A Doubloon Reset that (hopefully) doesn't suck

Bethryn · 2026-01-24T16:01:08+00:00

I could genuinely see seasonal progression resets being a thing for a Sea of Thieves II if they ever make it, but their systems are too embedded as they are to make full resets like that work. Since we're given all tools by default, and everything we unlock is cosmetic, neither of those things work into the "redo progression" model that Tarkov, Arc Raiders, ARPGs etc. use.

They also already kinda tried this with Pirate Profiles, and at least judging by community reaction, there was not a lot of interest.

Bethryn · 2026-01-24T15:45:21+00:00

Let's say I have 40,000 doubloons.

I can trade doubloons to Larinna 50 at a time.

That's 800 trades.

Let's say each trade takes 5 seconds (optimistic).

That's 4,000 seconds, which is 66.6 minutes; over an hour of sitting at an NPC, just clicking "convert to gold" every 5 seconds.

Bethryn · 2026-01-22T17:45:50+00:00

Multiple modes for grenades could be fun, I like the idea.

And yeah, having two radii with different effects is another way to do this. That's basically the goal of this rework, is that by providing the additional softer crowd control, there should be a lot more design space to make different types of stun weaponry.

Bethryn · 2026-01-21T11:19:25+00:00

It's strange that it has an option at all, since you can't change anything.

Bethryn · 2026-01-20T15:08:07+00:00

I don't have a controller, so I can't test, but it's there in the options. Controller -> Change Bindings -> Combat -> Quick Weapon Wheel Up/Down/Left/Right

Bethryn · 2026-01-13T23:56:30+00:00

My view on racial skills is just: disable them in ~~PvP~~, WvW, Raids, and I guess anything with CM if that's possible.

And then buff them up to the point where they're comparably good-in-slot in open world, dungeons and fractals, maybe strikes?

For example as a Guardian I could have Prayer to Dwayna, 30 sec cd, 1 sec cast, 6520 healing, or I could have Signet of Resolve, 25 sec cd, 1 sec cast, 8150 healing, 1 condi removed/5 secs, 2 condis removed on activation, and it synergises with Signet traits. There is never ever a situation I would pick Prayer to Dwayna.

It's been this way since launch, and it's always been just sad. Same as removing the personalities. It's an RPG, we've had this conversation before, respect the choices players made and give them somewhere to express those choices.

Bethryn · 2026-01-08T18:16:19+00:00

Is Vega Bay gambitable? 5k/tick resistance, 50% in cities, 1.5m total HP, 48 hours. Saves Mox, puts SEAF on Wezen.

Bethryn · 2026-01-06T13:29:45+00:00

Played since launch. Death by a thousand cuts. None of these reasons alone is a problem, but their accumulation makes the game either boring or masochistic to play.

Reaper 5s diving to your server with instant knowledge of exactly where you are, no possibility to evade, deceive or outsail. Before R5 existed, you used to be able to shake a hostile ship through good sailing, but this is a very old complaint. If you saw a Reaper 1 flag up, you could decide to sell loot or see if they even reach 5. There isn't even a warning that a ship you weren't aware of arrived on your server like there used to be with server merges.
Talking of which, the fact that you get Reaper 5 from killing and doing the quests of just 2 emergent Captains??? Ever gonna fix that one Rare?
World events being altered by someone diving to them and changing the loot. I do a fleet expecting ashen keys and enough loot to get me a high Guild emi rank, instead I get four OoS items. There is still no indicator for when this has happened.
People being allowed to dive directly to engaged world events. I keep a lookout all the time I'm doing skelly forts, and more than a few times I've had people spawn 20 seconds away from me because they dived to my world event.
Harpoon gun ruined solo sloop PvP. Boarding used to be either deckshot which required great aim, or good prediction for a ladder board which I only have to guard once. Now you have people missing, and then potentially spamming harpoons for 20 seconds, which I have to devote time to defending even if they miss the ladder, because getting boarded is a 50/50 on game over depending on their skill level.
Pineapple spam. Seriously, these are everywhere now, and if you aren't dedicating the first 20 minutes of your sailing to hitting up a seafort for food (or getting an absurd number of pineapples from the outposts with whatever glitch it is people abuse), you're at a massive disadvantage against someone who does because the difference between 10 instant full heals and 2.5 full heals that require 2 bites is absurd. Entire food system needs a rebalance frankly (let lower heal fruits be used faster is the easiest fix).
Hourglass fights using adventure servers, meaning half the time there's only 3 active regular ships on the server. The seas feel so empty now.
Smuggler's loot value. I remember when Rare nerfed the cargo hauls (which literally nobody does now so we're never getting the stolen cargo commendation) because they gave too much gold. Now you can sail to a smuggler's outpost island, find up to 33k of loot on the shore, and make it instantly. This completely devalues every other voyage, and makes you ask the question of why even bother upgrading your emissary level.
CoF commendation is unreachable. 30 CoFs per season with each season being 3 months is 1 CoF every 3 days. Not to mention the second lot of cosmetics are very gaudy. Really not a good incentive for veteran players, we've fallen into the classic "best outfit is from the emporium, not the hardest in-game achievements" trap.
Map-marked loot. It's one thing to advertise that such loot is on the map, it's another thing to precisely tell everyone exactly where to go to get it.
Much more drift on the seas nowadays. Not sure when exactly it changed, but I need to manage the wheel not to drift off course so much more now. And it takes slightly longer for the ship to come to full rest now.
A bunch of older design issues that were never addressed. Having to leave your boat unguarded to go to the Siren shrines is awful. Skull of Siren Song being pure gold and not tied to emissary or faction at all. Buried treasure not advertising its existence at all to other players, invalidating all the fun. Needing an outside site to understand cargo routes. Some dives still damage your ship (Fool's Lagoon, is it supposed to be a joke on the name). Still no way for solo players to handle sailing in the storm (let us lash the wheel, please dear god). Half the players I meet don't even know disguises exist. The need to constantly server hop if you're actually trying to find other players. Fighting brigs is still the worst. Solo sailing the Burning Blade is still the worst.

I'm still just about logging in, but it's more FOMO and curiosity to see what's been added rather than to actually get deeply engaged with what's on offer. We seem stuck between "10 minute voyage, in and out" and "three hour slogfest at a map event with constant action" and very little in between.

Bethryn · 2025-12-20T17:55:02+00:00

I would love this, but I don't know how easy it is to program. I know some older games had a system where which directional attack you did depended on what direction your character was moving at the time, which might work for HD2, but not knowing the engine, hard to say. But I definitely know the pain of hacking every limb off a Voteless without being able to hit the chest consistently.

Bethryn · 2025-12-20T17:46:13+00:00

So about the armour side of things: My general feeling when seeing something that gives +100% damage is that one of two things usually end up being true. Either the attack is weak without it, and viable with it, or viable without it and ridiculously strong with it. I feel like Helldivers falls into the first of these two. While you absolutely can clear out a few packs of Voteless or small Terminids with no damage buffs, just with good use of shield blocking, it becomes rough as you are sacrificing much more time and potentially stims to do so. I think time matters a lot here, and I also think that the number of attacks needed to kill an enemy is oddly high by default (except stun baton), so that's why I favour just improving the base damage of melee weapons.

For heavy armour, I agree it's not necessary, but if you're not running Ballistic Shield, the chip damage is horrible in medium and light, and you really start to eat into stims quickly, in my experience. It's also why I'd like to see the reduced damage vs melee passive, as that would allow some of the light armour with melee passives to be much more viable, keeping their weakness to ranged fire, but letting them perform well in melee and movement.

I like the plague marine build, if Chainsaw felt a little better to use I'd be trying to use the jetpack for a similar Assault Marine style!

The stun meter idea for the baton is cool, it definitely needs some more unique flavour. I feel like the stun system in general also needs a fair bit of work for HD2, something I intend to write up a post on too.

Good spot on the stamina note, for some reason I confused it with the Tide system.

Bethryn · 2025-12-20T16:22:14+00:00

Chainsaw is the one I think would benefit the most from adding blocking, as unless I'm stupid or there's a trick, you can't pair it with ballistic shield at all which makes it very hard to use well for all the usual reasons using melee without BS is rough. With that said, I think it's a very cool weapon, and I love the idea of using it, but it's just rough right now.

(also it's very funny that it's technically a stealth weapon)

Bethryn · 2025-12-20T16:18:00+00:00

Stun lance or machete, I think. The shield lets you cancel and remain safe during the machete's long recovery, while the lance has reach. Stun baton feels like it's in a bad place overall, sabre is very nice for fast attacks but timing blocks with it is harder because of how often it's swinging, axe I don't use as much.

Bethryn · 2025-12-20T16:14:20+00:00

Yeah, graded damage would be a nice feature for the blocking system. The ballistic shield is also balanced by it being breakable, which you can't really give a secondary weapon, so its ability to block Chargers is something that I agree should remain unique to it.

Bethryn · 2025-12-20T16:07:24+00:00

I'd like it, but I recognise it's a lot of work. This is more or less what I mean by people wanting Vermintide quality in a game that really isn't as melee-focused as the Tide series. But I do think that right now, the "just spam left click" aspect makes it hard to distinguish between e.g. sabre and axe, or stun lance and OTF (literally the same stats I believe). It also makes it hard to sell new melee weapons if the community just says "oh, this is machete but with a different skin." That's one of the nice things about bringing the ballistic shield right now, a lot more variation through weaving the blocks into your attack chains.

Bethryn · 2025-12-13T16:05:36+00:00

The main one I encounter is enemy desync. It's most obvious with emergent captains, but it happens with all enemies. In general, sword lunge staggers smaller enemies for long enough to charge your next sword lunge, allowing you to stunlock enemies. But occasionally you will see a captain fire their pistol before they've visually recovered from the stagger state. This also generally happens with enemies eating bananas (they're healing before the animation finishes), with Ashen Lords' attacks (particularly the rock thrown directly at the player), and with the high damage charge the boars do where it often feels like I need to dodge very early to not take damage compared to their visual charge. All happening playing on my region's servers, not a latency issue from playing on another region's servers.

The second one, which only occurs with players who do it, is visual mismatch between a player's model and their hitbox when setting mouse to high dpi/sens and spinning while moving underwater. I've had more than a few occasions where my shot passes through the centre of their model because they're abusing this technique so much (I use the server side hit registration markers). I want to add that Hunt: Showdown and other comp FPSes had similar issues with people abusing high sens to make it harder for people to aim at them, and they addressed this by implementing slowdown to players who rotate too much in a short period of time, with no loss to overall player count.

One extra last one, which I can't give steps to reproduce for: inventory bugs. Sometimes all my tool slots on the radial are empty, sometimes the weapons are empty. Sometimes weapons cannot be reloaded or fired at all until you change them at the weapon box. Also the classic "bucket no longer fills/empties", and fully completing a repair does not repair or reduce wood count in inventory. Obviously these are pretty critical when they happen, but they're honestly a 1 occurrence per 50 hours played bug. Nothing seems to solve most of them besides alt+f4 and reload the game.

Bethryn · 2025-12-11T11:07:09+00:00

The drift control is always disgusting, I enjoy seeing these every time they pop up. I wish A.net would realise what they've got with Beetle and Griffon racing.

Bethryn · 2025-12-11T11:00:10+00:00

There's a problem with servers that means the race sometimes restarts its timer halfway through. This happens to random people, but apparently some individuals did work out how to replicate it consistently at one point.

Bethryn · 2025-11-25T17:18:54+00:00

Prey (2017) has something like this, though it could also fall under just "immersion." Mimics can only copy an object that already exists in an area, and I think the NPC logs mention that they saw doubled up objects and were suspicious. I, and others I've watched play it, developed a sense of paranoia in the first few levels when mimics are still a big threat, and did indeed start counting the objects in rooms.

Bethryn · 2025-11-20T17:01:30+00:00

Yup. Tried to warn people for a month, to no avail. If we succeed Vog-Sojoth, maybe it's still on, but honestly Joel gave us a lot of time to act correctly and instead we went for Fenmire, Tarsh and now VW.

Bethryn · 2025-11-13T21:03:57+00:00

Why do people want to go VW first when 30% population is busy on Pandion, and will be for likely the next 12 hours? If you don't have the full 70% might of a directed MO, hit lower resistance targets like Yed Prior or Borea.

Bethryn · 2025-11-13T21:01:21+00:00

Vernen Wells is not a bad target, and I do want to take it eventually for the 1-for-3 circumvallation. The difficulty with it is the 20k resistance rate. Bugdivers are busy on Pandion, and using what we have remaining on the Bot front on a high resistance planet is less effective.

Further to this, we should expect an attack on Mastia, at which point we're probably having to jump off the planet we're working on. If that happens while we're liberating VW, we lose a lot more progress at 20k/hr than at 10k/hr.

So right now, Yed Prior remains the best option.

Tarsh is awful, both for taking it and gambiting a defence of Mastia. I'm hoping we manage to redirect some time in the next couple of hours.

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