Hey,
I don't mean to offend the developers for what they have done nor belittle the enjoyment that people obviously get from this game. But I just wanted to share my experience after playing for a week. This isn't objective, it's purely subjective.
-
Most notably I love the seafaring mechanics in SoT - amazing, I think controlling the boats and ships is great, and the changing seas and weather and seeing other ships is fantastic. Navigating to islands, that is all great. Sea battles are a bit too hectic but capture the excitement of the moment well.
-
Missions are OK, digging up chests is great and searching islands is good. But even after a week, sometimes I find searching islands for a book is a bit grueling. I haven't given much thought to what could be done to improve that experience. But mission complexity and variety is quickly running out.
-
Multiplayer is terrible. The battles are fine but unfortunately there is an incentive to kill everybody automatically. There is very little incentive to create an in game community or be friendly or impartial to people. I've had 1, maybe 2 people who didn't attack me on sight, about 1 boat on the water that didn't attack me. And people have come up to me and said stuff like 'bet you can't kill me' and then shot me - i just quit after that. It's just horrible for doing missions, especially the tall tales where I have to work at it for a couple of hours, and any encounter is putting progression at risk or if I'm off my boat, it's basically game over and I may as well quit the game.
-
Ship skin doesn't save - WHY? Why did you think we would want to reset it back to the basic skin every time we started a game. This just shows how little you've actually thought about game play and continuity in particular.
-
Skeletons - 1 ground based aggressive NPC type, well what can i say, pretty poor.
-
Fishing is pretty good, but so far I've found the rewards or sense of achievement pretty low. I'd rather fish in WOW.
-
Tall tales are just terrible IMO. The idea is great, and that they are a bit complicated. But without a save game and without some basic game play features, I've found the first tall tale a terrible experience - one that will probably lead me to stop playing the game completely. I have attempted the tall tale about 5 times now, tonight I played for 2 1/2 hours and got to the location where i place the crab totem, but drowned in the chamber. Respawned, my boat had obviously been sunk, because that's what the players are like in this game. Previously I sold my key because that's what I thought I had to do. And lost 2+ hours then too. Why didn't you include a restriction on selling quest items. Why didn't you include a save game? I can't fit this need to spend 3 hours doing a tall tale into my life. And then having to do that several times over working out stuff. Like the cave puzzle, where I just lost all my progress. Now i've spent about 10 hours on the first tall tale trying to work it out and I just couldn't be bothered anymroe. This is basic game design - include a save game - we are not all youtubers or full time gamers who can put 3 hours aside to do a quest in a single sitting - that's just ridiculous.
If I could put the seafaring mechanics inside an MMO or RPG of some kind I think it would be so much fun. I rate SOT highly as a tech demo 5/5, but as an actual game I can't give it more than 3/5. And that's generous, because it's only been a week and I'm already thinking about quitting. If I do quit, I'll give it 2.5/5 as a game because it just doesn't have real staying power, and because of the ridiculous requirements to make progress, and because of the lack of any upgrades, and because of the lack of save game, the horrible MP experience with regard to people attacking all the time and auto sinking my boat when I'm trying to find something.
The idea is great, but nope, I can't rate Sea of Thieves.

