A Day on the High Seas

Last night Xenos, Thief, Speed and myself had a jolly old time pirating.

We found some buried treasure, hunted down some bounties, defended our ship while sinking an enemy's (twice!), and even looted a Skeleton Fort.

Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of our fantastic haul, but I did grab some shots at the end of the night to remember Day One.

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Last night Xenos, Thief, Speed and myself had a jolly old time pirating.

We found some buried treasure, hunted down some bounties, defended our ship while sinking an enemy's (twice!), and even looted a Skeleton Fort.

Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of our fantastic haul, but I did grab some shots at the end of the night to remember Day One.

While the water’s gotten plenty of well-deserved love, the skybox/lighting itself deserves some real praise, as your pictures show. It’s a shame that the game will likely go stale in a couple of weeks, because it’s a pretty big breath of fresh air in a lot of ways. Glad that folks are having fun in it right now, though.

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I won’t say much, as I don’t want to just be a downer, but I wish I enjoyed the game. It’s gorgeous and interesting in concept. Just feels hollow and empty without any really compelling gameplay to lean on. I can understand using it as a platform for hanging out with friends, I totally get that, but I’d rather play Destiny for that.

As seems to be the case all too often anymore, Sea of Thieves seems like a game that might be worth revisiting in 18 months after they’ve added a whole bunch of stuff.

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I won’t say much, as I don’t want to just be a downer, but I wish I enjoyed the game. It’s gorgeous and interesting in concept. Just feels hollow and empty without any really compelling gameplay to lean on. I can understand using it as a platform for hanging out with friends, I totally get that, but I’d rather play Destiny for that.

Right. It's a "make your own fun" game, and it's fine for that, but there are better games to do that in (Deep Rock, anyone?), and for far less than the AAA $60 asking price.
If you got it through Game Pass, I feel like that's a far better way to experience it, but again, even in the Game pass, there are better options.

I don't want to be a downer about it either, since I had lots of fun in the Betas, but the diminishing returns inherent in that game's fun are going to hurt it reaaaaal soon, and the game's Executive Producer is already fielding these questions with "We plan to grow the game down the road" answers, which is... Well, both a canned answer, and an acknowledgement that yeah, folks are seeing most of what the game has to offer already.

As seems to be the case all too often anymore, Sea of Thieves seems like a game that might be worth revisiting in 18 months after they’ve added a whole bunch of stuff.

Totally. I was discussing that with Paddy and Snipe last night (Snipe's been enjoying it), but the issue that I saw was that Rare is super slow at developing anything (the game's been in the works since 2014, and look at how barebones and unpolished it is at launch). Unlike certain other games (did we mention that part II of noclip's doc is up?), there's not enough apparent potential to say "this will be completely different a year from now, and loaded with content).
The core gameplay loop simply isn't sustainable long term, but I really hope that rare pulls through with a miracle, especially since there aren't a whole lot of big sandbox multiplayer games coming out soon.

Realistically speaking, though, all the kids will probably be back to their Fortnites and PUBGs in a week or two, causing the game world to be devoid of all but the most dedicated players.

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Last night I set up the game and played around solo because I had exactly 8 people on my friends list playing in 2 groups. I had fun with my sailing simulator and really never ran into another soul, except occasionally seeing some sails on the horizon.

This afternoon I spent a lovely hour or so pirating around on a sloop killing undead captains and digging up treasure, and then half-way through a mission I found myself at an island with someone else. They attacked, and by working the sails and fire angles I managed to fend them off single handedly despite them having 2+ people. Then another ship came as they left. So, low on supplies I high-sea'd it out of there, and ran into a big ship. They both chased me and I managed to give the big ship the slip, but the other small ship chased me all they way into port, sunk my ship just as I reached the dock (very Jack Sparrow), and then shot me to death P2P as I tried to turn in the one skull I managed to save from my sinking ship.

I respawned feeling like I wasted 2 hours because they're is simply nothing you can do if you are alone when a ship with even one more person decides to come after you.

Yeah, yeah, Piracy. I get it. But I had no REAL problem with them sinking me, or really even loosing most of the gold from my adventures, but the rep gains should probably accrue when you get the voyage successful message. And I think there should be some sort of pirate code protection force at the ports. Something to make it feel like even a total loss was not a waste of time, and something that can give you a fighting chance solo.

As it is it really sapped the "I want to play" feeling I had at the start of the day and I don't know if I would play solo again.

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Last night I set up the game and played around solo because I had exactly 8 people on my friends list playing in 2 groups. I had fun with my sailing simulator and really never ran into another soul, except occasionally seeing some sails on the horizon.

This afternoon I spent a lovely hour or so pirating around on a sloop killing undead captains and digging up treasure, and then half-way through a mission I found myself at an island with someone else. They attacked, and by working the sails and fire angles I managed to fend them off single handedly despite them having 2+ people. Then another ship came as they left. So, low on supplies I high-sea'd it out of there, and ran into a big ship. They both chased me and I managed to give the big ship the slip, but the other small ship chased me all they way into port, sunk my ship just as I reached the dock (very Jack Sparrow), and then shot me to death P2P as I tried to turn in the one skull I managed to save from my sinking ship.

I respawned feeling like I wasted 2 hours because they're is simply nothing you can do if you are alone when a ship with even one more person decides to come after you.

Yeah, yeah, Piracy. I get it. But I had no REAL problem with them sinking me, or really even loosing most of the gold from my adventures, but the rep gains should probably accrue when you get the voyage successful message. And I think there should be some sort of pirate code protection force at the ports. Something to make it feel like even a total loss was not a waste of time, and something that can give you a fighting chance solo.

As it is it really sapped the "I want to play" feeling I had at the start of the day and I don't know if I would play solo again.

Yeah, despite the fact that you have the "you can't really get mad, because, come on, it's literally the name of the game" mentality to keep you in perspective, it really is easy to grief others, and it still sucks when it happens to you. We called out this problem in the first Beta, and some months later, absolutely nothing changed to alleviate that, and I haven't heard a peep from Rare on that front.

I heard some reports that some Galleons simply wait at ports for sloops to show up in order to steal their loot. There are no safe waters, and the smaller ships are no faster than the big ones (because of multitasking needed to sail them, the small ships can be even slower than a fully-manned galleon).

It sucks, and sometimes the only thing that you can do is to sail over the edge of the map to deny the enemy ship your treasures...

I totally agree that you should be able to cash in half of the rep by completing the Voyage, and the other half by turning in the chest.

It would be nice if you could set up timed alliances, so that certain Waters would make you immune to an Ally ship's cannons and such as long as you stayed within a certain distance of each other... or something to promote social play, rather than rewarding the cheapest, douchiest playstyles...

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It’s probably not easy to do, but they could adopt something similar to the Elite Dangerous solution. Kill other players, you get a bounty put on your head that other players can kill you for. That system isn’t perfect, but there’s potential in something like that.

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... or something to promote social play, rather than rewarding the cheapest, douchiest playstyles...

But that's how I want to play!

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Last night I set up the game and played around solo because I had exactly 8 people on my friends list playing in 2 groups. I had fun with my sailing simulator and really never ran into another soul, except occasionally seeing some sails on the horizon.

This afternoon I spent a lovely hour or so pirating around on a sloop killing undead captains and digging up treasure, and then half-way through a mission I found myself at an island with someone else. They attacked, and by working the sails and fire angles I managed to fend them off single handedly despite them having 2+ people. Then another ship came as they left. So, low on supplies I high-sea'd it out of there, and ran into a big ship. They both chased me and I managed to give the big ship the slip, but the other small ship chased me all they way into port, sunk my ship just as I reached the dock (very Jack Sparrow), and then shot me to death P2P as I tried to turn in the one skull I managed to save from my sinking ship.

I respawned feeling like I wasted 2 hours because they're is simply nothing you can do if you are alone when a ship with even one more person decides to come after you.

Yeah, yeah, Piracy. I get it. But I had no REAL problem with them sinking me, or really even loosing most of the gold from my adventures, but the rep gains should probably accrue when you get the voyage successful message. And I think there should be some sort of pirate code protection force at the ports. Something to make it feel like even a total loss was not a waste of time, and something that can give you a fighting chance solo.

As it is it really sapped the "I want to play" feeling I had at the start of the day and I don't know if I would play solo again.

Yeah, despite the fact that you have the "you can't really get mad, because, come on, it's literally the name of the game" mentality to keep you in perspective, it really is easy to grief others, and it still sucks when it happens to you. We called out this problem in the first Beta, and some months later, absolutely nothing changed to alleviate that, and I haven't heard a peep from Rare on that front.

I heard some reports that some Galleons simply wait at ports for sloops to show up in order to steal their loot. There are no safe waters, and the smaller ships are no faster than the big ones (because of multitasking needed to sail them, the small ships can be even slower than a fully-manned galleon).

It sucks, and sometimes the only thing that you can do is to sail over the edge of the map to deny the enemy ship your treasures...

I totally agree that you should be able to cash in half of the rep by completing the Voyage, and the other half by turning in the chest.

It would be nice if you could set up timed alliances, so that certain Waters would make you immune to an Ally ship's cannons and such as long as you stayed within a certain distance of each other... or something to promote social play, rather than rewarding the cheapest, douchiest playstyles...

Something I realized the other day...piracy isn't piracy without the law. If there's no law, there's no risk. There needs to be a risk factor involved in aggressive behavior and a reward for those who shut it down.

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Last night Xenos, Thief, Speed and myself had a jolly old time pirating.

We found some buried treasure, hunted down some bounties, defended our ship while sinking an enemy's (twice!), and even looted a Skeleton Fort.

Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of our fantastic haul, but I did grab some shots at the end of the night to remember Day One.

I tried to play it a couple times during the day yesterday, but the servers were having trouble. When I was able to get into a game, it wasn’t populating properly, so there were no players or NPCs or activities to do. But I got to just sail around a bit, which I found surprisingly satisfying all by itself. I could see that being a make-or-break element for some people. If you enjoy the simple act of sailing your ship across the open waters, the game will have loads of appeal.

Looking forward to trying it out properly.

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We found some buried treasure, hunted down some bounties, defended our ship while sinking an enemy's (twice!), and even looted a Skeleton Fort.

Oh wow! How insane was that? My crew and I were too jittery about trying, since we had our fair share of trouble doing some bounties from bottles.

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We found some buried treasure, hunted down some bounties, defended our ship while sinking an enemy's (twice!), and even looted a Skeleton Fort.

Oh wow! How insane was that? My crew and I were too jittery about trying, since we had our fair share of trouble doing some bounties from bottles.

It was very tough. We had to pause our assault twice to fend off other ships. I can see how it's built to be a muti-crew encounter. I think it took us about 30-45 minutes. I died a lot. It's got some nice mechanics with the enemies that change up how you play every round.

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