How to fix Sea of Thieves instead of watching it die.
CHANGES TO BOTH SEAS:
(1) Remove diving to voyages and events. Although it is very convenient it gives too much power to players, ruins plenty of tucks, crews can literally dive to a new server to a specific area of the map whilst retaining all of their supplies and emissary flag/grade. It negatively affects the chances of being able to commit piracy in a pirate game. It was a step too far.
(2) Scale PvE difficulty to the average reputation level of the pirates in a crew. And when I say PvE difficulty I don’t just mean their hp. I also mean their movement speed, reaction time, accuracy and lethality. The hp of all the bosses is currently way too low though for all crew sizes. Veteran players deserve more challenging PvE that tests all of their skills including movement, cover, healing, accuracy, helming, repair prioritization etc. Events and bosses should feel suspenseful, challenging and dangerous.
(3) Add more randomness to the treasure you get from doing voyages and increase the average time spent per island so that less time is spent sailing from island to island after spending all of 5 minutes digging up three treasures or collecting three animals etc. It’s not as fun to know exactly what chest you’re going to dig up or what skull will drop. It would be better if there was a range of possibilities of desirable treasures up to a small chance of getting the most rare and valuable treasure for a particular company from a regular voyage.
(4) Bug fixes and game performance improvements.
CHANGES TO SAFER SEAS:
(1) No reputation caps.
(2) All PvE content is available to play.
(3) Captaincy is available.
(4) Sailing for a guild is possible.
(5) The host of a safer seas session can add/remove additional ships and invite/kick additional players up to the maximum amount a server can support.
(6) Most live events can be progressed and completed and any bonuses can be had.
RESTRICTIONS TO KEEP IN SAFER SEAS:
(1) No emissary flags can be raised which also means no emissary multipliers or ledger can be earned. So safer seas players can get 1x plus any event bonuses while high seas players can get up to 2.5x plus any event bonuses. More risk, more potential reward.
(2) No allegiance can be earned. Want to unlock those cool curses that let you be a skeleton or a phantom? Well you’ve got to sail the high seas to be able to earn allegiance but don’t worry if you tried hourglass and didn’t enjoy it. I have a suggestion below that will allow players to earn allegiance outside of hourglass for doing PvP on the high seas.
(3) The commendations relating to the Skull of Siren Song competitive voyage, Burning Blade world event and Fate of Fortune cosmetic set are unavailable to progress in safer seas. So if you want to earn the latest and greatest cosmetics you will have to test your luck with the content on the high seas. But safer seas players can still do the content for fun or to see how it works or to earn reputation/gold etc.
CHANGES TO HIGH SEAS:
(1) World events have better rewards both in quantity & quality and it scales based on how many crews are actively doing the event. World events need to feel challenging and rewarding. And how cool would it be if Rare further incentivized cooperation by changing the static rewards for completing events to dynamic rewards based on the number of crews working together and actively doing the event. This would apply to all events big and small including sea forts, skeleton camps, treasuries and all world events.
(2) The loot that spawns after completing a world event is based on the emissary flag(s) or lack thereof of the crew or crews that were actively doing the event. Crews without an emissary flag would get a mixture of the three main trading companies Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls and Merchant Alliance. Crews with an emissary flag would get loot that corresponds with the company they represent similarly to how raid voyages function now.
(3) Before setting sail for the high seas all crews will see a prompt asking them to choose a side to represent: Athena’s Fortune or Reaper’s Bones. Please note this is not the same as opt-ing in to hourglass and will not cause your crew to be invaded by enemy crews.
Any crew who wishes to represent Athena’s Fortune will not be permitted to raise a Reaper’s Bones emissary flag during that session.
Any crew who wishes to represent the Reaper’s Bones will not be permitted to raise any emissary flag other than Reaper’s Bones or a Guild emissary flag during that session.
Any action related to PvP including damaging a player ship, sinking a player ship, damaging a player, killing a player, turning in stolen treasure, hiding on a player ship, etc. will earn allegiance to the faction your crew chose to represent before you started the session. Finally players can earn allegiance outside of hourglass when sailing the high seas for participating in PvP. Finally PvP is directly incentivized and rewarded in adventure mode outside of hourglass.
(4) If your ship sinks AND you or one or more of your crew mates die, as soon as you or a crew mate enters the door on the Ferry of the Damned the entire crew merges to a new server. Therefore once a crew’s ship is sunk that entire crew has one life only - no respawns are available. This is intentional as to not ruin the ability for players to attempt a tuck play on an enemy crew’s ship.
Plain, simple and fair for everyone. This makes abandoning your ship for any reason (board attempt, tucking, etc.) that much more risky. Crews must protect their ship from sinking if they want the ability to respawn after dying and still be on the same high seas server.
GOALS:
(1) Make Sea of Thieves a game for everyone to enjoy regardless of whether or not you enjoy PvP. How it should have been all along. The gaming market is highly saturated. You cannot force people to like or do something they don’t enjoy. Players must desire to improve at PvP on their own and slowly get better as they put in the time. Players who do not want to get better at PvP who do not enjoy PvP will stop playing Sea of Thieves after X number of sinks/losses. People who work one or more jobs may not have a lot of free time. Losing progress when you have extremely limited free time is simply not acceptable. Players like I am describing have money to help support the ongoing development of the game if Rare would support the experience they want during the limited free time they have to enjoy playing Sea of Thieves.
(2) Servers shouldn’t be airports and crews shouldn’t be able to switch servers on demand outside of diving for an hourglass match or if their ship sinks which means they leave behind all treasure, supplies and emissary flag. With PvE diving crews are much less invested in a single server and frequently dive to a new server for a variety of reasons including to avoid PvP. The number of “juicy” servers and the number of crews stacking loot has significantly decreased as a result.
(3) The PvE difficulty is currently way too easy for veteran players but new players still struggle. I would go as far as to say it is mindlessly easy and the bosses feel extremely weak and underwhelming. The only good solution I see is having the PvE difficulty scale for each crew based on metrics that are intended to determine an approximation of the skill level of any given crew.
(4) Cooperation should be encouraged and it will be if high seas world event rewards scaled to the number of crews actively doing the event. Maybe the crews disperse the treasure evenly between them or maybe an epic battle begins so one crew gets to claim it all for themselves.
(5) PvP should be encouraged and it will be if players can earn allegiance outside of hourglass for doing actions relating to PvP when sailing the high seas. Right now the only way to earn allegiance is to play hourglass and although hourglass is fun it is very competitive and repetitive whereas adventure mode is more random and unpredictable. Players should be able to earn allegiance outside of hourglass if they participate in high seas PvP.
(6) Crews sailing the high seas that get sunk and killed should accept defeat and they will when they merge to a new server. Sinking should be consequential. An entire crew abandoning their ship should be a risky endeavor. This should help reduce board spam and make whole crew tuck plays more risky. Sinking a crew’s ship and killing the crew will (most likely) eliminate the possibility of having to fight the same crew again unless they get lucky and are able to menu hop to the same server in time and find you again before you can sell your spoils (unlikely).
