Sea of Thieves

[Brother Glacius]

This game has been a bit of a rollercoaster for me. The game itself is fun. I have been fortunate so far to not have been forced to join other groups, but when I have, they have mostly been positive. The best part of the game is playing with my friends. However, even hoping on without them and getting stuff done is still cool. The whole "threat of getting ganked" when you go on good missions is cool. It really adds tension to the game. Nothing like trying to make it back to an outpost to sell, and spot another ship heading towards you. Some very fun sea battles. All in all though, mostly it is about completing missions...haven't really had to deal with constant player harassment. (knock on wood). Great if you just want to roleplay as a silly pirate for a while.

 

The downside has been the game's stability, and the stupid Xbox chat system. Crashing is too often and costly (if you aren't playing with friends, good luck on getting back into the crew you just left, which means all work done on missions that haven't been turned in has been lost). Xbox chat is annoying. Not enough controls in the game itself, and then it also conflicts/works with xbox party chat. So you just never know who can hear you and visa versa. Discord is great, but then in game people can't hear you. They need to work that shit out.

[savion47]

I have been playing this game a fair amount with some friends. $60 game it is not, but we are always talking about what potential it has and if they had only had more content at release.

[Brother Glacius]

I've finally gotten in some good player scraps. They are fun and very harrowing. Was running a three-man galleon and got attacked by another. Got off some good salvos enough to drive them off. Wonderful combo of steering, sail management, cannon firing, and then repairs. Yet earlier in the same session, was sunk by a sloop because my friend can't steer worth crap and then parked us with our tail facing him after hitting sandbars. Won't forget the sound of the dude laughing as we sank.

A night with a random crew, we held off two sloops at port for like 30 minutes. Galleon never sank and we made it off with our treasure. Fun times.

[savion47]

Oh ya, the player on player ship battles can be a lot of fun. Things like using gunpowder barrels to blow a bunch of holes in the side of ships is great.

I have also had the opportunity to complete the raid which was ok. Was able to fight off the Kraken once as well which felt like a great accomplishment (and saved a bunch of treasure we collected). 

We have however hit a point of collecting treasure feels like a bit of a meaningless task. Since everything is cosmetic, once you have what you want there is little incentive to keep going as the quests are the same three things over and over.

[savion47]

A comparison just struck me about this game. I am not sure how many of you played EVE online, but Sea of Thieves gives me a lot of the feelings of that game. It has very little to do with any connection to mechanics, or anything like that, but everything to do with my feelings while playing it. The general day to day game play is actually quite boring for me (as with EVE but 10x worse), but the moments of pvp battles are incredibly thrilling. As Bro G was talking about, when you and your crew successfully fight off other players trying to steal your treasure (or just kill you because you might have treasure) the game is insanely fun. Taking revenge on someone for their actions against you is immensely satisfying.

For instance the most fun I had was during a battle between my galleon with 3 total crew and another. A smaller sloop decided to try and get involved. I ended up sneaking onto the ship and killing the 1 person crewing the ship. I then proceeded to ram the galleon that we had been fighting off for I think about 30 minutes. It was truly glorious watching the ship I had commandeered sink and the pursuing galleon panic as their ship began sinking at a rapid pace as well. We escaped with our treasure laughing and cheering. It was truly the most fun I have had in a video game in some time... sadly it is those short lived moments that make me keep coming back to this game for the boring missions.

[Brother Glacius]

Well last night my friend and I got robbed hard. Over an hour of loot gone, with no revenge to make me feel better about it. It really pissed me off that they could just sit on my ship, reloading and killing us as we spawned back. Not fun. 

[Brother Glacius]

Sea of Thieves Anniversary Edition Update

So I started playing SoT again mostly because it is one of the few games I can play with an old east coast friend. They have added some content since a year ago. The big impact changes are as follows:

New volcanic region - very dangerous. Lost a ship to an erupting volcano while trying to complete a quest on said island. Not sure what the reward vs risk is there just yet. But it keeps you on your toes.

Roaming ghost pirate ship crewed by skeletons. Not very aggressive that I can see so far, but if you shoot it, they will come after you and they are faster. Fight was interesting, kept getting hit my "dancing" cannonball, which means you are stuck dancing after it hits your ship for a minute or so. Makes fighting back and repairing very difficult. Not sure if we could have won as a kraken showed up and between the two, we sunk fairly quickly.

Roaming mega shark - this pops up quite frequently. Now I did do the event to hunt this beast back when it first came out. Now it just attacks ships at random all the time. Not hard to avoid, but I don't know if there's an reward to fighting it and killing it now.

New pirate ship cloud in the sky, but not sure what it signifies. 

New activity in fishing and cooking. You can now fish and catch various levels of rare fish throughout the waters. Types of bait can help attract certain ones. There are new outposts in the water where you can sell the fish. Selling cooked fish brings more money. You can also now kill pigs and chickens and snakes and collect meat from them to cook as well. Cooked meat restores more health when eaten.

Also, there is a new Arena mode, where you just get put on a ship and go fight other ships and try to find treasure in a timed event. Meh...tried it a couple of times. I suppose if you are really bored, or if you have a full four man group that works together it could be a good money maker. A little too random though for solo play as to who you get stuck with on your team.

All in all, spent a few hours playing over the last week and there is some fun stuff there. There's also other minor changes in quests and the like. I've actually enjoyed the fishing aspect. Makes it a little easier to get money now without as much risk as typical missions.