I was cautiously optimistic about Sea Of Thieves. Having watched some reputable streamers play the beta (admittedly with the cynicism that Microsoft had paid for them to do so) it looked like a fun, albeit repetitive sandbox. The full game boasted a larger range of quests and incentives to play, and after a friend suggested I sign up for the two week Microsoft Game Pass Trial I was able to take to the seas without spending a single dollar. The rest of my PUGB squad already had the game preordered, so it was a fairly easy transition, and we've spent the last week sailing about, shivering timbers, and other nautical verbs like that.

It's been less than a week and half my crew has already uninstalled the game.

There's a lot to appreciate about Sea Of Thieves. The game looks gorgeous, and as a longtime fan of both Eve Online and Guns Of Icarus Online this, on paper, was everything I'd ever wanted. A ship shared between multiple players with open world PVP. Awesome.

After a lengthy debate over which side of the boat was port and which was starboard (left and right respectively, thank you), we got going. There are three NPC guilds/alliances to align with, though we were told that it's better to level all three without prejudice as you're required to hit the cap with each to participate in the endgame content. Each of them had quests that were entertaining at first. Until we handed them in, and were given an identical set of replacements. 5 days later, we're still getting the same quests. Fetch quests.

Go to this island. Dig up some treasure/kill a skeleton/capture a chicken. Sail back. Slowly.

But we're fucking pirates though, we all agreed, and we're not going to do the manual labour when there's a whole server full of peons for us to have at. So we started sailing between outposts instead, looking for other players to fight. Unfortunately most other players seemed to have the same idea, and while ship-to-ship combat is fun, it would usually end in one of us being sunk and neither of us having anything to show for it.

For all its beauty, there are some bizarre gameplay decisions in Sea Of Thieves.

The assorted user interfaces are clunky and awkward, and the layout of the galleon is simply frustrating. Players can only carry 5 musketballs for each of their guns (two max) but apparently are able to simultaneously haul around 10 cannonballs? The result is you're frequently running below deck to refill your guns, as the ammo crate is frustratingly tucked away among the cosmetic/vanity items in the hold. However even a fully loaded weapon is problematic to wield, as there's no crosshairs and the bullet drop on long range weapons is bizarrely unpredictable. The sensitivity options of the controls are also minimal, with one slider for everything, and the sensitivity of the sniper is far too low relative to the default view. As a result almost everyone carries the blunderbuss shotgun and the sword, and the main tactic right now seems to be to get as close to the enemy as possible and then flail wildly. It's effective, but it feels sloppy, and fights seem more dependent on luck than skill.

Respawns are slow and tedious. If a ship sinks it will (usually) immediately materialise only a single island away with absolutely no penatly, which clearly benefits the attacking players rather than the ones defending; an attacker with nothing to lose can endlessly throw empty ships at their target with zero repercussions, while a treasure-laden defender is forced to tirelessly hold off their attacks or sail away.

The core gameplay loops in Sea Of Thieves simply aren't fun.

You can spend hours sailing around feeling like you've achieved nothing meaningful - you can complete dozens of quests, amass a stack of gold, but the only things you can spend it on are cosmetics, the most extravagant of which are ridiculously expensive and would require weeks of monotonous playtime to unlock. The suggestion that I farm fetch quests for 10 hours in order to unlock a new coat does not sound particularly appealing. You can make your character look like more of a badass, but as there's no stats or weapons to upgrade and the combat is so shallow, you seldom feel like one.

The positive experiences we've had with the game usually take place despite its design, rather than because of it.

The skull forts, waves of increasingly difficult enemies, are a welcome change to the usual gameplay, and are one of the few elements of the game where you're rewarded proportionately for the amount of effort put in - when these events begin a giant glowing skull appears in the clouds and players from all around will sail towards it to take part. This often will result in some great clashes as players fight either to control the island, or to seize the majority of the treasure after completing the event.

The sandbox elements of the game encourage experimentation, and sneaking aboard an enemy ship with a barrel of gunpowder only to stealthily detonate it in the hold and sink their ship while they're off looting an island left me laughing maniacally for about ten minutes. There's moments in Sea Of Thieves which allow a fantastic array of natural set-pieces, and there's moments of brilliance where you can see and appreciate the potential of this game. The majority of the time though itstill feels like a beta, a game lacking in structure and purpose and inadequately rewarding the players who take the time to invest in it. The emphasis on cosmetics makes me wonder if some iteration of the game was heavily dependent on microtransactions, and I can't help but feel like the only reason there are no loot crates in this game is due to the recent public backlash. Either that or because there's simply not enough content to justify it. I can understand why several of my friends are so bitter about their purchases.

I appreciate there's an echo of EVE online in Sea Of Thieves; you need to be proactive about the elements of the game you find entertaining. If you only want to mine asteroids in high-sec then you can't complain that the game is dull - you need to go out and camp warp gates, or join a corp of players who are more PVP focused. And it's possible to treat this game as an opportunity to simply goof around - even if you're achieving little in a gameplay sense, there's value to be had in a sandbox where you can sail around with your friends. I do sometimes feel though that even if you start playing with this attitude, the game doesn't do enough to meet you halfway by providing you a good range of things to do together. You can fight enemy ships, sure, but the game rarely gives sufficient reason to do so other than the combat itself which, as we've already mentioned, is average at best.

There's obvious changes that could be made, meaningful ones, that would improve this game dramatically.

Any player you ask can probably suggest a couple; Use the brig to capture attacking players? Alter the layout of the galleon to encourage different types of combat? Let players carry more ammo so they can take part in combat for longer when off-ship? Increase the amount of weapon types and let players upgrade individual parts (scopes, stocks, grips)? Increase the variety of equipment to encourage certain types of gameplay and allow players to specialise? Hire a fucking gameplay designer to come up with some quests that aren't completely mind-numbing? Etc.

There's good times to be had with sea of thieves, but they are few and far between, and having spent a week with the game already I see little incentive to keep going. I feel like I've already seen everything the game has to offer and while the best of it is good, the worst of it is fucking dull. There are better, more consistent games out there for us to play.

It feels like Sea Of Thieves is constantly promising something better; there's going to be patches with new content. There's more exciting quests locked once you hit the level cap. There's cool cosmetics to purchase once you level up enough to buy them. There's more coming, eventually! The problem is the gameplay isn't interesting enough to keep playing, so I doubt most players will ever see it.

Thanks for reading,

Love Sweep

To me it feels like another No Man's Sky situation. In theory some amazing core mechanics... but no real content there to actually do to take advantage of the mechanics in any interesting way.

There is some amazing gameplay fundamentally built in under the surface... but they just didn't add enough actually stuff to do with that gameplay in an interesting way.

I started cold on it, and I’m red hot into it a few days in. I’m curious if I’ll be dissatisfied and done in a week or two...time will tell.

I just like sailing, exploring, goofing off, not knowing if stopping for one more chest or skull will lead me to a wreck or fight that costs me my haul. It’s shallow, but fun.

It’s also a game that addresses my current pet peeve of games wasting my time. While Sea of Thieves is slow and full of waiting, especially when the wind won’t cooperate, you get in a game and go. Having played a lot of Monster Hunter lately, and living with the nightmare of co-oping that (wonderful) game, Sea of Thieves is coming at me from the right angle.

I also appreciate how different solo feels from a small or full crew. It’s hard to have brass balls in solo mode, it forces me to douse lights and sneak my haul onto islands to avoid getting jacked.

I do wish that there were better ways to form a larger crew, or a fleet, with folks you meet in-world. Maybe in the future?

I suspect lots of little changes that will hopefully add to alliances, betrayals, and general drunken tomfoolery.

I really love the game, but I totally get where you’re coming from. I worry I’ll tire of it, myself.

I'm super curious to see what the devlogs coming out of Rare sound like in the coming weeks, as technical server issues are fixed and more of the studio begins focusing on post-launch content.

Do they focus on adding more variety to immediate gameplay (new quests, minigames, etc.) or give in and start baking some progression mechanics into the quest loop.

I wasted 70 Euro's on this :'( that's 86,55 USD :D so i feel ripped off that's for sure also i coudn't find microsofts refund policy so i am kinda fucked. At least the seas look great i guess....

Xbox's No Man Sky. Cool premise but nothing surrounding the core concept. Extremely surprising that this game took so long to make. It's so hollow.

@soulcake: Taken from the Microsost site. I live in Australia, could be different for you.

Can I get a refund for a digital game?

No. You can’t return a digital game and receive a refund or credit.

I'd advise anyone intending on buying this game first try the game via the Xbox Game Pass program. Even if you can't use the 14 day free trial then just pay whatever it is for the first month. $15 in Australia vs $79 -$99 to buy. I'd be rather disappointed buying this game at full price.

Really disappointed with this game. My friends and I had such high hopes, but there's just not enough content and the content in it already isn't that good. Personally, I don't like customizing my character (that you hardly ever see) so the rewards in the game are pretty much meaningless to me. I had hope that the voyages to getting the gold would be enjoyable, but the only fun part for me and my friends is really sailing. Getting lost on an island from everyone else is frustrating, fighting the same skeletons and snakes on every island gets boring really fast.

And maybe it was just my connection to the server, but the combat lags bad. To attack, there's a .5 second lag to actually swinging or shooting. Didn't notice that lag in anything else though.

Also, why would you ever not just get a voyage reward and not immediately turn it in? If you don't, you risk another team taking you out and losing everything (rewards and supplies), hours of progress gone with 0 to show for it. Wish they had a PvE server so you could just be pirates with your friends and not deal with random assholes killing you all the time.

So upset I can't get a refund for this game. Such high hopes, and they delivered on nothing but really good looking water and fun sailing.

I imagine a lot of people are in the same sloop as you are.

This is an early access game disguised as a full AAA release and carrying the same price tag. Would not surprise me if it eventually went free to play.

Have a few friends who've been super excited for Sea of Thieves and they to have been down about it since launch. As mentioned this should be an early access game and I'm baffled as to why Microsoft didn't make it one. Would have saved em so much negativity surrounding the game.

There's potential but it seems unfinished from what I've read and been told, can only hope they learn a thing or two from Hello Games and No Man Sky.

alright i'm back in

I can understand why people are hopeful for future updates but honestly, outside of a free to play/subscription/loot crate business model there's very little reason for a developer to continue developing meaningful content other than bug fixes. Hello Games was obligated to make good on their promises because they knew that if they didn't then nobody would ever support them ever again. Microsoft doesn't care. As we've seen in the past repeatedly they're more likely to simply fire the studio and cut their losses than they are to spend the time and money committed to improving a game which, as far as they're concerned, they've already sold to you as a finished product.

@dudeglove: @sweep: There’s already Shiver Me Duders, which made me laugh.

@splodge: I’m super-high on this game at the moment, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t had the same thoughts. Major issue these days, and Sea of Thieves is as guilty as any game of shipping witout feeling like 1.0.

@sweep: If that is the case then it is no wonder why Microsoft is struggling as they have been. Sea of Thieves is a first party title, they marketed it and hyped it; incorrectly too. The fact that apparently the devs tried to open up on their end about what this game is aka a sandbox F2P lite thing, and Microsoft never once changed their pitch or marketing approach towards the game is a huge bummer. Or even the price point. I get that you can get in on the Pass stuff but ugh. If this game doesn't get support post launch to fully develop into the game it should be that would be a shame. I say that as someone who doesn't even want to touch it in it's current state, but you can't just dismiss all those people who paid $60 at launch for this and expect them to keep coming.

Not to try to turn this into the "console wars" thing but in comparison God of War early reactions look to be exactly what people want, and a far more finished product. I get that they aren't even remotely the same game, but as first party releases, releasing within relative range of each other...like what is Microsoft thinking? From what I saw of the concept in action, if you spend some more time developing it and fixing it, Sea of Thieves very much has the capacity to be a high selling first party title. Letting it just die as this pseudo early access half assed pirate simulator seems rather bad. Like EA levels of bad. Microsoft needs to get their shit together here imo.

Also this is a very informative long read. Thanks for writing it up duder, earnestly with all the pish posh of misinformation due to people not investing a lot of play time on the game it was nice to see some from a user who put a bunch of time in, and played it in the "ideal" fashion.

Free to play within the next 6 months.

tbh MS haven't pushed SoT all that hard just a few brief trailers over a couple E3's and the open beta last month with the YouTube stuff from the dev leading up to release.

I think the $60 price tag has more to do with cost to run Rare the studio wages alone over 4+ years dev is $50 million adding other cost associated with game dev and SoT is likely a $70 million game hence the $60 price.

How much support SoT is an interesting question because Rare have been hiring like crazy you would assume for SoT but the rumored Perfect Dark comeback could suggest otherwise.

Since the alpha nearly two years ago SoT has gotten even better water a fort and animal fetch quests given the glacial development speed at Rare and the fundamental flaws SoT has I would have major doubts SoT can be salvaged.

The only significant content they could add quickly unless they have stuff prepared given the lack of road map is unlikely would be strict PvP deathmatch or free-for-all etc.

It seems to be another case where the people who are into it are really into it, but everyone else is lukewarm at best. It's kind of disappointing. I was hoping for more, but there seems to be so many weird design decisions that only the smattering of people who A.) have a group of friends who are into it and B.) are cool with just kind of chilling and sailing around are really finding anything in it. And even then, it seems to be "the water looks good" that gets the most attention.

I feel like we are in a weird place with games that consider themselves a long term service based on previous issues with games like Destiny 2 and No Man's sky. We are so skeptical now of studios following through when they say before launch that "we have a post-launch plan for content" or "here is our roadmap for the next six-months."

This isn't coming from a place of hate for the game either. I have been playing with a 3-person crew of friends or with a few ppl from the Giant Bomb discord channel and each time has been a unique and super fun experience, but mostly because of our experiences despite the games core gameplay loop. I think that's why solo sailing after one or two voyage missions starts to feel super boring. You are avoiding all aspects of the game that create those story moments to make sure your hour of loot gathering doesn't go to waste.

I am hoping that before the initial two week trial period of the Xbox game pass finishes, they announce upcoming features and content they are adding, because I am super hopeful for once that a studio is going to carry out their vision. I love the feel of the game and traveling across the ocean in this world, I just want to keep having a reason to do so.

Also, fix the bug where skeletons don't spawn on islands for order of souls voyages. Four missions have broken for me now :(

Whoof. What a bummer of a game!

I was done with it in the beta.

Maybe is just me but I really don't base my video game choices because streamers are getting "fun" with X game. Feels to me that a streamer friendly game is not necessary a good / fun game for me (or most people actually). Some of my favorite genres and games are a chore to watch.

Someone commented on one of the times they played Mount your Friends 3D saying its annoying that a very mediocre game is going to sell well and get free press due to people streaming it and playing it because of its oddness basically. I didn't fully agree with that person when I read that. There are some good counterpoints to that argument, but over it kinda grew on me as a way of thinking, just like a waste of action concept.

Sea Of Thieves seems like the same kinda thing for me, have just seen hours and hours of people doing absolutely nothing in this hollow awkward formula haphazardly squashed into the shape of a game, Giant bomb have probably spent roughly 10 hours of footage on it, with 4 people every time (except one time they had 3?). Polygon has streamed for hours multiple times, etc. Everyone has, and its at least somewhat popular on Twitch although not comparatively. Launch streams, alpha streams, whatever, yet I feel like if you interspliced footage from any point in time, the game is basically the same.

I don't even feel the game is awful or anything, just like, a waste of effort. Maybe I am just talking about subjective emotions, again there are perfectly good counterpoints to this ranging from Is it wasted effort if it improves? to Anything that employs game designers is good. but in some sense I think its just gonna end up the same way as a lot of similar "ideas" felt when they were poorly executed. The failure removes the desire.

I really, really wanted this game to succeed.

While Sony was crushing it last year, 2017 was kind of a wet fart for Microsoft. That's not good. Dominance eventually leads a company to complacency. I want Microsoft to get back in the game. I want a reason to buy an Xbox. I wanted Sea of Thieves to be good so badly, I stubbornly ignored all the early criticism until I could see for myself.

Sea of Thieves is a alpha/beta that they're selling for $60. Whether they'll patch in the rest of the game or release it as DLC(a la EA with Battlefront 1) remains to be seen.

@alavapenguin: Totally a No Man's Sky situation. The on foot combat is comparably shallow too. But, Rare is an actual company while Hello games is a 10 person indie developer. Rare didn't fail to achieve their grand vision because of lack of capability.

I might be alone on this, but I really hope they never add progression that directly benefits the player's combat ability. The game is rough enough on new players. Having galleons full of dudes who've been playing since launch steamroll anybody they want because their boat is fast and they can carry more bullets seems like a bad, bad decision manufactured out of the frustration of people who really aren't going to play the game long term anyway. Keep it cosmetic, and the playing field relatively even.

I do think they need to add way more cosmetic options because there's really only like five different of each item that is then palette swapped for higher tiers. All pirates are going to look pretty much the damn same in a month or two. There needs to be tons of options. Let me dye my clothes, remove sleeves, unbutton or button up coats, let me get tattoos, let me dye my hair, let me change my base pirate. If all you're doing is cosmetic, which I think is the right play here, then you need to go all fucking out. As is, the customization is not sustainable.

I can't even tell if I like the game or not. It seems like whenever something cool happens I have to qualify it with "that was cool, but this annoying thing brought that feeling down." I outran a giant galleon and saw them get attacked by another galleon, it was a great moment, but after that hour of questing and chasing, I turned in my chests for not enough gold to buy the cheapest item in the game.

Over in the UK, I saw a Sea of Thieves advert playing on one of the big screens at Piccadilly Circus--that's about as big time as you can get, given how expensive a spot there most likely is!

@newfangled: Here in Canada also seen a bunch of adverts. I think it's more noting how none of the adverts at all put into perspective the type of experience the game is, and if anything promote that the game may be more than what it is. I've only seen two different adverts but each one talked of going on grand elaborate pirate adventures to a degree that I think one could argue isn't entirely present in the game.

This is what's most frustrating, because while there is the potential for this game to be great in future, I have very little enthusiasm to play right now. A roadmap is useless if you don't hook players at the start.

Yeah, I'm getting this a lot as well. I've had some interactions on twitter with people who will say things like "The combat is broken, the respawns are stupid, the quests are dull, and the cosmetics are too expensive, but this one time we hijacked a galleon and steered it into a rock so as far as i'm concerned it's still GotY!!" - as though that one cool experience made up for countless hours of monotony.

It's basically the MST3K effect, where terrible films are suddenly hilarious just because you're watching them while goofing off with friends. That doesn't make them good films, you're just experiencing them in a context which makes them enjoyable.

@hatking: I think progression would be bad. The game is very much a consequence-free sandbox.

I struggle with what could be added without ruining the pick-up and screw-off nature of the game. Simplicity and the lack of meaningful loss is a big part of the game.

For me, it’s been a game about stories. I think the current design is conducive to that end.

@nutter: I think they need to add more potential for those stories. My stories so far have only been random player interaction while I'm out collecting treasure. That quits being a thing when players lose interest in the pittance of things to do in the game.

I'm sick of chasing down random animals already, so that's 1/3 of the game I'm completely done with. The others probably aren't too far behind. Give me some reason to go out and experience this game, other than the off chance that something wild with another group will happen, or that in thirteen hours I might get a new hat.

I spent a few hours watching the game on stream and having a good time with it, but it's very clear to me that this game needs months of changes before i would actually consider playing it. Right now it feels like all those emergent stories can be summed up with ' we had loot, pirates came, we had a long ass battle but eventually prevailed'

Rare should flex it's writing chops on something more substantial than the trophy descriptions. Clearly they are able to write some humoristic questlines, so why is it that all those quests you gather are the most dry and uninteresting tasks imaginable? I need more Monkey Island-ish hi-jinks in this game. The game should try harder to put the players in fun situations (through questdesign or mechanical additions) , instead of fully relying on the players to make their own fun by being together on a boat.

I'm approx 25 hours into it so far, and still loving it. i think it helps I have a large variety of people to play with however.

For me, the ship to ship combat is just too much fun to put down, whether it be actively trying to attack another ship, or trying to get away due to having a bunch of loot. The game has really struck that pirate thing I wanted, and I can't put it down.

@hatking: I think the game has a weird problem in that freedom and freeform design seem, to me, to be central to the game.

Also, since the game feels content-incomplete, people are making what they want of the game. To me, it’s a sandbox free of penalty. It’s a place to adventure. It’s a place to drunkenly shoot people out of cannons. When Rare talked about adding a death tax, it rubbed me the wrong way. It would penalize the way I play. I think the lack of form needed to be committed to or altered before selling the damned game.

I did one chicken quest and thought it was dumb. I haven’t looked back. I’ve been leveling that vendor by bringing them silks, spices, and gunpowder gathered while I’m out collecting treasure, exploring the world, and fighting skeletons.

I would like to see the quests start dumb and trivial and get more varied as you level. Collecting chickens is dumb. I’ve seen pig crates, no less dumb. Maybe it’s fine to have those be level 1-4 missions, or the odd mission that you could choose. But let me fish, hunt, maybe someone needs some shark, part of a kracken. Maybe you can capture skeletons.

I think there’s room to add variety without fundamentally changing the game. I hope Rare walks that tightrope, as the game is charming as hell. Time will tell.

Yea, I am ready to bounce off this game after putting in twelve hours into the game. While it is certainly a blast for the first few hours with friends, it just becomes so tedious doing the same quests with no variety in them.

The merchant quests are by far the most annoying too. Sailing around islands for just two pigs or chickens drags on the experience. It is the equivalent of collecting bear asses in WoW, but at least in WoW I don't have to fret about people trying to take my bear asses or having to travel island to island just to find one specific bear ass that happens to be a different color than the one you need.

It's like they took two steps into an MMO and stopped there. So what you get is a world empty of 90% of the things that keep you playing a game like that. Sometimes it's actually worse to get half the thing you want, a tease, than to get nothing at all. At least this shows that there is probably a huge appetite out there for a Pirate based MMO.

I appreciate the idea of a consequence-free, no-progression game like this, but if you don't have any sort of deep character building you really need a very wide base of activities to compensate, or a huge world to explore together. Doesn't seem like Sea of Thieves has any of that really. There was so much hype, attention and interest at launch so it's a real shame if the player base falls off a cliff because there isn't enough to do, then it won't matter if they introduce it all over time.

Honestly if you just want to sail about the seas with friends and explore a good-looking world, you might as well just get Black Desert Online for $5. At least you can fish in that game, and it has a character creator.

@nutter: I'm with you on that. The last thing I want is for this game to turn into Destiny with boats, or go hard PVP and be Call of Duty with boats. I think it's walking this line of having PVP there as an element of chaos, but not be the central thing players have to work with. I also don't want to see this turn into a loot game where the player who found the best gun rules whatever instance they're in.

I think this game is on the right track, but only went a half step, if that. The cosmetic stuff and the make your own fun quest structure is the right direction, but it's just so limited right now. I wish that cosmetics were blown out like Saints Row or something. I don't like that every starting pirate looks the same for about the first fifteen hours they play.

Same goes with the quest types. Give me a weird adventure to go on with my friends. The closest thing to that I've had is the multiple step chest riddles. Which is actually pretty rad, but pretty rare.

Anyway, I hope they take this in the right direction because I do really like the fundamentals. Seems like they listened to critique and decided to cancel the death penalty update, according to the patch notes. Hopefully they keep that up.

@hatking: The combat is so loose that I can’t see PvP being a focus. If it is, that’s trouble.

And yeah, customization needs more...customization. Maybe this is the launch set of clothes and guns, but a lot of it is kinda samey.

It’d be interesting to see them go to pirate lore and fictional pirate stories to influence some multi-part quests.

They could do some tongue-in-cheek versions of Witcher style monster hunts, frankly. Have clues appear in the wild like some treasures. Have a chance encounture with a giant shark while diving that turns into a quest to slay the beast. Have legendary pirates come in as PvE pirates to take down.

I like that PvP is an uneasy threat, but the mechanics make it more of a hassle, or some silly fun, rather than a proper contest.

@nutter: The combat has grown on me, but it certainly doesn't feel like it should be a focus. There's a few really solid strategies I've developed to help me protect my treasure, but that's about the extent I want out of that.

I was watching a Polygon stream and somebody there said something about having NPC merchant vessels sailing around. I think giving players actual non-pirate boats to, uh, pirate would be a cool touch. Maybe that's asking a lot, but it could be a different way to progress in the Merchant Alliance.

I like the idea of Witcher-style epic monsters. The kind of have that with the skeletons now. I think a tiny bit of flavor text with those quests could go a long way. Tell me why I'm hunting this skeleton specifically. Stuff like killer sharks, krakens, skeleton bosses, giant snakes, and NPC pirates would all go a very long way to make the quests feel more varied and epic.

Maybe they don't even have to tell you what you're hunting right away. Maybe they just give you coordinates to an island and say something like "explorers have disappeared around these parts." Then you go there and do a similar thing to the treasure riddle, except it's random clues, to find a specific baddie. I would love to do stuff like that with my friends.

@hatking: Exactly, let you stumble upon quests that change in scope as you go. Maybe they’re multi-part, so you can recruit reinforcements, swap that sloop for a galleon.

As for NPCs, there could be islands with towns and governors, a navy that might patrol from time to time (not too often, maybe it’s like another kraken), there could be privateers, other pirates of varied reputation, merchants, NPC pirate strongholds...

There’s a ton that they could do to add to the game. I’d LOVE to see them pull it off. I’m cautiously hopeful.

You mentioned Destiny earlier, and while I don’t want this to be anything like Destiny, it reminds me a bit of Destiny year one. I just hope Rare generates content to support this properly sooner than later. It’d be a shame for this to die so quickly for lack of content.

@hatking: If there were more types of ships, I wouldn't feel too bad about their being high level ships you wouldn't want to mess with unless prepared. I mean being a pirate is all about weighing risk vs reward. Pirates in history had been known to loot warships but only under extremely strategic circumstances. Bigger ships take longer to turn, so even with more then a dozen canons, if a smaller ship can skate around their broadside, they can pretty much avoid getting hit. I mean that's the kind of PVP I'd want to have in this game, having to out think/maneuver the other player with your guile, and weaker assets.

@hatking said:

That was the first guild I encountered. I took a quest, eventually figured out how to start that quest (lack of tutorials really ding this thing out the gate) then blindly stumbled around trying to find chickens, then figured out I needed to have picked up pens for chickens before I left port. Head back, grab pens, head to island with chickens, engage in HORRIBLE NO GOOD GAMEPLAY until I get chickens, get paid like 75 gold. Go to buy a hat, hats are a billion gold. Chasing animals is for the birds.

@dancinginfernal: I think they need to be careful with adding stuff like that. I'd support different boats, to add variety, but it's a spinning plate act trying to keep these things balanced. I think the safe bet is keeping it cosmetic. I don't think it's impossible to have boats with different capabilities, I'd just want them to be extremely careful about it not becoming an arms race to the good boat.

@jeffrud: Easily my most despised aspect of the game. I was teaching my friend how to play last night and I told her to just never worry about those quests. Luckily we stumbled across a sunken ship with two Exquisite Spice crates and a Rare Tea crate, so that gave her a good head start on the Merchant Alliance. Honestly, my hard recommendation is to just keep an eye out for random crates to sell and never pick up one of those garbage quests.

@nutter:Fingers crossed. Two of my friends and I have signed up for the Xbox Game Pass trial to check this game out. We're all in our thirties now and have less time for this kind of stuff. It was really cool to have the excuse to play a low key game and chat with people without having to change out of my pajamas. Haha... Both friends have been impressed with the surface level stuff, but I'm afraid they'll fall off when they spend as much time with it as I have. I'd love to see this game pivot and become something special. Even if its not for everybody, I'd dig having this thing to play with friends.

Good tip on Merchant Alliance missions – get the crates then cancel the missions, that way you can leave port with like 6 cages. Do your other missions and as you're out there if you see animals grab them and bring them back when you bring back your main haul in order to level up Merch guild, that way you don't have to bring specific animals to specific ports.

@hatking: Yeah, a friend got me into it, another tried it and said “no thanks.” I’ve been mostly playing with my son, so that’s been cool. He’s nine, so he’s just loving just about every bit of it. He’s not stupid, though, so he refuses to vote for chicken chaser quests.

@the_last_starfighter: Good tip. I'll definitely try that out soon.

@nutter: Smart kid.

Is anyone else having the issue that Jeff and Ben described on the podcast, never seeing other boats? Maybe I'm queuing into higher population servers, but I'd say I see a boat every 30 mins or so.

Also, when playing as a group we had the most luck just bouncing between outposts and the Skull island to find boats to raid.

One thing that I noticed when playing with friends is they would never climb the mast, which gives a significant vision boost. They would always complain about never being able to see other players, but the truth was they simply weren't making the most of their visibility. I would routinely sit in the crows nest with my telescope and would spot plenty of enemies long before anyone else.

I see ships all the time. In the early going, my biggest gripe was too many folks ganging up on me during solo sessions.

I’d say about a quarter of the time, my loot is threatened at outposts. I either need to stealth unload, make peace, or fight it out...usually stealth or fighting, unfortunately.

Here's the thing with this game and actually the same thing I didn't understand when I saw peoples reactions to No mans sky.

When shown off at press events they just talk like they are these "infinite possibility" type games and my first and only thought is oh its one of those games where you just wonder around with no real story or anything like that doing basic stuff, This type of marketing has been happening for decades.

I guess I'm just showing my age but noadays it seems like people believe that that type of unique and/or almost limitless time with a game like this is possible rather than just marketing. I dunno, I thought both games looked garbage to begin with, so maybe its just me.

Maybe indeed.