EDIT: WE DID IT LADS, THEY REMOVED THE CLUNKY LOCK ON.
THANK YOU RARE FOR LISTENING. WE LOVE YOU!
I want to be able to turn it off or have it removed completely.
The melee combat is already clunky, and feels super unpolished, but the auto-lock system just really takes the cake. It's infuriating and makes the already clunky melee combat even worse.
Losing complete control of your camera so you can't check your surroundings and quickly block/attack from angles other than in front of you when fighting multiple targets is completely counter-intuitive to so much of what this game sets up.
In PvP I sometimes get bested in a 2v1 scenario when I know I have the better reactions, but I can't turn my character around to block the other guy attacking me.
Even in PvE it's nothing but a crutch. I played through a wave+boss encounter mission today after picking up a message in a bottle, and it was the most unfun experience I've had yet in this game. Fighting waves of tanky skeletons is incredibly unfun when they all approach you at once, but you can only target one due to the lock on.
I know that I could fight two or more at once if I could just control the camera myself, but the game decides I'm not allowed.
After today it was clear I will be avoiding the PvE missions if I can't turn off the auto-lock, which is a shame because it could be so fun but currently the lock-on system just cancels out any chance of that being a fun thing to participate in.
It's especially unfun if you get surprise attacked by a sword wielding player/skeleton. It is so disorienting to lose all control of your camera SUDDENLY. You essentially always die if a player gets the jump on you with a sword due to the clunky lock on system screwing your camera and movement options, which is not fair or fun at all.
I know that the auto-lock-on melee combat being disabled is possible too, because currently in the stress test if you come across another dead player on the ghost-ship, you can fight them and the melee combat doesn't lock on - and BOY does it feel so much better. It decreases the clunkiness of melee combat tenfold and actually makes it feel so much more fun.
Please Rare, this is one of the few things wrong with the game and I'd really like to see it addressed BEFORE release. I know you can turn off the feature, so allow those who don't want to play with it to turn it off.
EDIT: Did a PvE raid today with 3 other crews on the final beta patch. It was horrifically unfun.
Fighting off hordes of skeletons who attack from all angles is completely miserable when you auto lock on to the first one you attack for 3-5 seconds and cannot turn around to block/run away. You're left completely vulnerable from every angle other than where you're locked on to. I truly don't understand how it got to this point. It's just objectively bad game design and is incredibly unfun.
Myself and the other crews literally all said after the raid "I'm never doing one of these again." It left a sour taste in our mouth - and this was before we unlocked the vault to find there was no loot LOL (not that I cared about that bug, I actually assumed it was a feature and fit the theme of the game. I enjoyed the anti-climax of there being no loot. We had to fight off another crew of 4 for about an hour to secure the loot being ours, and it just seemed fitting that after all the hardship there was no payout.)
However, It's not just the auto lock that makes the PvE awful - the skeletons with guns have incredibly accurate tracking and will be able to shoot you 95% of the time even if you're sprinting and jumping around actively trying to juke them.
This paired with the lock on system assures you'll die if you engage a blunderbuss skeleton in melee combat. After your 3rd swing, he WILL get a headshot, and since you're still locked on, you can't even attempt to run away or juke - not that it would matter anyway given how accurate their AI tracking is.
Sea of Thieves is the most fun game I've played in years. I'm not going to stop playing due to this, but please understand that myself and many other players will actively be avoiding PvE until these issues are addressed. I'm just glad the PvE barely makes up for 10% of the content available, because it is just flawed game design that isn't challenging or rewarding. It's just infuriatingly unfun and tedious. I'm honestly surprised this content made it into a beta test - I don't know how any RARE devs played this and thought "Yes, this is fun and rewarding for the players. Who doesn't love fighting waves of enemies with aimbot and trudging through our janky auto lock on melee combat?"
Even the console players I've teamed up with complain about it - and those are the only people I can think "benefit" from this "feature".
