What's next, private servers?

@bloodybil I absolutely agree with you, it's so sad that devs become something like a puppy that follows what someone will say. Like other people mentioned, they will need to create xbox one, xbox one x and etc. servers, just because they have faster load. Sad what they did.

@bundui Ahoy there!

Over the last 11 months Rare has gradually become one of my favorite developers. Not because I'm a fan boy who's obsessed with the game or because I grew up playing a lot of their titles but because they genuinely listen to their player base. Not only that but they keep us informed about what's happening in the studio and what they're working on. They're tight lipped about certain in-development features but they occasionally toss us a carrot, whether on purpose or by accident. Rare actually cares about their game and more importantly their community. It's one of the main reasons why Sea of Thieves ranks so highly on my list of all time favorites.

With all of that being said, Rare takes everything into consideration before rolling a feature out. They read the forums, browse their social media channels, chat with fans in person, collect and analyze various data points, and build a system they believe fits in line with their vision for Sea of Thieves. The decision to allow optional cross play wasn't because they seen it posted "X" amount of times on the forums, it was decided after taking in all the above points. They believe it's best for the community as a whole. But enough about cross play, we fortunately have a mega thread available to discuss that here: [Mega Thread] Crossplay announcement in the recent Dev Update video.

As for the inclusion of private servers. They've talked about private servers before but most recently have discussed the inclusion of private servers in their latest stream Sea of Thieves Weekly Stream: The Playground! The discussion begins at 1:38:00. You should totally check it out if you get the chance but in short they basically said they understand why people want private servers, to sail around and play with their friends, to battle their friends, and to create uninterrupted competitions. They said that they've talked about it and it's not in their immediate plans but they're discussing it in the next batch of things to come. However, they still need to figure out how it'll work from a design perspective.

Now I know that might seem a bit eerie to some but nothing is finalized yet, in fact they haven't even started working on them. For all we know the progression on a private server might not transfer to the public Adventure mode. For instance your progression from the public Adventure mode could transfer into a private server but all progress you make on that private server is lost when you leave and load in on a public server. This would allow players to relax and play the game with their friends while still requiring them to play the on the public servers in order to progress. I'm just speculating, we'll have to wait until further down the road when they further discuss this topic.

Hope that helps!

At this point, who cares? Rare is going to divide the game up as they feel is appropriate. Arena, Crossplay, PvE, Private Servers - if there is a demand it's going to happen whether its "good" or "bad".

As long as there are other pirates on the servers I'm playing on and they have enough dev time devoted to creating new content I don't care.

@bloodybil about xbox servers that was a joke, haha, to give a ex. of how rare following their community.

@je0rgie-p0rgie It's not always good to do what community asks for, sometimes it's better to leave it as it is. All this mess with crossplay, I can easily say a lot of people don't like that and it means that they didn't do a good job analyzing they just brought more "X".

@hooligan-wift said in What's next, private servers?:

I'll always play open world SoT.

That being said, as a father with a 6 year old boy and a 13 year old girl who really love this game, it would be nice for them to play together with friends without being harrassed and called [insert all the bad words you've heard from other sea farers].

They love this game, but they have to party chat or plug in headset and mute it and leave it on the floor as to avoid some of our more outspoken colleagues!

I'm fine with no loot/progression private servers for my kids sake. The game is fun without grinding for cosmetics.

Fine with that, when you get no exp or money, but all people complain that they getting "harassed" they call that getting killed by another crew and then need private servers so they can farm peacefully.

I suppose it’s always good for a developer to listen to the community, unless it is something you don’t agree with.. then shame on them!

And I believe they will be adding private servers in the future also.

@bloodybil said in What's next, private servers?:

@bundui Oh you know it brother, of course that's next. Once x-box users realise there are just as many toxic players on both sides and they get sunk just as much by better players on the same console, there will now be NEW issues to whine about. There will be more posts and complaints about needing safe zones and PVE/private servers, nerfing skeleton ships, kraken, etc. since the cross-play removal has already been achieved. Rare said they wouldn't want to remove the risk/excitement aspect of the game, but after all, they said they wouldn't compromise with crossplay either.

I mean, in all fairness there’s already all those requests on the forums anyway, there has been since day one so you can’t blame that on people wanting crossplay although I’m sure no whenever anyone has a problem with SoT it’s going to be crossplays fault lol.

And the developers have also stated on numerous occasions the game will evolve over time, that’s why we have skeleton ships, originally something what was never going to happen, it’s why we have Alliances another thing that was never going to happen..

The developers are doing good work, they are keeping to there vision of what they believe SoT should be but also making room for changes based on community feedback.

They are never going to make everyone happy but at the end of the day I think it’s fair that the crossplay people get there chance to play fair or even try it, considering we haven’t had that option yet and have had to play by the PC rules.

@knifelife said in What's next, private servers?:

And the developers have also stated on numerous occasions the game will evolve over time, that’s why we have skeleton ships, originally something what was never going to happen, it’s why we have Alliances another thing that was never going to happen..

I don't think we have skeleton ships because people asked for it - they had been prototyping them for months, all the way back to the Unity test build. Either they didn't think they could get them to work when they said there would never be AI ships, or they weren't telling the truth at the time.

@d3adst1ck said in What's next, private servers?:

@knifelife said in What's next, private servers?:

And the developers have also stated on numerous occasions the game will evolve over time, that’s why we have skeleton ships, originally something what was never going to happen, it’s why we have Alliances another thing that was never going to happen..

I don't think we have skeleton ships because people asked for it - they had been prototyping them for months, all the way back to the Unity test build. Either they didn't think they could get them to work when they said there would never be AI ships, or they weren't telling the truth at the time.

Don’t know mate it’s possible I’m just throwing out the excuses people use to try and dictate what the game should be.

During the TA they specified that the only sails you would ever see on the horizons are those of the human player. A big portion of the community wasn’t a fan off that and I believe on the launch poll that a member done. (Top of the list on most popular threads) one of the highest voted was AI ships I believe and now we have.

My point is we don’t necessarily know what effects changes will have on the game untill they actually launch.
I for one am glad we got the Cursed sails event and I really enjoyed it and love the new addition. :)

@bundui said in What's next, private servers?:

@je0rgie-p0rgie It's not always good to do what community asks for, sometimes it's better to leave it as it is. All this mess with crossplay, I can easily say a lot of people don't like that and it means that they didn't do a good job analyzing they just brought more "X".

I believe so long as Rare can stay true to their vision of what Sea of Thieves is supposed to be then I don't see why they won't continue to add as much community requested features as possible. At some point they'll draw a line and say, "no that just doesn't fit within the Sea of Thieves universe." In fact Mike talked about this on the latest stream. Someone asked about whether or not they'd add whales or other sea creatures and he said they're open to the idea so long as they could find a way to allow players to interact with them. He said it probably wouldn't be a whale per se but some kind of similar fantastical creature.

This is a prime example of the community requesting a specific feature and Rare attempting to find a way to implement it in a way that works for their vision of the game. At the end of the day Rare decides what makes it into the game and what doesn't. They obviously seen enough momentum behind crossplay and decided to find a way to add it to the game.

It's like @KnifeLife said, you unfortunately can't make everyone happy. The one's upset usually speak the loudest and the noise they make doesn't always accurately reflect how the community as a whole feels.

@je0rgie-p0rgie said in What's next, private servers?:

@bundui said in What's next, private servers?:

@je0rgie-p0rgie It's not always good to do what community asks for, sometimes it's better to leave it as it is. All this mess with crossplay, I can easily say a lot of people don't like that and it means that they didn't do a good job analyzing they just brought more "X".

I believe so long as Rare can stay true to their vision of what Sea of Thieves is supposed to be then I don't see why they won't continue to add as much community requested features as possible. At some point they'll draw a line and say, "no that just doesn't fit within the Sea of Thieves universe." In fact Mike talked about this on the latest stream. Someone asked about whether or not they'd add whales or other sea creatures and he said they're open to the idea so long as they could find a way to allow players to interact with them. He said it probably wouldn't be a whale per se but some kind of similar fantastical creature.

This is a prime example of the community requesting a specific feature and Rare attempting to find a way to implement it in a way that works for their vision of the game. At the end of the day Rare decides what makes it into the game and what doesn't. They obviously seen enough momentum behind crossplay and decided to find a way to add it to the game.

It's like @KnifeLife said, you unfortunately can't make everyone happy. The one's upset usually speak the loudest and the noise they make doesn't always accurately reflect how the community as a whole feels.

No clue what are you saying. "Rare attempting to find a way to implement it in a way that works for their vision of the game." Their vision was crossplatform game in the beginning, you either do crossplatform or you don't, some people maybe bough the game because of this feature for every players, but now they splitting it just because some guys who don't know how to play the game. I'll give you a example. one xbox player got killed by PC player with sword and blunderbuss and he started yelling I'm so glad double guns getting fixed, and this is the type of players who is crying about crossplatform.

"I don't see why they won't continue to add as much community requested features as possible." Oh yea dude, everyone in the community is asking for it and as I said before, devs don't need to add everything that community asks for it. This is very bad decision they made. There is much more important updates needed to the game that needs to be implemented.

@chronodusk said in What's next, private servers?:

Private Servers are confirmed as something that they want to do.

I'm very weary of the idea. In the context of creating a space where people can freely craft their own little games and activities using the tools at their disposal, private servers will be a cool idea.

But there are many design choices that they need to consider very carefully before implementing a private game choice.

I can see multiple crews using this as a place to practice ship combat and fight eachother for laughs and giggles, but if Rare doesn't make the right choice, the good intentions they had will quickly devolve into the majority of the playerbase effectively using them as PvE grind servers.

They would absolutely need to find ways to combat this sort of behavior, like disabling alliances... disabling or limiting progression... whatever it is they do, they have to make sure people aren't incentivized to remove themselves from the public world of Sea of Thieves which allows for the most interesting and genuine experience.

But... I don't know. The crossplay thing damaged my faith in Rare. I could see them allowing all of the same mechanics in a private server that exist in a public server, pretty much adding PvE servers without having to publicly label them as such, and further dividing the player base into Private (PvE) players and people who play the normal game.

The whole Private Server thing making me uneasy.

I absolutely agree with you, where you can practice, just spend some fun time, but knowing how they making their decision I feel like when they will add private servers it will be completely bad idea. Problem is that with this alliances there is already "PVE" servers with full of players doing athena farm. I'm not sure how they will do private servers avoiding it. They will probably just add it because people complained that other crews killing and saying that they getting "harassed", same what happened with crossplay.

@Hooligan-WiFT
@nofears-fun said in What's next, private servers?:

Private servers are coming, it is more a matter of when, not if. Joe Neate has said as such on a couple of occasions, both in written form (redit) and in a live stream. Fact is, there are many, many reasons to want private servers.

I know many will argue that it makes the game easier, but that may or may not be the case. It all depends on why you are using the private server. I also know many will argue against those of us that want to play a cartoon pirate game with our kids because of a rating. Which is funny because Joe Neate has said on multiple occasions they wanted SoT to be a game the whole family can enjoy together.

As for reasons to want private servers, as I said there are many. You want to have competitive game play against your friends or a community you are in. Something like a skull ball challenge, or capture the flag type game, a treasure hunt raise, or just a straight up lets go at it and see who is better at combat. I certainly do not think any of these reasons for a private server make it any easier other than saving communities time so they don't have to bully or buy out a server, which is what they have to do now.

You might want a private server to play with other families, and while still be competitive or allow combat, you don't want the risk of toxicity. Again, does not mean this server is any easier than a random server.

You want to go out and explore the SoT world without worrying about anyone else interfering with what you are doing. Not really there for gold or rep, just out enjoying the wonderful world Rare built.

You might want to stock up your ship and go out against Kraken, Megs and skelly ships without worrying about someone random interfering. (one of the most frustrating things for me is fighting a kraken, wanting to fight the kraken, and some random player ship pulls up just outside the ink to help the kraken sink my ship, especially when it serves no purpose, there is no loot or anything for them to gain by doing it, and certainly, since I can't fight back, there is no challenge). I personally love fighting skelly ships. One of the greatest additions to the game as far as I am concerned.

As for just how easy a private server would be, even if you only wanted to do a private server for PvE, would it really be all that much easier? I play on average 4-6 hours per day, everyday. And I can go days without getting any PvP. That is including times where I spend the entire game session at skull forts hoping for some PvP with no one else interested. While there may be other ships out there on the ocean, most of them pose little to no threat.

So having said all that, I personally would use Private Servers to play with my kiddos. I would be ok with a reduction in gold and rep gain on private servers, but I don't believe it should be more than 50% reduction. I want to give my kids a chance to buy cosmetics. They see me play with my many sets of cosmetics and they want them for themselves too.

So, about that game being easier, it would be completely easy, you're alone on the server what threat? Oh you mean kraken that got nerfed? Meg that you can escape? Only skeleton ship can give you some problems, but that's it. Then about kids, to be honest idc what Joe is saying about families, their games rated as T, which means (Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language.) So I'm a little bit confused why some of the people complaining that their 6 year old kids can't play...

And you are saying that rewards should be no more than 50%, if they will release private servers, rewards should be 0%. Wanna play some fun games with friends? Go for it. Explore around? Go for it, but with 0 rewards.

They specifically stated that the cross pay was to ensure players are on an equal playing level for the arena in the last developer video.

Private servers do no such thing.

@bundui said in What's next, private servers?:

No clue what are you saying. "Rare attempting to find a way to implement it in a way that works for their vision of the game." Their vision was crossplatform game in the beginning, you either do crossplatform or you don't, some people maybe bough the game because of this feature for every players, but now they splitting it just because some guys who don't know how to play the game. I'll give you a example. one xbox player got killed by PC player with sword and blunderbuss and he started yelling I'm so glad double guns getting fixed, and this is the type of players who is crying about crossplatform.

You're correct, their vision of the game was cross platform from the beginning and that vision still holds to this day. They're not removing cross platform, they're making it optional for those who wish to play on a more level playing field. However, people will still be able to play with friends on different platforms. Not everyone on Xbox is going to make the switch either. I've seen tons of topics and conversations around the web related to cross platform and the results sound more positive than negative.

Sure, there are a lot of Xbox players who are happy about the option to finally choose to only play with other Xbox players. However, there are a lot of people who have said that they're still going to play with their PC friends. Still others have said they don't feel at a disadvantage now so they don't plan on making the switch either. Cross play still exists, it's not going anywhere, and I don't think it's going to become a "thing of the past" after this update drops.

"I don't see why they won't continue to add as much community requested features as possible." Oh yea dude, everyone in the community is asking for it and as I said before, devs don't need to add everything that community asks for it. This is very bad decision they made. There is much more important updates needed to the game that needs to be implemented.

Everyone in the community? That's simply not true. And as I've said so long as popular community requests continue to fit into what Rare believes Sea of Thieves should be then I don't see a problem with them adding more community requests to the game. For example, if a popular request were that flying ships were introduced to the game Rare would more than likely shut that idea down and say, "no that doesn't fit within our vision, we're not adding flying ships to the game."

This isn't a poor bad decision on Rare's part. The Arena DLC will introduce highly competitive play and in order to create a more balanced experience for everyone playing they are allowing Xbox players to play with others who use the same input devices as them. This seems like the best option to me.

@pk-r0ckin said in What's next, private servers?:

They specifically stated that the cross pay was to ensure players are on an equal playing level for the arena in the last developer video.

Private servers do no such thing.

Then why not just make it in arena? And leave adventure mode as it is?

@je0rgie-p0rgie I've seen you in quit a lot of different threads and I came to conclusion that you are little baby sucking Rares finger, because you don't really answer on questions, you just repeat what devs said in video update, I don't need to know that, I already know. Every popular streamer (Summit, Doc, Dr.Lupo, Tim) is saying that this is bad thing, lot's of people saying it's bad and you're over here saying oh yea it's fine. (Don't take it as offense, I just don't know how to say it other way).