That sounds incredibly boring. Especially annoying that they would also focus on making it work better for streaming instead of being playable.
Sea of Thieves
Sebastian James
Liam Nguyen
They got an extra 200 viewers since I took this screenshot. And christ those Sea of Thieves streams are painful to listen to.
Ian Wood
Bought it 2 weeks ago. Played it for 3 hours and uninstalled it. Game is boring, repetitive, easy, no progression, and pvp is just ganky bullshit.
Thomas Ramirez
LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES
Wyatt Myers
I got this, against my better judgement, because I had two friends who wanted to play it with me and co-op multiplayer is the entire point.
I bring information about WHY it sucks massive cock, so you can go into arguments informed and armed.
When you first start, there is no character creator. Just half a dozen randomly generated pirates to choose from. If you don't like them you can generate a new set until there's one you like. They're all some shade of brown, arguably some are white but most are brown. I let it slide because sailors spend all day in the sun and they're gonna be tanned. But they're all UGLY AS FUCK also. If you're one of those people who was gonna use the character creator to make Shrek anyway, you'll love it. I chose a fat guy with a mullet and a mustache who looks like he should be helming an '86 Camaro instead of a boat.
The option to play solo in a Sloop exists, but it's trash. The game is designed around having a crew to help you run the boat. This is no Black Flag where you can both steer and use cannons. You can only do one thing at once. Steer, change sail length, change sail angle, aim a cannon, reload a cannon, fire a cannon. These are all exclusive to each other and cannot be multitasked by one person.
The other options for crew (matchmaking) are:
Sloop with 2 people
Galleon with 3 people
Galleon with 4 people
The Galleon is slower than a sloop, harder to control, and because the whole game is in first person, you can't fucking see where you're going at full sail because the sails block your vision at the helm. It also has 3 full length decks, which means two of them under the water line to run up and down fixing holes and bailing water if you take damage. There's no magic bucket that automatically empties the water you've taken on, you have to fill the bucket once and then run up 2 flights of stairs and throw it overboard, and repeat. The galleon does have 8 cannons though (sloop has 4), and if all of them (on one side) are manned competently, you can easily fuck up someone else's day in a single pass.
If you're playing with only 2 people, I've found you encounter MANY more players than if you play with 3 or 4. There doesn't appear to be any kind of skill or level-based matchmaking so I'm not sure why this is. When I was alone or on a 2-man crew with one friend, I was constantly beset upon by other ships out to sink me and steal my shit. This is, at first, the most annoying part of the game. Not griefers, because if you could just kill them and have reasonable assurance you'd never have to see them again, or respawn at the starter island, it would be whatever. The death/respawn system itself is rage-inducing. WHEN ANYONE DIES, THEY RESPAWN AT APPROXIMATELY THE SAME LOCAITON THEY DIED, 10 SECONDS LATER. If a griefer boards your ship and kills you, you'll just respawn 10 seconds later and he'll kill you again. If you kill him, he'll just respawn 10 seconds later for his revenge. Repeat until someone tires of the process and fucks off. It's absolutely the dumbest fucking thing I've witnessed in my video game career. If you sink a ship, that's another story, because it'll respawn at the nearest island instead. But if the griefing is taking place at a dock where you're attempting to turn in some quest items (to quest NPCs) for rewards, then you and your ship will just keep respawning at the same dock where you died, near that same asshole with his galleon parked with all the guns aiming at your spawn point, ready to kill you again. Worth noting- if your ship sinks you don't automatically die, you can just swim. To get the ship back, you have to talk to a Poseidon-like dude in the water where it sank and he'll give it back. But you lose any cargo (quest rewards) you had collected. The only good part about this PVP is that there are no upgrades in the game at all that make people better at combat, so every encounter is pure skill. But a total lack of upgrades is kinda bullshit for different reasons I'll get into later.
Owen Ross
Austin Thomas
I was becoming annoyed by being constantly attacked by jackasses, even when I had nothing of value to steal, and was relieved when it stopped when I got on a 4-person crew. I thought "finally, I have some peace to get into the meat of the game and actually earn some gold." We took some missions and set off. The mission types are:
Merchants- acquire something and deliver it to a buyer. Chickens, Snakes, Pigs, maybe a crate of tea or something IDK. I assume there's a note or some shit you have to bring back to cash in and prove you made the delivery.
Gold- find a treasure chest with a map that has an X on it, dig up the chest, bring it back for the guy to open.
Spirits- Kill reanimated skeletons until their high-value leader shows up, kill him, bring back his glowing skull.
It says "voyage completed" when you complete the objective out at sea, but you don't get any rewards like money or reputation until you come back to a person of that faction and turn in the object in question. So, the dock where all these quest NPCs hang out is where griefers lie, who will steal your items to earn themselves some gold instead, even if they hadn't activated that quest yet and presumably earn no reputation from the act.
Unfortunately, this meat of the game is trash. We took on a lengthy Spirit voyage with 5 skeleton targets to kill, that took us to 5 different islands where we fought hundreds of enemies. The combat is absolute shit. You can swing a sword 3 times, brief pause, and swing it 3 more times OR do a stabbing lunge forward that leaves you out of breath and vulnerable for too long afterwards. Your single-shot pistol only has 5 bullets before you have to run to an ammo crate in a different physical location and refill your… pockets? I guess? And the pistol doesn't kill skeletons (or other players) in one shot, and isn't accurate for sniping, so it's practically useless. What little there is to the combat isn't even enjoyable because of the super high ping you're dealing with from the not-MMO netcode (think Destiny with boats). When you kill a skeleton you aren't even sure he's died until a full second later when he explodes, and you're not sure if you finished him off or one of your friends did. There are different guns and swords you can buy in shops, but I learned from my one friend who's been playing longer that THEY HAVE NO FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCE from the beginner pistol. There's a sniper and a blunderbuss and they perform exactly the fucking same. Which brings me to the next complaint.
Camden Collins
Why do MMOfags keep falling for this lie?
Ayden Kelly
There is a ton of shit to buy at first glance, but no reason to have any of it. Every single thing you can purchase in the game is cosmetic. I understand they didn't want to make the PVP unbalanced, but that could have easily been solved with level-based matchmaking, or just having designated safe areas around ports, and PVP areas the further you got into the open ocean. This is the lowest effort I've ever seen put into an MMO-like game. You thought fucking Destiny was bad? It doesn't hold a shit-candle to this. There's tons of clothing, ship decorations, guns, different cosmetic modifications of your various tools that you'd rather not see because it means your ship is broken, accordions, shovels, etc. Tons of shit to buy. Expensive shit that will take a lot of gold farming to buy. And none of it means a damn thing. No weapon will make you dispatch skeletons or other players any faster. Nobody will give a shit about your ship's paintjob when they're killing you and stealing your loot. Your character's looks can't be improved with clothing because you're all ugly cunts. WHY would I want to increase my reputation or earn more gold to buy these things? I wouldn't. It reminds me of Monster Hunter, where the whole of the game is killing bigger monsters to get better equipment to kill bigger monsters to get better equipment to kill bigger monsters. Except in Monster Hunter, the combat is its own reward, killing monsters is fun. In Sea of Thieves, killing skeletons or chasing chickens around is not fun. Killing other players is not fun because everyone rubberbands around with high ping.
SAILING YOUR SHIP ISN'T EVEN THAT FUN. It was much better in AC Black Flag. I give them kudos on being able to independently control every sail and cannon and requiring teamwork to be successful, and the way you have to angle your sails to catch the wind the best, or raise them to slow down, and the way anchor drops work, but it's not FUN. It's difficult to maneuver your Galleon in any meaningful way when you're in combat with another, and it's easiest to simply run away, they'll never catch you. Ramming another ship does more damage to your own than to theirs, and you can't increase your hull strength. They have that goofy shit where you can fire yourself out of a cannon to board others, but it's literally the only goofy inventive thing in the entire game. And I'd much prefer the ability to swing on ropes like a real fucking pirate would, and like you could in Black Flag. You can climb to a crows nest and stand on beams, but you can't rope swing down or stick a knife in the sail and slide, or anything cool. You can jump down onto the deck and take fall damage, jump into the water, or attempt to get back on the ladder.
Jace Brooks
Is this a new crowbcat or something?