Hey Everyone,
With our Mid-Season Update launching yesterday, I wanted to drop in and share a few updates on where we are prioritising our efforts following the update.
Game Performance
We've seen fairly consistent reports that with March's update players are feeling a performance regression and not the improvements that we expected. There's been some sizeable changes behind the scenes here, from rebuilding of ships through to treasure and trinket optimisations. While change often comes with some risks, we're disappointed that this hasn't delivered the positive results we'd hoped for, especially after such an improved February update.
The team is already investigating as a priority, digging into live servers and client reports to try and identify the root cause of the impact. Though there is some correlation with those most affected running AMD hardware, further investigation is currently required. I have no news to share on this heading into the weekend, but the team is focusing on this as a priority, as we can clearly see the impact it is having on your sessions.
We hope to update players once we have more information.
Hunting Spear
With the introduction of our latest throwable, we've been reviewing the feedback and bug reports and the team has begun working on addressing these issues.
We quickly saw ships sailing around like porcupines littered with spears and reports of a clear item duplication issue surfaced. The team has temporarily reduced the gold and reputation rewards for handing in these spears while we address the duplication, so feel free to use those spears on your enemies rather than hoarding them for sale!
The team is also working on a fix for the issue where players can sometimes become unable to aim down sights after throwing a hunting spear.
Outside of bugs, the team is monitoring the feedback on how this new throwable is settling in as part of the balance across the broader experience. Nothing to share here yet but rest assured the team is seeing your feedback.
Hunter's Call Reputation Corrections
The various Hunter's Call Reputation Corrections (both exploit progress removal and prior missing progress) have now all been completed. These weren't able to be completed during the maintenance window on March 27th, but as of this post all players should now be sitting on their correct Hunter's Call reputation.
Other Issues
Wrapping up some of the other issues we've seen:
- Inconsistent delivery of hunting spears purchased from the HC representatives is being investigated.
- Pet Pigs in Outfits displaying visual issues at distance are being fixed.
- The Lightbearer Pistol is getting tweaks to its aim to better align with its iron sights.
- The Jagged Jaws Throwing Knives were delivered earlier than planned and will require Commendations due in our April update before they can be unlocked.
Then finally we are still seeing some players not receiving the Regal Duke Ship Set after purchasing the Sea of Thieves X Edition - the team is aware and working on addressing the issue so we can get these items into your hands!
While this clearly isn't an exhaustive list of everything we've seen, it should help demonstrate where we're focusing our efforts following the update.
Thanks again for all the feedback and bug reports so far as we've rolled out our latest update - our priority is tracking down these reported performance issues and getting us back into a good place!
Drew 'Sonicbob' Stevens
