Genuinely gutted by the game. I love the sailing, and really enjoy the "forced" teamwork for running a galleon. The simulation/fun balance is spot on for me. The sea, the lighting and the weather are amazing it's just a shame pretty much everything else is so lacking. The fun is already waning with so little to invest in.
The party system is awful, you can't just have friends drop in and out. After a huge amount of messing around we figured out that the party is locked to a size, so me and a friend can't start and invite others as they come online, which is terrible. Even worse is that if someone drops out we get randoms joining the remaining players. This just results in a terrible experience for both parties, I'm not being "mean" I just want to mess around with my friends and not randoms, and i'm sure randoms don't want to be where they are not really wanted.
The missions are essentially the same thing just with different shaped objects to turn in, it's like the ending of Mass Effect 3 all over again. It's so disappointingly uninspired, did you really not realise this? The merchant missions could have sent you somewhere on a strict (tight) time limit instead to test your sailing skill. How about NPCs/players trying to raid you and steal the goods or slow you down, maybe the game flags you (like the skull forts) to show you have valuable goods. But no it's just get this and bring it back like everything else...
We completed a skull fort last night and the loot room really highlights that everything is basically the same, just a different shape and given to a different person.
Even worse is that you can't do anything else at the same time. You have to start the mission, run back to the quest giver for cages, then get the animals, you can't just pick them up while doing a treasure mission at the same time. Hell, the merchant faction could have just been an animal/goods turn ins without any quests, maybe make you buy/hire the cages so there is a risk/reward element to carrying lots of cages.
The game is actually horribly un-casual too, there's no tutorial, but worse is that you basically HAVE to cash out and complete everything currently active or you lose hours of progress you can't return to later. Everyone has to start together and end together, which is not how many people tend to play. Losing found maps/items is frustrating too. My friend turn up unexpected and I had to ask him to watch for 20 mins while I finished a 4 chest bottle map and returned to port with 10+ big chests. I'm not sure what I'd suggest for this, but it's still not great.
I really don't agree with the lack of a character creator, your system is randomly generating from the parts you designed and would have been chosen from anyway so what difference does it make? But whatever, I can live with it, however you could have at the very least added an option to choose a sex first and made things 50% faster instantly. Why not make the "Favourite" option weight the results, or have a "More like this" button.
What truly baffles me is that the "hard" to make stuff is amazingly good, the framework is there and I love it, just barely anything is hanging on it. The world is empty with nothing to discover, there is essentially one enemy type, and that one enemy type has the most basic AI possible, progression feels hollow, missions all feel the same, and PvE combat is just boring.
I don't want to be harsh but the game feels like it's at the very beginning of Early Access, with a sound concept/engine just waiting for the actual "game" to be added.
What happened Rare, is this really your best? You're a well established AAA developer, you can't make NPC ships? You can't make more than one enemy type? You can't make a decent grouping system? You can't make more than 4 figurehead meshes? You can't do better combat? No Parrots in a pirate game...really...? No story at all? No interesting progression? So many basics are just not there, I am just shocked.
You seem to have cut every corner (other than the sea/sailing) and yet everything is still so shallow.
I'm passionate because I care, the game has SO MUCH potential, and i'll be gutted to see that wasted due to (and I hope not true) a lack of creativity, or even worse, a lack of ability within Rare. Rare was literally THE BEST during my late teens, and frankly i'm horrified to see where you are now, releasing hollow shells like this. There are still glimmers of that amazing past, but sadly glimmers aren't enough. So many are clearly testing the game via Game Pass, and I can only imagine the huge drop off once those 2 week trials run out and people feel there's not enough to justify that subscription. Both Sea of Thieves and Game Pass will suffer unfortunately.
