Sea of Thieves Review (Richard Johnson Wang)
Look, I love this game. I really do. But there are serious, fundamental issues with the current implementation of multiplayer.
First off- PvP is profoundly unfun for and unfair to small crews and people not dedicated to the PvP grind. Ganking is astoundingly easy, and 100% the meta strategy- all players have the same amount of health and do the same amount of damage, so large crews just fill your boat with more players than you can reasonably fight and spawnkill you until you sink. Overall, the skill floor for this game is way too high, and players self select into groups that make it worse- players who play the game for PvP will naturally become more skilled at PvP than players who play the game for PvE. As such, PvE players are sitting ducks, easy prey. And, even worse- with captaincy, a ship can be ready for a fight in less than a minute. It takes hours to build up a PvE loot stash of any meaningful value. So PvP ships can just throw themselves at PvE ships until they eventually lose- and, let's be real, when you lose you're screwed. They'll cash out immediately. It's way too easy to get Level 5 Reaper. So, as a small-crew PvE player, the game becomes heart-stoppingly stressful. And the devs don't seem to get this- they continue to make running away even harder. Which would be fine in a game where the stakes were lower, but is total crap in a game with enormous stakes and an even enormous-er aggressor advantage. You want to talk about realism? It's realistic that a tiny merchant ship would see a big hulking pirate galleon trudge up from under the horizon and be able to get the hell out of dodge.
Second, the ability for anyone- even allies- to backstab you is exciting and interesting on paper, but in practice is just an enormous impediment to camaraderie and community building. If I'm allied with a crew that I can't keep tabs on at all times, and I have any real amount of loot, I just plain can't leave my ship. We can't hang out, can't go on island voyages together- I can't spend time with other players without the risk of being betrayed and sunk. Without any form of loyalty assurance, this game is a profoundly lonely experience- compounded by the astoundingly sparse servers, at least partly limited in density because of the serious threat each new ship represents to your hoard.
Is all of this a skill issue? Yes, 100%. I'll be the first to admit that I'm garbage at PvP. But, frankly, PvP matches as a solo are just so slow, complicated, expensive, and frustrating that I don't have enough IRL time and motivation to commit to the grind. The constant threat of attack is exciting, and vital to the gameplay loop's challenge and significance, but the odds are so far skewed in the aggressor's favor that it's just not fun.
Edit: I'm really disappointed by the announcement of Safer Seas. I guarantee that if the fundamental issues with balancing and the gameplay loop were addressed, people wouldn't be clamoring for a PvE mode. Rather than take a good hard look at why people want PvE, they've decided to throw it in there and call it a day. It doesn't solve anything. It just splits the playerbase into the camps of Willing and Not Willing to deal with the existing bad design. And the ability to earn commendations in Safer Seas seriously cheapens them. Why should you be able to earn the Gold Curse or Legendary Hunter of the Sea of Thieves in the "introductory mode"?
Edit 2: They're adding an "industry leading" third-party anticheat. Every "industry leading" anti-cheat is kernel level, which is beyond invasive and an unacceptable security risk. I really, really hope they reconsider, because otherwise I'm out for good. I'd rather deal with a few snot-nosed script kiddies than sell my digital soul to some company I've never seen. This is genuinely heartbreaking.