[Mega Thread] - Tunnels of the Damned Migration

Dear,

I have sent this idea when "A Pirate Life" release. Hope it still help for "game deverloper".

"Thank you for your hard work new release with a pirate life. It bring me and my crew really back to sea of thieves world. I'm guessing all Rare team still need alot of work to complete the bug from new update. However, I would like share my idea to the team into this new update (hope it will help abit).

We are join the sea of thieves world with so many different type AI monster on the island (Skelly - Crawler - Phantom), but let them spawnd together and mix them in the same condition will not bring special for each of AI.

This is my idea:
Skelly - let them spwand like normally
Crawler - Spawnd in big Island and in the morning
Phantom - Spawnd in night time

This will make each type of AI more specical and not look like mix stuff just spawnd like ant, this will make player will less enjoy the fight and it really annoying sometimes."

Hope this will help.
Best of luck!
Star.Lord

@chi411 said in [Mega Thread] - Tunnels of the Damned Migration:

The real issue is and always has been once a Reaper got to G5 or close everyone sold and ran.

Risk vs Reward

Risk vs Reward is right. What I'm about to go into pertains more to the real issue you've identified above and not necessarily to portal hopping...but it kind of does. A portal hopping Reaper risks almost nothing when they enter a new server and B-line to the crews that have everything to risk with almost no reward aside from an inconvenience should they emerge victorious over the Reaper.

As it stands, if I see a Grade 1 Reaper headed towards me, I know that A) they have no loot...and B) if I sink them, I now have to make a separate trip up to Reapers Hideout after selling and lowering my own emissary flag to get a measley ~1500 gold for that broken flag. Gee...thanks.

With portal hopping, if I see a Grade 5 Reaper just magically appear on the map, I know that A) they more than likely have no loot... B) if I sink them, I now have to make a separate trip to Reapers Hideout after selling and lowering my own emissary flag to get ~10k gold for the broken flag...and C) this isn't just going to be any fight...they probably have 60+ chainshots, hundreds of cannonballs, cursed cannonballs, and premium heals galore. Gee...can't wait for that fight.

My solution is simple...allow for other factions to accept broken Reaper flags as loot. Your ~10k Grade 5 Reaper flag has suddenly become much more tasty with an emissary bonus and less of an inconvenience. Even the measley Grade 1 flag now has become tastier.

@mrstealurmum704 wrong thread mate

@wsurftvveeds dam it. Was a good rant tho? Ok posting it to the right one

I think it is fine.

Just came back in to say my prediction was on point for the effect of this change and portal hopping or just server hopping in general being so effective at destroying the soul of the game and deteriorating the player base steam charts peak players when I created my post was 50,314 now we have dwindled all the way down to 20,771 and that's with the boost of recent content.

I really hoped you would have some people at Rare more conscious of the long term effects online gameplay mechanics have on games its not always easy to pick but through experience we learn, I think the constant population drain can be mainly attributed to the issue I mentioned I'm talking from day 1 sea of thieves its been a slow burn of the same issue that if mended in any form will start to reverse the issue and foster huge growth because the game really has a insanely solid idea base to grow from. I've always wanted to see this game succeed in a huge way since release and of course it has in general but it hurts being an avid gamer watching your games squander there potential with just a few bad decisions.

Il just conclude with a reminder of the goal, adventure, community, the mystery of sails on the horizon. Server hopping, in normal or portal form via the adventure, Takes away from the game, the player base, your bottom line and anyone who sees the positive in it is only mentioning the short term gain without mention of consequence. Keeping your emissary, your supplies, free to server swap at will every few minutes when most content in game that involves a lot of treasure takes people an hour or more so obviously will steer toward stacked on supplies Reapers warping in and out waiting for just finished content by likely less experienced people who don't care to take advantage of the system they get dumped on and with time get over it.

I played for the first time in perhaps 6 months last night and it was truly sad to see just how empty it was the only ships we saw were on the map Reapers who hopped on and back out obviously checking for stacked people or the Athena fort who knows the point is the players we see are server browsing for fast wins versus a natural world that it was once much closer to.

I know you guys have the real figures at your disposal I can only go off the feel of the game as well as the steam charts but I really feel I'm on point with this one. Regardless I hope to see Sea of Thieves improve as a game and foster a better and larger community as we move into the future I will keep checking the game out here and there, when this change first came though it really made the game hard to enjoy and it still lingers.

@captain-goph
I would suggest editing your post and add a few line breaks.

@captain-goph didn't bother reading your whole thing because your first statistic is absolutely a bias sample size/time window, since about a month after coming out on Steam two years ago the average count has been around 20k players. The only outliers were A Pirate's Life update and the hype up until it, and end of year holidays. The servers also feel more empty because Rare reduced from 6 ships and 24 players to 5 ships and 16 players until they can work out server stability. Dropping population by that much when the map is this large is bound to feel empty.

You are also using the SMALLEST portion of the player base to justify your opinion. Lets add in Windows Store and Xbox numbers if you want a complete picture.

Let's solve the problem completely, because attacking one side (the PvP "bad guys") will just cause those players to leave and others who are less about interaction to take their place. As I said in another thread, lets tie the portal/server hopping together with things like red sea despawn wall and loot disintegration/Reaper visibility and the rapid decline of emissary population on the server when a Reaper 1 is sighted. Fix one, fix them all. Leave one, leave them all.

Removing portal hopping or the ability to rapidly hop servers manually is fine if we also remove the ability to despawn loot on command and remove the ability for emissary ships to go lower at the first sight of a Reaper 1 crew at a 15 minute sail across the map from you. Everyone can stay on the server they start, PvE crews are free from instant Reaper 5's UAVing them as they spawn in (hopping removed), PvP crews no longer have to strive for 100% stealth sight unseen from 3 islands away until they are on top of the other ship (red sea no longer allows you to reach the despawn wall to push loot outside of it), and Reapers no longer have to sink emissary ships and then raise the flag and do PvE to up-level before selling to be efficient at hunting emissary ships (Reaper visbility removed until grade 5). Equal battleground for all.

@kommodoreyenser Yeah I'm fine with your suggested changes as long as it removes hopping in all forms. It's degraded the game in many ways.

Server hopping shouldn't be allowed at all. The whole point of the game was to be aware of your surroundings, if you spotted someone, you then had time to prepare. With server hopping, players have the ability to sometimes warp right next to you. Players on islands in the spawn area no longer have a choice if they are attacked. It used to be that if a mistake was made in this game one could blame it on themselves, one could always find ways to improve and be better, ready for the next fight. With this mechanic, that goes out the window. One can scout the horizon a minute in, determine that it is clear to continue working on whatever, and then out of nowhere get attacked by another ship that could not have possible approached slowly from the horizon unless they had immediately been thrown right into the other player's proximity without warning. Reapers liability of "Always seen on the map" becomes useless as one would never see a reaper that jumped right into the middle of the game full of resources, going full speed ahead with all sails down. People here would have one believe that server hopping isn't significant in effect to the game, that's not true, they would just rather protect a mechanic that they themselves take advantage of to circumvent the game's design. The fact that the devs allow this means that they either don't know how to place counter defenses to this circumstance or are in agreement to allowing players circumvent the game in order to take advantage of the design as well as other players. Unlike sword dash leap, which is something immediately available to everyone, portal hopping requires that a player sets up the tale first to activate the portal. It is an unfair advantage to those who don't use it and much more to those who either don't know about it or are new to the game. Don't get me wrong, if you wish not to remove this mechanic, then specifically define server spawning points on the edges of the map, or at a given outpost without any emissary rank, treasure, or resources gained throughout. The natural server switch done in game functions only to move players to more active servers to keep the game moving, else players would be stuck in an empty server with no option for other player interaction. This "hopping" mechanic, however, does not function to do this, it only serves to help them pounce on victims who some will have no control of how they are approached as chances are that it would be too late to move their ship. If Rare really wanted better server merges, they would simply improve their current system as it would mean they do not trust in it to continue refreshing or cycling players through empty servers. To approve of such a mechanic as is, would be in agreement to the same people that have continued to support or take advantage of other game mechanics such as Red Sea treasure dumping.

Very simple solution. Tell the user that if they cancel the Tall Tale then their emissary status will be erased. Force the user to complete the entire tall tale if they want to carry over to a new Sea with their emissary status in tact. Portal hopping should reset the user back to square one, just like everyone else on the server that had to start from square one when they awoke in a tavern.

I figure I'll post this here since allegedly the Mega Threads get the most dev attention compared to regular feedback/suggestion posts. I'm very much in support of getting rid of emissaried portal hopping. I believe that it is generally bad for the Emissary system and overall health of the game. HOWEVER, I do believe that a change to it would need to be accompanied by some other changes to the Emissary system as it pertains to Reaper visibility on the map.

As it stands, it is WAY too easy for players to choose the "safest" server to do their voyaging as an Emissary. People switching servers before setting off when they see a Reaper is why we're at where we're at. It's why we have Reapers justifying the portal hopping. People complain about Reapers all the time for various reasons...yet when they're trying to do their emissary ledgers, they'll hop as many servers as they have to in order to find one without a Reaper on it. They're perpetuating the problem because it's enabled. Same as Reapers are perpetuating the problem with portal hopping....because it's been enabled. In reality, they're both the problem.

Here's my idea. I've suggested it before so I'll just copy/paste it with a slight alteration...

-1) Get rid of the little ships on the Reaper emissary table at the outposts.
-2) Crews can only see a Reaper on their map if they are running an Emissary of any kind and are Grade 3 or higher. The logic here is that crews would be invested enough in a server that they'd at least consider continuing with their risk even if they end up seeing a Reaper on their map after they've hit Grade 3. Sure, some people would still immediately sell, lower, and abandon the server, but those are the folks that aren't going to fight anyways. At least with this, their rewards/time would be impacted accordingly.
-3) Grade 5 Reapers can only see ships on their map that are Grade 3 or higher. The logic here is to complement the above rule so that you don't have a tactical advantage on low grade emissaries.
-4) Reapers can only see other Reapers once they've achieved Grade 2 or higher.

All of these things together would make the risk/reward of emissaries on every server way more organic and high stakes.

Now...the only people that would be impacted by these changes would be the hop and pop Reaper hunters, which ironically are what most SOT partners are...but for the betterment of the game and the Emissary system, I feel these changes are appropriate.

@sweetsandman

I'm not that wild about the qualifications and fine print so to speak. SOT's brilliance comes from its simplicity to understand. Trying to explain that to a new player is going to be a "who on first?" type skit. Can it not be as simple as "Reapers cannot be seen on the map until grade 5"

The hiding of little ships is something I've seen you post before, and I really like that.

I also heard an idea that either originated from Pace22 or Summit, where you cant see any emissary on the map at all, unless you travel to Reapers hideout (as a Reaper emissary) and use a map table there, or Sea Dogs for the location of any Reapers on the map. Or something along those lines. This way any information is earned and not always at your fingertips, you may know the general area where a emissary of any faction is, but not the exact real time location so encounters can feel a little more organic.

@d3adst1ck I do agree about the radar mechanics, but as you say, that ship as sailed. However, I don't agree that seeing a ship on the map gives you any meaningful advantage unless said ship is absolutely clueless.

@scarecrow1771

While I sympathize a lot for new players coming into this game in its current state, I feel like a 30 second IN GAME tutorial video explaining how emissaries work and when you can see, and be seen by Reapers would more than cover the bases. Make it an available to watch video at every emissary table, but a mandatory watch the first time you unlock/buy emissary capabilities. Simple.

Having to get to Grade 5 before being able to see Reapers (if that's what you're suggesting) would feel like a PvP buff since Reapers could have tracking on other ships before they have tracking on them. While I'm fine with that as a PvP player, it would be imbalanced.

Pace and Summit's suggestion would, again, feel like more of a PvP buff. It would create a scenario where the hunter has a huge advantage.

IMO, the hunter and hunted need to have visibility simultaneously. The current portal system creates that...except only one party knows the exact moment to check their map, and why I feel it's flawed.

Creating a system like I suggested, where the PvE players have an opportunity to make an educated decision on their commitment to the server and the emissary rewards (being Grade 3 and probably halfway through a voyage). And the Grade 5 Reapers have an opportunity to hunt Grade 3+ emissaries who are either in route to an outpost, or were willing to take the risks of remaining on the server.

Ultimately, I'm fine with any of the suggestions we've discussed. But the current Emissaried portal hopping system undermines the risk/reward mechanics of Emissaries by allowing anyone to head to a safer (or spicier) server, without having to take any of the risks of leveling up their Emissary and having that little target on their mast.

@d3adst1ck You still have to close the distance, they will still see you and react, exactly like they would to any other ship. You can make educated guesses sure, that will do very little to help you when its time to man the cannons.

@s0nicbob said in [Mega Thread] - Tunnels of the Damned Migration:

However, we recognise that there are many differing opinions on this topic, and we will continue to monitor both your feedback and how players are using this feature.

We will continue to assess how this feature impacts the overall play experience and may make adjustments in the future to ensure an enjoyable Sea of Thieves experience for all.

It's been over 10 months now.

Are there any updates from the dev team on what this monitoring and assessing has yielded? And if we are any closer to a final determination on the feature?

@s0nicbob
Reaper mechanics are broken.
Portal hopping is broken.

I literally just got to G5 GH. Been watching the map, nothing on the horizon. Soon as I get to grade 5, there is a grade 5 reaper on my tail.
He didnt exist before, well hit outpost sell good stuff and drop my flag.

Reapers should only be able to see grade fives as a perk for reaching 5. The idea that the entire map and everyone running emms in it becomes available is just insanity, flat out unfair.
The only reason portal hopping is a "Mechanic" is because reapers run out of people to dumpster on the server. So they head to a new one.
I mean is this crying?
Is this maulding?
I and so many others I know agree, is fudged up and broken as hail.
If your a reaper "main" of course you probably dont agree with me and have your own logic and justification. That's fine.
But the benefits to flying a reaper are literally "you are a hungry lion that knows exactly where every Gazelle is grazing on the savanna". That's not balance.
Then there is this "Exploit/mechanic?" that allows you to find another savanna when all the prey is gone. Then, You still get to know where all of the new gazelles are at.
The cringiest part is hearing every reaper main content creator crying about "how little" Rare does to cater to PvP.
You literally have ESP and teleport.
If Rare didnt put this in the game these are the type of mods I would expect to see on Nexus.

The one thing I can say, and my crew has discussed it as well:
Reaper seems like the only thing to do once everything else has been done to death and we own everything in the game. So this is the truth for some, for those I get it. But there are literally those people who jump in to Sea Of Thieves for the thrill of bullying.
In PvP versus most everyone else "I punch like a girl" I'm old, my nerves are bad I have gamer tourettes.
If I'm solo fighting is my last option.
I have been a legend for a while, I got jumped one time and the dude that killed me literally said "Legend huh, how'd that happen?" Hilarious. But, It happened because I'm smarter than you. There are ways to play and sail that can bring me the "W" without having to be better at PvP and that way involves me turning all my loot in and not sending it into the red. I mean, the PvP playbook is a really small one. PvPirates are predictable but friggin nasty and dangerous. If you can get them to stop jumping like cra c k heads you might come out on top.
Thats all fine and dandy, get gud or get sunk.
But the idea that they have Developer sponsored hacks disguised as mechanics sucks.
Say what you want, reapers should have to find you with no clue you even exist and they definitely shouldn't be able to teleport to another plane of existence at will.
(Oh but anyone can portal hop) we shouldn't be able to and PvE'ers dont have a reason to unless they are doing pirates life.

@capn-mcquacken
The emissary system is risk vs. reward. When you put up that flag, you accept the risk that a Reaper could drop on you at any time. You just want to be an emissary without the risk... if you want to stop being hunted by Reapers, stop asking Rare to step in and change things for you. Just don't raise the emissary flag.

It's said so much on the forums, but it's so true. Only carry on your ship what you're willing to lose. If you have a whole Grade 5 haul that you lost, that's also your fault because you hadn't sold earlier. "But you don't sell until you are Grade 5!" Just another risk of being an emissary. You take a gamble every minute that you aren't selling, and waiting to get to Grade 5 is just greed getting in the way of fear.
If you don't want to get sunk with all of your loot, don't raise an emissary and/or sell often.

Making Reapers only see Grade 5 emissaries would serve to make their G5 ability useless, because most G5 ships only stay that way for long enough to sell. Not much time for a Reaper to do anything.

You seem to be mad for getting sunk by Reapers and then want portal hopping removed so it doesn't happen as often. What are you trying to do? Reduce your risk while keeping the same payout. What are PvE server advocates trying to do? Eliminate risk while keeping the same payout. You're not doing the same thing, but it's the same sentiment and one that shouldn't and hasn't been catered to by the developers.

What portal hopping does for Sea of Thieves is help inject more risk for emissaries. This is a good thing, because if PvP didn't exist at all, the loot and game would be meaningless. So, the more PvP, the more actual value there is for loot, because selling loot means that you probably had to evade or engage in PvP.
Just look at Athena's Fortune level 30. The fastest way to get to 30 is Legend of the Veil voyages, but doing those voyages brings in a higher risk of PvP. Which means that a high level in Athena's Fortune represents a player who must overcome hardships more often.

Injecting more risk for emissaries is also important in a game where there is a 5 ship cap and a player limit. Meaning, in an average server there is less chance for PvP because there are less ships, and also servers are mostly solo sloops because of the player limit. In a game with servers like this, portal hopping is needed to continue to inject danger, and reduce the number of "natural PvE servers."

@s0nicbob

However, we recognise that there are many differing opinions on this topic, and we will continue to monitor both your feedback and how players are using this feature.

We will continue to assess how this feature impacts the overall play experience and may make adjustments in the future to ensure an enjoyable Sea of Thieves experience for all.

It's been over 10 months now.

Are there any updates from the dev team on what this monitoring and assessing has yielded? And if we are any closer to a final determination on the feature?

I keep hoping to come back into this Mega Thread and see some sort of update from the devs. Hopefully over a year worth of data and feedback has provided the clarity needed to make a decision and wrap up this Mega Thread.

First, let me clarify something that kept frustrating me as I was reading this thread. I saw a lot of the defenders of portal hopping making a very big assumption about the argument that crews now have to be extra careful since a G5 Reaper can appear at any time now. Nobody (well, nobody reasonable) is saying that all reapers are hopping. Nobody is saying that portal hopping is affecting everyone everywhere all the time. "It can happen to anyone at any time" and "It happens to everyone all the time" are two different sentences whose meanings are being conflated.

Something can be a problem without being such a massive problem that it's observed by everyone. We wouldn't use this logic for hackers in, say, Counter Strike. We wouldn't tell players that hacking is okay since not that many people (relatively) are hacking, and encountering a hacker in a match is (relatively) uncommon. We would still call out the problem that is hacking. People are doing the same here with Portal Hopping. It's not happening to everyone, and not everyone is having a G5 reaper spawn on top of them. But it still sucks when it does happen. That's the whole point of contention.

THAT BEING SAID, my thoughts are along the same lines as @sweetsandman

Portal Hopping is only a problem because of the way the Emissary system works. Reapers are designed to hunt other Emissaries, and are balanced out by being visible for everyone since they're designed to be a PvP faction. However, that falls flat for the following reasons:

• Reapers can turn a profit on PvE, probably more easily than they can on PvP. Which is fine - you have options, especially since you're not always dealt a good hand.
• The presence of a Reaper on the map discourages people from raising Emissary flags, especially higher value flags like Athena flags.
• Reapers are visible to everyone, which means any default sloop with default gear and nothing to lose can hunt them down.
• A G5 Reaper can see all emissaries, but said Emissaries are going to be few and far between. Which, again, is fine. People are free to lower their flags or just not sail Emissary if they don't want to be a target.
• Once a G5 Reaper has sunk every emissary on their map, there's no benefit to staying a Reaper. Where a normal Emissary can just lower their flag and raise it again to grind for a new G5 bonus, reapers don't have that option without waiting for potentially hours for other players to raise Emissary flags. Their only "reset" option is to hop servers until they find one with more Emissaries.
• A reaper typically won't have loot on their ship when hunting other ships. Sinking a Reaper who attacked you gives you the grand reward of... an inconvenience during your journey, and an extra trip to Reaper's Hideout to redeem a flag that's worth at most 10.5k assuming it's G5. Their risk is therefore lower than a PvE emissary's risk.

This leaves us two solutions. The first solution is to reset Emissary flags to Grade 1 on a portal hop. This serves as the "reset" for reapers who would then grind their way back up to G5. They still benefit from having all of their supplies, rather than having to reset their supplies by leaving the game and joining a new server. It also entirely solves the problem of G5 reapers joining a server and winding up within a short sailing distance of an unsuspecting emissary. Yes, it would still be possible that the G1 reaper would wind up near an unsuspecting emissary, but they now don't have the advantage of knowing where that emissary is. That's the only difference. People's only problem with portal hopping is that a G5 reaper immediately knows where they are, and it's even worse if they portal in near an emissary.

The other is to rework the Reapers entirely, which would make Portal Hopping a more irrelevant strategy. Here are my thoughts on that:

• Make them visible only to Emissaries until the Reaper reaches G5. At G5, they are visible to everyone. This eliminates the problem of players seeing a reaper on the map and deciding not to raise an Emissary flag (or deciding to hop servers to a safer server). There is now a new time investment to allow you to see where the reapers are. Players can still see that a reaper is present on the server using the Emissary table, but they cannot see where the reaper is. Non-emissaries now have to rely on predicting where the reaper would be, just like Reapers have to do for emissaries before reaching G5. It also incentivizes raising an Emissary flag if you truly want to hunt a reaper, forcing you to put at least some skin in the game.
• Allow players to sell Reaper Emissary flags to the Trading Companies. I'm kind of shocked that this isn't already the case. Right now if I'm sailing Emissary and I sink a reaper, my only prize is usually a trip to Reaper's Hideaway to redeem a flag that's worth less than the the loot I have on board after even only a couple of islands. I get that this means Reapers would have a harder time preventing their flag from being redeemed, but since Reapers usually aren't risking anything more than their flag and supplies when attacking another ship, I don't see the issue here. This also further incentivizes Emissaries to keep their flags up. Sinking a reaper is suddenly a lot more worthwhile if I can get 25k gold from their flag with my G5 emissary.
• Find more ways to incentivize flying an emissary flag even when reapers are around. More reasons to raise or stay an Emissary while a reaper's around means more targets for reapers and a healthier ecosystem. I don't really have ideas for this one, but others might.
• Don't punish reapers for being unable to find emissaries. The rep gain for non-flag loot is ridiculously low. I get it - reapers were designed to be emissary hunters. But that's not really happening, is it? With emissaries lowering their flags as soon as a reaper hits G5, and some even lowering as soon as a reaper enters the board, reapers have to rely on loot. Right now it's something like 0.25x for non-Athena, and 0.5x for Athena loot. With rates like that, it's no wonder Reapers are upset when they reach G5 and have no emissaries to hunt. Increase the rep gain rates for stolen treasure, while also increasing the rep gain for emissary flags. Make an Emissary flag a bonus rather than an absolute necessity at higher levels.

@meltedbutta Portal Hopping is bad for only pve players.

RARE should ask players if they want to play with sick experimented kids or they want a peaceful play with the game.

Bullying should not be allowed by RARE. Rare, please do not protect the aggressors.

@capn-mcquacken RARE, stop the BULLYING, the pve players are tired of the pvp nasty players.

We don't want to fight the reapers, we want peace, not war.