Sea Of Thieves (people play this game and talk about it)

[noiseredux]

Dudes, I'll be honest - I'm not a big fan of "pirate stuff" as a setting for games/movies/etc. So while this game hasn't really grabbed my attention personally, I've heard some insane enthusiasm from those that have actually played it. Bogus wrote some interesting and lengthy early impressions in another thread while he was participating in the beta a week or two ago. And this week I heard some rather riveting talk about it on the Idle Thumbs podcast. So I'm like... paying attention for now. But I figured that this game was probably worth starting a dedicated thread for. And I mean it's Rare.

So who's playing? Please post interesting stories and screenshots here, yeah?

[BogusMeatFactory]

I have in fact been playing! The game on day 1 was plagued with some issues. For the first hour you couldn't get into the game, because of matchmaking issues. Those issues were off and on as the day progressed, but were fairly good. The real problem was with buying and selling stuff in the game. Chests, when redeemed weren't being registered for an hour or so and if you logged off in that time, you were denied it. This is, of course, being addressed. Outside of those sporadic issues, the game is going well!

I have stories! When the game launched, I wanted to get an hour or so in at launch so I stayed up to play it. I was playing solo, because everyone was sleeping at it was 1 AM. Things were going great, getting treasure and the like, but as I was passing on island, I saw a glint shining bright in the distance. What is that? I head out that way and go ashore to find a message in a bottle with a riddle. The riddle led me to an island and, figuring out the clues I was able to dig up a nice piece of loot! I decide that was the closing of that session so I would turn it in at the nearest outpost and call it a night. When I approached the outpost, I saw a sloop parked perfectly at the docks. That means some players just spawned there... or did a really good parking job (never the case!). So I decide to just smash into the land and make a mad dash to turn in the chest and hope they are friendly, or bad at aiming. I steer my boat to where the gold hoarder is (the faction that accepts chests) and jump off, swimming underneath the boat as I use it as a distraction. It didn't work. A crew member saw me, I dropped the chest and we duked it out. We exchanged blows, but he took me down and got the chest turned in. I wasn't mad, because these guys were clearly new players and I thought about how crazy that experience must be to log in, look around and see this ship barreling at them with a guy holding a golden chest... kill him and turn it in for a huge reward. They were probably very excited!

Later in the day I logged in for a 2-man sloop experience. Met a random who was super cool and had been playing all day and had amassed a lot of treasure. He and I were doing some more advanced bounty missions, hunting down skeleton captains and their crew on a variety of islands. This is where a lot of new stuff came into play that was not in the testing periods. We came across iron skeletons that couldn't be killed outside of cannon fire, or gunshots. Later we had a mission to go to an island and take down two captains and their crew in a single bounty, but the island was miniscule, so it was filled with skeletons. Not any old skeletons, but ghost skeletons. These ones could only be hurt while being exposed to light, be it from the sun or from lantern light. The exposure needed to be continuous, so we pulled our ship along the shore, I jumped out with lantern in hand and my crew mate stayed on the boat and cannon blasted any skeletons I exposed. I was just being chased by around 10 ghost skeletons and their beefed up captains while cannon fire whizzed by my head by so many close calls from my crew mate. It was intense.

Lastly, I streamed my evening play session and was having issues getting in. Rare was blocking new players from starting a game because of some server issues they were trying to resolve, but you could technically join an already existing crew if a spot was open. My best chances were with a galleon and I was right. So let me break down my crew. There was Quiet Guy, who was an experienced vet like me to the game, but kept his head down and was a workhorse, adjusting sails, helping with the map navigation and was pretty good at finding treasure. The second member was Angry Guy, who cussed a lot, was super aggressive and had zero experience with the game. He asked lots of questions and was appreciative of the help, but he always seemed on edge. The third player was Psycho Guy. He never spoke, walked around with our chests, had to be put in the brig (a team vote to put him in a time out for bad behavior) but he got his act together. He was weird. He would get in your way and point his compass and map at you, take the treasure and put it on deck and lay down with it and turn on our lights a bunch. Just a nuisance, but manageable.

We are working like clockwork on some multi-part treasure chest voyages thanks to Quiet Guy being high in rank with the Gold Hoarders. I was captaining the crew and barking out orders and setting up the gameplan, because two of the three guys never played before and Quiet Guy was Quiet. He didn't want responsibility, just gold and was happy as long as we were productive. Things went smoothly with us getting lots of treasure and having to take detours to avoid a storm that was looming over an island we had a map for. Storms are devastating and only the foolish sloop can come out alive. Lightning smashes holes in your hull, controlling the ship is nigh impossible and your compass goes whonky. So we decided to stay away. We head back to unload our cargo and see if the storm passed and it did, so we decided to make way for Snake Island (and it rightfully earned its names as poisonous snakes were everywhere). As we approached, we saw a sloop moored alongside the shore and we decided to take them out. I told Angry Guy to get on board his boat and smash it into the rocks and if you see the guy kill him.

Angry Guy did as was ordered and saw the player and screamed, "I'm gonna skull fuck you, you fucking cunt!" And I was like, "WHOAH WHOAH WHOAH! ANGRY GUY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? I said kill the guy, not kill him emotionally! Jeez!" This was all in public voice chat so the victim heard me in the distance, which made me chuckle.

Angry responded with, "You can't be a pirate without hate in your heart," and I laughed and was like, "NOOO!!! Rule number 2 on my boat is, if you want to be a pirate... earn it! Make them laugh.. be a crazy person and spout nonsensities." I showed him how it was done. When the player respawned on his boat, he made a B-line for the island and tried to get on the cannons located there. I chased him and screamed that I didn't want to hurt him, but wanted him to have some thick, illustrious banana candy and cackled like a maniac before shooting him down. We sunk his boat, got our treasure and turned it in. I taught Angry Guy a lesson, because he agreed that that is a better way to handle it and that it was funny. I hope he takes that lesson to heart.

So that was my experience on Day 1. A Galleon is a lot harder to drive, you don't have the maneuverability of the sloop, but you definitely have the man power to get a lot done fast as long as everyone is on the same page.

People keep saying, "YOU NEED TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS!" and I disagree wholeheartedly! I think the game is best played with random people and you can provide for them an awesome and entertaining experience, while also teaching them a way to play that definitely heightens the experience. I don't go on a player killer rampage on a sloop, mostly because it isn't as fun. On a Galleon, there is definitely a consensus to fight, so I make sure that if we do fight, we do it my way. With banana candy.

[Stark]

I played some of this last night. I think the basic idea behind the "fun" is to put you and a couple of your friends in a sandbox with a couple of systems and see what sort of emergent game play can come from it and I had a blast.

We were mostly running gold missions for the Gold Explorers, they give you a map, you find it in the sea, you sail there, dig it up, and bring your haul back to an Outpost. Rinse, repeat. After two or three, we found a little sloop and decided to try and attack them, they're a little faster, but we outgunned them. Aiming cannons is super hard, a buddy got in a cannon and I shot him toward the sloop, but missed horribly. Now we're down a man and still trying to attack, finally came up along the port and laid into him with 3 or 4 great cannon volleys and sunk him. He was able to abandon ship and I hopped in the water to try and saber him and got him and a bunch of wooden planks to help repair the ship.

Then we decided to haul all of our chests back to an Outpost, decided to sail south, through Kraken Deep, sounds harmless, right? Of course we got attacked by a Kraken! Huge tentacles came up and grabbed a crewmate, we all scrambled attempting to fire cannons and free our friend, eventually we were just able to free the ship and get the heck out of there and drop of our loot at the Outpost. Where just after doing so and leaving port we're attacked by another Galleon and sunk. What a ride.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I played some of this last night. I think the basic idea behind the "fun" is to put you and a couple of your friends in a sandbox with a couple of systems and see what sort of emergent game play can come from it and I had a blast.

We were mostly running gold missions for the Gold Explorers, they give you a map, you find it in the sea, you sail there, dig it up, and bring your haul back to an Outpost. Rinse, repeat. After two or three, we found a little sloop and decided to try and attack them, they're a little faster, but we outgunned them. Aiming cannons is super hard, a buddy got in a cannon and I shot him toward the sloop, but missed horribly. Now we're down a man and still trying to attack, finally came up along the port and laid into him with 3 or 4 great cannon volleys and sunk him. He was able to abandon ship and I hopped in the water to try and saber him and got him and a bunch of wooden planks to help repair the ship.

Then we decided to haul all of our chests back to an Outpost, decided to sail south, through Kraken Deep, sounds harmless, right? Of course we got attacked by a Kraken! Huge tentacles came up and grabbed a crewmate, we all scrambled attempting to fire cannons and free our friend, eventually we were just able to free the ship and get the heck out of there and drop of our loot at the Outpost. Where just after doing so and leaving port we're attacked by another Galleon and sunk. What a ride.

Oh dude!! I have not come across the kraken yet! Super exciting! Great story! As a tip, being a galleon you are much much faster than a sloop, but you have a slow acceleration. If your sails have the wind, you will catch up insanely fast. A good sloop would zigzag and use their anchor to do 90 degree turns to avoid you guys or give you a much smaller target. Water conditions definitely affect your aim as there can be situations where I've ridden low on a big wave and have a huge advantage as they couldn't hit me, being much higher than me as we ran along the waves. First galleon I sunk was that way and solo as a sloop.

[Stark]

Also, all of their errors are "Beard" errors. So, I had to play it.

https://support.seaofthieves.com/hc/en- ... ard-Errors

[noiseredux]

Also, all of their errors are "Beard" errors. So, I had to play it.

https://support.seaofthieves.com/hc/en- ... ard-Errors

Ha!

[ESauced]

My wife tried to play last night. She had some trouble getting connected to a game and when she did the rest of her crew disappeared. Then she fell off her boat while trying to man it herself and when she found the mermaid and got back on the boat her whole crew was back, and the kraken had arrived too. It did not end well but it was hilarious. Her crew was awful. She fired at the tentacles while they all just ran around not knowing what to do. She tried to start again with a small crew but the game wouldn’t work. I told her it’d probably be a couple days before it was stable, and she’s going to try again tonight.

[noiseredux]

do any of you guys allow broadcasting of your games on Xbox One? If so I'll know to try to watch some of your games if I happen to notice any of you playing this.

[Stark]

do any of you guys allow broadcasting of your games on Xbox One? If so I'll know to try to watch some of your games if I happen to notice any of you playing this.

I'll check to see if I have it enabled.

[BogusMeatFactory]

do any of you guys allow broadcasting of your games on Xbox One? If so I'll know to try to watch some of your games if I happen to notice any of you playing this.

I have an archive on twitch and things will be uploaded on to youtube at some point! Just search my username and you can see archives. The final story I told is archived as the most recent video.