@laughsmaniacaly
Sea of Thieves creates a fantastic sandbox to play in but the main concepts constituting the player interaction with the world and other players is off in my opinion.
Risk/reward and death is critized in regards to the PvP element (respawn too close with a fully stocked fresh ship etc.). Survival in this game is secondary. In some situations you might prefer to just die in order to respawn on your ship.
Progression and economy is an absolute core concept in the gameworld. In the games' own logic you might go out to "have fun", but the underlying motivation will allways be the accumulation of wealth in order to accomplish what the game has set up to be accomplished (decoration here).
Thus I am absolutely baffled to see how little content is available in the shops (colour variations of decorations costs tens of hours of gameplay to acquire) and how there is nothing else to spend your money on (like being able to buy animal cages, cannonballs, even decorations that only last for the session or a limited time period).
The price for buying new voyages is so low that it doesn't have any impact on the overall economy - 'clothes, sails and guns' is where 95% of the income is spent :)
Cooperation is limited. I've stood there next to friendly people wanting to ask them to do something together, but nothing really (besides the skelly forts) makes for a meaningful cooperatve journey or interaction. Having a player-based trading system, -bounty system or having the ability to share a single voyage with another crew for shared rewards creates basis for meaningful interaction.
Quests are repetitive, island exploration is not really intriguing (locations in themselves are, but there is nothing extraordinary there to find). Exploration is tied to exploring things on already mapped islands and thus there MUST be new things to find on them. Loads of possibilities there.
My concluding point is, that for a sandbox world to come alive it must contain intrinsic meaning. All of the things that create meaningful interaction with a game world are really shallow in Sea of Thieves - lore, faction (inter)play, survival, character development, economy - these concepts are in the game, but none of them are developed.
That was my criticism. On the other hand I highly enjoy the in-group cooperation, the sea battles and the level playing field, the sandbox itself, the atmosphere.