Stream of Thieves

BEEN WAITIN FOR THIS ALL DAY

Hope this game doesn't suck

Man I was half asleep watching this and thought it was a dream when I looked for it just a few minutes ago. Really need to get my mind off things and distract from real life atm so thanks. Not sure if I'll try this game got no friends online or otherwise

Here's hoping the final game has more to do than the betas. Those were pretty boring after an hour or two.

The PvE elements of this game are very unremarkable at best. The "grind" of finding and selling loot is beyond tedious and only earns you cosmetics in the long run. Customizing your ship is the only thing that holds any appeal for me personally, but even that appeal is fairly limited.

The real fun in this game is in the PvP. Unfortunately, most other ships will run when they see your ship heading toward them. I had no problem finding other ships to sink in the betas, maybe 10 minutes of searching the horizon at the most, and then it was a matter of forcing them into a fight or simply sinking them as they tried to escape. It was a lot of fun to sink a galleon and watch half a dozen chests rise up from below the water after it went down. The most enjoyable way to collect treasure in this game is to pay the iron price for it. As much fun as I had with the PvP side of things, it still seems absolutely crazy that this game is being sold for $60.

It's a good party gamebut solo

A lot of people keep going on about the $60 price tag, but remember you can pay $10 for a month of Sea of Thieves and a bunch of other games.

So whereabouts does the actual game part start in this 3 hour marathon?

On the old ship venus...

Jeff Gerstmann, Pessimist. Can always find something to not like about games that most people enjoy, and focus on those with laser-like precision..

I can't help but think how much better these would be if Ryan was still around to sort of counteract the Jeff.

Don't get me wrong I like Jeff a lot, but he can tend to focus on the negative aspect of games in a way that can be a drag. I feel like Ryan was always good at bringing out the lighter side of Jeff's demeaner

So, i had just started watching the video when i made the last comment and was only a few minutes into it. To be fair, I don't think he knew they were streaming at the time. And he seemed to enjoy himself more once they got going on some missions.

That said, he can still come across as overly negative towards games that have a lot to enjoy but may have some elements that are either rough or purposely obtuse for whatever reason.

His criticisms are definitely valid from his perspective. But It seems to me that he can get hung up on things that most everyone else will acknowledge but overlook, or even enjoy because of the sense of immersion or whatever.

Its just something I've been noticing lately. He seems to harp on games pretty insistently even when he is the only one bothered by the aspect he doesn't like and it can get a little (for lack of a better word) nitpicky.

Like I said before it seemed like Ryan was pretty good at tempering that side of jeff when it meant there was fun to be had.

I still find Jeff's opinions very informative. He is really good at breaking down and articulating his points of view in a way that is easy to understand and informative

I don't think Jeff's criticisms of this game are unfounded. As someone who played the betas and got some enjoyment from it, once I realized what this game was I couldn't justify the 60 dollar price tag and canceled my pre-order. This game seems like it would very much fit in to the free to play with microtransactions model, as much as I hate to admit it.

It does seem like there is an opportunity for Rare to capitalize on the popularity of the battlegrounds game mode, and create a separate mode where a storm closes in, circling an area of the map and forcing ships into a smaller and smaller area to do battle until only one crew remains.

It seems to have some remarkable ideas for emergent social situations, but the game so doggedly avoids having any form of progression with stat-based items and equipment. As it is, the game seems like a faction reputation builder with only cosmetics as incentives.

Granted, it's only a very, very, VERY early look at the game. However, there are no signs that the game could get nor would get more elaborate and challenging.

The game is weird enough that it's not for everyone.

If you are curious about it, go sign up for Game Pass and try it for a month (you might even be able to find deals, so you are paying <= $10).

Also no one has reached high level yet, so I'm curious if the mid and end game have more variety than the early game.

Honestly, I think it's unfair to say he is a pessimist. Cynical sure, but pessimist is a bit strong. Jeff's criticism is one of the reasons I come to Giant Bomb. He's not afraid to call BS or simply be honest about his experiences in games. I really appreciate this, as I feel honest critical discourse is sorely lacking in the games industry. I get that people want to get excited about a game, but if there are few voices calling out poor design or lazy implementation, there is less incentive for things to improve.

Are there seriously only three types of randomly generated missions in this? Get treasure, fight skeletons, catch animals?

@stevec: I come down somewhere in the middle of this. I stopped listening to a certain podcast because the host and guests were always so endlessly positive that it became hard to trust anything they said. Even when something was obviously broken or poorly implemented in a game they were never the least bit critical. I find Jeff's views refreshing most of the time. I trust him when he says that something is really great because I know that he will be honest when he doesn't like something.

On the other hand, I sometimes think he is too hard on some games for seemingly minor problems. My initial reaction to jeff upon first hearing about giant bomb a few years ago (yes I was late to the party) was that he was somewhat jaded after having been in games for so long. I have turned around a bit on that and now for the most part love hearing his opinion on things.

is this game doing the Forza 7 thing where MTX will arrive weeks after launch?

Sure do love it when they decide to get hella drunk in a FPS game and give me a headache trying to watch their content! Yeah boy!

People really want numbers to go up. It's almost as if our minds have been poisoned by addictive gambling-like psychological designs in recent games.

It is a weird game though, and the animals and skeleton murdering quests seem kind of bland compared to the treasure hunting and PvP but maybe they pick up later, though I'm not necessarily counting on it. Only a few hours logged on release so far. Even if they don't there is enough here for me, this is 100% my jam.

Nice to play a game where I don't have to think about the numbers and where my opponents wear their advantages on their sleeve, if any. Since everyone has the same gear, it's crew, skill and ship that are the only real advantages you can get. If they ever do add traits to gear I hope it's PvP only stuff. Keep the guns all vanilla.

Couldn't get a crew on a galleon due to some error, and only saw one other sloop who I helped keep afloat due to feeling sorry for him trying to solo a weeping chest (Which is super doable unless it's your first rodeo). I should have robbed him but I didn't want to go full Rust and betray his trust. Hopefully the MM is fixed when I try again tonight and we can get into some sick 4-galleon clusterfucks like in the alpha/beta.

@paulunga: You make your own fun!

Granted, I feel the bombcrew could describe paint drying on a wall and somehow make it engaging for me.

e: Pirates are well known for going "Arhhgg"

@stevec: most of Jeff's concerns are very valid, but at times he does seem too impatient. 2 obvious examples are: not reading the first quest completely, and complaining that water does nothing when the skeletons didn't die immediately.

Contrast this with Vinny, who was just messing around. Vinny read the quest aloud and it was much clearer what they should do. Vinny also stared at skeletons close enough to realize they werw rusted and moved with clear hitches. He then experimented with luring them into water, which also rusts them.

Is this really what the game is because there doesn't seem like much to do. Hopefully they missed something.

I don't think it's necessarily just about the numbers going up - it's about a feeling of progression more generally. What can I do or experience at hour ten that I couldn't at hour one? That's what I'm not getting from this game - what is there to beyond go poke around these similar looking islands and do these fairly light/generic quest? That can only be interesting for so long.

During the stream, I was thinking it's kinda like Minecraft -- it's exploring for exploring's sake, the world is broadly similar everywhere, limited pallet of enemies, light to no narrative structure -- but without the element that made that interesting--that you can leave your mark on the world.

I don't think going heavily in the gear direction would be the right move -- if nothing else, it would destroy the playful, role-playing-esque feel it seems to be going for -- but I feel it needs SOMETHING.

FWIW, still no microtransactions in Forza 7.

Man I want to love this game. The look is nearly spot on and being a huge fan of BotW and Wind Waker I totally don't have a problem with sparse feeling games. Dem volumetric clouds. I wish I had a crew to roll in this with, or at least a substantial single player mode. Shame the gameplay seems so limited; maybe it will grow in scope eventually and become at the very least a good 2nd monitor game.

I read all of Treasure Island in one night when I was like 16

Listen at 5:20. Jeff did not know the stream had started already.

Jeff has been playing games so long that he's really zeroed in on the things he likes and doesn't like. His opinions are nuanced to the point of being nitpicky. So ya, his opinion on games doesn't really gel with people who have less experience with games. Which is a lot of the people on this site(including me).

Don't get me wrong, I like Jeff a lot. I just don't often agree with his critical opinion on games.

just trying to post a comment. Had to edit my last because when I tried to post a new one I got an error that CSRF format was invalid?

worked that time. weird

Vinny letting out a sigh of defeat every time someone likes his achievement is just... too good!

Hard pass for me. I'm okay with not having progression and/or loot with stats, as long as the core gameplay feels enjoyable and fun. But, as far as I can tell, the shooting looks bland, the melee combat is serviceable at best and the quests are boring.

"Oh yeah? Then what about co-op and PVP, smartass?" Playing with friends to 'enjoy' the tedious quests and exploring the same looking islands together sounds like hella fun! And PVP looks enjoyable only when you're fighting with ships, which is the best thing I've seen in this game. But that's not enough for $60.

The environment and the water especially looks great, though.

@rayne117:

I thought thats why people come to GB. He wont really rail about stuff he even likes such as horizon Dawn. He gives a base line its good. No Yelling about it no nothing. lol gotta say when i like a game i fall prey to telling people good things which turns them off. Maybe lowering expectations helps.

Doesn't seem like a game for me, but it was fun to hear/watch a Brad, Abby, Jeff, & Vinny combo.

@qrowdyy: @cannedstingray: Played the game for 4 hours on release. Jeff makes great points. There's not a lot going on after doing ~9 missions/voyages. It's not nitpicky: it's the game's lack of direction and objective. And sure, the sandbox was advertised to allow players to "play how they want," but a sandbox without cool toys to work towards isn't fun for me. And if there are cool toys, the game does a poor job of showing what it can offer.

The combat is lacking in that ammo is sparse and enemies aren't particularly interesting to fight back. The core quest loop is repetitive in a sense where exchange quests take too much time and aren't worth the rewards until you've leveled the faction; but by then the appeal of going on grand adventures with friends turns into fetch quests littered with long boat rides.

Sea of Thieves is a shallow pirate fantasy that fails to capitalize on its fantastic sailing mechanics in its beginning stages. The game may certainly improve after longer hours of play, but I wasn't convinced by the fourth hour.

But hey, if you're a teenager with a few friends and want to play pirate; it might be a good time. The game really nails the carefree pirate aesthetic, but everything else about the game falls flat.

Man. Man. If only this game didn't seem so painfully shallow. This could be such a slam dunk.

What's the name of that other pirate game that was shown at an E3 recently? Have we seen if that'll be any good?

@tgjessie: Skull and Bones. It's nothing like this. It's a competitive ship combat game. You control the ships, not the individual crew members etc.

It's the ship missions from Assassin's Creed turned into PVP.

I always find this a lame excuse. ANY game can be good with friends as long as it doesn't crash all the time. The fun comes from the friends tough. not the game itself.

I wonder what it is people want from this as compared to what Rare will ultimately deliver...

They have already been very clear there will be no better items with different stats so they can add new enemies, new areas, new ships and new factions and that is the end of it.

I would like it if they went crazy and eventually had ghost ships that float or fly and all sorts of bizarre gadgets and items but with no progression besides cosmetic... it's just doa unless you care about grinding rep to get a better look. That's not what people want these days.

@vincentomodei: People expect gear drops and gear progression because the combat and mission design (at the start) seems shallow. There are a decent amount of modern games with no persistent progression mechanics because there's enough depth in the gameplay itself.

Sure, you can argue that every game has simple mission and gameplay mechanics. Every game is about swinging your sword over and over, shooting your gun over and over, going from point A to point B, etc. And sure, all games start off simple. But this game didn't hint at what was coming. No exposition to give you a sample of how the missions will be presented. No story to set up conflict with enemies you may be excited to fight later on No skill tree to show you the cool abilities you can play with later on. Sure, survival games don't have these things, and they make up for it in a robust crafting system. From the few hours I played, combat seemed to be about one type of sword swing and basic shooting. Maybe there's crafting later on. Maybe there's a story later on. The game just doesn't hint at any of it at the start.

Wanting gear progression is a side effect of the perceived shallowness, maybe it'll get interesting several hours in.

I had a really fun time in the beta - I just hope there's more content because I could see digging up treasure getting old after a while.

Also, how amazing is that water tech? My god, it looks incredible!

To be fair he's been doing this a long, long time. I get how he feels to be honest, and mostly agree with him as someone who has been gaming a long time also.

That begin said i definitely undersand where you are coming from also.

Wow, someone in chat totally called vinny posing for a thumbnail when vinny started doing this at the end.

For 60 bucks I don't expect to have to make ALL my own fun. Might try this eventually on sale.

Boy...another hot banger first party title from Microsoft.

@cannedstingray Why should he pretend to like something when its not good or when he doesn't enjoy it? Literally no one else on Giant Bomb does that but Jeff gets the vast majority of complaints about it (optically seems that way at least).

That said, he can still come across as overly negative towards games that have a lot to enjoy but may have some elements that are either rough or purposely obtuse for whatever reason.

If he's being overly negative its because he is not enjoying it, even if you did. When you talk about games on camera/mic for as much as they do in a week you're going to hear them rant about stuff more than if you only heard him talk once a week in a podcast.

His criticisms are definitely valid from his perspective. But It seems to me that he can get hung up on things that most everyone else will acknowledge but overlook, or even enjoy because of the sense of immersion or whatever.

This seems like a "you can't have your cake and eat your cake" kind of thing...if his complaints are valid then they are valid. If the complaint is "overly critical and nitpicking" then its still valid if accurate..

I mean, I get it...I don't like when solid games don't get a fair shake from someone at Giant Bomb or it just gets dismissed. Sometimes they do it in a slightly troll-ish way, like with Kingdom Hearts (which I still didn't find to be malicious), but then other times, like with Witcher 3, its just that there really isn't much diversity as far as what people are playing. They are generally almost all playing the exact same things outside of maybe Rorie and Abbie...sometimes Jason.

I will say he was like this even with Ryan...and plenty of other people are like this on the site (see Dan, Alex for sure).

All that being said this game looks really bad, especially for $60. Maybe as a $20-30 budget title I could excuse the utter lack of content and variety. Anything is more fun in co-op, or with someone else, so I don't think that makes it good.

If nothing else, this is an interesting look at game psychology. The stream proved this game DOES have progression. You do easy missions first, rank up faction, then get the ability to unlock harder missions that presumably give you more money/faction. The only difference between this and Destiny is that Destiny forces everyone to grind until they have high enough level gear or else they'll be too weak to contribute. But for some reason, the lack of gear-level in SoT is a huge turn-off for lots of folks.

Personally, I love the idea that anyone can jump in at any time and contribute equally. No fear of getting "left behind" by friends who play way more than you. This is the best way to implement progression without punishing those who are too busy to play often. Any challenge can be conquered by quick thinking and teamwork without any worry of being underpowered.

With all that said... I still think the gameplay aspect doesn't look fun enough. Even when they got to the skull island with the glowing-eyed skeletons, it all looked tedious. Too easy to die, no way to do cool rolls or counters or any over-the-top swordplay. There doesn't appear to be any story or end goal. The enemy variety so far has only been "skeleton, but metal" and "skeleton, but fast". Kind of a bummer.

The stream was fun to watch, though! The game shines most when played by a lively group.

@vincentomodei: "People really want numbers to go up. It's almost as if our minds have been poisoned by addictive gambling-like psychological designs in recent games."

This was my thought as well. I played the beta a lot and really dug what was going on. There's no true skinner box as far as number's going up, and you know what, I was okay with that. The experience of sailing my little ship, exploring islands and wreckages and all that, I was just fine with that. Can't wait to resub to GamesPass to play this Live.

Bloody land-lubbers. That's not a boat, that's a ship.

@sammo21: I mean in regards to it being a “hot banger” that’s what people initially said about Fortnite and look at it now. This game definitely has room to grow and expand so who knows. I thinks it’s a fascinating idea and can see groups of friends having a lot of fun, but not a solo experience.

Skull and Bones is the name of Ubisoft's Pirate game from E3 last year. Yeah hopefully that will be good. I think Sea of Thieves still has potential, but yeah it didn't look like there was much to do judging from this stream. There's probably a lot more to do since there's suppose to be sea monster fights with Krakens.

Though honestly I had some unreasonably high expectations thinking this could be 2018's PUBG when it comes to being the big Multiplayer phenomenon. Maybe it is for other outlets, but maybe not for GB.