Sea of thieves is constantly changing, however updates seem to be creating more trouble then solution recently, we've had great QOL updates like the ship barrels, chests, red sea and some other changes, however the true content updates have been clearly lacking bug testing and performance optimizations, this becomes clear with the latest update, that had 75% of its content removed prior to, and during launch (no mimic darts, crouch removed, no traps, no hanging on the border of ships) and most if not all of them, due to game breaking bugs and performance issues, now, i'm not here to curse any rare worker for their mistakes or decisions, I'm here to give suggestions on how to fix them, so let's get right into it:
--- Updates and Insider Program ---
For a while now we had the insiders program, an exclusive server on which players can get early access to features before they are launched, however there's a big issue with this, and its the non disclosure agreement, and the way its hard to get into the test servers, everyone that knows what insider is, knows its part of the problem.
There are badly intentioned people that don't report bugs found for them to abuse when the features get released, others don't bother on giving feedback and just stay afk to farm the exclusive cosmetics and rewards.
How can we fix insiders?
- Remove non disclosure agreement (if you will add something to test server, announce it, and give players freedom to test it, no one cares about spoilers if you release good content)
- Change how insider rewards work (reward players for giving feedback instead of based on time logged in, with surveys when logging out, and rewarding exclusive rewards for finding bugs)
- Make test servers easy to access (allow players to hop into the test server without having to agree to some weird nda contract, and easy to find, like a link on youtube videos or in-game button)
- Please, Take your time (a bad first impression is much worse then a delayed update, if issues are found before release, fix them before introducing them to the game, like with the traps, but without removing features after update due to late-discovered bugs)
With this Rare will have more data before updates get released, and consequently will have more time to address the issues found.
--- Live Service (Cosmetics) ---
As you all know, Sea of Thieves is a Live Service Game, which means it needs constant feeding of content, for both engagement and monetization, however there are some issues with the model rare is following for content updates, delivering new ship sets, tools, weapons, emotes but only a small percentage of these cosmetics see the light of a player's credit card, and even less attract new players into the game.
Most successful live service games are free games, but being paid only limits the entrance of new players, the issue is on keeping players engaged, part of this relates to the cosmetics.
The most recent "cosmetic success" that we had were the pvp curses, because they were different, fresh, new, in contrast from the same dirty, rusty, boring sets that come with every update, but they are hard to get, and with lack of players they become harder to get everyday.
How can we fix cosmetics?
- Quality over Quantity (stop releasing the same low-contrast sets every update, and focus on making new, exciting content, what about a splashtail sword instead of a rusty spatula? fun at least lol)
- Change pirate emporium (current emporium is confusing to browse, the header menu doesn't even fit the screen, and its hard to find cosmetics, please just let us filter the cosmetics by type, like having a "discover" tab for new bundles or special offers, maybe weekly rotating discounts, and a regular browse function to find the cosmetics you want, instead of three buttons that take the whole screen.)
- Battle Pass needs more love (give it themes accordingly to the seasons, like what you did on this one with the ninja outfits, but make the experience better, i got 37 levels and didn't even notice i got anything at all, the feeling of claiming rewards is important for regular players to pay attention to features like a battle pass, also the "paid" plunder pass only gives some money back and a few cosmetics, you should give more cosmetics and not give a bunch of nothing, this needs to be reworked completely, take everything to the paid pass, give for free some minor cosmetics and a little bit of ancient coins every 8 levels or something, no one cares about gold, but looking at the empty bottom "paid" rewards it feels like the free one gives more stuff and that's bad for sales.)
- Add new stuff (innovate, add ship trails when max speed on wind, death animations, kill animations "finishers", get some fresh ideas out there! learn from other games!)
--- Quality of Life Changes ---
Aside from bugs and other issues, we have the quality of life changes, let's go straight to the suggestions here:
- Remove the auto-playing ads when launching the game (no one wants to watch an 144p trailer of the season in-game)
- Remove pop ups (do i need to say why?)
- Rework game UI (navigation just like mentioned above for the pirate emporium is a issue for browsing commendations, checking the pass progress and quests/events, will update this post with ideas for those later, also i can count the pixels on all the menus, can you fix these please?)
- Fix Grapple Gun ( Increase range, allow for crew to use it on any surface of their own ship or allied ships, and to use it anywhere on other ships hull/deck as long as they haven't launched themselves from a cannon, the vertical movement you get after landing is not enough to land most times, and removing the weapon box interaction for boarders already fixes the balancing issues this would bring..)
- Knife change (knives are fun, but don't offer much practical use, i suggest being able to use knife when crouching and give bonus damage when doing so, like a surprise attack, but with a cooldown so people dont crouch and insta kill someone with a knife right after crouching, also suggest knives break the defense of a sword when blocked, if they don't block knives already add that too)
- Merfruit buff (the current duration is too low, being useless for hiding on islands, and taking a food slot is bad, change it for other slot like the throwables one, and increase rarity and duration to around 20 minutes, disabled on death or by splashing water on yourself with a bucket)
- Rework reapers hideout (every single outpost ingame now has harpoons and a quick sell spot for capitained ships, meanwhile reapers have a single place to sell loot, and still need to take everything inside by hand, flameheart was ressucitated, his ship is frightening the seas but its capitain is living in a rusty tent with no ship dock? come one guys)
- Ship Jail - (Its useless, if a player from a server you invited, or from open crew is being annoying, having him stuck is useless, he still takes a slot, just turn it into a kick vote, and maybe keep the jail there allowing the crew to interact with it to open/close for role playing if you want)
- Hunter's call (an abandoned faction no one remembers, i wonder why, add quests on the seaposts, for hunting kraken, megalodons or just quests for hunting shark where many shark will spawn in a part of the ocean, maybe with a bigger one like a white shark, or quests for hunting mermaids, just make something useful from it aside from a last stop to sell meat, maybe special "monsters" like variations from the big crab one on islands, like red name for capitain skeletons and stuff, but mermaid/sea monster edition)
- Row Boats (allow us to buy them on port merick or other outposts, make it capitained ship exclusive if you want, theyre useful, and too rare)
- Rework shores of gold/devils roar (both regions are not visited by most players, the first one is only visited on tall tales or used for exploits to run from danger, we have safer seas now, we don't need to have 20% of the map as an safe zone, the second one is just annoying and doesn't have any merit to visit aside from tall tales, and a small buff of value to ashen items, people suggest ice regions and i agree it would be better too, volcanoes cool down after a while you know?)
- blow dart explosion to lit cannon fuse (as we all know, cannons only fire after the fuse is lit, would make sense for it to be lit with the explosion of the darts, also adds utility for pvp and maybe some fun interactions for when you want to launch fireworks on sync at the end of a long adventure)
- Fix supplies merchants/captaincy (players can buy multiple times if timed correctly, this only shows how supplies are both necessary and boring to get, with the on-demand pvp update you introduced coconuts to come with the ship spawn, i think you should tweak this a bit, or make the purchase of supplies more expensive and give more supplies scaling with player count/ship size so people don't have to abuse a bug to get a few supplies to start their adventure)
- Flare utility (i thought about this for a while, why not give the flares some practical use? what about a new flare that reveals enemy players below it? would come in handy with the new season so sneaky pirates watch their surroundings, also thought about flares attracting megas like on the event we had a while ago, to come with the hunters call update)
For now i think thats all, i will be updating this post but this is all that i have in mind for the present.
Of course these are all my personal opinions on these topics and i want to know what the rest if you guys think, do you agree? do you disagree? comment below :)
