At this point, I seriously doubt that Sea of Thieves can be saved.
It's not a content issue, it's a production/priority issue that Rare is clearly not seeing.
Besides the fact that gameplay features are slim and that every patch content is thinner, what is obvious is that the game still has no purpose except to let players kind of role play and let the randomness do it's thing.
I like the concept of letting players create their own story and have fun, but the reality is that SoT still doesn't have the necessary depth to let players do so.
Today the overall goal is shady and lost. The game does not know where it's going.
Another fact is that Rare is obviously very focused on player feedback and I think that this is a terrible choice. Blindly listening to a community made of player that have no understanding when it comes to game developpement is a VERY bad decision.
No matter how consistent they can be between their updates.. it will still feel empty patches after empty patches. There are little to no link/continuity between all those updates and at the end.. it looks like a big pile of incoherent content.
The simple fact that they released a megalodon as a 1st update shows how desperate they were and how urgent it was for them to calm down the community. Releasing a random threat as a first patch was a bad idea, especially after launch, when the game needed vital in depth gameplay mechanics. Today, the meg is useless. it's secondary as hell.. nobody cares about it anymore.
The Cursed Cannon balls are an even bigger deception. It's overpowered and can be found anywhere in the world (therefore contradicting the original lore!) Adding such an overpowered element is vastly downgrading the sail/battle experience making it unbalanced and resuming itself to "who is going to land the first Cursed Cannonballs wins". It's sad to see so much great work thrown away after 3 years of hardwork on the sailing and battle experience (And many more i'm sure)
Sorry guys, introducing CCs was a poor idea.
The new barrel system adds another layer of "what is going on with these devs??"
Once again ruining the fps/pvp experience. I don't think that this abomination was needed to introduce new item types in the game, it just doesn't makes sense. The forum is full of great ideas for this concern. Many valid point were given and i'm sure we all know that a solution can be easily found.
The game population is almost out today, the player base is so low compared to what it was 1 month ago. At this pace, I give SoT 1 more year to catch up, or it's going to literraly die. There are many companies out there pushing the boundaries while Rare is still running with a 10 year old game dev model that can't make it up in modern times...
The quest system should be a lot more expanded, with a better usage of all the game assests,, a better continuity between all the clues/paintings in the game, caves, riddles, traps, puzzles and so much more therefore completely elevating quests to a more unexpected, longer, interesting and challenging way. Using a procedural tech to somehow never have twice the EXACT same riddle or chain of events... THIS should be the basics of Sea of Thieves... But no.
Rare, you don't need to focus on new things when the potential of your foundations have to be exploited first!