Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.

  • Lord Spark 0
    Castaway

    I think with your new game, Rare, that Sea of Thieves may be suffering in its development. What was striking to me was in your 'Sea of Thieves Developers update' video, you included a member of your new game from their team. This is a big nono. This confuses your customer base. This does not show me that Sea of Thieves is your priority, in a video about Sea of Thieves. (And this has nothing to do with the lady, I'm sure she is very nice and is good at what she does).

    The last 3 updates are literally a rehash of content that we already got. The only exception is the new Tale and fire mechanic.

    It has been over a year now and our main enemy in the game is Skeletons. I must have killed thousands by now. I've had enough of skeletons.

    -The new enemy types are just reskins of skeletons or they have a fire effect added to them as 'Ashen Guardians'

    -The 'new' skelly ship battle isn't new at all. Its the same battle with a volcano to deal with and they have fireballs.

    The Fort of The Damned. Rehash of a Fort battle mixed in with our lantern voyage from last year to fight different colors of skeletons. And the boss battle is a reused boss battle we had from the Tall Tales (which all had the same boss battles using the same techniques to fight you - just reskins). It was fun at first but a really harsh grind to get the 50 done.

    The Arena 'update' this time around isn't really exciting at all. I don't care to customize my ship in that mode. I'm sure others don't either. We need new things to do. I mean, by rights, we got an Arena weekend that was broken and fixed this update.. You should redo the Arena weekend for gold/rep... Thats ridiculous..

    -New Players have it way easier now to achieve Pirate Legend (making it not a special thing to have)

    -Pirate Legends don't get anything special anyways. Athena commendations are counters for players to do the same things they were already doing..

    -The Kraken. It still puts itself over the hull on the brig. You said you fixed that, and you didn't.

    -The Equipment persistence bug. This should have been hotfixed ages ago. I am sick and tired of having my equipment reworked every time I log in. This is considered your end-game reward for the game, and its somewhat broken. Fix it.

    These are just some of the things I have in my mind. Others have been giving you tons of ideas to work with and a lot of them are very clever, yet you don't see them come into the game, at all. Its disappointing.

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  • Retribution213
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    The first concerns i had where when the mercenary voyages were introduced. When Anniversary came out i was obviously relieved. Then they started doing monthly updates with a new cosmetic set and a sad remix of previous mercenary voyages. The last of these updates was the one that brought in the Emporium which since then has certainly revived the game. Whether you like it or not, Fort of the Dammed was the largest update since Anniversary and while I do understand how many people didn't like the fort let's be honest this was much better than those garbage mercenary voyages. However, this update was even bigger. Now the first component was the tale. If anyone has completed the tale you obviously know what its setting up for which seems like it will be very fun and im excited to see this second generation of tales be shipped out. Fire was even bigger as it added a new core mechanic to the game. Clearly the item shop has increased the game's life span significantly.

    Btw on the video I do agree, stop advertising your forest sim in a pirate game.

  • Lord Spark 0
    Castaway

    @retribution213

    Thanks for your post.

    While I do agree with you, Fort of the Damned, for me was fun at first. I enjoyed it and I had some interesting moments there. But, I am talking about longevity for the game. I do not see people doing it for months to come down the road. It is repetitive because, as already described, they rehash old mechanics and the number 1 enemy in the game is Skeletons.

    And I heard from a friend that this new Tall Tale is actually quite boring. I don't want content to 'setup' for future content later. Rare needs content now (since people have been crying since Launch).

    We need new enemy types and things to do.

  • PrimoMT
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    Founder

    I think the game lacks (and it have a pretty structure to do this) creativity on part of the developers.

    Yes, the player base must have it's creativity as well, but shouldn't depend on it.

    Do more elaborated stuff! You guys can do it.

    Different enemies as @Lord-Szarvas stated with different battle mechanics should already be in the game.

    Intelligent puzzles, even with the ships, rocks, enigmas, end game content, raids, dungeons.. although i dont play Destiny 2, there are plenty of creativity on the developers side to digest there.

  • iTz Majman
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    It's two different teams, i don't understand why some think they are splitting the team up or something to make two seperate games. Rare isn't a small indie studio.

    If you haven't noticed this is how the updates has been coming out since day 1.

    2-3 that doesn't add to much and then theres a big one.

  • YoureNowOnTV
    Commander
    Insider

    @lord-szarvas said in Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.:

    The Arena 'update' this time around isn't really exciting at all. I don't care to customize my ship in that mode. I'm sure others don't either. We need new things to do. I mean, by rights, we got an Arena weekend that was broken and fixed this update.. You should redo the Arena weekend for gold/rep... Thats ridiculous..

    I customised my ship and went into the game. I didn't see any of the customisations but got the Cannon rewards for it, so the graphics aren't showing to players.

    The Server switching is now more often and also more frustrating as a result. I counted 5 server switches and a game still didn't start.

    The fire system isn't very popular from the conversations I had with players this afternoon.

    Incompetent or pre-occupied crews just let the ship burn now making it impossible to put out. If you're boarded by people intending to spawn camp and your ship is on fire the only thing to do is burn with it, scuttle, or log out. Before you could at least have some PvP fun, now you just catch on fire and get shot as soon as you get to the part of the ship not on fire, and occupied by the boarders.

    The wear at least 5 pieces of the Glorious Sea Dogs outfit is quite curious. Now everyone looks the same so it's harder to separate team mates and the enemy. (When in close quarters combat player names are invisible or at a distance in the water)

    I'm really glad to see new things tried but the Arena has taken a strange step in a direction that may or may not work out. The server stability and matching was one of the biggest issues and that doesn't seem to be resolved now with all the new additions.

  • Boxcar Squidy
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    Insider

    @primottv8016 said in Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.:

    I think the game lacks (and it have a pretty structure to do this) creativity on part of the developers.

    I think it's a design limitation rather than a creative deficit.

    Has anyone considered that the reason that new voyages tend to be remixes of older mechanics is because Rare are pushing up against the limit of mechanics they can easily incorporate into the existing code?

    Maybe they're trying to work around those limitations by reusing things so they don't bloat things too much and break everything (equipment bug still isn't fixed, for example, so that must be deep in there somewhere)

    It might just be that there's a lot more work under the hood than we see on the surface and our realistic choices are either get no new content at all, or settle for remixes while they try to add actual new mechanics (like fire) without adding a whole slew of new bugs (like the equipment thing)

    As for Rare's new game. Is it also Unreal engine? If so, you never know, things they develop for that could influence SoT, they're bound to share tech between teams, if you're into SoT it's probably worth keeping an eye on.

  • Fet 72
    Captain
    Insider

    The game now is very different from what it was 6 months ago and not in a good way. Xbox performance lag, the worst combat mechanics I have ever come across in any game I have ever played (when it used to be the best), more prevalent exploiting by the player base, clunky controls and getting stuck on the environment like glue and the worst rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
    6 months ago this game was the best game I had ever played which I had been playing since beta and release. Now my opinion is... what a load of rubbish. The game has simply turned into a buggy, boring grind fest with awful combat. How do you turn a game that was the best thing you had ever played into a pile of rubbish in just 6 months? Use the 'Needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many' philosophy, thats how.

    Thats how I feel now, its just rubbish.

  • RealStyli
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    @boxcar-squidy said in Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.:

    I think it's a design limitation rather than a creative deficit.

    Has anyone considered that the reason that new voyages tend to be remixes of older mechanics is because Rare are pushing up against the limit of mechanics they can easily incorporate into the existing code?

    Yeah, and they're also limited by trying to keep within the constraints of what the original Xbox One (not even the S) can do.

  • D3ADST1CK
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    I think expectations for events that have to be added every month are a bit high. The lead time to put together new voyage types is not going to happen in a month, you will see these things come once every quarter most likely. Fire was probably being worked on over several months before being added. They are probably working on some other new mechanic now that we won't see for another couple of months.

    They've talked about adding new things to the trading companies, so I imagine that we won't see any major changes on what is available for monthly events to happen until they add those new mechanics to the voyage system.

    In the meantime, we are likely going to see variations using the existing voyage system for the monthly events.

  • Scrubber89
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    Item switch out bug STILL hasn't been fixed?

  • MEW Schnee
    Captain
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    Captain Obvious sails again, I see.
    Now, time goes on and every time someone mentions to attract players with PvE and try to keep them busy, other players come around and sense a conspiracy to further cripple PvP.
    This is your chosen heaven you have to live in, PvP is the main thing and everything else a decoration.

    Still, I do not think that they will abandon Sea of Thieves right now, but I would sleep better if they were to implement an offline game mode where one can play with friends just in case there no more servers around.

  • Vaca Hombre
    Champion
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @scrubber89 said in Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.:

    Item switch out bug STILL hasn't been fixed?

    Apparently it's proven to be a real pain. They mentioned in, I think it was the last dev update, that they were working on it, but it turned out to be a much deeper issue than they thought.

  • Lord Spark 0
    Castaway

    @itz-majman

    Rare = one company.

    One company is developing two titles: Sea of Thieves and Everwild.

    This does split resources and labor. Its just a fact. Nothing to really argue here.

    The updates were supposed to be monthly since the game launched, but Rare couldn't keep up with that last year, so they consolidated and pushed out a Mega update. After that, they went back to their monthly idea for updates. But, as I already posted, I think some of these updates are not really new and an update but rather a reskin and repackaged material. I just expect better from Rare.

  • Vaca Hombre
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    Boatswain
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    @lord-szarvas

    One company, but how many teams?

    Rare may not be the biggest of companies, but they're big enough to have multiple teams working on different projects.

    If the people allocated to work on Everwild weren't working on it, it's not a given that they'd automatically be working on SoT.

    Game companies don't stop development on new products just because they're supporting a live service game. At least not ones the size of Rare. Expecting them to do nothing but SoT is unrealistic.

    As others have said, the state of the updates are more likely to be a question of technology rather than manpower. Maybe that will change with the release of Scarlet and X-Cloud, but we'll have to wait and see.

  • Nawvillus
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    I think the problem is they are spending too much time developing monthly "events" that are only meant to keep players occupied for a couple weeks while they work on the next monthly "event". I think they should drop the monthly event philosophy and work on creating content that keeps players busy for months, seasonal content, Destiny does this decently well. Create something replayable once every 3-4 months that brings something to the game, is fun and something to work towards. Gives them time to not only create a single event but also maybe add a larger amount of cosmetics per update that maybe we could see in the actual shops and not in Duke's inventory at a large price.

    Another thing that needs looking at is pirate legend content. We have not had anything new to do as PL's since launch other than athena grinding for two ship sets and a clothing set? I have friends who don't even see the point of working towards PL because there's nothing worth doing after.

  • Lord Spark 0
    Castaway

    @lord-szarvas

    One company, but how many teams?

    Rare may not be the biggest of companies, but they're big enough to have multiple teams working on different projects.

    If the people allocated to work on Everwild weren't working on it, it's not a given that they'd automatically be working on SoT.

    Game companies don't stop development on new products just because they're supporting a live service game. At least not ones the size of Rare. Expecting them to do nothing but SoT is unrealistic.

    As others have said, the state of the updates are more likely to be a question of technology rather than manpower. Maybe that will change with the release of Scarlet and X-Cloud, but we'll have to wait and see.

    Rare is not big enough to work on multiple projects at once. Case and point, Sea of Thieves had a very bad launch. It received mild reviews at best. This is unfortunate and I don't like the facts, but that is what happened. Yes, the game got updates and got better over time, but the purpose of this thread is the direction it is heading.

    Here is the point: while SoT had a bad launch, I think it is fair to say Everwild was in development. So, this practice means that resources that could have been spent and used for their new product (SoT) wasn't fully realized in its potential.

    I'm not expecting them to stop at SoT. But, you'd expect them to really get SoT where it needs to be for the longevity of the game rather than make a whole new game first. Prioritization.

    If you read many of the posts (not just in this thread), you will see people hungry for new content. They do not say they want reskins and repackaged material.

    Make no mistake either, I love SoT. I've played so much of it in all aspects of its content.

  • Boxcar Squidy
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    I don't think the development of Everwild has had any negative impact on SoT. I don't think throwing extra bodies at SoT's development actually helps.

    They clearly have slow stream and fast stream development happening simultaneously.

    Slow stream stuff like fire, needs a lot of work, they talked about it like 4 months ago and it was clearly being worked on before that. Might have even started before DR released.

    Fast stream stuff like the monthly mercenary voyages which remix existing mechanics, have a faster turn around. They can remix that stuff and release it in a month.

    By doing both they have a constant stream of monthly updates with bigger things dropping as they take shape and remixed stuff coming more frequently.

    So, the big changes, like combat balancing or PL rework or Bounties actually might be being worked on right now. Could even be at an advanced stage with a lot of work done on them. We just won't hear about it until it's ready.

    Only Rare knows how it's team structure and development cycles can be organised to ensure maximum productivity. This is what they've arrived at after 20 months. The health of their staff is an important consideration too, if the developers get trapped in a cycle of endless crunch it will lead to high staff turnover and low morale, neither of which would be good for the quality of the game.

    I actually think it's a good idea for them to have two games on the go. That way if anyone gets sick of working on SoT for years they could be shifted to another project to see if that excites them more. Creative people get tired of working on the same project for ages and SoT is a long term endeavour. If they can move sidways to another project then their talent and skill remains in Rare, instead of leaving and joining another studio entirely.

  • Da German420
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    i dont get it why they not bring conker:D instead of everwild zelda clone...everwild looks not like a game i want to play.i just hope sot will still life for some years

  • Vaca Hombre
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    Boatswain
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    @lord-szarvas

    Was SoT hampered by other games' development, or by this being Rare's first real foray into the online, live service model?

    You say that Rare is too small and that working on Everwild negatively impacted SoT, but how do you know? What proof have you found of these theories?

    Make no mistake, I know nothing about Rare's actual size, the distribution of team members, or even the details of game making itself.

    But seeing how much they've been able to do with SoT in the first year, I'm inclined to believe they know what they're doing. Now, this is largely due to me being pretty satisfied with the game itself and most of the additions and tweaks that have been made so far. Of course, the quality of the Arena and combat overall is something I can't speak to as I don't use them, but everything else I've been pretty happy with.

    I guess my point is that, whatever problems I have with Rare, I'm not going to sit here and criticize their team distribution and game development decisions. I'm not qualified to do so and have no actual facts about the current state of their company.

    If you think you are, that's great. But I wouldn't know that either, so without any insight or context, I can only view your arguments the same as any other complaint on the forums based on opinion and anecdotal evidence.

  • NeedSmokes
    Commander

    I think you just have to accept this games best days are behind it, and just enjoy whatever comes along next if your still a fan.
    This game is going to be last gen within a year.
    Microsoft will need its studio's fully focused on the battle to come with PS5, and that means delivering games first and foremost to add to their library if they want to get a much bigger slice of Nintendo and Sony than they got previously. And that seems to be the aim of the next gen.
    Sea of Thieves will then be 3 years old. Not many Xbox games keep players playing for that long. No doubt it will continue for longer, but it will only be die hard pirates still clinging onto the riggin by then.
    Enjoy what is, and has been.
    And look forward to what's to come, or not.

  • cooliocam
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    Objectively, the monthly updates have been a bust, excluding perhaps, a few. I’d prefer if they stopped development to reassess if there is enough interest in making a sequel, giving developers a few years to expand on the ideas already in place to make a more substantial starting point where the rehashing of already available content has a stronger base. Imagine the state of the game if 4-6 mega update worth of content was created as a starting point as oppose to, “Now instead of pigs, drop this stuff off instead. If you do this 50 times you can earn a commendation and hat”. I agree with what others have said regarding the fact that it takes SO much work and time to do anything substantial to really change this game. The combat is perhaps the saddest thing about the game, but even more so, the fact that there is nothing to work toward. Still no captaincy update, still nothing for PL to really work toward, still the same enemies. I spend so much time playing this game saying, “This is great, but there is so much more potential to make this game universal rather than a niche interest.” So much potential though!

  • iTz Majman
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    @lord-szarvas

    This does split resources and labor. Its just a fact. Nothing to really argue here

    Are you new to gaming and how the industry works?

    If Rare has 1 team ONLY working on SoT and then hire 200 more people to do a other game, how is that splitting the resources? it's not like they have the biggest company in the world backing them up or anything.

  • dlCHIEF58
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    @needsmokes said in Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.:

    I think you just have to accept this games best days are behind it, and just enjoy whatever comes along next if your still a fan.
    This game is going to be last gen within a year.
    Microsoft will need its studio's fully focused on the battle to come with PS5, and that means delivering games first and foremost to add to their library if they want to get a much bigger slice of Nintendo and Sony than they got previously. And that seems to be the aim of the next gen.
    Sea of Thieves will then be 3 years old. Not many Xbox games keep players playing for that long. No doubt it will continue for longer, but it will only be die hard pirates still clinging onto the riggin by then.
    Enjoy what is, and has been.
    And look forward to what's to come, or not.

    Minecraft says Hi! How old is that game? And it is still in the top 5 played games on Xbox to this date consistently. Add GTA V to that list too, also a top 5 played game on any given week.

    Your doom and gloom prediction is very premature, especially considering Sea of Thieves has held pretty steady in weekly gameplay statistics for at least a year now (typically coming in at 20th to 25th on any given week). The best days are still yet to come.

  • Lord Spark 0
    Castaway

    -Your name is flagged as containing a word not available to be used.

    Was SoT hampered by other games' development, or by this being Rare's first real foray into the online, live service model?

    SoT had a marketing campaign that failed because what they were saying in the videos and promotions was not yet developed into their release.

    You say that Rare is too small and that working on Everwild negatively impacted SoT, but how do you know? What proof have you found of these theories?

    The proof is in the details. I'm not an expert but I doubt anyone really is anyways. The truth is I don't know for sure but I can say that it is probable due to how games are made and what it takes to do it. Everwild is likely to have been in development for sometime. 1. It can take up to 8 years to full fledge certain titles out there. 8 Years is a lot of time and money spent. 2. And, it does take a people to make a game. So, judging by those two factors alone is enough for me to come to that conclusion. I already explained it before but I guess I had to reword it here.

    In other words, we (you and I and everyone else on these forums) are on the receiving end of what they put out. We play the game. You can enjoy it or struggle with it. Not everyone is the same and everyone has their own ideas for what they would like to see. That is fine. But, I can honestly say when you see old content repackaged and people do the same old things over and over then you will have a problem with your game. People have been saying it since day one. People will continue to say it if they keep that up.

    Make no mistake, I know nothing about Rare's actual size, the distribution of team members, or even the details of game making itself.

    But seeing how much they've been able to do with SoT in the first year, I'm inclined to believe they know what they're doing. Now, this is largely due to me being pretty satisfied with the game itself and most of the additions and tweaks that have been made so far. Of course, the quality of the Arena and combat overall is something I can't speak to as I don't use them, but everything else I've been pretty happy with.

    I was happy with Hungering Deep and Cursed Crews. The Devils Roar was a nice area addition. But, we lost updates from then until the Mega update which was their best overall. If Rare released the title at launch if it was in the Mega update state it would have been far better off.

    I guess my point is that, whatever problems I have with Rare, I'm not going to sit here and criticize their team distribution and game development decisions. I'm not qualified to do so and have no actual facts about the current state of their company.

    So, your idea is not to criticize them. That's your decision. But, I don't understand why you want to question me and criticize me. It is like you expect an Expert to come into an open forum and provide statistical analysis for you to be satisifed with an opinion that misaligned with your views (And judging by the reception of the game in every update, it isn't fully well received).

    If you think you are, that's great. But I wouldn't know that either, so without any insight or context, I can only view your arguments the same as any other complaint on the forums based on opinion and anecdotal evidence.

    So, you don't have an expert opinion to weigh in or rebutt any talking points. It is just, ''oh I don't believe that" because I haven't checked off a list of requirements for you to be satisfied. Oh well.

    I'm not an expert on making a car but I sure can drive them and I know a few things about mechanics (though I'm not an engineer or an expert). As a customer, we do have a say in how we receive our products. We can criticize all we want.

    That is why the title of this thread is 'Concerned'. I love this game, but I do have concerns when they pull a stunt in a dev update video talking about Everwild and rehash/repackage already made content and call it an update/new (See the first post on this thread).

  • Lord Spark 0
    Castaway

    @itz-majman said in Concerned now for Sea of Thieves and the direction it is going.:

    @lord-szarvas

    This does split resources and labor. Its just a fact. Nothing to really argue here

    Are you new to gaming and how the industry works?

    If Rare has 1 team ONLY working on SoT and then hire 200 more people to do a other game, how is that splitting the resources? it's not like they have the biggest company in the world backing them up or anything.

    A. I'm not new to gaming. And I have an idea of how the industry works and how a business works.

    B. If Rare hired 200 people in your hypothetical scenario to work on another title, then the answer is obvious. They used resources (or borrowed credit) to acquire labour assets to do that. That was their choice, and I'm not knocking on Everwild at all. I'm concerned about SoT, which is why I'm here on the SoT forum talking about it.

    You need to pay people to work. If you had 200 extra people working on SoT, then expect better monthly updates. It is that simple. More people able to complete tasks = more content. Period.

  • jon221985
    Commander
    Insider

    I want human enemy npc pirates that attack both you and emergent threats. I also want skeletons/npc pirates to be able to climb ladders. I want new enemies and not just skeletons with a splash of new paint.

  • Vaca Hombre
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    Boatswain
    Founder

    @lord-szarvas

    Don't criticize them?

    Where did I say that exactly? Criticize away. I've certainly had some opinions on what I think Rare should add and/or change.

    But what I won't do is tell them how they should do it. I'll happily tell them what needs work, but I'm not going to try and tell them in what way to distribute their assets.

    And as others have said, the people working on Everwild aren't necessarily the ones who were working on SoT.

    Maybe that team were the ones working on the new Xbox avatars. Those were in development along with SoT.

    And again, the reworking of existing mechanics may be more to do with technical limitations. We don't know for sure, but it's just as likely as them short staffing themselves. (More likely, I'd say. But that's just me.)

    (Also, I'm not sure when wanting actual facts became nitpicking, but whatever. "The proof is in the details." Yeah, that's what they all they. =P )

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