Rare is considering implementing Battle Royale in Sea of Thieves. Speaking to Game Informer, design director Mike Chapman and studio head Craig Duncan answe...
This is already a BR game. Period. So I don’t understand your opposition to the idea of giving it some legs.
Everyone starts the same? Check.
No progression? Check.
Kill people and take their stuff? Check.
Get killed and lose everything? Check.
The only differences are no win conditions, the teeny tiny servers and the small uninteresting map. You can turn stuff in, but it has no real value since there is no progression.
Well as someone who played the fortnite campaign (Save the World) since launch, I can say battle royal isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Before Fortnite Battle Royal was a thing, there was only a campaign where you would play in 4 man teams in missions building and defending objectives. It was unique and fun but it didn't have a huge development team. It updated slowly and it had its fair share of bugs, ultimately leading me to getting bored from lack of content. However, when they released battle royal, they had a huge increase in players and most importantly...profit.
They have since massively increased their development teams for BOTH modes, so while fortnite save the world is completely separate from the battle royal counterpart, it has only massively benefited from its success. They now release more meaningful content updates and quality of life improvements monthly, sometimes even WEEKLY!
So regardless if you hate or love battle royal as a format, it has potential to benefit sea of thieves as a whole.
P.S. That depends though as the dev team is pretty hopeless if they have at least 3 separate crews working on the game and they struggle to fix long running bugs...
i hate fortnite, but I'd play this nonstop, honestly. it'd be an interesting twist or variation of the genre, BUT... it better be a different option on the main menu. i don't wanna be mid voyage and then have some big cloud show up and have people wipe me out or just be wiped out by the cloud itself when i was busy minding my own business lol
@maquark
That is exactly how fortnite does it, its an option in the menu for campaign and battle royal. Both leading to very different experiences and games
@ramb0zld i know lol I'm not hating without having played it. i probably have about a day of time put in and i just can't get in to it.
Sorry I'm not hating on you or trying to convince you to like it haha.
Just trying to show that battle royal doesn't have to be a bad thing :)
@blooddoll22 Well in Sea of Thieves case they do have a chance to make their battle royal unique. People never used to care about game modes being features in other games, would have been funny if people called out other games for having death match back in the day lol XD
At the very least it won't be another generic "boots on ground army dude royal™"
@ramb0zld sure - I get that. and frankly any additional content in a game is generally good content. But seriously... whatever happened to honest innovation... oh I know... sales. See, IMHO over saturation of a concept in gaming... just ruins it for everyone. To be honest, I can't even tolerate PvP in general but I accept that it's a logical inclusion and merrily indulge. That said, I may even enjoy a SoT styled BR session or more... but honestly, I won't not in the long run. It'd kill the game for me, albiet slowly but it'd do it none-the-less.
Now... if they aded deeper lore in game, full quest lines (even using voyages as the focus and simply chaining them and adding lore in that way) perhaps even ala Merricks, added greater variety of AI threats beyond mere skeletons (which they might be doing if they actually keep the GPB skelle in and yes I can tolerate skellies... I just want more than the same bad AI driven bad guys, spawn sizes, and more HP isn't AI...), and similar offerings...
You know... flesh out the game that is. Do that? And sure, then we can talk about adding in alternative game modes or something like BR events.
News like this only pains my faith in the game, which honestly waivers already, thankfully this interview only offers basic musings nothing directly official or set in stone...
but in short...
No.
Nope.
Nuh-uh.
I'll say again: Let's finish what we got going first, get a full game delivered instead of piecemeal offerings that feel loose and disconnected, and build up the setting f*s. THEN we can talk about random silliness like BR modes.
@blooddoll22 Yes, I absolutely completely agree the devs should complete their game. It is missing far too much content. However, as I said earlier, Fortnite's Campaign was in a similar state. It was early access, didn't have a complete story, missing content, bugs, all sorts of stuff. Which was in turn saved by battle royal which gave them the resources they needed to build proper teams and pump out updates (which they still do on a regular basis).
The campaign would be nothing like it is now if battle royal was never introduced, and it never replaced it, they coexist as two completely separate game modes.
@ramb0zld said in I don't want this. (Battle Royale):
and it never replaced it, they coexist as two completely separate game modes.
mmmm naw... I went and bought the game thanks to my local friends love for the BR mode. I played it for an hour... I did play BR for about a month.... then I realized I hate that sort of game too...
I feel that the only reason to play Fortnite IS the BR mode.. the campaign though the original state of the game... really is just a glorified tac on in most players view.
I support this with the notion that many bad games are adopting a BR mode and people do play BR modes. If not for the BR mode fortnite wouldn't exist, by your own admission.
SoT should find a more creative way to elevate their game if they are worried enough that adding a BR mode is the solve.
@blooddoll22 Well the battle royal was the tac on lol, the campaign was the original game and concept. Fortnite however would still exist if battle royal never happened, it would just likely have been less developed, but there is no way to know if they would have made changes if things were different
Epic was just smart and introduced battle royal when they saw it was a popular game mode and it was a great decision. Yes, without battle royal fortnites campaign would be nothing like it is now, but that's because they are making millions of dollars from battle royal and have invested in building bigger teams. Nothing wrong with that. If the result is a better game, what is the problem?
As to other ways Sea of Thieves could elevate their game you mentioned, they should try releasing more content lol
If they were to implement a separate Battle Royale mode, the die-hard PvP players would migrate to that, leaving the PvE folks with much more peaceful seas. The end result would be similar to separate PvP and PvE servers. Whether this would be a “good” thing or a “bad” thing depends upon your point of view.
This game of baseball is kind of fun. It's reasonably fast paced and exciting.
It just lacks proper goals.
What baseball really needs are things to aim the ball at. Maybe they could be baskets. Baskets mounted high on poles! With a backboard, so you can bounce the ball in. We would probably need bigger balls too. Oh! And, let's have all players from both teams on the field at once. Get rid of the bats and the running-around-a-diamond mechanic.
Why not?
If the result is a better game, what is the problem?
I do not want this either and we need to be vocal about it if anyone agrees. I would rather time and effort be placed fleshing out the world and lore the way they have been doing so, but adding in multiple modes just splits the wider community. Not to mention if BR becomes very popular it will tempt the devolpers hand towards it more in the long run and the game I love will suffer. Now an all inclusive battle royal that happens withon the general game as an event lime the adventures...sign me up!
Seriously, I do not understand incoherences of the community and criticism in general.
First that the game has no content. I missed something ? What content is there in those BR games?
If there is any criticism it would be to solve is the lack of depth of the game. Things like the ship's kitchen are in abandoned concepts. When you only imagine cooking recipes with the resources of spices boxes etc ... that the kitchen will catch fire.
Make powerful recipes for breathing underwater or to keep life up for a while.
I've heard rumors of rats that are going to steal resources from the ship.
I have also seen cats of pets, which makes me think that they will be able to counteract the rats.
That is the way. Battle Royal No.
Market is not so big. The bulk is playing fortnite and PUBG. Do you want to try to bring that consumer profile to SoT or keep our prospective market?
While in general I'm against SoT mindlessly copying the next big thing in a cynical attempt to maximise market share - and let's not kid ourselves that's all that going after BR at this particular time would be.
I would still be interested in hearing SoT's take on a BR experience, even if only so I can be more specific in my criticism.
Honestly, I don't care what it is though, now wouldn't be the right time for me to be hearing that they are putting dev time on this if they want me to remain happy with the direction they are taking.
Maybe in the future, but not right now.
They really shouldn't be out of ideas for the main game and looking to copy other IPs at this stage, if they were to announce such a thing I'd probably be out.
@ramb0zld No, I realize that BR came later.
But now when people discuss fortnite, at least in the company I keep... they are referring to BR... not the original game.
BR is IMO the only reason the game is relevant at all... if they would have never stole it from the mod that became PUBG Fortnite wouldn't even be the go-to in this topic.. we'd have me making something like a PUBG poster using SoT assets and making an argument in that light.
Sure, Rare could add a BR mode and I bet it could even be fun....
But that isn't the point. My point is I feel it will water down the spirit of the core game we do have. I would rather see Rare innovate ways to make the "No man's seas" and our lack of content become filled with innovative ideas that draw players. Instead of tacking on a BR mode to get focused interest and THEN add things that will be overlooked and ultimately become unimportant.
Following the leader in creative ideas is not IMO ever the way to go.. it shows a lack of integrity and imagination and makes me wonder why I should bother playing their games when all they seem interested in doing is what others are doing.
If I want a BR experience.. I'll play PUBG or Fortnite... I want an open world pirate game with exploration voyages and monsters. I would like it if it followed a few deeper offerings of RPG tropes it already has the mechanics for but simply lacks the form... I don't want AC: Black Sails 2.0.... I don't want a pure pirate PvP experience.. Ill go to to Skull and Bones for that.... I want a RPG Lite Pirate game with open world mechanics.
Flesh out the core offering before leaping to a whole 'nother game experience. Show some integrity and imagination, you know, the things Rare is supposed to be good at, then once we're all built up... sure experiment and add whatever random garbage ya want.. because sure it could be fun, it is how one celebrates and IP after all.. even the Avengers are on Lunchboxes so to speak.
Difference is.. the Avengers did what they needed to do to become, well the avengers first....
Then they sold themselves to whatever random meme of thought came their way. Perhaps that's a bad example... but it is an example of my point.
@surveyorpete said in I don't want this. (Battle Royale):
This game of baseball is kind of fun. It's reasonably fast paced and exciting.
It just lacks proper goals.
What baseball really needs are things to aim the ball at. Maybe they could be baskets. Baskets mounted high on poles! With a backboard, so you can bounce the ball in. We would probably need bigger balls too. Oh! And, let's have all players from both teams on the field at once. Get rid of the bats and the running-around-a-diamond mechanic.
Why not?
If the result is a better game, what is the problem?
Anyone can do what you just did, dosnt prove anything lol.. the only thing this conveys to the person you reply to is that you think their points are as stupid as the ones you just made up about baseball. Except the things he is saying fortnite did to change their game, actually helped he original concept, and they are seprate modes in the same “league” if comparing to baseball.
Your post would make more sense if you clarified that baseball itself didn’t change but they did build new stadiums in every state because of the money they made on the dumb version you mockingly suggested. Yeah you can have that opinion of battle royale but the facts remain, and here are two unquestionable facts.
Rare needs to ramp up content production and have a stable game which requires more work because I still crash out way to often for a game where you invest time to earn things in the way we do in game. More content costs more money (arguably they need more skill also because there should be more content and the game should be more stable already)
Battle royale is a hugely popular thing right now and would be enough of an addition to gameplay to warrant them adding in a MTX cosmetic shop, possibly solely for the BR mode so the main game isn’t affected. This would make them a lot of money.
@ramb0zld dijo en I don't want this. (Battle Royale):
Well as someone who played the fortnite campaign (Save the World) since launch, I can say battle royal isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Before Fortnite Battle Royal was a thing, there was only a campaign where you would play in 4 man teams in missions building and defending objectives. It was unique and fun but it didn't have a huge development team. It updated slowly and it had its fair share of bugs, ultimately leading me getting bored from lack of content. However, when they released battle royal, they had a huge increase in players and most importantly...profit.
They have since massively increased their development teams for BOTH modes, so while fortnite save the world is completely separate from the battle royal counterpart, it has only massively benefited from its success. They now release more meaningful content updates and quality of life improvements monthly, sometimes even WEEKLY!
So regardless if you hate or love battle royal as a format, it has potential to benefit sea of thieves as a whole.
P.S. That depends though as the dev team is pretty hopeless if they have at least 3 separate crews working on the game and they struggle to fix long running bugs...
Yep, it's like some players don't like sucess for their favourite game.
I also play Fortnite PvE (and ignore Battle Royale) and the game changed a lot, for the best, when BR was released. The first iteration was a blatant Pay2Win and it was like the finantial BR sucess unchained their hands to fix PvE.
Maybe then can come up with some kind of BR variant for SoT and it might be fun. But I'd prefer them doing something different and unique. There's going to be a BR mode in most games soon anyway. And it's so boring imo. I bought PUBG but got bored in a week. Fortnite.. eww. Epic used to be one of my favorite studios because of Gears of War. Shame.
Sea Of Thieves: Battle Royal.
4 Galleon ships sailing around for 30 minutes looking for supplies and each other.
2 weapons with 5 bullets each or 1 weapon and sword with a 3 hit stun combo.
Bunny hopping PC players with unlimted FPS VS Xbox players capped at 30fps with controllers.
Please don't turn this into another unfinshed Battle Royale beta.
Finish development of the game that needs more content to establish it as a ''full game''.
Sea Of Thieves currently feels like a $60 beta on Xbox One.
Grinding 3 traders to reach ''pirate legend'' was fine for the beta test.
I was expecting more for the full release.
Not just a kraken with no body and only tentacles.
Need more enemies that are not skeletons on land.
Enemy ai ships on the sea.
More sea creatures in the water to fight.
The world of Sea Of Thieves feels too empty.
I see 1 ship every 2 to 4 hours of playing.
Gamepass is the only thing keeping it from sinking into a watery grave.
@viejvs @blooddoll22
I never played fortnite and tbh this is really my first MMO. My question is, is the campaign on fortnite a shared world? If not, my thinking is that a BR mode could bring more PvP's into SOT, because you're going to need to practice somewhere and I've grown tried of the whole griefer/safezone posts, this will only add more.
@manifest7 SoT isn't an MMO, it's an Arena Sandbox. If anything, it is more like a MOBA. PvE and PvP of fortnite is completely different. In the PvE section you get guns that do upwards to like 89k in one shot, for instance.
@manifest7 likely not in the sense your thinking as far as shared world goes.. but yes multiple players in the campaign so share the game until the next session they join or host.
The BR is an open world with a reducing play area and forces players together over time until the last man stands.
It's a valid game mechanism... but it's also one that's being copied and cloned far too often lately thanks to the success of pubg and fortnite.
SoT is already similar to a BR in that it's an open world pvp arena (if chosen to be such since players can run and avoid pvp) it just lacks the reduction over time element in the play area.
In fact, SoT already utilizes an algorithm that sets up overlap in voyage locations (more notable for PL and Athena's) which causes players to bump into one another more often if on the same server. But it's still not enforced PvP and can be worked around by simply doing another leg of a voyage until the other ships moves on or vice versa....
It's not even the enforced PvP I draw exception to... it's also not a mass pvp BR thing that bothers me..
it's the idea of SoT gluing a game mode to the IP ripped from other games without even coming close yet to finishing the IP off with polish that should be expected from this title..
This title is advertised as a SWAG (A new if not entirely original concept to me) and the idea of taking on BR before we've even polish SWAG or made it a thing... to me smacks of desperation and unoriginality.
If I wanted to play fortnite.. I'd play fortnite. That's my only stance... I don't actually have issue with the idea of adding new innovations to the game or even drawing inspiration from other titles.. but this is a whole 'nother direction independent from the original vision... that bothers me.
@personalc0ffee which reminds me... can we get some more love for my poster? I mean c'monI used Fortnites text..SoT assests... Fortnite layout and even the ghouls/zombies... let's face it.. I did gud l**o.
@personalc0ffee but I gotta admit.. it's not original! lol I used assets hahahaq ok I think I need to pack something fresh..I'm spamming..sorry.
Rare’s Mike Chapman: “We see the battle royale thing, but I think there will be opportunities to do that kind of thing differently”
