New Players Are Being Sold a Lie | Sea of Thieves 

Come hang out and watch SoT live at twitch.tv/blurbs PvP Tips playlist so you can get sweaty: ru-vid.com/group/PLeVtvf69N6wvKqf1UNr5MR2kPn5EUWtck

I mean this might be some of it, but as a casual player who knew all about the PvP side of things going in, I think the biggest killer is how much progress you can lose from other players attacking you and taking your stuff. Going out, doing quests and racking up that good loot takes a while and it can be very easily all taken away from you because you just don't have the PvP experience to effectively defend yourself. If it's going to take people repeatedly losing hours and hours of progress to learn how to defend themselves in a game like this, most people aren't going to devote the time to do so and just quit.

It's tough for me to bring friends in. Whenever I do, I'm trying to teach them the basics of how to turn the sails meanwhile we get seasoned players deckshotting from a mile away, double-gun quickscoping my friends with 45 minutes on the game, and then spawn camping all the spawns on the ship. 99% of the time, those new players drop the game because of that. They got it for free thru gamepass so they have no attachment to the game, then the seasoned players shit on them, mic spam, and bucket scoop them. These same players later ask why nobody new is playing the game and then they make a video blaming the developer lmao.

When I first got into the game, I knew PvP was a thing. I knew you fought players and that PvP was an inevitability, and I was ready for that and ready to learn and improve. What I wasn't ready for was the soul-crushing reality check that is you are going to lose several hours worth of loot and supplies while being called slurs and there is literally nothing you can do about it until you spend hundreds of hours throwing yourself at other players to "improve." But what sucks even more is that your friends need to have that same drive or else you'll be learning as a solo sloop and that is my breaking point. I refuse to PvP at such a major disadvantage. One other person with me? I'll man the helm and give commands like a god damn admiral. But trying to do it all by myself? Screw that

When I joined Sea of thieves I expected an immersive open world pirate adventure with world pvp.... I was fully aware of the risks of the game but I didn't expect to get killed on sight literally everytime regardless of how much treasure I had (even with 0) just gets tiring when u can't even just sail from one place to another without getting ganked

A lot of the problem with pvp, from my view, is the pvper loses absolutely nothing if they die and the person getting attacked loses everything if they sink, gaining nothing for winning. It's such a skewed system.

Honestly for me it's the lack of intuitive counterplay - getting bum rushed by jumping sweaty blunderbusses, always being out numbered. Unforgiving mechanics where a meta doesn't change are always going to be more punishing the older a game gets. I don't feel missold on pvp, but the skill gap on new players versus veterans definitely isnt highlighted enough

When I first played it, years ago, I knew pvp existed, but it seemed like it was a side show to adventuring and hoarding loot. I rapidly learned that if you hoarded loot for hours, you were going to lose hours of work, because someone is going to kill you for it. A friend and I eventually had 5 hours worth of duo sloop loot taken by a galleon crew and stopped playing. "How are two relatively new players meant to get anywhere in this game, with a four player crew killing us whenever we try?" was how we felt. We stopped for a year or so, and then tried again, knowing pvp was likely. We stopped hoarding, and just did one thing and then banked it. This got very boring, very fast, so we stopped again. "We can't hoard the loot or someone will take it, but selling constantly is a chore we don't want to deal with." Another year or so went by and I decided to go back to it. This time, without my friend,. Eventually I think I hit on the mindset you have to adopt as a pve focused player if you want to not burn out on the game. "Loot doesn't matter. Gold doesn't matter. Getting killed does not matter. Play FOR the adventure, not the reward at the end." Unfortunately, this is not a mindset that is easy for a pve focused player to maintain, because the point of the adventure is the reward usually. Having hours worth of effort disappear is frustrating, especially when it disappears to someone who probably has not been online even half as long for that session.

PvP players often, if not always, rot whatever community they are tied to. Mostly because they seek enjoyment from making sure other people don't have fun. I'm all for some open PvP, but this is just a game where players like yourself, with hundreds of hours, are just trying to make it un-fun for EVERYONE else. You can have it, keep the game, I uninstalled after 10 hours of the bullshit that's within it.

A lot of the pvp centred players are not really playing the game like everyone else anymore. They dont need the gold, they dont do events or try to get loot and often sink other ships and leave the loot in the water. For them its not about being a pirate, its just about murdering people and they often expect a fight from their enemies as some sort of entertainment. All too often i have seen a crew trying to finish a fort of fortune only for some unpainted server hopper ship to sail up, kill and sink them, only to then leave the event and then the server. They attack crews who are themselves distracted but have no intention of actually taking part in the event that is going on, or trying to get the loot it might generate. I doubt that many of those server hopping crews even play the game for that long afterwards. Its like a sickness, they have become apart from the game they are playing and have less and less entertainment from it as they outskill the rest of the playerbase. There they are, bunnyhopping around on a galleon, moving backwards faster than other players can move forwards and sending out a hail of bullets at anyone who dares try to fight back. You can only find that entertaining for so long and i feel sorry for those players rather than admiring them. They are the big kid in the schoolyard, bullying others and becoming progressively more lonely and frustrated.

It's the time it takes to make progress that kills PVP in my eyes. Hours of looting to get attacked and lose everything REALLY sucks. Emissary flags encourage hoarding which makes it worse. I enjoy PVP, but only when I have less that 20 minutes of gameplay to lose. If I've spent an hour or more gathering loot and supplies I will absolutely hate you for attacking me if I lose, even if it is just part of the game. Nobody likes to lose IRL time and effort, and this game is the worst for it.

Yesterday I got home from work and went to play a little with my friends, we were doing some talltales. Unluckily for us, a mega alliance entered our server and sank us, not only that, but they also started cursing us, even though we kept quiet during the whole situation. I understand you might like pvp etc but the toxicity level of this game annoys me. There was also one time when I was playing with my son, and a crew started cursing him, because they said he was bad (he's only 8 years old), seeing this makes me totally unmotivated to play, it's just a game! people need to realize this!

The problem is that the game was not developed for PVP players you can see this in how there is no headshot damage multiplier. It had PVP and PVE in it as a feature but its main goal was to be a relatively chill RP game with some occasional action. The devs themselves have said this on video and text. The problem is the PVP crowd became way to gung ho and essentially turned the game from RP to a roving band of murderhobos.

When PVP crew sinks they don't really lose anything. Skills get better after each fight regardless. Maybe some time got wasted to gather resources (can just buy if you have money) and find a ship to battle with, but that is all. PVE crew on the other hand loses all loot and time invested in it. It is also harded to get better at PVP as PVE player since you have to care about loot more. PVP players can just "oh, ship sank, gonna try again and rush for that athena chest" From one side it looks like PVE in this game was created just to be exploited by PVP Icing on cake are streames who do full time PVP and get paid/donated for that

I don't think I've ever had a "good" pvp experience in SoT. It's either dead quiet, an attacking crew who can't even work a sail, or a reaper galleon using every trick and exploit available. It can get boring with not a single hostile entity but it's not possible to learn anything from these sweat encounters, people show up out of nowhere and make it impossible to even try and fight back. No amount of map and horizon watching will keep a dedicated swimmer or a server hopping reaper away.

I respect what you're getting at, but I do think that this explains at most 10 hours of a player's confusion, and probably less. People figure out pretty quickly what the gist of the game is and where PVP fits. I think the real issue is what you've glossed over in the beginning, that PVP just doesn't feel good - that the overall design of the experience of PVP is pretty weak. The attacker almost never has anything to lose in a fight and gets to choose when to initiate. Different personality types dictate how often a given player is going to be that assailant, and it is difficult not to feel like a victim every time someone else chooses, without much of your input, to stop your progress. Finally, time to kill is very short so if you are out classed you're going to spend a lot of the fight dead and that pirates cannot learn to fight better. These are all critiques of design that many players have for hundreds of hours, and they cannot be attributed to the ultimately very short effects of marketing.

When I first saw sea of thieves, I loved the idea. Sailing on big map, doing cool quests, getting gold for cool cosmetics, leveling up factions. But when i started playing it (I played always for like 2-3 hours) I had someone attack me and steal my loot. So of that 3 hour session 1-1,5 hour would be lost to bunch of ppl who just destroyed me by landing almost every cannon shot and spawn killing me. I stopped playing it because of that. I don’t understand why try if you get destroyed and lose so much stuff and was hours of doing puzzles and sailing across map. Better yet when I once managed to win the fight somehow, I didn’t even get anything from it, the attacking ppl never have any loot to lose so you either lose your loot or get nothing and thats just plain pain.

I bought the game because it felt like a windwaker inspired game- lost my sailing buddies because of the PvP though.

I think theres a big divide in the game. Lots and lots of people are "new-ish" and just want to grind out ranks and get lots of gold to buy cool things, and then there's the more experienced players, who have seen and done a lot if not all of it and just want the thrill of PvP. The issue is when group 1 spends hours and hours grinding for all their loot and then some server hoppers reaper 5s with 10k hours pile in and ruin all their time and effort, that is in no way fun for the first group, and once you have some time sure you can sort of learn to deal with it but for most people it's a "wow i really just lost hours of work to some sweatlords screw this game i'm never playing it again". And if they do they shy even further away from PvP because of the bad experiences they've had with it. Its a real problem, and its one Rare can't easily solve. The game basically goes from some casual fun with friends to something more akin to Escape From Tarkov and that's a really big swing that can all take place in a couple of seconds and the latter isn't what a lot of people bought the game for. I wouldn't be surprised if we got PvE servers eventually once the complaints/player drop off reach a critical mass. The sweatiness and often times toxicity also doesn't really help the case of the PvP camp, exhibit A being the most recent adventure.

I just started playing the game a month ago and I have been met with so much hostility and just all out terrible people. I even just stand there and tell people (as they're sinking me) that they are going to kill this game. Eventually all of these people that think they're "real pirates" and "give no quarter" are going to push everyone away and then it will just be them left. They'll eventually get bored and then rare will pull the plug. Just to be clear I don't mind AT ALL being sunk when I have a bunch of loot. It's a pirate game so I expect nothing less. But when I'm being sunk, right when I spawn in with just starter supplies and no loot, it kind of makes me not want to play the game. I'm sure there's a lot of new people that feel the same way as me. I once spawned in on plunder outpost and right when I woke up from my drunken stupor I got caught in a spawn trap. Literally right after waking up! I was telling those dudes they're killing the game, but no one cares. Best believe though they'll be the first ones crying when people stop playing and rare pulls the plug. Edit: Oh yeah I'll even offer people whatever treasure I have (if I do have any, because I've learned to just do missions and not get the loot that way I don't have to lose anything (can't miss what you never had am I right) and they still just GiVe No QuArTeR! Just over there sweatin drinking there gallon of 7eleven mountain dew. And no I don't have an emissary up if that's what any of you are wondering. I get attacked enough without one. I don't dare raise any emissary. Game is amazing, but rare needs to do something about us getting attacked when we literally have starter supplies, no loot and no emissary. I don't want to always have to PvP. Sometimes I just want to do a fu¢kin tall tale just to see what happens. I haven't even been able to start one let alone finish it.

I would imagine they're purposefully avoiding advertising PvP because they know that most people don't want PvP. The PvPers are, indeed, very active and very sweaty, but there aren't actually enough of them to financially sustain the game. I'm not saying the PvPers are wrong to play that way, because clearly Rare built the game for them. Rather, Rare was wrong for thinking they could make a sustainable PvP MMO in the first place, so now they have to lie to get new players onboard.

Rare should at least try to matchmaker pvp players with other pvp players. We know from captaincy that they can track that sort of thing, so it seems like a natural progression to put them together.

I came into the game expecting pvp but what I didn't expect was being day one spawn camped and not just to confirm the sink. They just stayed on my ship and killed me on spawn till I left the game.

Most sweats aren’t as good as they think they are because they only target people that do all the work for them and are at their weakest state in whatever voyage they are attempting before all of their work is inevitably deemed worthless. I hate the sweats in this the most out of any game I’ve ever played. I seriously don’t understand how y’all figured out how to sweat your balls off in a cartoon pirate game. You make this game worse

Rare is the pinnacle of what happens when you only hire art designers.

When I first got the game, I honestly didn't care since I was so excited to finally be able to play a pirate game, but going into it I knew I was gonna come across other players that I would have to fight

My biggest issue with the pvp is that there's no way to conduct yourself in a way to signal to other players to leave you alone. Like you can be a fishing boat with a white flag and cannons pointed upwards and you'll still get people roll up on you and try to sink you. They gain nothing from the exchange and you just wasted an hour of time. Same with tall tales. If you're just trying to experience the actual plot of the game, there is no way to do so without being at the mercy of any player who feels like wasting your time. For me, the biggest annoyance of pvp isn't losing loot, or sinking, or getting spawn camped, it's time loss. On a whim any experienced player can decide to recontextualize massive amounts of time for other players into being a waste. And the problem compounds with the fact that newer players just take longer to complete tasks that experienced players do easily and quickly. What would be 15 minutes of time lost for one player, could easily be an hour for another. When the learning curve of the game is spent largely waiting for opportunities to play without facing insurmountable challenges, that's not a healthy environment to get new players to stick around. The number of open crews I've been on where the democratic consensus is to attack every anchored ship with sails down, or who just relentlessly try to pick on solo sloops, just for the satisfaction of sinking a ship that can't fight back, is genuinely disappointing.

There are a LOT of people who really want to be able to opt out of the PVP in this game. I think Rare should find a way to make that happen.

All games that have PvP nowadays can't be played due to the fact that the playerbase is incredibly toxic, it's all about 'getting better' but games aren't supposed to be like that

im fairly new to the game as of writing this, and i was taken aback by how much pvp there is in the game. all of the tactics, strategies and crew reading is something ive only learned of once diving deep into the community. with little to no mention of the amount of naval combat you tend to run into, it made me a very careful player at the start. it took away from the game because i lacked the skill to protect my hard-earned loot that was very valuable to the beginner me. i learned from it, of course, which was the most valuable currency i could've gotten from it, but now later that im further into the learning curve, the imbalance shows. serverhopper pvp crews have everything gain, while crews who have been grinding for hours can have everything to lose. nobody warns you of this, and it turned me away from solo slooping entirely. beginner crews, often of very few players, can't fight off stronger foes and that might scare many off. sure, its a pirate game. but this is turning into survival of the fittest, where the strong pick on the weak

I think what makes PvP remarkably un-fun in SoT is how long it takes to recover from your ship sinking and how much work and progress you end up losing. It's one of the more unforgiving games out there because of how long it takes to do anything.

I knew what to expect, but it still took a long time until i wasnt mad anymore being sunk and lose treasure. The two things that still annoy me are when people sink you on a tall tale where you have to have an item on board that you need to progress. Losing that to pvp sucks big times. And the second thing is, we stopped doing ambassador voyages since reaper lvl 5 can server hop out of no where onto your server and emediately see and target you.

For me personally, I want to be high after a long shift and just vibe as a pirate w/o checking my shoulder every 10 seconds. Also the community will jump real quick to tell you its pvpve and its not all about pvp but when you challenge pvp they respond with how pvp NEEDS pve around to make it happen. That just seems half backwards to me.

Old video (relatively) but honestly getting my stuff stolen in Sea of Thieves wasn't the point where I stopped playing. It was multiple times when enemy players got onto my ship, spawn killed me and my group, and then just stood there spawn killing us over and over again. And that was when I said "Ah here it is. The human rogue in Tarren Mill killing Level 20 Forsaken." And having done this song and dance for two decades in World of Warcraft, I was like "I think I'll play something else." If you're trying to convince people that getting camped is fun, you're going to be arguing for a very long time.

No, what aggravates me is that SoT is GORGEOUS game, and one of the more relaxing titles I would love to spend more time relaxing in IF IT WASN'T FOR OTHER PLAYERS. I do not enjoy it when I come home from a bad or hard day and all I want to do is enjoy something that is beautiful in every aspect, but I have to contend with other players. Every time I look at playing SoT I think to myself, "man, do I really want to deal with other players who refuse to leave me in peace to explore and enjoy all this game has to offer"? And the answer is usually a resounding "No"! I love this game with all my heart, but I hate dealing with other players. If there was a single player version of this game, I would play that all the time, but nothing like this game exists. Some try, but they all fail. Rare made something you see maybe a few times in a lifetime if you're lucky. I just wish I could enjoy it in peace.

I started playing last year. Although I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into, I got frustrated fairly quickly by getting attacked. I think the biggest issue right now is the skill disparity. You have Season One/Arena sweatlords hopping servers and attacking less experienced players who can't defend themselves. You learn nothing by getting obliterated in 30 seconds. With Arena gone, it's not easy to just "get good" at PVP. You rarely encounter another player wanting to PVP who's on a similar level in terms of skills, and those are the most valuable learning experiences. I ended up just learning to avoid other ships, which isn't a great strategy either, since you lose opportunities to meet friendly crews too. Only after grinding out Pirate Legend solo and fighting countless skeleton ships am I now confident enough to fight other crews if I need to. I agree that Rare needs to make the PVP aspect more apparent in their advertising. I'm glad that I persevered long enough to become a decent all-around player, but I think a majority of new players will not have that type of patience.

Very nicely said man, GG.

This happens in the life cycle of every game. Eventually the hard-core players get very good at the game. And new players have to contend with that player base. It eventually feels like running into a wall.

Sea of thieves is trash….you keep grinding and trying to get better at PvP and the game. The players are toxic. And even if you were starting by to get the hang of it, you will never keep up with the streamers and sweats who spend millions of hours grinding and fighting everyday. This game is completely garbage and it’s incredibly being sold as a lie

In my crew's first or second play session when we first encountered another human (luckily for us, it was a "friendly" encounter, someone doing a "ship inspection" on our boat) one of my crew was totally confused and surprised that other players were in the same server as us. She thought it was a multiplayer pve game.

I started playing the game around the time Pirates Life came out but I knew about the PvP going in cuz I research games before buying them. I love naval pvp in this game and the most fun I have had in this game has been pvp battles. I am mostly a solo player but I have gone through three separate gally crews 2 of which have given up on the game. Here are the main reasons they quit: Skill Gap: pretty self explanatory. They only way to learn the pvp in this game is to engage in pvp and whenever a group of new players go against a group of experienced players in this game the fight ends in .5 seconds with the new players getting obliterated. Combine this with Rare not making your shots land half the time makes learning pvp very frustrating so running away is the better option. Get Rared lmao: hitreg, glitches, server lag, exploits, getting kicked etc. PvE vs. PvP risk: Even if you win against a ship out for blood they just respawn and go after you again. The most they have to lose are supplies and maybe an emissary flag while new players who often gravitate towards pve risk losing an entire sessions worth of work which could mean hours of time spent playing a game for nothing. Griefers: You know who I’m talking about. Those who aren’t even after you’re loot but just want to endlessly grief. I am not kidding that the first time I ever logged onto the game I was spawn camped at the outpost for 30 minutes until I quit (I was new and didn’t know how to scuttle). We got to see these people at work in the last adventure so encountering these guys as a new player sucks.

When i started it was with a group of friends running a galleon. We constantly wanted to avoid other players and became paranoid when seeing ships cause we were so unprepared from learning how to handle the galleon. We would use so much wood from not knowing when to anchor and crashing into islands, rocks and shallow land. Most combat we would get sunk or get chased for ages. The game just is so against new players for pvp, the tutorial teaches you the most basic things(except how to even fish despite the commendation) but not how to actually aim a cannon or fight any other skeletons types. Combat is a single bound skeleton that im not even sure can hurt you, i'm really not surprised PVE servers were wanted when actual PVP is rare and if you pick a fight they sail away or decimate you with the possibility of hours of progress. Player PVP just isn't good, it's just wasted hours and suffering for new players. Sure it can be fun but the game never actually prepares you for it when you can instantly die and realize your ship sunk while you were dead. Looking at the new adventure we had a reaper brig just cannoning everyone, me and a friend on a sloop lit all except the middle bridge brazier cause despite it being a 5 v 1 or something like they barely made it to a standstill while i worked my way up to the top. They need to bring back arena or have a pirate arena to sword fight in. Anything so you can actually learn to PVP. I'll gladly admit that even though i have over 400 hours im still bad at player combat, ship combat i can accurately get from a good distance but if they board then im probably dead.

Because most of us aren't nearly autistic enough to master cannoning someone from two miles away before firing onto their crows nest and zip around like a hyena on crystal meth to keep JUST out of their field of view in combat. When you dust off the sugar coating, all the PvPers' arguments are just "fuck you, got mine."

I started playing back when the game first released to the public and i had a great time, PvP was challenging but not overbearing and i mostly remember the fun stuff like killing the meg and open crew shenanigans, but i had to leave SoT for a while. I reinstalled the game last month and my god the tone has changed entirely, I've met 2 friendly crews over the last month and now i treat every ship on the horizon as a blood thirsty sweat because 9/10 they are just that. My entire experience getting back into the game gets completely ruined by some grade 5 reaper galleon shitting on me for just being alive. I've started avoiding every ship i see because there's just nothing to gain from PvP, it's not fun anymore and everyone who thinks it is are just sweaty try hards with too much time invested to admit they're the problem.

This game should have PVE only servers coz frankly I'm sick of having an entire night's worth of work wasted by some server hopping PVP sweatlord with nothing better to do. SoT has two distinct playerbases that do not get along one wants to be left alone and the other wants to fight everything. Give them their PVP servers, give everyone else PVE private ones. Fixes the issue.

First time watcher. This feels accurate to me, I did not expect a bunch of PVP when I joined, I expected the OCCASIONAL fight and even sort of looked forward to it. But in my experience I've had a LOT of salty sailors just screaming obscenities at my friends and I, even after they camp us from JUST spawning in. It hurts the game by ruining experiences.

People who make it their lives to attack players, especially new players and only attack, not even steal the loot, should be banned for harassment.

As a new player I had no idea that pvp is a big part of the game, I thought that it was some secondary gamemode or at least optional, but it turned out that you are constantly at risk of losing hours and hours of progress because you encountered someone that played the game ten times longer than you. I enjoy the pve content, but I really dislike pvp because it just wastes the time you spent grinding for cool stuff in the shop

I really think the reason newer players hate PvP is because the majority of people who actually seek out PvP are super experienced and super sweaty. I've played since Alpha and yes, at first, PvP wasn't a major issue. This is because so many people were still learning. Realistically those of us with any skill in FPS games learned super quickly and became more or less akin to gods at the game in the early days. But most people still enjoyed PvP. Then Arena came out, and the prospect of it being "Competitive" made people assume that Adventure wasn't meant to have PvP anymore, which is flat out untrue, it's a sandbox adventure game. GTA/RDO have specific PvP Modes, but people can and will still kill you in the world just because they can. It's a part of the world and the game. Losing loot sucks, no matter who you are, because it essentially means you wasted your time, which is not something you can get back. And all the gamepass people just want to relax on the game, without that fear, or at least without the fear of a PvPer Portal Hopping into your server and suddenly appearing without warning, when the server was safe mere minutes ago with all chill people minding their own business, Reapers or other Emissaries alike. Personally I don't seek out PvP, but I don't run from it either. I choose not to seek it out, because I don't know who is or isn't on my server, if they want a fight, they can come to me, and get subsequently smashed into the dirt. But if they don't, I don't wanna be that guy that ruins hours of some soccer dad/mom's only time off to play the game. Rare has already stated that they will be doing more with PvP focus in future updates. It's just really hard to get right in a game that works the way Sea of Thieves does. The amount of griefers is absolutely insane. Just look at the last adventure. It was a griefers paradise. Not because it was "easy access to pvp" but because the people who were doing it are just plain assholes who don't care. And the amount of people doing it was insane. Personally I got it done quick and easy with no issues, but not everybody did. TLDR: The problem is the skill gap. Some of us have been playing since Alpha, Beta, Year one, whatever, and have a wildly different grasp on the game and it's mechanics. And most people haven't played that long. While some folks like myself, choose to NOT seek out PvP because we don't want to ruin the experience for others. Not everyone cares about that. Some people thrive off of knowing they're better than others, new to the game or not.

I convinced a friend to try it out awhile back. I played at release amd took a long break but I knew what to expect from people. We load in at the tavern to cannonfire, and by the time the little intro ended and we gor to the dock, his boat had been sunk. No loot, nothing cause we hadnt even finished loading in and he was already sunk and despite my best effoet to help him he gor killed by some decked out sweat lord with a blunder whike i was fighting the guys two friends. He was fine at first but danced on him after they downed him and sent him a message to "kys". He immedately got off it and hasnt been back on, he has limited time to game in the military and he doesnt wwnt to play that again. Your problem its this game has devolved into sea of sociopaths

Me and my friends started playing the Sea of Thieves last month. In our first and only playthrough we actually enjoyed gathering some treasures and other stuff. A seasoned slooper noticed us. We tried to defend our ship and we are confident about it because it's 4 vs 1 unfortunately it was a disappointment. My friends aren't planning to come back to the game and I also don't like playing solo so we started playing other games instead.

3 years playing, still PVE and avoid others on the seas. Not a running reaper type, actually a Hunters Call guy who hunts for gems.

The main reason new players don’t enjoy the game is because the players who always instigate fights and get their asses kicked by better players become noob hunters and only find Joe bullying the weak not to mention how toxic and racist those people are.

My son and I played for a couple hours then got ganked and camped by some twelve year old spamming his mic about how bad we suck. My conclusion, it's a griefer game. Not worth my time. I would return it on Steam if I wasn't very slightly over 2 hours.

I remember as a new player knowing there was PvP but not taking it seriously enough. I literally didn’t even know how easy it was for other players to board. I definitely raged the first 1 or 2 times that I took 3+ hours solo to find loot just for some guy to take it in under 2 minutes. That feels really really bad as a new player. I didn’t give up on the game but I’m sure a lot of other people have done the same thing as me and never picked it up again lol

The biggest problem with the Maiden Voyage is that it doesn’t even have anywhere that it even tells you there are other players in the world. At the very least when you load into an outpost after completing the maiden voyage it should have a warning to be weary of other player ships. I’ve ran into so many new players that didn’t even know there were other player ships on the servers.

So in conclusion, You’re saying that PvP isn’t the problem people hate SoT but instead It’s RARE’s fault for bad marketing and that players need to “learn to defend themselves”.

PVP community ruined this game. Period

Hi ! I used to play sea of thieves a lot, for years, I had to quit for my own good lol. The thing is, today, Rare is selling sot as a cooperative pirate adventure game with quests and mysteries and plenty of events throughout its world. Problem is, players who join the game nowadays hoping to play that said adventure coop thing instantly face reality and players cruelty. I mean, alright I got it, thats how the game works, its pvp oriented okok, but dont pretend its all fun and adventure and loot and stuff and friends when the game is just another salty toxic hardcore pvp gamers den which roughly looks like your favorite disney pirate saga... I would add to conclude, I don't blame Rare as much as I blame sot playerbase. Rare tried to make their game more friendly to new players, proposing a bunch of new stuff every update... People already in the game dont give a damn F*** about new pve stuff, so the keep doin what they like, or what we hate...

This game is like a really toxic high school. New kids come in, they get beaten up and bullied immediately by every other person with more hours than them. If they make it through a cycle of abuse that could last months, they have to actively make the decision to bully others in order to get any practice defending themselves, as trying to get practice defending against the existing bullies will never work. To survive this game you have to actively engage in an activity you may think is reprehensible in order to get better, that’s just the disgusting truth of it.

Rare has no intention of balancing this broken game. They’re just going to keep feeding frivolous seasonal content to the few trolls that still play the game, and hope new players explore it just long enough to disqualify them from a refund once they find out what it really is. They could make ranked servers, but instead they make a thousand bullshit excuses to keep things as broken as they are. “It takes away the mystery of not knowing who’s on the horizon”. No it fucking doesn’t, you still don’t know who it is, you just know you’re chances of facing someone 100x better than you are dramatically lower, so you’d probably be MORE inclined to engage. “You could exploit that by mid-session invites”. Live server migration is ALREADY a thing, it’s 100% possible to parse them by average party rank. “Smurfs”. Is a problem with all competitive pvp games, and still not an excuse to sacrifice accessibility. “Longer wait times for servers”. Again, a pathetic excuse when you actually consider what you’re sacrificing to shave a few seconds off of server placement. This game is now only accessible to veteran players, and new players who join a veteran crew and just get carried. They COULD balance servers, they COULD fix arena, they COULD prepare new players for the harsh pvp encounters they will constantly face, but that wouldn’t be as effective at tricking them into buying the game. They are CHOOSING to let their community remain a bunch of toxic gatekeepers. A fact I’ll remember the next time I see the Rare logo on a new title.

I dont think this is as intuitive as it is well put together. It basically boils down to OP saying "ohh stop being upset that your getting shit on in pvp without explanation or repair" "its the marketing fault" dude, what? if unanimously the people are saying pvp is shit because its tedious, unfun and at times entirely unfair, im not sure how you come to this conclusion. this is an entitled TTV nerd opinion frankly. Balance, adjustments, anything to make pvp remotely fair or enjoyable, but nah, lets just blame the player base (which is dying for this reason)

My community day was spent getting spawn camped by a sweaty galleon under a false pretense of server alliance (and then taunted and hit on) with two of my relatively new SoT-playing buddies. Watching your friends get frustrated to the point of rage quitting something that was supposed to be a fun little adventure and then being unable to do anything about it really sucks. Even with all the help and tips you provide to other players, nothing can really prepare them for their first encounter with the Arena/PVP gods. Even I myself can’t combat people like that.

The questions raised in the video come down to this: should the marketing reflect the game, or should the game reflect the marketing? The best way I can think of to split the difference would be a pacifist emissary that takes a massive cut of loot sold, or some sort of wanted system that poses a serious threat to a PvP crew.

The sole thing I can see to fix the distaste for the pvp, is to add the ability to have a private lobby. Let players just chill in a pve lobby or add some sort of ghost/passive mode so people who don't want to be bothered can't be bothered. Seems like such a simple thing for the developers to do and would fix so much for those of us that just want to chill with friends and enjoy the game.

''Why do new players hate PvP in sea of thieves'' They have brains. When I played the game 6 years ago I was assuming they'd fix it somewhere down the line, god was I wrong lmao tried downloading it tonight and honestly it made me realize how weak of a title it is, why would anyone who likes pvp ever want to play this? I've reached diamond/plat (LE in CS) on nearly every fps game out there and I would NEVER invest time trying to learn SoT.

Uhm here's the real reasons why pvp should be REMOVED: 1- crossplatform and crossgen is unfair. The game is not optimized in old gen, and is much better on the new gen and even better on pc, so everybody fight against the platform the opponent is playing on, not against a better player or a worse one. 2- related to the other problem, this game is full of problems, respawn time for players on console is like 10 times slower, and it isn't about the console performance, clearly done on purpose. 3- blunderbass is op and too easy to use. 4- pvp concept is unfair by itself, just go around as a solo sloop vs good galleon, just unfair. This game is designed for a good pve experience but definetly ruined by the non skill based pvp.

I've recently found that, what was once true for me, is the same with a lot of new players. It can seem like magic when a player boards you, anchors you, and blunderbuss' you in a matter of 5 seconds. If you're not on a super hyper aware level of what the splash of someone getting on your ladder sounds like, or enemy footsteps (assuming they're not barefoot), or players running all black clothes, using skinny, hard to see characters. You will surely die. Personally I've started sailing around with no loot waiting to be attacked to get practice in.. unfortunately the only consistent time I get attacked is when the enemy player thinks I'm not on my ship and sees it sitting somewhere while I'm trying to do a tall tale or searching for treasure.

my casual group decided that the time investment we'd need to be able to defend ourselves from the constant and highly aggressive pvp was not worth the frustration of repeatedly losing hours of progress in our limited times to hang out together. add to that the possibility of a level 5 reaper popping up an island away regardless of how diligently we surveil the horizon and map, and everyone quit aggressive pvpers can just respawn and resupply, but pve players lose hours of play.

I think that people hate being a loot funnel for people who has been geeking pvp, as well as 9/10 times, the receiver of a bomardment is the one with 100x more loot than the pursuer, so there's not really any insentive to go against against them. "Go back to arena with all the other sweats" is a very real statement, because you're not going into adventure mode to have a great naval battle with a new crew, you're using them as a loot funnel and ego booster, because if you wanted a great fight, you'd be fighting in arena (Whenever it existed of course). This video honestly just feels like an attempt to deflect the blame of being the reason new players dislike the game

I played sea of thieves since August 2019 and the toxicity of the community has never been that high since reaper faction released. So much pvp sweats that prefer keep your boat safe to keep Spawn killing you until you decide to stop playing. I know your gonna say "ThIeVeS iS iN tHe TiTlE" but i mean, you can steal someone chest its ok, its the game. But killing someone again and again to make him just burst in rage for your pleasure just mean you need some serious mental healthcare

Video: "It isn't MY fault PVP is bad, even though all I do is troll, attack players, and then t-bag or emote into the ground someone on Twitch and get paid to play video games where I troll people and call them names. No, it is the game devs for making it possible."

I think new players would have more fun learning pvp and the rest of the game if solo sloop only lobbies existed As a new player I haven’t encountered any solo sloops (100 hours in) that weren’t experienced. Which puts new players in such a disadvantage that makes pvp a turn off

Because it's bad? It's almost impossible to aim cannons, that's why no one does it. And the player movement and guns are just awful. No one is good at it, period. Very few people will ever be able to do it.

When I first started playing ( game pass ) I was aware of all the PvP. I got me and a few friends to play. And after completing the tutorial all 4 of us went and started doing some gold vaults because we were told they were the best way to make money by another friendly seeming crew. After about 2 hrs the same crew ended up getting on our boat and spawn camping us for like 30 minutes. All the while 1 of the 4 guys was taking our loot and sold it. After that experience all my friends deleted it. I gave it another shot like a week later by myself and basically the same thing happened. Haven’t played it sense

Allow me to share my experience as a previous-new player then who quit within 100 hours: 1: The game is advertised and presented as a "Fun aesthetic adventure pirate game... with pvp elements" however when you started to play you become acutely aware that it is a "PvP FOCUSED game with high risk... with pve elements." as a mainly PvE player in most games I own I found this incredibly unfortunate due to how cool I found the mechanics, combat, and sailing to be. 2: Skill gaps, this is a big part of why I stopped: Sailing around alone in a sloop is bad enough but being constantly harassed by 4 man galleons or 3 man brigs it makes the experience near impossible to enjoy, and I mean that literally, I have live story quests I have never done because every time I tried some stomp squad of pvp'ers would quickly spot me and proceed to chase me for like an hour of real time and sink me without any profit since I wasn't carrying loot. 3: Toxicity, they basically do nothing to prevent it as far as I experienced, voice chat is basically a must to negotiate as a PvE players and make friends rather than enemies, however that comes with a lot of people screaming down their studio mics. Even if you take voice chat out of it the fact that spawn camping is an INTRINSIC mechanic that I don't see how they could remove from the game, it makes it so that if you're a solo slooper and you die even once? Say goodbye to your loot cause it's already gone, you're not going to be able to respawn. Rather than it being a quirky fun adventure game with pirate themes, it ends up being more of a hardcore pvp-focused arena experience a lot of the time. This doesn't account for every single encounter you ever have, but as a solo slooper? Yeah it accounts for about 90% of everyone I ran into. At the end when I saw another ship I would almost immediately get used to the idea that I wasn't going to be able to bank my loot if they turned my way. Edit note: TL;DR: Why spend 2 hours farming loot only to loose it to a stomp squad when I could be playing a game where my time had guaranteed return on investment?

There isn't 14 seconds of that game that is meant to be enjoyable. Even the volcanoes auto target your ship rather than by chance. They REALLY missed the mark with this game.

While I, as a new player, definitively don’t look at the PvP elements fondly, especially since I’m a solo player and just wanna grind money, I absolutely adore the implementation of PvP as it adds an incredible stress factor that I often don’t experience in other games

as a relative new player, that just recently started enjoying pvp. i can say that the two main factors of me not enjoying pvp, was 1, that i was actively trying to progress in the game, and people stealing my loot was a big hinderance, which led to a lot of frustrations, and 2, that everyone was a lot better at pvp than me and my friends, which ment that almost any pvp interaction, resultet in our ship getting sunk, and losing everything that we had been working towards. these days, im a pirate legend, and dont really care much about the loot, other than collecting it for the hell of it. so losing it doesnt matter that much to me. and pvp interractions are much more likely to be a 50/50 chance of winning, unless the other ship are some really sweaty tryhards.

I would say the biggest issue is the "matchmaking" system. They put day 1 sweat lords on the same server as people waking up for the first time in the tavern. The skill gap is so big that they die without a chance to even learn from their mistakes. There is no hope for them to figure out how to defend themselves when they spend the whole time on the ferry. So the first thing new players learn is to run and running isn't fun.

I initially picked up the game back in 2020 and while I knew about the PvP, as the video said, I was not prepared for the level of sweat I encountered. My first few voyages were sunk which completely turned me off of the game because losing hours of progress to end the night empty handed was not a fun experience when play time is already limited. I came back in late 2021, playing with the mindset that I might lose everything and Ive been able to progress under that mindset. Now, I think the sweaty nature of the game hinders it more than helps it and I wager for every new player like myself that comes back, more of them don't because why deal with that hassle. Ultimately, I think its for the overall detriment of the games growth but that wont change because of Rares "tools not rules" mindset.

Attacking noobs who are not even remotely a challenge doesnt exactly make you credible.

At the end of the day the sole issue with PvP is griefing. I understand "ItS a PiRaTe GaMe" but with the lack of a PvP tutorial they throw new players into a meat grinder of 400lb basement dwelling sweat lords who do nothing but PvP and when new players are thrown into that it's not fun at all and ruins the experience for them. If Rare wants to keep this game going they need to handle griefing NOT PVP but GRIEFING. Instead of adding a "Safe Seas" mode which is meant to be PvE "but then removing the biggest PvE content bcuz griefers cried about FotD and FoF being in SS" they should have added a "Defensive" mode much like RDO has, where if a new player or someone who doesn't originally want to PvP wants to then PvP they can remove themselves from "defensive" to "offensive" and then they can take and deal damage to other players and their ships. This wouldn't remove players from "High Seas" servers and would allow for both sides to get what they want in the end.

I just wish more people would coop with eachother. Every alliance ends in betrayal, and it's for nothing but memes. I'm still waiting for a two or three boat alliance that doesn't end in disappointment. People are tricksters and lie and act friendly only to sink you at the best opportunity. It makes people less inclined to coop, and thus leads to more toxic encounters.

I got Sea of Thieves expecting an open world exploration pirate game focused on meticulous exploration and treasure hunting. I knew it had co-op and PvP, but I thought it had those as MODES. I only ever played solo exploration and quests, so yes, I did look up "How to disable PvP" early on and have had a hard time liking the game since I just plainly don't enjoy PvP, I adore the PvE because of how chill it is, and the game delivers BEAUTIFULLY, but I can't get away from PvP so... I haven't played SoT in a long while :/ Edit: Forgot to add, once I learned that the game had PvE stuff, I thought ship battles were mostly PvE

The thing that made no sense in the beginning was outpost camping/pvp at outposts. That made me ragequit more times than I could admit. Getting into Sea of Thieves 4 years after launch made it difficult fighting against other players but man, I never expected that difficulty level. Same thing with fresh players in a lobby, they have no emissary, no loot, basically nothing to lose so they come for your 4-hour-farm loot you unfortunately come to sell in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again, new player here (80 hours in) I can’t fight back efficiently most of the time I am solo slooping so fleeing from a galleon is a common activity for me/changing servers. The devs kinda crossed their fingers and hoped that players would be kind to each other, what kind of hope is that, foolishness ?

I used to like Sea Of Thieves, but it always bothered me that there was no “actual pirating”, aka raiding ships etc. (I also didn’t like how there weren’t private worlds but that’s not important.) But then I realized that there was… by attacking other players. So essentially the only way to be a pirate in this “pirate” game was to ruin the fun of other players. I quit and never looked back, writing off the game as a terrible and unfair excuse for a pirate game.

I followed all your PvP tips and they were definitely helpful, but I still found PvP to be quite clunky and frustrating as I ran into sweat after sweat. Dropped the game after that. I’d be down with bots trying to sink my ship (PvE only mode) as I don’t like the mechanic gimmicks you have to pull in SoT

My experience has been that the sheer amount of exposure a new player has to game mechanics, multitasking, and anxiety during altercations gets cut short far too quickly in many cases, due to a lack of matchmaking. It's easy to tell a player to just get good, but that requires actual time practicing. It is entirely possible that a new player is a member of a crew during their short time with the game and will never touch the cannon. PVP is just anxiety to them because they haven't been given an opportunity to feel out what they're capable of. They forget to orient the sails, reload weapons, steer the ship, patch holes, listen for boarders, watch for merms, block with sword, etc. I think many vets take for granted just how much you have to keep track of to simply feel like you're playing the game without getting perpetually dunked on by everyone you come across. Persevering is cool and all, but many new players are going to take the shit experiences they have with their first several interactions and just drop the game. Best case scenario, they become the crewmember that feels like they can do nothing but patch holes. A necessary job, but it sucks to feel incapable. TLDR: new players might stick to the game long enough to learn how to play if they're paired with players of similar MMR

I attempted playing solo and in my first hour: 1 person greeted me and handed me loot that she did not need seeing I was a new player 20 minutes later, I was ambushed by two PvPers that then proceeded to take all the small loot that she had given me, and continued to kill me despite me having nothing I went into the game expecting there to be pvp eventually. But when the pvp ends up becoming so toxic to the point where you purposely target smaller boats and newer players for the satisfaction of beating someone in a video game, it's become a different issue than newer players just not expecting sweaty pvpers making it impossible for any new player to enjoy the game in their first try.

The problem with Sea Of Thieves, it just feels too competitive. While yes it's meant to be competitive by nature, new players shouldn't have to learn how to be a pirate combat specialist or a professional navigator in order to prevent their loot from being stolen. As a player who played with their friends, I only had fun when we were roaming around the map and doing the most littlest of things, the idea is to just have the subtle art of not giving a damn while playing it feels like.

When I joined SoT I knew what to expect. But since I don't have the best PC, and loading screen bug was a thing back then, every time I got into PvP in game and I died once I lost my ship with any loot I gathered in the last hours. So I ended up running away from any pvp scenario and got fun playing the game as a singleplayer with the ocational interactions with other solo sloopers.

When I'm playing pvp, then I have my own pirate codex: If you have an ambassador flag, then you are also ready for pvp! Gamers who make a tall tale will not be attacked! Fishermen will not be attacked! If another gamer turns out to be a newbie, then I'll make him the offer of an alliance! If an attacked player hoists the white flag, he does not have a significant loot on board, then I let him flee or offer him an alliance! Had this situation two times.😅 Then I'm 100% a role-player! I don't like sneaky reaper! If I'm targeting ambassadors, then only officially under the reaper flag!

No, I think the original marketing was accurate to what Rare intended for the game to be- relaxing pirate-fantasy PvE and with more casual and fun PvP. What happened is that they didn't have enough PvE content at launch to keep players engaged in long enough, so then there was nothing else to do but to go try to find and rob another player that's been grinding the same PvE content loop for 6+ hours. So, it became, "Hey this is fun to harass other players because I get rewarded with tons of loot I didn't have to do several hours of work for). Which eventually became "I prefer to just attack other players that are actually playing the game because... reasons". Then Rare adds PvE content that gets ruined for people who want to do that by a now toxic playerbase. Now, you're right in that most players will come to the game for Game Pass or on a sale or something. But they came expecting what the marketing shows- a chill pirate fantasy game and occasionally do pirate stuff to other players. But that's not what they got. They're a solo player or a crew of a couple friends that wanted to try out the game, and they discovered it's actually just getting kicked in the nuts by griefers as soon as boot up the game. Gathered loot from one world event? You're griefed. Avoided that by luck and gathered hours of loot? You're griefed. It makes people mad and they don't want to play anymore so they leave. Did you notice that when the Pirate's Life update came out, there was a HUGE surge of players that came to play this PvE content? That's what people wanted... separate PvE content, with a Pirates of the Carribean crossover that SoT players have only ever dreamed of! How did that go? Well, it released buggy and at first other players would clip into your instance of one the tales instead of you or your crew being alone. Oh well, right? No. You only got tall tale rewards, not physical loot you had to put on a ship and sell out an outpost... but other players in your bugged instance would literally kill you just because. Didn't matter that they earned nothing from killing you, they just enjoyed repeatedly killing you for no particular reason. That probably describes SoT better than any other example I could think of. Imagine if you were new or a casual solo or crew, you got jumped by 2 krakens every time you put a chest on your ship? That's what it feels like for a lot of players, and it's why SoT lost its momentum. You try to actually play the game the right way and here comes some no life crew or some sweaty streamer to be an asshole and kill you and take your hours of work in just a couple minutes. Completely ruins an otherwise phenomenal game. And you know how I can auto-win the debate of whether griefers are bad vs "it's part of the game git gud?" What happens anytime someone suggests having consequences for PKers, or introducing PvE only servers? The PvP griefers go "REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" Because all they actually care about is just ruining someone else's gaming time knowing that there's no consequence to them in return. Ever been to the SoT subreddit? Oh my, one of the most TOXIC gaming subs I've ever been on lmao. Suggest anything should change in favor of casual solo and crews, and you get downvote bombed and you'll get nonstop berated for suggesting that spawn killing people at outposts that just logged in is not a good thing (this has actually happened to me a few times). P.S. I love watching SoT streamers, this is not an insult. Just my rebuttal in disagreement with your argument in the video.

dude ranted didnt say anything meaningful

I bought it like for $15, and it hurts to know that money was poorly wasted on this game😢

I started sot just before the anniversary update and watched it go from 50% pve 50% pvp to 75% uninteresting forced story quests, 20% pve and 5% pvp before quitting .

People are gonna be like “Go to safer seas then”. Dumass! You get gold slowly and rep slowly

I learned just how sweaty the PVP only players last night. Was with a friend, deciding to do some island hopping Q's, when out of nowhere, a team of 5 just straight up sail on in, blow our boat up, and before we could even react to what was going on, there were multiple players systematically killing me and my friend at the same time our ship was being sunk. One player was just up in my face, side to side bunny hopping while throwing firebombs in my face... Ngl, PVPVE sucks as a game mode, because it treats PVE players like me and my friend as literal cannon fodder to feed PVP only players, who don't seek to engage in the content I am trying to invest in, while at the same time, actively going out of their way to ruin my overall experience and making me want to quit. I'm too old to be engaging in PVP these days, because as time went on, I stopped finding PVP fun and to the current day, it seems like PVP has become a sweatlord slave grind, that really serves no hgiher purpose and doesn't really do much outside of some easy wins.

New player here. Saw a few streamers play it but knew very little about it. Watched some of the trailers, and I agree, pretty much ZERO mention of pvp. I was drawn in by the colorful characters and what looked like some cool adventures. After playing for a while, never even got attacked, but knowing how toxic the community is, I’m out. It’s too bad, as it would make an amazing pve game, but I have no interest in losing hours of progress and having slurs shouted at me. I wanted to be a pirate. Not whatever this is. 🤮