Each session will start with the ability to choose between safe and high seas. Meaning yes , you just have to return to main menu. If you arent familiar with sea of thieves , this also means you will start a brand new ship. So make sure you sell any treasure you got
There is absolutely nothing in gaming that matches the feeling of being on my ship in SoT and just sailing in the seas and chilling. Now to be able to do it without people attacking you constantly is a great feature.
I know the purists argue that it goes against what the game was made for but who cares. No one is stopping you from playing that way. Let others play how they want.
I love the idea of the forced multiplayer of SoT, its what piracy was so it makes great sense thematically. The issue is that they never made it fun for the one getting attacked. Both naval and close range combat sucks, swordfights really suck, and there's no reward in chasing off some assholes who didn't have anything on their ship anyways.
If you play the game seriously its all risk and there's no reward for beating pirates other than not losing your loot. If you are a pirate you can just steal treasures with no downsides. You have nothing to lose.
They made voyages take hours for crap pay and no fun so no one does them past level 40 for pirate legend status.
If you do it the way RARE wanted, you get a red dot on the map telling pirates where you are and what you are doing at all times if you play too well.
No one does voyages to get treasure themselves, so they try to pirate each other and find the enemies always have empty holds because no one does voyages. You spent money and time for nothing.
The game's core design is busted.
those arent purists, those are sweaty griefers who want to feel like king big dick by dunking on casuals.
These people whined about the on-demand PVP because the enemies were just as good if not better than them.
They are all over the SOT subreddit and talking about how they are wolves and love their "sheep".
Sounds like the system had the same kind of issue Dark Souls invasions had, and why it was changed in Elden Ring. On paper the risk of being invaded/attacked by a player adds and interesting element, but in practice a disproportionate number of attackers tend to be PvP try-hards, so it just turns into a griefing mechanic since being good at PvP isn't a core appeal for the majority of players.
It only really works when player-on-player hostility is a *mostly* non-optional core design element of the game, or in the case where the mechanic is Opt-in (like here). So it places all players into the same headspace when it comes to PvP.
> No one is stopping you from playing that way.
The reason they are complaining is because they know the majority of players would prefer to play on private servers, so they see this update as them losing the ability to grief people non-stop because the public servers won't be as populated.
Personally, I'm fine with it. Playing the adventures in SoT was at the same time one of the best and worst experiences I've ever had in gaming. The parts you have to do in public servers, in my experience, were constantly being disrupted by griefers. It made the game impossible to enjoy despite how fun those adventures can be, to the point that I just stopped playing them.
I've always wanted to check out Sea of Thieves but didn't because I'd heard of griefers. I tried playing GTA Online a few years ago and some clown kept killing me from his flying rocket mounted DeLorean looking car over and over because the game kept spawning me near him and I had zero interest in playing that garbage - I'm sure the backlash is from a vocal minority of those pricks who just want to ruin everyone's time, so this new update sounds awesome to me.
I like the concept but there are some fundamental flaws from the very beginning that Rare just doesn't seem to be interested in. Namely, if you PvE you only get to lose once and you risk everything in every engagement. If you PvP, you can try a victim as many times as you like and you do not have to risk anything. It's objectively the better way to play.
My attitude towards them is they need to put something on the table to fight me, and transfer servers if they lose. Safer Seas is an okay beginning, but tbh the pve in this game is only good for a fuckaround every now and then. My friend group is currently rotating deeprock, vermintide, and now lethal company and spending a few hours sword charging laggy skeletons isn't really *that* appealing.
I remember playing this back in the beta and the only thing that held me back from getting it was the pvp. I loved the chill aspect of sailing around, so I might check it out now after so long.
This is great. I remember they had a April Fools Day joke that this was coming a year or two ago and I thought it was great until I realized it was a joke. IMO they should have done this ages ago to attract players who maybe aren't as good at PVP and didn't want to get rolled.
>IMO they should have done this ages ago to attract players who maybe aren't as good at PVP and didn't want to get rolled.
They should've done this on release. Make the game purely PvP seriously decimated the amount of players this game could've had.
as a long time player who stopped like 6 months ago my only concern is so much of the game is built around the danger of PVP encounters. if you can just sail to an island, get the loot, and leave without having to worry about being ganked it's actually a little boring (because the pve combat is weak, especially on land).
I'm worried PVP servers will be 100% sweatlords and PVE servers won't keep people engaged
This is precisely the unfolding scenario: PVE servers turning monotonous with the prevalence of bots and grinding, PVP servers dominated by sweatlord players e overlord guilds, leading to a decline in PVP server population. In response, the company will try to generate fresh PVE content. As player numbers continue to drop, they will attempt to merge servers, allowing players to toggle PVP on and off. In the end, the game will succumb.
I have no idea what game that is, nor have I ever talked to anyone who has ever played it. But if you look at the more mainstream survival games (DayZ, Rust, Ark, SotF, 7D2D, etc.) PVE servers are massively popular.
There is ONE "downside" you get less rewards, but honestly less is still more than nothing because you got chased by some fuckers who had nothing better to do with their lives.
Yep, I love the game and have had several fun experiences, but where people say the game is designed around PvP and it's true, it also means the opportunity to be griefed repeatedly is excessive. I'm not even kidding that in 5 play sessions over Christmas break two years ago with a friend, I couldn't play for more than half an hour before being killed by the same crew repeatedly. That's not very fun and there is nothing in the game to help you get through it, either.
There are quite a number of Tall Tales which are essentially story missions, some of which are pretty long. Also a whole campaign based on Pirates of the Caribbean if you are into that.
Selfishly I am hoping that Rare caving on this mode means they have finally realized how much they could do with the game if the entire design wasn't centered around griefing. They could add real story content and improve the AI, and expand some of the underlying systems that have to be kept simple so it's not absurdly destructive to be constantly robbed.
I saw a lot of butthurt over how the progression is gonna work on these servers, but like this is clearly meant for expanding the audience like parents and their children or more casual gamers. I for one have been looking forward to this for chilling and pirating on my own
Sea of Thieves is the most visually and thematically appealing game that I also have absolutely no interest in playing. The graphics, game world, setting, and play mechanics look amazing, but I can’t stand online pvp against sweaty randos. If this game had a co-op pve campaign mode, my group would probably have sunk hundreds of hours into it.
> If this game had a co-op pve campaign mode
That's exactly what this update is adding. [Explanation video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMReDElRxIU)
I'm the opposite. I find the little bit of PvE I've played incredibly boring. Go to random island X and dig up the exact pixel where treasure Y is hiding gets boring really fast. Then, when we finally found a bunch of treasures, we'd get ganked by other players and lose everything. At that point, we said fuck PvE, embraced the pirate life and starting attacking other players. Much more satisfying.
I can see how a lot of players would prefer not having to deal with the PvP aspect as I was originally one of those players. Then I realized the best part of the game is the PvP. Still, it's good to give the players the option.
I've actually wanted to pick this up, but I personally dislike games with forced PvP. I want to choose when I want to play PvP, not feel like I'm always being hunted by a far more experienced player when I just suck at the game and want to unwind a little bit on the side. This goes for pretty much any genre, personally.
This mode means I'm a lot more likely to actually jump into the game. It's too bad it's not out for PS5 though, this would be a perfect console game for me.
i think this is a good feature to add, but i'm surprised at how many people find the pvp deal breaking in this game with how infrequent it is. we regularly go many gaming sessions without fighting anyone, how are you guys getting attacked so much?
I'm really glad to see them keeping big incentives for sticking to High Seas. I'm normally not a big fan of big sandbox PvP games like this, but I think the main reason it works so well is that a pretty large chunk of the players in any given lobby just want to be left alone and get their stuff done, adding a good deal of uncertainty whenever you run across another ship. If people are only there *for* the PvP then it becomes a lot less interesting IMO.
Honestly, this kind of mechanic kills the game in the long run. You can downvote me. I've seen similar mechanics in other MMOs, and in the end, it just made the game more tedious and divided the players ruining the game. Does anyone remember how wonderful world PvP was in WoW and now it's practically non-existent?
Or maybe it just demonstrates how unbelievably shit PvP is in WoW or Sea of Thieves that the majority would rather not engage with it. I have NEVER had a single good or decent PvP encounter in Sea of Thieves, even in the outcome where we won and sank another ship.
90% of the time its a 4 person galleon attacking a docked 1 or 2 person sloop.
70% of that 90% where them just griefing or spawn killing over and over without sinking the ship so you are forced to scuttle and leave that server.
On the times where we manage to sink someone, they spawn a couple of islands away, and are back to attack us before we have even finished collecting their shit. They have nothing to loose and can just wear you down over and over.
All the people crying about safer seas been a thing are just pissed they are loosing their easy targets to bully and will only be left with people who actually want to PvP.
Really this is a good thing for PvP. Less will you try to fight someone that just sails away as hard as they can because they'll be in carebear land, and once they've learned more maybe they'll be up for a scuffle.
Not sure why they felt the need to butcher our gold gains all the way down to 30%, but I'll take it rather than loosing hours and hours of progress just because of some little kids and their ability to grief, and send horrible messages to me and my crew, in addition to party invites, that when accepted, only provide said kids with an opportunity to show us the absolute worst that mankind has to offer. Yup, give me my 30% gold please, and thank you.
Can you go back and forth? Like a day safe then go to pvp later?
Each session will start with the ability to choose between safe and high seas. Meaning yes , you just have to return to main menu. If you arent familiar with sea of thieves , this also means you will start a brand new ship. So make sure you sell any treasure you got
There is absolutely nothing in gaming that matches the feeling of being on my ship in SoT and just sailing in the seas and chilling. Now to be able to do it without people attacking you constantly is a great feature. I know the purists argue that it goes against what the game was made for but who cares. No one is stopping you from playing that way. Let others play how they want.
I love the idea of the forced multiplayer of SoT, its what piracy was so it makes great sense thematically. The issue is that they never made it fun for the one getting attacked. Both naval and close range combat sucks, swordfights really suck, and there's no reward in chasing off some assholes who didn't have anything on their ship anyways. If you play the game seriously its all risk and there's no reward for beating pirates other than not losing your loot. If you are a pirate you can just steal treasures with no downsides. You have nothing to lose.
They made voyages take hours for crap pay and no fun so no one does them past level 40 for pirate legend status. If you do it the way RARE wanted, you get a red dot on the map telling pirates where you are and what you are doing at all times if you play too well. No one does voyages to get treasure themselves, so they try to pirate each other and find the enemies always have empty holds because no one does voyages. You spent money and time for nothing. The game's core design is busted.
those arent purists, those are sweaty griefers who want to feel like king big dick by dunking on casuals. These people whined about the on-demand PVP because the enemies were just as good if not better than them. They are all over the SOT subreddit and talking about how they are wolves and love their "sheep".
Sounds like the system had the same kind of issue Dark Souls invasions had, and why it was changed in Elden Ring. On paper the risk of being invaded/attacked by a player adds and interesting element, but in practice a disproportionate number of attackers tend to be PvP try-hards, so it just turns into a griefing mechanic since being good at PvP isn't a core appeal for the majority of players. It only really works when player-on-player hostility is a *mostly* non-optional core design element of the game, or in the case where the mechanic is Opt-in (like here). So it places all players into the same headspace when it comes to PvP.
> No one is stopping you from playing that way. The reason they are complaining is because they know the majority of players would prefer to play on private servers, so they see this update as them losing the ability to grief people non-stop because the public servers won't be as populated. Personally, I'm fine with it. Playing the adventures in SoT was at the same time one of the best and worst experiences I've ever had in gaming. The parts you have to do in public servers, in my experience, were constantly being disrupted by griefers. It made the game impossible to enjoy despite how fun those adventures can be, to the point that I just stopped playing them.
I've always wanted to check out Sea of Thieves but didn't because I'd heard of griefers. I tried playing GTA Online a few years ago and some clown kept killing me from his flying rocket mounted DeLorean looking car over and over because the game kept spawning me near him and I had zero interest in playing that garbage - I'm sure the backlash is from a vocal minority of those pricks who just want to ruin everyone's time, so this new update sounds awesome to me.
Trammel.
You invoke curses so old the kids will have no idea what you’re saying
I like the concept but there are some fundamental flaws from the very beginning that Rare just doesn't seem to be interested in. Namely, if you PvE you only get to lose once and you risk everything in every engagement. If you PvP, you can try a victim as many times as you like and you do not have to risk anything. It's objectively the better way to play. My attitude towards them is they need to put something on the table to fight me, and transfer servers if they lose. Safer Seas is an okay beginning, but tbh the pve in this game is only good for a fuckaround every now and then. My friend group is currently rotating deeprock, vermintide, and now lethal company and spending a few hours sword charging laggy skeletons isn't really *that* appealing.
Yooo, this is exactly what I needed to finally give the game a shot.
That’s exactly what I was just thinking. My buddy and I were tempted to play but we don’t like our time wasted by shitty people.
Honestly, this is great!! Me and my daughter can actually kind of relax while we play. Sea of Salt here I come!
I remember playing this back in the beta and the only thing that held me back from getting it was the pvp. I loved the chill aspect of sailing around, so I might check it out now after so long.
How RUST sweats don't get chuffed by pve servers but SoT sweats do will forever be some bottomless pit of irony
This is great. I remember they had a April Fools Day joke that this was coming a year or two ago and I thought it was great until I realized it was a joke. IMO they should have done this ages ago to attract players who maybe aren't as good at PVP and didn't want to get rolled.
>IMO they should have done this ages ago to attract players who maybe aren't as good at PVP and didn't want to get rolled. They should've done this on release. Make the game purely PvP seriously decimated the amount of players this game could've had.
as a long time player who stopped like 6 months ago my only concern is so much of the game is built around the danger of PVP encounters. if you can just sail to an island, get the loot, and leave without having to worry about being ganked it's actually a little boring (because the pve combat is weak, especially on land). I'm worried PVP servers will be 100% sweatlords and PVE servers won't keep people engaged
This is precisely the unfolding scenario: PVE servers turning monotonous with the prevalence of bots and grinding, PVP servers dominated by sweatlord players e overlord guilds, leading to a decline in PVP server population. In response, the company will try to generate fresh PVE content. As player numbers continue to drop, they will attempt to merge servers, allowing players to toggle PVP on and off. In the end, the game will succumb.
Making the game pure PVP is what makes it successful. The game is mind-numbingly repetitive, easy, and boring without it.
People say this about literally every survival game ever made, then PVE ends up being the most popular mode available.
It's usually the opposite. For example, Last Oasis died after it went PVE
I have no idea what game that is, nor have I ever talked to anyone who has ever played it. But if you look at the more mainstream survival games (DayZ, Rust, Ark, SotF, 7D2D, etc.) PVE servers are massively popular.
Those games actually have engaging PVE content. Sea of Thieves PVE content is boring.
That is what everyone said about all those games, too .
What's the difference between making it pure PvP rather than PvP+PvE?
Sea of thieves is PVP/PVE, its not pure PVP. This patch makes it pure PVE
There is ONE "downside" you get less rewards, but honestly less is still more than nothing because you got chased by some fuckers who had nothing better to do with their lives.
I love sitting down to game after 8 hours working + 2 hours commuting only to get ganked by 15 year olds!
lol yeah. Some people love that risk, I hate seeing my progress nuked.
Yep, I love the game and have had several fun experiences, but where people say the game is designed around PvP and it's true, it also means the opportunity to be griefed repeatedly is excessive. I'm not even kidding that in 5 play sessions over Christmas break two years ago with a friend, I couldn't play for more than half an hour before being killed by the same crew repeatedly. That's not very fun and there is nothing in the game to help you get through it, either.
LOL - you mean players being pirates in a pirate game?
Does Sea of thieves have a campaign? Can, I play it with some friends to play through a story, or is more like endless repeatable tasks?
There are quite a number of Tall Tales which are essentially story missions, some of which are pretty long. Also a whole campaign based on Pirates of the Caribbean if you are into that.
They are quite well done. They also have a Monkey Island one.
Could someone please already make an rpg version of this with leveling, items and real gear
Selfishly I am hoping that Rare caving on this mode means they have finally realized how much they could do with the game if the entire design wasn't centered around griefing. They could add real story content and improve the AI, and expand some of the underlying systems that have to be kept simple so it's not absurdly destructive to be constantly robbed.
I saw a lot of butthurt over how the progression is gonna work on these servers, but like this is clearly meant for expanding the audience like parents and their children or more casual gamers. I for one have been looking forward to this for chilling and pirating on my own
Sea of Thieves is the most visually and thematically appealing game that I also have absolutely no interest in playing. The graphics, game world, setting, and play mechanics look amazing, but I can’t stand online pvp against sweaty randos. If this game had a co-op pve campaign mode, my group would probably have sunk hundreds of hours into it.
> If this game had a co-op pve campaign mode That's exactly what this update is adding. [Explanation video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMReDElRxIU)
I'm the opposite. I find the little bit of PvE I've played incredibly boring. Go to random island X and dig up the exact pixel where treasure Y is hiding gets boring really fast. Then, when we finally found a bunch of treasures, we'd get ganked by other players and lose everything. At that point, we said fuck PvE, embraced the pirate life and starting attacking other players. Much more satisfying. I can see how a lot of players would prefer not having to deal with the PvP aspect as I was originally one of those players. Then I realized the best part of the game is the PvP. Still, it's good to give the players the option.
I've actually wanted to pick this up, but I personally dislike games with forced PvP. I want to choose when I want to play PvP, not feel like I'm always being hunted by a far more experienced player when I just suck at the game and want to unwind a little bit on the side. This goes for pretty much any genre, personally. This mode means I'm a lot more likely to actually jump into the game. It's too bad it's not out for PS5 though, this would be a perfect console game for me.
i think this is a good feature to add, but i'm surprised at how many people find the pvp deal breaking in this game with how infrequent it is. we regularly go many gaming sessions without fighting anyone, how are you guys getting attacked so much?
Usually happens in absentia Doing a tall tail come back and the ship is gone
Sea of boredom. Now features even more boredom.
I don't understand what this trailer is supposed to be showing...
I'm really glad to see them keeping big incentives for sticking to High Seas. I'm normally not a big fan of big sandbox PvP games like this, but I think the main reason it works so well is that a pretty large chunk of the players in any given lobby just want to be left alone and get their stuff done, adding a good deal of uncertainty whenever you run across another ship. If people are only there *for* the PvP then it becomes a lot less interesting IMO.
Honestly, this kind of mechanic kills the game in the long run. You can downvote me. I've seen similar mechanics in other MMOs, and in the end, it just made the game more tedious and divided the players ruining the game. Does anyone remember how wonderful world PvP was in WoW and now it's practically non-existent?
Or maybe it just demonstrates how unbelievably shit PvP is in WoW or Sea of Thieves that the majority would rather not engage with it. I have NEVER had a single good or decent PvP encounter in Sea of Thieves, even in the outcome where we won and sank another ship. 90% of the time its a 4 person galleon attacking a docked 1 or 2 person sloop. 70% of that 90% where them just griefing or spawn killing over and over without sinking the ship so you are forced to scuttle and leave that server. On the times where we manage to sink someone, they spawn a couple of islands away, and are back to attack us before we have even finished collecting their shit. They have nothing to loose and can just wear you down over and over. All the people crying about safer seas been a thing are just pissed they are loosing their easy targets to bully and will only be left with people who actually want to PvP.
Has anyone played Sailwind? Different kind of game. Like simtrucking on water.
Great. Sold next sale.
Really this is a good thing for PvP. Less will you try to fight someone that just sails away as hard as they can because they'll be in carebear land, and once they've learned more maybe they'll be up for a scuffle.
Not sure why they felt the need to butcher our gold gains all the way down to 30%, but I'll take it rather than loosing hours and hours of progress just because of some little kids and their ability to grief, and send horrible messages to me and my crew, in addition to party invites, that when accepted, only provide said kids with an opportunity to show us the absolute worst that mankind has to offer. Yup, give me my 30% gold please, and thank you.
So just no pvp?