Season 14 - State of Play

Just some thoughts on how I might overhaul some of the new features to make them fun and shake up (but not upend) the meta.

The grapple gun really isn't an intuitive tool in it's current state. I'd suggest giving it longer reach and removing exclusion zones. I'd also consider making all ships immune to it. It already appears to be an edge case use in PvP, and working on one ship type (galleon) but not others adds to the confusion.

Perhaps we could let it really shine in PvE scenarios as a fun tool that creates some truly neat water cooler moments.......instead of being mediocre at both PvP and PvE.

The merfruits are interesting. My take on how they're used would be to overhaul mermaids in general. Make the default time for a mermaid to spawn related to time spent in the water as opposed to distance from your ship......say 30-45 seconds? But if you eat a cooked merfruit it summons the mermaid instantly. I think this would be a more impactful shake up to the current meta, and give Sea of Thieves unique naval battles a chance to shine a bit more.

Whether merfruits go this route or not, I'd like to see something like the above suggestion changed with mermaids. It'd be really neat if the decision to leave your ship had more weight, both in how quickly you're able to return and "reset" and also in deciding whether to take up one of your food slots with a recall item......... should your away plan not succeed.

@sonicbob said in Season 14 Update - State of Play:

We know that this is still ultimately a reactive decision and one very late in the process, and that this is a clear area we need to improve, but I'm happier knowing that in this scenario we've made the pragmatic call and addressed these areas ahead of launch rather than as a reaction to Live feedback.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that, while the state of season 14's launch isn't what we all wanted, good on the team for making some tough calls knowing you'd catch flak for it.

I know it wasn't easy, but thanks for making the overall game experience a priority and doing your best to safeguard that.

As a small QoL consideration to the blow dart could we make it so that the fire is a hold and release shot (holding the right trigger brings it up and let's you shoot farther) freeing up left trigger to be used for the ammo radial.

@captain-fob4141 said in Season 14 Update - State of Play:

As a small QoL consideration to the blow dart could we make it so that the fire is a hold and release shot (holding the right trigger brings it up and let's you shoot farther) freeing up left trigger to be used for the ammo radial.

I like this a lot. Fewer button presses and being able to truly change dart types on the fly. Almost like currently selecting new shanties with your instrument out or bait with the fishing rod.

I'm generally very patient when it comes to folk doing their best with what's given to them. We all make mistakes from time to time.

But when mistakes keep happening, you have to look at the processes and see what needs fixing - are QA being given enough time and resources? Are concerns internally being taken seriously and addressed? Are realistic deadlines being set by management? Should updates be done earlier in the week? Are those working on the game in good morale?

I'm sad that the game is in such a state, and updates aren't going to plan lately, but I'm more concerned right now with what state Rare are in (as an example, the Rare Store has been MIA for nearly 10 months with no update). I hope the ship can be righted for both the game and company.

I'll end with the positives from this State of Play: transparency and honesty is always welcomed, and it's good that you made the decision to deactivate broken features that you had identified before launch.

Much love and happy sailing.

Can we get the merfruit out of the food inventory completely? It's really frustrating to be fighting and the first thing to pop out is that shiny fruit that also, during a fight with the new blunderbuss it's really possible that I will end up in the water and waiting for my mermaid to show up.
I suggest having a diferent hotkey for it or at least put the merfruit last after the 5 pieces of food that I got earlier.

The main thing that is becoming clear, is that Insiders is completely broken, here's what needs to happen.

• Insiders needs to be public, bug hunting streams would be fun to watch, and would encourage more people to actively bug hunt.

• Reporting bugs needs to be easier, a 50mb limit combined with the nda makes it a pain to upload footage, and the website takes forever to upload to and handle the report, and a lot of the time it will bug out and you have to restart the report. There needs to be an in depth dedicated in game report system.

• Insider rewards need to be reflective of helpful reports, not time played, I sometimes sail from outpost to outpost and all I see is players afk either with a program or just wiggling their mouse every 8 minutes.
  This is a hard one to fix, as we know any metric that becomes a target ceases to be an accurate metric, and bug reports isn't an area you want to sacrifice accuracy. But something has to be done, maybe a closed insiders with a closer eye on insider activity, but insiders servers are dead enough as is. Perhaps paid bug testers

• This is more minor, but there should be an lfg page and closed vc in the discord server for Insiders, lots of bugs need multiple players to work or be observed, and maybe this is just my servers but open crew is completely empty.

Very glad to hear that the mimic dart hasnt been scrapped. I just hope it doesnt mimic people's usernames as well, to avoid any false bans.

Thanks for keeping us up to date.

I think @realstyli did a very excellent job at explaining what alot of us are thinking and questions and actions that need to be taken. It keeps happening and getting worse. There seems to be a lack of management and accountability within Rare. We all make mistakes but its getting out of hand. We understand its difficult but there is without a doubt changes that are needed. I love this game. It is to me the best game I have ever played and I have been gaming since the Atari era. Ive never cared for nor had as much fun as I do on the seas, yet I have never had a game where me and my crew talk about how much and what stuff we think will break on Update day. Its sad its gone from this is gonna be exciting to how much will be broken. The transparency is always appreciated. Hopefully we can see proof and not just hear promises. Best wishes to you all.

P.S. Please consider changing Insiders to a Public Test. I think it would greatly benefit the game.

In all honesty, I know it's not been a perfect release, but I personally had the smoothest feeling servers last night when I finally got immersed. Not even the burning blade spawning impacted my gameplay, and we had two galleons and two sloops in close proximity. I know there are flaws, but y'all have progressed by leaps and bounds, so know that it's seen and appreciated.

@regairegina I agree here servers feel oh so smooth when sailing around and such, dont get any lag or other so something positive amongst all this eh

It's really easy for players to get wrapped up in what's wrong and forget to acknowledge what's gone right. This was by far, despite the delayed features, the smoothest update I have experienced during my time in this game. The servers were shockingly smooth, the weapons worked largely as intended, I wasn't plagued with DC's, the servers were full of players that were laughing and having a great time with the new toys. The concept for this season is so clever!
I am also overjoyed to see timely and transparent communication and ownership of where things have fallen short.
Thank ya'll for your handwork and the positive direction the team is moving with game updates and communications! Looking forward to the hotfix.

I and my crew played last night and we had a smooth experience. We have seen much worse releases, and content released while ignoring major issues. I feel there where too many major concept changes(i.e. no harpoon boarding) made too close to release for a finished product(that's not something insiders can fix). However I definitely prefer stable servers and delayed content to massively crashing servers as I have seen before. Lets definitely keep appreciating when Rare acknowledges issues, and communicates more clearly/transparently as they seem to be making an effort to do lately. Keep stabilizing/fixing those servers and chasing those cheaters @sonicbob.

All the bone crusher jackets have a visual glitch

I appreciate that folks are eager to see improvement in quality here and ultimately words aren't going to cut it, so we need to get stuck in and prove through our actions how we can make changes for the better here.

I understand you’re the face of these updates and this post is in no way directed at you, but the quality level players are experiencing from these game updates is beyond poor and not what an industry leading games company with nearly 40 years experience should be delivering.

I don’t know what on earth is causing such poor quality updates to come out now two seasons in a row but it sets the tone for the rest of the season, and falling flat on your face at the start of the race is just embarrassing.

Several times this year there’s been commitment to making the game better and having stronger quality updates as teams are shifted around to focus on this quality. It’s got to the point that this phrase is a meme and now become a lie to quell the masses.

I think it’s clear you’re understaffed for the type of game you have on your shoulders. You need more people to help deliver content on time AND keep the game healthy. Hire. More. People.

I truly love this game and the people who make it, but my god it is so embarrassing that I have to tell people who want to play desperately, to avoid it.

I appreciate the update but guys this has become the norm. Any incoming update means game breaking items. Your team is so focused on expanding the game you've forgot to fix other things that have become game breaking. For months surface tension and going underwater has been seriously broken in all areas of the map. Update after update things are just broken and no sign of that changing.
I love the game but it has recently been put to the side because of the game breaking expirence my crew and I have daily. After 6 almost 7 years in production I think your team need to stop making new changes and just focus on fixing everything that is broke today.

Given the continued issues and poor quality that has become the norm of each season's release, and Rare expressing disappointment it didn't land as expected, I have to wonder if anybody in the team has stepped back and asked if the seasonal approach is right for SoT OR if three months is enough time between seasons to get it right - you clearly don't have enough breathing room between the latest of build(s) and the actual update going live.

In my eyes, which I know doesn't count for much, seasons aren't working for the game.

@sonicbob said in Season 14 Update - State of Play:

[Mimic Dart] This feature however was deprioritised internally

I am glad this is being shelved for now. As cool as it sounds, the Mimic Dart can too easily be used by people to get in trouble with SoT support. If this is ultimately cancelled it would be better for the game.

Good luck for the remaining fixes :)

Refusal to fix an issue now indicates it should be a low- severity HIGH-priority defect.

The issue is millions of users unable to save key bindings and having to redo them every time. Every time. EVERY DAMNED TIME.
Pick your best devs and whatever size QA team your qa team tells you they need, and leave them alone.

When they are done and there are no bug reports about it for 1 week, those developers and qa team members get an Full Company paid vacation for 30 days, unplugged from the company, at a real luxury resort where they may frolic in packs or enjoy quiet time alone. This is for them, not management.

I have spoken

Z

"Pragmatically," I think you're really overselling the "efforts" made. You said it yourself, actions not words, and hoo-boy have there been a whole mess of actions not made for pretty much the entirety of the last year. I don't know what's going on behind closed doors, but something still needs to drastically change at Rare. If it's an over reliance on outside teams, stop using outside teams. If it's the whole studio getting stretched too thin on other internal projects, it's time to expand or put things on the chopping block.

Stop giving us words, give us actions.

You want to draw players? Hold a Megladon weekend where the chances of getting the shrouded are much much easier and you will see a FLOOD of players coming back. You'll never do it, but at this stage of the game it needs to happen!

1. Can we please get a fix for the radial menu bug? It's been an issue for too long and now it's even more prominent and a huge nuisance with the blowgun. When you have your blowgun out, "O" is not available, in the radial menu, to switch between different dart-types because "O" is bound to Disengage/Stow, even though you are still able to use "X" and "Triangle" within the radial menu (Jump & Swap weapons). "O" (and other buttons) need to be made so it can be used to navigate the radial menu while it's up but resorts back to "Stow/Disengage" when the menu is not up.

2. "Save" settings bug -- For a lot of players, numerous settings do not fully save after being set. When you log out of the game & log back in, you have to reset those settings that you just changed. (ex. "Nameplates above crew" will be changed to "Yes" but will not save for future game sessions. This also has effected crouching since I had "R3" on toggle-to-talk and after readjusting these settings to use the crouch ability, they are NOT saving and I have to reset crouch and other settings back to working properly every game session.

Harpoon Gun on islands:
I think it is faster to just sprint if you can rather than shoot the harpoon gun, wait for it to land, wait for it to pull you, and wait for it to reload.
You also risk wasting time if you shoot it too far away (which is not that far). If you shoot it to a closer spot, why wouldn't you run there in the first place?

Blowpipe:
The combination of the sound and visuals when I ads (the vignette, the zoom, the breathing sound) gives me a headache and makes me dizzy. An option to disable them would be perfect.

Lure dart glint:
To my experience, glint only appears at a very close distance when I can still see that there are no treasures there.

Lure dart gunpowder skeletons:
The idea to shoot a gunpowder skeleton with a lure dart is very funny, but gunpowder skeletons explode their gunpowerder when near a lure dart and that makes it very very easy to disable them. Not sure if that is good thing or a bad thing.

I see people complaining about Insiders being lazy and afking for rewards, not doing their "job", people asking for Insiders to become public, and so on - the usual spiel, recently boosted by some content creators.

The issue is, right now, Rare is barely able to take into account a fraction of the current Insider bug reports and feedback due to their deadlines and their production pipeline.

Making Insiders public would only end up drowning the devs in reports and complaints where only the loudest voices (ie creators & their communities, or passionate communities with very specific playstyles) would stand out due to their public exposure.

Unless Rare significantly staffs up, drops the seasonal model and/or rethinks their entire pipeline, opening Insiders to the public would only clog things up even more, imo.

@sonicbob said in Season 14 Update - State of Play:

---Post-Launch Update---

Hey Folks,

So for transparency this original post was written prior to us opening up the servers today and focused on sharing our state of play at Launch.

With a few hours of Live play now under our belt it's clear that further issues have flown under our radar here and made their way to live.
Its been incredibly disappointing for the team to see issues with the new features surface so soon and just reinforces our need to focus in on improving quality.

So ill be Brutally honest here, Its not good enough anymore. This same speech is made every time, The same words "We know the update wasnt good enough, And were sorry but were going to fix it". We need to start seeing actions from these teams your bringing in. You bring in teams to focus on key points that community are talking about and then we hear nothing from them for months. For example, The hitreg team at the start of the year that weve heard nothing from and hitreg has continually gotten way worse. The team focused on stability mid year that you brought in, But yet stability has come way down and gotten way way worse over the past few months that I actually hope that there isn't really a team thats supposed to be working on this. You've recently brought in a team to focus on community and dealing with cheaters / harrasers, We have seen updates from this team which is awesome, And thats the only team weve actually heard from all year.

At the start of the year, You did a year a review. You stated that you dropped the ball last year on updates / quality of life, and that this year you will be focusing heavily on this. So far, these are just empty words, we are nearly at the end of the year and the game is in a state that most of the partners don't want to play the game, And instead just meme on your own patch notes / videos because of how out of touch the are.

Stop doing updates that aren't clearly tested before hand. Stop rushing to release stuff that isnt ready. Stop releasing updates where you only have 1 working day afterwards to hotfix. This update majorly dropped the ball, With a lot of exploits being reverted / Made worse, Bugs reverting and problems from years ago coming back (Double world event enjoyer anyone?) This game has a LOT of potential, But my god you really are letting the side down with the development.