Concerned? Yes. I've been concerned for over a year, and have previously posted that my yearly xbox stats finally saw Sea of Thieves sliding from top game, giving way to Diablo 4. Which was sad to me, and was purely avoidable had SoT stuck to their core.
Panicked? No. The dev update felt like an acknowledgement of things most players have known for some time. But let me dive into a couple details. I have no inside-the-team information, but I can tell you how the game has been landing for me, an older middle-aged player that plays solo, duo, and brig crews somewhat regularly.
With the "new" seasonal structure, we can look at smugglers. There was only one reason to do the "yellow" route; commendations. The payout wasn't great. The risk was slightly higher, but mostly just obnoxious with the extra phantoms and skellie patrol ships.
Act 2 brought a very easy limited time event. Contested for about 3 days, then people lost interest so if you were late to the party, you could complete it easily. Which was good for PvP oriented players the first week, and good for PvE players the next 3 weeks, but wasn't "balanced" to either of them. PvP players had no incentive to linger and force a confrontation because avid players completed it early, so you'd be hoping to catch stragglers. And you always felt like the bully on the block because the stragglers were the PvEers who didn't want and more importantly weren't good at PvP. You wren't getting a fight. You were getting a sink with no loot. And PvEr's weren't incentivized to repeat the experience. Get your commendation, move on, because the risk/reward wasn't there. Not a big payout, a lot of time off ship clearing phantoms. And more time "searching" for the right painting. Sure you could take ALL the paintings, but that just made loading a ship even more time consuming than normal (with no ability to sell to sovereigns.
Act 3 was also limited, but so unmemorable that I can't even remember what was unique and what the time limited deeds were in Act 3. I know I completed them, but can't tell you what they were. Obviously the fort itself was permanent and has permanent commendations, which made act 3 deeds purely FOMO with NO actual limited gameplay attached (compared to the festival of fishing, etc.)
Let's look at season 18. We introduce a new baddie. Okay. Did we need a new baddie? One that is random? One that drops a key that forces you into the roar? One where the vault that the key unlocks has so much loot that you are vulnerable unloading it. Once I got those commendations done, I moved to selling the keys. Which aren't worth the effort of killing the baddie. It was an interesting concept, but putting all the vaults in the roar just for the sake of the seasonal theme instead of good gameplay made the content barely repeatable. And mostly skippable.
Act 2 brings a world event that is more obnoxious than not. Due to the timing, I've had to mostly solo this. I've gotten sunk at grade 4 emissary. I've gotten sunk after claiming the emissary quest while fighting big baddie (again.) I've gotten sunk with the key heading to molten sands. I've gotten sunk while working the damage-sponge skellie lords at the fort. I have not gotten sunk by a tucker (shockingly.)
And I've completed all 18 deeds in Act 2, so plenty of success too. But this highlights the problem. Where season 17's act 2 was too easy, this one is way to insanely grindy for most players. The buildup of emissary (even with the boost.) The extended time on an island just to get a key (usually out of the roar.) I've gitten to grade 5 and claimed the quest at morrow's and that most often drives me to Devil's ridge, which is still an obnoxiously long sail back into the roar and south to north to get to the fort. And then fighting bosses that aren't hard, just spongey. All to get loot out of avault that is one of the longest runs down a cave to get to compared to every other fort vault in the game. I usually grabbed the orb, chest of fortune, and bolted. Because the risk/reward for a solo wasn't there, and tuckers were too common. Even as a crew, with half the loot being reaper's loot that has to go to reaper's hideout, it just wasn't worth it. Did it for the deeds, not the loot. And had to SUCCESSFULLY pull it off 6 times. Six!!!! Nah.
Obvioulsy I can't rate Act 3 yet. But if its like Season 17's act 3....yeah.
Point being, the dev update acknowledged that something had to change. The time limited events weren't working. The content had you spending excessive amounts of time on land for a game called "sea of thieves" at a time when they are trying to increase encounter rates. Wanna know what I don't want to do? Sit in the crows nest looking for ships while my crew works a long land-based fight/event. Or spend a ton of time doing something solo while stressing and taking "breaks" every 5 minutes to check the horizon. We have stuff like that already. We don't need more.
Functoinally, most of what was in the upcoming season was more of that. It needed to be gutted. And when you pull the trigger on something like that, with most features taking many months, you don't have time to create alternatives. But you also don't roll out things that you already know is going to further push the player base away. You eat your dev time, suck it up, and push out the few things you have that improve the game.
Yeah, the news sucks. But the orb thing, amassing value based on kills....is exactly what the hourglass does already. Let's kill hourglass by making this other item that does the exact same thing and splits the playerbase. The kraken revamp might be nice, but we didn't get to see it in action, and with all the other problems, was it nice enough? Dunno. Everything else was just lore wrapped around those things so we aren't losing as much as it sounds like. Lore is good, but can't carry a game on its own. The kraken, in particular, wouldn't surprise me if it gets a second life later down the line after the team figures out their restructuring.
I've been in business meetings before when a company has to rapidly pivot. It isn't easy. That doesn't mean the game is in maintenance mode. It means they had to scrap a bunch of dev stuff and have to have executive level meetings to determine a new direction. And then dev time has to catch up to the new plan. So I don't expect to see big dividends for months. If they keep seasons, think season 21 at the earliest. Season 20, if it happens, is gonna be light too.
But, this is also why, going back to the beginning, I am concerned. We've heard "we listened and know we need to do better" going on two years now. And they keep not doing better. They wait too long on game breaking experiences (seas are empty, can't use cannons in hourglass) and this "bug only triage team" has been on it for over a year now, and many of the bugs still exist. How in the WORLD did ladders suddenly get bugged?!? What partof the code were they touching to cause THAT to happen?!?!?!? Broken promises and broken experiences are not new, and we are seeing that in player counts. No the game is not dead. It might actually be dying this time. And fewer players means fewer dollars means fewer devs means downward spiral.
Whatever comes of this latest change; whatever leadership decisions get made that Drew hinted at near the end of the dev update, is likely the make-or-break for this game. If they pivot well, we can be fine. If they botch it badly, there many not be enough playerbase left to keep the lights on. And I don't think it'll be maintenance mode at that point. I think they'll just pull the plug. Cloud servers aren't cheap, and cloud compute cost is only going up because of AI/Copilot/RAM prices/nVidia price spikes. This is, I predict, a do-or-die moment for SoT, and recent trends have not convinced me that Rare understands what their players want. We will see....
