Sea of Thieves!

Should be under Privacy in Windows 10 settings.

start --> settings --> Privacy --> Microphone --> Enable Xbox and / or Sea of Thieves

I play some evenings, Sydney time. I am still getting my sea legs. I team up with an old friend last night. Let’s hook up in a few days. I am usually online 8pm to 11pm Aussie east coast time.

It’s fun with people.

Not the review yet, but that article on EG kind of mirrors why I feel this game works for me:

I really want to manage to sync times with some people here (I’m not usually into multiplayer that much and am a bit trident to just hit people with random party invites in the middle of whatever they are doing), because a friendly crew will elevate the game. My wife and daughter are also ready to join in and that’s going to be another fun time.

Some maintenance windows over the next few days:

Thursday March 22nd, 9am–12pm GMT
Saturday March 24th, 9am–12pm GMT
Tuesday March 27th, 9am–12pm GMT

Right in my Aussie gaming prime-time! Ouch…

I asked a few friends if they were getting this and it seems not, we are all pretty much happy with Vermintide 2 right now. But once more is added we may take another look and give it a try for $10 for a month.

This is perfectly fine for me.

This is what I thought all along, especially from playing in the stress tests. I really enjoy the game but I wasn’t expecting to have it be my main game. More of a filler in between other experiences. If you go into the game with that perspective you should be fine.

The great thing is everyone can try it for free for 2 weeks and even get another month for $10.

I signed up for Gamepass last night, the free trial, and I honestly had a blast with my 3 PUBG squaddies. We had an hour long fight with another ship and eventually sunk it. We dropped anchor behind a rock, waited for them to come by one side and opened fire, got like 8 hits before they could retaliate.

What sucks is we swam to their boat to steal their shit as it was sinking and it despawned. So it was all for nothing.

I still don’t see this holding interest for more than 10 hours, so game pass is a good way to experience this game.

Yeah I too think this game works just fine as “filler”, or a game I enjoy as decompression or whatever between larger, deeper games. Sometimes I like a light adventure game to fill in the blanks but I think Sea of Thieves will work well too. A little tougher to do a pickup game, since it is multiplayer, but I jumped in and tooled around in a sloop by myself last night and had fun on my own. Not sure how long that will last but that’s a problem for one-month-down-the-road me.

Any loot on the ship will float up to the surface after it sinks.

Aww, what a shame! Might have been worth sitting or ‘sleeping’ in a bush and riding their visit out.

What is the protocol for inviting someone one in this game as it stands now?

Just blind invite to chat party regardless of whether the person is in game? Message first?

Seen a few folks ‘sailing the seas’ and decided not to bother them.

What would folks prefer?

Are you able to see on the Xbox App whether a person is currently in a party? If so then I would think that if you see someone in a party then they’re good, pass them by. But if someone is playing and not partied up, they’re safe to at least send an invite to. I certainly wouldn’t object to getting an invite.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t hear McMaster’s dulcet tones for technical reasons (note: Discord voice chat needs your default windows playback device to also be the default communications device. wtf, never heard of it) I had a great time bashing skeletons and finding treasure last night.

We got royally pwned at one of those Skull Storm Skeleton Strongholds. It probably didn’t help that I had to step afk just before we arrived. I watched the Twitch stream later and saw my prone avatar standing proudly on the deck while McMaster got blown off the ship by a cannonball.

The merchant missions seem objectively terrible? Find two red speckled hens. OK, found one on the closest island! The 2nd hen… never. Island after island of golden chickens, white chickens, pigs, etc. What a drag. The only reason I’m going to persevere through any Merchant missions is to hit level 5 so I can talk to that shadowy dude in the pubs.

A great deal of the charm is the simple pleasure of sailing w/ such gorgeous water, sky and sound systems. I’m also not convinced there’s much there there, but I can see spending a lot of time in this game

I’m always up for an invite too. The more the merrier =)

I’m really glad I was able to try this out for $10, because I don’t get the love for it at all. As a casual get-together faff around with buddies experience I guess it’s okay, but I think there are a lot of co-op games that do that better.

I suppose it has potential to eventually be something cool, but for now, I’m finding it pretty bare.

I can only speak for the xbox app on pc which i run on a second screen.

For a given player it shows either “Sot - in main menu” or “Sot - sailing the seas”. The second one is when you are actually playing.

There is no way to tell if they are solo, full, or have room, whick stinks.

I guess if i see “in menu” ill message and/or invite to chat party to touch bases. If “sailing” send a message and maybe be able to hook up next voyage break?

It’s easy for me to see the potential appeal of how manual everything his. In the vein of communication in Chromehounds or pulling up your map while you’re driving through the jungle in Far Cry 2, the things you do are delightfully “un-abstracted”, at least by video game standards. It’s not just that because you’re playing a sailing game, your speed is controlled by adjusting sails. It’s that a player has to manually set each sail. You have to decide with your team who has what role. If you’re taking on water, is someone patching the hole? Is someone bailing out the water? Are too many people doing both? Or neither?

I really like the potential in this style of sailing. If this kind of teamwork is common, point me in the direction of the deeper examples, because I want more of this. I’m just not sure if the game provides enough reasons to go sailing in the first place.

OK that’s why I ask, because on Xbox I can tell if users are already grouped in a party, and I haven’t really used the Xbox app on PC much. Still, I’d say to err on the side of including folks. If they don’t want to group up they can just tell you no.

I’m always in a party so I have never heard the proximity chat. I’m sure it’s super mature and not at all full of racists.

Do xbox party chats max at 4 people?

Edit: when you say on xbox you can see if some one is in a party do you mean game party or xbox chat party?