With the Pirates of the Caribbean update A Pirate’s Life, Sea of Thieves could attract heaps of newcomers – but the sheltered entry could make them miss out on the game’s true strength.
Everything is gone. For three hours I have sailed trade goods from one end of the game world to the other with my crew, beaten up dozens of skeleton pirates, sunk several ships, collected clues, dug up treasures – and now a single mistake costs us all our loot.
Because shortly before we can sell the object of desire, a “chest of legends”, to the “mysterious stranger” in the tavern, I am killed by an enemy player. And in my death throes I even see him walking the last three metres to the faction NPC and cashing in for our loot. I should scream, angrily throw the controller and swear bloody revenge. But I can’t help but applaud.
Now, if you’re clutching your heads and asking how anyone can even be happy about such a frustrating debacle, I can’t blame you. And that’s exactly where the core of the problem lies that developer Rare is currently getting itself into with the new story update “A Pirate’s Life”.
The free expansion for Sea of Thieves brings five new story chapters around Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” and is supposed to be the best possible entry point for new pirates with instanced story sequences and linear player guidance.
On the one hand, this is laudable and could give Sea of Thieves’ player numbers a huge boost in the long term – but it could just as easily backfire completely, because Jack Sparrow fans will be released into the game world with completely false expectations after the new story chapters.
The Sea of Thieves Deal
This sounds confusing at first, but let me explain. In Sea of Thieves, every time you start the game, you will randomly land on one of the game servers, either alone or with your crew. The open game world on these servers is always the same, but it is completely up to chance who sails with you across the sea. There is a maximum of six player ships per server. And they can be either peaceful traders, treasure hunters, bounty hunters or dangerous PvP reapers. But it is precisely this unpredictability that makes the game so appealing to me.
Because if you go on a treasure hunt solo or as a crew, you don’t know beforehand how things will turn out. Other ships come and go, alliances are forged and broken again, or dynamic events like a megalodon attack, skeleton galleons or the legendary Kraken ruin your plans.
The lesson I had to learn (much too late) is that in Sea of Thieves you always have to expect to lose everything again – because the game, other players or a combination of both were just that little bit more cunning than you.
When the players write the stories
It is only because of this ever-present risk that the loot has any value at all. If every treasure chest were immediately stored safely in your inventory, it would take away all excitement from the rest of the journey. But you always have to weigh up the costs and benefits: Would it be better to turn back immediately, sell the paltry junk at the outpost and thus earn little but at least some gold with certainty?
Or continue, risk more, tackle greater challenges, but become increasingly paranoid about other players in the process? Is that a sail on the horizon? Have they just spotted our prey and are heading straight for us?
The best example is the ambush from the article entry: I was just about to sell a particularly valuable chest for “Athena’s Blessing”. For the chest you could now – as we did – do all eight subtasks for hours to then get the coordinates for the chest at the end.
But it is just as legitimate to spy out which ship on the server is looking for such a chest and then secretly follow it. Then it is only a matter of finding out where the chest is being lifted in order to plan an ambush at the nearest outpost. One player hides in a barrel in the tavern and then shoots the confident chest carrier (me) on the last metres. Touché! Sure, it was annoying somewhere, but anyone who shows as much planning, patience and perfect timing as our counterparts deserves my appreciation.
The risk of the new update
But: Before it comes to such feelings of success, Sea of Thieves demands a bunch of hardships and patience. As a new player, you not only have to learn how to handle a pistol, sabre and rifle, but also how to steer a sailing ship efficiently, prioritise tasks and read your surroundings correctly.
So at first you will be robbed, sunk or both quite often – and with luck your opponents only want to destroy your loot and not your fun in the game. For every helpful or at least fair Sea of Thieves player, there are unfortunately at least as many who take pleasure in ruining the day for inexperienced newcomers.
Inexperienced newcomers, such as “A Pirate’s Life” will almost certainly drive onto the servers in droves – not least thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean licence. At least Rare has taken this into consideration and therefore moved most of the five new Tall Tale chapters to instanced areas that you can only enter with your own crew.
That’s smart in itself, but my one concern is the contrast between carefully staged story missions with set-pieces and heroic storytelling – and the first walking attempts of new players outside this safety zone. After all, those who are never confronted with risk and loss when sealed off from the rest of the server for eight to 12 hours could feel so blindsided by their first PvP defeat that they never play Sea of Thieves again.
My biggest concern, however, is not that newcomers will be flattened by veterans – after all, that happens in almost every game. I would feel much worse if “A Pirate’s Life” gave the impression that Sea of Thieves only offers completely staged story set-pieces like in a Disneyland ride.
Sure, there are already three other multi-part sea yarn campaigns and more to come. But its greatest strength, in my opinion, lies in the stories, which are created completely dynamically in the interplay of different player crews, events, AI characters and weather conditions every day anew.
Therefore, my appeal: As a newcomer, please play the new Tall Tales of “A Pirates Life” and enjoy the countless allusions to Pirates of the Caribbean and other pirate games. But please – even if it seems daunting at first – also try your hand at free play. I haven’t had so much fun in multiplayer for years and I hope you do too. And who knows: Maybe you’ll soon be sitting huddled in a barrel in a tavern somewhere, waiting for me to walk in the door with a fat chest, confident of victory. But this time I’m prepared …
