Everything is collecting dust.

What condition they leave content in when they move on is more important than reworking it.

Good design can at least maintain but poor patch changes makes it unappealing and then it really does just sit there.

Commodities as an example. Made less appealing in a couple different patches and then just sat there, a worse version of itself without organic appeal. Just as an overreaction to cheesing (people cheese everything in this game, it shouldn't lead to counterproductive patches)

The BB already has people turning in 0-3's because they patched in a turn in restriction. Lack of organic appeal is what will be the issue the BB has going forward, specifically because of a patch. I've been watching people sink them and turn them in with barely any activity on them, that's because of a patch, not the original design.

They did it with horns for an entire season by nerfing rng away from organic appeal. They fixed that but that's what it was, a fix to a self created problem. Had they left it then it would be left organically unappealing like other content.

It's a live service game, it's understandable that in the space a lot of stuff doesn't reach its full potential, but making it worse with patches and then leaving it is way way worse.

Number 1 issue with content in this game are the overreaction patches that don't stop cheesing, they just make the content less appealing for people that play organically. That's what makes it worse when they move along to the next thing.

Commodities is the part i'd most love seeing overhauled or expanded upon to turn the Merchant faction into a large scale goods hauling faction. Let me load my ship to the brim on one dock (maybe with some new loading/unloading tool), transport it across the map with some risk and excitement involved, and unload it for sweet profit.

But yeah, nerfing stuff because a minority of players are cheesing it and thereby punishing organic fun is a terrible decision.

yea as much as i love this game the dev team has this habit of abandoning content almost immedetly after its added. not sure if this is coming from the top ie joe/mike. like they clearly have passion for the game they made but they dont have the passion for polishing it. like they have tried to rework merchants like 5x now and its still the worst faction to level aside from maybe reapers now that its so easy to sell at outposts the extra time to sell at reapers is unacceptable especially since the only thing to gain is a silly set of rings no commendation nor achievement for acquiring them so why bother? i missed the initial commodities addition. from the sounds like they need to revert it back to how it originally was. they even added this new variant of merchant loot, the box of diamonds isnt worth enough reputation, the new cargo is still cargo... i would say the new cargo value should be what og cargo value is set to and double the new cargo value. also the fact that they bugged out plants so buckets of water no longer heal them... smashed rum cant even be picked up etc. the roar variation of new cargo is the only cargo worth touching. and the worst part is cargo doesnt get a sovereign multipler if youre running guild emissary. which the game is all about now since they are no longer adding new emissary rewards other than guilds. i still think if cargo is going to an outpost the sovereigns should be able to accept the hand in

but you look at stuff like hitbotc saying how hourglass was the greatest update in the history of sea of thieves..... if rare polishes it... they never did within 2 months hitbotc was saying how much he despises hourglass. they fixed a few issues but overall its now hated by the majority of the player base. and even someone like myself who doesnt like pvp enjoyed it at first, but now i just look at arena and wish 1 of 2 things. either arena comes back or hourglass goes the same way and they remove it. though 100% commendations is impossible so ive given up on hoping sot would be a game that could be 100% between arena achievements being stuck in progress if you have them and never completed as well as 5 shrouded ghosts... i dont have a single kill and my friend has 1 kill out of over 1000 megs. he doesnt know the actual count due to the captaincy deletion of past progress which had an overall meg kill counter but he was at like 600+ before that update

no longer adding cosmetic rewards for the og players who have unlocked every new leader board cosmetic every season, or had been maxed out on insiders for a year... abandoning the people who have put in more time than the others because they are the most loyal players but also the extreme minority. this game isnt for OG players any more its for the revolving door of new players because the OG players (most of them) arent buying cosmetics any more. some still do, there are whales out there im sure, every game has them. but newer players are more likely to come in and have fun with the game enough to where they dont mind dropping some money on some cosmetics before the innevitable quit.

they have a habbit of looking at data wrong. like with arena. only 3% of the players were still playing arena.... well why was that? 1.. the pirate legend grind was lame. it didnt match the achievement AND 1st place was all that mattered. so you could get 2nd place 1000 times and oh well sorry bud your still lost! haha! also having 5 commendations tiers to unlock 1 cosmetic coloration? why not have 1 color set per tier? that way there would have originally be 5 color variations to unlock via og arena. then when they did the arena update they added a new color set which required you to grind out arena ALL over again just wearing the og arena cosmetics. thats just AWFUL design..... and something they have done way too many times. so having the new color variant being locked behind a grind people had already given up on... and like the weapon commendations having to get last hit with a specific weapon like what was it 200x? that was way too much and limited your load out so if you wanted pistol kills you have to have an eye or reach for the 1st shot. blunder and cutlas would have been the easiest ones to farm but those just came with seadog levels so you didnt even have to work for that. so yea no duh people werent playing arena. the reward structure was awful. 1st place was all the mattered. imagine if the achievment for 1st place was like 50x and the commendation was "place in the top 3, 240x" wow now THAT is something i can accomplish! also the fact that they didnt realize the new "rejoin" feature killed open crews in arena... like 90% of people who dropped out of arena que did it improperly leaving their spot on the ships reserved for like 10 minutes that created an insanely terrible experience for anyone trying to open crew arena... and an amazing experience for anyone fighting against those crews full of ghosted slots

i think thats the big issue. the additions they are adding they are adding for the short term players because the game is such a revolving player base of old players coming back for a week or 2 and new players only coming in for a few months to never return. polish only matters for those who stick around for the long haul and we are the minority.

@thamb0
Cheating in Arena was never as bad (Mostly Closet ESP Users) as it is today.
Cheating really start to ramp up when Arena was closed, players lost what they loved about SoT, didn't care for the other half of the game anymore, and turned to cheats.
Hourglass was also a massive moment in cheating history.
And sadly today cheating has gotten worse...

And yeah the arena commendations where a pain, I hated having to wear certain cosmetic just to advance to the next.

@KeylessWord4029
Also for the 10,0000th time, it was 2% of playtime spent in Arena NOT 2% of the player base that played it in total.
It's a very skewed stat that fools a lot of people till this day that RARE purposely nit picked.
A 15 minute Arena Game brings down the average play time severely compared to an adventure session that could last a few hours (Back before you could smack out a fortress and hop off with some progress)
Granted I don't think it Matters as much weather it was 2% of playerbase vs playtime, it was low.

@thamb0
Look up Broadsidedev on twitter/X, trying to recreate a game inspired from the Arena (With more features)
Arena will most likely never make a comeback ever, the player base has been at an all time low according to steam charts.

• if they mentioned server upkeep as also a reason to remove Arena, then it makes no Sense to bring it back with even fewer active players.