PLEASE PRESERVE SEA OF THIEVES AFTER SERVERS SHUTDOWN

  • JPSkyWalker9332
    Marauder
    Insider

    Sea of thieves is a live service game nearing its 7th anniversay. We have no details on the future of this IP and work on Everwild seems to be ramping up which makes me worried for Sea Of Thieves. I am all for developers making the games they want to make and if they decide to move on from Sea Of Thieves once that 10 year plan is reached I think the game needs to be preserved. We have seen tons of server-based games just die and all your left with is the memories you made with the game. SoT is a landmark live service title and the best pirate game of all time in my opinion. This is a game that as a community we cannot let die or accept the inevitable server shutdown in a few years' time. This is also a title that's had server issues and memory issues since it was launched and per what the devs have said they have had to work miracles to free up memory to add new content to the server. They just had to reduce the frequency of the burning blade to reduce server performance. My point in all this is that eventually something has to give. Rare could decide to stop working on Sea Of Thieves in order to focus on Everwild after the 10-year plan is over. We know that Everwild will probably be a live service game as well and I can't imagine the teams want to be that stretched trying to keep both running. I don't know Rares plans, and this is just speculation but something worth thinking about.

    When the time does come to shut the servers down in the future, I really do hope they have a plan going forward to keep this experience playable past the planned content for the game. I have even thought about a separate version of sea of thieves that's rewritten to run locally without needing servers. So much of the game is ran on servers that in my mind they would have to rewrite the code if the game is to be preserved past servers being shut down. This isn't an immediate problem, but we are quickly approaching that date and the long-term future of this ip is largely unknown to anyone besides Rare. As a community I would like to start having discussions about this and maybe create a push for rare to discuss the long-term future of this game. As someone who has 1600 hours in this game it is terrifying to think about not being able to play it again in a few years or whenever the game is sunset. For me their isn't another game like Sea Of Thieves. I don't play other live service titles because SoT has always been enough for me. I imagine others feel the same way so I think as a community we need to create a push to ensure the game is preserved long past server shutdown. Even if we had to settle for a local version of sea of thieves without other players in the world I still think the pve and content of the game should be preserved for people to enjoy for years after end of life.

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  • iTz Majman
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    They are still having SoT as one of their "main" games when they showcase Xbox events and what not. I don't think this game is going to die anytime soon. Wishful thinking is that we get Sea of Thieves (2) that is on a new engine.

  • JPSkyWalker9332
    Marauder
    Insider

    @itz-majman

    I feel like SoT 2 on unreal engine 5 is a given. It would be interesting to see them take their experience developing sea of thieves and bring that to ue5 rewritting certain systems to be more flexible and using what they learned to make the experience more fluent overall. Increasing the number of ships, we can have on servers and the types of ships we can have are the main benefits I see to a Sea Of Thieves 2. Also having more world events go on at the same time is another thing I have on my wishlist for SoT 2. While Sea Of Thieves is a great game it is a game that has had its true potential bottlenecked either by last gen consoles or server and performance issues that really impact the type of content we receive. That reason alone is enough to justify SoT 2 and I think Microsoft and Xbox would greenlight a sequel because it is one of their cornerstone ip's now.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    I haven't seen the kind of organic activity that I've been seeing in the game since season 9. Pc servers are always kinda whatever but controller preferred are wild, way more experienced pvp, willingness to steal and fight, etc than I've seen in a long time.

    Who knows what the overall numbers are internally but it's a very promising season with activity, at least on controller preferred. I wouldn't be surprised if they are seeing activity that they are liking to see this far into the game's life.

    I've been having a great time so far and the people on the servers appear to be quite engaged in content right now.

    Might as well enjoy it while it's here because there is a lot of interesting adventure going on right now in season 15.

    The future is always uncertain.

  • KeylessWord4029
    Ship Mate

    sadly they dont really consider players accomplishments in the game. we have had 4 updates that have ignored player progress for the sake of keeping us in the hamster wheel longer by making us regrind the same things we already 100%

    they have put years of hard work into the game to toss it in the bin. arena, aventures, the yea 1 updates like hunger deep. the battle for golden sands. etc.

    they have thrown away millions of dollars by pushing away the pve player base by trying to stick to their mission statement of pvpve servers. more people playing your game means more potential cash shop sales.... but yea alienate the biggest player base.

    people actually straight up pay monthly fees to have access to pve discords just to get a safe place to play free of the pvp.

    i dont think rare has a plan for end of life making the game playable offline or allow us to host our own servers

    they are dead set on the pvpve and if the day comes to shut down the servers i imagine they are more than happy to let the game become a memory just like all the fomo content. they loved the concept of the adventures being fisher man tales you would gather around a pub and tell your friend about your adventures and memories of things long past. this game becoming that.... and old fishermans tale of an insanely mismanaged and buggy game that we all somehow grew to love and cherish even when the developers seemed to be actively trying to push a large amount of the player base away.

    this game has always been about the journey. its never about the destination because the destination always leads to the same place given enough time.... the grave. everything has its time, and everything dies. we need to make peace with that. that is the lesson to gain from the eye of the universe. acceptance.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    @keylessword4029 said in PLEASE PRESERVE SEA OF THIEVES AFTER SERVERS SHUTDOWN:

    they have thrown away millions of dollars by pushing away the pve player base by trying to stick to their mission statement of pvpve servers. more people playing your game means more potential cash shop sales.... but yea alienate the biggest player base.

    Pvers are adventurers

    totally fair to criticize decisions made over the years, I've done a lot of that but they haven't rejected "pvers" in this game at all.

    A person can never fight and never win a fight in the game and still be adventurers that are content with the design of the game.

    This idea that the game needs to cater to players that just want to farm without losing to players in order to be welcoming to pve is just flawed and inaccurate, imo.

    The players that have always carried this game are the ones that lean pve and defense pvp to secure whatever their win conditions are. That's the group that is consistent in play, the ones that organically play the game as it is designed.

    There is nothing to suggest that they sacrificed potential, when the only thing that has ever worked is when they cater to adventure players that like random outcome and random encounters with risk.

    The balance hasn't always been there, the maintenance hasn't always been sufficient, but the interest and passion have always been there for an adventure sandbox with random multiplayer/pvp risks. That's why regs have 3k, 5k, 10k+ hours in the game, rather than 500 hours or a thousand hours like many other games.

  • R3vanNS
    Master
    Insider

    I'll just chime in saying that I understand this would take a lot of resources and time (money) to implement, and honestly wouldn't expect any company doing this for free. Especially since SoT is a live service game.

    BUT....

    Private servers do exist. And I'd personally be happy even if they allowed us to pay for our own server hosting (or simply buy out our own server client/licenses), with tools at our disposal to modify some simple stuff, like rates, spawns, whatever. To keep the game alive, without them ever having to bother about costs/maintenance anymore.

    This way, they would probably at least earn the money back invested into making this happen + show they care about their loyal OG crowd. I may be wrong, but I'd still appreciate if something like this would be possible before the official servers get shut down, whenever that may be.

  • CaptDirtyOar
    Ship Mate

    @jpskywalker9332 said in PLEASE PRESERVE SEA OF THIEVES AFTER SERVERS SHUTDOWN:

    I feel like SoT 2 on unreal engine 5 is a given.

    Unreal engine has been terrible for large map games. They always hit a wall too easy with limits.

    SC UM game for example, map was meant to be 4x the current size, devs hit a wall with limitations.

    PUBG also had issues in early days, they had to lower things big time to get the game running properly.

  • JPSkyWalker9332
    Marauder
    Insider

    @r3vanns

    Yea I've suggested them making those available for purchase on the emporium for a while. No rep or gold earned just custom private servers that we can run and invite friends to and have them be on different boats. I feel like they evolved into safer seas which if that is true then that is a sad compromise bc I don't think even if the servers were to be shutdown that safer seas would even still be playable regardless we do need a way to host our own servers if they decide to pull the plug we cant let this game fall to the waste side.

  • KeylessWord4029
    Ship Mate

    @wolfmanbush 100% they have rejected pvers. safer seas is a 0 progression training ground for new comers. its a weak attempt to keep begginers around because at first people see they need gold to get cosmetics. but the reality is the game has so many more progression paths. safer seas would have been amazing in year 1 but now its laughable.

    Rare: "play your way"
    the reality
    "play your way, as long as its exactly the way we want you to play"

    logging in when i want, to do what i want, pvp free or not. the issue here is they needed to make high seas more rewarding while letting safer seas be an alternative for those who just want to casually login and make some progression. while the updated voyages to make singular hauls quicker hasnt exactly worked for all things. like the final phase of a veil of the ancients is still time consuming and way too much loot for a solo to get on board before someone comes at you since doing that voyage puts a giant beacon up in the world.

    the level restrictions, and locked out content of safer seas is despicable. some of us have been playing since year1 and we had friends who we played with daily. and those of us who stuck around probably arent still playing with the same crew as 95% of the players in this game have quit. i have not made a single friend in this game. only played with people ive known from before this game. most of them quit within the first month of release. actually have lost contact with some of my oldest gaming friends because this is the game i play most and they dont care to even consider returning. had one friend who tried once but the combat nerfs have made combat feel so clunky and gross they just immediately get turned off

    all the pvp nerfs that have been done have a massive negative impact on the pve experience
    weapon draw delay is extremely punishing when you need different tools to deal with different pve scenarios. a damage rework to make 2 shots impossible and scaling back ai health would have been a much better alternative than forcing you to run further before drawing a weapon to shoot a keg for example.

    another example that came WAY too late.... animation canceling to speed dig. as mostly a solo player now digging is painfully slow. the number of digs for 1 chest doesnt scale with crew size its just random? or based on treasure value? but dig, stow, draw, dig while tedious felt way better because it was cutting your dig time in half. they should have sped up the dig animation or something if they wanted everyone to be on an even playing field. and why does speed digging even matter? for arena...... which they deleted. so whats the point?

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    @keylessword4029 said in PLEASE PRESERVE SEA OF THIEVES AFTER SERVERS SHUTDOWN:

    @wolfmanbush 100% they have rejected pvers. safer seas is a 0 progression training ground for new comers. its a weak attempt to keep begginers around because at first people see they need gold to get cosmetics. but the reality is the game has so many more progression paths. safer seas would have been amazing in year 1 but now its laughable.

    Rare: "play your way"
    the reality
    "play your way, as long as its exactly the way we want you to play"

    The reason I don't think this is accurate is because I know my journey in this game.

    It's very likely I've played this game more than anyone ever has, organically. I hunt megs and krakens and just adventure around. I defend and I secure my win conditions when I can but I don't start fights and I very rarely steal.

    Nobody forces me to do anything. I do what I wanna do every day and a large majority of the time I've done it solo.

    Having played so much and in such a dedicated way to the experience I've also seen how many changes they have made and how many things they have added to improve the experience of those that aren't as fortunate as I have been in the game. It's way less intense now and it's way more realistic for people to play how they want to play now, none of us get to win all the time but that doesn't prevent people from participating.

    People can play their way, they just won't always win in their way. Losing sometimes is just a part of maintaining humility and appreciation for the journey. That applies to people that lean pve as much as it does to people that lean pvp.

  • R3vanNS
    Master
    Insider

    @jpskywalker9332 said in PLEASE PRESERVE SEA OF THIEVES AFTER SERVERS SHUTDOWN:

    @r3vanns

    Yea I've suggested them making those available for purchase on the emporium for a while. No rep or gold earned just custom private servers that we can run and invite friends to and have them be on different boats. I feel like they evolved into safer seas which if that is true then that is a sad compromise bc I don't think even if the servers were to be shutdown that safer seas would even still be playable regardless we do need a way to host our own servers if they decide to pull the plug we cant let this game fall to the waste side.

    I mean, if I'm about to pay for a server to host on my own + they are abandoning the game - at least what I expect is to keep the progression (of the last state of the game at such point, if it happens) and some basic control over the server.

    Regarding SS in the context of this topic - it's still part of the same progression. And SS is still using the Azure servers, same as HS. With SS or not, they'd still need to box out stuff with Microsoft (since MS is their publisher) and would need some sort of permission to release private servers (in whatever state, SS, HS, custom) to the public, either for renting or purchase.

    This might be even the harder part then actually making dedicated server/offline version of the game. And it's the main reason why I'm really not sure if it's worth their effort to them (financially, and in regards to time) to make it happen.

    Time will tell, we'll see.

  • JPSkyWalker9332
    Marauder
    Insider

    @r3vanns

     Every year they release a new edition of the game called SoT "insert year" edition. I feel like a year after content has ended for the game the next edition of the game should be an edition that has these private servers, we can host no matter if the game is sunsetted or not. Maybe they can even go peer to peer so games can always be hosted but idk enough about what azure specifically allows them to do or if going peer to peer would be something they would see value in. Time will tell but with rise of stuff like Microsoft's new A.I they can maybe preserve the experience in that matter where the game doesn't need servers at all to run it just relies on thousands of hours of gameplay clips to reproduce the experience. Of course, I would prefer Rare preserve the experience in the way that we enjoy it but there are other options that might be more technically efficient for the team.
  • Ultrasuprman
    Seafarer

    I saw a theory online that I think makes sense. We know Sea Of Thieves 2 is going to happen, we are nearing the limits of what the game can do.

    So the theory was this version will become Sea Of Thieves Classic and will flip to free to play since the servers have long paid for themselves. Does that mean the servers will never shutdown, no, but it would give the game another 10 years.

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