Good afternoon to all of you. I'm sure most of us can agree that Sea Of Thieves has a huge content problem, and I'd like to make a short post outlining the problems with content we have.
For context, I've been playing/grinding this game on and off since release and I always think it's had it's issues but I feel like the game is going nowhere fast, and the content we're getting is regurgitated and even lazy at times.
Enemies
Skeletons
My issue with the skeletons is that they're overused and usually quite in the way. The game thinks that spawning 5, 6-hit skeletons on you the second you dig up a chest makes it difficult. But it's genuinely quite annoying. You don't need skeletons on every dig spot. It gets annoying and tedious after 2 digs. Back to the "overused" thing. I find it quite boring that skeletons are the only real enemy you'll find on an island (excluding other players). Sure you've got, well... snakes. But eventually fighting nothing but skeletons gets tedious. Adding more variants of skeletons (shadow, golden, seaweed) doesn't fix this as they just become quite underwhelming overtime. Imagine another game, like doom for example, spawning nothing on you but the basic soldier enemy for the entirety of the game. It loses it's entertainment value really quickly. My suggestion for fixing this problem is to just move away from skeletons and add an entirely new group of enemies to the game together. For example, lost souls from the ferry of the damned, maybe an aggressive animal, island tribes and so on. I have thoughts on ashen winds but that's for later...
On the waves
It's the same experience on the waves. It's the same couple of enemies with the occasional player crew. The kraken is way too easy on a sloop now to the point where the boss fight has no real merit or thrill to it anymore and most players can handle a meg or a skull ship easily. The point is, the same pool of 3 enemies occasionally spawning on you gets incredibly boring really quickly, (unless you count the different colour megs - which I don't). The only meg worth fighting at this point is the shrouded ghost - which, I won't lie, looking for and finding the shrouded ghost was one of my best experiences with the game. The underlying point is that the enemies on the waves get boring, fast. After you kill the kraken once, kill a couple different colour megs then give up on the ghost, and kill a skull ship or two, that part of the game doesn't change. Its difficulty doesn't scale up, unless you have a bigger boat, and it just becomes shooting cannons at a wiggly hitbox after 2-3 encounters of the same enemy.
Side note: I'd also recommend removing the maiden voyage or at least the segment that spoils the main 3 enemies you'll find on the waves. Knowing they exist in the game and having to find them is what makes it fun. Not having them waved in front of you.
Ocean Crawler?
When the ocean crawler set was released with the kraken set I thought it would be coming to the game at some point in the future. I think adding the ocean crawler or any sort of other bosses you can imagine to make that pool of enemies larger would be the fix to it. Because, if you know what makes krakens spawn (world events ending), chances are you'll only encounter the odd meg or occasional skull ship. The enemy pool is way too small and needs to expand. You could do this by adding the ocean crawler, adding a bird boss of some sort or anything else I'm just spit balling here.
I'm not saying to make the boss spawn rate higher, I like it as it is now and I'd only increase it by a little if at all. But to have the amount of bosses that can spawn to be larger. So you aren't fighting the same 2-3 enemies when you're on the waves.
Ashen winds "content"
When a game adds content, I usually split it into 2 things. "Soft Content" and "Hard Content". Hard content is content that directly affects gameplay, adds new mechanics to the game, changes the gameplay experience, etc. Soft content is usually an optional experience, sidelined away from the main game or usually put in your way as an annoyance just so you remember it exists. I think you know what I'm gonna say about Ashen Winds... Flameheart, his fleet and his captains are all optional, annoying and in the way. It is an attempt to tackle the enemy on islands problem mentioned above but a poor one. Most players will steer clear of flameheart and his fleet and the massive, red, sky tornadoes because it's the same experience after 2 attempts. They're easily avoidable and are just there as an optional extra for players who want a challenge. Which is cool n all. But, as mentioned above, fighting flameheart once is enough and all you'll get from the experience. The flamethrower skull is cool n all but it instantly comes with the crutch of encouraging players not to use it with the commendations and it will usually end up getting you killed if used in PvP situations.
"Bosses"
I haven't forgotten about the skeleton lords. I remember when I first fought Briggsy and she launched me miles off into the ocean off of Crooked Masts it was genuinely a fun experience. Figuring out her moves, taking her skull, etc was a fun and, crucially new piece of gameplay for me to enjoy. Now. Take everything about that fight and recycle, reuse and regurgitate it for every single "skeleton lord" fight. Then you have Graymarrow and the Gold Hoarder. Each boss has 3 main attacks, 1. teleport, 2. Slam and 3. Summon sighs more skeletons. Sitting there shooting Graymarrow with guns and ships cannons for 3 in game days really did it for me and just made the entire thing seem pointless and by the time my crew and I got to shores of gold we weren't in the mood to fight the final boss, the poster boy. Why? Because we knew what his fight would be before getting into it. We knew his moves, we knew the room we'd be fighting him in thanks to poster material and we knew what he looked like. (Also I'm just gonna mention that the price for his skull was way too low and left a bad taste in my mouth after the whole ordeal).
Tall Tales and The New Vaults
Out of the shores of gold tall tales, 2 are fun to play. Cursed rogue and the art of the trickster. To mention, the actual shores of gold was pretty disappointing. I obviously wasn't expecting shores made out of gold but I was expecting something more than what we got. And the achievement where you have to play the tall tale 5 times is just draining to get. Either way, they took everything fun about the tall tales and ripped it into the new ancient vaults update. The thing that made tall tales fun to play is that they were new. Following cursed compasses, entering ancient vaults and exploring trap ridden caves are what made them great. I was quite disappointed when I saw the vault idea be reused over and over again in tall tales and the new vault update, as I felt it was quite a breath of fresh air and it was a shame to see it be reused to the extent that it was. Either way they all followed a formula. Go to island, dig up miscellaneous chest, go to vault, shroudbreaker stone yay. They all got boring but were still a fun experience overall. Ignoring the finale. It was a shame to see them be introduced to the main game as they were because it stripped them of their originality and made the tall tales even more unplayable.
Still no point in Pirate Legend
This has been said enough but to summarise. Pirate legend is a cosmetic role. It's a status symbol more than anything. Athena voyages are just more of the same stuff reused and recycled into one big voyage for you to hate. The main athena voyage is practically useless now that thieves haven runs exist and the fact you can get the ghost set and athenas voyager before pirate legend defeats the purpose of the grind. Cheers.
Quests
Gold hoarders missions are annoying and can even ruin the experience for new players if they get an island like plunder valley or old faithfull isle. The riddles can often be hard to find and overstretch the attention span of the player to the point where they start to get bored. By the time you get round to doing an order of souls mission all the skeleton fighting has been drained from your being, but the fleets are a step in the right direction. Even if they eliminate the point in flameheart. Merchant cargo runs are quick and easy money and a good way to get rep but the animal missions are long, tedious and repetitive. Maybe go into adding an aggressive animal (as suggested above) as a way to counteract this. As something should be trying to stop you from catching passive animals. Just not skeletons. We've had our fill of skeletons now. One of the main complaints I see is about how you can't open chests (and yes, I don't see collectors chests as an answer to this problem) and how you can't do anything with skulls. As to the first, I don't mind the chest thing personally but I do get the worldbreaking argument to it. As for the "skull enchantment" idea, I like sea of thieves because everyone starts off with the same equipment and it's down to the players to outsmart and outthink eachother. I think having a special sword could massively imbalance the game if implemented wrong so I'd be careful in how it is done, if at all. Rare could ignore these problems as they aren't big or potent in the game today.
To summarise
The main point of this has been to highlight how the game stays fresh as long as the content does. And recycling and reusing the same content over and over isn't the fix for it. Examples of this being Tall tales, megs, the worst victim of this, skeletons, etc. Rare should strive for new bosses, enemies and quests which are all different from another. Otherwise the game becomes more of the same stuff. Obviously not every quest can be different but if you have a list of possibly 5 events that can happen in a gold hoarders quest (to start with) and 3 different spots they can happen in you can get 15 different quests. Which is actually a lot. There are low chances you'll get the exact same quest which at least reduces the cycle of repeating content.
The reason for me writing this is because I'd like to see Rare and one of my favourite games improve. Feel free to leave any other suggestions or feedback below and I'll try and respond to it all!
