Sea of Thieves (Xbone, PC)

cccc · February 2, 2018, 1:16pm

AThat’s pretty nuts for a closed beta. March 20th is going to be bananas.

mrsaxon · February 2, 2018, 1:24pm

Also, apparently the Beta received a 7GB update yesterday despite the session having ended (are they preparing it for another Beta before the game goes live?) which was promptly data-mined. The results have been put on Reddit and there’s lot of interesting stuff. I’m particularly glad to see that the NPCs WILL talk in the completed version.

Lots of female-exclusive animations added
More animations for chicken, snake and pig (run forward scared, turn, startle, hunger)
Merchants have talk animations
Beards, belts, dresses, eyepatches, gloves, hooks, hair and boots in wardrobe and added to shops
New clothing styles: Kraken, Ferryman, Blackdog, Sovereign and Bilgerat (all include most of the above-mentioned new clothing items)
A separate weapon-shopkeeper
Admiral and Bilgerat-themed weapon skins for blunderbuss, cutlass and flintlock (available in the new weapon shop)
New kraken animations (IdleToDefeated, HoldingToDefeated etc.) and particles (roar mouth, underwater powerslam)
Fort-chests
A new location called “Legendary_Hideout”
Lots of new npc_ghost_crew character variants
New variants of the shipwright added
Curse (skull) cloud above certain islands (that you can see in some of the trailers)
Different forms of skellies: Bone, metal, plant and shadow. Each form has their own death particles and sounds.
New kraken figurehead (possibly just a rename)
Added a mirror to Captains’ Cabin
Kraken-themed music as well as sound effects for hitting the kraken with a cannon (just like when hitting player ships)
Individual kraken tentacles can die
Gold hoarders NPC voice lines: “Welcome”, “Goodbye” and one called bridge. (other merchants’ voice lines are not yet included in the game)

Someone in the comments was able to unearth some additional details.

tzudohnihm · February 2, 2018, 3:33pm

WET T-SHIRT CONTEST ON THE HMS SEWER!!!

I cannot believe the 1/2/4 crewed ships distribution was so close. I can only imagine that was a welcome surprise to the developers that the content is engaging players at all levels of sociability.

This game is going to fucking rock on release.

mrsaxon · February 13, 2018, 10:45am

Media embargo lifted today and I’m liking what I’m reading.

Yes, there’s a cash shop but no loot boxes. See something you like? Don’t gamble for it: buy it. I’m happy with that.

No DLCs. No season passes. Just fun stuff. Also, stuff you can earn in-game.

On the whole, they’re happy with PvP but will probably change how respawns work (I remember Tzu saying he was continually killed by enemy players after spawning at one point, so I’m glad this is getting fixed).

We’ve deliberately said that we don’t want to have safe zones – that’s why we give you a spyglass – that’s why we put the right number of outposts around the world so you’ve got the choice. Can I see masts there? Do I go there? Is there gonna be people there? All that paranoia is what leads to the drama, that
“high high.”
To have that
“high high”
you’ve got to have the
“low low.”
One of the things we’ve strived to do early on strikes the right balance of “loss.”
Some of the multiplayer survival games we were looking at previously – such as DayZ and Rust – they had that drama, but the lows were so cripplingly low, you’d play for hours and hours and might lose absolutely everything. For us, we feel that we’ve struck the right balance for our game – yes you’ll feel a sense of loss, which I feel is critical to a game where you’ll feel a wide range of emotions. You don’t want it to be this pure power fantasy where you’re never getting better – you want to feel that you’ve bonded with your ship, and feel something as it sinks below the waves. You want to feel like it’s part of the adventure.
At the same time, I’m kind of seeing something that we’ll probably address for release. If people are figuring out where respawns are – that is a number we can tweak. Maybe we spawned killed players in that particulate place because it’s close to their voyage, but we could push them further away to prevent repeated griefing, for example. All of these sorts of things we wanted to address by running a closed beta.

The character creator is kind of interesting.

When you initially make your character in Sea of Thieves, you will be presented with a carousel of eight, completely randomly generated pirates, pulling from a potential pool of millions. The idea is that no two pirates will look the same, even if, like most players, you simply hit the “play now” button and go with whatever design you’re given.
Rare made the point that in many other many other games of this nature, players often simply stick with the default skin. In a game world that revolves around player-generated lore and personal legends, encountering pirates that look identical 75 percent of the time would potentially infringe upon that idea.
Instead of asking players to do the heavy lifting, spending hours to design a unique and memorable pirate face, Rare will do it for you. But hey, if you’re like me and you’re the kind of gamer who will spend hours and hours customizing your dude or dudette in Fallout 4 until they look
perfect
, know that Rare doesn’t completely remove control from the player.
Hairstyles, beards, peg legs, hooks, and more transitory cosmetic options will be available in the vanity chest, found on ships or outside clothes shops. Additionally, Rare will let you reroll the pirate generator carousel an infinite number of times until you find the pirate that’s right for you. It’s important to note too that hitboxes will be normalized, so picking a smaller pirate won’t help.

In fact, the above article is really good for the sort of content we’re going to be seeing to keep people engaged long-term, including random raids:

For those who played in the Alpha or Beta, you might have seen these eerily empty islands that were full of ramparts and abandoned watchtowers, known as outposts on the map. Rare demonstrated how they will work in the full game.
Similarly to supply drops in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or The Division’s Dark Zone, a gigantic, foreboding thundering skull cloud will appear above outposts sometimes, as you’re sailing across the high seas. That beacon will be viewable for miles in every direction, alerting players to the piles of juicy loot therein.
Inhabited outposts will be swarming with powerful skeletons, requiring players to work together to eliminate the threats at hand. Once you have destroyed the outpost skeleton boss, he will drop a key players can pick up and fight over. Of course, then comes the high-drama of dealing with the loot, as each active outpost will come with a vault, crammed with more chests than any single crew can carry in a single trip.
These outpost raids will be the perfect opportunity for players looking for more PvP-oriented action, no doubt, with potentially huge hauls of loot as a reward. On the flip side, it could help solo players know where to avoid (or if they’re brave, sneak in for some brash thievery).

What sounds particularly great is the end-game.

Your ultimate goal in Sea of Thieves is to become a pirate legend. As you play you’ll bump into a mysterious group of NPCs who, if you prove yourself to them, will reveal more secrets about the world. At the end of this progression, you’ll discover a secret which gives you a quest to do a certain thing in a certain place (Rare won’t say what it is). The upshot is you become a pirate legend and gain a key that opens the door to a hidden area of the world (this hidden area, by the way, was in the closed beta, but no-one discovered it). This area is not loaded in from a menu. It is a place that exists in the virtual world, and, once discovered, can be accessed seamlessly - as long as you have the key. For now, its location is a secret - and Rare’s happy to keep it that way.
Inside is a secret pirate hideout, a place exclusively reserved for players who have obtained the pirate legend rank. There you’ll find the Tavern of Legends, which is built into the remains of an ancient shipwreck. In the distance is a ship and a waterfall that leads out into the game world. It’s all very Goonies. During a demo of the area, I saw ghostly pirate legends sat on chairs drinking grog. These are real players’ pirates, lifted from Sea of Thieves’ appearance at E3 2016, now immortalised in the game. By talking to these characters you learn hints of what’s coming next to the game; whispers of a new trading company, perhaps. The secret pirate hideout looks like this:
Inside the Captain’s Cabin is the Pirate Lord, an NPC who sells legendary voyages. These are the most challenging and rewarding quests in the entire game. Design director Mike Chapman calls them Sea of Thieves’ take on public events, or “if Sea of Thieves did raid content”.
What’s cool about these legendary voyages is only one person in a crew needs to have one for all players to take it on and earn the rewards. A pirate legend could slam their legendary voyage on the captain’s table in their ship in front of three brand new players, then, if the legendary voyage wins the vote, take the entire crew out to tackle it. This extends to the secret pirate hideout, too. A pirate legend can take their crew into the hideout and show them around. “The idea with this place is it’s the velvet rope in a nightclub,” Chapman continues. "It’s that secret place I want to get to, and there’s something aspirational about that.
A pirate legend also gains access to more elaborate outfits (think the Barbossa character from Pirates of the Caribbean), as well as the pirate legend title that shows up under your gamertag. But you can choose not to wear pirate legend clothes or display the pirate legend title, if you fancy fooling your crew and other pirates into thinking you’re not as experienced at the game as you are.“A couple of weeks after launch, the first person will make it here. No doubt they will become a mini celebrity in the Sea of Thieves community. Then the second person, the third person, the fourth person. Then you’ll get that proliferation of legendary voyages throughout the world and this understanding of what legend means.”

This article goes into some depth on the Kraken and how new monsters will probably appear as the game progresses.

Are there going to be special rewards for killing the Kraken?:

Imagine a scenario where the Kraken is simultaneously attacking multiple ships, you’re sailing past, you see the Kraken against the sunset, do you go and save those guys? Or do you sail away? Or do you sail in and pick off the stragglers?
All these emergent scenarios you get is going to make the Kraken feel so awesome to encounter. Some of the stuff it can do, it can literally pick players up off the deck, it can ingest players, it can slam them in the water, dunk them under water, it can throw players across the map. It can wrap the ship, rock the ship, punch holes in the ship. You can fight the tentacles to get them to release you, it sprays ink, it’s going to be epic.
There will be rewards, deliberately so, physical rewards like chests and so on.
While we’re on the topic of pirate myths and nautical legends, I found a giant sea serpent skeleton under the water once, with a shipwreck inside its rib cage as though it had swallowed an entire vessel. Could that be a thing?
So, as you can imagine, with a game like ours which is this fantasy pirate world where all these nautical legends can come to life, it’s overwhelming the amount of ideas that we’ve had, the amount of things that we’ve prototyped, the amount of things we want to bring to this world. Games as a Service – that term gets banded around a lot – but it’s the perfect delivery system for our game, because the possibilities are endless.

It sounds like they’re prototyping alliances/armadas but it won’t be there at launch.

mrsaxon · February 13, 2018, 5:53pm

In addition to the above, Rare has released the official PC specs. (Who the hell would want to play at 540p?)

codename · February 13, 2018, 6:03pm

MrSaxon:

embargo lifted today and I’m liking what I’m reading.
Yes, there’s a cash shop but no loot boxes. See something you like? Don’t gamble for it:
buy it
. I’m happy with that.
No DLCs. No season passes. Just fun stuff. Also, stuff you can earn in-game.
On the whole, they’re happy with PvP but will probably change how respawns work (I remember Tzu saying he was continually killed by enemy players after spawning at one point, so I’m glad this is getting fixed).
The character creator is kind of interesting.
In fact, the above article is really good for the sort of content we’re going to be seeing to keep people engaged long-term, including random raids:
What sounds particularly great is the end-game.
This article
goes into some depth on the Kraken and how new monsters will probably appear as the game progresses.
It sounds like they’re prototyping alliances/armadas but it won’t be there at launch.

Goddamn, that sounds fucking cool.

mrsaxon · February 13, 2018, 6:06pm

It really does. It has the possibility to be my favorite game of the year if these articles are even 70% accurate.

tzudohnihm · February 13, 2018, 6:23pm

Great, all our animals will die as Saxon lays around like Lennie from Of Mice and Men.

mrsaxon · February 13, 2018, 6:30pm

How dare you, Sir.

I’ll be lying around doing nothing like someone cool. I’ll be Steve McQueening it.

jacob_singer · February 13, 2018, 8:19pm

More like:

cccc · February 14, 2018, 2:08am

I read that you’ll know if the Kraken are coming because you’ll see the black ink in the water. Sounds fucking terrifying!

cccc · February 14, 2018, 11:28am

People that have a shit PC and no Xbox. Plus, it’s funny as hell that it’s called Cursed!

mrsaxon · February 14, 2018, 11:55am

God, you’d lose so much of the beautiful sea effects at 540p. It almost makes me sad to imagine seeing this at that resolution:

codename · February 14, 2018, 11:58am

Other than my OS (which I really should upgrade anyway), I’m sitting right smack dab on those recommended specs.

mrsaxon · February 14, 2018, 12:04pm

I am too. The game looked absolutely beautiful on my system. I can barely fathom what it looks like at higher resolutions.

I think there’s a strong case for this game having the best water in any game.

cccc · February 14, 2018, 12:35pm

A[quote name=“MrSaxon” url=“/community/t/159996/sea-of-thieves-xbone-pc/150#post_4472994”]I am too. The game looked absolutely beautiful on my system. I can barely fathom what it looks like at higher resolutions.

I think there’s a strong case for this game having the best water in any game.
[/quote]

I think it’s case closed. Hell, I love the whole art design of the game. It’s perfect for this type of game. Even the clouds and wind streams are gorgeous.

mrtyres · February 14, 2018, 1:20pm

Did any of you play Pirates of the Burning Sea? That game had beautiful water and ship effects. The rest of the game was essentially EVE Online as it was mostly an economic game, but man oh man the ship sailing and combat was beautiful.

mrsaxon · February 14, 2018, 1:33pm

Weird. I’m usually on top of MMO’s but I’ve never heard of that one. It sounds kind of similar to UBIsoft’s upcoming pirate multiplayer Skull & Bones where one player takes control of an entire ship. I’ve signed up for the Beta of that one but I think Sea Of Thieves will probably end up the better game (at least for those playing in groups).

codename · February 14, 2018, 1:53pm

Skull & Bones seems like they finally got wise and made a whole game out of the best part of AC: Black Flag.

Which is cool, but Sea of Thieves seems more like my jam.

mrsaxon · February 15, 2018, 6:38pm

This just appeared in my Youtube subs, so I thought I’d post it here: