So i have now been playing the beta for about 3 days now and im having a lot of fun! So i thought i should come leave some feedback and a couple of suggestions on what i think will make the game great!
Feedback:
So first thing i love the graphics & music. They really help set the atmosphere and they really help the world feel alive. The ships handle really well and the detail on them is amazing! i love having to adjust the sails angle to catch the wind. The riddles to find the treasure are really nice and well thought through. The controls feel nice and natural. You really have done an amazing job so far with the game.
suggestions:
Crew/Ship sizes:
I would really like to have any size ship with any size crew, this currently is been hard for me and my friends! My self and 2 of my friends always play games together as a three. So the only way we can play together is to go on the 4 crew sized ship. But with just the 3 of us its very difficult to sail and we keep getting a stranger join us! and as we 3 are in a group call theirs no communication to the other random player. Thats bad for all involved. So i think it would be best to either let any crew size join on any ship size.
The ship that you have put as a 4 person crew is in my opinion vastly undermanned. To me that ship needs at least 6 crew to sail it to its max potential. 1 Driver, 2 Sails, 2 navigators, 1 repair/Lookout.
The ship for solo/duo works well. But it could still work well with a crew of 4. 1 drive, 1 navigator, 1 sails, 1 repair/Lookout.
Crew/Friends:
When in a lobby you should be able to set your crew to private/invite only. Its good to play with friends but at the moment if you join a crew with friends but dont fill all the spots you get strangers joining you. This seems unfair as the friends will normally ignore the strangers and not let them have a say. This results in the strangers having a bad experience. Iv even seen other friends vote to lock the strangers in the brig to keep them out the way.
Also on windows 10 the only way to join/invite friends is to open the xbox app! thats crazy. This means while im in game and want to invite a friend i have to minimize the game and open another app. Just set up a friend system in the game i cant see any sane reason as to why we should have to open another app to invite friends. While im minimizing the game to invite a friend i could be attacked/crash or even have treasure stolen. Also one of my friends has real issues minimizing games once hes done that he cant get them back to full screen as they normally crash.
Ships & Storage:
So currently when we logout of the game our ship is basically reset. I did not know that would happen and when we first started we spent about an hour running around just getting wood planks, cannon balls & Bananas to store in the ship. That turned out to be pointless and annoying when we next logged in to discover we had gone from having like 100+ of everything back to the default amount. Im not sure if this is just while where in the beta but i hope once the game is released fully that anything we collect and store in the barrels remains during logins.
Servers:
So at the moment seems we just join in on random servers. Im not sure if this is true but i read somewhere that only 4 crews will be on the same server at anytime. That does not bother me, in fact i like that. Stops the sea feeling too crowded.
But what i would like to see are some different type of servers. For example the ability to pick from pvp & pve servers. I enjoy doing both activities. pvp ship to ship battles, the pressure of out running a pursuing while we have treasure. pve i enjoy just exploring the map & solving the treasure riddles. Sometimes i just want to go full pvp and others i just want to go full pve. I think it would be nice to let people have the option as to what server type to join. So everyone can experiance the game the way they want. The pvpers can have fun attacking, looting other players and the pveers can have fun exploring and doing the treasure hunting while not feeling threatened by other players.
Customization:
Characters - i have seen their are a handful of pirate character models, but when we spawn in for the first time one is just randomly assigned to us. I would like the ability to pick the one i want to play as, it would be nice too if we could change so small details like hair & eye color, even add beards?
Ships - I would like the ability to add items to the ship, for example other type of weapons like a harpoon gun so you can attach to other ships, on the larger ships be able to add a life boat so you can row to shore after you drop the anchor. It would be nice to if we could design our own flag and have the ability to change the color of the ships. Also the ability to upgrade existing feature like improved cannons, lights etc. Finally it would be nice to be able to fully repair a ship. After patching up holes with the planks it would be nice if parking near a port or a repair dock that the holes would be fully fixed.
So thats just my personal thoughts and opinions. I would have liked to have left this someplace more official where i knew the devs would read it, but when going to the feedback link from the games menu (www.aka.ms/sotforum) i just get an error saying "You seem to have stumbled upon a page that does not exist. Return to the home page"
