We must confess, we have really failed to provide a solid coverage of the Sea of Thieves beta ever since it started to allow video footage, so we took the opportunity of the final beta build to try the game a bit more than we had in the past. Sadly, we were quite unlucky yesterday evening, as we couldn't even get a free treasure map, the old man selling them taking ages to count our coins (we had none and the map was free, so the math was hard...), which is why we decided to set sail without any real objective to motivate our adventure. You'll also notice that we had no crew, which clearly isn't the best way to experience Rare's new title. Nothing much happened in the course of our short journey, we didn't meet anyone (but we don't need anyone when it comes to sinking our own boat), we found nothing of interest in the different islands we explored, but we saw very nice landscapes and beautiful waters. This more or less proves that the success of the game will only rely on what players will be lucky enough to experience, together or on their own. We just don't know yet if there is enough content to make it interesting in the long run. What do you guys think?
Update: Fifth video added.
All comments (15)
I still think exploration is not rewarded enough. The few islands I have seen had nothing particularly unique to offer in terms of landscapes (though they look very good) and offered nothing especially interesting in terms of things to do/find.
Unless I really didn't get the game at all.
It's also poorly displayed on the Windows Store. I had to search for it to find it.
badum-tish.
Unless I really didn't get the game at all.
The game has nice aesthetics but beyond that is highly dependant on emergent experiences to tide you over from one voyage to the next. If you decide to go where the wind takes you, the different islands aren't interesting enough to facilitate a worthwhile self-made voyage of visiting every single one; they have funny cool names though.
Because Rare keep tinkering the instances in these scale tests and betas, it's hard to know what the frequency of ship encounters will be like come launch, there have been a fair few times where I've been caught in a 3-galleon cross fire and times where I've played a lengthy session and only seen one other sloop, I've been chased by a galleon on my sloop into a storm and on the other side found another sloop just chilling at an outpost which becomes thrilling when you have chests you need to bank, so it really does vary.
To conclude and concur, the game is far better with at least one other person, I think the one-man option is there just because people asked for it, but when the game reaches the apex of Rare's vision it doesn't feel like there is really a place for a one-man pirate army.
But I've also heard the full game is going to have a lot more content that's not being shown in the beta... then again would not be surprised at getting fckd on that too. It'll be interesting to see the DLC or content release strategy here
Looks like they closed up the beta early though? I can't seem to gain access to the "open" beta
Not sure about a lot more content at launch but they definitely haven't shown everything and I don't think there are any more betas as the game launches in 9 days.
As Drift said, the game will have free expansions for as long as they are able to do them.
Unfortunate for me I was on a trip with my wife while this went on :(. Granted I'd rather be on the trip but bad timing