Empty servers (almost)

Rare recently published some selective stats for Year One:
http://compass.xboxlive.com/assets/91/62/9162acaa-8a3f-45f1-a114-4f2fe1f03a0b.jpg?n=INFOGRAPHIC_ONEYEAR.jpg

A lot of the information is not very meaningful, and there is a distinct lack of information that helps us analyse how many people might be playing Sea of Thieves. The average numbers of encounters, in the top right corner, seem remarkably low to those of us that are Pirate Legends, or way on the way to becoming one. It does seem there must be a lot of people that have dipped their toes in and decided the pirate's life was not for them.

The most telling stat I think is the little item in parentheses to the right: "Around 2.3 Million [island visits] per day." Let's assume in a good play session of a couple of hours, you visit 23 islands, then that means that there are 100,000 people (or 100,000 crews) playing Sea of Thieves for a couple of hours each, every day. If 23 islands per session seems a bit high, then it is even more people.

That sounds pretty healthy to me.

The players tripled in the last few months my dude. Maybe look at the numbers and not assume it is dying due to your opinion.

What the heck - I'll chime in with my useless and long winded prose.

TL;DR - I disagree with the OP.

So, no crud there I was playing SoT at launch for meh, around 5ish months or a bit longer. I stepped away more long term after some other games dropped and I took to the idea of streaming some, trying to figure out ways to generate income outside of typical work environments (disability issues) and so on. This slow drip of external interests slowly wore down my interests in SoT play within the scope of any worthy note.

I always loved SoT even if I was one of the "tinfoil kids" who screamed that the game was conspiratorially pawned off by MS too soon for Rare to meet their own personal mark. I knew Rare had wanted to aim higher than launch, but felt MS and Gamepass forced their hand. Many of my crew mates and I tuned into alien radio transmissions, mapped the alignment of the pyramids to various starcharts, and even discovered that the Earth actually is round, all in our efforts to refuse any notion that the game was simply released too early and the current (at the time) testing standards were too weak/limitted and that MS was force starting their new game service platform.

But during all of that, people complaining (wrongly IMO) about PC advantages, perpetual patch/updates destroying various infrastructure in the game, and metric tons of other complaints (many posted by the OP in this thread have been parrotted since launch by vocal portions of the community that just can't let their opinions change), and more, my crew and I stayed solid - we simply enjoyed the darnnabbit game too much!

But as I mentioned, I had to step back for a few months after what was meant to be a short break mutated into a degree of recovery from my disabiling symptoms I started school. And well... school... kinda kills game schedules when full time and a parent...

But here I am.. anniversary update curiosity has brought me back into the fold I never truely intended to leave permanently.

And my take on things?

Sure, more of the players are better at PvP than what used to be common. Sure, I've seen bugs still. Sure, there are things I might gripe about elsewhere that I would like to see handled differently.

But the game is as wonderfully entertaining as ever. And all of the new stuff we'll have after this next update?

For shame! The game has meat on it!

Ok, maybe not in the doses some fans would prefer, or maybe exactly in those doses.

But even without the upcoming update... I am very happy with SoT, happier than ever!

So, go ahead and critisize community sizes, varied mechanics, issues you have fault to draw upon, we're all ears.

But don't be fooled.

The game isn't slowly dying anymore than any of us are. It's been a year... I literally can't remember the last game that I played for half a dozen or so months solid,,, almost daily... then stopped and played a plethora of other titles... only to return happier than before!

Ok, maybe some old classics from the "good ol days" of older systems...

But I really cannot think of another title that's kept me as a fan within the last 5 years. And brother (sister, whatever)... I play a metric ton of games.

@surveyorpete said in Empty servers (almost):

Rare recently published some selective stats for Year One:
http://compass.xboxlive.com/assets/91/62/9162acaa-8a3f-45f1-a114-4f2fe1f03a0b.jpg?n=INFOGRAPHIC_ONEYEAR.jpg

A lot of the information is not very meaningful, and there is a distinct lack of information that helps us analyse how many people might be playing Sea of Thieves. The average numbers of encounters, in the top right corner, seem remarkably low to those of us that are Pirate Legends, or way on the way to becoming one. It does seem there must be a lot of people that have dipped their toes in and decided the pirate's life was not for them.

The most telling stat I think is the little item in parentheses to the right: "Around 2.3 Million [island visits] per day." Let's assume in a good play session of a couple of hours, you visit 23 islands, then that means that there are 100,000 people (or 100,000 crews) playing Sea of Thieves for a couple of hours each, every day. If 23 islands per session seems a bit high, then it is even more people.

That sounds pretty healthy to me.

Pete....

These numbers are waaaaaaayyyyyy off by my memory for our crews specifically.

I swear I've completed like 304.3332 skull forts and lords knows I've encountered over a zillion other ships.

I know.. I'm not average... lol

@yarrrold said in Empty servers (almost):

Let's face it folks, the game game is dying slowly as the players are split in many ways and will die even faster with The arena.

-Xbox players now have the option to opt out from crossplay
=> from my observations pretty much all Xboxers turned it off leaving us PC players a very small communauty to play with. the reason to that? PC players have an advantage they say, in my humble opinion its totally false as i know several Xboxers who can deal with pc players with ease. its more a "git gud situation" to be honest.

Let's face it, you're making {wouldn't pass profanity filter anyway} up, cause there is no opt-out yet.

@bugaboo-bill One objection. If "private servers via Ip tracker" were a way the game is intended to be played, you wouldn't need these trackers in the first place. You would just have the option to open one.

Such long discussions, much wow.

Let me start off by saying we all know the OP is posting absolute lies, because of load balancing you can have 6 people playing the game or 100.000.000 people and notice no difference because the systems will merge servers if able to get people on a single server.

Otherwise I don't really get why people are always discussing the health of a game. If you enjoy a game just play it and keep playing for as long as you like. If friends leave make your own choice, I for one keep playing this game because I love it, I run a discord where people mostly play this game so I've got plenty of people willing to play with me. Do I care about anyone else playing this game? Nope not really as long as I can meet other pirates on the seas I don't care if 6 or 100.000.000 people are playing.

OP's credibility is suspect due to the erroneous assumptions he makes.

You need to up your meds, pirate. That or your crew keeps mixing urine and grog.

SoT is more popular than ever.
He wont play Arena, I'll guess he hates galleons, so I'm going to assume he will enjoy ganking pirates attempting the Tall Tales, or pirates fishing.

Howabout how so many more pirates will be learning pvp skillz in Arena, and how that translates into more competent ships on the water in Adventure?

Every pirate has an opinion, makes absolutely no difference to me.

@yarrrold said in Empty servers (almost):

I bought an open world game like it was advertised, not a battle royale game.

This guy obviously doesn't know what the Arena even is.

Almost everything here is highly inaccurate.

1. You always find a crew to play with 99% of the time.
2. Having separate game modes only strengthens the lifespan and replayability and going by impressions it’s going to be great for those mainly interested in pvp.
3. You barely encounter anyone because the developers intended it that way. Even from the very beginning this has been a thing but some would rather keep it this way because of dangers of malicious players stealing or making fake alliances on purpose.
4. Disabling of enabling the cross play between platforms is still under heavy discussion and from what I’ve heard it’s only planned for Arena. For obvious reasons.
5. Sea of Thieves is thriving. The game is in good health with the constant developer updates, streams, and of course with these types of “mega” updates. It’s honestly ridiculous of you to think the game is dying in any way. I’ve only heard positive things as of recently and some of the most popular games out right now also started rather troubled or at times lacked good content updates but they’ve managed to pull through.

Quite honestly there is nothing like the Sea of Thieves experience and that alone with the constant communication with fans is just enough to keep those who are well informed happy.

Id like to chime in on the allied server concern. This was predicted long ago, even before it went live. It wasn't really all that bad at first. The most fun part of it was how players would sometimes actually meet and form these alliances versus core (Known friends only) player groups doing the same but in the fashion you remark (Or the old fashioned way by simply barganing with other crews for the benefit of taking control of another ship with friend invites).

But even then, I never had much issue - I often didn't and still don't join alliances usually, I have nothing against them... I just don't really care about money and hit my Athena 9 soon enough that I quit playing just before ten (and interestingly have a old school goal to fulfill now that I've returned which is nice).

And even if I am on a server where it's obvious that I am the one outsider to an otherwise full alliance...

I don't often care or notice.

I've likely the ability to count on one finger the time when a whole server hunted me down. In fact, that was an awesome day as I skillfully avoided them for well over an hour and managed to sink no less than 1 gallon in my sloop while dodging the others. Avoiding boarders was the hardest part.

Granted, if your playing antagonistically it can be a pain, but hey, if your really going to be a feared pirate it's hard odds you need to beat, not tackling the same less capable single crew throughout a session!

So honestly, the one time it was an issue, ended up being quite a fun experience. And as we've all heard before Sea of Thieves is built on the notion of these "experiences".

Then there's the new Arena set up, which I worry about insofar as players manipulating lobby rosters. But outside of that I predict that dedicated PvP'ers will live there most often, it's rather a fun place to visit.

@yarrrold
hmmm ok first i dont think the game is dying at all, if you looked at the stats that was posted a few months ago
by officials - it is way far from dead or dying. It is infact listed as one of the most popular pirate games of all time.
The option to opt out is a good idea and should be kept, try looking at it this way if your saying PC players have no advantages over xbox players - look around the forums there are several PC players whom openly admit and quite frankly rub the salt in the wounds so to speak about there being an advantage they have and gloat about it.

The arena is a brilliant idea for those players that only wish to engage in PVP it is not forced on people - it is left to their individual choices.
Also the demand and request for more lore driven mode of play has been asked for repeatedly for a long time. So on all accounts "GOOD ON YOU RARE FOR THIS LATEST UPDATE!"
If anything i think and believe this latest update will actually ease alot of tensions between the players.
Just my humble opinions and observations on the matter.

There are a max of 6 ships on a server. Hypothetically you get 6 galleons so 6 x 4 players = 24

Servers also merge... so unless you are trying to suggest that there are less then 24 players playing at any given time, you have absolutely no basis for using server density as a determination for the health of the game.

What you could argue is that with the addition of the devils roar, the server is too large for only 6 ships and that Rare should increase the cap.

@inboundbomb yes I agree if they add it so console plays with console only in arena that sounds far just not in the whole game