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.