@captain-surgee said in Current direction of SoT:

I hate that events are timed. Don't care I can get commendations for finding thrones if I can't get cash from it. Adding quests that disappear after 2 weeks is a waste of resources IMO. If you add something, leave it in the game or it will stay empty forever. No one goes around and tell stories of a great search for a throne that doesn't matter anymore. People wanna do it themselves, not hear stories. What's the point if making content that very few will experience? So in short, I like the updates but quests should stay active forever and with that give us more ways to earn things.

This is basically the reason I quit playing. The game already has no content. Stop trying to force me to log or miss out. Same stupid concept for all the mixer/ E3 content.

I hate that events are timed. Don't care I can get commendations for finding thrones if I can't get cash from it. Adding quests that disappear after 2 weeks is a waste of resources IMO. If you add something, leave it in the game or it will stay empty forever. No one goes around and tell stories of a great search for a throne that doesn't matter anymore. People wanna do it themselves, not hear stories. What's the point if making content that very few will experience? So in short, I like the updates but quests should stay active forever and with that give us more ways to earn things.

@removeyourpants For me, I've been in love with the game since I first tried the alpha last December. That said, there are loads of things I'd love to see added:

1.) Ways to help players stand out on their server...

If we want player skills/habits/behaviors/quirks to be the main social thrust behind recognition among the randoms you find on servers, we need ways to emphasize and communicate such things to everyone on said server. This could be accomplished using a notice board at each Outpost.

Example 1; if I'm the type who has a habit of betraying those I form an alliance with (formal or otherwise), it'd be col to have this info posted in a lore-friendly manner at an Outpost using a BEWARE! styled poster.

Example 2; if I am the type who is always out to sink sloops I could maybe be referenced on a Wanted Poster in an Outpost and branded as a Sloop Sinker or something.

Example 3; if I am a Pirate Legend who enjoys helping others by plopping down Athena Voyages, or by giving away chests to friendly passer-bys, then a notice showing what my ship looks like and where it was last spotted could be real neat.

Example 4; Classifieds section of notice board where we can tell other like minded pirates what we are looking for in a crew/alliance akin to how Looking for Group works already. Let players post their own Alliance proffers on these notice boards. Something like 'Sign up for the [Alliance name here] and help us seek out OoS quests!', etc.

2.) More voyage variety...
OoS: (1) Grave robbing missions where you must find and dig up graves of the deceased to basically trigger the spawning of a bounty skull fight. (2) Skeleton ship voyages once Cursed Sails runs its course. (3) Quests where you have to find cannonballs and perform a ritual to curse them, then bring them back to the OoS rep. Or just find some cursed cannonballs and sell them to the rep.

Gold Hoarders: (1) Have some riddles require us to figure out the starting island instead of just telling us. (2) Have some maps be required to be held up to light or plunged into water (or both!) before we can see all the X's, otherwise only show some. Hell, maybe even some can require us to puke on it! (3) For other maps, instead of being a traditional map they are sketches that show a drawing of where the treasure can be found (big pay off type treasure; high level voyage). This is yet another way to map players use their eyes and look around to find stuff on islands. Some of these might even be sequenced, so you have to figure out what the island is first and then ya get another map once ya get there showing a sketch of where it is.

Merchants: (1) add in voyages where you are given a trade route and must navigate it (with storms, Megs, Kraken, other ships) to deliver your cargo; veer too far from the route and your payoff is diminished; faster you complete the delivery the more ya get paid. (2) you are given a trade route and told that another ship was supposed to follow the route and make a deliver but failed to show up. Your task is to find the sunken ship and its cargo (within sunken ship OR washed up on nearby shores) and make the delivery. (3) You are given a series of destinations (other Outposts) and must sail to them under a certain time limit. The goal here is to map out new trade routes. You would have to deliver a specific item to each Outpost's Merchant representative and earn bonus payoff based on your time. (4) players can manually choose to take on resource missions where they can choose to deliver cannonballs/bananas/planks to other Outposts. Instead of this being a random voyage for the Merchants, it should be something we can deliberately choose to do.

Other quest givers...maybe a Monster Hunter guild where you have to go seek out, play music to spawn, then take out a Kraken/Meg/Giant Crab/Sea Serpent/Moby D**k/Giant Boar/Bird/Bat/etc boss. You get trophies for your efforts that could be hung on your ship as custom decor once we get full ship customization. You'd have to actually grab these items though, including something that could be used as proof of your success to return to the quest giver.

Additionally, maybe an Explorer's Guild too. This guild might give you tasks that specifically flesh out the lore of SoT. (1) You go in search of some lost artifact or whatnot and must return it. The voyages could include riddles, vague references to rumors, require you to wear certain outfits for NPC's to talk and give you more info, or require you and your crew to overcome environmental obstacles (shoot yourself using cannon to top of a peak, then everyone has to play a specific song in harmony to open some door, then maybe you use boarding axe to or torch to remove planks or burn some foliage such that a path opens up, use gun powder barrel to blow open a cracked rock, etc). You'd search for journals or have to interpret cave paintings or whatnot. (2) Maybe for another voyage type here, you would have to find cave paintings and catalogue them and when you return to the quest giver they interpret and explain the lore behind that specific island based on the cave paintings you found. Perhaps you sketch them while doing the quest.

NPC's at Outposts...You could use a pick axe (detailed a bit later in the post) to essentially 'mine' such materials for sale to the traders at the Outposts (not Merchants, but the weapon smiths or shipwrights). Mine valuable gems from caves to help barmaids bedazzle their necklaces. Could also be helpful for cracking open secret passages for Explorers quests. For the clothing traders, maybe you find special cloth on sunken ships (not exotic silks, but simpler/cheaper stuff that can be ripped from sails or from decor in captain's cabin or wherever).

3.) Player Bounties...
This would let players or crews make formal offers to those willing to take out a rival crew and even individual pirates. You'd go to an Outpost, find the Bounty Dealer, and put up some $$$ at which point the bounty is posted on the notice board at all the Outposts. There would be two bounties; one for the crew's ship you are targeting and one for the highest level pirate among the crew. Take out the highest level pirate among the crew and he drops a token of some sort that you can collect and bring back to bounty dealer for your reward. Further, if you sink their ship you can use a boarding axe to pry off their plaque with the ship's name on it to bring it back to the bounty dealer as well. If you post a bounty for others, you are notified when someone takes it up. Feel like fighting? Post one on your own ship! :p

Also, in terms of presentation, it'd be cool for the the bounty you take up to be presented akin to voyages with the cinematic black bars on top/bottom and whatnot, dramatic music included. When you get close to the target ship, similar black bars pop up alerting you to that fact and it shows the ship's name at the top and the crews' names at the bottom and highlights the pirate target. When taking up a bounty, you are given a scroll with an image of the ship on it as well as one showing what the target pirate looks like and maybe which sector of the world they were last spotted in (the Wilds, Shores 'a Plenty, etc).

4.) More social Outposts...
Let the taverns specifically be social hubs with more to do, like play cards (cards adorned with the images of player pirates ranked by their level...i.e. the Ace of Spades is some level 8 Athena Pirate Legend, the 2 of Diamonds is some random scrub, etc). Or let them go out back and try their hand at a marksmanship challenge. Or let them play dice inside. Or let them melee fight one on one upstairs. Or let them place wagers on the outcomes of such games. Maybe even let the winners work towards commendations that unlock more doublumes. You could integrate this using the Bilge Rats pretty readily, I'd imagine. Make the taverns themselves safe zones (just taverns, not the Outposts in general). To encourage ppl to show up, maybe add in a few more instruments that can only be played in the tavern (temporarily, later on they can be added to everyone's inventory). Oh, and maybe an arm wrestling mini game.

5.) More weapons and more items to use as tools...
Boarding Axe to let us tear planks off of holes in ships to make em leak again. It could also be used as a melee weapon.

Sling shot for an additional ranged weapon. Might be helpful if doing environmental puzzles for Explorers Guild. Stones used for 'ammo' can be retrieved from targets.

Throwing knives...similar to above, knives can be retrieved from targets.

Spears, clubs and other blades to add more flavor to the melee combat. Add flourish moves too that require players to seek out combat training from an expert at an Outpost or on some remote island.

Hand to hand melee options would be cool too. Like flourishes, you'd have to see out the trainer to learn these.

Pick axe as another melee weapon. It could be used to crack open areas in caves that are rich in certain minerals or something valuable.

A torch with flint so we can light it. Could be cool to let us light sails on fire too for other ships perhaps too.

More instruments like a banjo, a kazoo...maybe as a pair [see what I did there RARE? You're welcome!] , spoons, a harmonica, a flute, and a fiddle.

6.) Some prep stuff to do while sailing...
This is something they said they are already looking at, but letting us harvest shark meat, crab meat, various fruits, etc. and utilizing the cooking station on Galleons would be cool. Let us maybe curse cannonballs or something if we have the right resources. Cooked food could do more to boost health and restore us from being poisoned.

7.) Ship customization...
Let us decorate our ships, customize cannon designs, use a livery editor to use already-in-game imagery to construct logos for the ships, adjust colors as we see fit so long as we buy enough dye, add more lanterns to place on the deck, re-arrange some stuff like resources barrels or change decor/trophies in captain's cabin. Let us name the ship and have is displayed on plaque above captain's cabin door. Let us have a mirror to try on clothes or vanity items both in their corresponding shops and also in the captain's cabin.

8.) More wildlife and more fruits...
Pineapples, pomegranates, etc. More shark types (hammerheads maybe?), stingrays, j*******h, other types of fish for fishing. Wild boars, monkees. Enemy mermaids(!!!).

9.) Other areas to explore as SoT expands...
Specifically, some way to open up deep underwater sectors where Mermaids live and explore their colonies in search of cool treasure. Also, a Sea of the Damned where ghost ships materialize out of thin air and you need a special lantern or a special song to be played to make them vulnerable to attack.

10.) Other...
Let us use left trigger to lift our tankards high and propose a toast to the crew. Further, if we drink too much, render the pirates of the opposite sex as more traditionally attractive. Maybe make our characters f**t when drunk too, lol. Potions and potion shops (cure poison, old age, youthful potion, one that lets you see the sparkle of trinkets on shores super far away, etc. Also, move the vanity chests to be replaced by a vanity barber shop on Outposts. You could let us rework our pirate's body/looks there too.

Game has the bones of something brilliant, but it's still just that - bones. It sounds like by the end of 2018 the game will be something that feels more feature-complete, but all that does is beg the question of why it "released" in March at full triple-A price (something Rare probably had no direct control over). I'd have made the game $40, and put it in the Game Preview program until early 2019.

• The first thing the game needs badly, is an overhaul of the core "voyage" mechanic - including more types. It's baffling to me that there's still no faction giving out bounty voyages to hunt down player ships, and thus giving people an incentive to engage in the ship combat.

• How are the NPCs in this game not voiced?! Voiced dialogue goes a long way to giving your personalities some actual personality. As would having them move around the outpost (or at least their own shops), instead of being nailed to the floor.

• Versatile ship and player loadouts. Maybe you want a giant ram on the front of your boat. Maybe you want two fore and two aft cannons, instead of broadside ones. Maybe you want two cannons and two mounted harpoon guns, to "hold" an opposing boat for boarding. Maybe you want some defensive iron plating on the sides of your ship, at the expense of some offensive capability. Maybe you want to fire chainshot that hampers speed and/or rudder control, over straight damage.

As a player, maybe you want a falchion instead of a cutlass. Maybe you want a spear instead of a sword at all. Maybe you want a set of three smaller flintlock pistols all loaded on belts (like the player character in AC Black Flag could have), but they individually do less damage than the regular single pistol and all share the same ammo pool. Maybe you want an axe, that does less damage than a sword but can be used for boarding.

Imagine hunting down a player ship that has plating on it and a giant ram on the front - a lumbering, heavy beast with no inherent attacking options besides hitting ships head on or boarding them, but can also take a walloping before finally going down. These kinds of customizations would breathe so much life into encounters, because every loadout would require different tactics.

• I'd also love to see an enhancement to the ship damage models, that lets them break in half if you damage them in the right places (especially the galleon). And the kraken should be able to do this when it grabs ships, unless you fight it off quickly.

• Man'o'War. Six player ship. Not very nimble and a giant target, but also armed to the nines.

@hailhypnotoad1 lol thanks ya shared among crew would be cool. Make it like a 1% chance to drop. To be fair this wasnt my idea, but it is a good one to pass along.

@messiahxxxx OooOOoO i like the idea of RnG cosmetic items! That would add another reason to grind having that hope you could stumble across exclusive cosmetics. Maybe shared via the crew your with and not just the founder. Come on people give this man an upvote.

@removeyourpants im happy(pl/a9), alliances are questionable, but we ll see how that plays out. Personally i would like to see super rare cosmetics in cursed chests or something.

@lil-fokker You must be really fun at parties...

Can't really say. I and those I care to game with have stopped playing over a month ago.
The updates and additions haven't been of anything meaningful to the game... especially since the content is introduced and then stripped to its minor component.

The whole game amounts to this....."who cares?"

Sink your ship...."who cares?" You get another.
Lost your life...."who cares?" You get another.
Lost your treasure...."who cares?" There's more.
Miss an event...."who cares?" They amount to nothing anyhow.
Not pirate legend yet...."who cares?" It's meaningless.
Achieved pirate legend...."who cares?" You're still the same as e'rbody else...your clothing glows...yay!

I can only sum the experience up as a giant sandbox of "who cares?"

Really wish it wasn't the case and I hope that CS will do something for the life of the game...but...like Meg, it'll only last a couple of weeks and then become nothing more than a cosmetic to the seas.

@hailhypnotoad1

Seems fine to me.

@v**a-hombre Speaking of trajectory....fix the cannon glitch! haha that's my number 1 bug fix i want them to address.

@removeyourpants Happy more stuff is on the way. Unhappy with the sea of friends direction Rare seems really hellbent on. Mostly hoping legends have a reason to turn the game on more than once a week with this dlc. If we don't by or before forsaken shores I think this games in big trouble.

Long post incoming...

Generally speaking, I think it's good. As others have said, the game could have used more time in development, but I think they've done a good job of listening to feedback. The addition of skeleton ships and a new ship, which were not planned prior to feedback is promising.

I haven't played a whole lot lately. Mostly because my friends who I was playing with haven't been playing. I expect they'll hop back in for Cursed Sails.

Bilge Rat Adventures
I played through the skeleton thrones and gunpowder event, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I liked the idea of the mermaid statues on paper, but that particular event turned out to be underwhelming for me. Not a big deal.

It does, however, feel like these are side activities that should be available permanently (I know they still exist in the world, but you can't earn doubloons). I'm not sure what would feel more appropriate as bi-weekly events. I realize this is vague "feedback", so take it with a grain of salt.

Voyages
Variety is the biggest issue here. Kudos to Rare for incorporating reputation gains into the Bilge Rat Adventures.

Gold Hoarders: Riddles need serious improvements. This is unfortunate because I genuinely enjoy the riddle voyages, but they just aren't worth the time invested. Treasure maps are fine.

Merchant Alliance: Needs to be reworked. This is probably the one area where I feel that Rare has seemingly ignored the player-base (I'm sure they've gathered data on it and had discussions about it).

Order of Souls: Generally fine, and was particularly fun when the gunpowder skeleton frequency was turned up.

Lore
We want more in-game lore, and not JUST centered around the campaigns. They've mentioned this a few times in videos and such, so hopefully we see this improve.

A longer, multi-session quest that is available every 5-10 reputation levels with each faction would be awesome. Let us learn more about the trading companies and characters that way.

PvP
This is probably the trickiest part. The game will suffer if everyone is just bloodthirsty. The game will suffer if no one engages in PvP.

Right now, there is no real risk/reward for PvP. Generally speaking, a crew with a treasure haul worth taking is going to have no interest in engaging in PvP. A crew that sets out looking for PvP is, in most cases, going to off-load any treasure they have before looking for a fight.

Honestly, I don't know what the fix is here. Maybe something like a multiplier for treasure values on your ship when you kill/sink other crews? Bloodsoaked Captains Chest, etc.

Cosmetics
Seeing steady improvements here. Keep them coming. Still waiting for more customization of the ship outside of sails/hull/figurehead. I expect that was part of ship captaincy which got put on the back burner, in which case, I wouldn't have it anyway since I'm not legend.

World
The world still feels fairly empty. I'd like to see more sea life. I'd like to have more reason to explore islands and reefs (this kind of goes back to the lore section). More treasure spawns on islands.

Each region feels unique in aesthetic only. Forsaken Shores is supposed to be very different, both visually and from a gameplay perspective, which is something I would like to see extended to all regions eventually.

AI and NPC's
AI could be improved. It's not terrible, it's just not all that convincing.

I would love to have voice acting to go along with all the dialogue from NPC's.

I would also like more enemy variety. Rare seems aware of this, and noted that we will eventually be seeing other enemies (Merfolk, no doubt).

Mechanics
Combat feels a little clunky. This might be partly a latency issue. The fact that it takes almost a full second from the time you press attack, to the time the sword actually swings, just doesn't feel good. It would only take some minor timing/animation adjustments to greatly improve the feel IMO.

I think cursed cannonballs are going to be great for ship battles. I'm hoping that they make sinking ships without boarding more viable. As it stands, boarding a ship is almost a requirement.

The ammo situation is kind of weird. I see what they were going for, and it makes sense on paper, but all it really did was encourage most hardcore PvP players to carry 2 guns instead of a sword.

Technical
The fact that there are stability issues when there are a lot items in the world seems to point to fundamental software architecture issues.

Draw distance needs improving.

TL;DR
I realize this is a long post, and goes a little more in depth than general game direction. I enjoy the game. As others have said, the design foundation is solid, but there are a lot of things that could be improved. I think Rare is doing a good job of listening to feedback, and is generally quite good at communicating. I've been gaming for a very long time, and I can't think of many developers who have been as transparent and responsive.

@d3adst1ck
You can dial in the stick sensitivities for the elite controllers, not the stock ones though.
The problem with those is the bumpers start coming loose/falling off after a few months.

I agree the inputs on launch were not an optimal workaround, but it was the closest in achieving xplay parity I’d seen. Unfortunately it made the mouse a liability. Trying to aim with EoR was inviting carpal tunnel. Heh.

@mrgrim67686 said in Current direction of SoT:

My opinions are fairly well known.
Rare had it right with xplay then listened to PC players whining that it took forever to aim and upped their sensitivity, breaking the balance they had on launch.

{and then some stuff I mostly agree with}

Fixing the sensitivity by adding an additional slider was a usability issue and having poor sensitivity didn't do anything to provide any kind of balance, since it could just be circumvented by going into the game options anyways. Trying to make the controls terrible as some kind of balance mechanic is the dumbest option - all players on all platforms should not be inhibited by terrible controls. Instead, you should strive to make controlling your character in the game as simple as possible.

In fact, controllers should be able to fine tune their controls even more so than they currently can so that they can turn quicker at larger angles of deflection on the stick and slower adjustments with small movements (similar to custom joystick calibration back in the day). I'm surprised these kind of options aren't a standard on consoles yet.

The other stuff in your post I agree with. They haven't addressed any of the criticism with the majority of the base game. I guess Forsaken Shores is supposed to touch on the voyage system but we have to wait for details on that to see if it will make any difference at all.

What is kind of weird though is that the last few content updates seem to contain mostly user suggested content that goes completely against their original premise (formal server wide player alliances, all ships on the sea are players - now there are AI ships, etc...). This is fine if they pushed back most of their post release ideas into the Forsaken Shores update providing that update targets a lot of the initial criticism that plagued the game's reviews.

You would think that stuff that was planned out before release would be ready sooner so I do kind of worry that based on the relatively low variety of voyages on release that they basically had no ideas in the pipeline and were relying on their user feedback entirely - even if it went against the original design of the game.

Honestly i feel like often our voices are not heard.

This may be because many ideas are conflicting or that they are jyst planned WAY down the line. Either way I've seen countless great ideas on the forums that could have been a better use of dev time.

Brutally honest for me is that I'm waiting to see how the next update goes, if it's as shallow as the hungering deep then i might shelf sea of thieves for a few months and play no man's sky instead, come back when there have been sime more developments.
I enjoy the game but i can't help feeling that a game focused on cosmetic progression with such a limited choice of cosmetic options is somewhat of poor planning. I'm sure it will get there, is just how long.

Still, it's the journey not the destination, or so I'm told.

@mrgrim67686 Some hard truths but truths none-the-less. I have confidence that with player feedback most of these things can be fixed in the future.

I would add that I'm not a fan of cosmetics being tied to real world purchases. That's one area that I'm not so happy with Rare's direction.

@removeyourpants So, to summarise LOOSLY

Pretty much everyone is relatively happy with the game, but we just want more.

That's not bad at all to be honest. from what I've picked up personally, the majority of players who are unhappy are still happily playing the game, but wanting more. (more to do, see, interact with etc etc)

A rather small amount (less that 20 users I've seen in a Week of being highly active on these boards) are actually dissatisfied are are not currently playing, most of these appear to have legend status and are just waiting for more "legend only" content. I dont personally see this coming, as legend is a status. not a unlock. (Hell if it DOES come. ill be one very happy bunny mind you!)

@mrgrim67686 said in Current direction of SoT:

My opinions are fairly well known.
Rare had it right with xplay then listened to PC players whining that it took forever to aim and upped their sensitivity, breaking the balance they had on launch.

I can still see ships clearly off on the horizon as they are much darker than the surrounding environment, making the spyglass useless. Leave the lights on, turn them off it doesn’t matter. The ships are so black in the distance they may as well be neon.

The UI and popup messages need work. A little more transparency would be nice so it is not completely obscuring critical information (is this cannon loaded? Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see!)

The Duke clones felt rushed and reinforced the complaint that NPCs were thrown in as filler with no real purpose. ONE NPC is semidynamic, but for real with such limited options who visits the weapon shops every port call to ever see it?
The factions still have no interplay and serve only as a catalyst for fetch quests. Still. To this day.

Multiplayer options are still extremely limited and often require server hops with long load times to manage crew flows.

AI is rudimentary.

The game’s lore is sold separately from the game. Why?

I don’t know who’s idea it was to focus on selling a bunch of peripheral c**p, but pursuing these schlocky revenue streams feels like it is taking resources away from the game.

Weekly/biweekly/okay not biweekly events are largely a wash.

Almost every activity requires a huge time investment but game stability hinders those activities. Not everyone has huge chunks of time to blow just to see it flushed away. Which is a small complaint since progression and gold are largely a joke and that is a much bigger problem. After all this time though people still are not earning rep for voyage completion. This is a huge oversight which undermines the entire voyage system.

Still getting server stability issues, audio bugs, inventory bugs, and clipping issues.

Their support team is laughable and their communications to players need work. The marketing videos/endless vague commercials put out by Joe and Mike don’t cut it.

Issues like these are quickly burning people out and turning them away. This game could be so much more than it is with just a few tweaks.

I still hope to see some of these issues addressed.

ALL THAT SAID
The base is great and you can’t go wrong with the core concept.

I do like the game, regardless of how I sound above. My main issue is that so many other people do not. My complaints are all rooted in player retention issues and aggregated from several dozen people who walked away from this game and won’t be coming back. Many of who I convinced to preorder this game.

This feels like a very young and inexperienced team who perhaps bit off a bit more than they could chew, but I think they are learning. Slowly and painfully. It is coming together, but it is blatantly obvious this game needed another year of development. I don’t blame Rare for that at all and I genuinely feel bad for this young eager team who were rushed into launching the game in this state.

I mostly agree. To play devils advocate tho, I think gold and voyage progressions are meant to take a while. This is a time consuming game for a reason. If you could easily farm gold and xp to the point where it becomes too easy then the game has no longevity. Then we would complain about that.

Overall I am happy with the game. Each session plays out differently. Some are a cakewalk while others present us with obstacles no matter what we attempt to do.

I do wish they did more within the game with lore and interconnected stories. I had enjoyed exploring the islands to discover deeper mysteries and had hoped there was a larger narrative at work. It appears that direction was abandoned during development. As it is, the NPCs currently have nothing much to add. The stuff with Wanda and Merrick are a small step in the right direction.

Also, there really does need to be more to offer pirate legends for their efforts. I am not suggesting large storylines, enhanced abilities, or restricted zones. On the other hand, they should have access to things such as exclusive songs, unique ship profiles, SOMETHING compelling to inspire other players.

My opinions are fairly well known.
Rare had it right with xplay then listened to PC players whining that it took forever to aim and upped their sensitivity, breaking the balance they had on launch.

I can still see ships clearly off on the horizon as they are much darker than the surrounding environment, making the spyglass useless. Leave the lights on, turn them off it doesn’t matter. The ships are so black in the distance they may as well be neon.

The UI and popup messages need work. A little more transparency would be nice so it is not completely obscuring critical information (is this cannon loaded? Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see!)

The Duke clones felt rushed and reinforced the complaint that NPCs were thrown in as filler with no real purpose. ONE NPC is semidynamic, but for real with such limited options who visits the weapon shops every port call to ever see it?
The factions still have no interplay and serve only as a catalyst for fetch quests. Still. To this day.

Multiplayer options are still extremely limited and often require server hops with long load times to manage crew flows.

AI is rudimentary.

The game’s lore is sold separately from the game. Why?

I don’t know who’s idea it was to focus on selling a bunch of peripheral c**p, but pursuing these schlocky revenue streams feels like it is taking resources away from the game.

Weekly/biweekly/okay not biweekly events are largely a wash.

Almost every activity requires a huge time investment but game stability hinders those activities. Not everyone has huge chunks of time to blow just to see it flushed away. Which is a small complaint since progression and gold are largely a joke and that is a much bigger problem. After all this time though people still are not earning rep for voyage completion. This is a huge oversight which undermines the entire voyage system.

Still getting server stability issues, audio bugs, inventory bugs, and clipping issues.

Their support team is laughable and their communications to players need work. The marketing videos/endless vague commercials put out by Joe and Mike don’t cut it.

Issues like these are quickly burning people out and turning them away. This game could be so much more than it is with just a few tweaks.

I still hope to see some of these issues addressed.

ALL THAT SAID
The base is great and you can’t go wrong with the core concept.

I do like the game, regardless of how I sound above. My main issue is that so many other people do not. My complaints are all rooted in player retention issues and aggregated from several dozen people who walked away from this game and won’t be coming back. Many of who I convinced to preorder this game.

This feels like a very young and inexperienced team who perhaps bit off a bit more than they could chew, but I think they are learning. Slowly and painfully. It is coming together, but it is blatantly obvious this game needed another year of development. I don’t blame Rare for that at all and I genuinely feel bad for this young eager team who were rushed into launching the game in this state.

@removeyourpants Pairing up with others can be necessary to fully complete some events but I think there were better tools they could have given us to make it easier.

@xcalypt0x said in Current direction of SoT:

@removeyourpants I'm hesitant about the alliance system and a little frustrated with the rate at which content has been added (thought it would be faster) but all in all I'm very pleased with the game. I kind of thought I would stop playing once I hit legend but everyday I think about what I want to do when I get home from work and SoT is usually near the top of the list.

Yeah not too sure about the alliance stuff. I usually play with friends and can’t see myself wanting to pair up with randoms

@removeyourpants said in Current direction of SoT:

What do you think of a life boat if your ship gets sunk?

Since ships spawn with minimal stock...it should be the same as a fresh spawn, rowboat should be there. Though to be honest I never understood why we get a free boat, with stocks at all. I would rather have had to earn my boat from the start, and every time it's raised I have to slip the ferryman same coin. Some games implement it as xp debt, so you can still earn money/gold whatever but a percent goes to debt until paid..so you progress just slower. Takes the sting off a bit.

Everything outside of visually just feels rushed and incomplete, and not thought out. I really think another year of developing lore, and mechanics and a better progression system would have made a huge difference. Now it seems like they are piling on new systems to fix the incomplete ones, and hoping they eventual knit together. Using lack luster time limited cosmetics to keep people interested. after 20 versions of the bucket....you think may people will get excited for #21 lol.

Questing and lore will develop or the game will eventually die. It’s up to rare to make the right steps

Here's hoping.