Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why

@zeyrniyx
I once thought the same, but I do not think that Sea of Thieves is in poor health as I read into it. I think that Rare's approach to maintaining and scaling Sea Of Thieves to meet the demands of Xbox, while delivering on free updates for players has its limits and gives off the appearance of poor health due to a few reasons:

• Adopting Continuous Delivery - To maintain Sea Of Thieves from the very beginning, Rare changed how they did software build versioning, instead of using multiple git branches, they adopted for one branch only (Continuous Delivery) and use a combination of feature toggles and dynamic toggles to turn new content on and off (example of this 'toggling' is when the Hunter's Call stand vanished as they delayed the season start and it was meant to toggle off). This shortens development time, but also makes it makes new content updates smaller.
• Game engine age and limits - Sea of Thieves is using a heavily modified version of UnReal Engine 4.10 that is set up in a way that it makes difficult to update the engine (the last update to UnReal Engine 4 was 4.27). I believe this is due to how Rare programed their memory allocation functions and optimized the Garbage Collector to remove unused assets, so new ones can be loaded in. This is why probably why they decreased the ship limit size and made Adventures Limited time only - to get around the memory issues for clients. Dropping support for older consoles is not a fix, as it is the in-game objects in the scenes themselves that cause the memory issues. This is also why the open world map never has expanded since Devil's Roar - World Composition has its limits.
• Automated unit tests - The reason the game has not fallen apart despite the old UnReal Engine being used is because Rare has been writing a ton of automated tests for the new features as they are built, this stops a lot of bugs from being missed in the development cycle. It also means that Rare may have a narrower view on performance issues, as their tests pass and they can ship the newer build. As people progress onwards with their careers, they at least leave behind a solid foundation for others to build upon.
• Talent Pool - Newer hires to Rare who work on Sea of Thieves have more experience with new video game engines than older ones, so they have to learn how UnReal Engine 4 works instead of UnReal Engine 5. This hinders how fast someone can get familiar with the code base and support it. It is why Rare has third part contractors who help support the game like
• Tech Risk - Rare is risk averse to adding new features into the game due to tech risk of it breaking other features - which is why you see a lot of recycled content and assets, as the team knows they work reliably and can be safely used
• Workflow pipleine - the season workflow pipeline is already set a few seasons in advance and the insiders are on the second last step of the process. Most of the features have been already decided or cut (see Sea Serpent)

I only trust them because I can sort of understand what is happening in the background, this is not obvious to the average player. I would not be surprised if Everwild (Rare's new game) will be running an up-to-date version of UnReal Engine 5+ as this will avoid the engine limitation issues present with sticking with the same UnReal Engine build.

For more information see:
Adopting Continuous Delivery (In Sea of Thieves)
Automated Testing of Gameplay Features in 'Sea of Thieves'
Talkabout 26: Good Game Devs are Rare (with James Thomas) #seaofthieves #walkaboutminigolf

As for the narrative issues:

• they have scrapped their original intentions more than once and changed what they have delivered more than once - there was a final adventure featuring Sticher Jim called Sticher's Sorrow and the Last Adventure's cliffhanger was redone for the Skull of Siren Voyage.
• Season 10, 11, 12 and 14 were focused on sandbox updates, with minimal story progression
• Their new Senior Narrative Designer they recently had on the podcast has a preference to emergent storytelling by altering features in the world (e.g. Tasha's skeleton curse cure arc, the Order of Souls Fortune Telling card arc) to make it feel alive
• They tried telling stories outside the game world (Comics, Books, Mysteries - which was retired early)

I understand you would like standalone adventures inside the game, but as the game as grown in size (including how much space the asset now takes up) and all these factors I think it is just not possible. If they do more, it'll not join up to the world map but be in a separate map - see here.

Also, I think Everwild was supposed to release in 2024 as the Wikipedia page states here and then Rare was going to sunset Sea of Thieves, but I think Everwild and Sea of Thieves are going to be supported together for a couple of years instead now. When it releases, I expect some resourcing to become available for Sea of Thieves, especially if older employees opted to work on Everwild for a change and are now happy to go back to supporting Sea of Thieves for a period of time.

I do not expect to change your mind on this, but I wished to provide you and other some explanation which I believe explains the root cause of why this seems to be an issue.

@unblinkingmass7 a dit dans Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why :

@zeyrniyx
I once thought the same, but I do not think that Sea of Thieves is in poor health as I read into it. I think that Rare's approach to maintaining and scaling Sea Of Thieves to meet the demands of Xbox, while delivering on free updates for players has its limits and gives off the appearance of poor health due to a few reasons:

• Adopting Continuous Delivery - To maintain Sea Of Thieves from the very beginning, Rare changed how they did software build versioning, instead of using multiple git branches, they adopted for one branch only (Continuous Delivery) and use a combination of feature toggles and dynamic toggles to turn new content on and off (example of this 'toggling' is when the Hunter's Call stand vanished as they delayed the season start and it was meant to toggle off). This shortens development time, but also makes it makes new content updates smaller.
• Game engine age and limits - Sea of Thieves is using a heavily modified version of UnReal Engine 4.10 that is set up in a way that it makes difficult to update the engine (the last update to UnReal Engine 4 was 4.27). I believe this is due to how Rare programed their memory allocation functions and optimized the Garbage Collector to remove unused assets, so new ones can be loaded in. This is why probably why they decreased the ship limit size and made Adventures Limited time only - to get around the memory issues for clients. Dropping support for older consoles is not a fix, as it is the in-game objects in the scenes themselves that cause the memory issues. This is also why the open world map never has expanded since Devil's Roar - World Composition has its limits.
• Automated unit tests - The reason the game has not fallen apart despite the old UnReal Engine being used is because Rare has been writing a ton of automated tests for the new features as they are built, this stops a lot of bugs from being missed in the development cycle. It also means that Rare may have a narrower view on performance issues, as their tests pass and they can ship the newer build. As people progress onwards with their careers, they at least leave behind a solid foundation for others to build upon.
• Talent Pool - Newer hires to Rare who work on Sea of Thieves have more experience with new video game engines than older ones, so they have to learn how UnReal Engine 4 works instead of UnReal Engine 5. This hinders how fast someone can get familiar with the code base and support it. It is why Rare has third part contractors who help support the game like
• Tech Risk - Rare is risk averse to adding new features into the game due to tech risk of it breaking other features - which is why you see a lot of recycled content and assets, as the team knows they work reliably and can be safely used
• Workflow pipleine - the season workflow pipeline is already set a few seasons in advance and the insiders are on the second last step of the process. Most of the features have been already decided or cut (see Sea Serpent)

I only trust them because I can sort of understand what is happening in the background, this is not obvious to the average player. I would not be surprised if Everwild (Rare's new game) will be running an up-to-date version of UnReal Engine 5+ as this will avoid the engine limitation issues present with sticking with the same UnReal Engine build.

For more information see:
Adopting Continuous Delivery (In Sea of Thieves)
Automated Testing of Gameplay Features in 'Sea of Thieves'
Talkabout 26: Good Game Devs are Rare (with James Thomas) #seaofthieves #walkaboutminigolf

As for the narrative issues:

• they have scrapped their original intentions more than once and changed what they have delivered more than once - there was a final adventure featuring Sticher Jim called Sticher's Sorrow and the Last Adventure's cliffhanger was redone for the Skull of Siren Voyage.
• Season 10, 11, 12 and 14 were focused on sandbox updates, with minimal story progression
• Their new Senior Narrative Designer they recently had on the podcast has a preference to emergent storytelling by altering features in the world (e.g. Tasha's skeleton curse cure arc, the Order of Souls Fortune Telling card arc) to make it feel alive
• They tried telling stories outside the game world (Comics, Books, Mysteries - which was retired early)

I understand you would like standalone adventures inside the game, but as the game as grown in size (including how much space the asset now takes up) and all these factors I think it is just not possible. If they do more, it'll not join up to the world map but be in a separate map - see here.

Also, I think Everwild was supposed to release in 2024 as the Wikipedia page states here and then Rare was going to sunset Sea of Thieves, but I think Everwild and Sea of Thieves are going to be supported together for a couple of years instead now. When it releases, I expect some resourcing to become available for Sea of Thieves, especially if older employees opted to work on Everwild for a change and are now happy to go back to supporting Sea of Thieves for a period of time.

I do not expect to change your mind on this, but I wished to provide you and other some explanation which I believe explains the root cause of why this seems to be an issue.

Thanks for these technical clarifications, and although I'm aware of the “problems” associated with using U4, which I totally agree with, I have a contradiction to make:

• For at least 5 years, they didn't stop integrating lore into the game: there were 4 to 6 major releases integrating stories. So even if U4 is “old”, we know they can do it, but this is “as you said” a decision. And let's come to that decision: it's a bad one, that's what I've tried to explain:
• Since Tasha's healing arc, we've seen integration in play, which on paper is good, but here we are:
• The journey of the mermaid skull is hardly used anymore.
• The BB is no longer used or contested to the same extent, as a large proportion of players have completed their recommendations and/or are not necessarily attracted by the PvP that these journeys/events entail.
  In other words: it's adding content that's destined to die (the Mermaid Skull trip is already well buried).

I can also prove that they know how to integrate new gameplay mechanics, starting with tall tales for example.

• Tyrolean traverse (from Monkey Island)
• The tridents (from APL)

If the game's lore can only be summed up as changing cards on a table, or just moving an NPC to an island and that's it (as has been the case for at least 3 seasons), it's because they've not only put the lore aside to concentrate on sandbox gameplay, they've abandoned it altogether. And you can't blame U4 for that, but it's definitely an artistic decision. And that's why I say that SoT is in poor health, because Sea of Thieves without its lore is no longer Sea of Thieves, it's a copy of Fornite... (or some other similar game)
So if Rare thinks that recycling content indefinitely will generate player retention, then they've got it all wrong, because players are volatile. In fact, I think the current grumbling among gamers is a good indication of this. And insiders know what I'm talking about.

As for Everwild, having had no news for years, I have to admit I'm not even waiting for it any more, as if its development had been abandoned, given the silence.... (unless I've missed some news, which is possible)

Meanwhile. Some players I randomly met, roleplay so hard we have been moving the story alone behind the scenes. For fun.

It the players who are the main characters. We move the story along. Without the players doing anything besides fighting each other. Like making fun moments of random junk, that when the game starts to lose it flavor.

So. It the players fault.

@burnbacon a dit dans Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why :

Meanwhile. Some players I randomly met, roleplay so hard we have been moving the story alone behind the scenes. For fun.

It the players who are the main characters. We move the story along. Without the players doing anything besides fighting each other. Like making fun moments of random junk, that when the game starts to lose it flavor.

So. It the players fault.

Of course, we make the story ourselves, but the lore has always been an integral part of this game! One doesn't preclude the other.
Also, as I said, I've played over 10,000 hours, and in all honesty, I've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of crews... RP, I can count it on the fingers of one hand! The last time I saw RP on Sea of ​​Thieves was two years ago...

And frankly, let's be serious for two seconds: the vast majority of players don't play SoT to RP... we'd have known that by now...

That's why I'm asking this question: are all the players playing the game badly? If that's the case, then yes, the developers have largely failed in their marketing...

I think people forget how much money Microsoft has invested in this game and continues to do so. Because of that, many decisions are likely out of Rare’s hands and more in Microsoft’s. Microsoft probably expects some return, so having a few paid features that players can choose to use isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, something like pirate profiles being paid might be more of a Microsoft demand, since they have to approve what gets worked on—they’re the ones funding most of it and paying the staff.

@unblinkingmass7 said in Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why:

• Game engine age and limits - Sea of Thieves is using a heavily modified version of UnReal Engine 4.10 that is set up in a way that it makes difficult to update the engine (the last update to UnReal Engine 4 was 4.27).

As far as I know, Sea of Thieves no longer runs on the original Unreal Engine 4.10. Instead, it uses what’s often called the Rare Engine—a heavily modified version tailored specifically for the game. The Unreal Engine team collaborates with Rare to backport features and fix issues from newer versions, but not all updates are directly carried over. Some functions either aren’t needed for the project or require significant modification to fit Rare’s customizations, otherwise the engine could become unstable or break. In fact, the engine likely includes unique systems and features that aren’t even present in Unreal Engine 5, making it highly specialized. So it’s not simply that the engine is outdated, but that updating it fully is a complex, careful process due to the unique systems Rare has built on top of it.

@unblinkingmass7 Also, I have a question: I have an old-generation Xbox (despite the fact that I play on PC), and from memory I can play Fornite for example:

Has Fornite been updated to U5? Does this update to U5 also concern this older generation?
Because if it does, then the developers could also update to U5, while keeping the game on Xbox One....
Unless I'm missing something...

@uluckyhitreg a dit dans Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why :

I think people forget how much money Microsoft has invested in this game and continues to do so. Because of that, many decisions are likely out of Rare’s hands and more in Microsoft’s. Microsoft probably expects some return, so having a few paid features that players can choose to use isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, something like pirate profiles being paid might be more of a Microsoft demand, since they have to approve what gets worked on—they’re the ones funding most of it and paying the staff.

That's my main concern, that Sea of ​​Thieves is starting to become a game where you have to pay to access features. It's funny, because when I pointed out this problem in a post published here: https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/169388/pay-to-win-features/2

I mentioned a problem that no one has pointed out: the fact that to play High Seas on console (and therefore to have access to additional features), you have to pay a subscription in addition to paying for the game.
Clearly, this doesn't bother anyone, but it bothers me more than a little, and the latest decision confirms my fears, which I already had a year ago!

And to answer you: charging for additional features is probably good for Microsoft, but disastrous for the game!
But if players are willing to accept this without saying anything... well...

I don't know why they still support Xbox one, to be honest. Xbox One is holding sea of thieves back.

@zeyrniyx said in Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why:

@uluckyhitreg a dit dans Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why :

I think people forget how much money Microsoft has invested in this game and continues to do so. Because of that, many decisions are likely out of Rare’s hands and more in Microsoft’s. Microsoft probably expects some return, so having a few paid features that players can choose to use isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, something like pirate profiles being paid might be more of a Microsoft demand, since they have to approve what gets worked on—they’re the ones funding most of it and paying the staff.

That's my main concern, that Sea of ​​Thieves is starting to become a game where you have to pay to access features. It's funny, because when I pointed out this problem in a post published here: https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/topic/169388/pay-to-win-features/2

I mentioned a problem that no one has pointed out: the fact that to play High Seas on console (and therefore to have access to additional features), you have to pay a subscription in addition to paying for the game.
Clearly, this doesn't bother anyone, but it bothers me more than a little, and the latest decision confirms my fears, which I already had a year ago!

Because before Safer Seas was introduced, this subscription was already in place (AFAIK for all online Xbox games where you can play with others). You're not paying for additional game features, as a courtesy, you don't have to pay a subscription when you're not playing with others (and have less features because of not playing with other players).

Probably someone argued that when playing solo on Safer Seas it was basically not falling under the terms of the subscription.

@zeyrniyx said in Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why:

@unblinkingmass7 Also, I have a question: I have an old-generation Xbox (despite the fact that I play on PC), and from memory I can play Fornite for example:

Has Fornite been updated to U5? Does this update to U5 also concern this older generation?
Because if it does, then the developers could also update to U5, while keeping the game on Xbox One....
Unless I'm missing something...

Yes @Zeyrniyx, Fortnite has been updated to U5 and still supports Xbox One.
Fortnite Reddit - When will Fortnite stop supporting Xbox one?
IGN - Fortnite Is Officially Moving to Unreal Engine 5

@zeyrniyx said in Sea of Thieves is in poor health, and here's why:

As for Everwild, having had no news for years, I have to admit I'm not even waiting for it any more, as if its development had been abandoned, given the silence.... (unless I've missed some news, which is possible)

I am sure you heard the news regarding the recent Xbox layoffs and what happened to Rare. I am really disappointed that it was cancelled. I envy you not hearing anything it, I had hope due to an interview with Phil Spencer early this year where he said that ""It's nice to see the team with Everwild and the progress that they're making," he says. "It has been [a while]. And we've been able to give those teams time in what they're doing, which is good, and still have a portfolio like we have," he said. "It's like a dream that Matt [Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios] and I have had for a long time, so it's finally good to be there. We can give those teams time.".
Games Radar - Everwild: Everything we know about the canceled Rare game

From what I understand from the limited research I have done is that this game was a Monster Tamer/Battler, where dark spirits are corrupting wildlife and you have cleanse them. Once you perform a cleansing, the wildlife would join your party. The battle system operated on moves your player character performed to instruct your wildlife companions through an avatar. It was meant to be a 4 player co-op experience in an open world, but you'd have a base, which would have base building systems.
Everwild reddit - Everwild staff update and alleged gameplay description

Seeing how Sea of Thieves turned out, with its map size and scope. I can understand why it was taking so long to come out and why it had to be rebooted completely. Unlike Sea of Thieves, you have one connected land mass and the environment's flora and fauna would need to hold the players attention, as it would need to be very diverse. The primary gameplay loop feels a little open ended too, with Sea of Thieves you go out, collect loot and bring it back to sell. With this game, I feel this loop may not have been so tight and they were continuing to revise it - I cannot picture what the end state would be or if it was meant to be more freeform. I hope that the base building mechanics and other components of this IP can be salvaged into Sea of Thieves so we can experience some of it.

@zeyrniyx That's not what pay to win means. Pay to win means that you can put money into the game to make yourself more likely to win. Frankly I don't see the issue with having to pay for xbox live to play an online video game. That's kinda the point of xbox live.

@super87ghost It's a scam to have to pay to use online servers? Is that what I'm getting from this?

@super87ghost Microsoft has to host servers, they have to be paid for. PC players do pay, in the other way that this game has monetisation, through micro transactions. No one is forcing you to use the emporium, but no one is forcing you to play this game online either. It's not pay to win, that has an entirely different definition. It's not a scam, you literally cannot play ANY online games without it on the console. Yeah, PC players don't have to deal with it, but PC players also don't have to use a microsoft device accessing microsoft servers through microsoft web platforms.