular servers or an alliance server. As for earning the emissary cosmetics, and as I said before, people will earn them gradually, alliance server or not.

Very minute ? I guess we differ about what would be significant, again I said "just missed a nice reward", perhaps have your one game night per week turning in GH items and become #42,050 when the cut off point for the cosmetic was 42k (numbers totally made up).

I would understand and be upset if players earned emissary value from other crews turn-ins, or if players earned commendation progress from what other crews in the alliance turn in, but neither are the case. You only get emissary value and commendation progress for loot that your own crew turns in.

If an alliance PvE server organisors have thought it over, the crews would exchange specific loot (let the GH emissary turn in chests, OoS turn in skulls, everyone buys MA crates for the MA crew to pick up and sell). Emissary value skyrockets, and lets not forget the non-risk bit, the once-per-week crew might get sunk lets say once or twice a month, have to spend time either fighting other crews or trying to turn in on a lower grade than 5 - the PvE crews probably turn in at least double the value in the same amount of time.

I've been playing since the beginning, and I'm almost exclusively PvP (save for when I just want a chill session, and I'll sail around and do whatever world event I see, etc) and the entire concept of alliance servers have never bothered me. I always saw it as another medium for people to enjoy the game. Some people love PvP, some love to do PvE, some love both interchangeably. I believe that there are/should be mediums for everyone to enjoy the game, as that is the nature of a sandbox game; player agency.

I was planning to quote the devs quip about the game being adventures in an unknown world where you don't know if other players are friend or foe but they have buried that *very, very deep nowadays.

@lwebbl I think you misunderstood, I'm not against the notion of alliance servers, I'm all for them.

I was also trying to state that there are far less alliance server players, than regular servers players, and that alliance server activity does not intrinsically effect regular lobbies.

Just let people play how they want to in game... If they want to put in the hours to knock out things, then let them. It doesn't affect you in anyway; stop being the sandbox police.

@drizkillz this 1000%

@lwebbl In fairness, that number was last time I checked, which was on launch of APL, which did have steam active players at 63k if I recall.

Oh dang, that isn't even a fully locked down server, either. But yeah if people want to put in that kind of time to form them, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. TDM players get to have their game mode in arena, and PvE players can have their alliance servers. Everyone gets to play how they want.

@jumli7 people say "tools not rules" because it makes them sound like originalists who are supporting the true founder's vision of the game and because it rhymes. It's very lazy.

I mean, nobody in history has ever released a game or feature that had some imbalances or mistakes in it ever.

It doesn't take much thought to monkey that line every time someone makes a suggestion for how new rules could help a current tool, be not so uncool. See I can rhyme too!

Gripe aside, I think they should cap alliances at 2 ships, AND force those ships to turn in together at the same outpost for the extra money to come through.

@jumli7 The chances of stumbling into a full server alliance are slim-to-none. So it doesn't affect anyone complaining about them. If you manage to find your way into one, then you can go about your business, attack, or join. If any of that is an issue, there is always another server just the way you like it. I don't see how this bothers anyone. Out of sight, out of mind, there are better things to do. Nothing unbalanced about everyone in the sandbox playing by agreed upon rules and you know this.