@piratecraggy
Thanks for sharing this massive article ,Mr Craggy…
A few of you may know that i love and like Sea of Thieves like no other game. This is the first game where your "you" isn't pushed in a "role" ( * Waw, he's writing his "very clear and obvious" opinions down again...Moron, write a dictionary about yer strange thoughtpatterns before no one is able to follow you ...fool). i mean , take a RPG , no Title needed , any RPG will do...You choose to be a Palladin , who obviously can't morally slaughter whole villages for nothing or you choose to be a Thief. Have you ever seen a Thief that doesn't dare to pick a pocket , span a trap or steal content from picklocked chests? Or an Assassin that never kills one NPC...
Games that promise total Freedom still have hidden patterns that people automaticly will follow. Their Promised Freedom knows rules and boundaries eventhough you can travel anywhere the tip of yer nose point you at...Your role is , allthough wide oppertunities are available, still restricted to the role you have chosen…
Sea of Thieves ,however , has no roles ...At first sight , but contains so many really Free roles...i'll give you an example. We like to play Arena , a game where you need to work together as a crew or you garantee yourself on the last spot if you don't cooperate.
Pirates have a main role : We have our Ace Helmswoman, Our Captain / Tactician , Our Brawler and Cannoneer and our RepairPirate ...Those are our main roles but nothing , absolutely nothing restricts you to these stereotype patters because a Helmsman/woman can decide to help with the cannons, the sails, the capstan, fighting , defending ,digging treasures and so on and on...
i think that this is one of the most hidden but strongest setups in game history. Every person, with all kinds of skills or lack of skills can play and above all enjoy Sea of Thieves…
For that , i want to look at myself ( * NOOOOOO, your poor fool , you gonna blind yerself by absorbing so much ugliness….heheheheh).i started this game or better said first ever public Alpha as a very afraid person. i was , and i'm still not , a fast PvP player . A curse in many Multiplayer Games . A person that resides on the last spot of the leaderboard is not liked in a team...
Because off that i played many Mulitplayers as " hit and run" games. i played a few matches where i was always the " champion" ( * no, you're a chumpion...hihihihi) of the last spot and moved on before the other teammembers started to realize they were playing with a walking targetpractise disk...
Talking was another issue , i have an accent , nomatter how hard i may try to sound British , the less i succeed…
Every person can immediatly hear that i'm foreign or...i have to try a few stereotype accents that lean towards cosplay but even then people know i'm not English/ Australian /USA ,but they have trouble on pinpointing where i come from…
In the past this has lead towards an everlasting stream of insults because the accent ,combined with the everlasting last place , became a burden to bare...
And in the end , you stop talking to people , you play but silently and through the years your resentment into "Leaderboards " based games grows , along with yer fear to talk to people…
In that lies a very dangerous spiral where it's almost impossible to crawl out... Over the years i abandoned Multiplayers , except the Gears of War games...i loved and still love to co-operate in a game , to fight or play to reach a common liked goal and Gears was perfect...The playstyle of the Horde Mode was so intense that words became unnecessary.
i'd knew what the team needed and tried to provide what i could , oh , i remember the thrills ,the chills of pure Adrenaline rushing through the veins ,when i saw that somebody was shot down...i rushed from the other side of the map in order to pick a teammate up before a Locust would squash it's head…
And if i succeeded ,than that simple action made my evening.
But something along a long way of isolation, purely out of fear of not being good enough , or being foreign or equiped with an annoying voice prevented me to accept the seldom Friendrequest that my "life saver character " did…
Gaming became a purely singleplayer aspect , or silence multiplayer experience for one game , only one. i wished i could talk but the fear killed every word before it could launch itself out of my throat...In real life ,i'm very slow in getting used to people...It took me a year before i said something about myself in our factory...i was a silent , part ,almost unseen to many...That's who i always am, when i start somewhere ...But if given time ,i can blossom ( * You compare yerself as a "flower" ? Wow , i normally would call you a narcisist but with that face of yers i will call you " nettleist" ...hihihihi, you sting in other one's eyes...moron) open and goof and joke around but it takes seas of time.
Gaming became a very lonely " timekiller" . Because of the stereotype 13 in a dozen kind of games , and i'm not saying that they were bad games , but the fact that yer class get's pushed in a direction that you have to follow or the game gives you some form of penalties if you want to play more freely , games became just timekillers ...How many games have i played through ,just for the story , without feeling passion, enlightment or thrills? They must be numerous…
i slowly became to realize that my many dark moments , dark thoughts , came from a feel of " failing and a slowly alldestroying kind of solemnness"...
And then i stumblerd on this Forum , a place where a massive amount of Friendliness slowly defrosted a distrusting Heart…
The game that was being discussed promised the kind of co-operation that i was always looking for ...Even the worst player ever could mean something to the crew...
It was all a theory made by a Developer and every Developer promises its' fans to have the best game ever. But the more i read , the more i started to doubt my scepticism…
" What If….This Rare ,that seemed to have a very Friendly and Healthy Community was able to fulfill their promises " was a thought that slowly grew into my mind...
But then , totally wanted but also very unexpected ,i was invited towards the Alpha , the Alpha was not even a fingernail big as the game is today but i played it , was overwhelmed in the way that i succeeded to light up a lightbulb ,just by holding it in my adrenalitic hands. But the most important fact was that i talked , after seven bloody long years , and got accepted for who i was...
No bad comments , all gigles , oooh's and aaaah's ...A Lifechanger had finally revelated itself into the GamesWorld…
i grew , mentally , in every session...At first i was reserved , hold back, came up with great situational jokes which i didn't dare to tell because i lost the perception on how a joke or remark was going to be interpreted…
But as the Alpha grew , so did my confidence ,about the game aswell as my own abilities ...i became more verbal , started laughing , singing and eventually i turned my "curse" , the accents ,into an asset that has brought a lot of laughs to many…
i found my perfect role aboard a ship and crew that allowed me to grow ...Oh, i'm not that dashing Erroll Flynn that ranks up Pirates on the blade of his rapier , nor am i a Flintlock Slinging Captain like Flint but i do am the repairman of the ship. The old man, that comes out of the hull to shoot a few cannonballs until the ship is hurted again…
Sea of Thieves is a lifesaver for me, ooh i know you all feel that i sound like a drama queen in yer ears but i can press on yer Heart that if you are forced towards an isolation that in time , you really start to change...And not for a good way...Distrusting people , fear and later uncapable of talking ,is slowly paving a path towards a more selfdestructive thinking. A kind of thinking that would eventually lead to a shadowy end somewhere in the corner of an attic…
Sea of Thieves is the game that made me feel usefull , eventhough how small that usefullness may be compared with other player's skill , Every Pirate counts , Every Pirate's personality brings an alteration to a story that can never be reenacted into detail...Because the endless posibilities , random encounters between AI and Real Life Persones or Pirates makes that this game is Lonely on the Top...
There is simply no other game where i can feel undistilled happiness, where i feel i'm part of and belong to a crew of wondeful, and colourful people that have accepted me for who i am…
Our Crew , that Good Old , Old Salts ,who all, allow me to be who i am that day. And without knowing, their Acceptance together with meeting so many Great Random Pirates have filled my evenings/nights with so many great and healthy feels that i hope i may never snap out of this dream…
In this great article is also the word "streaming ", placed forward. i'm not a streamer fan but let me explain first why. i love to watch streams in which people explains the game , how it's played , which tactic they apply , why they do this and that and so on...These kind of Streams may convince you to try or buy a certain game...Other streams from people that know how to bring and " live" in the current game that evolves on yer screen are also very entertaining.
But..." Forced" Streams in which the streamer feels the need to always be in the corner off yer screen , equipped with an ugly ,massive headphone , saying a few hundred times " Oh my GOOOOD" just curls my toes in an angle they simply snap...
i would love to stream , as myself ,to show people how entertaining and how many sportmanship ship and melee battles are occuring in this game, eventhough so many reports of trolling and grievers that scare so many potential Pirates away before they even tried ...but ...alas , knowing that i have to start the Steam myself , or seeing a message that someone of the crew started the screams brings an "alteration" in my mind that stops me to "be me"...
Streams should be activated in yer personal settings as " being randomly started while being unaware, without being noticed" ...This way so many streams would feel geniune and real compared with the " forced and sometimes fake" streams...If you know what i mean ( * Dream on, dufus , nobody understands you….Hey , aren't that the orderlies with the "straightjacket" that pass before yer window, moron? Time to run...).
Sea of Thieves is unique , if you can look passed Levels, factions, Cosmetics and play for rewards...Sea of Thieves is ,or should be ,played for it's none of a kind stories and adventures...For it's unpredictability , for it's ,sometimes , Divine meetings of Personalities who you connect with , and who ,unknowingly , alter an evening into a happening that will always stick in the corner of yer head as a memory you would like to relive…
Sea of Thieves may be set in a Pirateword, have levels and accomplishments that one can find in other games as well ,but the mental side , the fact that not one story can be relived , nor reenacted is purely and solely ownership of Rare's MasterPiece that was and still is made by more than 200 Passionate Persons that wanted to change the ,sometimes ,"bad" reputation of Multiplayer Games and they have succeeded more than one could expect...
When We Made... Sea of Thieves - MCV/DEVELOP
