Does it get better?

After watching the crew play a bit of the game, I hopped on the free trial with Xbox Game Pass and tried the game out.

For four hours, I managed to complete around ~9 voyages after bumbling with the interface and slowly understanding the core loop. Level factions with quests, sometimes I dig treasure, other times I'm capturing chickens, and occasionally I slap a skeleton for a skull or two.

Does it get better? It feels like I'm playing a watered-down sandbox with no appealing incentives and very few toys to play around with. Purchasable gear doesn't make itself clear on whether or not it has an added benefit, and even if there were stronger weapons -- it wouldn't make the combat any more appealing. Most enemies I encountered were skeletons that are only a nuisance to completing quests, since ammo is so limited and sword combat doesn't have any satisfying weight to swings.

The idea behind the game is wonderful in concept. Ship mechanics feel immersive and near-breathtaking as the dock rises and dips along waves that are beautifully lit. It's a game that feels like its trying to capitalize on GTA Online's success in its own way.

But everything else feels so shallow and underdeveloped. I'd like to know your experiences so far in the game. What do you like about it? Is it worth your $60? What were your initial expectations? I know it's not the game for me; but I'd love to hear why some people really dig it.

EDIT: Thanks everyone for pitching in your experience with the game. General consensus: no. It doesn't get better. But maybe it'll pull a No Man's Sky and continue to develop its progression system. The way the game doesn't explain itself at all is somewhat charming, so let's hope that they manage to add a sense of purpose and direction without compromising subtlety.

I am also curious about this. I haven't gotten it yet but I am very interested in it.... It looks cool but I am not sure it has that hook to keep me playing it long as far as progression goes.

I also signed up for the free two week pass so I could give it a shot, played for around 3 hours on PC.

One thing I noticed right away was the griefing, I'd pull up to a port only to find people waiting to shoot on sight and steal my stuff or repeatedly spawn camp my ship. These were my only interactions with players, I never fired the first shot, I'd try to wave or communicate in text chat but they just wanted blood. Pretty boring encounters.

The griefing along with the fetch quest nature of the gameplay are making for a fairly monotonous experience so far. Shame because the game's gorgeous and the sailing is really fun. Ah well...

There really isn't any kind of meaningful progression. There are a few different types of missions and once you've done them each once, the rest are the same. There are factions to level up and cosmetics to earn, as far as I know that's the entirety of the progression system.

Do not buy this game if you are looking for any kind of depth or progression or anything like that, because it isn't there. There also isn't any point to exploration because while there are islands, there is nothing on them to find. This game is about getting together with your friends on a ship and once you have exhausted the minuscule amount of content, then you PVP - I can't imagine doing anything but PVP in the long term because anything else would be the most boring, repetitive grind imaginable. My PVP experience was pretty limited and I only got into two "fights" - in one, the other ship just turned and ran. In the other, our two Galleons circled one another firing cannonballs and repairing hull breaches for what seemed like an eternity until we ran out of ammo, then we turned and ran. The major PVE portion of the game is a very simplistic horde mode where you fight waves of skeletons, and if you beat the boss then you try to get the loot onto your ship and back to an outpost to sell.

It is a beautiful game with some well designed mechanics, and it felt great to sail around in, then I was done. Some games have a lot of breadth, some have a lot of depth, some have both, but Sea of Thieves has neither. Have you ever heard that phrase, "As wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle"? Well Sea of Thieves is more like, "As wide as a puddle, as deep as a thin layer of moisture." This is pretty much what I thought it was going to be, but I was curious so I signed up for the free Game Pass trial and gave it a shot. I'm already done with it and have canceled my Game Pass trial, and the whole experience cost me exactly $0. I would have been pissed if I spent $60 on this game.

If you want to sail around and engage in PVP with your friends while chatting, this might be the perfect game for you and you may have a ton of fun with it. If you are at all interested in Sea of Thieves I strongly recommend going for the free 14-day Xbox Game Pass trial and playing it that way, then deciding from there if you actually want to spend $60 on it. It's a Play Anywhere game so the Game Pass trial allows you to play on both the Xbox One and PC.

That's a real shame. I always assumed the experience would be something like this but I really hoped it would surprise me. I tried to watch a few people play last night but it seemed to either be super boring or not working. Great/fun art style though :|

Bummer. Looks like a cool game in theory but not enough of the content there to make me actually buy it going by this thread.

This sums up my experience with the game from playing many hours with some friends all the while trying to find what the hook is. That there's no possible reward for exploring random island other than there might be a message in a bottle on it (which you'll always find from passing anyway) seems criminal.

Part of me thinks that since this game has no actual progression other than cosmetic, that they should've just launched it as a free to play title and let you pump money into it to buy the cosmetics if you wanted in addition to working towards them by doing the same 3 fetch quests over and over.

I'm curious about the game, so I watched this video:

It discusses progression and talks about what happens while you rank up with the 3 guilds, when new mission types open up with rank. When you are maxed out with the three guilds, you become a "Pirate Legend" and gain access to the "legendary Pirate Hideout" (according to the video). In this exclusive end-game area, there will be access to "legendary voyages" and clues to unlock the secrets of "Athena's Fortune". That seems like end-game content to me. So that's scaling mission types with rank progression and an end-game content area.

The video also suggests that people create their own emergent gameplay by being piratical with opposing players or forming alliances with them, which is something you'd have to do for yourself, given imagination.

I wonder if the comments in this thread and the video can both be true. I'm still intrigued enough to give it a go.

I've heard the same thing. And after 4 hours of the game, there is NO WAY I'm going to go through potentially dozens more hours of the same repetitive quests just to attain Legendary status. And that's assuming that content is actually something other than just finding a different colored pig or catching a golden chicken or something.

If there is a significant portion of the game locked behind Legendary status, then Rare really fucked up. If it's just slight variations on the stuff you can do from the get go, then I'm not missing anything.

@mike: What was your guild rank and do you know what the max rank was? Is the colour of the animals you catch the only difference in higher ranked missions?

No, it doesn't get much better. Im enjoying the game but its nothing more than an enjoyable, mediocre game right now that doesn't seem all that finished. It seems like a game thats a year away from being good. The $60 price tag is insane. Its kinda perfect for game pass though because I can just check in on it for a few hours of fun every few months when they make some big updates.

I only played 2, but same thing. Spent a bunch of time looking for chickens, got to port and got spawn camped. After that I spent most of my time circling around quest objective ports to drop cargo, waiting for ships to leave. I want this game to be fun so much, but I'm grasping at straws.

Think I only going to try and give it one last chance and matchmake into a larger crew. But like folks mentioned ( and the video explained) The game has 3 types of areas, 3 types of quests and the variation seems to be that you need to do "more" of the same. Like more items for your cargo laundry list, more skeleton bosses to kill or more steps to get to a buried treasure.

Just spent an hour and a half or so running a chicken-collecting quest, and then the gold I got for turning it in spontaneously disappeared when I talked to a shop keeper. So that was a bummer.

@echoecho: During the beta I'd similar problems. Logging in and out got me my gold back.

I think people have summed up the whole deal with Sea of Thieves pretty accurately here. As a person who has been consistently enjoying their time in the beta and now live (even as a solo player) I would confidently say this this game is NOT going to be for everyone. In fact it probably won't be for most people. I reckon the initial wave of hype and publicity will probably be centered around streamer shenanigans (it seems tailor made for Mixer what with the four stream split set up... convenient) and then it will be left in the hands of the die hard players.

Sea of Thieves is boring and beautiful, tedious and mysterious. I think the biggest problem with it right now is that not a lot of people know what is or isn't in there and folks jumping in to have a raucous good pirate adventure may find themselves terribly confused and frustrated. This is definitely going to be one of those pieces of entertainment software that you have to be in the right mood for.

SoT for me is my MMO lite analogue. It's a thing I spin up at night before bed so I can sail around, push a few rep numbers up, and then get to bed. All the while I get to enjoy a very pretty and relaxing virtual world. Do things get tense and exciting some times? Sure they do... But you're gonna spend a lot of time walking around to the sound of nature.

I am not entirely surprised to see this game headlining Microsoft's new first party on Game Pass incentive. Sea of Thieves seems like a game that people at Rare wanted to make, damn the consequences, and they got a bunch of money with which to do so. It seems very much like they made the thing they wanted to make, take it or leave it, and as it neared completion I have a feeling someone somewhere said "This is gonna get crucified as a $60 retail product. Bob had this idea though..."

As a freebie along with the Game Pass subscription Sea of Thieves is cool and I really appreciate a lot of what it offers me. If I had a consistent, regular crew of three other friends who wanted to commit to a D&D like session structure of doing stuff and exploring together until we all saw everything... Maybe I'd consider paying retail price. As it stands though I think it fits in well with Game Pass, particularly if the long term support they suggested ends up being a thing. Sea of Thieves could very well be Microsoft's subscription based MMO-like-lite that also happens to come with a huge on-demand video game library.

Seems like they made some cool systems but didn't take enough time to build a game around them. I honestly can't believe you not only have to collect chickens more than once, but it's one of the 3 main mission types? that can't be right? would be cool if they had some kind of AI driven or player driven military that kept randomly trying to capture you, maybe like events in MMO's or something.

Played a 45-minute demo for Sea of Thieves at PAX West last year and felt this exact fatigue during the demonstration. That seemed like a pretty big red flag.

I'm hoping people really get into this game, but I'm certain this isn't for me.

What I've been afraid and amazed is by their lack of content. They've got a (seemingly) great framework, did they just forgot to hire content creation people?

Do they expect people to yaryar their way around a world that has nothing to do?

Skeletons, chickens, wow. Great stuff, guys ;) PS. I really hope they keep on updating it and it turns out ok.

@willyod: I wonder if the devs spent an inordinate amount of time making sure the boat travel was cool and had neat systems and moving parts and everybody could do different roles while drinking and playing a song, and then didn't have enough time to actually make the quests varied or interesting, or make the on-land combat rewarding. I know game dev can be hard since you don't see the whole picture of the game you're making come together until near the very end of the process, but this is the hardest I've seen a big dev miss the mark in a while.

Weird analogy, but this game seems like the inverse of the Wind Waker. Wind Waker had brain-dead sailing where you just changed wind direction then zipped around in a straight line, but the puzzles and combat you found on the islands were enjoyable and it all felt like a big cool world. Sea of Thieves has more detailed sailing on bigger ships where a crew can coordinate different roles and you can "roleplay a sailor" better than Wind Waker, but SoT's puzzles and combat and general activities once you're actually on the islands are boring and repetitive, and it feels like there's nothing interesting to do or find in the world.

I will give them this, the sailing feels amazing.

It's just everything other than that isn't good. The combat just plain sucks. The missions are immediately repetitive and boring.

I appreciate that I don't have to worry about my friends having more spare time than me and getting way above my level by the 2nd day, making the game either impossible or boring to play with my friends. But there are other ways to create some kind of goal, something to drive for. At this point you play for a few hours, see a bit of everything and you're done. Just any amount of variety to the missions would do wonders.

Woe to the players who spent $60 on the game and are currently in the justification phase of a game's release.

@willyod@bisonhero I also don't want to armchair critic too hard, I whole-heartedly accept that I have NO idea how the development went. But when looking at the trailer from nearly 3 years ago, it seems like a lot of the core concepts were already there. I would speculate that their time was spent on make tonnes and tonnes of islands. I haven't even played SoT but from what I've seen the map is rather large and islands are quite commonplace.

I would like to point out how weird the 'lack of a progression system' is specifically in a game about amassing riches.

I wish Sea of Thieves had leaned more into the exploration aspect. All the islands in the game LOOK different, but they all give you the same things to do: Fight skeletons, catch chickens, or dig up treasure. I would be way more into the game if they had taken the time to make each island truly feel unique. Give each one a different puzzle or gimmick, or maybe put collectibles on various islands that players can take to their ship and keep, to give more incentive to explore.

It could also benefit from some type of cartography quest, like at the start of the game maybe you only have maps of the sea immediately around you, but as you sail around you could discover new islands or find new maps that lead you to other places.

I played the first PC alpha like 8 months ago, and the game was more or less the same as it is now. There are a decent amount of islands on the map, but they are all pretty generic with little reason to visit them unless you are going after something specific, like catching chickens to deliver. There is no reason to explore any of the islands in the game because there is nothing to find on them. There is no reason to go to any islands at all unless you are doing one of the repetitive fetch quests to earn gold to level up so you can do...more fetch quests.

@feralchemy: I think you summed up its positive quirks quite well. As jaded as my personality gets, you're absolutely spot on that this is a game they had genuine interest in making. The sailing is cool -- the rest of it kind of isn't.

It's one hell of a tech demo. I would also treat it as an MMO-lite if my questing wasn't hampered by bullies guarding the outpost docks haha. I'm glad you like it though, I'm excited to see how they continue to develop the game throughout its lifespan.

This really seems like another No Man's Sky. My only hope is they can turn it around in a similar manner. Seems like they could do some of the following:

- NPC Pirate ships: Allows for players to experience ship to ship combat without having to deal with players who really don't want to engage or the whole griefing aspect of things. Tools and items related to boarding would be useful; grappling hooks (maybe even cannon based ones) and the like.

- More Sea Life/Monsters/Anomalies: Whales, Dolphins, Whirlpools, Waterspouts, etc. Who wouldn't want their own Moby Dick like encounter out there.

- Weapon Variety: The weapons don't have to be better, just different. I know it's a little dismissive to say "just balance them" but it's not like they can't tweak values over time.

- Actual Treasure: It is bonkers that you just trade in the loot you find. I would have thought they could do a risk reward thing where chests could be opened and looted for a piece of gear or traded in so you rank up. Higher rank voyages = higher rank treasure = better gear when looted.

- Fleets: Self explanatory. I know this can just sort of happen if crews play friendly, but they should build a system around it to better manage it.

- Activity variety: Ties into the NPC pirates, but missions around kidnapping, pillaging, destruction, prison escapes, scuttling fleets, etc. Hard to do this when the only enemies are skellies.

- A Home base: Gives you something to work towards and spend gold on outside of cosmetics.

Just some thoughts. I love the idea behind this game, it just feels like they left it too empty.

I can't help but to wonder what Rare has been doing for the past years...

But I can now better understand Microsoft and their Game Pass plans. Only interest in Xbox (actually I'll be more likely to play on my Windows PC) games I have was State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves (I feel that Crackdown 3 was dated already when it was announced), and it looks like SoT didn't quite pan out. Of course nowadays it's possible they'll keep on updating the game for years to come (Ubisoft has become one of my favourite game companies in the past year, which I would have never ever expected...)

I'm super-hoping that State of Decay 2 will be great, perhaps the greatest coop game ever (Saints Row 2 still holds this place in my heart, just my personal experience).

So the number don't go up? This has seemed like a proof of concept from the get go, with very little in the way of meaningful progression. It might be a fun co-op distraction, but from what I've seen it's seem very shallow at this point. My question is, who is this for? Is it a baby's toy?

This definitely seems like another one of those chatroom games like Destiny and Monster Hunter (of course nowhere on the level of progression rewards that Destiny/MH have). I was having fun with it for a bit until I started to run into countless people just camping the towns to kill you as soon as you got there. Going through that much trouble for as little as 80 coins towards things that cost 5k-140k and are 100% cosmetic isn't a real motivator to keep going.

I'll probably give it another shot but I'm really not that hopeful right now.

@jesus_phish: Yeah, it was back the next time I logged in. Not a terribly big deal.

--

Not sure how I feel about getting jumped and killed in an outpost while trying to turn in quests. Especially when playing solo or as a duo, there isn't much you can do to defend yourself if you're walking up to an NPC with a quest item in hand, and suddenly you've got two other players shooting and/or hacking you to pieces before you can turn it in. Then after that, they just camp your ship and take you for all you're worth. It'd be one thing if it was a run-in with another group out in the wider world -- it's a pirate game, after all -- but it just feels like the outposts should be neutral ground. Hell, there's even a sign posted in the tavern that implies as much. But I was playing with my girlfriend, and we'd gotten a bounty from a message in a bottle, spent a good chunk of time completing it, and then as we were walking into the faction tent with skulls in hand we got cut down, lost the skulls, and then had our boat camped. It wasn't an especially fun note to end our night of adventuring on.

The big problem is that there's no penalty for attacking other players, so people are just doing it because they can.

They really need to add something that promotes friendly play. If a group is killing people they could end up with a bounty on their head that shows their location on the map for 2-4 hours or maybe a super aggressive AI ship hunts them down, I dunno but there should be some sort of penalty/risk to attacking/griefing other players.

This almost sounds like a No Man's Sky situation. Great premise and gameplay in theory but just not enough actually there....

I dont know, lots of progression within the factions but the pure sailing is just so fantastic that any excuse to do it is enough for me. taking a break though the servers seem to be getting fucked, ive got items vanishing and chests that can't be dug up. once they stabalize this is gonna be my everyday game though.

@the_last_starfighter: I'm amazed that it doesn't even do something as simple as forces your sails to be black or for there to be a jolly roger on your mast so other players know that your crew are playing that way so they know to avoid that ship.

I saw the early trailers, I thought 'griefing'. I read this thread, I hear 'griefing'.

The BBC says: How Sea of Thieves is trying to make gamers play nice

The Executive Producer in the video says: "There's literally no reason or motivation to do anything other than co-operate." He was talking about within a crew of course, but even then... I don't think they quite understand the internet. Also, they didn't say anything more than vague 'we designed things to avoid toxic behaviour', but what can you expect from a fluff piece interview I suppose.

My friend and his brother are super enthusiastic about getting into the game... it will be interesting for me to see how that turns out.

I want just push that horse back into the stable and bolt it, tell Rare they've got another 12 months, and come back once they've put some more game stuff into the unbelievable sandbox they look to have built. I'm not quite sure what they're banking on players coming back to the game for, time after time? because at the moment it looks like they're throwing a party with no booze, not enough to make people stick around, not enough to encourage co-operation, not enough rum in the grog.

Yeah... wow that is amazingly naive. It's not about motivation, it's about opportunity.

Not every game needs to be about the progression loop. It's why people exist who play RPGs and LARP. Some games require you to put into the game to make it what you want.

I feel like this is a game that some people want to be other than it is. Maybe future events and content update will make it more to those tastes but for now it's gonna be a game where you make the fun via interaction with other people. The core game is focused around playing with friends or encountering other players randomly in the world. Most of the gameplay loop seems to focus on giving you more opportunities to individualize your pirate or ship. Character building is what you bring to it.

For me it's a chance to play a game where the stakes are only what I want them to be and the story is what I make of it. The tools to make that story more interesting are the only limit I've found.

It'll be interesting to see how quickly Rare drop some more content into it. The Division and Rainbow Six built up well over time, the Division getting some quite quick fixes that helped the gameplay loop. It might be wishful thinking but if they could fix a few things before the player base drops off it could end up being something quite cool. Personally if they can fix the solo play to make us loners not such an easy target I'd feel a little bit better about the fetching.

@wandrecanada: You're absolutely right; I don't think I ever explicitly said that the game needs a progression loop, but yes -- an interesting world is all people need to immerse themselves.

What I did state, however, was that there aren't enough toys in the sandbox they created to warrant that kind of immersion. The content inside the current game is shallow with not much to play around with. The game is what you make of it, yes; but it has a foundation that needs more to it from my perspective.

My first 20mins with this game were amazing. I set out solo on small ship. No quests, no previous experience.

- I swam underneath a squad of 4 pirates unnoticed to board their ship and proceed to steal it. My heart was literally pounding when It was taking forever to raise their anchor. They saw me and all started to run but were too late! I waved goodbye! No other game outside may be PUBG gave me that suspense or urgency.

-My next encounter started out as absolutely epic but ended in my quitting the game for now. I got engaged with a 4 on 1 ship battle. Which is completely fine. My tiny ship was circling them just perfectly where I was able to land all my shots while they missed all theirs. I sunk their ship with this crazy storm coming down. I can't get over how epic that was. Then..... they somehow boarded my ship and proceeded to camp me for 20 mins. Not sure what to do, I just quit out.

This game is gorgeous but it might suffer from the No Man's Sky syndrome. "A mile wide, an inch deep."

"As wide as an ocean, as deep as a puddle" is way too generous for Sea of Thieves. It's more like, "as wide as a lake, as deep as a thin film of moisture." It's a sandbox but they forgot the sand.

That first tale was pretty funny, did you make sure they could see you laughing while you stole their ship?

Is this a less hyped No Man Sky?

@barrock: um, it's been way less hyped.

Yes all 4 were standing on the island about 15 feet away watching in disbelief as I was waving goodbye. My very first experience. :)

@feralchemy: I really think you summed up why I like this game, and why I'm not bothered by the criticism.

I haven't had a chance to play it as much as I wanted, but the times I did I enjoyed. It's a game where you can make your own fun, and I understand why people object to that; the argument being you shouldn't have to MAKE things to keep your interest, it should be designed in to the game.

For me, it's a game where I can put on one of the many pod casts I'm listening to and go sail around, avoiding other ships like the plague and do the occasional mission. My computer is pretty beefy (I was lucky enough to buy a GTX1080 Ti when it was under $800) so the visualslook amazing, and the soundtrack/ambiance is superb.

Admittedly I haven't been griefed by spawn campers yet and the $60 price tag is steep, though I suspect that putting this game on the game pass is the primary reason why this game has the audience it does. It doesn't have the pull to remain a top streaming game (LoL, PUBG, and even Fortnite will likely have that honor for the foreseeable future). But for me, I'm satisfied.

Puddle of thieves.

There's zero depth to this game all of the assets and artistry looks great but they forget to hire a game designer. I blame Kinect sports 2 for the lack of a good game-designer.

If you need a game designer / Quest designer Rare i got some solid idea's and i am dirt cheap !

I'm waiting a good few months before I jump in. Honestly hearing the opinions of some friends who have been playing Sea of Thieves it sounds like there's barely any depth whatsoever which seems odd to me. Considering the setting and gameplay you'd think there'd be a deep progression system.

I hope it follows a No Man Sky path and improves in the coming months because right now it seems a bit of a rip-off. The No Man Sky of 2018 is a considerably more satisfying experience.

I heard this game has very little to offer. So, I don't think it'll get any better.

It seems worse than no man's sky