As always, there is a divide between those of us who want a better PvE option and those who, for some reason, think this game would die without PvP (hint, it won't).
I think that instead of going the route they did with safer seas, they should have used a flagging system, similar to what a lot of large MMORPGs have. Want to play PvP? Fine. Go get yourself flagged. But you cannot interact with a crew that is not flagged for PvP. If a non-flagged crew interacts with you, then they will be flagged as well and y'all can duke it out. It's not a hard system to navigate and it would make much more sense than what they attempted to do with safer seas. I say this because safer seas is severely unbalanced for what it is, and no, I'm not talking about the rep/loot gain limitations. I don't mind grinding for hours to achieve my goals. What I do mind is this senseless notion that people are lesser for wanting to be able to enjoy the full game experience without being harassed by others. Y'all enjoy PvP and that's okay, however not everyone else does.
"PvE only ruins the game" - No, it doesn't. There's plenty to do in the game that has absolutely nothing to do with PvP actually. You have commendations, tall tales, fishing, voyages, fortresses, shrines, meg hunting, kraken hunting, all kinds of things. PvP on the other hand can ruin a lot of people's experiences when they're trying to focus on any of the things listed prior and they have to start over from scratch because someone else decided it would be funny to sink their ship and take their quest items or hard earned fish. It has happened many times before, I'm not the first person to bring it up and I won't be the last.
The reason I think the flagging system would work better for this game is because with that system in place, we wouldn't need things like Safer Seas, but people could still choose that if they don't want to risk accidentally flagging themselves. Just like how people who want PvP can easily use the hourglass function if they are craving a fight so badly. And it isn't like you'll always have an issue where only one person on a server is flagged- They could make it so any interaction with a reaper ship auto flags you for so much time, and every interaction with a flagged ship or crew member will reset your flag timer.
To those of you who think that we are wanting a "baby mode" by making it harder for PvP players to target us, my question to you is why can you not go and get your own treasure? Is it that hard for you? Again, if you just enjoy PvP, great! But don't get mad when those of us who don't enjoy your random episode of "I spy a ship, I'm gonna go attack it" say that we don't want to be randomly attacked. If you want to enjoy the PvP aspects, you're not alone. There would be many others flagged on a server, you can fight to your heart's content. Those of us who remain unflagged just wouldn't have to worry about losing all our progress mid-whatever it is we're doing.
I say this as a person who has been playing only on Safer Seas since it dropped. I enjoy safe seas, to a certain extent. It's extremely buggy like the rest of the game, and I really wish they would focus on fixing all their persisting issues instead of making new cosmetics every other week, but I digress. This is just my opinion on how they could have gone about making a better PvP inclusive experience in a PvE game. "SoT is a PvP game" the base game is PvE, the PvP is just accessories, and they could use some redesigning.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
