It shouldn't be compared to No Man's Sky, since they straight up lied about their game and tricked people. Sea of Thieves is just an open world sandbox with boring, repetitive, and limited missions. I'd probably describe Destiny 1 and 2 the same way in that regard; I got bored with them in about a week or so. I can't say that I feel bad for anyone who bought Sea of Thieves, why not try it out on game pass first? It took me less than an hour to get the feeling that the mission design sucked and they needed more stuff to do.

@deathstriker: Rare have been very open about SoT unlike Hello Games however you can easily see parallels between both games. Both games sold an idea that simply doesn't chime or appear in the final product. With Rare's become a pirate legend people weren't thinking doing so via repetitive fetch quests chasing chickens and fighting the same brain dead skeletons.

So some dude hit Legend status and, as a surprise to absolutely no one, there's jack shit waiting for you. There is one new cosmetic set, the new quests are just longer versions of the same previous quests, and the new enemies are just harder versions of the same skeletons.

@thepanzini: rare never lied about what the game was and what was in it. Hello games absolutely did. The problem is that sea of thieves showed off a cool gameplay demo at e3 last year and that was pretty much most of the game. The only real parallel is that they're both disappointing and should not have been sold as $60 AAA games. At least on SoT's case though there at least is essentially a two week free trial and it's a part of gamepass.

@mems1224: Where did I say Rare lied? Rare revealed SoT in 2015 as a pirate game with limitless possibilites, and over three years not showing you a clear idea of what you'll actually do, allowing alot of folks to project what they though the game should be.

If Jeff and the Giant Bomb crew on SoT launch day were expecting a pirate rpg with skills trees and questing and their part of the industry it easy to imagin alot of others doing the same, which is exactly what happened to No Man's Sky.

Are people still dragging No Man's Sky in the mud?

Jesus Christ.

If that was what they were expecting then that is completely their own fault. Rare was 100% transparent and honest about what was going to be in the game. If the GB dudes or anyone else gave zero shits about actually looking into what the game was before launch then that is on them. They outlined all the merchants and progression in December...

@mems1224:

None of that was in marketing though. Like do you "HC fans" really not get that there are casual audiences, who don't read dev updates and walkthroughs? This is a $60, Microsoft First Party Published Title. It has advertisements, E3 walkthroughs, and nowhere did any of those games show off as "open world sandbox with pirates and really nothing else." Nowhere. It looked like there was an open world, and a sandbox, yes, but it never looked like that was the entire purpose of the game.

I totally get and am fine with the developers releasing that information, but it's clear either they or Microsoft have zero care if people buy the game expecting something else, and then not able to get a refund since MS doesn't offer them on digital purchases. If that type of Dev update was released in December then Microsft should be sharing that. But of course they aren't, they don't want to scare people from wasting money on the product.

Earnestly I think No Mans Sky actually is a less egregious example. All the game footage I saw of No Mans Sky from the first E3 demo read like "overly ambitious Terraria/Minecraft like with multiple planets." Now tell me that wasn't the game they "delivered" on? Even before patches. The idea that people got "hoodwinked" because the marketing for NMS said it was a more feature full version of a Terraria/Minecraft like seems silly to me because guess what, it's still a Terraria Minecraft like. At the end of the day, even if I agree neither game should of been charged for $60, NMS the game released going for the exact things I thought it would be going for.

If you watched the first E3 footage of Sea of Thieves and didn't assume there would be large factions of NPC rival pirates and other assorted quests to do that had pirate themed things your crazy. They sold it on this open world pirate adventure, we had no idea how much of that would be online, what would be limited to player interactions. And again I'm not denying they showed that in dev updates, but none of that info is being discussed until after the game has launched. Because they didn't care to effectively market actually what the game is. I think the NMS analogy is probably bad because NMS overmarketed what it would have in it, not what it is. Sea of Thieves literally markets itself as an entirely different game than what you play.

@mems1224: You only ever get one chance to make first impression the Xbone and Wii U are prime examples of this which perpetchated well after the fact, a walkthrough on Rare's YouTube channel isn't gonna get alot of eyeballs especially 3 years after the reveal most folks don't follow gaming E3 and trailers are there main sources of information.

I'm not disagreeing with you or anything you've said but Rare revealed SoT poorly and did so multiple times later letting peoples imagination run wild.

The problem Rare had was revealing SoT too soon while in alpha when they didn't have a firm grasp on what the game was actually going to be.

That's probably never going to stop. At least until something worse happens.

This also means that everything that was actually in the game can be explained on a 7 minute video trailer. You have to cut folks some slack, that is rarely the case and not the most glowing thing you could say about any game.

Most games do give you an outline of what the game is about, sure, but games are also traditionally more than just the line that goes outside the idea. The problem here is about the lines that go on the inside ( The ones you discover by playing the game). Not saying those are not there, clearly there's some nuance for the pvp encounters, but there are not there for everyone and they didn't have to be rpg mechanics. They just had to be the lines that defined complexity rather than just show the silhouette.

@thepanzini: The only idea I saw in the SoT promo stuff was "here is some pretty water and ship combat". The game had like 5 betas and anyone could've just played it through game pass, possibly for free for 14 days, so people having buyers remorse with this game feels like it's their own fault.

It's pretty boring right now, but MS is probably pushing Rare to update the game. Everything wrong with the game is fixable, which is no excuse for them not having enough content, but it's better than nothing and the game staying the same.

@devise22: that is ridiculous because Sean Murray went on national television and lied about things that would be in the game. They showed trailers with creatures that aren't even possible in the game.

If you just assumed things were going to be in sea of thieves that were never mentioned then idk how that's on rare or MS. Especially since it had a beta that was pretty much the whole game. You'd have to try really hard to blindly buy sea of thieves and knowing nothing about it.

@mems1224: I'm not speaking about myself, but I do know people who have gone into a store, saw "hey new Pirate guy from Microsoft" and purchased it. So yes. I don't see how it's ridiculous at all though. I'm not at all implying there wasn't some semblance of failed delivery on NMS part, there certainly was. Nor am I suggesting that somehow I personally think that game was satisfactory, or worth it's price point. It wasn't. But I thought that before it even released. There is a reason games like Minecraft and Terraria are what they are framework wise, because these type of expirements it turns out aren't even remotely in the same scale as your AAA $60 releases.

But it should be pretty easy to see the distinction between, "this game which genre and objectives are totally upfront doesn't have the content it said it would have at launch" versus "we had no idea how to set expectations for this game because the marketing did no job of ever selling what you even do in it." I won't pretend that making the assumption that you got to do the type of pirate quests you wanted in SoT is certianly on the player, but the marketing did zero job ever changing that. The fact that you guys think every consumer has to read dev updates and play beta's is hilarious. This is a $60 boxed product. The marketing should do at least a little bit of a job in being responsible for showing you what the game actually is. Not just going "here is a ship, here is pirates, have an adventure today!" SoT has the most bare bones marketing I've ever seen, for a game that even respected industry members like GB had a very tenuous idea on what would be in the final product, even after they tried the beta.

But right sorry, we can't even fahtom casuals not having an idea of what you do in this game, much less industry and gaming experts. Sorry but I don't buy that. The onus was on Microsoft to properly market that this game is the experimental thing it is, they didn't.

I was at one point gonna buy an Xbox One for this if it shaped up good, seemed to have a lot of promise and I'm a sucker for nautical games. I can't justify doing so while the game play is still so shallow though, though I am getting an itch to play AC4 again...

@someoneproud: I’m with you. Loved AC4, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, and had some fun with that Sea Dogs game that got turned into a buggy Pirates of the Caribbean game.

I’m enjoying Sea of Thieves, and there’s more depth than you’d think, but I still wouldn’t call the mechanics deep. Sword fighting, for example, is deeper than mashing X and bunny hopping.

You have single slashes, three hit combos, and charge attacks. Charges are unblockable and can push people back, knocking them off ships or stunning them if they hit a surface hard. Blocks will also create some room. You can also dodge while blocking, which blew my mind when I realized that was an option. It does create a level of tactics to fighting.

I also recently learned of different skeleton types, debuffing enemies with water or fire, charming snakes to avoid bites, and I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting.

Anyhow, it’s not a deep game, but I think there’s more available than most people know (as even basic controls aren’t really surfaced).

P.S. A big part of my apologist-streak with this game is planted in my love of the adventure motif (pirates, Indiana Jones, etc.).

@nutter: WHAT YOU CAN CHARM SNAKES?!

My personal favorite is getting drunk, puking, and scooping up in the bucket puke for "flashbangs" on unsuspecting pirates.

@ballsleon: Yeah, blinding people with puke is good, if not sometimes difficult to pull off.

As for snakes, play music and they’ll stop hissing and start swaying. My mind was pretty blown when I realized that was a tool at my disposal.

I wish they'd done more with this kind of mechanic. You have so many tools, it's a shame that the majority of the enemies are just different variations of tanky skeleton - although there's that one kind of skeleton that only can be killed when you shine light on them, that was cool. But think of all the cool combinations you could have tried. What about skeletons that you have to hit with a shovel, or that can only be killed when facing North (so you need to angle yourself with a compass) or skeletons that dance when you play them music, or big slow troll-like skeletons that will automatically chase whoever is playing music - using music for aggro is a great idea, incidentally. But no, they didn't do any of that, it's just one type of enemy with 5 different skins and varying sized health bars. So unimpressed.

Well this confirmed my stance of "wait and see" on this game before jumping in. I want to like it but boy everything I see and hear about how the game progresses seems to be shit

I find this highly unlikely. I understand your reasoning behind it. Yes, Microsoft could just leave it as is, and not really be affected. But if they improve it, Game Pass could benefit, and they have every reason to increase Game Pass's appeal. The game doesn't look cheap. I seriously doubt they spent all that time and money to develop such a solid base to abandon it to a bunch of simple fetch quests.

@dryker: Agreed. I think Sea of Thieves will get support for some time, if for no other reason, to see what metrics they can get about gamepass and games as a service.

Figuring out how to be “the Netflix of gaming” while also turning a profit is a huge nut to crack.

This lines up with what my expectations were, unfortunately. I'd heard a bunch of stories told by people who had fun with it, but none of those ever really sounded like experiences that could carry the weight of an entire game. Nothing I had heard leading up to its release lead me to believe that there was a mechanical density of any sort to it. It always sounded like a fun thing to screw around in for a few hours, but that was about it.

This was an opinion formed by not actually playing the game, so it's 100% conjecture on my part. But reading you describe some of the same faults that my baseless conjecture assumed it had is disheartening, too. I usually like to be proven wrong on this stuff (and I usually am.)