izigame.me

Have played SoT for couple years now on both Xbutt and PC and have watched the game slowly run itself into the depths, SoT at its core is a good game I'm not posting this review complaining about that.
However, I am writing this Review as i have hit a brickwall with the Moderators and Rare themselves and more than likely will be Permanently banned soon as they are getting tired of Removing my posts which are calling them out in regards to their recent "But we banned X" accounts post.
SoT has a lot of potential, It fills that Niche of allowing the user to explore freely while also giving them the choice if they want to do PvE, Fishing, PvP, Ambush Tactics, Alliances, Hunting, Exploring, Questing, Story, Trying to break the game?
But something it has always struggled with is Hackers, And ever since they released "Hourglass" that problem has only doubled as you need Rank 100 to get the "Cool Hip New Cosmetics" forcing players to do PvP which then leads to more people using hacks to succeed in PvP rather than get good at the game as people can get away with Hacking as long as it isn't blatant and as long as it isn't Video Recorded.
When you mention Hackers the Forum Mods remove it and label "Misinformation" and when you call out that choice they then flag you with "Baiting staff" and threaten to Perma ban you. If there wasn't an issue people wouldn't talk about Hackers. If you mention Emporium aswell? They get very angry.
Emporium is a whole 'nother issue, When i first started i thought Emporium was great bought a couple skins was enjoying myself . . Until i noticed a pattern. Y'see people get REALLY angry when you have Paid Cosmetics in-game they go out of their way to harass Emporium users. Soon as i removed my Cosmetics the behaviour changed again people aren't as aggressive.
Rare is known for putting all their eggs in a single basket y'see, They put everything into Voyages (One time content) and Emporium. Well, Atleast for last two years.
Sure, They added Captaincy (Which is garbage) because it gives you zero control over your own damned ship but also doesn't let you modify anything important (Anchor) (Barrels) & (Cannons) Nobody cares about Trinkets or paintings Majority of captained vessels i've seen are all Copy Paste aside from the "Ship Name"
Then you have Hourglass, Arguably one of the worst things to happen to SoT.
Hourglass itself is fine, However the server issues that came alongside it? The forced interaction with PvP to get Cosmetics or Titles? The In-equality of ship supplies in matchmade PvP? The "MMR SYSTEM" which is fake and doesn't actually do anything? Not okay.
They seem hardstuck trying to push PvP instead of add features people have basically begged for years for.
Still no new Big Encounter (Meg / Kraken)
Still no new content for storms so no reason to EVER enter one aside from escape fleas who run when you try to fight em but follow when you dont.
Still no new region, Volcano is DoA nobody EVER goes in unless voyage forces it.
Still no new Enemies, We still have PoTC enemies acting as "New" content.
No new ships, No meaningful ship customization, Still can't restrict players (On your team) as a captain from using Anchor aside from raising it.
No reason to level Hunter Call
No reason to EVER use Order Of Souls
The Devs think "Reworking" Islands count as new content even though i've never seen a single soul explore said "Reworked" islands (Fort Merrick) you go to islands to collect and sell loot and then leave just as fast.
Majority of their community still hasn't seen the new Cutscene for Flame or Athena cause 100 PvP Ranks is too much.
Majority of their community won't do World Events cause they know it's not worth the hassle you clear while watching horizon.
Overwhelming Majority won't touch Sunken shrines cause you have to leave ship defenseless to clear the shrine and because of that Ocean Curse is always going to be ultra rare.
I've only seen people do FaF / FoF (However you want to spell it) / (Activated World Event with Ritual Skull) Maybe once, Nobody is dumb enough to waste their own time to have the work potentially stolen by every hippie in the server.
The Tutorial for the game STILL after ALL OF THESE YEARS does not teach the user Windmanagement which is why so many people exit Tutorial and are so god damned clueless about why the ship isn't moving fast.
Hell, The Tutorial doesn't even teach you how to stop the ship an extremely unhealthy amount of people rely on Anchor to do ANYTHING. Majority don't know that Harpoon can grab loot either until people show you it.
Zero Tutorial for fishing either, The Quality Of Life features are Awful for new players.
Don't have friends? Time to enjoy sifting through Random Queue after Random Queue of people that want to Sabotage or just want to join for payout and leave right after. When you raise concern? Get told "Use Discord not our problem" instead of the Devs getting off their arse and making an actual Lobby List instead of "Randomly Queue and pray"
Captaincy should allow the player to write a "Custom Message" for their Ship which appears in "Lobby List" and allows the user to choose for themselves if they want to join "Fishing Boat" or "Shrines" or "PvP" or "Meg Hunters" or "Story Enjoyers" or "Achievement Hunting"
Zero, And i mean, ZERO Quality of life for users they expect / demand you use Discord to matchmake otherwise enjoy sifting for an hour to get people that wanna play SoT.
Complete focus on Cash Shop, In-game stuff from last year and half has been awful aside from PvP Content.
And for all the money they're making? They have worse servers than Warcraft 3 Reforged, I don't suggest buying the game in current state. They don't care about hackers unless they cheat the paid currency, They don't care about server security, They don't care about PvE players, They don't care about how bad the servers are running and the rubber banding.
Any other game? I have 20ms max, This game? Comfortable 90ms at all times if not higher.
I wasn't going to write this review but y'know what? If they want to Silence me on forums, Fine.
You can't delete Reviews without paying off Steam, So better get shelving money to Steam if you don't want my Review up can't silence me otherwise.
TLDR; Good game, Awful Community, Awful Developers, And Awful Quality Of Life.