Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!

@sonicbob Ok

Keep up the good work!!! (And maybe increase allegiance for hourglass battle to make it more worth playing. 3 fights for 1 level when fights can sometimes last for more than 30 minutes :) )

I hope the equal footing between Treasure Hunting and Hourglass guild reputation earn rates will be done by buffing the reputation you get for Treasure Hunting and not nerfing Hourglass. In my opinion, it is really not satisfying playing for hours and then seeing the guild progress bar move by an inch (even though this is supposed to be guild progression and not just you alone).

This is just the best way to lose players forever.

The ones that used the exploits surely are achievements hunters and die hard fans of the game, not the ones that can leave the game forever in 1-2 months, and even if they indeed used an exploit, they haven’t damaged at all other players or hacked the game.

I can agree with the erasing of Guild progress, but I find too extreme everything else. This is not inquisition.

@fox-gr said in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

This is just the best way to lose players forever.

The ones that used the exploits surely are achievements hunters and die hard fans of the game, not the ones that can leave the game forever in 1-2 months, and even if they indeed used an exploit, they haven’t damaged at all other players or hacked the game.

I can agree with the erasing of Guild progress, but I find too extreme everything else. This is not inquisition.

Found the exploiter

@fox-gr said in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

This is just the best way to lose players forever.

The ones that used the exploits surely are achievements hunters and die hard fans of the game, not the ones that can leave the game forever in 1-2 months, and even if they indeed used an exploit, they haven’t damaged at all other players or hacked the game.

I can agree with the erasing of Guild progress, but I find too extreme everything else. This is not inquisition.

Consider yourself lucky if you get off with just a progress wipe and not a ban

if you're such a fan of the game you should have considered legitimately earning the levels like the rest of us. The hourglass levels and curses are supposed to mean something.

@musicmee you’re right.

The exploits must be removed from the game, always. And the guild progresses too, but I think that should be enough. There’s no need for bans or other stuff.

@fox-gr sagte in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

This is just the best way to lose players forever.

The ones that used the exploits surely are achievements hunters and die hard fans of the game, not the ones that can leave the game forever in 1-2 months, and even if they indeed used an exploit, they haven’t damaged at all other players or hacked the game.

I can agree with the erasing of Guild progress, but I find too extreme everything else. This is not inquisition.

No! The game lost players because those exploits haven't been addresses properly in the past and players lost hope that Rare would ever care. Fortunately they are addressing these issues and are being transparent about it.
To your point that those exploiters haven't damaged other players you're straight up wrong! Players became stuck on an outpost after being in a queue unable to vote down their streak or vote for a new battle. That happened to me twice within 5 fights. It's annoying as hell.
Therefore I'm absolutely down for deleting the guild progress, the players hourglass progress and even addressing player bans if the exploit was used excessively.

@myth-renn

Well, having played the game for over 3600 hours makes me a fan on the game, I suppose.

'Pathetic Tokens' Commendation Progress
Players handing in Athena's Fortune Emissary Flags have discovered the Pathetic Tokens Commendation has not been progressing, a fix for this issue will be coming in November's update.

So will we get our Commendation be corrected for the amount of flags we give in our will it just stay on the amount of flags we handed in.

@musicmee
Seriously, those leaderboards tho. Good luck to anyone getting top tier honestly.

@fox-gr you think leave people with gold curses they haven't earned? I've seen clips of 155 win streaks, it wasn't just for guild progress that people have done that.

@bernhardx18

I agree wipe there lvl back to 0 and all the achievements they have earn wiped

I really hope that they find a way to balance Guild progression for smaller Guilds.

For example: It's more efficient to play on 3 separate sloops instead of together on a Brig. That's pushing away from the social aspect.

Having commendations only available for Guild level 1'000 seems really harsh.

Our Guild is only level 33, and we're in the top 400 for this month so far. We have 3 active members.

@fox-gr said in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

@myth-renn

Well, having played the game for over 3600 hours makes me a fan on the game, I suppose.

Being a fan does not entitle you to use exploits and then not face consequences

@jackgrimm6899

@jackgrimm6899 said in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

I really hope that they find a way to balance Guild progression for smaller Guilds.

For example: It's more efficient to play on 3 separate sloops instead of together on a Brig. That's pushing away from the social aspect.

Having commendations only available for Guild level 1'000 seems really harsh.

Our Guild is only level 33, and we're in the top 400 for this month so far. We have 3 active members.

Could not agree more. Everything about Guilds is currently EXTREMELY unbalanced, unfortunately.

@myth-renn
I haven’t used it, by the way.
I was just saying what I am thinking about this. From my point of view this exploit was very different from cheats or hacks used to ruin other people experience.

No keg teleport, auto aim, quick switch, invulnerability or other stuff that gives you the upper hand in a fight with other players.

@fox-gr said in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

@myth-renn
I haven’t used it, by the way.
I was just saying what I am thinking about this. From my point of view this exploit was very different from cheats or hacks used to ruin other people experience.

No keg teleport, auto aim, quick switch, invulnerability or other stuff that gives you the upper hand in a fight with other players.

The exploit used for HG actively sabotaged actual HG players by putting them in a bugged state of battle and resulted in them losing their streak, and in some cases also flags and supplies. It very much harmed other players

Good that steps are being taken to resolve server instability. Reading this, it sounds as if the development team believe that the server instability is what is making hitreg so bad right now. If this is the case, then that tracks with my experience, where the awful and dysfunctional hitreg comes in waves. It is bad enough that me and my other regulars have lost matches in hourglass when we were in strong advantages. I've taken a break for the past week since I'm so frustrated by these problems, so I hope the solutions the team are working on will help SOT be the best it can be.

As for The Exploit TM, ALL PROGRESS RELATED TO THE EXPLOIT SHOULD BE REMOVED and I hope the team is considering this. Otherwise, it will be another kick in the ribs for those committed players who've done the dirty work to earn their achievements. I hope that the lack of firm statement on what progress will be reset is code for "we don't want to provide the details of the exploit" but it will be a massive disappointment if only guild progress is reset. Such an action would give those who choose to do those exploits the go-ahead since they won't get banned or punished to the full extent that they deserve.

While I'm providing feedback, consider making all emissary flags tagged [won in battle]. It wasn't a problem before guilds, but it is now. Those flags are not worth hourglass reputation.

Thanks for the update. I hope my feedback is valuable.

@myth-renn
Now I understand what you are talking about! This happened to me too few times (not played HG too much recently, been busy with chest of fortune).

But the streak isn’t lost. You must just wait about 10 minutes and you can close the session as usual

@musicmee Our guild, as of this writing, sits at #21, with 69mil value. All of that has been made by grinding long long hours across multiple crews - no bs involved. Obviously, despite our hard work we don't come close to the top 10. My point, however, being that not everyone near the top is cheesing by default. Some of us just fight "toof n nail" to make progress. I'm hoping the purge happens based on evidence, because we certainly kept our receipts from all the loot sold (see milestones) and not on mere assumption.

I thought that what insider's is for to test,

@fox-gr sagte in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

@myth-renn
Now I understand what you are talking about! This happened to me too few times (not played HG too much recently, been busy with chest of fortune).

But the streak isn’t lost. You must just wait about 10 minutes and you can close the session as usual

No! You can only continue or close the session if the other ship scuttles and leaves the server. otherwise the battle counts as "still goin on". And as long as that happens you can't do anything but wait or quit without voting down the hourglass. Alternatively you could sail to EVERY outpost on the map and try to find your opponent which is even more difficult if he or she does the same.

@sonicbob said in Season Ten - State of Play Update Part 2!:

Server Performance
Server Performance continues to be the key priority for the team and is affecting many live sessions for our players.
We reduced the Player and Ship Limits back on the 23rd, and while we saw this improve the experience for our most densely populated servers, we still saw many servers still under strain. We followed this up with a Hotfix on the 30th which delivered further improvements and later this week we then made a further change to reduce the quantity of game servers we run on a single Virtual Machine to optimise performance where we can.

While we've seen performance improve across these changes we are still unhappy with the current state of performance and it's impact on the experience. Spikes on the server are currently impacting all connected systems such as player movement and of course hit registration.

Our team are continuing to work on improving the experience here and will need to make further improvements before we will consider returning the Player and Ship Limits.

At this point, while the main feature of Season 10 - Part 1 does need good rebalancing in which I gave my personal thoughts on during the first week of the update. My primary concerns are with the servers.

The noticeable decline has started to become a widespread issue starting with Season 4's Sunken Kingdom addition, and proceeded to get worsened with Season 6's Sea Forts addition to the world.

While I'm not going to recommend anything gets removed/disabled as to improve overall server performance, it would be nice if we could get some answers that several players have been assuming, making statements on, and trying to prove as much.

"Sea of Thieves servers are limited by the Xbox One! We must remove support for that for this game to flourish in a new generation!"

If I recall correctly, a member of the development team, or at the very least a Rare employee, confirmed that Xbox One is not the reason for poor server performance. While the console (alongside low end PCs that probably aren't even recommended to play Sea of Thieves in the first place) are the worst performers of the game, the team confirms they aren't holding the servers back.

"Microsoft Azure is so bad for a video game server!"

Discussions about Sea of Thieves running on Microsoft Azure servers has been a topic that has been most concerning to me because it seems like a wild assumption. I have very little solid information about Microsoft Azure, and all I'd like to hear is confirmation if these are the servers Microsoft has provided the team all this time.

Now for a very new rumor I was told about:

"Sea of Thieves' servers are actually as old as the original Halo servers on Xbox"

This one shocked me, because I was not aware the original Halo had functioning online multiplayer, let alone something that's still functionable in modern day. This then made me assume a few things that might have connected issues together:

• Halo's multiplayer was rather simple and basic, with models as "detailed" as you could get 2 decades ago and still have good performance. Maps weren't too big and there weren't many moving parts on those maps (other than players in combat), compared to the numerous environments, buildings, structures, and several additional entities being generated and running about those structures on a gigantic map that needs to be loaded by at least one player.
• Halo's multiplayer sessions likely only loads up a map, a game mode, and all of the participating players until a winner is finalized and everyone is returned to the main menu. This may mean that compared to Sea of Thieves where servers are up for several hours (especially because of long-standing alliances), that servers are likely deteriorating wasting Virtual Machine space because they normally don't handle long sessions like these, and with all of the additional tall tale regions on the map, the Sea Forts, and the Sunken Kingdom, it begins to inflate those issues as the server likely has all of these things active.

I wish we could get better and more solidified insight into the servers, because the amount of potential misinformation online is only going to lead to worse speculation and even more ridicule for the development team that they don't need if they're already working so hard as is in the game's current state.

@bernhardx18 I think they usually scuttle when they find they haven't matched against their desired opponent anyway.

Wonder when this states fixed though as I had this on saturday