"The Quest for Guybrush"...but now what?

  • Lucky11
    Commander
    Insider

    "The Quest for Guybrush" Tall Tale is easily one of my favorites. (I would probably rank in the top three Tall Tales for me) As a fan of Monkey Island, being able to walk around Mêlée Island freely and interact with a lot of characters was simply awesome. (I'm of the opinion that Monkey Island's characters are better suited for Sea of Thieves than Pirates of the Caribbean) The atmosphere, the lore and references to Monkey Island and Sea of Thieves, as well as the addition of Insult Sword Fighting was INCREDIBLE!

    I am absolutely ecstatic for Chapter 3 sometime later this month, but I have had a thought looming in the back of my mind: Now what?

    I finished "The Quest for Guybrush," and I had this pang of dejection as I climbed aboard my ship and sailed away from Mêlée Island. Outside of maybe stopping by to pick up Guybrush on our way to Monkey Island in Chapter 3, when would we be back to Mêlée Island?

    I understand there are a lot of legal liabilities involved, but I could make the same argument about Sailor's Grave (which is, by and large, a Sea of Thieves location); Rare put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into something the majority of us may only experience once or twice. I'm not saying we should move away from Tall Tales or even Instanced Sequences (I actually think this is the perfect formula for Tall Tales moving forward)

    I just don't want these really cool locations to be frozen in time or, even more so, to just sit there collecting dust. I think it would be really cool for places like Sailor's Grave or (potentially) Mêlée Island to be somehow integrated into the main world of Sea of Thieves. Maybe there could be some cargo quests added to the game that would task you with delivering shipments to the Citizen of Mêlée Island, a generic pirate in the Bay of Mêlée Island, or a ghost on Sailor's Grave. (we can take Emissary Flags with us between servers while participating in Hour Glass Battles, I have to imagine transporting cargo through the Sea of the Damned isn't that far-fetched)

    As it stands, it feels like these Tall Tales are one-and-done, and I don't like that. (I can't imagine what everyone at Rare feels, having worked extensively on these projects only for them to become obsolete) I'd love to have an excuse to go back to these locations without having to replay the Tall Tales! I think it would also make Sea of Thieves more lively as it would add more things to continuously do in the game!

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  • ZiG ZaG LTU
    Commander
    Insider

    @lucky11 I could see some kind of event/game mode being hosted there.

    Imo an interesting one would be Team Hide and Seek or Capture the flag or something ( I know a lot people here don't like team death match - but it would be awesome)

    Imagine going into those islands and having to use your tuck emotes in some kind of hide and seek game mode. I don't know how exactly that would work or what the goal would be, but would be amazing if those locations could be somehow incorporated into main game play.

    Obviously its ok and still fun to redo them once in a while, but I do agree with Lucky, most pirates will go there only once or twice.

  • heslashthem
    Legend
    Insider

    @lucky11 Rare simply can't lift these locations and just chuck them into the map, there are limits on what the game can do and they cannot extend the map further, they have stated this in the past. It makes more sense for these large areas to be where they are as they are memories made real by the Sea of the Damned and have no place in the Sea of Thieves.

    Yes they're cool locations but it's just not possible to have them in the main map.

  • Lucky11
    Commander
    Insider

    @tesiccl
    Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about bringing them into the main game. I was just wondering about an excuse (like a cargo quest or something) we could use to sail back through the portal into the Sea of the Damned and visit these places again without having to activate or go through a Tall Tale!

    In designing places Mêlée Island and Sailor's Grave, Rare has created an opportunity to add more quest types into the game ("A Daughting Journey to Sailor's Grave" or something like that; You could theoretically spend some time in the overworld with a Bounty Quest and sell the loot aboard your ship before voting on another quest that would have you sail through the portal back to Sailor's Grave.)

  • heslashthem
    Legend
    Insider

    @lucky11 Okay, but remember, these are instanced areas where no other crews have access to them so that would fall into the realm of PvE servers and that's a big no no from Rare. They do not want that as they want crews interacting with each other on the seas and sailing about the main map, getting into scraps, making memories with each other etc.

  • Lucky11
    Commander
    Insider

    @tesiccl
    That's a fair point, I didn't consider that! Maybe these locations could be adjusted slightly to allow more crews to participate in these quests simultaneously. (kind of like A Hunter's Cry) I would have to imagine 70-80% of the work would already be done (considering these locations are already completed, and Rare has the formula for how to get multiple crews into the Sea of the Damned), Rare would have to tweak a few things involving server stress and migration, but I think this type of quest could realistically be implemented.

    There'd be some good opportunities for ambushes, it would add a new quest into the game, and it makes the Tall Tale locations feel like a natural extension of the Sea of Thieves world as opposed to feeling like they are some one-and-done side stories!

  • strangeness
    Lord
    Insider

    There are lore implications as well.

    From a lore perspective, those locations are all in the sea of the dammed and created from memories of the pirates in the tall tales. They aren't even real places in the sea of the damned. They are literally memories. Even the NPCs are a mix of dead who chose not to leave, or are characters trapped in their memory.

    It's make no sense to have regular voyages delivering cargo or anything else. The only times we have gone to the sea of the dammed are "extraordinary circumstances" where the sea of thieves itself is under threat. Trying to wedge regular clvisits to these locations would significantly break lore.

  • PersonalC0ffee
    Captain
    Insider
    Boatswain

    Remember, these places and their people other than who is acting against us and who we are trying to save, are not real. These are MEMORIES created by the Sea of the Damned.

  • Licenturion
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    I think the current formula is great.

    These stories are a great opportunity for me and my friends to return a few times to Sea Of Thieves.

    After 1000+ hours we don’t play the ‘main game‘ anymore because lack of real progression systems and skill trees and too much emphasis on PVP by the community . But this is the perfect reason the revisit a world we loved and experience new stories.

    I would either pay for stories like this instead of season passes or shop cosmetics.

    I am sure these type of thing attract some bew players and brings back some old players, even if it is only for a while.

  • AxecaliburTV
    Master
    Insider

    I would love to have some more of the Pirates Life and Monkey Island characters / places in the normal Sea Of Thieves world. Be it as NPCs or shipwrecks or even islands like the Shores of Gold.

  • Foambreaker
    Sailor

    Now that they have the backdrop and the business deal, anything is possible.

    In fact I would say it is unlikely they went to this level of effort to have it end after three Tall Tales.

  • WolfManbush
    Champion

    I enjoyed the new tale.

    Something that is interesting to me and a testament to the quality of this environment is that I really have to push myself to do them. Not because I don't enjoy them or support them but because I enjoy the shared organic environment in this game so much that's it tough to play this game in any way outside of that for me. Even after the massive amount of hours I have in the game I still struggle to get motivated enough to play in any other way, even for a relatively short amount of time.

    In that way this type of content leads me to appreciating the experience even more than I already did.

  • Liberance
    Master

    So far these two Tall Tales have been spectacular. The way in which they have implemented point-and-click adventure mechanics into the Sea of Thieves context is world-class and certainly the level of meticulous faithfulness you can expect from Rare—if you know them since the days of Goldeneye in Nintendo 64, you know this is the kind of obsessive attention to detail the studio strives for with adaptations.

    That said, the overall experience has been feeling too much like a straight up remake of the original Monkey Island game. I loved that take in the first Tale but I was expecting the second the begin branching a bit more toward Sea of Thieves, or at the very least, do something that doesn't just repeat the same puzzles and scenes from the LucasArts games almost word for word. So here's hoping that the third one does something genuinely new.

    As for this...

    @lucky11 said in "The Quest for Guybrush"...but now what?:

    I just don't want these really cool locations to be frozen in time or, even more so, to just sit there collecting dust. I think it would be really cool for places like Sailor's Grave or (potentially) Mêlée Island to be somehow integrated into the main world of Sea of Thieves. Maybe there could be some cargo quests added to the game that would task you with delivering shipments to the Citizen of Mêlée Island, a generic pirate in the Bay of Mêlée Island, or a ghost on Sailor's Grave. (we can take Emissary Flags with us between servers while participating in Hour Glass Battles, I have to imagine transporting cargo through the Sea of the Damned isn't that far-fetched)

    As it stands, it feels like these Tall Tales are one-and-done, and I don't like that.

    They are literally frozen in time, though. That's the whole story point, and you can't change that either mechanically or stylistically—Melee Island can't exist without its perpetual blue night and it's entirely designed as a first-person Metroidvania-like map to make progress through.

    So I don't see that changing, nor I think it's much of a good idea to even float the idea around.

  • sudo slippin
    Seafarer
    Insider

    I'm finding the amount of content added in this tall tale to be incredibly lacking. It's not three tall tales. It's one tall tale divided into its three segments spread out over three months (actually longer, at this rate). So 1/5 the content delivered over 3x the amount of time, and part two of the tale was a running simulator. I'm not one to use a guide, and I found part two of this tall tale to be incredibly vague in its hints and bland with its delivery. I was looking forward to this in hopes that it would be similar to the Pirate's Life in terms of quantity, but in reality, it falls drastically short. Part one is a solid 5/10 and part two is at best a 2/10.

    Regarding the original topic, the last thing I want to see in this game is delivering more crates for the sake of delivering crates. If they somehow integrate anything else into the game, it needs to be competitive in some form. Some of the best events in the past were when ships/crews were forced onto the same island or islands to get their cargo with rewards for stealing cargo from other crews. There's more than enough forts already. We need strategic play added where there's risk/reward beyond pulling up to a fort and killing skeletons on repeat.

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