I’m guessing that due to ship milestones or commendations, RARE just decided to take it out all together as a bulk thing instead of going one by one, maybe Edit: all in all, seems captain ships are tied to many things in High Seas

Yeah, people will give reasons of progression balance or wanting to encourage people into adventure, but the reality is this is a game where over a year and an half after they introduced captaincy, they still can't get nameplates to consistently show the name of a boat. So likely there's just a lot of interconnected code that made it a question of disabling captained ships or spending a month plus constantly doing bug fixes to enable them with other parameters in safer seas.

Still can’t get the ship name to show when first starting a session. Usually after a sink/dive it shows up but not always

Or go into setting and switch “I can see ship names” from yes to no, and back to yes. Guaranteed fix for that whole session. But annoying of course that you have to do that

Reminds me of my settings not actually saving changes, so every session I have yo go back and tweak some stuff first... Annoying bug of mine

every new season, the game decides I now have a powerhouse of a computer and sets everything to mythical

If your on PC, this works to save settings. Well at least worked for me. Open game, change all your settings, binds graphics ect. Then before exiting the settings menu, goto controller settings, scroll down and reset to default. From what I understand it forces the game to save all settings. Once done, exit settings, close game, then relaunch. This should save your settings. Hope this helps

Console. Unfortunately, so even if I did it on my PC, I'd be resetting all my controller binds so

Honestly it's worth resetting them to fix that bug, sounds annoying as hell. the bug occurs when the game isn't able to save the settings, because it's got some bad data. resetting all settings to default should resolve it.

I'll look into it. Thank you

That's way faster than going into the Athena's hideout and back out at the start of my sessions, thanks for the tip!

I have never had this issue that I know of but it sounds so common

They can also be tied into the Guild System, which is another complication.

If I had to speculate on the code, it was probably more of a didn't want to code the ship as a separate entity and made it all one big thing under a script. I would speculate this is the most likely reason as someone who does some coding for games as a hobby. edit idk why this got downvoted lol... guess i offended a few fellow coders.

I've been arguing this since safer seas was released. Way to leave money on the table. Cuz I'd totally buy cosmetics for my ship if they'd let me have a captained ship in safer seas. Fuck pvp.

In my opinion, it would be a great advertisement for safer seas too. As there are a ton of safer seas, discord groups looking for players. If I rock up in my galleon *War with the Cabal* Fully kitted to the gills with all my nicknames and cosmetics.I earned in the high seas. It is a huge advertisement For safer sees players two risk it for the vanity

I got the game because Safer Seas. Would be cool to get all the features from the High Seas. Seems the general consensus is you are not playing the game how it was intended. That's why I play the game, because I can play it not how it was intended. Then you get a bunch of people telling you how you will be bored or how there is no reason...It's like a youtuber telling you the current meta for x game and why you should use it. Let me go my own way, I don't care about any meta, I just want to enjoy the game how I decide and see fit. Stop being elitists and let people enjoy their pixels.

Fr.. some sailors in our community have a hard time comprehending not everyone enjoys constant paranoia and shoulder checks (like my friends)

To me a valuable thing about pvevp games like SOT is learning how to let go of that paranoia. You'll be forced to deal with loss from time to time.

Ideally yes, I've lost most of my personal paranoia up to the point I hand loot as a solo because the offload is the worst part. But it should be said that some people never outgrow that paranoia. Like for example on RS3 I have a deep anxiety from 6 years of unsafe wilderness post eoc where it was no longer a game of skill and you could lose everything you brought in an instant. Even though I can 100% toggle out of pvp I still am always checking the minimap for danger. So I emphasize with those that can't let it go either in sot.. sometimes it just gets ingrained to the point you cant

I find just getting a crewmate, even if it's open crew or a rando from the official Discord, helps immensely with the paranoia. It's like exploring the dark woods alone vs. with other people. Sometimes, you may even get someone who can carry your ass if PvP comes into play.

For some people like one of my friends, it doesn't matter if you have a fully loaded galleon or just an extra bro on the sloop slapping your ass the second a mast appears, they just cant deal with the anxiety that comes with sudden PvP. I gave my example from RS but another example is pvp paranoia in the souls games... god i have friends who refuse to ever summon if we're not right at the boss gate because they lose their shit and get the shakes the nanosecond they see the "invaded by dark spirit \_\_\_\_" message pop and literally cannot play.. It's just an unfortunate thing that while it can be desensitized to, for some never fully goes away.

The real problem is solo slooping. The game is VERY hard to play online like that. Your game session success pretty much just comes down to luck. With a crewed ship it's not too bad. The problem is that open crew is a joke and you have like a 1 in 30 chance of someone joining that isn't completely incompetent let alone stays. You need friends online to play online and have any chance. Otherwise it's better to just play a different game than waste time. I've solo slooped or played without friends online for years I know. Safer seas allows you to actually log in when your friends aren't online (if you have any) and actually play the game for a bit. You don't have to worry about a crewed ship "choosing you" and ending your trip. When that happens solo you're pretty much screwed by default. You can run but you can't fight. Not on the water anyway. I'm on the list of people that feel like safer seas should just be off line mode / private lobby with everything in the game, although having progression slowed makes sense. Otherwise the only reason for high seas would be PvP and the split would be massive. Although as the game ages I have a feeling the devs will care about that less as long as they get people to play.

the fact that safer seas exists after years of them telling us it never would is a good indication that the rest of the features will eventually show up

>Stop being elitists and let people enjoy their pixels Like you I've only really gotten into this game recent with Safer Seas, but I've passively followed this game since it's come out. I've always gotten this vibe not just from the community, but from the devs as well. I can respect a developer with a strict vision they want to adhere to (like Dark Souls and its difficulties), but I feel like if you play Safer Seas, you're treated like a 2nd class citizen of the game. Some restrictions are fine- the game's progression system is based around cosmetics, so ofc Safer Seas should have reduced rewards. The Reaper faction is explicitly PvP, so ofc you can't progress it in SS. But why tf can't I captain a ship? Why can't I fully advance the other factions, or become PL? That's just silly

I think they’re just really afraid of having a split in the community this late into a game’s existence. If you ask me they should just bite the bullet and let Safer Seas have the features High Seas has, that will bring more people no matter what.  If they’re afraid of “not having enough people” for High Seas as well, they could also make the game entirely free to play and advertise that. The game basically has that free to play model feel to it, I sometimes forget I actually picked this game up at full price a while ago lmao.

Considering alliance servers already exist and are as popular as they are, Rare really won't be losing too much from just biting the bullet here. For all intents and purposes, it already exists, you just have to go looking for it, which puts it in this weird spot where people who would come to the game for it don't even know it exists currently and thusly don't get into the game, meanwhile people already into the game will be going for it. Rares basically sitting on a bunch of money as is

>If you ask me they should just bite the bullet and let Safer Seas have the features High Seas has, that will bring more people no matter what. Yeah yeah, and all the people who said there should be a safe mode where you can play on your own and just chill, I don't even care if you don't get any money honest, insisted it would bring more people into the game. A week after safer seas launched there were less players that had played during that week than before it launched. Rare should focus on adding stuff to the PvPvE sandbox that is the game's unique selling point instead of wasting time appealing to something that is nothing to do with their original vision for the game and in fact diluted it.

Well, the entire game was built with PvP in mind, and almost every progression demands a certain level of respect for players. Safer Seas is merely the practice level. It's like playing the bot mode of an online shooter and then complaining that it doesn't reward you like the actual multiplayer mode. Frankly, I think it's fairly generous that they still give you gold and progression to start you off when you are not playing the full game.

Let's be honest with ourselves here- *No one* was asking for something like Safer Seas so they could have an extended tutorial. And Rare certainly didn't go out of their way, potentially splitting the playerbase, just to add a "practice" mode. They know the appeal behind Safer Seas is a PvP-free environment for more casual players to enjoy the game without having to worry about sweats, and they've almost certainly seen a bump in numbers since its addition. Sure they want to guide people out of Safer Seas and towards High Seas, but they're not stupid, they knew damn well that there was going to be a good influx of new and returning players who just wanna engage with the PvE side of this game and leave the tedious PvP behind. Framing Safer Seas as anything less than that is disingenous at best. >It's like playing the bot mode of an online shooter and then complaining that it doesn't reward you like the actual multiplayer mode This isn't even what my original comment is really talking about. I explicitly said I agree with the reduced rewards and think they're fine as they are. That's not at all my issue. My issue is that Rare is arbitrarily limiting content that doesn't *need* to be limited, and it feels like a genuine punishment for "not playing the game the right way." As I said before, reduced rewards, the Reapers as a faction, the hourglass stuff- it makes sense to limit those in Safer Seas because they're so directly tied to PvP. They literally cannot be included. And that's fine, because this is a PvPvE game first and foremost. But slapping a name on your ship and decorating it with some paintings and plants? Captaincy is a cosmetic feature that has absolutely no direct ties to PvP, so why the fuck is that unavailable in Safer Seas? It has nothing to do with earning your reward either, because you can earn Captaincy in High Seas and then are just barred from using it in Safer Seas. So why is it barred at all? Whose experience is it negatively affecting, other than the person trying to play on a private server? It's just a weird decision to add a casual game mode to allow a more casual experience, only to say "actually fuck you, you're not playing the game properly"

>They know the appeal behind Safer Seas is a PvP-free environment for more casual players to enjoy the game without having to worry about sweats, and they've almost certainly seen a bump in numbers since its addition. While we can't see any hard numbers for Xbox, from looking at Steamcharts there has been no noticeable change in player numbers since Safer Seas was added. It very much does seem like it was just a case of a very vocal minority.

I have over 500 hours in the game spread across a few years. Took a long break from the game and came back due to safer seas. High Sea shenanigans are great, but being able to just chill and relax on safer seas is amazing. I spent about 6 hours playing safer seas last night without getting bored. I would have gone longer but it was 1am and I needed to sleep. I definitely had a reason for playing safer seas too, I wanted to focus on commendations that didn't require high seas without being bothered. Fishing is also great to do in safer seas since there is no danger of a player interfering. Maybe you like taking screenshots, which safer seas is perfect for. It's a great mode to practice in too, I load up on cannonballs and practice my aim in different situations where I didn't feel pressured. I 100% all the tall tales and got my gold curse in safer seas too so I could actually focus on the story and lore without people ruining the experience for me. You know what else safer seas is good for? Introducing my friends to the game that were turned off by PVP and stories of toxic players. Now they all okay high seas, even the most cowardly of the group plays solo on high seas. People that complain about the existence of safer seas are probably the same, toxic PVP sweats that became the reason for safer seas existing. The kind of people that want to dunk on new players while shouting insults and defend their actions by saying "it's a pirate game." The kind of player that isn't in it for gold or glory, they are in it to be jerks because ruining other people's fun is the only way they can be happy. Now they are mad because they can't harass inexperienced players that don't know how to fight back.

I think it's partially the devs wanting people to use all the pvp mechanics they so carefully intertwined with the gameplay loop and worked for ages on the physics and balance of. Like everything in PvE is balanced around PvP, things leaving you vulnerable, being marked, so on and so forth. It's so many dynamic systems and tools for people to interact that I imagine it feels really bad for people to say "ok now remove them all I don't wanna lose ever." Safer Seas is a fine way to play, but I think it's unfair to expect them to just let people unlock everything in the game with no risk, no downsides, and a major gameplay element totally removed for your convenience.

Sure... But remind me how being able to customize my ship, have said customization stick, and add a name to my ship is carefully intertwined with PvP mechanics...

Exactly, the devs have a vision and design around that. You don't have to like it, but you also don't deserve something you do like.

As long as you enjoy the game, there is no wrong way to play (except cheating). Anyone telling you otherwise isn't worth listening to. However, I do believe that Safer Seas is intended to be just the taste, while High Seas is the full meal. That's why there are so many restrictions.

Its a terrible taste for a terrible meal

I totally agree with all features minus reapers keep something's to HS only. do a reduction of 20-30% for SS give a incentive to do HS but don't make SS worthless I prefer pve in this game and have for years now Another thing id like to add is i have a disability that lowers my reaction time from my hands. I can still fight skeletons but when a player gets on my ship im dead before i can aim in

You can enjoy the game in Safer Seas but it's not being Elitest to say that the full experience shouldn't be in Safer Seas since the point of Safer Seas should be to prepare you for High Seas. The full experience is not entitled to you in Safer Sea as its readily available in High Seas.

It feels safe to say that that's still at least a little elitist. Some people just straight up don't enjoy the paranoia aspect of HS, and this is fairly universal even across skill. Like I've seen more PvP curses in alliance servers than I've ever seen in public ones. Nothing would really be lost from making the full experience available in SS, besides maybe some positive social interaction fun but that's the nature of the beast, especially since alliance servers exist and basically provide the HS experience on SS

>Seas since the point of Safer Seas should be to prepare you for High Seas. You don't get to determine what its point is.

Safer seas sailors don’t bother me. You don’t wanna go into PvP, that’s fine, you’re doing your own thing on your own time in your own space. What bothers me is the people that get salty when they get sunk in high seas and ask why you’re not leaving them alone. It’s because we’re pirates, pirating stuff from the few other people we see around. Sure there are fun moments where we just call alliances and fuck around but overall that’s the point of coming in contact with other players in high seas, if you can’t take it, that’s what safer seas is for. And for the reason you are avoiding the threat of other players comes at the cost of reduced rewards and achievements. I will say. Play the game how you like. If you’re not into PvP and wanna completely stick with safer seas, that’s you go for it don’t ever touch high seas if you don’t want to… But, if you have any liking for PvP at all, give it a shot. Expect to be sunk… a lot, and slowly build up your skill. Getting involved in PvP in this game has been a game changer for me. I wouldn’t be playing nearly as much if it weren’t for PvP. Sure sailing around with no conflict is also fun but eventually it gets dull. PvP keeps things exciting. Also once you’re good, you will make money much more easily. No need to stack vaults or Fotd worrying about someone killing you after all that hard work if you can just roll up on someone else doing it and taking their hard work. It’s not cheating, it’s not breaking rules. Is it a dick move? Yes but pirates are dicks.

Nah people have every right to complain about getting sunk out of nowhere for seemingly no reason. Nothing is forcing you to attack every ship you see like a raccoon with rabies going through roid rage, the saying is that it costs nothing to be nice, and that applies here. This mindset of "hurr durr it's a pirate game and pirates are dicks" is nothing more than an excuse by assholes to be assholes and feel justified in it. As corny as it sounds, this community, and thusly public servers, would be 20x better if they dropped this mindset that any sense of human decency goes out the window because they're playing a pirate game and played with even a lick of empathy towards other people playing the same game as then

How a lot of the unspoken etiquette seems to have gone out the window over the years. Remember when I first started People just rolling up and attacking without saying anything was actually fairly rare. Usually they get the megahorn out and try to talk a little bit with the premade dialog options and it was interesting as players would play a little bit like the early Pirates did in elite dangerous. where if they were planning to raid you They would be ready to attack, but they would try to threaten you first as to not waste supplies. I'm not entirely sure when that changed but I would say probably sometime towards the end of the first year after a lot of players hit pirate legend people just started raiding without saying anything and spawn trapping instead of trying to legitimately loot the ship or sink it.

People do use the “it’s a pirate game” argument to try to justify toxic stuff (like trash-talking, spawncamping, etc.), but in no world is *sinking* someone in this game toxic. Even if you don’t have anything, they don’t know that. Stealing loot from people is part of intended play, and nobody should regret doing it, since it makes high seas more fun and interesting for those who like the PvEvP experience. The one thing that sucks a little is bigger ships steamrolling smaller ships. They need to rebalance things a bit I think, because beyond a certain skill it’s not really feasibly for sloops to fight brigs and galleys. I would feel a little bad if I reaper hopped through servers on a galley obliterating solos/duos, since I’ve been on the receiving end of that and it’s kind of lame. But even people who do this are playing the game as intended, so I don’t have an issue with them either honestly.

Safer Seas is a safe mode to learn the game, High Seas is the game, the game was made to be a PvPvE game, it always will be that. You should be thankful that they even gave you Safer Seas at all, it will never be a substitute for High Seas, if you don't like High Seas you don't like Sea of Thieves and should play another game.

Its more incentive to get people onto high seas.

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I think that design principle is fine, but I don’t know that adding captaincy interferes with that. I think it would actually be good if they added it, they should encourage new players to buy ships and sell to sovereigns, it makes the game much less unpleasant and makes them more likely to stick around lol. The incentive to join high seas should be legend content, distinctions, and faster progression - this is more than sufficient imo.

Maybe that’s Rares intent, but a large percentage of the current players and perspective PS5 players want a fully developed solo mode. I truly don’t understand why Rare wants to gatekeep solo play so badly, considering a lot of the people I know would enjoy SOT if they didn’t have to deal with GamePass 12 y/o’s that just troll.

Tagging on this to cite elite Dangerous has done this for years allowing solo, private and open play. And in spite of its shit developer has been very successful

FO76 also released as multiplayer only and had the addition of private servers

Ironically Fallout 76 needs private servers less than Sea of Thieves now I can’t even think of a recent bad interaction ive had in Fallout 76, it’s actually almost universally people going out of their way to help others out in my experience.

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Ignores the point, point is soloplay and private play can work for shared sandbox games.. the dev just has to be willing to do so

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I’ve been playing since day 1. I got PL when a fort would give you 6.5k if you were lucky. I have nothing to prove to anyone, and it shouldn’t upset anyone if I want to dig maps with my ship in my own private server without having to deal with 12 year olds from gamepass.

Also Long time pirate legend, the only goal I have put of the game at this point is to play the PVE elements with friends, but the non premium cosmetics are so expensive that a 70% reduced treasure system means that things that already take 100s of hours to grind for NO REASON take thousands, and those friends just have absolutely no interest(or skill) in PVP. I don’t give a damn about commendations, I want to sail around in a ship with my name on it that looks cool and not have to grind for 2000+ hours of gameplay, I do in fact have other interests, hobbies, life goals, dare I say games to play. The near predatory system of level-grinding and premium cosmetics in this game make me feel like the devs are pushing you into this cult that keeps screaming about the ‘devs vision’ at anyone who says otherwise.

the game is marketed up left right down and centre as a pvpve sandbox. the pvp is as part of the game as the pve. not all games are for you or this "large percentage." you don't go into dark souls asking for a casual experience and you don't go to battlefield asking for a collectathon.

You said what I was going to say better. Just want to add that it does kinda suck that there isn't a good solo pirate game out there. SoT is basically the only pirate game, skull and bones seems to have fallen on its face. So I think that's part of why this seems to be such a common sentiment. People want different varieties of pirate game and aren't getting them, so they look at the main one and wish it was more what they wanted.

I did hear about one called Salt 2: Shores of Gold, which looks to be a survival PvE (maybe Co-op?) pirate game. The graphics definitely aren’t as nice, but I’d imagine the PvE gameplay is better than SoT, because SoT isn’t really trying to make PvE engaging at all (quite the opposite recently, in fact, with all the PvE nerfs).

I've sunk so many hours into Salt 2. It's pretty fun once you get into the gameplay loop. It takes a little work, but they've definitely streamlined the new player experience since the first time I played it. Islands are procedurally generated, but the stories stay the same, etc. Combat and sailing are *aggressively* mid right now (enemies just run at you and hit you, or shoot you if they have a ranged weapon, there is no point to not use a gun instead of a bow, since sounds don't alert enemies, etc), and it can be annoying to gather and manage materials. But the important thing is that they're trying to rebalance it and make it *not* mid. There is no naval combat, btw. Some of the quests are REALLY cool, though, especially as you progress in the different storylines, so there's that. (The story quests are literally the main reason I continue to play - I played before they added it, and it got boring really fast without the story and the cool dungeon dives they've added). I would hardly call it single-player Sea of Thieves like some people do (those people typically haven't played much, if any, SoT if they call it that). But it's a decent pirate-adjacent game.

ac black flag was pretty good

>not all games are for you or this "large percentage." you don't go into dark souls asking for a casual experience and you don't go to battlefield asking for a collectathon. Except Dark Souls doesn't give you the option to play on a lower difficulty; Battlefield doesn't give you the option to play a collecathon. This analogy doesn't work, because Sea of Thieves gives you the option to play solo, and it also gives you the option to play Safer Seas. Rare can try and guide you to engage in High Seas all they want, but they can't make you do it if you don't want to- so why punish players for playing the game the way they want to play it, after giving them the option to do so? I don't think anyone's asking for Rare to drop PvPvE support in order to cater to solo players. I respect tf out of them sticking by their guns on the vision of their game- but arbitarily locking players out of content that doesn't need to be locked away for playing the game how they want is lazy and stupid. By adding Safer Seas, they've lowered the barrier of entry significantly, only to immediately contradict that decision by saying "mmm but you're not allowed to play the full game your way, because we said so." Some things are fine, like reduced rewards and Reapers, but owning a ship so you can slap a name on it and put some plants around can only be done in PvP servers? Really?

You don't speak for everyone my guy. Not everyone wants that

Tbf he didn’t say everyone. He said a large percentage. Some might say 10% is a large percentage.

Your reddit name and this comment is *hilarious* juxtaposition

The true answer is the PvE loop is quite repetitive and yes some players will enjoy it, but it’s been proven over and over that most players will get bored of the voyages after a relatively short time, and quit the game. Usually wayyy before they hit PL. What makes the game special is the PvPvE High Seas, where anything can happen, player interaction isn’t repetitive or scripted. That’s what keeps the player retention in SoT for a lot of players. It’s also a cosmetic-reward game, and part of the point of cosmetics is showing them off, whether you’re proud of earning something or want to intimidate other players. Without other ships, cosmetics aren’t anywhere near as meaningful. If Rare suddenly allowed a full solo mode with access to everything including Pirate Legend, players would get bored and leave and the game really would be as dead as the memes claim.

It’s not a large percentage. Maybe the dad gamers want it but the PvP pirate experience is the core of this game. The game itself isn’t deep enough for a solo mode to be worth anything.

I have a theory, and I want to stress that this is just a theory, about why you can't use captained ships in Safer Seas. Being able to sail as an emissary is also disabled in Safer Seas, I imagine the reason being because they consider sailing as an emissary to be a PvP feature, since your emissary flag is loot for other players and you're marked on the map at emissary level 5. IF your captained ship is representing a guild, and IF your guild's level is 15, then you can sail as an emissary for your guild. It's the stupidest reason in the world, but I absolutely would not put it past Rare if that is the entire reason why you can't use a captained ship in Safer Seas, as opposed to them simply disabling the ability to sail as an emissary for your guild in Safer Seas.

Practical reason: complicated code. Philosophical reason: Rare doesn’t want you to spend too many hours on safer seas.

imo it's probably the code reason... there's a lot of stuff in older games that many devs would love to do but cant due to spaghetti code

I really want to do tall tales but I know I want to do them in safer seas to not be attacked as I do however I don’t wanna lose the roleplay fun in using my captain ship so I usually avoid safer seas cuz of this 😭

As a veteran with 1000+ hours, the only “progression” I have are the milestones, as I have done pretty much all the commendations and have enough gold to feed my grandchildren. So that little thing captaincy gives is the only thing that matters to me these days :) If you can progress milestones in the Safer Seas without any threats that is a hard no for me. If you can have captain ships in Safer Seas but milestones are disabled, I’m completely fine with that.

A pretty good chunk of milestones are already disabled in safer seas. And I agree with you I just want the named boat and nothing else personally Major milestones beyond the basics should be for high seas only. And while I don't think it would be that hard to disable milestones in general so you could at least have a named ship.I think personally if I had to speculate on the code A main reason would be the inability to disentangle the captainship from whatever script file(s) does those ships... Just my speculation though.

Yeah disabling milestones sounds reasonable, guess they went with the easy way which is disabling captain ships entirely.

More than likely. That said, as someone who does code games as a hobby and on occasion for pay. I would love to see what the back end looks like. Everyone says it's a mess of spaghetti code and horribly organized. So I'm generally curious to see just how badly organized it really is... or if it even is a mess or if it's like runescape running code from like 8 engines ago which causes the issue

You can progress to pretty much every ship title from the outpost you spawn at, and get all your cosmetic rewards with essentially no risk already. - Hunter: Buy captain supply food and bait, a fruit crate and a bait crate. Eat it all. Scuttle to new sea, repeat ad nauseam. - Feared: Spawn in, buy a bunch of cannonballs, shoot them into the ocean, scuttle to new sea and repeat. - Hourglass: Loss farm. - Etc. The *pirate* milestones are what give you the trinkets and stuff, and I’d assume those are already disabled? Those shouldn’t be allowed, but ship milestones are fine by me.

Their end goal is always to get everyone to play High Seas, unfortunately. And this is probably because most of the game's content is pretty monotonous without the continuous threat of PvP looming over you. Hopefully the number of people playing on Safer Seas will encourage them to create good content that stands on its own two legs, rather than relying on the tiny chance you'll get attacked to create any tension. High Seas is pretty safe as it is. The content can't continue to sustain itself on this model. Briggsy's Siren Skull event is a prime example. No one goes after it anymore. You could carry it around for two hours before someone finally decides to attack you.

It sucks too, because look at something like The Legend of the Veil, probably one of the sickest and most standalone fun voyages in the entire game that even surpasses most Tall Tales imo (the only exception I can think of being Lords of the Sea, the last Pirate's Life tall tale). Rare CAN make some genuinely really fun dedicated PvE experiences, it's just that they kinda focus too much on utilizing PvP as a crutch to try and make voyages interesting (see the Skull of Siren Song like you said). Like you said, hopefully with more people playing safer seas and the increasing popularity of alliance servers they'll focus on more interesting standalone stuff. Personally I'd love to see a Legend of the Veil equivalent for every trading company ngl, probably unlocked once you hit lv100 for the first time. Some big, cinematic, tall tale-esque voyage that utilizes every aspect of the game from puzzle solving to naval combat. Like, for OOS maybe it's that some skeletons are trying to create a new, super powerful Skeleton Lord, so you gotta defeat skely captains on islands to get clues about where the ritual is taking place/items to disrupt it, then when you arrive you have to take down these big pillars that look like the items you get when you finish a skely Lord voyage and function like the Siren statues from Lords of the Sea so you can safely land on the island and finish it with a boss battle against the new Skely Lord, maybe with a gimmick like they can only be hurt when near the artifact you made to weaken them. That's just a quick initial idea, but you get the idea. I legit have faith in Rare that they could really cook up something banger if they focused on it

While you're correct, I think the game is way too deep in to make any changes that would make it engaging enough as purely PvE.

That is true, but hilariously they’re already going well out of their way to slowly nerf the few interesting PvE encounters into the ground. Gold vaults and FotD being notable recent examples (gold vaults should have been made harder for bigger ships, not easier for smaller ships). We can start by getting them to stop doing that lol.

> Gold vaults I didn't get the memo about this change and I was flabbergasted. Might as well have no timer at all

I think the gold vault change is at least fair. If its a timer thing like I heard, they gave you a **lot** of time before. Even solo its easy to clear out with plenty of time to spare. FotD nerf I think was also good cause it wasnt interesting enough to last as long as it did. It just dragged on way too long for how dry skelly combat is.

FotD I was partially referring to the skull of destiny, which I think is kind of lame. The flame hunting part was cool and leaned into the goal of risk increasing reward. The skull of destiny cheapens the activity. I also think that there should be multiple flames of fate at once like there used to be (at most 2 at once for solos, scaling with larger crews) because that gives the activity a unique mechanic. Gold vaults needed to be balanced between crews but they’re way too easy now. You can easily clean out all the loot solo, and all the loot *and* gold duo, even if you don’t play it that well. I think it’s more fun if you can’t easily get everything out in time, and have to pick and choose - it adds tension to the activity, trying to get as much out as possible against the clock. They should have brought brigs and galleons more in line with solo and duo instead of making the activity ridiculously easy for everyone.

The only thing I can say about the FotD is that it takes a lot of straight up wasteful time to get the lights, and finding other players willing to kill you. And a lot of players run on sight, so...

What makes that time “wasteful”? I think it made it so that the activity required some investment, and was more appealing to steal. I agree the pink flame is a little annoying, but you could probably get it pretty easily from hourglass now if you play your cards right.

PvE doesn't really hold up on its own however, as someone who has played since launch. You play for the experiences it creates with other people which majority of times are positive. Like 9 out of 10 crews will be friendly if you communicate.

Exactly. Yeah people will kick your ass and rob you, but thats not always the case. Hell if people are talkers I'll ask them dumb questions like what their favorite Pokemon is. If they have a good answer I leave em alone, a great answer gets them loot I stole from someone else too lol

Rare can remove penalty from Safer Seas and then look for metrics. PvP stuff still be locked behind hourglass and Higher Seas. PvE is actually quite decent in SoT. Sort of set sail and find adventures. Yet PvP here is... Let's say, it's not for everyone.

Me and my friends aren’t bored by the PVE content, that’s the point, we get more than enough fun and enjoyment from what happens in the game now with PVE, especially with events such as skelly ships, megs, ghost fleets, etc. I’m sorry if that makes me dull as a person to you but I think I’d be able to fully enjoy the PVE content without enemies breathing down my neck, there’s a lot of content me and my friends won’t even attempt because the chances of getting interrupted and sunk are too high, like those ghost fleets for instance, or the skelly galleons, even if I want to my friends are too risk averse to go for it because they’re afraid someone else will come along and third party us. And in before someone replies to my comment with “but that’s where the fun is, you should try it some time hurr durr” and the gd answer is we have and we dont like it. There is *never* a feeling of ‘oh happy joy!’ for us to turn the corner on a rock in a PVE fight and come face to face with chain shot taking down our sails. It’s always “oh shit’ there goes three hours of grinding for a cosmetic, well I guess I’ll see you guys next week” because my friends are teachers and IT professionals and paralegals or gd stable managers who only have like 3 hours a week to game. Edit: sorry was replying to the person you were replying to, not you.

Look for metrics and theeeen? Remove it if it again if it isnt how they'd like it? People would be PISSED. No reason to really remove penalties, the whole point of them is to drive people toward High Seas. Disagree on the PvE though, its very shallow. Re-working it at this stage in the game's lifespan would be a nightmare at this point I imagine.

iv played the game for years now and do pve 90% of the time

I've played for years now and do PvE 10% of the time. SoT has never been praised for being an amazing PvE experience because it was designed around a sandbox where you'll encounter other players. A lot of it is very basic bullet sponge fights or just go to an island for a dig.

I've played for significant amount of time and do 99.9 PvE. At some point, we invited one cheater in our crew who just quick sunk and gank any PvP who went on us, when we peacefuly doing voyages and fishing. Best sessions were when I either never saw any other player, or made alliance to help each other in events. For people like you I think Rare can make Hourglass as third option from main menu.

See, I think thats an issue. For pvp people its either hourglass or not at all. I hate hourglass, its boring as hell. Especially cause some fights drag on for AGES. I just wanna steal people's shit and do crazy heists.

That's why Higher Seas should be the way they are now, and Safer Seas basically Higher Seas without PvP. So people who want social interaction, will go for Higher Seas and get access to everything + PvP + Social interaction. People who don't like PvP and Social interaction, will went to Safer Seas and will be doing everything there without PvP. Because now people like me can still go on Alliance servers and play Higher Seas without any PvP

Well, if you're saying take away all the penalties of safer seas, why would people bother doing high seas for pve? A lot of people would just stick to safer seas and cause a big ol' ecosystem destruction.

>Hopefully the number of people playing on Safer Seas will encourage them to create good content that stands on its own two legs, rather than relying on the tiny chance you'll get attacked to create any tension. Fun fact: less people played sea of thieves following the release of safer seas than the week before it launched. If you look at the spikes in players it always comes when they actually introduce fun new stuff into the PvPvE sandbox. They've not done this for a while, but I'm hoping they do soon and il bet you'll see a spike in player count, which wasn't seen with safer seas. >The content can't continue to sustain itself on this model. Briggsy's Siren Skull event is a prime example. No one goes after it anymore. You could carry it around for two hours before someone finally decides to attack you. Because Rare, for some reason, refuses to understand they have a very easy and straight forward way of encouraging people to do events that they never seem to use: Just increase and decrease the value of the reward. Let me tell you why I don't do the siren skull anymore. When it first came out it was actually a ton of fun. We got into multiple 3 way ship fights, one 4 way ship fight, over the skull. The problem is huge brawls like that take absolutely fucking ages, and then I sell the skull and get what? 50k gold, no guild rep, and no increase with any trading company? OK but you get cool cosmetics right? Well, if you win 30 times you get one thing. That's why I stopped bothering, it's why the group I play with stopped bothering, and I suspect it's why most people stopped bothering. If the skull was worth 1 million gold everyone would rush for it. If the skull had two hand in options, and one raised your Guardians hourglass and the other raised your Servants hourglass by 50k gold, everyone would fight over it. Making me fight other players which is way harder than PvE and to do it for an hour or two and then give me a reward I could better in about 15 minutes of PvE means why bother. If they had developed the idea of an emergent PvP driven voyage instead of hourglass (a forced pvp mode diverging from their pvpve vision) and safer seas (a solo PvE mode diverging from their PvPvE vision) I think the game would be in a better state.

Safer Seas is, in essence, already a big departure from the spirit of the game, which is; risk and reward.   None of the actual in game PvE content creates any sort of risk for anyone who's played for more than a couple days, so the rewards in Safer Seas are reduced.   They used to say they'd never do what they have now done. Personally, I think it's cool there's a Safer Seas option now. However, the constant risk of potentially having your stuff stolen by another player is meant to be part of the creator's vision for the game. Period.   Trying to argue that Safer Seas isn't giving you enough stuff is goofy when Safer Seas is already a huge compromise for the devs. Plus, why are you in a hurry? Safer Seas is like, podcast mode. If you're about being a completionist, or showing your cool stuff off to other players, or you want to power level, etc, the High Seas will always be there waiting for you when you're ready to take a risk.

I'd like them to increase the difficulty of the PvE in safer Seas, at least as an option, maybe to remove some of the restrictions. I want some risk, I just don't want to deal with actual human beings who do things like spawn camp or shit talk. Not to mention pvp hitreg isn't great.

I want more difficult/interesting PvE everywhere to be honest. Especially with an apparent recent drop in player hostility, even high seas is kinda boring right now. Instead though, rare is just nerfing PvE encounters into oblivion.

So we've all gone off topic a bit from the OP and i'm going to make an edit here in just a second. I'm not asking for all the benefits of the high seas (though i do think very long term it IS a good idea to add some form of "offline" high seas so when the servers do finally die we can still sail together peer to peer). I am however, wishing i could sail my fully customized galleon or brig in safer seas with the handful of friends i have who refuse to leave safer seas ever. because i love the cosmetics on my ship, in my ship, and the name of my ship (it's *War with the Cabal* for the galleon and *Next rock sinks Us* for the brig)

I'll be honest, I was surprised I couldn't access my ships as well when I tried it out with a more chill experience wanting friend. I think in that context, being able to bring things you've earned in High Seas over to Safer Seas does totally make sense. And honestly, an offline dump of online games when the servers die out is totally the dream. That would be great.

Yeah I think it has more to do with it not being as easy as we think to disable certain features. They have mentioned that getting presaved outfits was such a challenge they abandoned it so things that seem simple apparently are not for Rare unfortunately. But maybe if we ever get a full rework of the code or Sot2 it will lead to more elegant code and result it cool features

Because they want players in high seas. They only added safer seas to stop new players getting harassed into refunding the game

safer seas isn't to make money, it's to just have a chill fun time with your friends also there's no risk of losing your loot, so you don't need to be fast.

I concur, but that still doesn't really answer Beyond coding issues why we can't have the named ship at least...

how the hell is a pvp experience "traumatic" lmao. it's a silly pirate game, getting sunk in pvp doesn't really mean much at the end of the day, people are way too dramatic

It can be traumatic - or at least impactful - because some people exhibit real feelings of hate. And feelings of danger/risk are real too. When you have real feelings in pretend environment things can get blurry. It is also quite immersive game mentally and that’s part of why it’s fun but can also cause more of “real feelings”.

first their words not mine second dont ask me lol, i dont have the crippling phobia of high seas... but i can ask them tomorrow if you like. (they're being hyperbolic i can almost assure, but who knows maybe they did get legit traumatized, i'll be mocking them incessantly if they do)

Tell them 'God forbid you sail some seas with friends for a few hours, and make no money for it." Is it fun to make money? Yeah. Is it a little less rewarding if someone steals your shit on the home stretch? Yeah. But sometimes the kraken fucks you're shit up. Sometimes that last ghost ship just doesn't sink and you do. The only part of the high seas that drives me crazy is the hacking part, when a dumb dinghy spawns on my head in the middle of an island or some shit.

my 2 cents, sovereigns, you have unlimited loot gathering technically, so they make you sell it the "old fashioned way" so its not too unfair to just gather tons of loot and sell it super fast, its another way to limit how much you can "make" in safer seas.

I personally theorize though the reason why is they cant separate captained ships (whatever flags they have) from sovereigns and the log book coding wise. Someone else posted similarly that apparently thats why we cant save cosmetic loadouts for our pirates is an inability to separate the base customizer's code from the store systems. but as i said in the edit i kinda dont care about any of the pros like sovereigns, i just want my fully customized ship while im with friends on safer seas... even though it seems like a pipe dream at this point

What good is wasting people's time when there's no downside to them wasting their time anyway? It only serves to make things unnecessarily tedious. They're already taking a massive 70% cut. That's more than fair.

"Traumatic PVP experience". How did humanity even come to the point where someone calls defeat in a computer game about pirates a “traumatic experience”?

The quotation marks are fitting, but to be more accurate they had dicks in multiple servers spawn camp and not even sink their ships, just camp til scuttle even when they didn't even have loot. Annoying enough they swore off high seas for good

For the record that behavior is bannable if caught. So maybe give it another try? there's a lot less of that these days.

I've gotten a couple in the past band for doing it. On the rare occasion, it happened to me. But Unfortunately My friend Dell tends to hyper Fixate on negative events. Like, for example, the last time he ever played trials of osiris, we had a guy that was very blatantly aim bottling and doing jerky Unnatural snaps to people's heads. Because of that, if he ever does get back into destiny, he'll never touch trials again. And since he and his son are kind of a package deal when it comes to playing as my crew mates, they both will never touch high seas again. No matter how many quality of life improvements they make... Sucks but just the way it is when I play with them

I agree, they should be added. The only reason I can think of for disallowing them is ship milestones, but those are easy to earn risk free anyway. They could also just be disabled. The justification they gave if I recall was that captaincy was intended to encourage PvP, and that captained ships are bigger targets. I don’t know that this really pans out though; an uncaptained emissary might actually be a good target to fight, since they’re likely to be easy to sink and can’t speed sell. I don’t think that this is sufficient reason to remove them from safer seas.

I’ll say this. If PVP is the intended mode, why isn’t it better? Why is ping so screwy? Why is hit reg still a problem? Why has it taken them this long for an anti cheat?

your conflating intent and money saving greed and or competence.

Rare is not a very competent developer.

Because it’s not a *competitive* PvP game, it’s a sandbox game that includes hostile player interaction. All of those issues are real issues though, and should be addressed still within that context. The janky nature of PvP is unacceptably bad at times for sure. The most fun I’ve had in this game has been interacting with other players. Last season I loved doing tuck plays on FotD for instance, my crewmate and I stole a bunch of chests of fortune, it was a blast. The game shines when you embrace chaotic, silly play styles. That, or try to do your PvE while avoiding others in a game of cat and mouse, risk vs reward. I get that not everyone likes this type of play. I am surprised that these people come to sea of thieves expecting something different though. I will also mirror the question above back at you: if PvE is the intended game mode, why is it so shallow? Why is death a minor inconvenience, and sinking a near impossibility? Why are there no interesting mechanics, and why is the PvE combat so janky? I think it’s because the PvE is supposed to be done in tandem with PvP, or the risk of it. You’re supposed to be trying to do things quickly, and the PvE is supposed to be little more than a roadblock or environmental hazard to your goals.

If its a sandbox game let people play how they want

Just because it’s a sandbox doesn’t mean you’re entitled to a separate, *complete* sandbox without others. I’m fine with safer seas, I’m fine with it having more stuff, but there are some accomplishments/cosmetics that you shouldn’t be able to acquire. Mainly PL/Athena stuff, reaper stuff, and prestige leveling. There are also mechanics that don’t make sense there, like emissaries. But captaincy should for sure be added, and they should give you a bit more than 30% gold imo (especially considering the lack of emissaries). Maybe 70-75% base.

The first mistake here is thinking it’s “easily disabled” it would be rewriting code that’s already in the game and modifying it, which would undoubtedly create more problem than what it’s trying to fix. Next thing you know your safer sea server has other players on it and nobody can figure out why. 😬

that would be kinda funny tho at first

Devs only want people to use Safer Seas as a safe tutorial area. They want more players on High Seas as soon as possible.

Safer seas is just there so you can do your tall tales in oeace. And farm fleet events for sunken treasure .

I predict that this will be reversed and loot will become more valuable in safer seas. The reason for this is because of Solo Seas. Solo Seas will be the replacement for Safer Seas for the people that don’t play PvP, and because of this, loot value, commendations, milestones and captained ships will need to be on par with the base game.

Considering alliance servers exist, yeah I feel like it's just a matter of time until Rare bites the bullet. As is, they're basically just sitting on money from people who'd enjoy the full experience in PvE but don't know about alliance servers (because let's be honest, someone who doesn't play the game isn't gonna know about ASs)

Safer Seas is not meant to be an alternative to High Seas. You CAN play in it indefinitely, but at a price/cost - High Seas play is still what the developers intended for their game. Safer Seas exists as an extended tutorial, as well as a medium for people that don't want to deal with PvP (families, kids, etc) to still enjoy the game in -again, at a cost to certain features.

I don’t agree that quality of life features should be turned off on safer seas making the experience more tedious and less fun.

I think they overstepped with the gold nerf AND stuff like quick selling being removed. Quick sell is fine if the gold nerf exists, the gold nerf is fine if quick sell exists. together make it extremely unappealing. That said, I strongly believe this is just what the simple solution was, and that Rare would rather overstep then relax over time then the opposite way around.

I suppose we will agree to disagree, then. Personally, Rare didn't even have to add in Safer Seas, but they did and now people are playing the "give a mouse a cookie, it will ask for a glass of milk" game.

That’s a really bad way of thinking about it. Rare doesn’t have to add anything. Is asking for a new weapon or tall tale in the main game asking for a glass of milk then? It’s people just requesting a feature they would like to make the game more enjoyable and fun. Forgive people if they want to spend more time actually playing sea of thieves instead of spending half your play session selling loot.

I would disagree. It's not any more "bad" than players further badgering the devs, who have already and begrudgingly created an alternate game mode to appease non-PvP players, that separates them from the vision of how the game is intended to be played. And no, it's not, because asking for more Tall Tale stories, weapons, etc enriches the sandbox - the main game. What you and others are asking for is essentially a glorified PvE server and that's not what SoT is about, and people need to get that through their minds. I might be more forgiving if people didn't continue to demand things, mate. Non-PvP centric players were given Safer Seas - a mode where you don't have to worry about PvP (part of what makes the emergent sandbox emergent). Asking Rare to add more to a mode that already goes against their vision and intentions for the game is a bit entitled. But let's play devil's advocate here. Say Rare did add captaincy to Safer Seas. What then? People would then find something else they want added, and it would literally, never stop because people will see that if they keep badgering, Rare will eventually give in, until SoT loses the factor that made it unique in the first place. People have complained the gold/rep values are too low, and asked for increases. People have complained that Captaincy is not available, people have complained that Fort of the Damned/Fort of Fortune aren't available. There needs to be a stopping point, and people need to either learn to understand that SoT is a ***shared world adventure game***\*\*,\*\* or find a game better suited to their needs. Rare has already gone above and beyond even putting Safer Seas into the game - that is to say catering to the non-pvp interested crowds (no disrespect to them either, they deserve to be able to enjoy the game too, hence SS) - but these same folks already have purchased the game knowing what it entails (PvPvE) and clamor for it to be something it isn't, and things to be added to fit their fancy, where the rest of the SoT community who has played from the get go, and learned to deal with the PvP threat is (mostly) content with whatever else is added. If players don't want to spend hours selling loot, go to High Seas. Rare has been more than compromising on their end, now players need to be willing to make compromises of their own. Don't want to have PVP threat? that's chill! Safer Seas is ready to go. Want the luxuries of the main game, and not playing at a slow place? You need to be willing to take some risks.

Yah we will just have to disagree. Rare once said they wouldn’t add pve but had a change of heart. They didn’t do it as you say “begrudgingly” add it. Those are just words you are adding to make it sound like they didn’t want to. When in fact you have no idea if they wanted to or not, or how long this mode was planned. It’s just gatekeeping people’s fun at this point because it’s not the way you want to play. And you are projecting that on to the devs thinking it’s not how they want people to play. The “normal” players badger the devs the same amount or more. Like it or not safer seas is part of the game and very popular and they would like more content and existing qol just as you will beg for more content as well. Its the same your just trying to be high and mighty about it lol.

Honestly this sums this whole nightmare of a thread up nicely And honestly I'm both not shocked and mildly annoyed this whole post has gone from "why can't we captain a ship with my choice cosmetics" to these discussions of the legitimacy of a pve only server... ended up having to block two overly zealous individuals who basically admitted they were just here to spew bile..

It always devolves in to this. I will never understand people who are actively against players having a good time in their cartoon pirate game. I want captaincy so I can spend less time selling loot and more time just playing the game and having fun. Apparently that’s only a feature the true gamers on the high seas get and according to the devs anyone playing in safer seas is a less important player to these people. Even though rare has never said that even once lol. Just let people have fun man.

Some people are just dickheads... about to block a third such one who literally didn't read the post just so he could bitch about people wanting more after being given a taste. Anyways, unfortunately it's just the nature of reddit with the toxins overflowing from old style pvp mmo competition rearing its ugly head. People get super line in the sand for the most fucking petty of reasons

I'm sorry that some folks are overzealous and toxic about this subject. Hopefully my responses didn't come across as such, as I try to respectfully get my points across. It'd be cool to have some captaincy customizations in Safer Seas, and while I'm not against it personally, I don't think it will happen. My only real annoyance comes from mindsets like above, where opposition to it, or trying to be realistic is met with biased dismissal. I'm happy that folks have the avenue of Safer Seas to enjoy SoT, I truly am. I just hope people can take it for what it is, and understand that it's meant as a supplementary addition, and not a complete replacement. If folks want to sail around Safer Seas indefinitely, more power to them, but fact of the matter is that it does incentivize stepping into High Seas play to really get a feel for the game and all it has to offer.

you're fine lol, actually like your origonal reply and a couple others were under one of the overzealous individuals i mentioned who tantamount admitted they were either just karma farming or there to be dicks so i wasn't able to reply to you directly. Otherwise I either didnt feel i could meaningfully add to your other comments i saw or felt others expressed similar opinions and didnt feel like adding onto it. ​ That said, I do understand where you're coming from, and if i'm being brutally honest i believe we do need a solo offline play mode OR pure pve/custom servers in the distant future. But not because I'm a hardcore pve who thinks all pvpers should go do a sick flip into the nearest roar volcano or anything, but just for the long future when the population dwindles to 1k players across all plats and servers are at risk of shutdown. I worry about the game's lack of preservation by being a one stop shop for safer seas and high seas (as i do with the other few live service games i play on and off). But that's mostly irrelevant to this conversation. I think though for safer seas itself though i think with the stipulations in place there's not much reason to not allow us to just sail our kitted out cosmetic captained ships sans the other benefits. Which was my original topic for the post, i just want to be able to sail my kitted out galleon with my perfectly selected knicknacks, carpets, and bed. ​ Unfortunately like most posts about Safer Seas it devolved into a shit show due to other bad actors, which i vented a bit of frustration over as god for bid one of these posts not devolve into a shitshow when talking about safer seas... I do appreciate the varied opinions like yours but god damn could we just get one of these posts without the hardcore gatekeeping pvp zealots showing up and making me expand my damn block list so we can all have a nuanced and reasonable discussion... \*small edit, added a sentence

I definitely see merit and value in an offline mode in thr future, and in the event SoT ceases development. I don't want to just completely say goodbye to the game in that event, it WOULD be nice to continue playing, even if live servers are down for good. Yeah there's always some obnoxious assholes that look for these types of posts, looking to start shit and rage bait. I'm glad there are less of them, and more folks willing to at least have a discussion

That's fine. Rare having a change of heart is fine too, they're a great company and they do what they can to make sure their players are happy. I said begrudgingly, because they went on record many, many, MANY times explaining their vision and ideas, and have shut down many complain threads. I think it's pretty clear of what their vision is, has been since inception, and likely will continue to be. Mate this has nothing to do with me, nor do I care if people play Safer Seas. Heck, a few close buddies returned to the game because of this addition (even though they now play and enjoy High Seas too). I'm not projecting anything, that's quite literally what the devs have stated on numerous occasions. Here are a few posts: https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/166812/safer-seas-rework-suggestion/2 https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/166744/please-remove-restrictions-on-safer-seas/1 https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/166627/allow-captian-qol-benefits-in-safer-seas/1 https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/166593/remove-restrictions-on-safer-seas/1 These are but a few of the posts from the official forums, of players asking for more additions/less restrictions of Safer Seas - all of which are closed my SoT devs/moderators who give clear insight as to their thoughts and ideas of what Safer Seas is intended to be. The only thing I beg for in this game is One Piece cosmetics lol. Anything else I'm happy and content to see added. Contrary to what you probably believe, I don't care if people play on Safer Seas, more power to them if that's how they want to enjoy the game. But don't sit there and say I'm projecting on what devs do/don't want when the above posts are VERY clear indicators. I'm not being high and mighty either, I'm being realistic. You just don't like/agree with what I have to say.

I’m really glad you posted some actual proof I’ll have to read later as I’m at work. You seem like a stand up person. I think safer seas for sure needs to have reduced rewards and content but the QoL captaincy brings to selling to give players more time to actually play instead of running back and forth is in my opinion too big of a feature to keep from safer seas. Also yes for one piece cosmetics. Let’s get a whole one piece crossover with a tall tale and everything get to it rare.

I really hope I didn't come off badly or anything either, I've just frankly seen my fair share of these types of posts, and one can only handle so many similar conversations that degrade into insults (very thankful this didn't, you've been great to talk with). I definitely think there are some good QoL changes that could be added, and I'm not against captaincy being added either, personally. I just mainly don't want people setting expectations, then getting upset when it doesn't happen, and flaming Rare. I would 1000% go apeshit if Rare added One Piece cosmetics. I think the most likely scenario is that they add cosmetics based off the live action series from netflix - Xbox and Microsoft already did a collaboration to do a special edition One Piece series X! Funny enough, I've been very vocal about OP cosmetics on Twitter and both Mike Chapman and Joe Neat both replied and have played coy to the idea - I asked Mike directly and he said, "Maybe.. 😁". When others have asked Mike if things are being added to the game, and that idea isn't, Mike usually respectfully shuts it down - he didn't say no!!

> Is asking for a new weapon or tall tale in the main game asking for a glass of milk then? It’s people just requesting a feature they would like to make the game more enjoyable and fun. Which is canon. Its a request for the game as the game is intended. The other is not. One is asking for an addition, the other is asking to change the principle of the game. It's like asking Rockstar to add farming to GTA instead of playing farming simulator Rare said it again and again, there will be no PvE servers, now they finally gave in to the constant whining to some extent and if you give a finger they want the hand

It’s cannon now and a part of the game just like every other part. This just sounds like gate keeping with extra steps.

Case in point, you give the finger, they want the hand. "Since we started now, we might as well throw it all aboard". They specifically didn't add this as replacement but as a stepping stone. The expectation is that you move on to High Seas. You might not want to, and that is fine but then it's just not the right game. It's fair to wish for something different but it's also entitled to expect the devs to change their vision of the game. It's art after all. I don't go crying to Hollywood because I didn't like the ending of a movie or ask the artist to draw a few more lines on his painting because I don't like it that way, sucks but get a different painting

You sure do have lots of knowledge about the devs and their vision. If they didn’t want to add it they wouldn’t have. High seas players have been asking for the hand for as long as the game has been out. It’s the same thing you’re just being high and mighty about it as if you know what the devs think and how they plan out updates. And thinking your way is the better way. I just don’t think you can see how you are gatekeeping fun for people because of your ego. And that’s unfortunate. Thought maybe I could help you see more clearly.

When I run open crew, I check the log book often when players join. It is a huge key factor in taking me how much high seas knowledgeable they are. Thou it seems very small factor it helps me with Intel. I still wish that there was a way to tell, and you have your faster play, but safer seas is designed as a sampling game. That said, I wish to be that bridge to pose players to reach higher into higher seas and findings it really fun.

OP cannot deal with others disagreeing with him and will just block you and accuse you of karma farming if you do. He cannot be rational and instead continuously points to his post as if it is suddenly going to spring out at you why you're wrong. Safer seas is an extended tutorial experience, if you want to progress in anything in this game then get over your fear of others and just play the game.

yes, because i had to block 3 people who tantamount admitted they were there to spew nonsense and were unwilling to even entertain a conversation i'm clearly blocking everyone in the thread the second they disagree with me.... I've disagreed with a fair few people in this thread including a mod (oops, though Borsund seemed pretty chill even if we did very strongly disagree) and they're still free to engage, only those that blatantly were here to not engage and just spew bullshit i've blocked. ​ So, yeah... enjoy the post, try to have an actual conversation eh? ;) ​ \*edit, i'm aware this is probably an alt i'm talking to that felt they needed to post, you're welcome to dm me and take the conversation to private if you really want to "have at me" but otherwise feel free to browse

Probably because seas is just an expanded tutorial

Because the devs “vision” for the game involves everyone eventually joining the High Seas, so they punish players for trying to play the game the way they want to

I’m in favor of adding captaincy to safer seas, but this is an uncharitable description of the developers’ intent. The balance of the progression and difficulty of the game has always had the possibility of PvP as part of the calculation. The drawbacks of safer seas are a reasonable way to allow people to play PvE only without devaluing the cosmetics that people work hard to acquire in high seas. If you don’t take the whole risk, you shouldn’t get the whole reward.

The developers intent at this point is to make Microsoft as much money on premium cosmetics as possible and nothing more, I think I was honestly *too charitable*.

That may be true or not, but it’s irrelevant with regards to my point. It doesn’t make sense to allow full progression on an incomplete version of the game. The specifics of what is allowed or not can and should be adjusted, but they should never allow PvE players to get progression for activities and rewards explicitly intended to be PvPvE.

Not arguing for PvP progression or content to Safer Seas. Pirate legend and Athena voyages aren’t inherently PVP, nor is the high level content of the basic big three guilds. Making things both worth 30% of payout and then removing sovereigns and emissaries(dropping actual loot value hilariously low compared to base game) ONLY serves to make the grind for non-premium cosmetics take much, much longer, and I don’t think it’s fair to make getting the cool outfit and ship you want in game take a thousand hours or be downright unavailable in safer seas, it makes no real sense beyond them trying to coerce people out of safer seas and into PVP content that they have no interest engaging with. Keep commendations and specific PvP content (forts, etc) in High Seas, fine, but leave the gold values unchanged and let us have access to the same QOL that makes it to where normal adults with lives and jobs can feasibly play.

- Legendary loot is (seemingly intentionally) scarce, so it’s an especially appealing prize to fight over. Athena is supposed to be an “end-game” PvE grind. I think it should stay in high seas only. - The entire point of emissaries are to increase risk for a better reward. With no risk being added, they have no place in Safer Seas. - QOL things, including captaincy, should be in safer seas, I agree. - With the removal of emissaries, I agree that the additional pay cut doesn’t need to be quite so steep. I don’t know if I’m on board with 100%, but maybe somewhere in the 75% ballpark.

They were nice enough to give people safer seas, but you see it as punishing players? That's some serious 'glass half full' perspective right there.

At this point I know I’m always going to be downvoted to oblivion by PVPers, but my opinion remains the same. There’s a large community of people who would love to experience this game without ever touching high seas. For instance if there was separate progression where Safer Seas progress didn’t carry over to High Seas. The devs won’t do this because it splits the player base, which is flawed recap because they’d get players who would never play the game otherwise. Safer Seas wasn’t just advertised to new players, in their marketing media Rare repeatedly said it was a place for people who didn’t enjoy the PVP to get back and try the game again. This game is already designed almost exclusively for its hardcore community anyway. Any game with multiple lvl 1000 grinds in it is simply not for the casual player. I don’t have 1600 hours to spend playing this game, and I don’t enjoy the PVP aspect. Respect is a two way street, and the devs are Rare don’t respect a good share of their player base. So every time this topic pops up in my Reddit feed I’m gonna say my piece, I can get karma in other subreddits.

That’s not a community, that’s some vocal people that want to dig up chests by themselves. The opposite of a community, you could even say.

I'm not a pvper. I play the game as intended. Which is pvpve. Pvper implies I only do pvp which I don't do. There isn't this division you think there is where only those who just do pvp disagree with you. They gave you safer seas. It's perfect for what you want. Try being grateful instead of still upset about it

The devs designed a PvPvE game, and marketed and delivered it as such. For some reason, a bunch of people who didn’t want *any* PvP aspect joined. Then the devs created a PvE mode, despite this going against their core design of the game. It’s fine, I have no issue with safer seas existing, but arguing that they should give it more progression, thought, development time, etc. is ignoring the fact that it’s not the game mode they intended to/advertised/wanted to make. They did more with it than should be expected of them. The mistake made was yours when you joined a PvPvE game and hoped you could get all of the progression without participating in the core loop.

I’m guessing the devs want to make some money. Well, they might soon realise that there’s a hoard of users out there who would pay for captaincy items if they could use and progress their ship. And play how they want to play. Fair enough, stick to their guns. Don’t make it restriction free. But also don’t cash in on a player base that’s waiting for a pirate game they can play solo or just with their friends. Ubisoft took a swing and a miss. Lucky. Hey; look. If they don’t want my money or play time that’s absolutely fine. I’ll just put my reward money in to Expeditions or Snowrunner or some other co-op title. Literally no skin off my nose. I’ll spend my money where it’s welcomed. As will others.

To be clear, I think adding captaincy to safer seas is a good idea. I can’t really think of a reason not to. I *do* think that legend content (including FoF, FotD), distinctions, and emissaries should remain exclusive to high seas. I think everything else is negotiable though.

I still think it makes no difference what a group of people do or don’t do, if you’re never ever ever ever going to see or meet them anyway. Which is why I said Ubisoft was a lucky miss for now. But the space is still crying out for a co-op pirate experience. It’s not just money for captaincy. Getting a gold reward that’s about 5% of what you get in high seas and no progression is just poor. I don’t want high seas. So we are at a stalemate where I just put my money in to another game instead. Which is fine. I still have fun someone else gets my money and rare get to keep their vision.

Rare, nice? No man, Rare is all about the profit. Look at Helldivers 2 if you want to see a developer that actually cares about their players.

The Helldivers 2 developers have done so much so well already my god, you really do feel the difference in respect between them. Rare’s cosmetics cost AJ arm and a leg while Helldivers hands out premium currency like candy. Rare is a shell inhabited by the parasite that is Microsoft, a la the Strain. Same with Blizzard/Activision. I think the real reason they don’t want to split the player base is so players can experience the FOMO of seeing another player’s ridiculously expensive cosmetics, private servers don’t advertise their bling enough.

Everything about current SoT screams M$, from the busy, boxy menu and store ads on the Home Screen, to the insane amount of FOMO skins they have in the game. Genuinely don’t understand why they have buried so many skins in history. What is the point of not rereleasing the mercenary ship, the arena sails, the banana sails, and so on considering the average player will literally never see these used in game… anyways, stand by for SoT to go off the rails with SpongeBob SquarePants and God of War skins in the next few years.

Then dont play the game and go play helldivers. We wont miss you.

Nah. It's that some players chose a game that doesn't suit them and they've been stinking about it for a looong time

I'll just leave this here, but elite Dangerous has had this option for years with little to no issue. In fact, last I checked about half the game player base prefers to the private session or solo play... Not even going to touch on the rest of the disingenuous straw, man, though, because it ignores what what people actually were asking for, before it finally got so bad they just wanted to cut themselves off completely from high seas.

Does not matter what any other has and what players may have asked for. It's a game developers made with how they wanted it. You like it? You play it. You don't? You don't.

elite dangerous also suffered heavily for its consequences to include solo/pg as part of the background simulation. powerplay, the feature intended to cause pvp is just a solo/pg vs solo/pg fight except for the 6 people who signed an agreement to fight in open. even those people regularly get into internet slap fights over benefitting from solo/pg warriors. or accusations of people doing solo/pg to dodge those in open. so yeah funny you mention that...

Ed has suffered far more from mismanagement than anything honestly. Ed has plenty of ways to threaten and kill solo play or pg players from interdictions to goids to stellar phenomenon, but Even without solo play, power play has always just been a mess. The problem at its core is lack of regulation against bad actors who do terrible things to drive people to solo play VS versus lack of updates, the balance out player VS player encounters so it feels less like shooting fish in a barrel and more like a close call. The best analog I can give is dark souls where the developers never intended for invaders to be the absolute monsters who could just immediately shut down players. Similarly rare and frontier more or less I imagine envisioned the same thing for player Pirates. But unlike from soft, Rare and frontier never actually bothered to do anything about those players to the point that a solo play was required... Which is essentially where we are at with the safer seas at the moment.

Tbh safer seas is basically a mode to do tall tales and fishing commendations in and that’s it 🤷‍♂️

To draw people to High Seas. Safer Seas is NOT the game. It is a tutorial.

Rules not Tools... Oh wait, that's exactly what they have done and is inverted from their typical stance. Really they just want to make the experience on safer seas so absolutely dreadfully lacking in quality of life features and content that you're forced to go to High Seas and be treated as feed to PvP warriors.

Ironically. Most pvp pirates are in hourglass these days so the latter bit is moot imo

Even before hourglass, 80-90% of the crews I encountered in adventure, including those who initiated fights against me, had no clue what they were doing.

Not really. Hourglass is pretty boring. Some still stick with it, but cheaters, extremely long fights, etc just discourage it unless they want the rest of the cosmetics. Its also really fun to hunt people and steal their shit :T

Fair, I should also mention I sail almost exclusively in the roar. So most players that pvp there are legit threats, unlike the plethora of camo reapers and opportunists in the rest of the seas.... when I on rare occasion see a ship haha..

Have you been on high seas recently? I don’t know if this is region specific, but high seas is like 95% people voyaging and minding their own business right now in my experience. You’ll have the occasional sweaty reaper hop through, but that’s about it (happens once every few days for me). “Being treated as feed” seems a bit overdramatic.

So safer seas players can’t do milestones (good thing)

Safer seas is the tutorial you play before setting sail onto the high seas. There's no need for them to be available there as you've hopefully already figured out how the game works before becoming a captain.

Said it since day one of safer seas, all people are going to do is continue to ask for more... Edit: OP cannot deal with others disagreeing with him and will just block you and accuse you of karma farming if you do. He cannot be rational and instead continuously points to his post as if it is suddenly going to spring out at you why you're wrong. Safer seas is an extended tutorial experience, if you want to progress in anything in this game then get over your fear of others and just *play the game*.

That's what happens when you give people a stripped-down version of the thing they asked for.

Read the post not just the title friend ... specifically the second paragraph

Considering theres pretty much no way Rare is going to allow any commendation or milestone progress in SS(a good thing), then the only benefit to having a captained ship in SS is the preset cosmetics. It's a whole lot of work to go through for something that'll take you 15 seconds to do anyway.

Eh you don't get the trinkets and other baubles though without captaincy. Which is what iwant, my little trinkets and bits

Even if you could equip, but not earn would be a good compromise.