Hi,
I just tried the game via xbox live 14 day trial at a small LAN party last weekend. We all got the game and figured that it might be something really awesome to play as a group. We even had rum for it!
Unfortunately, we never drank all of it.
Oh, back to Sea of Thieves.. Right. After 30 minutes or so, I already felt that all the game has, has been seen. I stopped playing, watched the others play a bit, and.. Yeah.
At minimum, we expected the game to have:
- Character customization beyond only aesthetics.
- Ability to customize your ship (like trading speed for more guns, etc)
- Some sort of meaningful faction relations.
- Gear to gather.
- Leveling.
- Meaningful PvP. Of the 4 encounters we had, in 3 the other just left and we couldn't catch them, and in the 4th we ended up to a ship that had no crew nowhere near to be seen.
- Diverse places to see and many types of monsters; But it's just.. skeletons with two island themes (rocky and jungle-ish).
We were also hoping on:
- Ability to form a fleet of multiple ships with friends.
- Trading by, for example, taking goods from port to port.
- More frequent and interesting combat in the seas vs NPCs.
We had none of the above. I've long ago learned to avoid games that build a lot of hype around them, since much too often they simply fail to deliver. I was hoping this would, essentially, be the multiplayer Sea Dogs or maybe have some elements from Sid Meier's Pirates!.
But as it stands, it is unfortunately still a far cry from either game.
This game desperately needs more meaningful content. To end my topic with an upbeat, I'd like to list the things that did work and were really fun for us:
- Good graphics, including really good water vfx.
- Atmospheric storms.
- Atmospheric and fitting audio.
- The stress of repairing a ship in a huge storm was great.
- Nice feel with maneuvering the ship.
- Nice selection of emotes and the like.
This game has tons of unrealized potential and I sincerely hope this ship can be turned (pun intended!). If I ever see that happen, I wouldn't hesitate to go and buy the game.
Thanks!
