Our lonely videos of Sea of Thieves

Driftwood
Saturday, March 10, 2018 | 12:05 PM
15 comments

GSY Video PC Xbox One

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.

High quality stream and download

Commented on 2018-03-10 11:50:39

You would think with the Beta being fully open now you would have surely run into a lot more people. Dare I say a lot more people than you will encounter when the game actually launches for money?

In reply to

Driftwood

Commented on 2018-03-10 11:54:10 In reply to andrewsqual

Well, actually, I don't think i would have liked to run into anyone, considering I was on my own and I'm pretty sure they would have attacked my tiny boat. :D

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.

aphex187

Commented on 2018-03-10 12:31:20

Maybe if the beta was splashed across Steams front page there would be more people playing it? Really wish they'd bite the bullet and just allow their games on steam, I mean they did it with Quantum Break so why not this and others!?

Kostchtchie

Commented on 2018-03-10 12:50:23 In reply to aphex187

shame its still win10, and state, age of empires... smh MS in there attempt to get exculsives ruining gaming for PC gamers by forcing them upgrade to win10 garbage

GriftGFX

Commented on 2018-03-10 13:06:41 In reply to aphex187

Posted by aphex187

Microsoft hasn't given up on killing Win32. I don't really want to support UWP (which includes Xbox), but this is the first offering that has really piqued my interest enough to tempt me. I'll definitely try the beta.

It's also poorly displayed on the Windows Store. I had to search for it to find it.

nostradamus

Commented on 2018-03-10 15:17:00 In reply to andrewsqual

Posted by andrewsqual

ayy, the Salt.

badum-tish.

Doom_Bringer

Commented on 2018-03-10 16:40:59

this is one of the best looking games I have ever seen. The water tech alone is amazing

Commented on 2018-03-10 17:50:41 In reply to Driftwood

Maybe if you meet up with people you can join up with them then? Maybe it doesn't work like that though.

Commented on 2018-03-10 18:29:21 In reply to GriftGFX

Posted by GriftGFX

It's also poorly displayed on the Windows Store. I had to search for it to find it.

Yeah I noticed that.

Tiz

Commented on 2018-03-10 19:24:06 In reply to Driftwood

Posted by Driftwood

Well, actually, I don't think i would have liked to run into anyone, considering I was on my own and I'm pretty sure they would have attacked my tiny boat. :D

The game becomes a bit survival horror if you do bump into people on a one-man sloop and it's always a flip of the coin whether they might be assholes or just passively soaking in the sea, so if you're not big into talking into the mic to accommodate proximity chat then you're left at the mercy of a random encounter.

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.

The voyages kind of start you off on your quests for doing things, but your vendor was being stingy at the time, if you do play again hopefully he has finished counting. ;)

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.

[quote=Driftwood]Well, actually, I don't think i would have liked to run into anyone, considering I was on my own and I'm pretty sure they would have attacked my tiny boat. :D[/quote]

[quote=Driftwood]
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.[/quote]

The voyages kind of start you off on your quests for doing things, but your vendor was being stingy at the time, if you do play again hopefully he has finished counting. ;)

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.

Tinks

Commented on 2018-03-11 17:11:56

It's definitely a party game to fuck around in

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

Commented on 2018-03-11 17:22:13 In reply to Tinks

They have said all the future updates will be free, so no season pass or DLC per se.

Commented on 2018-03-11 17:36:32 In reply to Tinks

It was always scheduled to close around 10am GMT not sure which time zone you're in but that was around 6 hours ago, I only managed to get another 3 hour session in 5 hours before the close.

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.

Commented on 2018-03-11 19:36:03

It's a little distressing to me that an island with three big rocks on it is a point of interest.

Commented on 2018-03-11 20:44:23

My friends got to try it and they seem really happy with it.

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