Ahoy, pirates!
Just wanted to leave a few thoughts on the current Adventure "player experience." It's clear that Adventures are a major investment by Rare, and even have their own category on the My Pirate platform.
While overall I enjoy them and the goals they set for storytelling AND framing up new ways to play, the actual experience of playing through them is a bit confusing when compared to similar efforts in other games, and sometimes frustrating (RNG! :)
In game:
- It's not entirely clear that you have to "Start" or especially "Continue" an Adventure after certain chapters...
- When on a chapter (in this case, Chapter Two of Forts of the Forgotten) it isn't made clear that it must all be done in one session
- Further compounding the above are the Deeds, which contain some of the Adventure items checked off
- It's not clear that completing the Deeds are not required to complete the Adventure
- Completing the Adventure rewards the item Memento (Jailor's Cutlass in this case) but completing the Deeds awards the title
- It's a bit frustrating (not to mention immersion-breaking) to have to find random NPCs at all the forts, worse, seeing ones you've already seen. Are these Phantoms transferring them around to keep us on our toes?? :)
- Would these not benefit from Tall Tale style checkpoints for cross-session play?
On the web platform (My Pirate):
- Shrouded Islands does not contain the list of Deeds (Forts of the Forgotten does): https://www.seaofthieves.com/profile/adventures/shrouded-islands
- The Your Progress - isn't clear what that really indicates. Does it mean Chapters completed? Doesn't seem to align count-wise with the Chapters
- The Mementos graphics do not have a Checkbox like we typically see once we've completed or acquired something
I'd also love to know a bit of the inside baseball on why these Adventures are a new system, and could not leverage the Tall Tales tech and UI/presentation... I am sure there is a reason, but from a player experience... Story/Adventure/Quest/Voyage/Tall Tale all seemingly have similar meanings, but are executed differently.
I am sure Rare is working on iterating these things and they will get better. Just wanted to highlight what me and my OCD have been noticing :)
