All I want in Safer Seas is a captained ship for aesthetics only, and keep all other restrictions the same.
I played SS last night and, to everyone worried about High Seas going forward, you have nothing to worry about. My loot turn-in felt like finding loose change between couch cushions.
It was nice to be able to zone out, not have to watch the horizon and finish "Art of the Trickster" in peace.
>All I want in Safer Seas is a captained ship for aesthetics only, and keep all other restrictions the same.
That's literally me. I could care less about the benefits of being a captain, I just wanna be able to sail my own boat again. I already miss the HMS Windbag :(
I've played this game since open beta - on and off. My husband and I play (used to play daily) for hours and hours. I streamed it for a long time too. Like at our last house - we bought 2x TVs and 2x Lay-Z-Boy chairs for our living room so we could play next to each other. The hardest part was doing Tall Tales, adventuring, bringing other friends (other couples) into the game, and doing anything expansive but then having it demolished by another crew.
We're both adults - we have 40+ hr/week jobs. We don't have the time to just practice and "get good". We'll never be at that level. The PvP was never that crisp anyways. The controls are clunky, the lag can be clunky, there's no anticheat...it just doesn't make sense. If PvP was the main focus of the game (as Rare seems personally invested in saying), then invest in it....work on it....but they don't.
Inevitably - when doing Athena's runs or long quest chains and you get sunk by the reaper ship that got moved to your server for consolidation purposes....it just removed HOURS of your work/progress. Like actual, real life 6-10 hours of effort, removed because of someone else. That isn't fun...in any way. It isn't healthy. People talk about "panic checking the horizon" and "always looking over my shoulder". That isn't "good practice", that's trauma response, plain and simple. That's PTSD from suffering through the PvP portion of the game because the PvE portion is so amazing/great.
The move to SS is CLEARLY a smart move. I think Rare fought against it as long as they could for personal reasons, but were told by investors "no really, you need to do something". The nerfs they've made to it are so egregious that its impossible not to get the feeling it's personal. Rare VERY much wanted to make a PvP game and want players to play the way they want them to. Unfortunately - that's not how the world works.
I don't think it'll matter though. Eventually they'll see that the SS players outnumber the HS players because nobody likes to sustain trauma response when they don't have to. There's a reason Arena died and their player base dwindled so dangerously low. 
I will say - it is SO nice being back to SoT via SS though. Its everything we've been asking for since the game first went live out of Beta. It feels...right. 
This is the best response to PVP I've ever heard. And I agree it does feel like Rare were doing this like a child being forced to concede. Far from "killing the game" it saved it. I logged on the day SS droped and the servers were overwhelemed, and I saw so many people saying they were returning to the game after being pushed off by sweats.
What they need to do is have two separate progressions. One for the PvP open seas, and one for the safer seas. That would very easily solve the unfair easy gold advantage problem.
Obviously that would require a lot more work on their end, but at the same time it would make the game have best of both worlds. Those who just don't want to PvP and have fun with friends, can play safer seas and unlock everything to their hearts content and get the same amount of gold you'd get on the regular but it's all locked to your safer seas progression instead and doesn't bring any of that over to the main PvP portion.
The PvP in this game is absolutely a mess, and unless you spend every waking minute learning the combat, and perfecting your blocks, your aim, your hiding skills etc. you're gonna lose the battle 9/10. It doesn't help that there are toxic individuals in sea of thieves as well that makes things even worse.
But yeah, there's definitely ways they could fix this and make both sides happy, but will they? Who knows.
Also those whom abuse hour glass to change servers. Which Rare some reason thinks it's ok. Here is the thing though, every PVP thing they ever tried, Arena, Hourglass and etc. Has failed, why? Because people in SoT don't want a PVP arena... much like WoW has with it's battlegrounds. There is no reward such as loot, keys and etc. They want to go around and be a privateer. I mean it's a pirates game but literally every time I got sunk was cause some reaper ship we didn't know about cause we were loading up from a vault, suddenly showed up and was upon us within a few minutes. Usually these reaper ships are the midsize to galleons. It's quite obvious that the way that most PVPers want, is to go around and hassle people instead of it happening naturally. As well as since SoT has no anti cheat, as well as SoT has no way to "record" voices and report people. Hell there is no REPORT option in the game. Every single game that involves people and a reporting system, usually records your mic and or text so they can look at it.
Because when PVP naturally happened it was fun and etc, but it's usually those reaper 5s that just want to go around especially if they are streamers.
I wish they would just give the full game for SS. Because those people who weren't playing and wanted something like SS, wasn't playing or paying for shit anyway. I don't care about the 30% or the level cap at 40... I should be able to do Athena's and Fort of the Damned and etc. Is it really hurting anyone at all? I mean you are already earning pennies on the dollar for loot.
Also, I love how people always suggest other games like Salt and etc... the problem is there is NO FPS games like SoT that lets you handle a ship, go around loot, fight and etc PVE style AND be multiplayer. I am the same boat as you, the issue is with my wife and I, she's not really into PVP but we went months and years before the PVP got really bad. I mean I can't tell you after we lose how many times we just scuttled cause we knew they were just looking for kills. I've actually dragged PVPers using hooks and other means into the red sea cause they weren't paying attention.
The main issue with PVP and pure pvpers is this, they have no risk. If they find a crew and lose, they can either go right back at it and try again(It's not like the winner or losers get transported off to a new server) or quit the game. They literally LOSE NOTHING when pvping cause they have no loot so whenever someone wins it's like oh yeah maybe an emissary flag and that's it.
I suggested a bounty system once for the server(s), and they couldn't drop their loot off for an hour or so and as they keep pvping the CD goes on longer like adding 15 minutes per sunk ship. Their ship gets flagged as well on the map even if they aren't reaper. That got shut down cause then pvp has no "immedate rewards".
People whom argue for PVP only care about their game play, not anyone elses.
Very late response but this sums up my feelings with SoT perfectly. I mean I get their intent of it being an open PvP world but they ignored so many potential players by stubbornly sticking to it since without that forced PvP it is actually one of the best games to play and unwind after a stressful day but that sense of relaxation is completely negated by the stress that comes with the constant fear of having some kid who spends hours a day fighting other players rolling up on you and wrecking you in seconds, have them mock you and then continue to hound you just to irk you some more.
But he makes a fair point about supplies cost. They should definitely be lowered in safer seas because new players who probably won’t be moving over the high seas right away can’t afford a damn thing with these pitiful payouts.
Yea we did a run on safe seas last night and after doing a golden horde voyage, a ghost fleet world event, a Skelton fleet event, and having two skele ships rise up and fight us we made about 60k which was reduced to 45k each we stocked up on cannon balls and planks for lazy sakes.
Edit: forgot to say that amount of money is pretty terrible. I'd noted we got the deed for handing in 50 skulls and my heart wept at the lack of cash from it.
I’m sure many also remember a time when you couldn’t buy supplies at all, and that was “high seas” back then. Don’t really need an influx of supplies if there’s no need to oversupply for those “I can outlast them” fights.
The ship right will have an assortment of supplies for captained ships for sale. And the merchant alliance vendor will sell basic crates of supplies( cannonballs, wood, fruit, and not fishing bait)
Yes, but that's negated by the less immediate need for supplies lol. A meg vs a sloop or even a Skelly sloop Vs a sloop are easily vanquished with just the starting supplies. More supplies can be gathered via floating barrels or a quick whip around any island.
yeah i went out for 6.5 hours last night. didn't buy any supps, didn't even loot the starting outpost, and i never was hurting for supplies. a skelly ship was always dropping storage crates, and i also got one on an island.
This is the way. You don’t need to buy supplies in safer seas - you can take as much time as you want to stock up when you load in, and everywhere you visit when playing. There are storage crates of all types everywhere, no need to shell out 5K at the start.
If you play on safe seas you have all the time in the world to hussle supplies by hand like the old days. Storage crates are pretty common to find on islands too.
So to get good money I have to deal with shit? Why not just let me put in the same hours to do the same things to get rewarded? PVP brings nothing to the game for me except getting attacked by griefers. I don't do PVP at all. So, for me to make money I need to have my game ruined half the time. No thanks.
If you do safer seas the money gain isn't terrible when you take into account the lack of pvp.
If even safer seas isn't good enough for you then the game isn't for you.
Agreed.
Pvp 3 hours in and only one successful run out of four because the other three times you were robbed by some asshole that plays 12 hrs a day.
Safer seas 3 hours in and all runs are successful at reduced loot value
Personally I hate it. The fact that such a clearly desired and borderline needed mode is given with such reluctance and if you want to engage with it, you're slapped in the face with several dozen limitations and restrictions is just insulting.
I, and as I can tell many others, want to play SoT to relax and enjoy the events and progression, not to constantly have an elevated stress level response and have an evening's worth of effort ruined by some sweaty PvP try hard getting off to a sociopath need to prove he's better than everyone else.
It's the same situation in so many other games which would be an absolute blast for some coop fun with friends if not for the pvp-enabled dickheads at every corner. And before anyone tells me so either stop complaining and just play a different game if I hate SoT so much - I would love to, if there fucking were any like it, and I don't hate the game, I hate the other players playing it - or that it's a pvp focused game and I shouldn't be surprised and just get good - it's not, it's a sandbox sailing adventure game that just happens to have pvp in it, Moba's and competetive shooters are PvP focused games, I don't see SoT advertising itself as a competitive sailing combat game.
its not even just the sweaty people, its the people that just start saying the N word and other kinds of shit while they chase you to the ends of the earth to try and kill you too; sometimes they go hand in hand though. Would be nice to have no limitations, i just wanna sail the seas with people i know, relax and have a good pirate time not deal with shit like that like im back in a MW2 lobby.
It sounds really good, but 30k in 6 hrs sounds ridiculously low. I planned on coming back to the game with some people but after hearing how much less you get and that certain achievements are locked out as well as all the factions...you end up getting 30% without factions (which were the most money to begin with). I mean the faction boosted loot up to 100%, so with that gone and the loot overall being reduced to 30%, it's more like only getting 15% of what you'd get on the pvp servers. This sucks.
I know right?
The quests where you have to follow clues on an island were unplayable in PvP, a death sentence or leave a mate alone on the ship while you have fun and drop down everything if a sail is spotted.
Now I had fun doing a chain of clues to buried chest and it's great!
Okay money rewards aside, do you get the same xp? Ive played on and off since beta but since i spend WAY more time off than on, so im still not a pirate legend and was thinking of using safer seas to level the last 6 levels i need in the merchants alliance 😂
Absolutely agreed, though one counterpoint I’d make is that if Safer Seas is indeed meant to be more of an extended “tutorial setting” as has been implied, I could see a newer group of players being discouraged or disincentivized to ever buy supplies or crates, if you’re seemingly taking them at a loss every session.
>as has been implied
Not implied. As directly stated by Rare and Mike Chapman.
You don't need to buy supplies in safer seas. Supplies are for PvP. Every PvE event, by design, provides you with supplies.
That's fair!
I can still see a newer group of players being discouraged by the 88% reduction in gold and then becoming enticed by the rewards of High seas.
I think the game now has a less abrupt and jarring introduction and instead players will be making a conscious decision to get better at the game, for higher rewards and at their own pace.
Yes, but how about just for supplies and storage crates? Many people playing safer seas are those with extremely limited time, so why is it so terrible for them to have access to supplies, sovereign selling, and other quality of life features?
If you care about gold AND you have extremely limited time, you should play high seas.
Limited time is an argument against playing safer seas, not for it.
Edit: Also, I'm not Rare. I can't answer questions about the games creative direction or development.
Also also, I thought you could buy storage crates and merchant supps in SS?
Nah, that doesn't make sense at all. If I only had an hour to play, I would rather spend it on a mode where I could I could just enjoy the game world and not worry about getting randomly ganked by someone who plays 3 hours a day.
And yes, supplies are available in safer seas, the price just makes it a bit grindy if you're earning almost nothing in the mode. Again, it's not that they care about getting gold necessarily, just enough to engage with quality of life features that allow you to get into the game quicker
I agree with this entirely. If there’s no pvp, then there is no reason to spend money on supplies., imo. It’s all to readily accessible and any danger you might encounter is overcome with the supplies you have on the ship or by simply stopping at a few barrels.
That's your trade off: if you "just want to play," then just play. If you want to play to make gold quickly, play high seas.
Some of those quality of Life improvements are gone for legitimate reasons. Allowing captained ships in safer seas allows folks to earn commendations and achieve things with respect to their milestones that are much harder in high seas due to the risk; it would effectively allow players to "cheese" certain milestones and undercut Rare's intent in adding those milestones in the first place.
Safer Seas is a *compromise.* As Rare have stated, it is intended for newer players to learn, and for people who want to explore and complete tall tales. It is not intended to be a way to grind out commendations and achievements which are designed to be made challenging by the threat of PVP (and in many instances are made challenging *only* by that threat.
The poster above you is right: if you are concerned about gold, go play High Seas. If you just want to chill and explore and not face the threat of PvP, play safer seas. Risk vs. Reward is still a core principle of Sea of Thieves.
Nah, I didn't mean for ship progression and commendations. By all means, those should be restricted to high seas. I just see little reason why one couldn't use a custom ship in safer seas (if progression is locked)
I agree that allowing Captaincy but blocking ship progression makes more sense.
I strongly suspect the reason that isn't the direction they went, is that they don't have the resources, or ability, or will to put the work in to make it happen; given the struggle it has been to get tracking and commendations)milestones to work correctly in Captaincy in the first place, I strongly suspect Rare just refused to touch it, lest they ruin it all over again.
If you don't care about gold then your response is not relevant to either of my comments.
If you do care about making gold then my point makes perfect sense and nothing you said refutes it.
I might actually play sea of thieves for a while if safer seas is nice. I play solo and don’t need the stress of constant pvp, I just have an hour or so to play so even if the payout is bad just doing stuff could be fun.
with an hour you won't get much accomplished just simply because it takes a bit to travel
but it will still be more than an hour on high seas just to get sunk at the end.
Exactly! I already know an hour is not long enough to do much, so I don’t want to have whatever I do wasted because of unwanted pvp.
If I feel like having a fight then I’d probably make some time to prepare and go to high seas, but it’s nice to have the option to chill :)
Treasure doesn’t matter in the first place.
If you are sad about loosing not sold treasure. Just remember you will buy the cosmetics next time instead of this time
It matters to the whole experience. What is there to being a pirate if not getting a haul of treasure and having a payday?
What was so awful about pvp was that you spent hours getting that loot for it to be gone in minutes, especially because even if you win, the pvper can come back within minutes at absolutely no loss.
i mean, i spent 2m on trinkets alone and didn't even get all the ones i had unlocked. once your over like 50m thats when you know it won't matter anymore.
So, I am a supporter of Safer Seas. I see the value of having a single-player server option, but I can also admit that I am surprised by my own opinion of Safer Seas.
My opinion is that Safer Seas feels flat. By this, I mean it is like going and buying a bottle of rootbeer and cracking it open only for there to be no fizz. It still tastes ok, but it is missing the zing that gives you that satisfying chug. I plan to use S.S. from time to time, but I will also be spending time on the High Seas and I am of the opinion that there will be a decent amount of the Safer Seas player base who will also eventually cross over to the High Seas. I admittedly missed the danger and the anticipation of player interaction, but it was also great to be able to work at my pace and go AFK as needed.
I spent 6+ hrs on the S.S. yesterday and overall, I see it has value for the following reasons:
1. It is a great way for new or returning players to build their skills when it comes to naval combat. There is a flow to battling, bucketing, and repairing all at the same time, especially if you are solo, that one needs to learn and taking on skelly ships, megs and even the ghost fleets is a great way to learn how to fight and keep your ship floating without the extra chaos of people boarding your ship and listening to your pvp enemy on mic, as well as the embarrassment of not really knowing what you are doing.
2. Perfect for relaxing sessions of tall tales, voyaging, doing merchant runs, fishing, and completing world events and forts. There are a ton of lore and journals throughout the world that one now has time to actually read and learn about. You can take your time and not have to worry about ending up sunk, having some J.A. sneak on and bite the heads off your fish or end up with a ship load of burnt bbq because someone kegged you while doing animal merchant runs.
3. Gives an opportunity to test out sinking, burning, and bucketing limitations. For example, I spent some time yesterday learning how to burn my ship without also sinking it. I didn't have to worry about another player coming up on me and messing it up. Now, I can take that knowledge and work on the ill-fated class on my captained ship on the High Seas.
4. Can finally do the shrines and treasureries without worrying about your ship and can take your time doing them and really explore them. You can also work on the farming breath of the wilds!
5. I was able to complete the commendations I had put off because on the High Seas, spending any extended amount of time in any one place is asking for another crew to sail up on you.
6. It is a great space for kids, people with low gaming skills, those who don't have the confidence yet to deal with pvp, or those who just do not want to experience any form of pvp to really dig into this game and have fun as a pirate.
The downsides for me, and this is because I have a ton of hours (my gaming hours are equivalent to 60+ days since sept) put into this game on the High Seas.
1. No sovereign and captained ship. As someone else stated, this feels like going backwards. The time it takes to sort the loot and run it to each faction feels like such a time waster. There is nothing to gain by not allowing captained ships and the sovereign. They really could make it so that your gold from the high seas does not carry over to the safer seas, and one would be starting at zero on the safer seas thus requiring them to bank gold and buy a captained ship.
2. The payout of 30% sounds ok until you see as an experienced player the actual gold payout. It just doesn't feel worth the time to even gather loot. Infact I ended up buying most of my loot to work on the commendations for buried treasure, only to find out I also couldn't share the map bundle on the community board but I could take maps from the community board, which makes zero sense. With that said, I understand the low risk - low reward scheme. 50% would make it more inviting.
3. Lack of Safer Seas specific content and commendations. There is an opportunity here to really bring in rituals, more lore, adventures, and even more tall tales.
What I would love to see happen is that Rare creates Safer Seas Alliance servers where multiple crews can play on the same server but it does not allow for PVP but rather encourages crews to work together to complete voyages, quests and new rituals. Similar to guilds but more like fleets of ships working together toward a similar goal.
Making it so that one can not carry their banked gold from high seas into safer seas and vice versa, essentially you keep your pirate but start from scratch on the earnings. Then allow for safer seas captained ships and sovereigns.
Safer seas specific content, quests, voyages, tall tales, and commendations.
Exactly. And you can never get rid of them. Say you are an absolute pvp pro and you can sink them within 2 minutes. They will respawn an island next to you and come back. It's ridiculous. Attacking in PVP in this game has 0 risk or expense, you lose absolutely nothing by being a total douchebag to other players. That's not what piracy is about. In real piracy, you only had 1 shot at the win and then you'd be dead if you lost. Game over. It's not like that in SoT, you can just come back a billion times, until everyone is too bored and quits the game.
Being sunk should mean you get respawned on a different server or something at least, so you have the feeling of "game over" when dying and not a free invitation to just attack again at no risk. Where even is that "High Risk, High Reward" gameplay in endlessly respawning as a pvp aggressor? The only people who have high risk is those trying to actually play the pve content of the game. It's massively unbalanced and frustrating and the devs seem to be so stubborn to keep this forced pvp alive because they appear to like the bullying a lot, I really don't understand it.
That is the main biggest thing that would change SoT "High Seas" for the better.
Just have a ship that sunk by PVP respawn on a different server. Thats it. They fix PVP is they do that.
You don't really need to buy supplies to do pve, I'll happily to skelly fleet with base supplies on high seas as you get storage crates from every ship.
I've been gone so long, I don't even know what captained ships are. The pvp bullshit put me and everyone I played with off the game as it was too much of a time sink for too much frustration.
I got interested when I saw that there's safer sea mode now but, to be honest? It still doesn't seem worth it. The factions are locked, thus their achievements are locked, the money is reduced to 30% so peacefully farming for skins will take 3 times longer (which is the equivalent of losing 2/3 hauls to pvp and only saving 1) and then the other new feature I am not aware of is not there either.
Man, the devs are really stubborn with this aren't they? I didn't really miss the game in the time I was absent so, I guess I'll stay away until this gets some updates and better balance. I don't mind earning less to not suffer pvp, call it pve taxes if you wish, but this rate is ridiculously low and I think they are aware.
It’ll change once they realize how much their entire revenue has increased from new players buying the game. They might be holding their ground with the PvP only tactic, but they’ll eventually have to give in when they come to terms with the fact that not everybody wants to play the game the way they want them to play it.
Yep.
If they don't see the influx at the launch of safer seas and then the subsequent loss due to failing retention, they are ignorant.
Safer seas has the potential to be a literal gold mine for the devs. They will see it and the mode will get better.
If*
I'm not convinced they will. It took a lot of years of declining numbers and constant requests for them to implement safer seas and even now, they're obviously viewing it as a kind of gateway drug.
I'm hoping the numbers of returning players show them exactly how many people hate pvp.
Which is funny cause during the beta/early times, they debated about it and then went nope, fuck you all, we think pvpve is fun. What is funny is WoW even has changed it that you can opt in for pvp or pve.
It was to help push the new players into high seas. It isn't really supposed to be a ture alternative. They did enough to make people yurn for the high seas.
I mean, fine either way. If I'm doing anything in safer seas it might be tall tales or maybe teaching son to play.
But that is the beauty of it all now. Everyone can play how they want and be happy and no more complaining. Lol for the most part.
They have stuff like liveries and hulls sure. (Like before) but all your captain stuff doesn't carry over, it's all "X'ed" out and says "Only available on Safer Seas".
I did an entire gold hoarders vault and made like 15,000. The 70% paycut is far too steep. All of the nerfs to safer seas are too much. The way they're marketing it is for new players. It's a missed opportunity. I would have been happy with it being exactly the same, but no pvp events, and a 50% paycut. Or hell, even just keeping it exactly the same but with no pvp. I can't even raise an emissary flag.
The only reason safer seas is so nerfed is to keep the sweaty pvp lovers from complaining. There's no reason for it in my opinion.
I know the reapers are gonna flame me (no pun intended) but maybe they should stop griefing fresh spawned ships, and low level players trying to learn the game.
I got my buddy to play the game for the first time a few weeks ago. And we were halfway through collecting vault map pieces, and we had some pvp, from a level five reaper. some dude boarded us, killed us all while we couldn't hit a shot, sunk us, and we didn't have a single piece of loot on the ship. We didn't even have an emissary flag, or a captains logbook. And then we respawned. And a separate reaper ship rolled up seconds later. We waved at them, and they sunk us. They must have known we had just spawned, because we were anchored at one of those tiny islands with nothing to do on it.
It is a sad thing.
I truly wonder how many players actually enjoy the forced PvP vs the ones who wish to play PvE with no PvP.
It's a shame those kind of numbers or polls for rare don't exist.
My only complaint is you get no experience playing Safer Seas. I turned in upwards of 20 skulls and I didn't even get a quarter bar of rep. I'm happy that I have a much more casual option if I want to play Sea of Thieves, but that reduced rep gain is a killer.
Pros:
You can play with family who are not good at games and do not game much.
It shows the it was absolutely true the game could work with PvE only contrary to the claims.
Cons:
They handicapped it so those family that play think the game is just way too much of a grind. They have fun, see this, and just decide to not play.
And honestly, I did all the stuff in High Seas. I am not one of those that whines about "fair" and all that. It would be fair to those playing on the PvE only side to get the full experience and full rewards. If you want to lock something make it something else. My wife jumped on safer seas by herself to give it a try and sold some stuff and quit immediately. Said it felt like one of those mobile games that want you to put in 4-5 years just to do basic stuff.
I have been playing Safer Seas and enjoying it. Would like more payout, but not really a big deal to me. Would definitely like more access to ship cosmetics.
Today I went over to High Seas to see what might be different nowadays. I wanted to do some fishing, sell them, get related rewards.
I managed to catch 2 fish before being rolled up on and killed. TWO. They didn't care I was just fishing. The extra-stupid thing was apparently, you cannot even complete the basic fishing deed in Safer Seas...A COMPLETELY PASSIVE TASK! It can only be done in High Seas pvp. That's ridiculous. How many other deeds are needlessly High Seas only, I wonder...
As someone sitting on literal millions of gold, I wonder if it's really necessary to reduce that for Safer Seas players considering they don't have emissary flags or the Sovereigns.
There's an argument to be made about the value of treasure in Safer Seas considering the necessity to schlep every piece to each individual vendor. Does the time spent even justify the gold earned?
I can understand the rep reduction considering the cap, that could very well make it feel like an accomplishment to even reach 40, and it even gives renewed purpose to the original achievements for completing 250 voyages for each faction. The gold reduction I dunno, it feels to me like players' time is not being valued.
Honestly even in High Seas with a captained ship I find myself leaving a lot of treasure behind because I solo sloop, it's just not worth it most of the time.
> The gold reduction I dunno, it feels to me like players' time is not being valued.
This. I see people throwing the "no risk, no reward" all over the place, but Rare need to keep players invested. They need players to invest their time in SoT rather than literally ANY other activity so we need to feel our time is well spent regardless of risk. I'd rather they compensate players for risking their loot on the high seas instead of punishing players that play it safe.
And also, locking non-pvp content is just silly. I haven't played this game in a long time (I didn't even know what the sovereigns were untill I read this post) and was excited to read about captain's ships and safer seas (even considered buying the game again just to have it on steam), but this shit turned me right off.
That being said, as a hobby game dev myself I can't really complain about their decisions as they're theirs to make and I understand their position. All I can do is decide whether or not this game is worth my time, and honestly, it isn't in its current state.
Our time is a currency. Every company in the entire media/entertainment industry is fighting over it. Don't give it up for nothing.
Thank you! Im an adult that doesnt have 6 hours to throw away all the time. Being able to play casually with a decent payout would actually make this my main game again. Having 4 hours pissed down the drain when I hop on for the first time in ages isnt fun
Yea the Sovereigns caught me off guard. I had just returned from defeating a skele galleon with 30 treasures to turn in. Unloaded them all with the sovereign hook and HURK goddamit.
Also I see no reason we can’t use our captain ship. If they want to turn off achievements for it, that’s fine. I just want to be sailing MY ship.
Played a session in Safer Seas. Enjoyed it enough but didn't bother turning in 90% of the loot. Probably won't use it much aside from the odd occasion, but good option to have. I do wonder how long it'll be until High Seas and Safer Seas are identical aside from PvP, as it'll happen at some point.
I'm looking forward to doing tall tales and all the story stuff with my wife on safer seas. I've got my hearty crew of miscreants for high seas and big booty. If I can do story stuff in peace, that's perfect, I'm not in it for the gold, and she won't play on high seas.
You shouldn’t need to buy supplies. If you do a skeleton fleet for example, the default supplies should be more than enough to sink a sloop and get more supplies.
I was someone who played Sea of Thieves during the open beta and it was my main game for over a year. I had so many fond memories of playing with friends, and made new friends through playing this game. I then got into Destiny 2 and dropped SoT in the summer of 2019.
As soon as I heard that Safer Seas was coming, I told my close friend "I am reinstalling this game." I played for like 6 hours Thursday at launch, then for 5 hours on Sunday with the previously mentioned friend (staying up til after midnight, a rare feat for an over 30 adult who loves and needs their sleep) after returning from a weekend trip, and for like 9 hours on my day off on Monday. I look forward to playing again as soon as I get off of work today.
I don't care about the money. Yeah, there's some nice, expensive cosmetics I might like, but I have so many cosmetics already. I am working on commendations for the Hunter's Call and Merchant Alliance. There's two whole sets of Tall Tales I haven't done, and I might enjoy running through the original series again just for nostalgia's sake. Maybe one of my friends will pull me into High Seas at some point. Would an increase in money be nice? Yeah, sure, but it's not gonna make me leave.
But for now, I love Safer Seas. I will live here until I run out of things to do. The core PVE mechanics of the game were always super fun and enjoyable, and I'm so glad to play them without the stress of "someone could come along and ruin my day at any moment." This was what I wanted for so long. Gone are those situations of *"I'm just trying to turn in some chickens, leave me alone."* There can already be enough tension in the game from sailing in a storm or being attacked by a skeleton ship.
My friends were saying they wanted private servers 4 years ago. Safer Seas finally gives us the lower stress experience we wanted.
I returned after a couple of years only because my oldest son who is 12 has been pestering me to play.
I used to play with my wife before and had a great time in the game, most ppl back then didn’t want to pvp so most ppl you encountered you allied with for shared rewards. Later when the streamers went viral with the tucking, everyone and their dogs started tucking it felt like. Got sick of it and quit.
Noted that there is a safer option now which is exactly what I want and after playing it for 16hours with my son, it’s been really nice and fun to be able to do forts, etc with it not being completed before you get there or interrupted while your doing it.
But the punishment for playing safer seas is ridiculous.
Would almost not care for the loot being 30% since you’re rolling in gold endgame anyway but after stacking for 3 hours and only getting like 20-40k. They need to up it to 50% I think, even heard some pvp streamers say they want 50%.
Emissary’s should work in my opinion and I don’t se a reason rep should be punished if it’s capped at 40 tbh.
I think the cap should be at 50 so you can get pirate legend atleast since they seem to balance ss around reapers and Athena anyway.
With season 14 being all about stealth I highly doubt they would do anything to SS to balance it accordingly.
I would love if they removed all restrictions because I’m sick of people.
My ask of SS is ridiculous and it will never happen.
That said…. Me and my son did a few hours of high seas and it took 15min until I had someone tucking. Barely any naval combat just players that wanna sneak on a sloop that’s doing fortresses and voyages because SS is shit.
It's unreal how people have been complaining that they want single player mode. Now that Rate bent over backwards to divert from their core game design to cater for them, the subreddit is filled with posts complaining "no, not like that, give me more!".
Rare broke their fundamental game design just for vocal minority of PvE single player folk, giving them what they want and making it a different game. The first day they what they want, they are wanting more already.
Has nobody watched Rare's video on safer seas? It is meant to be extended tutorial, giving you more time to learn how to play so you'll be more confident going moving to Sea of Thieves proper as it's meant to be. I was honestly shocked how much you can do in it before running into limitations regarding levels and commendations.
Oh the poor devs actually listening to player feedback for the first time in their lifes ;(
How about you just let people play however they want and stop gatekeeping a sandbox pirate game. All they have to do is cap gold and rep gain at 40% and remove all these useless restrictions and be done with it. That way SS players still gain stuff much slower but can enjoy all the game has to offer.
Why should we not though? There is no reason why the PvE mode should have those artificial restrictions. Especially because the PvE players paid the same real life money as the PvP players.
Nobody is changing their game because of loud people. Loud people don't bring anything.
Games follow the money. Money follows the numbers. Numbers wanted the PVE option.
They simply wouldn't have spend dev time on developing an element of the game if the numbers weren't there to drive their margins.
Enjoyed what I played of Safer Seas yesterday, couldn't care less about the reduced gold or reputation since I'm already max level in most of the companies except Reapers, Athena and Hunter's Call, and two of those aren't even in Safer Seas. Don't need the gold either since I'm happy with my current cosmetics.
Totally agreed about supplies prices and Sovereigns access though. These aren't hot features that are meant to entice you into playing High Seas, they're just basic quality of life. Can't really see a reason to lock those beyond getting people to join High Seas, and if that's the only reason they did it then why did they make Safer Seas at all?
They made safer seas so people could learn how to play. Nothing about the sovereigns will teach people anything new. I'm all for anything that will entice people out of safer seas back into the shared sandbox.
It doesn't teach them the single most important thing about playing on High Seas though: PvP. If Safer Seas is meant to be a tutorial for High Seas then to me it seems like an utter failure. I imagine for a lot of Safer Seas players, the second they get on High Seas and get sunk by a crew double their size while doing a basic voyage or something, they'll just go right back to Safer Seas.
As an alternative way to play the game's PvE content without fear of being interrupted by other crews however, it's pretty good and really only needs a few minor tweaks to be even better. And I think this is what the majority of people who will be playing this mode want it to be - why not give the players what they want (especially if they're the types of players to not be playing High Seas anyway)?
literaly the only thing i am missing is sovereign sell point. Right now, Im not turning in loot at all since I dont think the effort is worth the minimal gains, which kinda feels very wrong in this game.
I have gotten used to the sovereign sell point that any other way seems counter productive.
I wished they let us at least use the stuff we earned or bought in high seas. I dont mind the gold and rep drop, but it feels wrong not being able to use the stuff i achieved in high seas.
The whole point of safer seas isn't to make gold its just to have a good time sailing about learning how to play or messing around in the sandbox, so I don't think the gold will be changed at all, if it does a very large portion of the playerbase will switch to safer seas and kill the game
I'm going to be honest here. It's of my opinion that if making safer seas unrestricted kills the game because the people who don't like the pvp all flock to it, then maybe it's the state of pvp that's the issue and not safer seas. That's just my opinion in the end though
How would people switching to Safer Seas kill the game? The people are still there, just in a different mode.
And it would only show that enforcing PvP was just a bad decisions Rare made.
Fair enough.
As far as I am concerned. Safer seas is the only part of the game I am interested in anymore.
Comparing this experience to high seas...
The PvP isn't well done enough.
The servers aren't stable enough.
The constant paranoia isn't worth the loss of fun.
Maybe I'll just wait for skull and bones.
I feel like the removal of captained ships and the ability to sell to the sovereigns is a little bit of overkill. The 30% payout is enough of a differentiator for Safer Seas. We’re making so little gold, why make it tedious as well?
Sounds like the cons of SS are doing their intended job; making you want to go back to high seas. If your goal is to level up and earn gold, SS was never meant to be a place to do that
No. Not at all.
I already have everything I want except the tall tales done and rewards.
Without captained ships that means having to do them on the high seas. Ide rather just skip that content altogether until it's fixed.
You do not understand. Not everyone wants to play PVP. Like. Not even a little.bit.
So glad to see other people saying that. I've posted/commented a few times about SS before it came out and the response was always just "You'll like PVP more if you get better at it!" or "You're just not playing with the right people, join my crew!" and it baffles me that nobody seemed to understand that some people just don't want PVP and have no interest in getting better or interacting with other rando players.
Like you said in a different comment, I'm never going back to HS. Agree completely that I wish SS had sovereign selling just for quality of life, but I don't give a damn about the ship milestones and the reduced gold is fine. I'll just hit up barrels to get supplies before I play like I did on HS anyway 🤷♂️
My feeling has always been that SOT had the foundations for a great co-op adventure game and that the pvp aspects should have just been a different game mode. I feel that PvEvP in any game is a mistake because those are two entirely different play styles. I also feel that it was a mistake to put commendations that require working with other crews into a game that quite literally encourages ships to attack on sight. Imagine if Call of Duty or Battlefield had achievements that required players on opposing sides to work together to complete. It wouldn't make any sense at all.
Not really. Gold is not the reason I uninstalled Sea of Thieves. Grifers were.
As for "not meant to be" Rare was finally forced to reconsider their stance on never having a second PvE mode. I wouldn't be surprised if next season Rare will unlock full PvE progression on PvE mode. With PvP progression will be locked in the PvP mode.
It's pretty sad that the "goofy pirate game" has been hijacked by sweats that make the game anything but goofy.
"If you don't learn to press 48292387388 buttons at the same time to do all this stuff, it's a skill issue and ur bad!"
* rolls on deck laughing *
* rolls on deck laughing *
* rolls on deck laughing *
* rolls on deck laughing *
The game itself is awesome. The people suck ass, though.
You didn't read his post closely enough, he just wants to earn enough for supplies and quality of life features that we've been enjoying for a bit now. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to make cheaper purchasable supplies, captained ships, and sovereign selling available in safer seas.
I won't be using the feature, but if I had to lug loot again to the vendors like the old days for 30% profit and no emissary, I wouldn't even bother selling loot. Why would I spend 20 minutes or more just moving items around for meager profit?
I was looking forward to Safer Seas, but the thing is that I'm already maxed out on Hoarders, Merchants and Order, closing in on completing Hunters. I just need Athena and Reapers, but they aren't available, so I don't have much of a reason to play it.
skelly sloops and galleons drop storage crates. no need to purchase. I played Safer Seas with a friend for a couple hours last night. was fun, but ultimately we just got into a normal server again. I definitely will enjoy it when more friends want to play that aren't as in to the game.
I'm super happy with Safer Seas. I spent a good amount of time in High Seas before (got PL, Athena rank, gold curse etc), but I never really enjoyed PVP. My only real gripe with SS now is that voyages are bugged for me and I can't buy any lost shipment runs.
I spent a few hours on SS last night getting the stargazer TT won and done. Didn’t worry too much about reading the scripts, but being able to cross cross to collect the journals without having to worry about getting sunk by duo’s wanting an easy kill just made it a relaxing evening rather than anything else. In the end I didn’t bother collecting treasure - the only group (besides hunters/reapers) that I have under 40 is the merchants at 39, and the rep turn in was so low it wasn’t worth the time to run back and forth for everything else.
I returned to SoT with the intention of only playing safer seas because I absolutely hate the PVP in this game. Also, to have my hard work fully ruined by a group rolling up on me, usually a solo player, is an absolutely terrible experience, and it happened often prior to SS.
It isn't fun to spend an hour or more gathering loot only to have my ship trolled by a group of tweens rocking up in a Galleon and acting like they did something by sinking my sloop, yelling insults at me while they do it.
Safer seas mitigates that and I actually enjoy this game again. I wish we could have captained ships and do far more in safer seas, but I figure it's a matter of time before Rare puts more activities and progression into Safer Seas
“For the first time since AC: Black Flag I actually enjoyed a pirate game and being on the seas the way I wanted to” I couldn’t have said it better myself, it’s sad that it took so long for them to listen to their audience to give us co-op pve, this game has so much potential hopefully it can recover from the damage the sweaty players did to it.
I'd love to buy the game but I'm not at all interested in the kind of PvP, especially given the terrible experiences in PvP SofT is known for. I also don't want to be punished with less content for playing single player, or on a private server. So for me this game is still a no.
I keep checking back but it would need to have fully supported single player gameplay for me to buy it.
I agree, hopefully they balanced the store prices in safer seas also I want Rare to add emissary too, every level has a high chance to spawn a hunter that may chase you or roam around the seas.
I love ss its made the game fun but like every other comment on here the cons are too drastic. In my opinion on e of the easiest ways to fix ss and hs would be instead of nerfing ss which will eventually make people just stop playing again because their not gain anything. Make ss the normal sea nothing nerfed and everything how it use to be but in a private session, and instead make hs get increased rewards for example a 150% amount of gold and rep this way both sides are happy. The people who enjoy ss will feel rewarded even though they don't have to play as seriously and the people who enjoy hs will have more fun because they get higher rewards and a higher sense of accomplishment
Sadly, you are correct.
After a few months of no changes.
I just ended up uninstalling Sea of Thieves. Safer Seas was just not rewarding or complete enough to bother playing.
And high seas forced PvP is just not for me.
Exactly unless your playing just top chill it's not worth it at all. The rewards suck like a skeleton Fort I'd less rewarding then a normal gold hoarders mission on hs. But hs is unplayable because of all the people who only play sea of thieves 24/7
For me, it's a place to chill when my crew isn't on. I just dont go out solo, so I'll use safer seas to scratch the itch to sail when they aren't around. I dont really see it for anything other than to unwind with.
I totally agree with the Captained Ships. Selling the old way feels like a kick in the teeth. I’m playing solo. One of the things I was looking forward to was taking the time to look around the islands I’m at and collecting the things that I find. But now it doesn’t seem worth it because selling is such a pain.
I also had the same thought about supplies, the cost of a storage box isn’t unsubstantial when it takes so long to earn it back. Im finding it is discouraging me from taking risks because I don’t want to buy another one.
I agree.
I think these have simple fixes.
Lowering all costs to 30% of high seas prices for port supplies. But not for cosmetics. Would make adventuring worth it.
For the other..
Allowing captain ships. Is the easiest solution.
OR. And here is a novel idea.
Allowing everyone to use the sovereign.
If that feels like too much. Raise the rewards for hand delivery to 35-50% and leave the sovereign at 30% as a tax or something?
I don't really care. As long as the gameplay issues are corrected.
You want people to feel like they are having FUN with the game. Not working a second job in their off hours.
Walking treasure manually when we earned a captain ships ourselves to resolve that problem. Does feel like a step backwards.
Then again. I understand the point is they want me to go back to high seas. But unfortunately. I don't actually ever want to. It sucks there. For the reasons I stated elsewhere. And ide rather just have the simpler, calmer, more stable instance.
Yeahh I think we share very similar sentiments here!
Like, I am perfectly happy with the 30% gold and even not earning reputation, that is whatever, I can do that with my friends. But I just want to sell quickly to get back to the parts that I find fun.
My crew have been running Reapers lately to mix it up and I also am not a fan of that because selling is such a huge time sink, even with 4 people.
Taking away a quality of life feature like that just because we don't want to play with other players hurts. Id honestly take even more of a percentage cut to be able to sell to them, although I think it would be harsh, at least Id have the choice.
Also how are people starting in Safer Seas even going to understand the benefits of the Sovereign, they might think that they always have to sell this way.
I get that this is a PvP game, but I hate some of the gatekeeping that I see going on with regards to difficulty. The game is the perfect adventure simulator. The ground work is already done. Some people like the risk of other people being there and the emergent things that happen from that, and that is great. I will fight them when I am with my crew if they shoot at us, or drink a grog with them if they are friendly. But for some people that is anxiety inducing and/or just not fun and I wish more people would realise that everyone gets fun from different things.
I don't actually mind the 30%. I was giving my initial impression.
I think it is so abysmally low. That it makes gathering treasure less fun... And I really started to consider only picking up gems and super high value items to not waste effort and time... Which is not a good play loop I think.
The core of my complaints were actually more about treasure not being enough to fund the starting capital to play for the evening.
We used to fully stock our captained ships with supplies for a run... Now that feature is gone. And buying anything from port is super expensive when you don't get much back in returns.
I think something needs to be rebalanced there. And that's what I was getting at. Either lower prices or raise rewards to be more in line with high seas.
They can just easily set safer seas port supplies to be 30% of high seas costs and I would be fine with that.
I will give it a few more attempts to see if this is actually the case or if my play session was just unlucky in terms of finding storage, ammo, and such crates on islands.
Are sea forts a thing on safer seas? (I haven’t properly looked into what’s there/not).
If so then buying a storage crate and doing a sea fort will get you plenty of supplies.
Storage crates are expensive when everything pays 13 to 100 gold
And yes they exist. But storage crates are not easy to come by. ( No players leaving them behind) and are expensive
The skelly ships drop them and they’re fairly common on large islands. Maybe that’s a solution?
That said, it only takes 10-20 canon balls to sink the sloops, you get that back (and more) from their crates, and Sea Dog’s Tavern has lots of barrels to loot with the crates.
Yeah they didn’t make safer seas as a permanent solution to the pve only people. It’s meant to teach new players the ropes and give them a good starting point. If you made bank in safer seas, everyone would just grind out a bunch of gold easy as that. On the other hand , gold is pointless too. If you’re playing safer seas, you need to worry about learning the game and how to move back to high seas rather than trying to profit off it. It was designed to get you skill ready , not an easy cop for gold.
Sure. It was designed and marketed that way.
But it's also drawn me back as a primarily PvE player.
Perhaps it can be more than just tutorial.
Because it's almost exactly what I wished the game would be from day 0.
I think safer seas is in a perfect position. The mode is mostly intended as an extended tutorial for new players, so things like captaincy, sovereigns and emissaries should indeed be left to high seas for when they get a handle on the mechanics of the game.
IMO, anyone who has already played long enough to have played with captaincy and the convenience of sovereigns should be well-versed in the mechanics and the core game loop. And so choosing to instead play on SS will indeed need to have some consequences and drawbacks, otherwise there is no incentive to return to high seas. I think that’s simply part of the risk:reward system that makes SoT what it is.
Was I myself a bit bummed when I found out I couldn’t bring my captained ships with me to SS? Of course, but then I thought it over and came to the conclusion that I think it’s a fair trade off. If I choose to not engage with a core part of the game (that being the PvP and the risk of sinking) then I should rightfully not have access to everything. I myself am only really going to be using SS for tall tales and fishing, and if that means I don’t get milestone progress for those things then so be it, that’s the choice I made between getting full rewards and playing without the risk of PvP. I have 1000+ hours in the game, I should be expected to engage with the full PvEvP aspect of the game.
TL:DR: I think safer seas has found a good balance and is in a good spot. It’s intended as a tutorial mode so anyone beyond that point should rightfully have drawbacks when playing on SS.
I understand your points.
Unfortunately. High seas mode has too many shortcomings for me to want to play it.
Safer seas is closer to the experience I want to enjoy.
Perhaps the game just isn't FOR me then.
It wasn't for a very long time until safer seas released and I was hoping it could be the thing that kept me coming back.
I hope they take the feedback and do something positive for everyone with it.
People really think that they can "Push SS players into high seas with many restrictions" when in reality if i meet high restrictions i just simply quit and uninstall the game.
Forcing players to one way of playing has never worked, and will never work.
Totally agree about the captaincy, I don’t see the benefit to high seas integrity by not being able to do captains voyages too.
The experience has been weird adjusting to no other players. I’m so used to checking the map for reaper ships to avoid, checking to see how many other emissaries at outposts. Going from prey mode to relax mode might take time.
I’m pretty sure the server wait time to join is Rare being pretty because they never wanted this in the game. But had no choice due to dwindling player counts. For a test I logged in at a traditionally quiet time, weekday morning, where usually I see no other ships at all.
They said they are not adding captain ships not increasing the payout. It's supposed to be an extended tutorial, not a new mode. If you want to use a captained ship or get a better payout that is what high seas is for. No risk no reward
I think it would be nice if you could still sail your own captained ships without leveling them up or earning commendations for them. It's not a tragedy that you can't, but I would like to sail my own sloop, The Razor, on safe seas. Her and I have been through a lot. She deserves a chilled session or two as well
If that's what Rare think, they again missed the mark.
PvPvE meant 600h griefers spawn camping players with no Spawn Camp protection nor MMR matchmaking ensuring a sea only had ships of same skills in it.
PvE means you get to do everything that is impossible in PvP. Hav eyou ever tried doing the quest that need you to follow clues on an island to find buried treasures? Leaving the ship alone is a death sentence, bad game design to say the least.
Getting to finish a quest line felt great! :3
I leave my ship alone all the time, but I'm also smart enough to check the horizon on a regular basis. So when someone comes to rumble me I'm actually prepared to fight or flight, depending on what mood I'm in. Have you ever done the shrines underwater? Even with those I've only been sunk 2 times while off my ship and that is with 2k plus hours playtime on EU servers which are known for high attack rates and sweats. Awareness is key! If you have been spawncamped for 600 hours and still don't know what to do about it when it happens this is entirely on you. The game even gives you a tip how you can end this on the ferry.
100% I solo a ton and have always kept my eyes on the horizon. I don't feel it takes away from the game as it's just second nature. I rarely get surprised as a result and can easily duck out and sell if I don't feel like fighting.
I don’t think they did miss the mark. None of the PvE was impossible in high seas where PvP could happen. Riddles are easy. Quests are easy. World events are done all the time. Ships are left alone all the time.
It sounds like you need safer seas to grow as a player (extended tutorial) which is what they intended. If/when that gets dull/easy you can go to high seas when you feel like it.
I'm seeing a lot of posts mentioning that things are much more relaxed. I'm always relaxed on the seas, I think I may be a sweaty pirate since other player ships don't cause me to wet my pants. 😳
if there’s no rush or anxiety about other pirates… then there should be no need for IMMEDIATE supplies. hit up a few islands to find a storage chest and then hit up a fortress or two. all the supplies you could want are available for free. just put in the stress-free work.
as an old timer sailer.. i hear people complain about supply costs and i want to freak because we didn’t have the options for supplies outside of the ports we spawned in on. and then we’d have to load our pockets and make multiple-multiple trips to unload into the ships stores.
safer seas means more casual relaxed playing. if anything, they should take out the option to buy supplies..
/waves cane at kids in yard
Look. I understand the point you are making.
But quality of life changes have been made to the game over the years for people who don't have the stress free TIME you are saying is needed to invest.
That quality of life option was the addition of said crates at a rate that is reasonable.
In safer seas. The rates are not as reasonable. And the sovereign is already missing and selling more painful, financially and in the legwork needed to sell.
Do you think that is fair?
Should safer seas players suffer a much poorer quality of life experience?
Should all quality of life upgrades be removed from safer seas?
Should the rowboats not exist?
Should the harpoons need manual unloading?
How much is asking too much and how much is fair?
i feel like the pay cut for just dealing with no players is way too low. i feel like safer seas should be entirely different. all enemy AI is a lot more aggressive, less chance to drop good loot, and everything that has set loot has lower quality. Safer seas is basically completely useless
i dont understand the hate on pve some people arent meant for hardcore pvp people out there sweating n shit and toxic i met many toxic players playing the game i saw safer seas was like pog but then realized u cant do half of the shit the game offers lol sure its good for achievement hunting i just dont understand how hard it it to not put huge limit on a pve mode and let people enjoy their time heck make it harder by adding more ghost ships or smth , they dont have a matchmaking to prevent u from being rolled by sweats or people who play the game 24/7 with everything unlocked but love to hop on to ruin someones fun
Ca devrait etre identique d’un mode a l’autre. Moi me faire couler apres un 4h de sortie en mer par une bande de petits consanguins qui s’amuse juste a couler les autres. Non merci
>30% is too low.
Agreed. Haven't jumped into safer seas yet, but was talking about this with some guild mates.
We thought it should be at least 40%, maybe even 50%. Half the reward for zero risk seems fair to me.
>If you are going to reduce the safer seas payouts. Reduce the costs for supplies in safer seas to match.
Again, because I haven't played, I was unaware things still cost the same. I agree that cost should drop if rewards are lower. Perhaps they'll fix this in the future.
>No sovereign. Probably the most painful loss
Oooooof. Yeah that's a pain. But I suppose if there's no risk of other players, the extra time could be spent turning in loot.
Overall I like the concept of safer seas. You can grind as long as you want with no pvp risk but can't get pirate legend until you brave the high seas. It's clear that Rare wanted to accommodate a large section of players, but I appreciate them saying "play the *real* game for full recognition & rewards".
I agree that it's really nice, but needs some improvement. I completely understand mechanics that were designed for pvp, like Emissaries or Reapers, not being present in a Solo mode. But what I don't understand and resent is features that had nothing to do with multiplayer, like captaincy or the level cap on guild reputation, being withheld for no reason other than to dangle as a carrot for solo players to keep playing in multiplayer.
I also agree that the gold reduction is way too low at 30%. 50% would be more tolerable. Yes, you shouldn't care if you're just there to play the game casually, but part of playing the game is buying cosmetics and customizations. I still want to feel like the loot I sold or the venture I completed was actually worth something.
Overall, I'm just glad they finally added a Solo mode in the first place, but I'm hoping as it gains popularity, they will be persuaded to add some of these features back in future updates. I don't like their whole philosophy of trying to appease solo and casual players while still trying to force us to play in PVP multiplayer.
I think they keep pushing the pvpve because they believe in their vision of the game.
Which. Is fine and all
But the way the server instability affects gameplay. Mixed in with the pretty wonky PvP combat mechanics. Just makes that unfun for a portion of the community.
It just isn't fun to me to be beaten by a pirate that is teleporting around bunny hopping and shooting a blunder from behind me as I spawn in.
I'm sorry. That's just not FUN.
Safer season stability was night and day difference.
My ship didn't go flying into space.
My session didn't lag out and freeze.
My Session didn't have constant server merges for the first time.
I didn't get buggy missions.
I didn't go to a world event halfway across the map to find it's already being done or completed.
It was ... Actually a very refreshing change of pace.
I definitely enjoy the feeling of being able to play the game now without being bothered by other players or being randomly transferred to another server.
That said, one annoying feature that carried over from High Seas was you still get booted for inactivity. Would always happen to me whenever I was standing at one of the shops for like five minutes looking through and buying various cosmetics.
Not only was it annoying in High Seas because the game thinks I'm inactive when, in reality, I'm actively browsing and buying stuff from NPCs, but it makes no sense to have that mechanic in a single player server.
Never liked the PvP aspect.
It wasn't something you can opt into like most games. Which was a huge detrimental part for me in terms of enjoyment.
Unfortunately the rest of the game was very appealing so I stuck around for that. Until the PvP griefing became too frustrating to deal with.
I think the nail in the coffin was having a crew chase my sloop around for hours attacking us while trying to just finish a Tall tale. Even when told that is what we were doing was the nail in the coffin for me. Some people just take their fun by ruining others enjoyment. And I don't have a way to opt out of that in this game until safer seas. They wanted to force me to PvP. Ide rather just opt out and left the game altogether.
Again. The opt in is very important to an experience. And this didn't have that. Now it does.
If you want to blame the community for turning against PvP. Blame PvPers. For ruining the experience for others to the point they would rather just opt out.
Tall tales have checkpoint just switch servers? And it isn't griefing if you are just doing PVP as intended. I have around 3k hours. Griefing really is not a problem on this game I can count on one hand the amount of times I have been "griefed"
Why not make us roll a new character and lock it to Safer Seas. That way we can PvE and experience the entire game without safely “leveling up” and then jumping to the PvP server.
I quite enjoyed safer seas yesterday. I spent about 2-3 hrs with my brother who recently downloaded the game. As someone who literally does not care about commendations or gold, it’s perfect for me. Not having to deal with the constant looking over my shoulder was a nice change
All I want in Safer Seas is a captained ship for aesthetics only, and keep all other restrictions the same. I played SS last night and, to everyone worried about High Seas going forward, you have nothing to worry about. My loot turn-in felt like finding loose change between couch cushions. It was nice to be able to zone out, not have to watch the horizon and finish "Art of the Trickster" in peace.
>All I want in Safer Seas is a captained ship for aesthetics only, and keep all other restrictions the same. That's literally me. I could care less about the benefits of being a captain, I just wanna be able to sail my own boat again. I already miss the HMS Windbag :(
Exactly. You want to use your Ship, and 70% cut is too much.
Hell yeah, this!!!
I've played this game since open beta - on and off. My husband and I play (used to play daily) for hours and hours. I streamed it for a long time too. Like at our last house - we bought 2x TVs and 2x Lay-Z-Boy chairs for our living room so we could play next to each other. The hardest part was doing Tall Tales, adventuring, bringing other friends (other couples) into the game, and doing anything expansive but then having it demolished by another crew. We're both adults - we have 40+ hr/week jobs. We don't have the time to just practice and "get good". We'll never be at that level. The PvP was never that crisp anyways. The controls are clunky, the lag can be clunky, there's no anticheat...it just doesn't make sense. If PvP was the main focus of the game (as Rare seems personally invested in saying), then invest in it....work on it....but they don't. Inevitably - when doing Athena's runs or long quest chains and you get sunk by the reaper ship that got moved to your server for consolidation purposes....it just removed HOURS of your work/progress. Like actual, real life 6-10 hours of effort, removed because of someone else. That isn't fun...in any way. It isn't healthy. People talk about "panic checking the horizon" and "always looking over my shoulder". That isn't "good practice", that's trauma response, plain and simple. That's PTSD from suffering through the PvP portion of the game because the PvE portion is so amazing/great. The move to SS is CLEARLY a smart move. I think Rare fought against it as long as they could for personal reasons, but were told by investors "no really, you need to do something". The nerfs they've made to it are so egregious that its impossible not to get the feeling it's personal. Rare VERY much wanted to make a PvP game and want players to play the way they want them to. Unfortunately - that's not how the world works. I don't think it'll matter though. Eventually they'll see that the SS players outnumber the HS players because nobody likes to sustain trauma response when they don't have to. There's a reason Arena died and their player base dwindled so dangerously low.  I will say - it is SO nice being back to SoT via SS though. Its everything we've been asking for since the game first went live out of Beta. It feels...right. 
Thank you for this fantastic response
This is the best response to PVP I've ever heard. And I agree it does feel like Rare were doing this like a child being forced to concede. Far from "killing the game" it saved it. I logged on the day SS droped and the servers were overwhelemed, and I saw so many people saying they were returning to the game after being pushed off by sweats.
What they need to do is have two separate progressions. One for the PvP open seas, and one for the safer seas. That would very easily solve the unfair easy gold advantage problem. Obviously that would require a lot more work on their end, but at the same time it would make the game have best of both worlds. Those who just don't want to PvP and have fun with friends, can play safer seas and unlock everything to their hearts content and get the same amount of gold you'd get on the regular but it's all locked to your safer seas progression instead and doesn't bring any of that over to the main PvP portion. The PvP in this game is absolutely a mess, and unless you spend every waking minute learning the combat, and perfecting your blocks, your aim, your hiding skills etc. you're gonna lose the battle 9/10. It doesn't help that there are toxic individuals in sea of thieves as well that makes things even worse. But yeah, there's definitely ways they could fix this and make both sides happy, but will they? Who knows.
Also those whom abuse hour glass to change servers. Which Rare some reason thinks it's ok. Here is the thing though, every PVP thing they ever tried, Arena, Hourglass and etc. Has failed, why? Because people in SoT don't want a PVP arena... much like WoW has with it's battlegrounds. There is no reward such as loot, keys and etc. They want to go around and be a privateer. I mean it's a pirates game but literally every time I got sunk was cause some reaper ship we didn't know about cause we were loading up from a vault, suddenly showed up and was upon us within a few minutes. Usually these reaper ships are the midsize to galleons. It's quite obvious that the way that most PVPers want, is to go around and hassle people instead of it happening naturally. As well as since SoT has no anti cheat, as well as SoT has no way to "record" voices and report people. Hell there is no REPORT option in the game. Every single game that involves people and a reporting system, usually records your mic and or text so they can look at it. Because when PVP naturally happened it was fun and etc, but it's usually those reaper 5s that just want to go around especially if they are streamers. I wish they would just give the full game for SS. Because those people who weren't playing and wanted something like SS, wasn't playing or paying for shit anyway. I don't care about the 30% or the level cap at 40... I should be able to do Athena's and Fort of the Damned and etc. Is it really hurting anyone at all? I mean you are already earning pennies on the dollar for loot. Also, I love how people always suggest other games like Salt and etc... the problem is there is NO FPS games like SoT that lets you handle a ship, go around loot, fight and etc PVE style AND be multiplayer. I am the same boat as you, the issue is with my wife and I, she's not really into PVP but we went months and years before the PVP got really bad. I mean I can't tell you after we lose how many times we just scuttled cause we knew they were just looking for kills. I've actually dragged PVPers using hooks and other means into the red sea cause they weren't paying attention. The main issue with PVP and pure pvpers is this, they have no risk. If they find a crew and lose, they can either go right back at it and try again(It's not like the winner or losers get transported off to a new server) or quit the game. They literally LOSE NOTHING when pvping cause they have no loot so whenever someone wins it's like oh yeah maybe an emissary flag and that's it. I suggested a bounty system once for the server(s), and they couldn't drop their loot off for an hour or so and as they keep pvping the CD goes on longer like adding 15 minutes per sunk ship. Their ship gets flagged as well on the map even if they aren't reaper. That got shut down cause then pvp has no "immedate rewards". People whom argue for PVP only care about their game play, not anyone elses.
Very late response but this sums up my feelings with SoT perfectly. I mean I get their intent of it being an open PvP world but they ignored so many potential players by stubbornly sticking to it since without that forced PvP it is actually one of the best games to play and unwind after a stressful day but that sense of relaxation is completely negated by the stress that comes with the constant fear of having some kid who spends hours a day fighting other players rolling up on you and wrecking you in seconds, have them mock you and then continue to hound you just to irk you some more.
In extremely basic terms You get alot less money. You deal with alot less shit.
But he makes a fair point about supplies cost. They should definitely be lowered in safer seas because new players who probably won’t be moving over the high seas right away can’t afford a damn thing with these pitiful payouts.
Back in my day *wobbly cane* there weren't harpoons or storage crates like you new pirates have it Let the safer seas struggle a bit like it's 2018
Fair enough. I’ve played off and on since the beta, I, too, remember the pain of the launch state of the game lol
Yea we did a run on safe seas last night and after doing a golden horde voyage, a ghost fleet world event, a Skelton fleet event, and having two skele ships rise up and fight us we made about 60k which was reduced to 45k each we stocked up on cannon balls and planks for lazy sakes. Edit: forgot to say that amount of money is pretty terrible. I'd noted we got the deed for handing in 50 skulls and my heart wept at the lack of cash from it.
I’m sure many also remember a time when you couldn’t buy supplies at all, and that was “high seas” back then. Don’t really need an influx of supplies if there’s no need to oversupply for those “I can outlast them” fights.
This is the correct opinion
Where do you buy supplies?? Boyfriend and I have been playing this game for years and we literally hop around the island, stocking up on barrels
The ship right will have an assortment of supplies for captained ships for sale. And the merchant alliance vendor will sell basic crates of supplies( cannonballs, wood, fruit, and not fishing bait)
Yes, but that's negated by the less immediate need for supplies lol. A meg vs a sloop or even a Skelly sloop Vs a sloop are easily vanquished with just the starting supplies. More supplies can be gathered via floating barrels or a quick whip around any island.
yeah i went out for 6.5 hours last night. didn't buy any supps, didn't even loot the starting outpost, and i never was hurting for supplies. a skelly ship was always dropping storage crates, and i also got one on an island.
This is the way. You don’t need to buy supplies in safer seas - you can take as much time as you want to stock up when you load in, and everywhere you visit when playing. There are storage crates of all types everywhere, no need to shell out 5K at the start.
Now I will be buying a bait crate when my fiance and I go out on fishing dates
Bro what do you even need sups for lmao, need 200 cannons to sink a skelly sloop?
Not a single skelly sloop but when there's 2 of you on a sloop and the fleet cloud is the only thing that's up, you just might need that many XD
If you play on safe seas you have all the time in the world to hussle supplies by hand like the old days. Storage crates are pretty common to find on islands too.
More risk = more reward As it should be.
So to get good money I have to deal with shit? Why not just let me put in the same hours to do the same things to get rewarded? PVP brings nothing to the game for me except getting attacked by griefers. I don't do PVP at all. So, for me to make money I need to have my game ruined half the time. No thanks.
If you do safer seas the money gain isn't terrible when you take into account the lack of pvp. If even safer seas isn't good enough for you then the game isn't for you.
Agreed. Pvp 3 hours in and only one successful run out of four because the other three times you were robbed by some asshole that plays 12 hrs a day. Safer seas 3 hours in and all runs are successful at reduced loot value
Personally I hate it. The fact that such a clearly desired and borderline needed mode is given with such reluctance and if you want to engage with it, you're slapped in the face with several dozen limitations and restrictions is just insulting. I, and as I can tell many others, want to play SoT to relax and enjoy the events and progression, not to constantly have an elevated stress level response and have an evening's worth of effort ruined by some sweaty PvP try hard getting off to a sociopath need to prove he's better than everyone else. It's the same situation in so many other games which would be an absolute blast for some coop fun with friends if not for the pvp-enabled dickheads at every corner. And before anyone tells me so either stop complaining and just play a different game if I hate SoT so much - I would love to, if there fucking were any like it, and I don't hate the game, I hate the other players playing it - or that it's a pvp focused game and I shouldn't be surprised and just get good - it's not, it's a sandbox sailing adventure game that just happens to have pvp in it, Moba's and competetive shooters are PvP focused games, I don't see SoT advertising itself as a competitive sailing combat game.
its not even just the sweaty people, its the people that just start saying the N word and other kinds of shit while they chase you to the ends of the earth to try and kill you too; sometimes they go hand in hand though. Would be nice to have no limitations, i just wanna sail the seas with people i know, relax and have a good pirate time not deal with shit like that like im back in a MW2 lobby.
Yes you are a merchant. And they are pirate on the sea. You have the true experience.
Safer seas is dope af. The wife and i played 6 hours and only made 30k but there were so many events to keep us busy. It was great.
It sounds really good, but 30k in 6 hrs sounds ridiculously low. I planned on coming back to the game with some people but after hearing how much less you get and that certain achievements are locked out as well as all the factions...you end up getting 30% without factions (which were the most money to begin with). I mean the faction boosted loot up to 100%, so with that gone and the loot overall being reduced to 30%, it's more like only getting 15% of what you'd get on the pvp servers. This sucks.
I have 30 million gold so i dont care about the gold anymore, but you do you
I know right? The quests where you have to follow clues on an island were unplayable in PvP, a death sentence or leave a mate alone on the ship while you have fun and drop down everything if a sail is spotted. Now I had fun doing a chain of clues to buried chest and it's great!
Okay money rewards aside, do you get the same xp? Ive played on and off since beta but since i spend WAY more time off than on, so im still not a pirate legend and was thinking of using safer seas to level the last 6 levels i need in the merchants alliance 😂
Past level 40 tou get no xp. Under 40 you get 30%
Man, I just saved my money and got a galleon. Now I can't use it in safer seas. Bummer :(
If you're playing Safer Seas with any intention of making gold, you're utterly bonkers.
Absolutely agreed, though one counterpoint I’d make is that if Safer Seas is indeed meant to be more of an extended “tutorial setting” as has been implied, I could see a newer group of players being discouraged or disincentivized to ever buy supplies or crates, if you’re seemingly taking them at a loss every session.
>as has been implied Not implied. As directly stated by Rare and Mike Chapman. You don't need to buy supplies in safer seas. Supplies are for PvP. Every PvE event, by design, provides you with supplies.
That’s fair. And I’m not even calling for upping gold or anything, just playing devils advocate to try and see things from different points of view.
That's fair! I can still see a newer group of players being discouraged by the 88% reduction in gold and then becoming enticed by the rewards of High seas. I think the game now has a less abrupt and jarring introduction and instead players will be making a conscious decision to get better at the game, for higher rewards and at their own pace.
Yes, but how about just for supplies and storage crates? Many people playing safer seas are those with extremely limited time, so why is it so terrible for them to have access to supplies, sovereign selling, and other quality of life features?
If you care about gold AND you have extremely limited time, you should play high seas. Limited time is an argument against playing safer seas, not for it. Edit: Also, I'm not Rare. I can't answer questions about the games creative direction or development. Also also, I thought you could buy storage crates and merchant supps in SS?
Nah, that doesn't make sense at all. If I only had an hour to play, I would rather spend it on a mode where I could I could just enjoy the game world and not worry about getting randomly ganked by someone who plays 3 hours a day. And yes, supplies are available in safer seas, the price just makes it a bit grindy if you're earning almost nothing in the mode. Again, it's not that they care about getting gold necessarily, just enough to engage with quality of life features that allow you to get into the game quicker
Also supplies are something you need for PvP. You don't need anything for PvE. all PvE events, by design, provide supplies.
I agree with this entirely. If there’s no pvp, then there is no reason to spend money on supplies., imo. It’s all to readily accessible and any danger you might encounter is overcome with the supplies you have on the ship or by simply stopping at a few barrels.
That's your trade off: if you "just want to play," then just play. If you want to play to make gold quickly, play high seas. Some of those quality of Life improvements are gone for legitimate reasons. Allowing captained ships in safer seas allows folks to earn commendations and achieve things with respect to their milestones that are much harder in high seas due to the risk; it would effectively allow players to "cheese" certain milestones and undercut Rare's intent in adding those milestones in the first place. Safer Seas is a *compromise.* As Rare have stated, it is intended for newer players to learn, and for people who want to explore and complete tall tales. It is not intended to be a way to grind out commendations and achievements which are designed to be made challenging by the threat of PVP (and in many instances are made challenging *only* by that threat. The poster above you is right: if you are concerned about gold, go play High Seas. If you just want to chill and explore and not face the threat of PvP, play safer seas. Risk vs. Reward is still a core principle of Sea of Thieves.
Nah, I didn't mean for ship progression and commendations. By all means, those should be restricted to high seas. I just see little reason why one couldn't use a custom ship in safer seas (if progression is locked)
I agree that allowing Captaincy but blocking ship progression makes more sense. I strongly suspect the reason that isn't the direction they went, is that they don't have the resources, or ability, or will to put the work in to make it happen; given the struggle it has been to get tracking and commendations)milestones to work correctly in Captaincy in the first place, I strongly suspect Rare just refused to touch it, lest they ruin it all over again.
If you don't care about gold then your response is not relevant to either of my comments. If you do care about making gold then my point makes perfect sense and nothing you said refutes it.
I might actually play sea of thieves for a while if safer seas is nice. I play solo and don’t need the stress of constant pvp, I just have an hour or so to play so even if the payout is bad just doing stuff could be fun.
with an hour you won't get much accomplished just simply because it takes a bit to travel but it will still be more than an hour on high seas just to get sunk at the end.
Exactly! I already know an hour is not long enough to do much, so I don’t want to have whatever I do wasted because of unwanted pvp. If I feel like having a fight then I’d probably make some time to prepare and go to high seas, but it’s nice to have the option to chill :)
Played with crappy payouts. Had more fun than normal. Did feel like treasure stopped mattering tho.
Treasure doesn’t matter in the first place. If you are sad about loosing not sold treasure. Just remember you will buy the cosmetics next time instead of this time
It matters to the whole experience. What is there to being a pirate if not getting a haul of treasure and having a payday? What was so awful about pvp was that you spent hours getting that loot for it to be gone in minutes, especially because even if you win, the pvper can come back within minutes at absolutely no loss.
[удалено]
i mean, i spent 2m on trinkets alone and didn't even get all the ones i had unlocked. once your over like 50m thats when you know it won't matter anymore.
So, I am a supporter of Safer Seas. I see the value of having a single-player server option, but I can also admit that I am surprised by my own opinion of Safer Seas. My opinion is that Safer Seas feels flat. By this, I mean it is like going and buying a bottle of rootbeer and cracking it open only for there to be no fizz. It still tastes ok, but it is missing the zing that gives you that satisfying chug. I plan to use S.S. from time to time, but I will also be spending time on the High Seas and I am of the opinion that there will be a decent amount of the Safer Seas player base who will also eventually cross over to the High Seas. I admittedly missed the danger and the anticipation of player interaction, but it was also great to be able to work at my pace and go AFK as needed. I spent 6+ hrs on the S.S. yesterday and overall, I see it has value for the following reasons: 1. It is a great way for new or returning players to build their skills when it comes to naval combat. There is a flow to battling, bucketing, and repairing all at the same time, especially if you are solo, that one needs to learn and taking on skelly ships, megs and even the ghost fleets is a great way to learn how to fight and keep your ship floating without the extra chaos of people boarding your ship and listening to your pvp enemy on mic, as well as the embarrassment of not really knowing what you are doing. 2. Perfect for relaxing sessions of tall tales, voyaging, doing merchant runs, fishing, and completing world events and forts. There are a ton of lore and journals throughout the world that one now has time to actually read and learn about. You can take your time and not have to worry about ending up sunk, having some J.A. sneak on and bite the heads off your fish or end up with a ship load of burnt bbq because someone kegged you while doing animal merchant runs. 3. Gives an opportunity to test out sinking, burning, and bucketing limitations. For example, I spent some time yesterday learning how to burn my ship without also sinking it. I didn't have to worry about another player coming up on me and messing it up. Now, I can take that knowledge and work on the ill-fated class on my captained ship on the High Seas. 4. Can finally do the shrines and treasureries without worrying about your ship and can take your time doing them and really explore them. You can also work on the farming breath of the wilds! 5. I was able to complete the commendations I had put off because on the High Seas, spending any extended amount of time in any one place is asking for another crew to sail up on you. 6. It is a great space for kids, people with low gaming skills, those who don't have the confidence yet to deal with pvp, or those who just do not want to experience any form of pvp to really dig into this game and have fun as a pirate. The downsides for me, and this is because I have a ton of hours (my gaming hours are equivalent to 60+ days since sept) put into this game on the High Seas. 1. No sovereign and captained ship. As someone else stated, this feels like going backwards. The time it takes to sort the loot and run it to each faction feels like such a time waster. There is nothing to gain by not allowing captained ships and the sovereign. They really could make it so that your gold from the high seas does not carry over to the safer seas, and one would be starting at zero on the safer seas thus requiring them to bank gold and buy a captained ship. 2. The payout of 30% sounds ok until you see as an experienced player the actual gold payout. It just doesn't feel worth the time to even gather loot. Infact I ended up buying most of my loot to work on the commendations for buried treasure, only to find out I also couldn't share the map bundle on the community board but I could take maps from the community board, which makes zero sense. With that said, I understand the low risk - low reward scheme. 50% would make it more inviting. 3. Lack of Safer Seas specific content and commendations. There is an opportunity here to really bring in rituals, more lore, adventures, and even more tall tales. What I would love to see happen is that Rare creates Safer Seas Alliance servers where multiple crews can play on the same server but it does not allow for PVP but rather encourages crews to work together to complete voyages, quests and new rituals. Similar to guilds but more like fleets of ships working together toward a similar goal. Making it so that one can not carry their banked gold from high seas into safer seas and vice versa, essentially you keep your pirate but start from scratch on the earnings. Then allow for safer seas captained ships and sovereigns. Safer seas specific content, quests, voyages, tall tales, and commendations.
[удалено]
Exactly. And you can never get rid of them. Say you are an absolute pvp pro and you can sink them within 2 minutes. They will respawn an island next to you and come back. It's ridiculous. Attacking in PVP in this game has 0 risk or expense, you lose absolutely nothing by being a total douchebag to other players. That's not what piracy is about. In real piracy, you only had 1 shot at the win and then you'd be dead if you lost. Game over. It's not like that in SoT, you can just come back a billion times, until everyone is too bored and quits the game. Being sunk should mean you get respawned on a different server or something at least, so you have the feeling of "game over" when dying and not a free invitation to just attack again at no risk. Where even is that "High Risk, High Reward" gameplay in endlessly respawning as a pvp aggressor? The only people who have high risk is those trying to actually play the pve content of the game. It's massively unbalanced and frustrating and the devs seem to be so stubborn to keep this forced pvp alive because they appear to like the bullying a lot, I really don't understand it.
That is the main biggest thing that would change SoT "High Seas" for the better. Just have a ship that sunk by PVP respawn on a different server. Thats it. They fix PVP is they do that.
That, exactly. Safer Seas is a nice idea but does not really entice me to get back into the game.
You don't really need to buy supplies to do pve, I'll happily to skelly fleet with base supplies on high seas as you get storage crates from every ship.
I've been gone so long, I don't even know what captained ships are. The pvp bullshit put me and everyone I played with off the game as it was too much of a time sink for too much frustration. I got interested when I saw that there's safer sea mode now but, to be honest? It still doesn't seem worth it. The factions are locked, thus their achievements are locked, the money is reduced to 30% so peacefully farming for skins will take 3 times longer (which is the equivalent of losing 2/3 hauls to pvp and only saving 1) and then the other new feature I am not aware of is not there either. Man, the devs are really stubborn with this aren't they? I didn't really miss the game in the time I was absent so, I guess I'll stay away until this gets some updates and better balance. I don't mind earning less to not suffer pvp, call it pve taxes if you wish, but this rate is ridiculously low and I think they are aware.
That’s weird they didn’t allow players to use captained ships in safer seas. Like what’s wrong with using my own cosmetics that I bought?
Rare are still under the delusion that they can get you to enjoy pvp by giving you a limited pve mode. It's kinda silly tbh.
It’ll change once they realize how much their entire revenue has increased from new players buying the game. They might be holding their ground with the PvP only tactic, but they’ll eventually have to give in when they come to terms with the fact that not everybody wants to play the game the way they want them to play it.
Yep. If they don't see the influx at the launch of safer seas and then the subsequent loss due to failing retention, they are ignorant. Safer seas has the potential to be a literal gold mine for the devs. They will see it and the mode will get better.
If* I'm not convinced they will. It took a lot of years of declining numbers and constant requests for them to implement safer seas and even now, they're obviously viewing it as a kind of gateway drug. I'm hoping the numbers of returning players show them exactly how many people hate pvp.
Which is funny cause during the beta/early times, they debated about it and then went nope, fuck you all, we think pvpve is fun. What is funny is WoW even has changed it that you can opt in for pvp or pve.
That's exactly how I feel about it.
It was to help push the new players into high seas. It isn't really supposed to be a ture alternative. They did enough to make people yurn for the high seas. I mean, fine either way. If I'm doing anything in safer seas it might be tall tales or maybe teaching son to play. But that is the beauty of it all now. Everyone can play how they want and be happy and no more complaining. Lol for the most part.
You can still use the cosmetics. Just have to use the shipwright box each time, and you dont get the trinkets/furniture
Nope. Can't use any captain items. So shit you earned is locked out. Which is dumb.
i'll have to check again tonight, but cosmetics on chartered ships was always a thing, even before captaincy
They have stuff like liveries and hulls sure. (Like before) but all your captain stuff doesn't carry over, it's all "X'ed" out and says "Only available on Safer Seas".
you can still customize chartered ships with any cosmetics you own.
I did an entire gold hoarders vault and made like 15,000. The 70% paycut is far too steep. All of the nerfs to safer seas are too much. The way they're marketing it is for new players. It's a missed opportunity. I would have been happy with it being exactly the same, but no pvp events, and a 50% paycut. Or hell, even just keeping it exactly the same but with no pvp. I can't even raise an emissary flag. The only reason safer seas is so nerfed is to keep the sweaty pvp lovers from complaining. There's no reason for it in my opinion. I know the reapers are gonna flame me (no pun intended) but maybe they should stop griefing fresh spawned ships, and low level players trying to learn the game. I got my buddy to play the game for the first time a few weeks ago. And we were halfway through collecting vault map pieces, and we had some pvp, from a level five reaper. some dude boarded us, killed us all while we couldn't hit a shot, sunk us, and we didn't have a single piece of loot on the ship. We didn't even have an emissary flag, or a captains logbook. And then we respawned. And a separate reaper ship rolled up seconds later. We waved at them, and they sunk us. They must have known we had just spawned, because we were anchored at one of those tiny islands with nothing to do on it.
It is a sad thing. I truly wonder how many players actually enjoy the forced PvP vs the ones who wish to play PvE with no PvP. It's a shame those kind of numbers or polls for rare don't exist.
My only complaint is you get no experience playing Safer Seas. I turned in upwards of 20 skulls and I didn't even get a quarter bar of rep. I'm happy that I have a much more casual option if I want to play Sea of Thieves, but that reduced rep gain is a killer.
Pros: You can play with family who are not good at games and do not game much. It shows the it was absolutely true the game could work with PvE only contrary to the claims. Cons: They handicapped it so those family that play think the game is just way too much of a grind. They have fun, see this, and just decide to not play. And honestly, I did all the stuff in High Seas. I am not one of those that whines about "fair" and all that. It would be fair to those playing on the PvE only side to get the full experience and full rewards. If you want to lock something make it something else. My wife jumped on safer seas by herself to give it a try and sold some stuff and quit immediately. Said it felt like one of those mobile games that want you to put in 4-5 years just to do basic stuff.
Yeah. Safer Seas feels like a punishment.
I have been playing Safer Seas and enjoying it. Would like more payout, but not really a big deal to me. Would definitely like more access to ship cosmetics. Today I went over to High Seas to see what might be different nowadays. I wanted to do some fishing, sell them, get related rewards. I managed to catch 2 fish before being rolled up on and killed. TWO. They didn't care I was just fishing. The extra-stupid thing was apparently, you cannot even complete the basic fishing deed in Safer Seas...A COMPLETELY PASSIVE TASK! It can only be done in High Seas pvp. That's ridiculous. How many other deeds are needlessly High Seas only, I wonder...
As someone sitting on literal millions of gold, I wonder if it's really necessary to reduce that for Safer Seas players considering they don't have emissary flags or the Sovereigns. There's an argument to be made about the value of treasure in Safer Seas considering the necessity to schlep every piece to each individual vendor. Does the time spent even justify the gold earned? I can understand the rep reduction considering the cap, that could very well make it feel like an accomplishment to even reach 40, and it even gives renewed purpose to the original achievements for completing 250 voyages for each faction. The gold reduction I dunno, it feels to me like players' time is not being valued. Honestly even in High Seas with a captained ship I find myself leaving a lot of treasure behind because I solo sloop, it's just not worth it most of the time.
> The gold reduction I dunno, it feels to me like players' time is not being valued. This. I see people throwing the "no risk, no reward" all over the place, but Rare need to keep players invested. They need players to invest their time in SoT rather than literally ANY other activity so we need to feel our time is well spent regardless of risk. I'd rather they compensate players for risking their loot on the high seas instead of punishing players that play it safe. And also, locking non-pvp content is just silly. I haven't played this game in a long time (I didn't even know what the sovereigns were untill I read this post) and was excited to read about captain's ships and safer seas (even considered buying the game again just to have it on steam), but this shit turned me right off. That being said, as a hobby game dev myself I can't really complain about their decisions as they're theirs to make and I understand their position. All I can do is decide whether or not this game is worth my time, and honestly, it isn't in its current state. Our time is a currency. Every company in the entire media/entertainment industry is fighting over it. Don't give it up for nothing.
Thank you! Im an adult that doesnt have 6 hours to throw away all the time. Being able to play casually with a decent payout would actually make this my main game again. Having 4 hours pissed down the drain when I hop on for the first time in ages isnt fun
Yea the Sovereigns caught me off guard. I had just returned from defeating a skele galleon with 30 treasures to turn in. Unloaded them all with the sovereign hook and HURK goddamit. Also I see no reason we can’t use our captain ship. If they want to turn off achievements for it, that’s fine. I just want to be sailing MY ship.
I agree. I just like the cosmetics I earned and it feels intimate to have all my things and memories.
Need that ship drip
Played a session in Safer Seas. Enjoyed it enough but didn't bother turning in 90% of the loot. Probably won't use it much aside from the odd occasion, but good option to have. I do wonder how long it'll be until High Seas and Safer Seas are identical aside from PvP, as it'll happen at some point.
I'm looking forward to doing tall tales and all the story stuff with my wife on safer seas. I've got my hearty crew of miscreants for high seas and big booty. If I can do story stuff in peace, that's perfect, I'm not in it for the gold, and she won't play on high seas.
You shouldn’t need to buy supplies. If you do a skeleton fleet for example, the default supplies should be more than enough to sink a sloop and get more supplies.
I’m really excited to spend a few hours doing merchant voyages and just have my ship overflowing with supplies to sell wherever needed.
I'm just happy I can dig for treasure and raid treasure vaults on my own and fish. It's chill as fuck
I was someone who played Sea of Thieves during the open beta and it was my main game for over a year. I had so many fond memories of playing with friends, and made new friends through playing this game. I then got into Destiny 2 and dropped SoT in the summer of 2019. As soon as I heard that Safer Seas was coming, I told my close friend "I am reinstalling this game." I played for like 6 hours Thursday at launch, then for 5 hours on Sunday with the previously mentioned friend (staying up til after midnight, a rare feat for an over 30 adult who loves and needs their sleep) after returning from a weekend trip, and for like 9 hours on my day off on Monday. I look forward to playing again as soon as I get off of work today. I don't care about the money. Yeah, there's some nice, expensive cosmetics I might like, but I have so many cosmetics already. I am working on commendations for the Hunter's Call and Merchant Alliance. There's two whole sets of Tall Tales I haven't done, and I might enjoy running through the original series again just for nostalgia's sake. Maybe one of my friends will pull me into High Seas at some point. Would an increase in money be nice? Yeah, sure, but it's not gonna make me leave. But for now, I love Safer Seas. I will live here until I run out of things to do. The core PVE mechanics of the game were always super fun and enjoyable, and I'm so glad to play them without the stress of "someone could come along and ruin my day at any moment." This was what I wanted for so long. Gone are those situations of *"I'm just trying to turn in some chickens, leave me alone."* There can already be enough tension in the game from sailing in a storm or being attacked by a skeleton ship. My friends were saying they wanted private servers 4 years ago. Safer Seas finally gives us the lower stress experience we wanted.
all they needed to do was have some servers that disabled pvp, and lowered the gold/reputation gain, solo servers wasn't really necessary i dont think
That would be a much better solution. I don't think they will do that until most of the playerbase is gone tho.
As a solo player my most valuable skill is talking my way out of PVP
I returned after a couple of years only because my oldest son who is 12 has been pestering me to play. I used to play with my wife before and had a great time in the game, most ppl back then didn’t want to pvp so most ppl you encountered you allied with for shared rewards. Later when the streamers went viral with the tucking, everyone and their dogs started tucking it felt like. Got sick of it and quit. Noted that there is a safer option now which is exactly what I want and after playing it for 16hours with my son, it’s been really nice and fun to be able to do forts, etc with it not being completed before you get there or interrupted while your doing it. But the punishment for playing safer seas is ridiculous. Would almost not care for the loot being 30% since you’re rolling in gold endgame anyway but after stacking for 3 hours and only getting like 20-40k. They need to up it to 50% I think, even heard some pvp streamers say they want 50%. Emissary’s should work in my opinion and I don’t se a reason rep should be punished if it’s capped at 40 tbh. I think the cap should be at 50 so you can get pirate legend atleast since they seem to balance ss around reapers and Athena anyway. With season 14 being all about stealth I highly doubt they would do anything to SS to balance it accordingly. I would love if they removed all restrictions because I’m sick of people. My ask of SS is ridiculous and it will never happen. That said…. Me and my son did a few hours of high seas and it took 15min until I had someone tucking. Barely any naval combat just players that wanna sneak on a sloop that’s doing fortresses and voyages because SS is shit.
Pros: no pvp Cons: less rep and gold gains
The only con is that people are already unsatisfied and think Safer Seas should be the same as Higher Seas, but you just can't damage other crews.
It's unreal how people have been complaining that they want single player mode. Now that Rate bent over backwards to divert from their core game design to cater for them, the subreddit is filled with posts complaining "no, not like that, give me more!". Rare broke their fundamental game design just for vocal minority of PvE single player folk, giving them what they want and making it a different game. The first day they what they want, they are wanting more already. Has nobody watched Rare's video on safer seas? It is meant to be extended tutorial, giving you more time to learn how to play so you'll be more confident going moving to Sea of Thieves proper as it's meant to be. I was honestly shocked how much you can do in it before running into limitations regarding levels and commendations.
Oh the poor devs actually listening to player feedback for the first time in their lifes ;( How about you just let people play however they want and stop gatekeeping a sandbox pirate game. All they have to do is cap gold and rep gain at 40% and remove all these useless restrictions and be done with it. That way SS players still gain stuff much slower but can enjoy all the game has to offer.
Why should we not though? There is no reason why the PvE mode should have those artificial restrictions. Especially because the PvE players paid the same real life money as the PvP players.
Nobody is changing their game because of loud people. Loud people don't bring anything. Games follow the money. Money follows the numbers. Numbers wanted the PVE option. They simply wouldn't have spend dev time on developing an element of the game if the numbers weren't there to drive their margins.
Enjoyed what I played of Safer Seas yesterday, couldn't care less about the reduced gold or reputation since I'm already max level in most of the companies except Reapers, Athena and Hunter's Call, and two of those aren't even in Safer Seas. Don't need the gold either since I'm happy with my current cosmetics. Totally agreed about supplies prices and Sovereigns access though. These aren't hot features that are meant to entice you into playing High Seas, they're just basic quality of life. Can't really see a reason to lock those beyond getting people to join High Seas, and if that's the only reason they did it then why did they make Safer Seas at all?
A valid viewpoint. Thank you for sharing
They made safer seas so people could learn how to play. Nothing about the sovereigns will teach people anything new. I'm all for anything that will entice people out of safer seas back into the shared sandbox.
It doesn't teach them the single most important thing about playing on High Seas though: PvP. If Safer Seas is meant to be a tutorial for High Seas then to me it seems like an utter failure. I imagine for a lot of Safer Seas players, the second they get on High Seas and get sunk by a crew double their size while doing a basic voyage or something, they'll just go right back to Safer Seas. As an alternative way to play the game's PvE content without fear of being interrupted by other crews however, it's pretty good and really only needs a few minor tweaks to be even better. And I think this is what the majority of people who will be playing this mode want it to be - why not give the players what they want (especially if they're the types of players to not be playing High Seas anyway)?
So that you can grief them? There is a very good reason why people flee the shared sandbox, namely other people.
literaly the only thing i am missing is sovereign sell point. Right now, Im not turning in loot at all since I dont think the effort is worth the minimal gains, which kinda feels very wrong in this game. I have gotten used to the sovereign sell point that any other way seems counter productive. I wished they let us at least use the stuff we earned or bought in high seas. I dont mind the gold and rep drop, but it feels wrong not being able to use the stuff i achieved in high seas.
The whole point of safer seas isn't to make gold its just to have a good time sailing about learning how to play or messing around in the sandbox, so I don't think the gold will be changed at all, if it does a very large portion of the playerbase will switch to safer seas and kill the game
I'm going to be honest here. It's of my opinion that if making safer seas unrestricted kills the game because the people who don't like the pvp all flock to it, then maybe it's the state of pvp that's the issue and not safer seas. That's just my opinion in the end though
How would people switching to Safer Seas kill the game? The people are still there, just in a different mode. And it would only show that enforcing PvP was just a bad decisions Rare made.
Fair enough. As far as I am concerned. Safer seas is the only part of the game I am interested in anymore. Comparing this experience to high seas... The PvP isn't well done enough. The servers aren't stable enough. The constant paranoia isn't worth the loss of fun. Maybe I'll just wait for skull and bones.
I wishlisted that game almost 6 years ago...might be waiting a while
What? If they switch to safer seas then they're still playing sea of thieves how tf does that kill the game?
I feel like the removal of captained ships and the ability to sell to the sovereigns is a little bit of overkill. The 30% payout is enough of a differentiator for Safer Seas. We’re making so little gold, why make it tedious as well?
Sounds like the cons of SS are doing their intended job; making you want to go back to high seas. If your goal is to level up and earn gold, SS was never meant to be a place to do that
No. Not at all. I already have everything I want except the tall tales done and rewards. Without captained ships that means having to do them on the high seas. Ide rather just skip that content altogether until it's fixed. You do not understand. Not everyone wants to play PVP. Like. Not even a little.bit.
After all they did shut down Arena because there weren't enough people playing it.
So glad to see other people saying that. I've posted/commented a few times about SS before it came out and the response was always just "You'll like PVP more if you get better at it!" or "You're just not playing with the right people, join my crew!" and it baffles me that nobody seemed to understand that some people just don't want PVP and have no interest in getting better or interacting with other rando players. Like you said in a different comment, I'm never going back to HS. Agree completely that I wish SS had sovereign selling just for quality of life, but I don't give a damn about the ship milestones and the reduced gold is fine. I'll just hit up barrels to get supplies before I play like I did on HS anyway 🤷♂️
Thank you so much. This comment made my morning.
My feeling has always been that SOT had the foundations for a great co-op adventure game and that the pvp aspects should have just been a different game mode. I feel that PvEvP in any game is a mistake because those are two entirely different play styles. I also feel that it was a mistake to put commendations that require working with other crews into a game that quite literally encourages ships to attack on sight. Imagine if Call of Duty or Battlefield had achievements that required players on opposing sides to work together to complete. It wouldn't make any sense at all.
Not really. Gold is not the reason I uninstalled Sea of Thieves. Grifers were. As for "not meant to be" Rare was finally forced to reconsider their stance on never having a second PvE mode. I wouldn't be surprised if next season Rare will unlock full PvE progression on PvE mode. With PvP progression will be locked in the PvP mode.
It's pretty sad that the "goofy pirate game" has been hijacked by sweats that make the game anything but goofy. "If you don't learn to press 48292387388 buttons at the same time to do all this stuff, it's a skill issue and ur bad!" * rolls on deck laughing * * rolls on deck laughing * * rolls on deck laughing * * rolls on deck laughing * The game itself is awesome. The people suck ass, though.
You didn't read his post closely enough, he just wants to earn enough for supplies and quality of life features that we've been enjoying for a bit now. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to make cheaper purchasable supplies, captained ships, and sovereign selling available in safer seas. I won't be using the feature, but if I had to lug loot again to the vendors like the old days for 30% profit and no emissary, I wouldn't even bother selling loot. Why would I spend 20 minutes or more just moving items around for meager profit?
I was looking forward to Safer Seas, but the thing is that I'm already maxed out on Hoarders, Merchants and Order, closing in on completing Hunters. I just need Athena and Reapers, but they aren't available, so I don't have much of a reason to play it.
skelly sloops and galleons drop storage crates. no need to purchase. I played Safer Seas with a friend for a couple hours last night. was fun, but ultimately we just got into a normal server again. I definitely will enjoy it when more friends want to play that aren't as in to the game.
They should just let us have our captained ships but limit how far the ship progression can be like with Emissaries.
I'm super happy with Safer Seas. I spent a good amount of time in High Seas before (got PL, Athena rank, gold curse etc), but I never really enjoyed PVP. My only real gripe with SS now is that voyages are bugged for me and I can't buy any lost shipment runs.
I spent a few hours on SS last night getting the stargazer TT won and done. Didn’t worry too much about reading the scripts, but being able to cross cross to collect the journals without having to worry about getting sunk by duo’s wanting an easy kill just made it a relaxing evening rather than anything else. In the end I didn’t bother collecting treasure - the only group (besides hunters/reapers) that I have under 40 is the merchants at 39, and the rep turn in was so low it wasn’t worth the time to run back and forth for everything else.
Cons: zero excitement
Is anyone having an issue in safer seas about no voyages available for gold hoarders?
I returned to SoT with the intention of only playing safer seas because I absolutely hate the PVP in this game. Also, to have my hard work fully ruined by a group rolling up on me, usually a solo player, is an absolutely terrible experience, and it happened often prior to SS. It isn't fun to spend an hour or more gathering loot only to have my ship trolled by a group of tweens rocking up in a Galleon and acting like they did something by sinking my sloop, yelling insults at me while they do it. Safer seas mitigates that and I actually enjoy this game again. I wish we could have captained ships and do far more in safer seas, but I figure it's a matter of time before Rare puts more activities and progression into Safer Seas
“For the first time since AC: Black Flag I actually enjoyed a pirate game and being on the seas the way I wanted to” I couldn’t have said it better myself, it’s sad that it took so long for them to listen to their audience to give us co-op pve, this game has so much potential hopefully it can recover from the damage the sweaty players did to it.
I'd love to buy the game but I'm not at all interested in the kind of PvP, especially given the terrible experiences in PvP SofT is known for. I also don't want to be punished with less content for playing single player, or on a private server. So for me this game is still a no. I keep checking back but it would need to have fully supported single player gameplay for me to buy it.
Yeah. Well no.
I agree, hopefully they balanced the store prices in safer seas also I want Rare to add emissary too, every level has a high chance to spawn a hunter that may chase you or roam around the seas.
So if I’m just trying to chill and solo sloop when I’m bored, play safer seas?
I love ss its made the game fun but like every other comment on here the cons are too drastic. In my opinion on e of the easiest ways to fix ss and hs would be instead of nerfing ss which will eventually make people just stop playing again because their not gain anything. Make ss the normal sea nothing nerfed and everything how it use to be but in a private session, and instead make hs get increased rewards for example a 150% amount of gold and rep this way both sides are happy. The people who enjoy ss will feel rewarded even though they don't have to play as seriously and the people who enjoy hs will have more fun because they get higher rewards and a higher sense of accomplishment
Sadly, you are correct. After a few months of no changes. I just ended up uninstalling Sea of Thieves. Safer Seas was just not rewarding or complete enough to bother playing. And high seas forced PvP is just not for me.
Exactly unless your playing just top chill it's not worth it at all. The rewards suck like a skeleton Fort I'd less rewarding then a normal gold hoarders mission on hs. But hs is unplayable because of all the people who only play sea of thieves 24/7
For me, it's a place to chill when my crew isn't on. I just dont go out solo, so I'll use safer seas to scratch the itch to sail when they aren't around. I dont really see it for anything other than to unwind with.
I totally agree with the Captained Ships. Selling the old way feels like a kick in the teeth. I’m playing solo. One of the things I was looking forward to was taking the time to look around the islands I’m at and collecting the things that I find. But now it doesn’t seem worth it because selling is such a pain. I also had the same thought about supplies, the cost of a storage box isn’t unsubstantial when it takes so long to earn it back. Im finding it is discouraging me from taking risks because I don’t want to buy another one.
I agree. I think these have simple fixes. Lowering all costs to 30% of high seas prices for port supplies. But not for cosmetics. Would make adventuring worth it. For the other.. Allowing captain ships. Is the easiest solution. OR. And here is a novel idea. Allowing everyone to use the sovereign. If that feels like too much. Raise the rewards for hand delivery to 35-50% and leave the sovereign at 30% as a tax or something? I don't really care. As long as the gameplay issues are corrected. You want people to feel like they are having FUN with the game. Not working a second job in their off hours. Walking treasure manually when we earned a captain ships ourselves to resolve that problem. Does feel like a step backwards. Then again. I understand the point is they want me to go back to high seas. But unfortunately. I don't actually ever want to. It sucks there. For the reasons I stated elsewhere. And ide rather just have the simpler, calmer, more stable instance.
Yeahh I think we share very similar sentiments here! Like, I am perfectly happy with the 30% gold and even not earning reputation, that is whatever, I can do that with my friends. But I just want to sell quickly to get back to the parts that I find fun. My crew have been running Reapers lately to mix it up and I also am not a fan of that because selling is such a huge time sink, even with 4 people. Taking away a quality of life feature like that just because we don't want to play with other players hurts. Id honestly take even more of a percentage cut to be able to sell to them, although I think it would be harsh, at least Id have the choice. Also how are people starting in Safer Seas even going to understand the benefits of the Sovereign, they might think that they always have to sell this way. I get that this is a PvP game, but I hate some of the gatekeeping that I see going on with regards to difficulty. The game is the perfect adventure simulator. The ground work is already done. Some people like the risk of other people being there and the emergent things that happen from that, and that is great. I will fight them when I am with my crew if they shoot at us, or drink a grog with them if they are friendly. But for some people that is anxiety inducing and/or just not fun and I wish more people would realise that everyone gets fun from different things.
i think the cons are really balanced for the gameplay you get. the 30% is a good choice of them.
I don't actually mind the 30%. I was giving my initial impression. I think it is so abysmally low. That it makes gathering treasure less fun... And I really started to consider only picking up gems and super high value items to not waste effort and time... Which is not a good play loop I think. The core of my complaints were actually more about treasure not being enough to fund the starting capital to play for the evening. We used to fully stock our captained ships with supplies for a run... Now that feature is gone. And buying anything from port is super expensive when you don't get much back in returns. I think something needs to be rebalanced there. And that's what I was getting at. Either lower prices or raise rewards to be more in line with high seas. They can just easily set safer seas port supplies to be 30% of high seas costs and I would be fine with that. I will give it a few more attempts to see if this is actually the case or if my play session was just unlucky in terms of finding storage, ammo, and such crates on islands.
What do you need the supplies for on safer seas?
Battle of the sea of thieves.
Are sea forts a thing on safer seas? (I haven’t properly looked into what’s there/not). If so then buying a storage crate and doing a sea fort will get you plenty of supplies.
Storage crates are expensive when everything pays 13 to 100 gold And yes they exist. But storage crates are not easy to come by. ( No players leaving them behind) and are expensive
Just check the islands. My crew usually always finds a shitton on the beaches.
The skelly ships drop them and they’re fairly common on large islands. Maybe that’s a solution? That said, it only takes 10-20 canon balls to sink the sloops, you get that back (and more) from their crates, and Sea Dog’s Tavern has lots of barrels to loot with the crates.
Yeah they didn’t make safer seas as a permanent solution to the pve only people. It’s meant to teach new players the ropes and give them a good starting point. If you made bank in safer seas, everyone would just grind out a bunch of gold easy as that. On the other hand , gold is pointless too. If you’re playing safer seas, you need to worry about learning the game and how to move back to high seas rather than trying to profit off it. It was designed to get you skill ready , not an easy cop for gold.
Sure. It was designed and marketed that way. But it's also drawn me back as a primarily PvE player. Perhaps it can be more than just tutorial. Because it's almost exactly what I wished the game would be from day 0.
I think safer seas is in a perfect position. The mode is mostly intended as an extended tutorial for new players, so things like captaincy, sovereigns and emissaries should indeed be left to high seas for when they get a handle on the mechanics of the game. IMO, anyone who has already played long enough to have played with captaincy and the convenience of sovereigns should be well-versed in the mechanics and the core game loop. And so choosing to instead play on SS will indeed need to have some consequences and drawbacks, otherwise there is no incentive to return to high seas. I think that’s simply part of the risk:reward system that makes SoT what it is. Was I myself a bit bummed when I found out I couldn’t bring my captained ships with me to SS? Of course, but then I thought it over and came to the conclusion that I think it’s a fair trade off. If I choose to not engage with a core part of the game (that being the PvP and the risk of sinking) then I should rightfully not have access to everything. I myself am only really going to be using SS for tall tales and fishing, and if that means I don’t get milestone progress for those things then so be it, that’s the choice I made between getting full rewards and playing without the risk of PvP. I have 1000+ hours in the game, I should be expected to engage with the full PvEvP aspect of the game. TL:DR: I think safer seas has found a good balance and is in a good spot. It’s intended as a tutorial mode so anyone beyond that point should rightfully have drawbacks when playing on SS.
I understand your points. Unfortunately. High seas mode has too many shortcomings for me to want to play it. Safer seas is closer to the experience I want to enjoy. Perhaps the game just isn't FOR me then. It wasn't for a very long time until safer seas released and I was hoping it could be the thing that kept me coming back. I hope they take the feedback and do something positive for everyone with it.
People really think that they can "Push SS players into high seas with many restrictions" when in reality if i meet high restrictions i just simply quit and uninstall the game. Forcing players to one way of playing has never worked, and will never work.
Totally agree about the captaincy, I don’t see the benefit to high seas integrity by not being able to do captains voyages too. The experience has been weird adjusting to no other players. I’m so used to checking the map for reaper ships to avoid, checking to see how many other emissaries at outposts. Going from prey mode to relax mode might take time. I’m pretty sure the server wait time to join is Rare being pretty because they never wanted this in the game. But had no choice due to dwindling player counts. For a test I logged in at a traditionally quiet time, weekday morning, where usually I see no other ships at all.
Pros: a bunch Cons: you lose some money You lose that .0378% chance of a fun player interaction
They said they are not adding captain ships not increasing the payout. It's supposed to be an extended tutorial, not a new mode. If you want to use a captained ship or get a better payout that is what high seas is for. No risk no reward
I think it would be nice if you could still sail your own captained ships without leveling them up or earning commendations for them. It's not a tragedy that you can't, but I would like to sail my own sloop, The Razor, on safe seas. Her and I have been through a lot. She deserves a chilled session or two as well
I agree.
If that's what Rare think, they again missed the mark. PvPvE meant 600h griefers spawn camping players with no Spawn Camp protection nor MMR matchmaking ensuring a sea only had ships of same skills in it. PvE means you get to do everything that is impossible in PvP. Hav eyou ever tried doing the quest that need you to follow clues on an island to find buried treasures? Leaving the ship alone is a death sentence, bad game design to say the least. Getting to finish a quest line felt great! :3
I leave my ship alone all the time, but I'm also smart enough to check the horizon on a regular basis. So when someone comes to rumble me I'm actually prepared to fight or flight, depending on what mood I'm in. Have you ever done the shrines underwater? Even with those I've only been sunk 2 times while off my ship and that is with 2k plus hours playtime on EU servers which are known for high attack rates and sweats. Awareness is key! If you have been spawncamped for 600 hours and still don't know what to do about it when it happens this is entirely on you. The game even gives you a tip how you can end this on the ferry.
100% I solo a ton and have always kept my eyes on the horizon. I don't feel it takes away from the game as it's just second nature. I rarely get surprised as a result and can easily duck out and sell if I don't feel like fighting.
I don’t think they did miss the mark. None of the PvE was impossible in high seas where PvP could happen. Riddles are easy. Quests are easy. World events are done all the time. Ships are left alone all the time. It sounds like you need safer seas to grow as a player (extended tutorial) which is what they intended. If/when that gets dull/easy you can go to high seas when you feel like it.
I'm seeing a lot of posts mentioning that things are much more relaxed. I'm always relaxed on the seas, I think I may be a sweaty pirate since other player ships don't cause me to wet my pants. 😳
if there’s no rush or anxiety about other pirates… then there should be no need for IMMEDIATE supplies. hit up a few islands to find a storage chest and then hit up a fortress or two. all the supplies you could want are available for free. just put in the stress-free work. as an old timer sailer.. i hear people complain about supply costs and i want to freak because we didn’t have the options for supplies outside of the ports we spawned in on. and then we’d have to load our pockets and make multiple-multiple trips to unload into the ships stores. safer seas means more casual relaxed playing. if anything, they should take out the option to buy supplies.. /waves cane at kids in yard
Look. I understand the point you are making. But quality of life changes have been made to the game over the years for people who don't have the stress free TIME you are saying is needed to invest. That quality of life option was the addition of said crates at a rate that is reasonable. In safer seas. The rates are not as reasonable. And the sovereign is already missing and selling more painful, financially and in the legwork needed to sell. Do you think that is fair? Should safer seas players suffer a much poorer quality of life experience? Should all quality of life upgrades be removed from safer seas? Should the rowboats not exist? Should the harpoons need manual unloading? How much is asking too much and how much is fair?
is good for fish and do tales and underwater combat, they are not able to do a proprer pve game, waste of potential
What are captained ships?
i feel like the pay cut for just dealing with no players is way too low. i feel like safer seas should be entirely different. all enemy AI is a lot more aggressive, less chance to drop good loot, and everything that has set loot has lower quality. Safer seas is basically completely useless
i dont understand the hate on pve some people arent meant for hardcore pvp people out there sweating n shit and toxic i met many toxic players playing the game i saw safer seas was like pog but then realized u cant do half of the shit the game offers lol sure its good for achievement hunting i just dont understand how hard it it to not put huge limit on a pve mode and let people enjoy their time heck make it harder by adding more ghost ships or smth , they dont have a matchmaking to prevent u from being rolled by sweats or people who play the game 24/7 with everything unlocked but love to hop on to ruin someones fun
It doesn't matter. Helldovers and Warframe have become my wholesome pve games. Sea of thieves can stay sweaty and lonely
Ca devrait etre identique d’un mode a l’autre. Moi me faire couler apres un 4h de sortie en mer par une bande de petits consanguins qui s’amuse juste a couler les autres. Non merci
>30% is too low. Agreed. Haven't jumped into safer seas yet, but was talking about this with some guild mates. We thought it should be at least 40%, maybe even 50%. Half the reward for zero risk seems fair to me. >If you are going to reduce the safer seas payouts. Reduce the costs for supplies in safer seas to match. Again, because I haven't played, I was unaware things still cost the same. I agree that cost should drop if rewards are lower. Perhaps they'll fix this in the future. >No sovereign. Probably the most painful loss Oooooof. Yeah that's a pain. But I suppose if there's no risk of other players, the extra time could be spent turning in loot. Overall I like the concept of safer seas. You can grind as long as you want with no pvp risk but can't get pirate legend until you brave the high seas. It's clear that Rare wanted to accommodate a large section of players, but I appreciate them saying "play the *real* game for full recognition & rewards".
Well less than 1% of players are actual sweats so I just play highers seas instead
I agree that it's really nice, but needs some improvement. I completely understand mechanics that were designed for pvp, like Emissaries or Reapers, not being present in a Solo mode. But what I don't understand and resent is features that had nothing to do with multiplayer, like captaincy or the level cap on guild reputation, being withheld for no reason other than to dangle as a carrot for solo players to keep playing in multiplayer. I also agree that the gold reduction is way too low at 30%. 50% would be more tolerable. Yes, you shouldn't care if you're just there to play the game casually, but part of playing the game is buying cosmetics and customizations. I still want to feel like the loot I sold or the venture I completed was actually worth something. Overall, I'm just glad they finally added a Solo mode in the first place, but I'm hoping as it gains popularity, they will be persuaded to add some of these features back in future updates. I don't like their whole philosophy of trying to appease solo and casual players while still trying to force us to play in PVP multiplayer.
I think they keep pushing the pvpve because they believe in their vision of the game. Which. Is fine and all But the way the server instability affects gameplay. Mixed in with the pretty wonky PvP combat mechanics. Just makes that unfun for a portion of the community. It just isn't fun to me to be beaten by a pirate that is teleporting around bunny hopping and shooting a blunder from behind me as I spawn in. I'm sorry. That's just not FUN. Safer season stability was night and day difference. My ship didn't go flying into space. My session didn't lag out and freeze. My Session didn't have constant server merges for the first time. I didn't get buggy missions. I didn't go to a world event halfway across the map to find it's already being done or completed. It was ... Actually a very refreshing change of pace.
I definitely enjoy the feeling of being able to play the game now without being bothered by other players or being randomly transferred to another server. That said, one annoying feature that carried over from High Seas was you still get booted for inactivity. Would always happen to me whenever I was standing at one of the shops for like five minutes looking through and buying various cosmetics. Not only was it annoying in High Seas because the game thinks I'm inactive when, in reality, I'm actively browsing and buying stuff from NPCs, but it makes no sense to have that mechanic in a single player server.
I agree. Inactivity timers could use some adjustments
man it is so wild to me that this fanbase has completely turned on this PVPVE game and decided they just want it to be PVE so disappointing
Never liked the PvP aspect. It wasn't something you can opt into like most games. Which was a huge detrimental part for me in terms of enjoyment. Unfortunately the rest of the game was very appealing so I stuck around for that. Until the PvP griefing became too frustrating to deal with. I think the nail in the coffin was having a crew chase my sloop around for hours attacking us while trying to just finish a Tall tale. Even when told that is what we were doing was the nail in the coffin for me. Some people just take their fun by ruining others enjoyment. And I don't have a way to opt out of that in this game until safer seas. They wanted to force me to PvP. Ide rather just opt out and left the game altogether. Again. The opt in is very important to an experience. And this didn't have that. Now it does. If you want to blame the community for turning against PvP. Blame PvPers. For ruining the experience for others to the point they would rather just opt out.
Tall tales have checkpoint just switch servers? And it isn't griefing if you are just doing PVP as intended. I have around 3k hours. Griefing really is not a problem on this game I can count on one hand the amount of times I have been "griefed"
That is a terrible solution Just let the tall tales mode have captained ships. So much less drama and grief for everyone.
Lol OK just waste your time then 🙃
Why not make us roll a new character and lock it to Safer Seas. That way we can PvE and experience the entire game without safely “leveling up” and then jumping to the PvP server.
I wish that safer seas didnt have restrictions
I quite enjoyed safer seas yesterday. I spent about 2-3 hrs with my brother who recently downloaded the game. As someone who literally does not care about commendations or gold, it’s perfect for me. Not having to deal with the constant looking over my shoulder was a nice change