Man do I love Sea of Thieves. I've been playing it since before launch, and I'm still playing it nearly every day. It'd hands down my game of the year due to how much I just love being in that world and sharing it with my friends. Its created tons of laughs and vexing defeats and glorious victories ect.
Recently I've become a bit frustrated with it, not really the game itself per se as I'm still getting in and having fun most times I play it, but more with Rare's lack of concern with balance issues/crossplay issues and general support of people subverting the game and its matchmaking to create ad hoc pve only servers. Perhaps even worse, Rare's official twitter or devs accts hyping tweets/images/clips ect from streamers creating situations that the average player will never experience.
I get the value of streamers to a game, of influencer type marketing. I even also get the desire of people who work on the game to see it pushed outside the box and such. It just rubs me the wrong way to hype experiences that the typical player cant make happen. In fact, in order for "world record" or crazy piles of loot it often requires the people to "buy the server" (or hijack it depending on your pov on it) by trading loot for spots on players ships to allow more invites of friendly people to the server than matchmaking generally allows., creating ad hoc pve only servers, which isn't an option offered to players normally.
Top that off with Rare's Speak/See/Hear no evil behavior when it comes to exploiters, (scuttling a ship *after* its been sunk to avoid penalty respawn distance/Exploiting macro's on KB+M to fire 2 weapons simultaneously to effectively 1 shot kill at range when it should only be possible at point blank range with a blunderbuss.) The official forum and the twitter account cite using Xbox live features to report such players. Which is great in theory.
In practice its rather a joke, because it relies on using the xbox "recent players" feature to file a report on that players gamertag, and that system isn't terribly reliable when it comes to crossplay. Its usually immediately obvious when coming up against PC players, either from free typed chat as opposed to the in-game contextual chat system, or from simply moving in a way that the console players generally dont, or the "one shotting" exploits via macros. The last is possible on controller as well (preprogramed) and can even be duplicated manually but its difficult enough to do even with an elite controller that I'd expect that to be a real minority of occurrences. in every one of those cases, the gamertag in question doesnt appear in the recent players list. In the most recent example I can think of I actually screengrabbed the gamertag and not only did it not appear in recent players but it wasnt even searchable on live via the xbox or xbox.com. Not possible to report using the only system that Rare states can be used to report.
I brought this up to their twitter account and of course got no reply at all.
Taking it to the forum is a joke. Any thread in the feedback forum suggesting there are some issues are immediately shit up by a cadre of chest out pvp kiddies who insist that there are no such issues and generally escalate insults and arguing in the thread until it gets locked, usually by a volunteer mod they stream with....
Its xbox on era levels of nonsense.
So yea, I love playing the game so much, and the vast majority of the time its a really positive experience, even when being bested by other players. But the asshole greiefers who can be so because they exploit/cheat their way to near invulnerability, occasionally make it a super sour and depressing experience and Rare doesnt seem to give a shit about that which is terribly frustrating.
/Soapbox
Recently I've become a bit frustrated with it, not really the game itself per se as I'm still getting in and having fun most times I play it, but more with Rare's lack of concern with balance issues/crossplay issues and general support of people subverting the game and its matchmaking to create ad hoc pve only servers. Perhaps even worse, Rare's official twitter or devs accts hyping tweets/images/clips ect from streamers creating situations that the average player will never experience.
I get the value of streamers to a game, of influencer type marketing. I even also get the desire of people who work on the game to see it pushed outside the box and such. It just rubs me the wrong way to hype experiences that the typical player cant make happen. In fact, in order for "world record" or crazy piles of loot it often requires the people to "buy the server" (or hijack it depending on your pov on it) by trading loot for spots on players ships to allow more invites of friendly people to the server than matchmaking generally allows., creating ad hoc pve only servers, which isn't an option offered to players normally.
Top that off with Rare's Speak/See/Hear no evil behavior when it comes to exploiters, (scuttling a ship *after* its been sunk to avoid penalty respawn distance/Exploiting macro's on KB+M to fire 2 weapons simultaneously to effectively 1 shot kill at range when it should only be possible at point blank range with a blunderbuss.) The official forum and the twitter account cite using Xbox live features to report such players. Which is great in theory.
In practice its rather a joke, because it relies on using the xbox "recent players" feature to file a report on that players gamertag, and that system isn't terribly reliable when it comes to crossplay. Its usually immediately obvious when coming up against PC players, either from free typed chat as opposed to the in-game contextual chat system, or from simply moving in a way that the console players generally dont, or the "one shotting" exploits via macros. The last is possible on controller as well (preprogramed) and can even be duplicated manually but its difficult enough to do even with an elite controller that I'd expect that to be a real minority of occurrences. in every one of those cases, the gamertag in question doesnt appear in the recent players list. In the most recent example I can think of I actually screengrabbed the gamertag and not only did it not appear in recent players but it wasnt even searchable on live via the xbox or xbox.com. Not possible to report using the only system that Rare states can be used to report.
I brought this up to their twitter account and of course got no reply at all.
Taking it to the forum is a joke. Any thread in the feedback forum suggesting there are some issues are immediately shit up by a cadre of chest out pvp kiddies who insist that there are no such issues and generally escalate insults and arguing in the thread until it gets locked, usually by a volunteer mod they stream with....
Its xbox on era levels of nonsense.
So yea, I love playing the game so much, and the vast majority of the time its a really positive experience, even when being bested by other players. But the asshole greiefers who can be so because they exploit/cheat their way to near invulnerability, occasionally make it a super sour and depressing experience and Rare doesnt seem to give a shit about that which is terribly frustrating.
/Soapbox
Last edited:
