Text originally published by my friend on other media, citing with permission.
At the moment they are not interested in playing through sickness. I dont have interest in playing without them.
So, one particular changelog entry got attention of a number of players. The dreaded "FOV fix". While config change itself seems to be a contentious topic among some players, opposition clearly doesn't know what they're talking about, as they didn't use said config themselves and just speculate that it gives an unfair advantage. Let's talk about it. I'll cover 3 topics: Why people desire FOV higher than game allows. Debunk the idea that it's an unfair advantage. And the flimsy argument of it being "cheating" because it "edits game files".
So, why do people use high FOV? Because low FOV makes them motion sick. That is a fact that many players face - and they can't do much about it other than play games that don't induce the condition. In my case, even with FOV cranked up all the way to the maximum with a config edit I do get motion sick during storms due to excessive ship shaking. But on a default 90 game provides I start to feel bad right at the tavern, and in 10 minutes I already feel like throwing up. High FOV is a necessity to even being able to play for some players, and being able to adjust it is a literal accessibility feature PC players enjoyed for more than 2 decades. And Rare just patched it out, thus, making the game far less accessible. Not being able to adjust FOV to comfortable levels (in my case anything lower than 95 vertical (90 horizontal in the game is roughly 72 vertical) FOV is extremely uncomfortable. This change renders the game nigh-unplayable for me and many other players. Not because we're some elitist crybabies, no. Because we literally cannot play it due to us getting motion sick in a matter minutes/hours (all depends on a person). For boasting high amount of accessibility features (some of which are legitimately great) - developers decided to explicitly abandoned a way more common disability group than people with hearing or muscle disabilities - people who are sensitive to conflicts of visual and vestibular systems. People who want to enjoy the games as much as anyone, but artificial limitation such as limiting FOV to values acceptable only when you sit 3 meters away from screen, but not when you're around a meter or ever closer to it as PC players often are. Many of us would play SOT with default FOV limits just fine, but we can't just make our motion sickness go away. High FOV is an accessibility feature that many console-oriented games fail miserably at.
Now let's talk about "unfair advantage" of high FOV. To which I want to say - what advantage exactly? High FOV is advantageous for peripheral vision, but it drastically reduces your ability to see in the distance, as all objects would get way smaller. More so in Sea of Thieves - where you spend way more time staring at the horizon, seeking out the sails of other people. Who would spot the ship in the hazy distance first? Person to whom said ship is visibly larger or one who can see a bit more to the sides but everything in the distance is smaller? Obviously the first one, and on practice I've experienced it numerous times as I struggle to find that tiny sail in the distance. God help me to figure out if they have an emissary on top of that. Not to mention that I have harder time reading tall tales as they are almost 2x smaller and not being able to use some tricks like looking down to the map from upper floor trough the openings - the map simply appears too far and too small to see the contents without straining the eyes. But sure, I can see to the sides a bit more. How did that help me in gameplay? Not that much. Higher FOV is not some magical advantage you get by selecting it. It's an exchange between peripheral vision and distance vision. The only minute advantage higher FOV would give is during melee, but that happens mainly on the ships, where there's not much space and slightly wider viewing angle doesn't magically make you play better. It's not a fast-paced fps on a mazey maps where being able to spot enemy darting out of the corner on the side of your vision is a factor deciding your life and death. It's Sea of Thieves, where long-distance combat is significantly more important.
In conclusion - FOV does not provide players with an unfair advantage. If anything, it have a slew of disadvantages specific to SOT. I didn't become better player for having high FOV, if anything, I had a disadvantage of not being able to see that good in the distance. As mentioned - it's a trade-off. Not just "see more on the sides". You either see far, or see wide, and SOT design clearly favors the former. My friend, for example, plays at default 90-horizontal FOV, and he's completely fine with it, but he isn't prone to motion sickness, and now that I can't play the game for longer than 20 minutes - I'm afraid we won't be able to sail together unless Rare would heed the voice of reason and raise the FOV limits.
Now to TOS. That is a pretty sensitive topic for many, as people really like throwing "bannable offense", "cheating because it modifies files" and other such claims. If you look at where the configuration files are stored - they are located in the userspace, not in the game folder, meaning that editing those are within the user discretion and is not editing static game files. It's not the same as patching game archives to change textures and such. Developers still can claim it's part of "game files", but those files were created by the game on first startup as well as edited by it when user configured the game. Should be equate configuring your game to cheating? That's silly. While config did exploit a configuration section that was not exposed in the UI and was not intended to - it is still just a configuration of the game, not a hack or a cheat (which are bannable). And that unaccounted setting allowed many players to play the game without getting sick.
People are upset about this "fix" not because it gives an advantage and Rare took it from them. They are upset because it made the game a tremendously worse for them as they are no longer can play it comfortably (if at all) without getting motion sick. For a game that aims to be accessible to many, not having basic accessibility features against motion sickness is kind of disgraceful. After reading all that, would you continue to claim that high FOV is cheating or that 90-horizontal FOV is good enough? It's not a question of advantage or disadvantage, it's a basic question of game accessibility.
