Sea of Thieves: Will it Sink or Sail?
Sea of Thieves is an ambitious new title by Rare that is fast approaching its official launch on March 20th. I won’t be going too in-depth with explaining what the game exactly is, I suggest looking at the extensive content on that already, but instead will be looking at the viability of the title. Being that it’s a game heavily reliant, if not entirely reliant, on online play with others means that it will inevitably die one day. But the question is, how long will it last?
Sea of Thieves has a lot of very cool things going for it; a minimalistic HUD to help immerse players, easy to figure out controls, a gorgeous sea and islands to explore, fantastic ship sailing, and a medley of simple social features, to name the highlights. But not everything is all bananas and booty I’m afraid. There are some features that meld in very reactive and unpleasant ways. I’ll be listing out points and talking about them, just for simplicity and readability. Plus it makes it easier to discuss.
1: A “horizontal” progression system and an open world “no safe zones” PvP system
By far the biggest concern. While Rare has insisted they studied multiple online games and understand exactly what makes them tick, I have to question how true that really is. Open world PvP (player versus player) is a fun concept that can easily spiral out of control. When people hear this feature, quite a few immediately imagine a lawless hellscape of death and destruction. For the most part, that’s actually not usually how it ends up. In the past, open world PvP games have survived because of one simple concept; if you give players something to do, they’ll probably do that instead of terrorizing others. Obviously not 100% effective, but the general economy of a game does end up significantly healthier while there is content to chew on.
The term horizontal progression basically means that all players are on a level playing field always. Whether you’re a decked out pirate legend with 10,000 hours, or a dirty vomit covered swabby with 1 hour, you are both equally matched raw power-wise. Players do gain some advantages, obviously the most notable being experience, with the other being weapon unlocks. But based on current balancing, a new player could get the weapons they want in about an hour. Characters can currently only hold two weapons, so unlocking the two that interest you is not exactly a lengthy feat.
Now if you haven’t realized the clash here, allow me to elaborate. Horizontal progression systems are inherently ones with no real, feasible goals. I don’t need to gain gold once I unlock the weapons I want, which doesn’t take long for shabby looking skinned weapons. PvP focused pirates can just hop on a ship, do a couple treasure hunts, and then proceed to make life hell for as many people as possible. This behavior very quickly poisons a community. A fantastic example is Rust. These days it’s full kill-on-sight PvP. Years ago, it was quite heavily RP and shenanigans. Rare wants to build a very social game, but outside of your crewmates it will quickly become second nature to attack and kill absolutely everyone, else they’ll troll or kill you. I don’t necessarily think there’s a proper solution to this, but there are plenty of ways to help bandage it.
2: Severe lack of PvE content
PvE content is probably one of the parts that suffers most in this game, and it ties nicely into my previous point. Currently there are two enemy types; sharks, and skeletons. Skeletons can use any weapons pirates can, including land cannons. There are also skeleton captains which are just skeletons with more HP. This is a very bad sign. Aside from the kraken being confirmed as a sea boss, nothing else has been shown, announced or found.
Like a fine cheese to go with an aged wine, voyages are also quite lacking. Split across 3 current factions, all of them are glorified reputation grinding. Probably MMORPG gamers least favorite activity, and for good reason. It’s a task that involves monotonous, repetitive grinding to keep pushing numbers up. Gold Hoarders reward chest turn ins, Merchant Alliance sends you on wild goose chases for animals and other goodies, while Order of Souls wants skulls. The core gameplay loop goes stale quite fast, as all voyages are more or less identical except in length and reward. The end goal of the game is to become a pirate legend, however all that offers is more voyages, more cosmetics, and a secret base that will do nothing until the next rank is released.
Really I’d say the game’s focus is on PvP, so realistically the PvE content doesn’t necessarily need to be beefy. However once again, we go back to the fact about open world PvP. Since this is a social game, or supposed to be, stale PvE means more ruthless PvPers out for blood. Trust me when I say, there are no social interactions at the bottom of the sea. Toxicity breeds toxicity, and the game chokes out social interaction at every turn.
3. No incentive to play nice, and missed opportunities to harbor social interactions
As dull as reputation grinding is, the different factions would have been a marvelous way to incite soft alliances with other players. Something as simple as allowing players to ally with a faction for a small boon, while adding a small bane to another faction, would have done wonders. As an optional feature it still would periodically bring upon positive social interaction. Even if it’s simply because you’re a Gold Hoarder, and you see a filthy Merchant Alliance ship, so you proceed to board their ship and have a lively engagement. It creates fun and excitement basically for free.
4. No character creation
I would never go so far as to call this game breaking, but it’s asinine enough that I really wanted to comment on it. When you start the game, you are faced with 8 randomly generated pirates. You can select one of these, or roll another 8. That’s it. For some bizarre reason, Rare thought it would be a delight to use characters “they” made for you. For a majority of players, I’m sure many will agree this is far from delightful. For the betas I didn’t really care what I looked like, but I guarantee for launch I will be spending upwards of 30 minutes praying RNGesus delivers me a character I enjoy. I spent 20 minutes for the open beta just to see if I could find a character I might like, to no avail.
Now, as dumb and short sighted as this feature is, it really could’ve been a lot less painful if you could at least help the creator a bit. I want a male character, so every single female character generated is a waste of the lineup. Why can I simply not choose my gender? As a white male, I also want my character to be white. Why can I not choose to only generate caucasian characters? Such a blatantly simple thing would likely at least make such a bad system bearable. Rare really screwed the pooch on this one I’m afraid. In a game where vanity is literally the entirety of the content progression, it makes zero sense to hinder players from having their ideal character to pimp out in awesome outfits.
I’ll probably look at wrapping this up. I have plenty more to say but this is getting on the longer side of things. I’ll briefly go over exactly how I feel about this game, where it’s currently headed, and what I think needs to happen.
Despite what it may seem, based on all of this ranting, I actually love Sea of Thieves and what it’s trying to do. It has a mountain of potential, and that’s why it honestly hurts to see Rare fumbling in some very key areas to preserve the longevity of this title for years to come. Sailing is absurdly fun and satisfying, it’s fun to play with friends, and it really is a beautiful game with gorgeous water. I would encourage anyone to grab an Xbox Game Pass (first timers can grab a 14-day free trial) and try this out (you get it for both Xbone and PC) for yourselves.
But despite the good, the bad really will poison the waters fast if things are not addressed. Unless Rare is hiding a cove, and maybe a few galleys, of content for launch, it’s looking like the game will launch with an incredibly limited amount of things to do. There is almost nothing to facilitate social interactions outside of your crew, and frankly even then if you’re playing with randoms there is already rampant trolling. Toxicity breeds more toxicity. In an open world game with full PvP, you need content to distract players from getting bored and looking to hinder other players’ experiences. Not only that, but players need a reason to keep logging in. For people who enjoy collecting vanity items, the game is fine for now. But for many, they’ll find the game severely underwhelming as far as real tangible content is concerned.
Many, many games have died to a toxic community in an open PvP world. In a game where other players are key, the game can’t afford to drop too many because that rapidly turns into a death spiral destined for the depths. Cross-play and the XB Game Pass will help, but it’s on Rare to have some pretty hefty plans for launch, and looking ahead. I genuinely look forward to seeing what this game becomes, and hope theirs is a fruitful venture. But without a surge of content or fixes to address the lacking social content, I could see the game drowning within months. Potentially even a month, depending on how much launch content they have tucked away.
With all that said, for all those interested in the game, it releases on March 20th for Xbox One and PC.
Hope to sink some of yer ships.
Also look out for a Sea of Thieves GBAtempTV stream I’ll be doing in the morning on launch day around 10 AM PST
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