Ahoy, pirates! The ninth Developer Update for Sea of Thieves has just been shipped out. It comes packed with enough goodies to induce at least the raise of an eyebrow from an old salt. Director of Production Drew Stevens went through some of the upcoming new changes to Rare’s piratey adventure, and the community could barely hold their excitement.
First comes the update to the Seasonal Deeds. These are basically the challenges that keep players coming back for a bit of loot and a little bit of glory in consolation. This is all Rare really allowed to be said on the matter in a masterful act of teasing, but new objectives will mean a new shot at those precious, precious cosmetics that everybody wants. I mean, let’s be honest: Half the battle is looking good while winning.
Matchmaking improvements will be deployed next, this time across regions. Those who, for time immemorial, find themselves stuck waiting for a crew or suffer horrendous latency offenses thanks to the game throwing together players from literally the other end of the world will find some balm. Also, adding more servers is bound to take the overcrowding load off, greatly reducing or even eliminating the chances of “server merges” happening smack in the middle of a fight.
Here it is, chugging along. Another mention of “imminent gameplay tweaks” crops up in the update. Sure, no specific details are ever uttered, and the masses now speculating are a sight to see. Some are screaming for private servers (Thank you, sir, I am looking at you, @jjwardyjj), while some have debated altering respawn mechanics or not. A certain @WezzyCruze posits that after a ship has been sunk quite a few times, it ought to harmlessly respawn somewhere further out so that the server remains full but is given breathing space. Now @loinbread took that a little bit farther and basically proposed that there is no way back and after way too many sinks players should forcibly be moved into a new sea. Harsh? Probably. Funny? Most definitely.
Some, however, are not: The year-old PvP v. PvE debate ignited into a full-blown bonfire. @demonyouknow_ termed the idea of removing PvP from open seas “ridiculous,” claiming half of the fun is the chaos of fighting both players and environmental hazards like krakens at the same time. Meanwhile, @MaZu_iceTea sprang into the full rant mode of a classic gamer about how modern games are meant to “cater to noobs” and not let players improve by means of really hard fights. That is the classic back-in-my-day energy for you.
Performance upgrades later will follow, which are really good news for anyone still on that last gen, @AaronMansmith said that the newer explosions (read: those fancy kegs) can straight-up crash those older systems. Ouch. Maybe it’s time to upgrade before your Xbox One gets bricked (props to @loinbread for an idea that is nightmare-inducing).
See the video linked above for the full details, but one thing is for certain: Rare is not going to let Sea of Thieves sit around and gather dust. Something new is always in the works, whether it’s making a ton of kills or just a ton of loot or anything and everything in between while vibing on the high seas. I need to excuse myself to train my cannon aim before these patches go live, and I’ll embarrass myself all over again.
So what do you think? Is this one pretty smooth, or will she be sinking in no time? Either way, get your crews together; the seas will make for great times.
