Thoughts on Season 16

All contrived combat in adventure has flopped pretty bad overall.

In recent seasons the loop is

Released with major exploits
regs exploit it
maybe it gets rolled back or maybe it doesn't but either way it wrecks momentum

then they patch it based on social media outrage rather than the organic experience and it kills off the rest of the momentum shortly after

These pvp voyages need to be something entirely different than they have done before or it'll be more cheesing, exploiting, spite plays, and lack of organic interest, like the rest.

I really don't even know why they keep doing the contrived pvp route, even many pvpers will tell you how quickly it falls off in SoT.

The fof with a cof has done better at maintaining organic pvp than all of their other stuff that is trying to force it.

The condition of pvp in this game makes it less and less likely that people engage in "pvp voyages" as intended.

Keeping a cof in a fof, keeping it out of the fotd, and adding it one or two other ways would keep a season more consistent than any reaper fight season.

@fysics3037 said in Thoughts on Season 16:

@wolfmanbush I've outlined the issue with PvPvE content and PvP before, well before S13 even came out. It just doesn't seem like something they're keen on improving with or maybe something they don't care about 🤷‍♂️ I mean SoSS and BB failed in the exact same areas that I've outlined before. And balance changes have been made that fail in the same ways I warned about. Idk I'm not necessarily hopeful for any groundbreaking improvements to SoT with S16. The content could work well if they implemented it properly, but it just seems unlikely. Anything I say now is too late to have any impact on S16, so I'm just gonna wait and see ig.

So far they are marketing it similar to how they did with Hg.

Acting like there was some giant base waiting around for 1v1 combat with no adventure that they "worked closely with the partners" to create. There was no organic interest or call for that.

Hype building for "pvp reaper voyages" isn't that far off from the above.

There are far more people in this game that will literally leave a server with a reaper on the map than there are people that are going to go through some reaper pvp voyage as it is designed.

I think the real issue is that they create fomo, they get the same ole group of regs to "get it done", and then they see those numbers as some sort of success, but it entirely misses whether something is fun or not, whether it's organically viable and enjoyable or not, and whether or not there was any organic interest to begin with.

Maybe this surprises me and doesn't repeat history, but this is a game full of repeated history. I'd love for it to be something that people enjoy doing.

So far, a lot of people are gonna hear what has been said and start throwing around "skippable season/content" in their mind.

If it's actually something good for organic play I'd strongly consider marketing it different and give some more details before people just tune it out. Don't market this to twitter and forum/discord regs, market it to the true majority if it's any good.

@fysics3037 said in Thoughts on Season 16:

@wolfmanbush I said this before but FPS is by in large the biggest audience of potential players for SoT

I think we are more in uncharted waters imo.

The game has gone the distance for what it is, major success story but it's also so back and forth as it tries to have its cake and eat it too, that I really don't even know who they are are truly trying to appeal to anymore. Anyone and everyone I guess, but in that, less and less groups feel satisfied with the overall direction/focus/priorities.

We don't really have anything to compare it to, it's a pioneer in modern live service adventure gaming imo.

We also don't really know anything about their internal retention goals. To us as players we think hundreds or thousands of hours and all of this long term SoTing that many of us have done. For all we know 60 hours and a couple of shipsets purchased is their goal. It's just a lot of inconsistency and back and forth so it's tough to gauge a lot of things.

Everything since season 7 has just been all over the place, imo.

@wolfmanbush @Fysics3037 I will tell you more, because I want them to Hourglass also updated or come up with something new to be interesting to play, and not wait and fear when there will be another cheater who will destroy everything for you or pro player who will easy kill you away in no time. And it is not clear whether it will be a balance between regular players and pro players to filter those who can be released on the battle. The problem of the clock is the monotony of battles, where in fact there is nothing but fights on the ships and can be varied in terms of the battles themselves whether it is in search of loot as in the Arena or to act in defense in some fort. Blazing Blade it is certainly good, I have tested it many times in the insider version but the problem is that not so many people want to interact with it and of course I can understand why they made it a world event, because if it was like in the skull of the sirens player on the ship would take down the server or something else

@letifer7533 said in Thoughts on Season 16:

@wolfmanbush Blazing Blade it is certainly good, I have tested it many times in the insider version but the problem is that not so many people want to interact with it

Burning blade isn't good and is a recent example of how they are once again disconnected from the organic experience of the game.

It's a "pvp boat" that is generally terrible for adventure pvp, which is why so few skilled pvpers choose to captain it.

They designed their "pvp boat" to be a PVE boat that defends, added comms that in no way support organic activity, and then started treating it like a pvp offense boat by patching reaper's hideout like they did.

They made a server hog that pvpers avoid, and most pvers avoid, and as usual the server hoppers win in the end because of the patch they did. BB is very much not good pvp content. It's lore content that people largely avoid. Likely will be the same with "reaper pvp voyages"

They abandoned siren song so quickly that it just became a full time exploit for people that want to manipulate their spawns. This did a lot more harm then many realize. Close respawns are AWFUL for adventure risk/reward pvp. It's bad enough that they have people popping up all over the place, right next to boats now, because of all of the diving that happens.

People were uninterested in HG from the beginning. It only kept players that got caught up in extreme fomo.

They don't make good contrived pvp, good adventure content makes good organic pvp. It has always been that way in adventure.

@wolfmanbush this is not to mention the same mission at Athens, which can be treated as a Toll Tales, and this mission is one of the few that is interesting to pass and feels like a breath of fresh air in particular for Athens, since except for PvP there is nothing better for them to pump, unless it is not raids-travel, and for them little lacked than the Reapers

@letifer7533

I miss season 10. It was a lot simpler.

@xdragonman15558 every player of the game has their favorite updates and seasons, that for me my favorites are: Pirate Life, season 8 and season 13, now waiting for season 16 it's really interesting how it's all going to be

This is by far the worst Season — and I’ve been playing since Season 3.

It’s become painfully clear that the devs are either not listening to player feedback or are heavily favoring a small group of veteran PvP players.

Right now, the game feels 100% PvP. Reapers can hit level 5 in no time, and it doesn’t matter what you're doing — you’ll appear on their map regardless. You’re always being hunted by a Galleon. And the worst part? The rewards from Reaper quests can only be cashed in at the Hideout, which is constantly camped by other players.

If you’re sailing solo on a Sloop, forget about enjoying this season.
You’ll do one mission, then spend the rest of your session running from 4-player crews.
And dont give me the "Sloop is faster against the wind". I know that, but sooner or later I have to turn, and then the Galleon catches up since it has 4 sailors.

I get that PvP is part of Sea of Thieves — and that’s fine. But it was supposed to be a part of the experience, not the entire game. Right now, PvE play is practically pointless.