The Future of Sea Of Thieves

  • LordVader1O1
    Champion
    Insider
    Founder

    Ahoy There!

    Damn Rare, I love you guys, I love this game so much! Its music, its story, its atmosphere, the visuals, the characters EVERYTHING is beautiful about SOT.

    BUT... yes there is a but.

    The game is not getting the amount of work it needs to make it to port... personally I feel its taking on water and is slowly sinking. The effort you guys put into the game is incredible especially with a Pandemic happening and you all working from home and what I can only assume is a medium sized team working on the game with maybe a few external studios.

    The thing is, I think SOT needs a much bigger dedicated team than the one it has... I don't think you guys realised how popular and loved this game was going to be and with Everwild in development the team for SOT has gotten smaller and the work load larger. The content for the game is good but its being dripped in slowly and although I do believe people shouldn't just smash out the new updates within day 1 of release, the content is not long lasting enough to sustain until the next release. Seasons for me is just a cover for the drip fed content and you can see that by looking at how much content is actually in the update vs the gold, doubloons and Ancient coins that fill the level gaps. When this damn covid goes away, I know it will be easier for you guys to work but I still think there needs to be a bigger team to keep up with the demand for the game.

    Please for the love of megs flippers don't think I am ripping you guys apart, because I respect how much work you guys have to do but we are seeing drops in quality on some assets or game mechanics because of how much you guys have to deal with. There needs to be more content rich updates, far more content in the updates, far more bug fixes and optimisations more updates to how the game is developing behind the scenes and way more fulfilling content that not only lasts a long time but also feels rewarding for the updates. Such as the POTC update... the tales were fantastic but the rewards were god awful except the shanty. Everything decent was behind a pay wall.

    I love this game but its hard to see the land ahead if this continues at this pace. I feel we are on a sinking ship with little planks left to fix the holes.

    Love you guys, keep up the good work, get a bigger team! (easier said than done IK)

    Happy Christmas and new year!

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  • D3ADST1CK
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    I haven't really noticed a drop in production. Some months/seasons are better than others in terms of what's delivered, but it's always seemed to be at the same pace.

  • Veronik5682
    Castaway

    I agree to some extent, for example this seasons trailer hyped up fireworks so much, I mean I like the feature but its not really that useful to the gameplay outside of messing around with crews.
    Imo the biggest change was the storage crate update.

    Burying feature needs work, I find that most people just bury worthless/junk treasure, I know this because I play with a lot of different crews all the time. I have yet to encounter an actual dig that was worth doing in value...

    I also see a lot of people taking long breaks only to comeback expecting big changes, but outside of cosmetics their isn't much.

    For example I took a 1 year break from the game, missed out on the seasons apart from the end of last season and this current one.

    I came back to having fun doing FlameHeart, Ashen winds, FoF and a few more things that I missed out on previously. But being honest after a day or two, it felt like old SoT, which imo I do not mind, but there is a lack of actual big changes if that makes sense.

    Why not go big and add a 4th weapon that will spice up the game a lot. Or go ham on adding new and different events, and maybe have a rotation where you take say Flameheart event out for the month?

    Lots and lots of ideas can be generated.

  • GrumpyW01f
    Legend
    Insider

    @lordvader1o1
    A Pirate's Life was an amazing update and is still great. Both it and the Sunken Kingdom took a lot of work. Season 5 is merely a cooldown... Maybe a calm before the storm?
    After the Anniversary Update, which gave us a ton of content, came Shrouded Spoils - A cooldown update that didn't give a ton of content, but improved the base of the game. Season 5 = Shrouded Spoils.

    It's true that the last few seasons have died out quickly do to the ease of completing the content. But this is a result of the amount of work put in to content that doesn't last very long, not that the game is going to die. In the future, if we get content with more staying power, we'll be able to feel like we have something to do in month 3 of each season.

    You also can't say that Everwild is taking away from Sea of Thieves, where's your proof?

    I don't think you guys realised how popular and loved this game was going to be

    ?

  • LordVader1O1
    Champion
    Insider
    Founder

    @grumpyw01f Everwild is by only an assumption priority right now for the studio. That tends to be the way it works for new games in the industry, prioritise the new games development while still supporting previous games on the side. Again I am merely assuming. Rare is not a massive studio, it is no Ubisoft, Dice etc. So their team is not “unlimited” for staff to work on SOT.

    As for my comments regards “I don’t think you guys realised how popular SOT was going to be”. They have done a fantastic job with the game so far but I don’t think they realised just how much the game was loved by people and they get new players every day. Therefore the work load is bigger and more challenging than originally thought. I have faith in them to make sure SOT lives the life it deserves. I just made this post to highlight my concern in the case it doesn’t quite clear the fog, showing my support as much as anyone who truly loves this game and wants it to succeed far beyond anything even similar to this game, has before.

  • Metal Ravage
    Champion
    Insider
    Founder

    I don't think the game's progress is up for debate as SOT was awarded that title already. Of course some seasons will be better than others this is why there are forums to post suggestions and ideas. In my opinion Rare is doing the best to keep SOT alive and enrich the open world without compromising their vision.

  • PersonalC0ffee
    Captain
    Insider
    Boatswain

    The game isn't dying just because there isn't people to hunt on the horizon.

  • LordVader1O1
    Champion
    Insider
    Founder

    @personalc0ffee said in The Future of Sea Of Thieves:

    The game isn't dying just because there isn't people to hunt on the horizon.

    I am not bothered about players “to hunt” I am only bothered about enriching the game and making it feel more alive than ever. Rare are doing a great job to do this, just maybe a little too slow… not their fault, there is massive demand for the game, I just hope it lasts as long as it deserves. Its extremely difficult for them especially during this damn pandemic.

  • PersonalC0ffee
    Captain
    Insider
    Boatswain

    @lordvader1o1 They will continue to enrich the game moving forward with things we couldn't even possibly dream of having or wanting. I know it's a bit slow right now and like you said, pandemic is slowing things up. Plus things are just naturally slow this time of year. Good reply.

  • ThaGoochiestMan
    Master
    Insider

    To be completely honest, Rare has as much room as Phil Spencer gives them.

    As soon as he's seen enough, the money gets cut off.

    So assuming they keep him happy and maintain some degree of profitability, the game will remain as is. But if doesn't, expect them to shift resources to a new title.

    For better or worse, ultimately as soon as Phil/Azure pull the plug on SoT's servers that's when the game ends. But being apart of a successful business, they'll wait for financial losses before discarding the game.

  • SF Lynx
    Commander
    Insider

    @lordvader1o1

    agree...there's something needed in this game to get the majority of the vets to stick around. Getting new players is good, and I envy new players coming in and seeing all these things to do. But I'm not new, I'm here for me, and right now the past 3 months hasn't been engaging enough. At least for my standards. I would like to see a roadmap...you know...what every company provides to their customers. I'll sign an NDA if that helps.

  • LordVader1O1
    Champion
    Insider
    Founder

    @sf-lynx same!

  • wsurftvveeds
    Master
    Insider

    @sf-lynx I've been happy with the updates, but a roadmap would definitely be nice.

    Rare is kind of weird with how close they keep stuff to their chest. Often only revealing anything right before release. More transparency with plans etc would never be a bad thing.

    couple seconds later edit: I think part of that is the way they like to tease stuff through social media - it's great for a certain group of players, but I think in terms of building more general hype/confidence it's less ideal - the majority of players are more interested with the actual content they are going to be playing rather than the lore around it.

  • Vaca Hombre
    Champion
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @sf-lynx

    To be honest, I've had my fill of "roadmaps" in games nowadays. Maybe I'm just burnt out from the ones that never went anywhere, who knows.

    That's why I was only briefly in Insiders. I'd rather not know about planned content until it's finished, tested, and released.

    Of course, I can just not look at it, so I'm not gonna throw a fit over it. But yeah, I've been really soured on "roadmaps".

  • Glannigan
    Sailor

    I see a new trend in gaming and I like it.

    This game and others like No Man's Sky, Conan Exiles, Minecraft, Fortnite, Elder Scrolls Online they just keep growing and getting better with age!

    Which is crazy cause 10 years ago, launch game, charge 50 bucks, charge 15 a month, promise bright future and new stuff then fizzle out 6 months later.

    Definitely prefer things this way!

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