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[PC] [ONE] Sea of Thieves

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[PC] [ONE] Sea of Thieves

Unread postby Sparkster » 15 Jun 2015 20:54

http://www.seaofthieves.com/

Sea-of-Thieves-Ann-Init.jpg
Sea-of-Thieves-Ann-Init.jpg (83.46 KiB) Viewed 10375 times


Rare wrote:Be the pirate you want – With musket loaded and grog in hand, the freedom of the pirate life awaits. What will your legend be?

An epic multiplayer adventure – Crew up and set sail on memorable voyages. Make and break your pirate’s code on the Sea of Thieves.

A treacherous shared world – Plot your course and set sail for hidden riches. Navigate the perils of a fantastical world and the danger of rival crews.


E3 Announce Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z48qvGsA_0
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Unread postby ChevRage » 25 Jul 2020 20:39

Sea of Thieves with ChevRage, schadenfreude, Some guy and Beakman: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/690239887

So I played this game with some of the clan-mates, and damn, the ship mechanics are pretty awesome! I haven't played much of Atlas to compare the naval combat, but some aspects of ship operation are a little more in-depth and immersive here than in that game. First of all, there's no third person view, so you need help from the other hands on deck to make sure that you're going in the correct direction. After all, standing by the wheel doesn't offer the best visibility with all the sails, masts, and other stuff in the way. The only map of the world is down in the lower deck of your ship, and others can watch on as it is being operated, kinda like a TV screen. To operate the sails you have to go to the appropriate ropes leading from the mast to the sides of the ship, and without somebody helping you, they furl up and rotate somewhat slowly. And this is just a few things that are better via direct comparison. I can't really compare much though since I haven't done much in Atlas.

On the other hand, you only have a couple of ship types available to you. You can't upgrade them in any way, beyond maybe finding a rowboat and attaching it to the aft. The wiki might say that there's a choice of 3 ships, but all that really turned out to be was a party size selection. Select the Sloop if you're going to play with another friend or by yourself, the Brigantine for 3 players, and the Galleon for 4 players. And you pretty much get it immediately decked out, with some essential resources on-board like food, cannonballs, and boards for repair. As far as I can tell you can't upgrade it in any way but cosmetically. Losing a ship means little outside of losing your current unsold loot, since you ALWAYS have a ship available to you. You just get one back at a port for nothing essentially. And it's like it stops existing when you log out of the game. Hell even dying allows you to keep your inventory.

The majority of the quests we did so far were minor repetitive stuff, like go to this island and find a chest, or go to this island and kill some skeletons. There are a handful of factions in the hub ports of the game, and it seems like doing their quests levels up your reputation with them (which seems to unlock harder quests the more levels you have with them, so maybe the harder quests are more interesting). And we were tripping over bottles of sand and treasure chest maps and such all over the place so it didn't seem like that stuff was rare at all. But getting money seems kinda lame in this game since the only thing you can use it on is cosmetics. Sure it's nice to cover up your ugly character as best as possible, but not being able to buy anything functionally different to what you already start out with is lame as hell.

Now aside from those, there are the longer types of quests which are called Tall Tales, they were significantly more interesting since you have to follow more complex steps in order to accomplish them. They seem to be the closest this game has to a campaign, so you probably want to play this game with the same group of people each time considering the length of time it takes to complete them. We only completed step 1 of like 7 or so of just the first quest during our entire time playing, and there's quite a few of them.

We didn't really do much ship vs ship combat, but we did attempt to take one on once. Didn't end too well for us though: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/690473024. There were also some sea monsters that we didn't engage, but they looked cool too.

And the game looks beautiful really, aside from the characters of course. The water is insane how good it looks, and it's not even limited to just the waves. The way the water pours into the cracks of the decking from random splashes looks unreal. I'd definitely be up for more of this if schadenfreude, Some guy and Beakman are up for another session some time.

Also, here's a few tips:

  • There's a 20 minute tutorial at the start of the game called "The Maiden Voyage", once you complete it and get some text in the top left corner saying "you are now playing with other players" or something, quit and go back out to the main menu, THEN you can start an adventure, and invite up to 3 friends. If you don't quit, you'll have just the Sloop as a ship, and won't be able to invite more than a single friend to join you.
  • The Tall Tales quests I was talking about are started in the tavern where you get dumped after the tutorial.
  • Try using the in-game voice chat over Discord. I'm sure it's much more immersive that way. It might give other players an advantage over you, but I think if I were to play again I'd like to try it out and see how it goes. Even when we saw other players' ships in the distance we didn't really interact with them at all.
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Unread postby ChevRage » 25 Jul 2020 20:47

From Discord:

CULT|Archonus
Those npcs that help you back on the ship are pretty cool. I wonder if mermaids in Atlas do anything cool like that

CULT|ChevRage
They're useful, but they kinda casualise the game a little bit. When I jumped off the ship like a retard I shouldn't have been able to get back on imo.

CULT|Archonus
Yeah, you're right, maybe if they pulled you along faster so you at least have a chance of getting back onto a moving ship instead of just teleporting you there magically. But being able to do it at all is pretty casual

CULT|ChevRage
What is pretty cool is that you can launch yourself onto an enemy ship using those cannons. You just get into the barrel lol

CULT|Archonus
lol, Zelda Wind Waker style
they used a catapult tho
I wish dolphins could help you swim faster in Atlas, I feel like they might as well since there's also sharks and other things that want to kill you, why not have creatures that can aid you as well, just like on land?
You can turn an option on to ride them in an unofficial server i believe

CULT|ChevRage
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/690239887?t=2h2m00s
a link to the exact time I use the cannon lol
Also, looking back on it we totally should have used the in-game proximity voice instead of Discord...(edited)

CULT|Archonus
That is so cool!

CULT|icycalm
I don't think the Sea of Thieves sinking looks significantly better than the Atlas ones
schaden probably hasn't been on a good Atlas sinking

CULT|Archonus
Trying to save a ship from sinking with buckets and hammers is a pretty cool experience too

CULT|icycalm
I think Sea of Thieves has that too

CULT|ChevRage
Yeah it does

CULT|icycalm
Not sure how they compare in complexity
It's important that whoever makes comparisons has tried the same aspect to the same extent in both games, otherwise people are just talking out of their ass

CULT|ChevRage
In SoT all you need to fix a leak is a board, and there are no tools. In Atlas, you need the tool and the materials, of which there are a couple of types, and I think the amount of each is even dependant on what part of the ship you are fixing.(edited)
Oh there's the bucket in SoT too, but that's for the water already in the ship

CULT|icycalm
That's what the bucket is for in Atlas too
Not sure why else you'd need a bucket

CULT|Archonus
You can collect milk from cows with them, but that's obviously beside the point lol

CULT|Beakman
Sailing is, I think, just a bit more involved in SoT than in Atlas and definitely more immersive. You have a rope to rise or lower the sail, and another one to turn it. The mechanic of setting your sails to catch the wind is much better. You see wind gusts when you turn your head up and you use their direction to set the sails. You don't have some HUD abstraction to do it like in Atlas.
When the characters are handling the ropes, they have an animation of them using ropes (the ropes that are supposed to be in their hands are immaterial, sadly).(edited)
The steering wheel usage is also more realistic. The wheel itself was more degrees of turning.

CULT|icycalm
Considering the SoT dev has 300 people making a much smaller game, compared to 50 for Atlas making a monstrously more complex game, I am disappointed by how few the improvements are in the sailing

CULT|Archonus
Holy shit, that's a huge difference.
Man, if only Atlas had 300 people working on it...

CULT|icycalm
Even then you can't really say the sailing is better when Atlas has galleons that can hold 50 people lol
50 people actually needed to fully sail the ship and fight to the full
Meanwhile SoT has more cannons on deck than people to fire them...

CULT|Archonus
And no NPCs to man them, right?

CULT|icycalm
I guess so
Can you even destroy the SoT ship by sailing in shallow water?

CULT|ChevRage
lol no
Your ship just slides off the island (even if you ram it at full speed, I'm assuming)
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