Jump to content
passwords have all been force reset. please recover password to reset ×
MFGamers

Sea of Thieves


DisturbedSwan
 Share

Recommended Posts

I absolutely adore this game. 

Playing with decent folks with Mics it’s a magnificent experience, by far and away Microsoft’s best exclusive for a very long time.

Its a very special game, got so many little cool stories to tell and so many magical ‘only in Sea of Thieves’ moments.

 

I teamed up with some folks from the Sea of Thieves Discord group earlier, everyone had mics and it was such a fantastic time.

 

We went doing the usual questing, picking up voyages and finding treasure and stuff. Over a certain period of time our ship sustained a lot of damage from rival ships, we actually ran out of boards fixing it up so when we cashed in all our chests at an outpost we all decided to scuttle it. As it was going under a rival lone dude was searching our ship for loot, we were all just on the beach playing our musical instruments in unison as the ship slowly sunk under the waves, it was a 'moment' just felt so magical and jolly at the same time, we were all giggling like school girl at the absurdity of the situation and what was happening.

 

After this we went back to the usual gameplay loop but got distracted by this lone dude in a boat. We chased after him, exhausting all our cannon supplies trying to sink his ship, he was much more nimble than us so it was quite difficult to track him down, he was firing back at us the entire time too. We must've chased him across the other side of the map before we finally managed to plug him with some cannonballs and sink his ship, killing him when he was swimming in the water afterwards :lol: 

 

I also found out earlier that you can put yourself into a cannon and then fire yourself out of it onto islands, yes it is as fun as it sounds! It's crazy how much you get into the pirate roleplay as well, everyone was using tons of nautical terms on my squad today, left and right became starboard and port and you get an extra kick out of the little details, even remembering to correctly raise and angle the sails with the wind and coordinating with everyone so you don't run into rocks approaching an island is a great moment to experience every time.

 

Folks may be worried that the nature of being able to steal other peoples' loot will make it like the Dark Zone in The Division or something. But it really isn't as bad as that, if you get killed you respawn on your ship, and if your ship gets sunk you wait for a mermaid to appear in the water and you get sent straight back to a new ship somewhere in the world. Yes, you do still lose your loot but that risk/reward aspect is part of the game.

 

I'm so pleased I put a lot more time into this as I really didn't think I would after the Alpha. Quite honestly every time I was playing Monster Hunter World over this weekend I would've rather been on this, and that is something I really didn't expect to be saying.

 

Ultimately it's the little stories folks will make and experience that will make the game, and it seems with the gangbuster viewing numbers on twitch and the servers being full pretty much constantly that Microsoft will have their first proper current gen hit on their hands, I really do think this is a strong GOTY contender already and the full game release will have much more content. I guess the art style will put some folks who prefer the grittier side of gaming aesthetics off it, which is a shame, but I really do think it's worth a go. 

 

It's a phenomenal achievement, Rare’s most definitely back!

 

 

Screenshot (55).png

 

Screenshot (57).png

 

Screenshot (58).png

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Been meaning to post some thoughts now the full game is out in the wild but just not had the time until now. It's quite a strange feeling going into a game you've already spent 30-40 hours playing over the Alpha's and Beta's, I purposefully avoided the last Scale Test and FInal Beta so I wouldn't feel burnt out when I got into the final game.

 

So yeah, no impressions here really as everything is covered in my previous posts. I will cover the additions which are access to the two other factions - Merchant Alliance and Order of Souls - along with tons of animals roaming about the islands, more fish and coral in the sea and other bits and pieces like that, there's also the Skeleton Fort raids which are signified by the huge glowing skull in the sky and of course The Kraken. The Gold required to buy items seems to have gone up significantly as well by about 10 x as much but I expect that it was put down low in the beta's so players could test them out.

 

So the Order of Souls is basically a horde mode variant. You travel to a named island then set about killing a few waves of different skeletons (Plant, Shadow, Gold - each having their own weaknesses) and a Pirate Captain. Once the Captain is defeated he'll drop a Skull and you can then cash it in at an outpost later on. The Merchant Alliance tasks you with just collecting a certain number and type of animals - for example 1 white feathered chicken, 1 pink bristled pig, 1 gunpowder barrel - and then bringing it back to a certain outpost on the map within the allocated - generous - time limit.

 

The Treasure Hunting quests which involve riddles are still by far and away my favourite but I like the Order of Souls quests too, definitely adds some much needed variety in there. I'm not sure what to make of the Merchant quests yet though, you have to get these cages from the NPC quest-giver at an outpost, then scope out a number of islands until you spot the animals you like, then have to coax them into a cage/coop and take them back to the outpost, feeding them bananas on the way to keep them alive and making sure they don't drown. Again, it adds some variety to the mix, which is great, but at the same time getting to an island and finding out it doesn't have what you want isn't very satisfying. The comedy aspect of chasing after chickens and pigs though is pretty cool.

 

The other huge addition is the skeleton fort raids. Once every so often you'll encounter a huge glowing skull on the horizon, if you go to it you'll experience a skeleton fort with wave after wave of different skeletons to fight. Just getting in is a pain as the Skeletons have towers manned with cannons that will fire on your ship as soon as you approach, but once you manage it you have to get through about 10-15 waves of Skeletons before defeating the final Captain boss. Once you've done that you can open the Vault with his key and net a very decent 10-15K gold and numerous + reputation levels in the process. These are really fun and the anxiety you feel booking it back to an outpost hoping a rival ship doesn't turn up out of nowhere is incredibly exhilarating. I haven't encountered the Kraken yet so can't comment on that at all.

 

So yeah, I've put about 23 hours in so far, and just like the beta's and alpha's the social aspect is what makes it so engaging so incredibly fun, can't get it out of my mind :wub:

 

Some pics:

 

 

 

 

Screenshot (61).png

Screenshot (62).png

Screenshot (63).png

Screenshot (64).png

Screenshot (65).png

Screenshot (66).png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So after 120 hours I've finally decided to put this game on hiatus.

 

I got to Level 32-32-30 in the three factions after that amount of time, I was just playing the game to enjoy it rather than rank up necessarily, even so that is an obscene amount of time to be relatively far off Pirate Legend status so I've kind of lost motivation.

 

I think the reveal about what Pirate Legend status meant and the associated benefits - or lack thereof - really put a dampener on my PL ambitions. Once you reach PL status you get a cool outfit, access to a secret hideaway placed underneath a tavern - which you have to play a special tune using the musical instruments to unlock - and that's about it. 

 

Once you get down to this hideout you can access the extremely lucrative Pirate Legend missions. The issue is though that there's no new type of voyages introduced, it is just an amalgamation of the three existing factions bungled together into one voyage. On top of this you're presented with another grind to get a new Ghost PL outfit - Athena's Fortune - along with some custom paintjobs for your ship.

 

Everything else is either not unlocked at the moment or isn't going to be available until the planned 'HUGE' 3 month update drops in late July.

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game though, it has provided me with some of my favourite moments I've ever had in games, when this game is good it is damn good. But likewise, when something awful happens you just want to be done with it and never switch it on again.

 

Two examples. This amazing raid I did with this group of guys, we fought off galleon after galleon and eventually got the fort key from the dead captain. We decided to stash it by swimming under water to the nearest rock formation and leaving it here to pick up later, letting the rival Galleon sink us so they'd think we'd already lost/used the key. 2 people on the ship led this rival galleon on a merry dance whilst me and the other guy went to this rock formation, I died due to shark bite, likewise with my comrade.

 

We respawn at the ship and go back to the rock formation near the fort once the rival galleon is off our tail. We're frantically looking around for 20-30 minutes in the water for this tiny key, my comrade seems to know exactly which rock he died out and looked around it 3 or 4 times, I was looking around too but more in hope that expectation. 

 

After this amount of time had passed we were about to leave the game and accept defeat, not being able to find the lost key. I said to the rest of them 'well I might as well have one last look where you died', so I looked around this rock formation in the water for another 1-2 minutes and I saw something floating under the water near the bedrock. As I swam towards it I saw it was the key, the issue was no matter how many times I mashed X on my controller I couldn't pick it up, I had to switch to keyboard and mash E/F and eventually picked it up.

 

The best part of it was telling the other guys I was playing with that I found it. Everybody went fucking bananas and I felt like I was some kind of superhero that just defeated a villain, it was one of the most incredible moments I've ever experienced in gaming, everyone at first in denial thinking I was joking about having it, then the realisation when I kept saying 'guys, I've found the key' and the sudden realisation 'no, no, no, no, no YOU MUST BE FUCKING SHITTING ME' were their reactions. These 3 dudes I'd just met on a discord channel all lauding me like Superman and the genuine joy and excitement in their voices, it was fucking amazing.

 

But then another example is when we did a different fort, some dude decided to hide the key in a 'secret spot' in the sails on the ship, assuring us that he wouldn't lose it....of course he lost it and our last 2 hours worth of efforts taking the fort were in vein. Likewise the time a few days ago when 6 hours went by with only 1 skull raid to show for it because it was either too hard or me and the folks I was with made too many mistakes attempting to get the key. On the final attempt we managed to track down and steal the key from a rival galleon, stash it on an island and then be chased for the next 1.5 hours, only to go back to the island stash to find out it had either disappeared or it had been taken by a random at some point. Points like that in the game are just so disappointing and annoying, 6 hours of play and 0 to show for it in the slightest.

 

The social interaction between people and even the randoms you meet out in the world is what makes the game. The factions - whilst repetitive - serve a purpose, they are there to get you and friends to have fun, interact and communicate with one another, likewise with how the various tasks on the Galleon need to be performed. But the issue is that the carrot on the end of the stick is more like some mouldy carrot that has been half eaten by a Donkey at the moment. The juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

 

I look forward to going back, and will still dip a toe in every now and then but I don't really care if I reach PL status by this time next year or not now, if it happens it happens, if it doesn't it doesn't. I've still had a whale of a time along the way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had a go on this today, just shy of 3 hours I spent on it. After listening to @Blakey fawn over it the experience I had has me thinking this...

 

XvJrBPrRr6OmGcDvQUDg_Confused%20TV.gif

 

Biggest take away from the whole experience? The Xbox One X is a lovely bit of kit. I understand where the love for that bit of hardware comes from, coupled to a 4k TV I don't think anything could rival how things look on that machine. It's astonishing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I played with 3 friends. Although we had to deal with 1 random for about an hour because someone had to leave. Barely changed the overall experience though.

 

It's a novel concept and it looks stunning, but that's where the good points end.

 

I've seen a lot of people reference No Mans Sky when comparing to this game. I've not played NMS, but the closest thing I can line this game up to to something I have played is PlayStation Home. Because that's what it is, SoT is basically a chatroom where occasionally something happens.

 

The things that do happen are so engaging that they feel like the shit never ending missions that generate in Skyrim. Go here. Catch a chicken. Go back. Go There. Fight some skeletons. Come back. Go somewhere. Solve a riddle. Get a chest and take it back. It's this over and over again.

 

It wouldn't be bad if the hook was there. The thing that drove you to do all these things was interesting, but it isn't. You work out where you're going, you raise the anchor and you go on your way. And that's it. You can have anywhere up to 5 minutes or more of dead time. It could be more, it could be less. It's fucking shit. Me and the lads decided to kill this time by climbing to the crows nest and then jumping to our deaths over and over. Because there's fuck all to do. You sort of beg for another ship to show up so you can have something to do. Speaking of which...

 

The PvP is fucking terrible. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but at one port were were at we got fired on and lost the ship. Another ship spawned and that got sunk before we could get to it. When the next ship come in we managed to get on it and this time we sunk each others ships. Then when the ships came in again we all made a rush to each other and we were on what we thought was our ship, which we seemed to fight these guys off for ages until one of our guys noticed we were on their ship because all the stuff was respawning or something? I don't even know. We unknowingly spawn camped their ship though, which is shit. Shit design. Also the guns are awful, they just feel terrible to use, I know that's the period they've set the games in and they're sort of tempered to that sort of fighting, but they're just awful. If all 4 of you pick out a crew member to stab you win. Not that winning matters, because I honestly couldn't give a fuck about the stuff we collected to turn in.

 

Talking about the melee stuff as well. The bits where you're sent to kill the skeletons. The fighting in Minecraft is deeper. Minecraft! The only thing that's dangerous when fighting the skeletons seems to be the other players, which randomly show up. The combat has as much depth as the skeletons can cope with when you walk them, to the water. Walk them to the water and kill them at your leisure. Or just kill them at your leisure anyway, it's not hard. I understand there's meant to be harder mobs to fight, but unfortunately I didn't see anything like that during my time with the game. I noticed that some skeletons were covered in gold or moss and that they had strengths and weaknesses, but dispatching them was never hard. Just dull. The kind of MMO go kill x amount of mobs dull.

 

They say that friends can make anything better, I'd hate to think what this would be like without them. At best I spent time catching up with friends I'd not seen for a few weeks. At worst I made us go to that dive bar that none of us like but we all go there anyway because it's the closest social space we all share.

 

This is a husk of a game. It's OK saying that more's coming, but that's not really good enough when this is a fucking £40 release right this minute. As it stands this is one of those Summer of XBLA games that everyone froths over that in retrospect is actual shit. Looking at the metacritic sites I'm truly astonished that this got anything over a 40%. Nice water effects aside  (and they are amazingly pretty, especially from underneath when you're swimming) this game offers so little to the user that it's just reinforced my opinion that this will go off a cliff if something isn't done to salvage.

 

Sea of Thieves? Nah, more like Crock of Shite. Truly a wasted opportunity if ever I saw one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm surprised you even played it to be honest @Sly Reflex the mere suggestion of you joining me in the open beta for free was met with a 'not into pirate games, not interested' response :lol: likewise with my repeated offers of a Game Pass Free 14 Day Trial that I have available (if anyone else wants it let me know by the way).

 

I agree with most of your points, I don't think SoT is an excellent game per se but some of the experiences and bonds I've formed (explained at length in previous posts) I've never had in any previous game. The combat is shallow yes, the missions are repetitive yes, there is only 1 type of enemy yes etc. but I don't play it because of that I play it to feel a certain way, and it's incredibly difficult to describe.

 

When you first spawn and you hear the music in the tavern playing, the trees at the outpost gently swaying in the wind against a beautiful sunset. Then you get on a boat and you're setting everything up with your crew, working out where to go etc. and then you set off into the open seas and someone will open their concertina or hurdy-gurdy and start playing one of the shanty's whilst you watch the waves and islands roll by with all the reflections bouncing off the surface. It's just phenomenal and can't be matched, above everything else it just has a fantastic sense of place and gives you an experience you can't really have anywhere else - AC4 is the closest example but even then there's no PvP. It just fills me with joy like no other game can, I can't help but get a big dumb smile on my face every damn time even after the amount of hours I've put into it.

 

I will say as well that I don't really think you've seen all the game has to offer in 3 hours. There's probably huge swathes of the map you've not been to and I doubt you did a Skeleton Fort in that time, admittedly once you have seen everything there's not much else there but I think that's when you hit 20 hours rather than 3 I'd argue.

 

As one of the most obstinate people I know, I know you're not likely to come back anytime soon but if you fancy giving it a second chance with me and some folks from the SoT ERA/SoT community discord I'm always here and I think you'll enjoy it more. That invitation is open to anyone as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I honestly don't think the game in its current form could be any more enjoyable even with the worlds best company. It's a pirate themed chatroom.

 

Initially it leaves such a great impression too. It's so full of character and charm when you jump in the lobby that's it's hard not to be won over, but it's such a thin veneer over what barely constitutes to be a game that that feeling goes right out the window.

 

I'm not ruling out never ever playing again, but it'll be a long time before I come back. They need to fill out the world they've crafted here with stuff to do that's actually worth a time investment. It's currently a fairground with no rides. Completely pointless.

 

I'd have been so angry if I'd have invested anything more than the handful of hours I spent on it. It's barely worth the sub to Game Pass as it stands. There's less game there than running patrols on Destiny. It's kind of beguiling that it hasn't been crucified by press.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...
  • 7 months later...

Three of four sessions in since I bought it.

 

Mixed feelings overall. This is definitely in a better place it was since I tried it when it came out. It still suffers from the same shit I talked about earlier in the thread where you're just sat twiddling your thumbs for massive parts of the game. Sometimes it feels 80% of the game is stood on deck watching for ships and hoping they try to attack you or hoping they ignore you because you're full of loot.

 

They do seem to have upped the stuff that happens while out at sea. There's more wrecks to dive down to and plunder and stuff like ghost ships and megaladon attacks happen more frequently. You do still get those times where there's absolutely fuck all to do but there seem to be fewer occasions where they do happen.

 

PvP is still shit. It's actually moved away from the sword rushing that was prevalent when I last played, now it comes down to having a pistol and a sniper rifle and getting two shots off quickly, Although teams focusing one player and wearing a team down like that is better, mainly because it makes the other crew 1 man down for 30 seconds so you can sort of stagger them so they trickle in one by one while you steal all their loot. It's still very poor. Ammo never really matters either since you're either fighting on your ammo box or theirs.

 

PvE. This is still bad. In fact whenever we've done anything where we have to kill skeleton bosses, it's just easier to take them to the beach and blast them with a cannonballs and sniper fire. A lot of this boils down to the melee being flat and uninteresting and the guns only having 5 shots in them before you have to go find an ammo box. You know what would sort this? Allowing you to either have unlimited ammo but longer reloads, or by allowing you to resupply off of skeletons that have firearms that you have killed.

 

The riddles and stuff are good. In fact the game has this weird loop where you buy a quest and set out on it, but you might find a message in a bottle on the way there and find out it's a case of having to make a diversion to do something else, where you'll end up picking up another quest. So one voyage to go find a chest ends up netting loads of quests because they naturally chain into each other. Sometimes you get these quests where they overlap, for instance we got one where we had to dig up 8 chests on an island, but it was also infested with skeleton bosses. It's here where the game excels since you're filling the ship up constantly with chests which makes then journeys onward more risky because people are going to want that shit. When you do go to hand in you have to be careful about people running onto your boat and helping themselves.

 

The biggest frustration I have with this game is the controls  for keyboard and mouse. They are impossibly shit and whoever decided that it should be like this needs a slap.

 

If you talk to any NPC in game you need to press Esc to back out. This is stupid since pressing Esc also brings up the menu settings. It is also a huge reach away from WASD.

 

You press F to interact with stuff. Except when it's R for no fucking good reason whatsoever. Why? Because fuck you, that's why!

 

When you look at the chart in the ship, you go into it by pressing F. That's like how you chat to people, so going off the chart and back into gameplay must be Esc, right? Nope, you press F again.

 

When you pick up a chest you press F. So what will it be this time? Esc or F to put it down? Well fuck your logic because you need to press X to put it down on the ground. You would think trying to equip weapons would drop it right there on the floor, or clicking the right mouse would lob it in the direction you're looking? Nope.

 

Looting barrels for supplies throws another unneeded key into the mix. You can press R to take all, but instead of it shutting the window like it should, nope, you have to press X to back out. Unless you're on a cannon and then that's F to get off it, and R to reload it. Fuck me, what a load of bollocks.

 

Also the run/walk keys are where they normally are on Shift and Ctrl, but for some reason walk only works when it fucking feels like it.

 

Just making it so that it's the same button to interact with something and the same button each time to disengage would make life so much more easier. There's no need for 3 different ways to disengage and then make them all distinct to certain actions.

 

It's honestly one of the dumbest control systems I've seen in a game. Usually it feels like they've crammed a control system onto a pad, but here it feels like the other way around.

 

Back to the good stuff though. It looks and sounds amazing. The bits where you're actually forced into working as a team are properly enthralling, and after a bit everyone on deck just works autonomously because that's the way it settles you in. The emergent gameplay can be pretty cool and the mind games you can pull with the other players and ships makes it worth a look.

 

I needs more content for sure, but it's sort of getting there. Stuff like the mermaid statues and ghost ships are a step in the right direction, bits that tie up the time of the player but give a decent reward if you can cash them in are what is needed to flesh out the experiences.. Maybe adding stuff like NPC that have already dug up the treasure and are running around the island with it. Chests that have some sort of gimmick like the one that cries and fills your ship with water make sailing about more interesting. There's a whole host of things they could do to pad it out, and maybe realise that it doesn't all have to be all go here, do this, return treasure because I think that there should be a way to cash in on some minor level without having to have every last bit of it at risk.

 

The next DLC is supposedly based around sending people to the same islands so they will clash over objectives. I think this will be good for both sides of the PvPvE stuff because the PvP players are naturally going to gravitate towards those quests and because of that the PvE players are going to be left alone a bit more to do what they want, but those PvP islands are going to see a lot of conflict for anyone going through.

 

Really it's what comes out after that. It needs a lot more stuff to do as well as some killer content like the volcano quests. Only then will it becomes something that I could recommend wholeheartedly. As it is now it's a maybe if you're really into gaming that is mostly  fucking about trying to find out where the shit is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...