Something To Think About

@madfrito99 where do you get your numbers from? way more than 22,000 people are playing sea of thieves

just do a quick search online and you will see

@madfrito99 220,000 people have already participated in the Gold Hoarder ledger this month.

that is literally 10x your numbers.

The 22k is steam chart only which only measures the PC steam version, not Microsoft store or Xbox, and only measures concurrent players (not total).

I definitely think sea of thieves could and should be more popular with changes, especially a middle ground approach. Maybe some instanced dungeon type content you could run without getting PVP'd, but can enable the option for it to be competitive for some kind of reward would be fair?

The game can also be very punishing because you invest a lot of time doing the events or voyages, and even longer the more cautious you try to be, then you spend time loading up, and time turning in. I think this loop could be slightly shortened without a lot of detriment to the game, and would make people feel a bit less worse about getting sunk. Esp for forts where carrying loot down incentivizes and creates opportunities for attackers to only attack after the event.

Totally get where you are coming from though, but for a lot of the people who currently play, that open world anything goes mentality is the major appeal of the game, so really both should and could coexist.

@calicorsaircat totally agree..destiny still destroys those #’s ten fold even removing ps #’s…gta as well…

@calicorsaircat i just dont think thats the majority anymore

@madfrito99 GTA has a lot of brand recognition as a franchise. Destiny too as the "next big project" from Bungie after the enormous success of Halo. Arguably, sea of thieves is the better game than either of those, but for different reasons.

I think you are right that the demand is high enough for rare to do something for less pvp individuals beyond tall tales which don't offer any reason to grind really. I want dungeons as I said with some earnable rare cosmetics and achievements. Like, beat with only swords, beat as a solo, beat without any gunpowder exploding, etc. Something fun, light, and replayable in which people who have done the dungeon can help others.

Also, the dungeons can even be duo crews either working together or competitively.

Example) I bring a ritual skull, you bring the stronghold barrel, and we place on a shrine to create a portal through the tall tale arches to a special dungeon with particular rewards and objectives.

That's the kind of content I feel could appeal to everyone. And could even have pvp versions. The goal is to make them repayable, so slight variations in enemy composition, goalels, and no guaranteed cosmetic reward are key.

I think the open world pvevp world is here to stay because it is just too established at this point in the game's identity. Doesn't mean you are wrong though that they could have got more players taking a diff approach, which is why I think they should do both and make use of that portal tech!

thats something lol but to say sot is better than destiny? nah #’s dont lie you could almost argue gta

@madfrito99 numbers don't lie, but they also don't make a game any better or worse. Destiny and Sea of Thieves are dramatically different games.

The devs have made their intentions quite clear on pvp and pve and how they are going to be mixed. If that is not your thing, this may not be game for you.

And before you come back and say that you like the fetch quests, the pve events, amd tall tales and that they could make a game out of that, they don't want too. They want it to be a shared world adventure game.

@madfrito99 What always gets me about these GTA allows you to grind without getting attacked comparisons is that people who say that always leave out that any of the big money high risk(which is equal to voyages) you have to do in a public lobby which by the way is near impossible now due to RockStar destroying the PvPvE balance of the game.

Also I do not think its fair to pick out a GTAO part of a huge franchise and say see look its because of peaceful griding!

I wont speak on Destiny as I am not familiar with that.

I think Sea of Thieves could benefit allowing Tall Tales to be done on its own instance and once private servers are around to be able to do some light gold making but thats about it.

Anyways devs made their decision and I am pretty sure they know better than you or me or anyone here as far as what their core playerbase wants. I would think if no PvE mode was tanking their game as you say they wouldnt do it.

@combatxkitty thats just it they dont want private servers lol but your right gta has its issues ( over priced items just like sot) but i agree doing tall tales as a stand alone is a great idea

@madfrito99 comparing game numbers to other games that are not in the same category is absurd from a statistical perspective.

Let me show you:

Destiny 2 has about 1 million players BUT World of Warcraft has over 26 million active players (over 40 at its peak)

What is Destiny 2 doing wrong? They need to make their game more like WoW...

@calicorsaircat said in Something To Think About:

Arguably, sea of thieves is the better game than either of those, but for different reasons.

GTAV is (one of) the most successful media products of all time—not just video games, all forms of media.

SoT has a lot of cool aspects to it, etc. but this sort of gaslighting is too out-there lol.

@kommodoreyenser ah you missed why i compared them…they are all open world games so different games yes but all 3 are open world

@madfrito99

Minecraft has over 238million copies sold and +100mil monthly users.
Roblox has 176 copies sold and 33.4mil daily users.

They're both Sandbox games where you can create your own server and minigames and they're so popular. SoT would be more popular if it changed into sandbox game where you can build on the islands and break them.

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• Numbers are funny thing, by comparing two different stats you can make it look like it's bad/good (I am highlighting numbers you gave)

Sea of Thieves: around 26mil copies sold = 0.08% of it's owners are still playing.
GTA: 150mil copies and let's say 100k playing =0.067% are playing
Destiny 2: Yep I won't even count that as you didn't give the same numbers as you did for other games. | Steam charts shows how many players there are playing during that time and as not everyone plays everyday it can't be compared to your "million" players.

In this case we compared numbers you gave to the copies sold of each game and found out that higher percentage of SoT playerbase are playing it over GTA5, In other words more people who got it play it.

I couldn't even compare Destiny 2 playerbase to it's copies sold as you gave whole another stats ( The amount of monthly users I assume?) where as you gave steam charts for SoT and GTA which you still managed to use wrongly.

Heck even I used data wrongly with these examples of mine as I compared Steam SoT and GTA5's numbers to their copes sold across all platforms.

Numbers dont lie.

Well they do if you don't use them right.

As my rant about using data right is over, let's begin :)

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• When you make game you have two options: Go with the masses and create a game that would become popular and bring you the most amount of money ( so Free2Play with microtransactions) Or to make a game that you and your team want to without reaching for the highest reward.
  Most companies do the following wile trying to grow it for more players in their own way, usually with updates which richen the game by expanding it's features and adding new mechanics. SoT is and will be growing as time passes by, you can compare the numbers from when it launched in 2018 (Just joking there are no public numbers) to what it now is platforms wide.

Saying SoT should add an feature which other games have is odd. Every game is different and different people like different things, no one has to like another game and that's ok as they may like a game that others despise.

Not everyone and every game needs to be aiming for the number one spot in what ever they're doing.

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• I won't go through PvE option as it has been gone over so many times there isn't any new conversation that could be had about it in ten different parallel universes.

If you really want to go through them:
Here is link to the now locked mega-thread with + 5285 posts if you're into reading.

Reason why it won't be added you can listen from here

and read from here :)

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• Some thoughts I have over your comments

People are tired of being attacked 24/7 while playing

It's part of the game, sometimes you're the one attacking and sometimes you're the one being attacked on. If I do not feel like fighting I will try to avoid conflict at all cost by sailing at the edges, not running emissary and not taking part in world events.

People are tired of fighting over loot for hrs

It may be annoying to fight over the same FoF for two hours but it's amazing feeling when you end up winning. Also if you end up in endless fight that sees no end you are free to disengage and do something else on that same server or server hop for a new one. No one is forcing you to fight over an ashen lord for 6 hours straight other than you and if you choose to force your self in that the game is last thing you should be blaming.

People are tired of the toxicity

That be true but it's part of each game, even minecraft as not everyone can control their feeling and being mean is easier over the internet that F2F.

More people would play this game if things changed…

Even though I said I wouldn't be talking about this topic I just have to say: yes more would play BUT the already existing playerbase would dwindle down. It's like if minecraft's survival would be changed into first person shooter like krunker, sure people would play it but others would leave. (bad example I know :)

Devs have made their decision to tank their own game instead of acknowledging what used to work no longer works

It is still working there just hasn't been content for over a half a year that would change the way we play which in result has made plenty of people including me taking a break and playing other games. Sure S3 and Pirate's life happened but they added 5 tall tales which we will end up playing through inly 1-4 times and new mobs for island. So nothing game changing which then made people lose interest. People going away when there hasn't been new content for ages can be seen with any game. No one would say that Overwatch died and is dying due to first person shooters not working anymore.

This game has been out for 4 years…only 22,000 people playing

3 and a half years*. Ones again wrong numbers and data, those 22k players from steam charts only show how many active players there are at a time playing through steam. SoT is on 3 platforms, Xbox, Steam and MC store (on windows) from which the majority plays through xbox and we could expect steam being near 50/50 with MC store on pc which would then mean around 88k active players at peak times.

Also active players means how many players there are in game at that moment. Like now I am typing this here on forums and not playing the game which then means that I am not "active player" even though I play weekly.

People want to play games to have fun and enjoy themselves…

That's true and that's why multiple games exist.

you just cant with this game…

I am sorry if you feel that way. Me an plenty of other people are surely enjoying it. Perhaps it wasn't the right one for you?

…but u sure can with the other two…time to rethink tye strategy for this game

In other hand this is something I wouldn't enjoy.

i compared them…they are all open world games so different games yes but all 3 are open world

isn't that like comparing Lemons to Kiwis, sure they're both fruits but totally different. It's like comparing CS:GO to Overwatch or COD as they're all First person shooters, They function differently so you can't really compare them with others.

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• TL:DR

Data lies when you use it wrongly, PvE servers won't come, Not every game/person/company has to pursue the number one spot on what ever they're doing.

PS. Sorry if I sound rude at some point, that was not my intention. Have a nice day! :)

@madfrito99 said in Something To Think About:

@kommodoreyenser ah you missed why i compared them…they are all open world games so different games yes but all 3 are open world

A crime themed shooter, a futuristic mmo FPS game, and a pirate/sailing adventure game are hardly related even if all are open world style maps.

Different players gravitate toward different games. Most have a favorite time frame or theme. Also there are platform availability to consider where destiny 2 trumps both SoT and GTA. Somehow though WoW loses on that front yet still beats all your examples in player numbers. So clearly your example is flawed as you cherry pick the games in your comparison.

@combatxkitty That's true for businesses but not heists though (which have long been considered the best way to make money). Heists are fully-instanced aside from certain set up missions.

And the most recent heist, Cayo Perica, could even be completed solo which (I think) was a first for heists in that game.

Not to mention their whole Tuner DLC a few months ago introduced an entirely new (PvP-free) location for similarly-minded car aficionados to hang out, and show off their microtransaction purchases, without fear of getting bombed. (this seemed brilliant to me)

Oh cool another PvE server request thread with absolutely zero ideas on how it would function as a fair and toxicity free environment for everyone to be able to access.

@sweetsandman here is the idea…people can create their own private server with friends and just play the game lol no world events but you can do voyages and grind and earn gold. however, you can’t level up emissary on private server. great idea, no? no different than alliance servers minus no world events

Firstly, as others have stated, you are using the stats incorrectly and providing incorrect data.

22K is the peak on Steam only for today. That's concurrent, not total active players, on 1 platform. Steam is the newest of the platforms the game is on, and without Game Pass, so has the smallest install base. If we're generous, it's probably about 20% of the overall playerbase.

If we look at Discord sizes (using Discord's server search), to get a general idea of its popularity, Sea of Thieves has ~290K members on its official Discord (88K currently online). Bear in mind that there are a huge number of console players who don't use Discord.

GTA Online's biggest Discord server has 390K members (60K currently online). The official Destiny server has 130K members (41K currently online). The Destiny 2 LFG Discord has 380K members (161K currently online).

Those numbers might make you go "so what", but that's kind of my point. You can infer a lot of wrong ideas from numbers that don't mean anything about the state of the game or playerbase.

Statistics are great when used correctly, but they can also be skewed to prove a point when they are not.

Secondly, comparing Sea of Thieves to other games does it a disservice. It's not trying to be those other games and it's aimed at a very particular audience. Yes, there are plenty of things in SOT that can improve, but changing its core would alienate players who love its uniqueness and would only shift the playerbase so it would be competing more directly.

Not every game needs to appeal to the mass market, a niche is perfectly profitable (and can be more profitable if the game does it right). I would say, compared to what Rare had dreamed of, Sea of Thieves is exceeding their wildest expectations. If it was struggling, they wouldn't be already working ahead on content for Season 7 (Source: most recent official podcast).

I'm a PvPvE player, skewed heavily towards PvE... I don't think it needs to change in that regard and I don't see the massive amount of toxicity that a vocal minority shout about.

2 of those games allow you to grind without being attacked so you can complete things and get rewards and also rank up…the other game you cant.

Yeah Gta and destiny both can’t be done unless you cowardly stay away from people. Both have single player. Which is for those reason.

Meanwhile. SoT you can do everything you wish without much issue. I did all tall tales (older ones) in a single day with 3 newbie players. Not a single issue besides side tracking with world events.
How nobody else can do this? Idk

@thagoochiestman said in Something To Think About:

@combatxkitty That's true for businesses but not heists though (which have long been considered the best way to make money). Heists are fully-instanced aside from certain set up missions.

When I think voyages though, that high reward high risk I see it closer to running the businesses. Heist cant be fully done in safety as you point out certain set ups need be in public lobby and the payouts if you are splitting fair are meh. Where for my businesses when I would play I could make like 2 million(or more cant remember) one sell (night club) but had to be in public. I equate that to doing a large haul voyages on SOT.

As I said I wouldnt be opposed to little things being in a private server to make gold or Tall Tales but I do not see devs letting potential big money ever in a PvE mode and they have made this very clear. Cant be more clear at this point.

And the most recent heist, Cayo Perica, could even be completed solo which (I think) was a first for heists in that game.

I think it would be.

Not to mention their whole Tuner DLC a few months ago introduced an entirely new (PvP-free) location for similarly-minded car aficionados to hang out, and show off their microtransaction purchases, without fear of getting bombed. (this seemed brilliant to me)

I heard about that. I cant stand Rockstar and their destroying of GTAO but I might check out that DLC. R still caters to the griefers though big time so I am not all that impressed with them adding that, its really the least they could do at this point.

@thagoochiestman its the better game for anyone who choose to play it instead of GTA. Since when is something more popular automatically better? The hell you talking about gaslighting?