Sea of Thieves!

Ya happened during the highest stress times of the stress test too, along with the reward delay issue.

Exactly my experience after playing the beta. Having two more factions sell chests to and a couple new skeleton types does not a full game make. Feels like they were extremely focused on the first 90 minute streamable hijinks but once you’ve played that long you’ve basically seen everything the game has to ofter except increasingly expensive cosmetics.

Compared to a game like Vermintide 2 made on a fraction of the budget and Sea of Thieves pales. Vermintide gives you so many more interesting ways to play, things to achieve, loot to earn and places to discover. Sea of Thieves is full of all these little secret areas, but they all look basically the same and your reward for finding them is always some bananas, planks, canon balls or a chest that might as well be a money order you have to carry back to the bank.

I watched Giant Bomb’s launch stream last night, and despite the fact that I’ve made up my mind about the game already I was physically uncomfortable seeing those guys discover the game’s inadequacies in real time. It made me cringe for the developers. It’s not the Pirate Destiny people thought it would be. It’s not even the Pirate Ark or Rust I had speculated they were making. Somehow it manages to be far less than either of those. It feels like a 4 player chat room with very pretty water and not much else.

I give up, unplayable tonight. Probably be the weekend before I can give it another shot.

Just as I was about to click Reply on a post commiserating with you, I got in. Played solo for a bit. Cashed in a skull and two chests, during which time I didn’t run into anyone. Then after I was thinking of logging out, I decided to see if I could sink a ship. I found one at a nearby isle, narrowly avoided being hit by four of their cannon shots as they saw my approach, and I skulked around to the other side of the large island. I slowly made my way around and spotted them anchored off the coast. I cowardly sunk their ship while they were off treasure hunting. Good times.

Man, games-as-a-service and being powered by the cloud really sucks so far.

I got in fine after about a 5 min wait. Midnight Eastern US time.

Practiced my solo sailing on the waves, and practiced my cannon firing versus some other pirates. I am starting to land some shots. :-)

Yeah I had that issue at first too. Have a look in your map radial for the voyage you’ve voted for to view its details.

Its E on PC to see the maps. You need to vote on the mission first, like you did. If you don’t see anything on E then you still need to vote on the mission (from the smaller table in the captain’s quarters).

I also had a hard time with getting missions, accepting them, opening maps, etc at first. So did a friend. Its not intuitive.

Also, getting multiple chicken coops, storing them, chasing after chickens with them and capturing the right ones takes some practice.

Right shoulder button, I think for the map radial. Haven’t had a chance to play since launch, so I might remember wrong though.

I’d love to join but I’m still having trouble with the Xbox App and Teredo. Spent hours last night for naught. I can play the game but I can’t join/invite anyone or join party chat which kind of defeats the point.

Just making sure you know this, but all the weapons are cosmetic.

I haven’t played enough to know, but I also believe later missions are more lucrative- the chests you find on them are worth more (and do funny things like make you drink while carrying them!).

I watched two streamers playing this game yesterday.

The first one is one of these extra competent players, he played alone/with randoms, he had a miserable experience being forced to do all task in the boat.

The second was a small streamer with a group of friends and family. He had the time of their life and they played mostly bad. It was so hilarious, I got glued to the screen the 3 hours they played it.

I watched a couple Twitch streamers desperately try to spin the game into something fun, they’re clearly being sponsored to stream the game and could not find the fun after first couple hours. Their chat rooms were a marketing nightmare. Gamers aren’t fooled.

This game will disappear in a week, and that’s super sad because I want it to be awesome. They need to very quickly put random loot in those chests with green, blue, purple, and orange rarities. That is literally all they need to make this game stick. Easier said than done, I know.

No! This game is definitely not a Destiny clone and shouldn’t be. If that’s what you want in your gameplay, the market caters for it in spades.

I’m glad Sea of Thieves is something else. It’s a different kind of sandbox and progression. I’m fully aware it won’t satisfy everyone. But what what is new in gaming?

If you wanted a game that requires raiding to gear up for endgame content, this is not for you.

Well, he might mean it’s all still cosmetic, just with rarity. Which might drive people to chase it, but man, they would be a bummer. I much prefer how it is now, and being able to just buy what you want.

Good point and I agree.

Has anyone then to the higher level missions yet? Supposedly they get more interesting as they go on?

I think it was the Eurogamer preview which said it was great to play a game where there wasn’t the loot grind.

I agree, it’s nice to have a game that is different, plenty of loot grind games out there and I enjoy them as much as the next person but there is no need to make every game the same. Personally I get fed up with games where you can’t keep up with the loot grind and normally stop playing anyways as you are so far behind the curve. You could add some cosmetic loot that is rare to allow for a greater range of looks but doesn’t affect the game play side of it. Sure you may lose some players or sales but it’s nice to be a little different.

I watched a streamer this morning who was level 20 with the gold diggers. At level 20 the chests leak water and flood your ship, sometimes. That’s it!

I guess the question is does Microsoft want this game to survive? If so they need to appeal to the things that keep gamers coming back. Put something in the chests worth chasing. Make the skeletons drop loot. Make a faction that has us sink AI ships and steal their loot. Make loot, period.

In the beta my crew saw a bunch of barrels floating in the ocean and we were excited. Turns out it was all just wood planks and bananas. Same shit we find on the islands, which we already had hundreds of. We found a sunken ship. We dove in and found a barnacle crusted chest, and lugged it back to town expecting a unique, special reward and got… 150 gold.

This is a game about piracy with nothing worth fighting over, questing for, or stealing. It just increments a counter. It has a giant open world with nothing in it.

Well, I suppose this is the center of it right here. It’s kind of a circular argument, though, and fixated on one particular type of player.

“They should make the progression like these other successful games because that’s what people want”. Ignoring all the other players who don’t want that progression or loot model, but there haven’t been any games that cater to them, because ‘that’s not what people want’.

I’m certainly curious to see how this evolves. I think it’s intended to be much, much less hardcore, and that they actively don’t want Peele to obsess over the loot grind. If you want that, go play Dark Zones in The Division?