Almost every single 1 star review on the xbox versions of the game (2025 edition AND deluxe edition) complain about the same exact thing, that there have been way too many PVP updates for high seas and way too many PVE restrictions in safer seas. So if you genuinely want to improve your game, I would start there. Nobody can enjoy high seas without hackers or reapers attacking them, and nobody can enjoy safer seas because your ship can't be captained or your emissary raised - you can't even dive to voyages! I don't know why you have to make every PVE feature so convoluted, all you had to do was make safer seas identical to high seas - in a private server - but no that's asking too much because some people might be able to buy the COSMETIC they want a little earlier than they would be able to in high seas.
Does that really sound like a legit reason to keep this mode so restricted, just in order to force people to PVP that don't want to? Maybe if people actually WANTED to pvp these updates would be great, but as you can tell with ARENA failing and HOURGLASS numbers dwindling, that maybe the community isn't as full of as many PVP lords as you once thought. On this website you're in an echo chamber of the most dedicated fanboys, but the reviews are what will really tell you why people stop playing.
Even just a few moments ago on this very forum someone just asked for the safer seas restrictions to be removed, and this was the moderators answer from LookBehindYou:
The game design and intent for Sea of Thieves is a shared world adventure, and it always will be. Those who wish to play in the confines of Safer Seas will always have the option but we will not bring the rewards and activities in line with those of High Seas when many of the restrictions are in place due to the risk vs reward factor that is inherent in Sea of Thieves - removing any risk means rewards must be balanced accordingly. Safer Seas will act not only as a safe space for our Tall Tale players but also for families with children who just want to pirate, for people who want to play the game but learn the ropes and it will organically feed into Adventure mode, keeping the player pool there healthy and upskilled as they've learned the mechanics. This is not only useful for new players but also families and players with accessibility needs - the whole game suddenly becomes available in a way it hasn't before, letting them naturally progress to High Seas and become a Pirate Legend. SoT has grown a huge amount in 5 years and it can be fairly overwhelming. The borders put in Safer Seas mean that to experience the full depth and breadth of the game you will have to hit the high seas BUT if you're playing with your family you don't have to, you can just enjoy the game and have fun as a family.
What this moderator is missing, is that the whole game does not become suddenly available, i wouldn't even say 50% is available with all the different restrictions, so that entire talking point is just defending the game like a fanboy rather than a meaningful response. People want the world to be shared - but with players THEY choose - not random toxic greifers with aimbot hacks that you refuse to patch. Also, I know you're adding private servers soon but you also plan on making them just as convoluted as safer seas - with no rep or rewards - which is just going to fail as badly as safer seas did.
If you want the game to grow to a top tier juggernaut like minecraft or rust you have to allow ACTUAL private servers like minecraft and rust - stop being scared about the community reaction or splitting the playerbase - you can always revert the changes. But never trying/testing it simply out of fear seems like a bad idea, never knowing what could have been.
So in safer seas : if you want to play a tall tale safely, you can do it but for no gold/rep. If you want to play with your family, you can do it but with 20 different restrictions. If you're disabled you can play safely alone, but without captaincy so you have to travel all over outpost to sell your goods which takes 20x longer and you can't dive anywhere.
HOW DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE SENSE WHEN YOU ACTUALLY TAKE A STEP BACK AND LOOK AT IT FROM OUTSIDE THE TOXIC COMMUNITY?!
This video makes some good points, funny how none of your advertising shows much PVP and the tutorial has no PVP at all - yet you say that PVP is supposedly the core of the game. Even grand theft auto online has a passive mode system - so everyone stays in the same server keeping the 'player pool' intact - so what's wrong with something like that? By the way, sinking a ship one time should send them to a new server, not after 3 times or whatever you have planned for the next update. Nobody enjoys fighting the same opponent in hourglass over and over again - so why would you allow it on the high seas instead?
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Also just for reference, I'm a level 100 hunter and was top 10 emissary for hunters call solo, so I don't want to hear 'just get good' the problem is much bigger than that at this point.
