This weekend's open beta was my first exposure to the game. And I have a lot of good things to say about it and some concerns. Disclaimer: this is experience with the open beta, and full release may be different.

Someone went and coded griefing tools right into the game!

Rare knows that people like to grief on the internet right? In internet matchmaking you will inevitably get matched to an existing crew that does not want you there. Can they lock the party, password protect their lobby, or kick you from the ship? No. The only option they have is to vote to lock you in the ship brig. The crew can vote you out of the brig, but only after a several minute minimum sentence. After that, you are not automatically released, but the crew has to go into a menu and vote to let you out. OR, just quit back to the menu and play the russian roulette of matchmaking again. This is horribly shortsighted on the part of Rare, in my opinion.

My first two attempts at matchmaking ended up being unjust brig time, and I almost gave up on the game, but eventually the good people on the internet triumphed over the bad, and every time after that was fine.

The Communication Problem

This is one of those games that is voice-chat-mandatory. The helms-person has a compass but no map view. That is below deck. Someone needs to tell them their heading over voice chat. You can choose to sail a large complicated Galleon or a small simple Sloop. The Galleon has six independent controls for the sails (angle plus level for three sails). It's great fun simply to coordinate to raise anchor, get the boat moving, finding a heading, and then angle the sails to catch the wind. BUT voice-chat is pretty much mandatory for all this. So it would be great if there were more fleshed out options for finding a group. Not everyone is going to like the adventure of a team-building exercise with internet randos.

All Captains and No Sailors

I wish the game would arbitrarily nominate someone as a captain of the boat. Give them a cool hat, and put a parrot on their shoulder, give them a weight of authority, I don't know. When matching with people it takes a while for people to run around aimlessly until somebody decided to take charge and start giving orders. It would be cool if the highest level player was automatically nominated as captain, and all the lowly sea dogs got extra credit for following their captains orders. And who knows, if someone routinely didn't follow orders, they got thrown in the brig.

Working crossplay between Xbox and PC

This is the first time I've seen this in action. I'm on PC with an Xbox One controller, and was matched with an unknown number of Xbox people. I voice-chatted with a shipmate for 30 minutes, and then hit T to type a message on the keyboard sitting in front of me. He was very confused. As it turns out he was on Xbox and I was on PC, and we never even noticed. This is kind of impressive. Using a controller during PVP shooting encounters did not seem to put me at a disadvantage either. Perhaps because the aim-down-sight view of the guns is not pixel-perfect which would give the mouse players a huge advantage. They also made it hard to quick-scope with the sniper rifle, knock on wood. Quick scoping console newbs with a $100 gaming mouse is the REAL PIRACY, amirite?

Flawless Technical Performance

This game is a looker. This will definitely be nominated for the new GiantBomb game of the year category "Best Waves of 2018". I'm on a GTX 970 video card, with an i5-6600K cpu. It's not a monster machine by any stretch, and it runs this game with a frame rate in the mid 50's with the quality settings on max, running at 1440p resolution. This game seems very polished and optimized. It's of course, Windows 10 store only, not Steam, but the advantage is cross platform matchmaking.

Only Two Quest Types

I really hope this will change with full release, but the open beta had you performing the same two quests over and over:

1) Treasure Chests:
Find Island where X-marks the spot, dig up the treasure chest, and turn it in. I did this probably 20 times.

2) Find Chickens:
Get empty chicken coop, search 8-10 islands for some chickens, then turn chickens in. I did this probably 5 times. Finding the chickens is tedious.

If the full game does not have many many more quest types than these two, this game is going to be extremely repetitive and grindy.

Conclusion

A gorgeous game with lots of potential, fun co-op adventuring, and the looming storm of internet griefers. But I guess after all, pirates will be pirates, won't they?

This game seems to exemplify "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" Everything I've seen suggests a lack of content and without constant improvements and content updates, this game will have a disappointing release and die soon after.

I've been saying the same thing for over a year since the first Alpha. Also keep in mind that this game is $60, not $30. People are going to bounce off of Sea of Thieves hard and fast.

This game has about as much depth as destiny, but without the false progression. So of course people are going to be put off. Sure they could give the equipment "stats" and "levels" and make you have to get the same blunderbuss over and over again just to get a higher "level" version of it. But like Destiny and other loot games they would just even everyone and even the enemies out so that level and stats mean nothing...

Personally I enjoyed the coop, and would love to do it with friends. but the price point doesn't make any sense. This should have been a free game with purchasable cosmetics. That model is working wonders for Fortnite BR, would have worked wonders here. I don't want to play with randos, and my friends don't want to spend $60 on a game they might lose interest in a few days. So I guess I'm not getting it even though I enjoyed the betas.

I got a deal on the Xbox game pass a few weeks ago so will pick this up on release - Perfect because, like many others, I'm not sure about dropping $60 on what might be great for a week or two but nothing beyond that.

@cerberus3dog: The puddle analogy is my concern.

Also, is this a lifestyle game like a Destiny or Monster Hunter? Those games feel like they’re as much work as they are fun.

Bungie completely lost me with Destiny 2, and while I really dig Monster Hunter, some days it feels like 30 minutes of getting our act together, 30 minutes of hunting, and by the time we’re ready to do a second mission, we’re spent and just call it quits.

I’m moving back towards Gears horde, Left 4 Dead/Vermintide, or campaign co-op as a result of all the burdon associated with certain recent games.

@unknownczar: I can understand why you would call progression that doesn't fundamentally alter gameplay "false" (though I think Destiny just barely hurdles that bar), but keep in mind there are clicker games that trade entirely on this concept. People like watching meters fill and numbers go up. Maybe it seems stupid when you put it like that, but when you strip that out of a game, you are robbing yourself of a powerful tool to keep players engaged.

Yeah add the awful combat and $60 SoT would be toast if not for Game Pass, chasing better hats seems to be the only goal in SoT.

I played the game for about 3 hours and it was quite boring. I spent a great deal of time waiting for things to happen rather than doing something.

Does anyone know what content they are holding back from the beta? I heard that there is more content that will be unlocked when the game fully releases.

@mike: it's also on gamepass so you could just drop $10 and get a months worth of fun and be done with it.

Has anyone played this solo? I would have to play by myself if I bought it and I'm concerned it's only primarily fun in multiplayer.

@mattchops: I would not recommend solo. Most of the fun comes from player interaction

I only play with friends when it comes to multplayer games, so I didn't find communication or different roles to be a problem. It seems like a good and fun game, but I'm worried about the mission design since the two quests in the beta (finding treasure chests and chickens) were boring as hell, but the gameplay and graphics are there.

Rare claims there will be much more content when the full game releases. It's also obviously meant to be a live title that they're continually update with content. But even with that in mind, I can't see myself spending $60 on it. Like others have said, it was pretty boring. I'll be spending my money on Burnout instead, and will likely pick up Sea of Thieves somewhere down the line when it goes on sale.

The lack of content is extremely worrying. They've said there will be more upon release, but everything I've seen and heard about this sounds like what the OP is saying: there's just not a lot to do. Hell, there could be a fuck load of stuff to do that makes this well worth $60, but it's definitely concerning that they've showed off so little of it if that's the case.

will get this game a year later when some new content is pushed as well as a cheaper price. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@mattchops: I tried to play it solo. Initially couldn’t figure out how to start a mission (called a “voyage” in game) after taking them from an NPC. Decided to just sail out, went to a small island, dropped anchor, killed a coupe skeletons. Some other ship came by and started shooting at me and my ship. Hauled ass back, raised anchor and took off. Ship sunk. I’m guessing I got shot but I don’t really know.

Respawned. Looked up how to start a voyage. Chose one with collecting chickens. Got a cage, had no idea how to use it. Abandoned that voyage, started a “go find the treasure one.” For to the island, dig up the chest carried it back to my ship. Stated sailing back to home base...ship sunk. No idea why. Tried to save chest and swim with it back to the home base. Got frustrated and lost. Respawned.

Quit.

@pappafost: There's also collecting pigs, same as collecting chickens. And then there's message in a bottle, which is a variant on X marks the spot. It's a little more involved but only a slivers worth.

Played the game for about 6-7 hours with some friends. It's not a good game.

@mattchops: I had some fun playing solo with the smaller ship, a sloop. You have to do all of the sails and navigation yourself. It's a very different experience. I ran away from every galleon I saw until they gave up and stopped chasing me. It would be fun solo, assuming the full game has a large variety of quests unlike the beta. Some games I call "podcast games". It would be a good podcast game solo.

The beta does lack any kind of tutorial, I don't know if one will be in the full game either. This game is brutally difficult for new players, best bet is to watch a lets play video and you will get it pretty quickly. I almost think it's designed this way. on the face it looks like a cartoony pirate game but it's more than that and it takes time in the game to see all that you can do, especially ship to ship combat which I think is the main focus of this game. I too think it may get boring after a while but I also think Rare knows what it's doing.

I spent $60 on curiosity alone. Played a bit of the open beta solo and got extremely tilted when other pirates murdered me and took the chickens I spend an hour collecting. Maybe a pirate's life isn't for me but I'm damn curious to find out.

I played it solo for a bit. Not sure why I had to vote on what voyage I wanted to do by myself but I had to look up how to even start a voyage online. Though the small ship is really well designed for solo and fun to tool around in.

I found a message in a bottle and that seemed super cool until finding out that it was a missions to collect ONE HUNDRED bananas in a crate and deliver it to a port in a certain time frame. No thanks I'm good. The merchant missions seem like bunk.

I did a few treasure chest maps. They seemed fine I guess. The constant skeletons spawning while you look around the island is annoying. It should probably be fun but the sword combat kinda sucks.

At some point I saw a sick looking skull in the clouds with green lightning lighting up the eyes so I decided to head that way. After a pretty long voyage it landed me at an encampment that already had a full crew doing the live quest there. Initially they fired on me but we came to an understanding about my friendly nature and we all just killed a ton of skeletons until the game said that was enough and unlocked a door to some chests. Being the solo dude against the full crew meant none of those chests were mine. It was cool to see that the game had events though.

I can't imagine feeling good about paying $60 for this game. Unless there is way more variety and gameplay they aren't talking about then this thing is going to fall off hard. I'll probably do the free gamepass introduction to mess with it a bit and move on.

I am really hoping there's more content at full release, but at least for now, I've canceled my pre-order and just switched over to Game Pass for $9.99/mo. If it's fun, I'll keep game pass for a few months (I don't see myself playing for 6+ months to justify the $60 price tag), so either way I'm saving money by going this route.

My wife is really excited about this game though, and I don't find many co-op games she'll play with me, so I really hope it's good so I'm not slogging through something I don't enjoy. The things we do for love!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even more so than No Man's Sky, which I didn't learn my lesson from because I pre-ordered SoT as well.

This seems to be a game that might be as fun as you make it. I played solo the last few weekends, and most of my time was spent running from larger ships and frantically looking over my shoulder as I was coming back to return treasure chests. I think everyone's concerns are well justified, though. Unless they're really holding content back, I don't see this game holding my attention longer than a month, or so.

Can you play co-op from the same gamertag? Or how does that work?

@mattchops: Have played primarily solo; it's great. A very relaxing experience, until it's not. This is already a GOTY contender for me, even with the limited features of the beta. Rare have created something special here. You'll see......

@confideration: I looked up family game pass options on Microsoft site but couldn't find any info on that. She just pre-ordered the game through her MS account though so we won't have any issues.

It would be nice if they offered something like that though.

@big_denim:

Is one of you on pc? Becaue, I just got the game pass, and it works that way.

Create a second account on your Xbox. It does not have to be a gold account. As long as your primary account is gold you are fine. Use the second silver account on Xbox.

Log into your main account on pc. Add each other as friends between your main and secondary account. Then play together.

It's actually really cool.

@mozzle: We are both on PC, so I don't know of that will still work. I may have to look into that and see. To my knowledge, you don't assign a primary PC like you do on console. Most likey because I don't use/need gold to play online.

@mozzle: Huh, thanks for figuring this out. I may use it to play with the kid.

Not sure why people are finding it so hard to know what kind of content exists in this game beyond the Beta stuff you saw. A quick search would easily bring up the list.

3 Factions with missions each specialized to their flavor.

Treasure Hunters - Get maps, find chests; Message in a bottle find chests; Search sunken shipwrecks find chests.

Traders - Haul a load of cargo from one outpost to another without losing it; Find animals on islands and trap them to sell; Find unique curios and treasures to sell.

Mystics - Hunt evil pirate lords and take their skulls back for trade; Message in a bottle - find and destroy pirate lords for bounty; find cursed items and trade for bounties.

Assault undead pirate strongholds - Take your crew and assault an undead pirate stronghold and be the first to snag the key to the special vault room containing unique chests, curios and the pirate lord skulls (from the assualt)

Raid - Defeat the Kracken! Join multiple ships in the fight against the massive Kracken. This is an event that will randomly attack ships and pull them underwater (you can fend it off and escape sometimes) unless a group bands together to defeat it in combat. This will scare away the Kracken for a time leaving you free to sail in (relative) peace.

I will say that as someone who has had it with tacked on progression mechanics and games that have numbers go up just to have numbers go up as if they were a AAA clicker, this game is a breath of fresh air. I have played and loved every second of the betas that have happened and cannot wait for final release. I don't need no color coded gear with useless stat numbers. Just give me the open sea, a full tank of grog, and a hearty crew ready to plunder and torment any poor soul we happen across.

@flakmunkey: Exactly ;)

I hope this can be fun without an immediate group of friends who are also playing! Here goes nothing!

This game is Microsoft's big chance to have their very own "No Man's Sky" event; I can hardly wait.

i get that, but i personally need atleast some form of progression. Otherwise it just feels meaningless. I love the idea of the game but i need incentive to play it. If the only thing that you get is fancy clothes, i'm out i think.

That's still a problem because you mention 5 things and 2 of them (look for treasure chests and haul chickens) are things I NEVER want to do again. They need more missions and content. The sailing is fun and on foot combat is decent enough, but I think a lot of people will get quickly bored. Something like the skeletons having their own ships and you have to fight them if you run into one would help spice things up too. If Ubisoft handles their pirate game right it could bury this one if Rare isn't careful.

I kinda feel like if you aren't into finding buried treasure from maps and clues you might not be the person for a fantasy pirate game my dude.

I feel like after a week alot of people won't be into the fantasy pirate game especially if the tenth treasure map isn't that much different from the first, the 14 day free game pass trail will probably be more than enough time to get your SoT fill.

@werupenstein: i keep hearing people say it's going to be like no man's sky and that is such a lazy and dumb comparison. Rare has been completely open and transparent about what the game is.

IMO progression systems are the bane of modern games. I absolutely do not want Sea Of Thieves to be filled with player levels and perk trees and sidequest cheklists. The magic of what I have played/seen comes from having my own adventures and stories in a very loose pirate-themed framework. With a few friends on board, this is going to be my goto hangout game for a long time.

I liked AC: Black Flag a lot, so there are obviously things to do in a pirate besides dig up treasure and haul chickens. Those are okay as optional side missions, but they shouldn't be a major aspect of the game since they get old fast.

@deathstriker: 5 categories, multiple mission types per the first 3. Just sayin'

Q: I tend to play games alone, is it even possible playing this game alone ? This seems like a big oversite

@soulcake

Absolutely. You can play a solo sloop if you do so wish, I did so for some of the beta. It does mean you will probably want to avoid ship to ship combat tho unless you get sneaky with it.

I won't take such a hard stance against progression-centric games, since I enjoy them most of the time. But I I agree completely otherwise. My friends and I played probably 20 hours across all the betas and had a blast. I feel like often times progression is a facade to cover the fact that you are still always doing the same thing over and over. And often times the gameplay that leads to progression in something like Destiny is even more repetitive and boring than what Sea of Thieves provides.

Which makes me think of what people count as progression. I watched a chunk of the live stream of SoT today and someone mentioned how Austin Walker would see a lot more progression in it than most people do, given his appreciation for player expression and storytelling.

It's drawn a lot of hot takes on either side, and I think it's easy to see why. It doesn't really compromise it's vision, which I feel like originates from the idea of just doing some pirate hijinks with your friends. Which I could not be more excited for.

@crazybagman: Yeah I came across as more overtly against progression systems than intended. One of the games I enjoyed the most last year was Path of Exile which is basically a Russian nesting doll of loot drop tables and progress bars. If a game's core design is built around the grind, that's one thing. But when folks say that they won't play a game unless they're incentivised by a progression system, I think that speaks to a larger problem.

Man, this thread is a bummer. I was very stoked for this game when it first showed at E3, knowing they would have time to "make it fun". I cannot for the life of me figure out what exactly they've been doing for the year or two since then. Presumably working on netcode and shaders and stuff because it seems like most of the islands are using the same modular assets with maybe two dozen hero pieces. Where's the meandering, walkabout inducing quest trees? Where's the different game modes to fill in time between PvP? The bar brawl mini games or dueling arena or point to point regatta races or...anything?

This feels like original Assassin's Creed all over again: very cool looking game in a fun setting with absolutely nothing to do besides three boilerplate quests you repeat forever.

And at 60? Yeah, emergent gameplay is all well and good but man...I kind of want...you know...something beyond Twitch fodder for that. I hope this sells well enough that they can keep adding on things to garner more interest for me. Maybe this got pushed ahead early like No Man's Sky and Andromeda? I dunno.

Think I'm on the side here that wants to see more out of this game. Haven't played any of it and haven't watched much of it, but I did tune in to the stream today. Seems like the game hasn't evolved at all since it was announced and I feel like I've seen 90% of what the game has to offer. Part of me wants to get it because of the visuals.. but my brain is telling me that's absurd and it would be unwise for me to do that, knowing my particular gaming habits.

I'd probably want more of a progression system out of it, which does not mean I want character progression specifically. I like having something to motivate me. Whether that is new cool things to see or features to unlock and some little cosmetic extras in there for good measure. I can only do the same old simple task for fun a handful of times. After that, I might as well go play something else that is new and shiny.

This does seem like the style of game that will be much better a few years down the line after some "expansions" with new features/content.