So did Seasons actually help Sea of Thieves?

  • Shadowspawn995
    Seafarer

    It feels weird talking about this since Sea of Thieves had Seasons longer than It had no Seasons.

    Still, with how badly they fumbled seasons recently I can't help it.
    Other games like SpaceDwarfMiningSimulator and Fort, Night managed to make seasons work pretty well.
    Did Sea of Thieves?

    Well some of the earlier Seasons were pretty good, that's for sure.
    Season 2, Season 3, Season4 and Season 6 were really good.
    Season 9 and 13 were pretty good too.

    The Free Currency and Cosmetics in the Season Passes are nice too, although I really can't bring myself to care about that currently.

    The weirdest Part is that I honestly Think Seasons are too SHORT. Ironic considering just how many Seasons were way longer than they had planned.
    My Issue is that most seasons introduced a couple of very distinct new things, that then never got touched again.

    Season 3 Seacrawlers? Yeah they are still here, just the three of them.
    Season 4 Sunken Shrines / Treasuries? No new ones since then.
    Season 6 Sea Forts? Still just kinda there. Legend of the Veil? Never got new Mission types.
    7 Captaincy? You're getting new Cosmetics very occasionally.
    8 Hourglass? Took them 3 years to add ONE whole new Gamemode.
    10 Guilds? Never even worth talking about, still aren't to this day.
    Season 11? Somehow has not been completely reverted even though it introduced diving.
    etc.

    Maybe they should have stuck with one key Aspect over Multiple Seasons. Thats what EsO has been doing, where They focus on one specific Arc every year. No Idea if they still do that admittedly.

    I also feel like multiple Seasons could just have been compressed into one large update. They would have longer to test it and they could figure out ways how to implement the new seasonal content into the world without it feeling forced or disjointed. That also would have given them more time to test and polish. That could have helped with how disastrously buggy some of the seasons ended up being.

    And then of course there's the abysmal amount of content in the more recent seasons.

    Overall I'm feeling rather mixed on the idea if they should continue even having seasons.
    Given just how Barren Season 19 will be, I'm not really holding out hope for Season 20 to somehow introduce all the Cool Stuff into the game that we all want.
    But some of the earlier Seasons WERE really good. If they could replicate a Pirates Life amount of content, then honestly, good on them.

    Now excuse me I, after watching the latest podcast I feel strangely inclined to order some 25$ Filtered Canned Water.

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  • D3ADST1CK
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    I'm not sure you're really upset with Seasons. Seasons did help Sea of Thieves, for sure. The renown track brought people back constantly to earn free stuff.

    Your complaint seems to be more about Rare not revisiting or updating old content, which is a separate issue.

  • DrBensei
    Master
    Insider

    Updating old content kind of was the plan with the new season model.

    Smuggler content updated skeleton ships, shipwrecks and brought back Reaper Rowboats.
    Season 18 was meant to revive the Roar.
    Season 19 was meant to turn the HG rework into an Adventure season.

    The problem is the execution. They wanted to do more than the current team can handle, so they had to dial back.

  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    They wanted to do more than the current team can handle, so they had to dial back.

    More like they tried to please a small group of players in the community because of backlash and complaints. And made it worse for the rest of the community and game itself.

  • Valor Omega
    Champion
    Insider

    I think it started off solid enough, but it quickly became apparent that the structure was too fast-paced to support meaningful updates, especially as of recent. I honestly much preferred update cadence, back during the days of Hungering Deep, Cursed Sails, Forsaken Shores, etc - updates were pushed when they were ready, and polished. I think going back to that at this stage would only be beneficial.

    Yes, we may wait a bit longer for content updates, but more time=more polishing ideally, and they could still pad the timeframes between updates with gold and glory, community week/weekends, fight nights, and other live events.

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