Sea of thieves

[Hercy]

About 1 boat an hour. Last night we played for 2 hours and came across the same boat twice.

I read (and I don't know how accurate it is) that each "instance" of the entire map contains a maximum of 6 ships and 16 players at any one time. And that it's not proximity based - i.e. we're not talking 6 ships popping in and out of an instance within a nearby subset of the entire map, but rather 6 ships across the whole map area who may spend their entire time never coming close to you.

[Froggy]

Interesting, I'm maybe assuming too much that they'll expand that once the server situation stabilises as that's not many for a huge map. Surely they would want like 60 or so per world, so far we have only had issues delivering our loot once the rest of the time it's a ghost town.

Did have a great moment last night though, chasing the one boat we found and the Kraken came up and surrounded him, he was stuck and we could still move slowly so we went on his ship, stole his loot, kept killing him then as we were a galley just blew the crap out of him and to cap it off shot him again as he swam desperately toward our boat for revenge lol.

[pilonv1]

About 1 boat an hour. Last night we played for 2 hours and came across the same boat twice.

I read (and I don't know how accurate it is) that each "instance" of the entire map contains a maximum of 6 ships and 16 players at any one time. And that it's not proximity based - i.e. we're not talking 6 ships popping in and out of an instance within a nearby subset of the entire map, but rather 6 ships across the whole map area who may spend their entire time never coming close to you.

Given the size of the map that's shockingly low.

[Hercy]

I did some more reading and no one seems to really know how it works. The developer said that they want you to run into another player every 15 to 30 minutes. However my and Froggy's experience has been that it has been much rarer.

[Froggy]

I'm averaging one boat about every 2.5 hours and then that same boat respawning close sometimes. I will give it a bit more time though, if the servers are being hammered they could have reduced it if they were aiming for every 15mins. Every 15mins would be great because half the time you are busy doing other stuff you want to run but it would add a whole lot to the game though having that worry/opportunity way more often. The Kracken was great, I'm hoping they have a lot more content to drop quickly early like they did night 1 otherwise I am left to wonder what exactly took it so long to get to market.

[Lepo5]

May I be the first to say, this game is boring

[Froggy]

That's when u can get on to play it unlike all of last night. How the hell servers are still an issue especially after about a year of testing ffs.

[lestat]

May I be the first to say, this game is boring

I don't think you're first, it's getting hammered by lots of reviewers, there isn't really a lot to do in the game, the fun is really from the social angle. I find games like PUBG to be boring, same map, same random loot and being shot in the back by some guy you never saw, rinse repeat.

But it's what people are loving for some reason, this game is crafted for that sort of audience, the social streaming crowd, they love half done games and watching their favorite streamers play them.

[Lepo5]

Well to be fair I'm meant first in this thread / community.

[Cletus]

just read a few hints in the comments of a youtube video.

Turn off ship lights to reduce chances of detection at night
chest of sorrows - will stop filling your ship with water if you play it music
chest of a thousand grogs - walk sideways to reach your destination ...faster..
snakes - charm them also with music and they wont spit at ya or try to bite you
golden skeletons - can be stopped in their tracks with a bucket of water and made weaker !
ghost skeletons - reveal them with a lamp at night!
flower skeletons - keep them away from water !
powder kegs - store them on your crows nest to avoid sinking yourself
powder kegs - drop them behind your ship like landmines for the ship chasing you to run into
powder kegs - swim one down below an enemy ship and release it for it to float up and sink them in one shot!
kraken! - fire yourself into the tentacle mouth sword drawn to drop a tentacle quickly! yarr

[pilonv1]

[Cletus]

It's kind of like Elite Dangerous. Nice concept, lots of possibilities but a mile wide and a foot deep.

[t0mby]

At least there's enough there in ED to keep you occupied in SP, sounds like ploughin'amd raping is not supported in Sea of Theives.

[Hercy]

Played for 2 and a half hours last night. Saw 2 other sloops. It might have been the same one twice. Hard to tell because the first one turned around and legged it while they were still far away, and the second one was docked at an outpost with no crew members in sight (perhaps they'd logged out?)

[Lepo5]

I bet that got the adrenaline going.....are you alright?

Probably need a little lie down after all that excitement.

[F for Fake]

[Choxden]

My mind is blown by how hollow this game is. I got sucked in by the hype, everyone was saying how good this game was going to be. Now, all I feel is disappiontment and disgust that MS are selling this shit for $99.99 on their store. Thank fuck I got it on games. pass. It's a fun game if playing with friends for about 2 sessions, then it dawns on you how the devs have done such a minimal effort to get your money, and this the worst case of that I've ever seen

[Cletus]

At least there's enough there in ED to keep you occupied in SP, sounds like ploughin'amd raping is not supported in Sea of Theives.

It wasn't a great comparison. You can trade slaves in ED. Elite is actually thousands of light years in any direction. Sea of thieves is only several miles. I've been playing Battlegrounds for almost a year now. I can deal with a game lacking content, don't get me wrong. But Sea of Thieves needs a lot of work. It feels like early access.

[lestat]

My mind is blown by how hollow this game is. I got sucked in by the hype, everyone was saying how good this game was going to be. Now, all I feel is disappiontment and disgust that MS are selling this shit for $99.99 on their store. Thank fuck I got it on games. pass. It's a fun game if playing with friends for about 2 sessions, then it dawns on you how the devs have done such a minimal effort to get your money, and this the worst case of that I've ever seen

I think it was initially meant to be a $20-30 title when announced. Then MS made it full priced as a Trojan for gamepass. I don't know anyone who got it at full price, everyone seems to have gamepass'd it.

It will be interesting to see what plans MS has for gamepass at E3. Clearly this is a path they really want to go down now.

[Froggy]

The worst part is that it also seems the loot is scaled severely to drag out your progression a long time. We did a skull mission early last week and got about 17.5k of loot, then we did a lot of sailing in between and got a bunch of treasure and so levelled to 20 in the gold merchants pretty fast and since then every quest has been the cheapest chests so we do these 4 or 5 island treasure hunts and get chests worth 98 bucks or so each, this is after buying and doing the higher level quests. Then when another of our crew did the skull again they only got less than 10k again so the deliberate scaling is well really off putting but also the lack of better loot for buying better and harder quests is a bit backwards to me. Longer sailing and harder for basically worthless stuff.

It's hard to complain too much when the game is essentially free but I can't see any of the PC guys I'm playing with converting to paid game pass, unless State of Decay 2 or Crackdown 3 is interest to them.

[lestat]

https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-boss-defend ... rackdown-3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Phil claims they're planning on long support with SoT, also interested to see what crackdown announcement is.

Imo that game is perfect for a battle royal mode, imagine that with the cloud destruction physics.

[Hercy]

I call bullshit on Phil's comments. The game isn't accessible - a wide audience isn't going figure out all the weird shit with no tutorial.

And "future plans"? If the game sucks at launch no-one's gonna come back in 12 months to see the new stuff. You get one chance.

I like that the game doesn't have level ups and upgrades. It's good that you don't have to grind just to stay on a level playing field with others. My problem is that the ship to ship combat is very samey (terrain is almost never an issue, so it's like playing an FPS where you're always in the middle of a flat field), and it's too hard to find other ships.

I play plenty of GTA V and Forza 7, both of which have no meaningful level ups or whatever. So I appreciate games that are just fun for the competitive aspect and the ability to sabotage other players. I just find that encounters in Sea of Thieves are too rare. In GTA V and Forza you're interacting with competitors multiple times per minute for the whole time you're playing. In SoT you can go an hour without seeing anyone else, and when you do see them they run away at the same speed you can sail at.

Even PUBG which is renowned for its quiet periods where you don't run into anyone, is only like that for 10 to 15 minutes at the most. And you're guaranteed that all hell is going to break loose by the end of 30 minutes due to the timer and diminishing play area.

[Hercy]

The worst part is that it also seems the loot is scaled severely to drag out your progression a long time. We did a skull mission early last week and got about 17.5k of loot, then we did a lot of sailing in between and got a bunch of treasure and so levelled to 20 in the gold merchants pretty fast and since then every quest has been the cheapest chests so we do these 4 or 5 island treasure hunts and get chests worth 98 bucks or so each, this is after buying and doing the higher level quests. Then when another of our crew did the skull again they only got less than 10k again so the deliberate scaling is well really off putting but also the lack of better loot for buying better and harder quests is a bit backwards to me. Longer sailing and harder for basically worthless stuff.

I ask this legitimately: why do you want to level up reputation ranks and get gold?

[lestat]

I agree Hercy, if they labelled the game as early access, people would be more lenient, right now you expect to get a full fleshed out product especially @ $60 rrp.

Looking at the top streamed games, there really isn't a lot of competition though, Sony is content releasing single player games, EA doesn't seem to care for it and is happy milking BF games, Activision shat the bed with destiny and is happy with team DM COD. They really would need a good content drop in the next 3 months before other titles comes out to capture peoples attention.

[Candy Arse]

So is this Microsoft's answer to No Man's Sky?