Sea Of Thieves (people play this game and talk about it)

[CFFJR]

Some friends and I had a great time playing this tonight.

Not much interaction with other people, but it's still fun.

We ended the night by sailing to a rather threatening looking island with a huge skull cloud floating above it, slamming our ship directly into the structure, and charging in to fight skeletons who turned out to be far above our strength level. It was glorious. And bloody.

Also, you can catch puke in buckets and throw it at each other, so there's that.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Some friends and I had a great time playing this tonight.

Not much interaction with other people, but it's still fun.

We ended the night by sailing to a rather threatening looking island with a huge skull cloud floating above it, slamming our ship directly into the structure, and charging in to fight skeletons who turned out to be far above our strength level. It was glorious. And bloody.

Also, you can catch puke in buckets and throw it at each other, so there's that.

Yes! Glad you enjoyed it! I am going bananas over the game and have plunked in way over 60 hours between it and all the testing sessions.

There has been a lot of flak for the game not having any content and it is completely asinine to believe that. Most folks say there is little to do in the game, but never encounter the kraken, or do the skeleton raids, or know anything about the enemy types, or even explore a shipwreck or.... DO THE LEGENDARY QUESTS IN THE SECRET PIRATE LORD LAIR TO UNLOCK A UNIQUE SHIP! .... but yeah.... no content.

[Segata]

This was Rare's last stand really and it got hammered in reviews. Some saying it's one of those fun at first but runs out of steam quickly kind of games. So in a couple months, we shall see if people stick with it or if this is a Ubisoft game situation. I think Rare/MS is going to have to announce some big new features and content later this year. If I had an XBO probably would play it but kinda obvious this game has some issues. Not so much in gameplay as that seems pretty solid but like many hyped online multiplayer games this gen the question is what can you do as it seems fairly limited.

I know I just mentioned Ubisoft so that makes me wonder how Skull N Bones will fair when it releases. Not hating but do have questions and concerns.

[BogusMeatFactory]

This was Rare's last stand really and it got hammered in reviews. Some saying it's one of those fun at first but runs out of steam quickly kind of games. So in a couple months, we shall see if people stick with it or if this is a Ubisoft game situation. I think Rare/MS is going to have to announce some big new features and content later this year. If I had an XBO probably would play it but kinda obvious this game has some issues. Not so much in gameplay as that seems pretty solid but like many hyped online multiplayer games this gen the question is what can you do as it seems fairly limited.

I know I just mentioned Ubisoft so that makes me wonder how Skull N Bones will fair when it releases. Not hating but do have questions and concerns.

So please... tell me, the guy who has played the game, what the problems are mr. Never played the game?

[Key-Glyph]

I just want to pop in to say it's killing me that I can't play this game. I just watched Bogus stream for three hours and my face hurts from laughing and smiling so much.

At the start, he got matched up with a really nice random player on a two-person sloop. As they were traveling the seas during an uneventful yet beautiful nautical night, they came upon another sloop. At first, the other sloop fired on them, but Bogus and his new friend signaled that they were friendly. The two dudes in the other sloop then described how a galleon had sunk them for no particular reason, but since they'd managed to smuggle in and set off a powder keg inside the galleon before they both died, that ship had been tailing them ever since. Bogus says smoothly, "We've got a powder keg aboard. Wanna sink them?"

The other guys go, "LET'S DO IT! THIS IS SO AWESOME!"

So, the two sloops part ways and set off to take the galleon from both sides. Bogus' crewmate turns out to be the most amazing cannon shot I've ever seen. Bogus sweeps by the galleon again and again and his buddy goes to town, lighting that ship on fire. As they are swooping by on a particular pass, we actually hear a player on the galleon say, "Man these guys are LAYING WASTE," before turning to Bogus & co. to say, and sincerely, "Good shots, guys!"

Bogus boards their sinking galleon and murders the remaining pirate attempting to patch the hull. We see that Galleon Guy respawn, and at some point he and Bogus are in the water at the same time and Bogus says, "No hard feelings! Come grog with us!" In response, Galleon Guy -- who I remind you, had just been shot in the back by Bogus five minutes ago while he was repairing his hull -- starts quaffing drink IN THE WATER. Naturally, Bogus joins in. Friendship!

Flash forward to the Two Sloop Crews in the tavern, drinking until they puke and playing games like "see who can catch the most vomit in a bucket" and "get into a cannon while drunk and fire yourself at the tavern to see who gets closest." They were laughing and running around like fools for what might have been ten minutes. Ten minutes of real, ridiculous laughter.

This new Barfing Brotherhood decide to join forces and add each other as friends so that they can start a new game session on their OWN four-man galleon, which many have never done before. In the ensuing hour or so, they take down ANOTHER galleon together -- firing three or four cannons simultaneously in a ridiculously exciting moment -- plunder a whole bunch of treasure, get rich, obsess over what fancy clothes to buy, and decide to call it a night.

They ended their session by purposely ramming their own ship into rocks and playing sad music together as their ship sank, technically bringing their galleon kill count up to three. They continued to play underwater until one by one, they dramatically drowned.

Somehow it was hilarious, absurd, beautiful, and heartfelt all at the same time.

Seriously. Killing me that I can't play this game.

[Melek-Ric]

I played some of alphas and betas but don't have the full game yet. I'll get it today then I can play tonight and tomorrow night. Just PM me here if you want to join up.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Great recap of the stream Key! I want to say that both you and michi were an excellent audience and it was an indescribable blast last night! Again truly encapsulating that there is nothing like this game. To elaborate with a more thorough play of last night, I will do my best to talk about, again, what makes this game great.

So I started playing a 2 man sloop, doing missions for the trade faction, gathering pigs and chickens with a player I'll refer to as Crack Shot (CS). We are travelling through the portion of the map that is littered with jagged rocks and tumultuous waters, skirting storms to race our animals to their destination before they get struck by lightning or drowned.

Eventually, our missions led us far west to the calmer and more serene seas. It was here that we noticed in the distance 2 galleons on either side of us, far into the distance. We made a mad dash to our drop off point at an outpost and as we leave, we see a sloop approach the island, notice us, and make a quick course as far from us as possible.

We chase them and we were debating whether to battle or not. They blinked their lights at us and we blinked back to say, "Hey we are friendly. We both park in the open seas to have a chat and talk about the state of the seas in the area and learn that they pissed off a galleon by sneaking on board of their ship with an explosive barrel and set it off and have been chased ever since.

We decide to team up and take them out so split up to flank the galleon with me at the wheel and CS on the cannons. We lined up our shots and fired again and again, CS hitting his mark every time. The man's aim was impeccable. We would get 5-10 hits in for every 1 of theirs. It helped that I was letting him know what side to be on and to get good angles on the galleon so that we had a good shot, but stayed out of their line of fire.

Every time they hit us hard, we would repair and disengage, only to have our compatriots swoop in and continue the fight. Over and over and over this went on, to the point that when we got close, you could hear the galleons crew say that we were devastating them and one guy on deck complimented our shots.

After we sunk them at the outpost, I offered a grog in reprieve and they accepted. One crew mate with pepe in the name was pissed off, sword slashing his crew mate to no avail. He was clearly mad and killed me.

When I respawned we met up with the other sloop, got drunk, played music, barfed into buckets and threw it at each other, shot each other out of cannons and then the sloop asked if we wanted to try a galleon together.

We accepted and set off. We get them all acclimated to the larger ship, which they've never sailed on before. As we set off, we were immediately set upon by a galleon. We had a mission to kill some skeleton captains at a nearby island. I told them I would jump off and take care of that while they handle the galleon.

As I fought bush skeletons (which regenerate health in the water) a cannon battle ensued around me. Our ship was sunk and I hid in the bushes to avoid being seen by our enemies. They stopped to look around and decided to finally leave.

They pick me up and we set off, only to see that same galleon chasing us. We move towards our next skeleton captain island to get another bounty, drop CS off to handle it why we try and lose them in a storm.... bad idea, as holes were springing up like mad. We patched up and were able to get out of the storm, only to see them still pursuing us. Luckily, CS was ready for pick up and we got him just in time for the fight.

The galleon approached and we lined up perfect so that all four of us begin pelting them from long distance. Over and over, the music rang out to signify a hit. It was cacophanous. We sunk them, killed the stragglers trying to board our boat and took off.

As we reached a rare message in a bottle mission, we noticed a galleon in the distance..... And another... we stop, make sure our lights are off and we don't use spyglasses that glint in the light.

Instead of them coming after us, they decide to fight each other. The guys we sunk mistook a different galleon for us and they races off into the distance to fight.

As we fought gold skeletons stop the island peak, I died and in the ferry of the damned, I see a crew of 4 dead there as well. They started yelling obscenities for us killing them and I was like. "HUH?! I didn't kill you guys. I'm a solo sloop out in golden sands (an outpost far away from where we are.)" They didn't believe me at first but I convinced them and they rushed off, obviously going to hunt me. They were off our trail.

We got our loot and rushed to turn it in, a mission well done. Everyone was eager to spend their gold, acting like a bunch of dandies, looking for what matched with their outfits. We danced and drank at the campfire at the outpost and decided to say goodbye, smash our ship on rocks and play sad music.. only for our ship to NOT SINK! We try again... And again... And FINALLY our ship begins to sink. We stood on the crows nest together as the inky black took us. We embraced in fear of what was to come as we slowly drowned! As brothers!!!! It was hilarious. Best game ever.

[Sload Soap]

Had a good long play of this today. Spent a few hours with two buddies manning a galleon and doing some early delivery missions, then spent some time on the ocean by myself on a sloop. The game is definitely more fun in a group but that's to be expected. I'll just quickly break down what I do and don't like so far.

- I love the art direction. The game is both really good looking while also not being taxing on the hardware. It feels like old Rare in that way and is really endearing. I also like little touches like playing songs to calm snakes, the feel of the wind hitting your sails at full mast and the way you can see storms raging off in the distance. Presentation is high.

- The game is full of emergent possibilities. We've seen some stories from Bogus but everyone is going to have one, probably very silly. For example my day started with a chicken hunt as we wanted a ship mascot. We were sailing by an island, one friend on the wheel, me at the sails, when we hear the bell ring furiously followed by cannonfire. Thinking we were under attack we quickly hitched the sails, dropped anchor, manned the cannons and waited. There was no further cannonfire. Then my other friend comes up onto the deck and triumphantly drops a caged golden chicken at our feet. He then notices he'd been on mute and explains that he'd spotted said bird from the crows nest, rang what he called the "justice bell" and fired himself over. The chicken was called Dave and it was not for sale UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. Course all this farting around had lead to us being spotted by another galleon which appeared to be heading straight for us. Feeling too noobish to fight we fled into a storm, which both we (and Dave) barely escaped.

- The ships themselves are pretty damn cool. While it's a shame they are somewhat disposable the feeling of getting you and a few other guys and girls working in tandem is great. Reminds me of a less violent Guns of Icarus. I like how they control as well, just arcadey enough to be fun also realistic enough that it doesn't feel like you're just pointing the boat where you want it to go.

So that's the good. The bad is pretty simple and something a lot of games of this nature suffer from: what'll keep me playing? The missions are very cookie cutter fetch quests and while there is the possibility of something or somebody throwing a spanner in your works, a lot of my time today was spent as downtime, sitting on the deck of my boat heading for the next item to check off a list. I am still very early on though so won't claim that there is nothing else to do but there needs to be some variation on the horizon. I also don't think on foot combat is too good and was a bit annoyed I had to choose from a pre-generated character instead of making my own.

So yeah, it's cool so far. I'll be able to give it a decent amount of time this week as I'm off work and I'm looking forward to it.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I totally understand the concern about, "what will keep me playing." So, outside of the three different faction quest styles, there are reasons to explore islands by themselves. Treasure and challenge quests can be found on islands, as well as a variety of relics that can be sold (the relics are a thing i just came across.) People like to think that the islands are all the same, but they do provide a ton of variety. In my last session we stopped on a very small island that had a shipwreck jutting out from under the sea. What you don't realize is that there is a deep underwater cave filled with coral and the rest of the shipwreck down there. Something you wouldn't notice unless you dove down.

Also, I have said before that there are varieties of skeleton types that use strategy to overcome them during the higher order of souls quests.

You also have the skeleton fort raids which lead to a ton of treasure and let's not forget the kraken!

The truth is, what brings a player back is the adventures you create for yourself. The developers give you all of these tools for mischief and fun and that emergent gameplay is the key.

Rare has already said that world events will happen (some of which I have tested but can't talk about) and there will be islands that sink or emerge from the seas. As well as events that players will participate in that will change the world itself (think the splatfests from splatoon, but pirates).

Even now there is the LEGENDARY STATUS!!!!!! Which is getting max rank in the game with the three factions and getting access to a super secret pirate hideout where the dreaded pirate Lord is who will give you legendary quests and your own personal hideout, a unique ship (or ship bling... not entirely sure) and the title of legendary pirate.

Their plans for the game is a progressive experience that morphs and changes as they are content. 3 months from now is the next big update which will include a ton of new features and content (according to rare). They have been very transparent about what they intend for the game and it is worth watching their development videos to get insight into the game itself.

For me... this is a game I will play for life. No question. Nothing has captivated me ever, quite like this and my fandom for it escalates above shenmue and myst for me. It is that intense. Gonna be doing another quiet stream tonight as well if any wanna watch. Probably in a half hour or so.

[noiseredux]

That's some serious high praise.