Like many of you on this forum, I’ve been playing Sea of Thieves for a fair bit of time. As the updates have come and gone I’ve watched the world around our pirates change. In many ways this has been for the better, but there have been some missteps as all games experience. However, in light of the Hunter’s Haul event that was just announced I think it’s particularly poignant to talk about Sea of Thieves’ update schedule in a way that is constructive so that we, the players, consistently feel like our time in the game is rewarded and want to keep returning.
We’ve gone through a few update schedules at this point, some more breakneck than others. While the monthly model the game currently uses is nice, I fear it isn’t sustainable for neither the playerbase nor the developers. Mercenary voyages have become a mainstay and largely offer the same repetitive kinds of tasks. While interesting here and there, they cannot continue to be the workhorse of future updates in their current form because there is growing player discontent (the tome chasing was a particularly insightful example once it kept repeating). One reason for this repetition (lore significance aside) is that it takes time to properly implement new features and we as players need to have things to do while these new features are tested behind the scenes. Unfortunately, because mercenary voyages follow a predictable pattern a growing number of players are expressing discontent.
So, what does one do? From what I can tell, the tools already exist:
Adjust to a bi-monthly update cadence that brings meaningful features to the game. At the same time, run weekly or bi-weekly events and release bug fixes between the big updates.
If new, meaningful features to the game take time to implement, take that time. It’s better to have a polished product at the end of the day than to have a partially finished one that was rushed out the door and then needs retail iteration because of an arbitrary deadline you set for yourself.
Meanwhile, to keep things interesting in the world you can run events similar to the Hunter’s Haul to inject variety into the game world. However, there is one thing I would like to stress regarding weekly/bi-weekly events: do not tie cosmetic rewards to their completion.
To understand why I make this distinction, let’s look at Destiny 2. This game is part of a franchise that also uses the games-as-a-service model, and those familiar with the game might remember the early days of Faction Rallies. Faction Rallies were a time-limited event where the player chose from one of three different factions in the game and carried out one or two types of repetitive tasks (if you were serious about earning the rewards) to gain standing with that faction. For collectors, the grind was intense to reach the top reward tier, and there was no small amount of hatred tied to the reward structure. Why? Because the developers tied time-limited rewards to time-intensive events that were not updates and the fear of missing out (aka FOMO) was very real, not only for players with limited gaming time but also those who were more available.
For many players, Destiny was a franchise about collecting stuff, and with a changing combat meta you never truly knew which stuff was going to suddenly end up as “the good stuff”. While certainly not the same, there is a strong parallel to Sea of Thieves here because there are many collectors and completionists in the playerbase. So, instead of tying cosmetics to a time-limited event, reward players who take part with double reputation, or double gold or X number of doubloons. Those should be enough of an incentive to change player behavior, you don’t need to take advantage of FOMO by adding a time-limited cosmetic. That pattern will ultimately be detrimental to the game’s health. In Destiny, simple weekly events helped keep the playerbase around between updates because it was something we were already capable of doing, but with a little reward to help you progress. I believe learning from what did and didn’t work for Destiny’s developer/player relationship in this context would only help Sea of Thieves.
TL;DR: Adjusting to a bi-monthly update cadence that brings meaningful features to the game while also running weekly or bi-weekly events and releasing bug fixes between the big updates would likely benefit Sea of Thieves. Events like the Hunter’s Haul are leaning in the right direction, but future expeditions would need a slight tweak regarding rewards to be effective and prevent cosmetic-based FOMO firestorms.
