RoadMap - Which Season are you the most hyped about and which the least?

Season 6 at the moment! It's also the one we got the most info about at the moment so that might help with it. But yeah, Pirate Legend content and changes in the world are two things I really enjoy!

I still think the Sea Forts will attract some pvp though! It'll probably be possible to tuck either on the fort, or park your ship somewhere and wait until the other crew finishes and then steal the loot.

Season 9
Just for the words "New Social Options for crews"

@pellahh
I'm loving what we've seen for season 6, but season 7 is my favorite right now. "New ways to play and progress" is very intriguing.

I can only hope that Expanded Role Play also includes some nice new ship customization options. Also because it has a picture of a ship but I could be looking into that too much.

Time will tell, I’m pretty excited overall for this year.

@dragon-nexus said in RoadMap - Which Season are you the most hyped about and which the least?:

"New ways to play and progress" is promising, especially since they mentioned solo play in the video.

What I've wanted for a while now is a purely PvE experience. Either being unable to damage other pirate ships and loot their stuff, or just a server all to myself.
I enjoy playing the game solo but the worst thing about doing that is seeing another player. Most of the time they just make a beeline for me and shoot the heck out of my ship and steal my stuff. And since all I can do is come back to life, die, wait, come back to life, die and wait for my ship to respawn, usually I just shut the game off at the first sign of trouble.

If they mitigate it by, I dunno, halving XP, or making it so you're attacked by environmental stuff more often, I'd be okay with that.

I'd honestly like to just gather a crew together and make some progress sometimes. It's a miserable experience when you get ganked by some 4 player galleon you have no hope of escaping or defeating and all your hard work is gone. It's okay to enjoy that if it's your thing but...it's not my thing.

Don't bring PvE servers into a wholesome post. It's. not. happening. The best you can get is private servers which will have zero gold/reputation/commendation completion.
Talking about fundamentals of game design: all PvE threats have to be relatively easy to defeat unless the player opts into something harder (world events, Devil's Roar). The most important thing is that they have to be possible to defeat. So, if every PvE threat has to be possible to defeat/at a reasonable difficulty for the task at hand, there is no way that a PvE server could replicate the danger of Adventure. This is why people want PvE servers, of course, even in making the request they admit that they want an easier time.
Ok, taking that knowledge in account, any gold or reputation earned in Adventure only means something because there was a chance that you could have been sunk at any time during that voyage. If all you had to contend with to finish a Gold hoarder voyage was an occasional meg/skeleton ship/ or the rare kraken, then there wouldn't be any value to what you did. ANYONE can do a voyage and deal with megs/skeleton ships/krakens. The gold and reputation, and therefore cosmetics would mean nothing if there were PvE servers, no matter what you do to try to stop this. Because no one is special if anyone can do everything in the game. The devs have made it clear, another player on the horizon gives mystery, varying difficulty, and value to Sea of Thieves.

TL;DR
If there were PvE servers,

• Every player doing PvE would go to the PvE servers
• The regular servers are full of PvPers fighting over almost nothing
• The PvE servers become a useless grind because there is no value or sense of accomplishment to anything earned that way
• So both kinds of players quit because there is really no point to playing that kind of game.
  Plus, PvE servers would be impossible to implement. Captain Falcore goes over this quite well.

@burnbacon @faceyourdemon

What are you guys hoping to see in Season 9?

They're all hype in their own way, New Ways to Play and Progress is intriguing, especially if it's different making routes along your pirate journey possible. Expanded Roleplay has a lot of potential (especially if it's some form of captaincy FINALLY) and new quest types will be welcome! However i honestly feel like i'm most hyped for New Social options for Crews!
After Season 5, it gives me the same vibes, that it will be a much more sandboxy update for increased interaction and fun either between separate crews, or what im hoping, between Crews themselves!
I may be getting my hopes up unnecessarily or for wrong reasons, but it really gives me the impression of new things to do between players and crews, like games, or heightened interaction, or my biggest hope, dueling! No matter what, new ways to interact with players, whether in your crew or not, has got me the most excited in terms of possibilities for some reason!

They're all a little too vague.

I'm hoping that whatever they do, they make each of the three regular trading companies feel more like an agent that actually provides some (temporary) change to the overall gameplay instead of them just being the skull, crate, chest faction.

Seriously, Reaper's Bones is still the most fun way to play because it just encourages everything with the added bit of PvP.

I never have a reason to raise Merchant Alliance because... I don't feel like delivering crates to NPCs.

For me, it's a tie between 7 and 8. The "New ways to play and progress" sounds like some kind of new progression system, so I can only speculate haha. As for season 8, I believe that will be when we finally get the fabled Captaincy update.

It may be a stretch, but the icons could be subtle clues of what could be coming. The icon for season 6 is the Athena's Fortune logo, and we are getting new PL content. I'm theorizing/hoping that the "Expanded Role Play and Quest types" could mean more expanded ways in which we can personalize our ships, and by extension, having more role play options to tell our pirate stories.

Season 6,8,7, and finally 9, in that order, from most anticipated to "ok".

This game has needed pirate legend content since the moment it released, it's been a long time coming. Devs used to say that pirate legend would be the real start of the game... it was the most boring and horrifying thing. As the game received dlc's, legendary voyages started feeling... not so legendary anymore. In fact, the only thing legendary about them since the game came out is how legendarily annoying they can be.

Apart from that, season 7 seems like they might use it as a mini update/ break after what season 6 will give, then season 8 seems heavily focused on new voyages/ story/ lore. Just seems like this season will be jam packed with content like season 6. And finally, season 9 I think will be another mini update for the devs to recover from season 8, and to get them safe and warm at home by the end of the holidays, happy new years, and we wait for them to get back from vacation and give us the run down for the new year, the end.

Looking forward to the season where they will re-introduce a new competitive after realizing that building a healthy competitive scene helps attract new players and builds on the longevity of a game ¯\(ツ)/¯

@wolfmanbush said in RoadMap - Which Season are you the most hyped about and which the least?:

I'm a simple kind of pirate, return the meg spawns back to 5+ months ago and I'd be content

I see season 6 going one of two ways. Either whatever the new PL stuff changes the entire game for the better like the emissary update or it's more of the same with just a bit of shiny sprinkled on it to get people to focus on it

I'm rooting for it to succeed but I have no idea how much substance and potential it'll come with. I think it's the most important season of the year for loot production and healthy food chain re-invigoration. Something that is needed desperately by Athena. In my view it's a make or break season as far as truly holding on the parts of the past goes or just completely transitioning over into a complete casual experience. My bias is clearly for keeping the foundational chain in tact but the game itself can and most likely with thrive even if it is abandoned.

The rest of the planned seasons are all layups imo. I have little to no doubt that whatever those are it'll work out just fine.

For me personally my drive for immersing in new content is low. I did everything I set out to do and I'm pretty comfortable being a random character on the piratical backdrop of the sea going forward as younger pirates with more drive and energy stake their claim to the hunting ground.

Every day I fight to get my loot, defend it, and then fight the ambushers at the hideout as I'm selling it. Today a pirate came over as I was selling. As usual I prepare for battle, it's so routine I don't even really think about it I just react to it like a robot performing a programmed task.

Before we reached a point of no return it was revealed that they wanted to give me loot. Seafarer chests a few silver cups and a stone key. A pirate without much, giving what they had to a pirate with pretty much everything just as something nice to do.
Devs can't replicate that. That happenstance sentiment can't be manufactured. Those moments that happen from time to time are all I look forward to these days. They already did their best work by creating the opportunity for it to happen organically.

What a beautiful comment, sir.

@theeggoplant The game has many issues that makes it not ready for competitive nor it is meant for competitive play.

1. Issues with combat

With combat in the current state putting resources into a competitive mode, which completely relies on combat, just raises the number of frustrated players which. Combat system itself and server/technical issues (like hitreg, rubberbanding, etc...) need to be dealt with before even thinking about a competitive scene.
I'm sure solving the issue is crucial to Adventure too so they surely are trying to fix these things, but until these are issues are fixed I can't see a competitive mode thrive.

2. What kind of players play and watch Sea of Thieves?

Let's be honest, even tho the "Arena community" is VERY dedicated it is a very very very low % of the player base. The problem wasn't just the combat system or the mode, it's also because people are attracted to Sea of Thieves for Adventure mode, most of the players are casuals that don't care about a competitive mode. Look at views too, it's not like people do not care about watching PvP content, they prefer Adventure PVP over Arena competitive series because that's what the game is good at. Trying to be good at everything isn't necessarily good for a game, many titles put a lot of resources into esport just to die because it didn't work, SoT core isn't competitive PvP and devs have no need risking to lose money fro putting resources into growing a competitive scene from zero.
Also Sea of Thieves isn't really into what people watch right now, the esports that detain most of the esport market are moba/hero shooters, battleroyale and/or mobile games. SoT is completely very far away to what casuals want, which means putting resources into an even more risky leap into the void. It can take up to literal years before a competitive scene starts to settle and attract new players, in the first year it need to grow inside the game community itself.
Would it really be worth to put resources (a lot of them, because a lot of them are needed to make it work) into a competitive scene hoping that it will benefit the game in 2 or 3 years when you can focus on what already benefits the game right now? Specially if the idea Rare has for the game is Adventure and not a competitive scene, because doing what you like and want to do usually pays off even more as you are creatively interestied in the project.

A healthy competitive scene benefits the game if there's enough casuals that are interested in it, if enough resources are invested and if it all goes well; for many reasons I don't think this is a good choice for SoT in the near future, I think right now devs should focus on fixing the foundation of the game (both tech and design) and work on the core elements of sot that made so much people try it out on gamepass.