Sea of Thieves is better than ever for players old and new in 2024

After Skull and Bones did not scratch my pirate itch, I lately returned to an old, acquainted good friend. Sea of Thieves is crusing right into a new 12 months, with a new slate of content material deliberate. Rare has experimented with easy methods to replace and improve the pirate sandbox recreation since its launch in 2018. The recreation has additionally left the Microsoft ecosystem and might be obtainable to PlayStation players in April — which, of course, means there are loads of new pirates on the excessive seas for the primary time. That’s why now is perhaps the most effective time to get into Sea of Thieves, even for those who’ve by no means performed it earlier than.

Over the final 5 years, Rare has dabbled with varied varieties of updates, together with narrative content material, time-limited campaigns, and Fortnite-like crossovers with different pirate franchises, like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Curse of Monkey Island. But over 2024, after decreasing the barrier to entry for new players, Rare needs to deal with emergent and natural encounters.

Image: Rare/Xbox Game Studios

“There are a lot of people out there that, I think, are intrigued by Sea of Thieves,” says Mike Chapman, artistic director on Sea of Thieves, in a name to Polygon. “They hear the stories of the gameplay from that shared world and unique occurrences, but the one thing holding them back is they don’t have a crew to sail with.”

“The more players you’ve got from different places, the more variety of stories and encounters you’re going to have,” says Joe Neate, govt producer on Sea of Thieves, provides.

Expanding the attain of the sport is a very good treatment for the new participant downside — and the latest addition of the Safer Seas mode signifies that the cruel studying curve is sanded down. It removes the menace of different pirates, permitting somebody to select up the ins and outs of the sport with out being barraged by a sudden hail of cannonballs.

There’s a fragile balancing act between making Sea of Thieves totally secure in order that players can benefit from the narrative content material added to the sport, whereas additionally retaining the DayZ-like feeling of seeing one other participant and not figuring out whether or not they’re good friend or foe. Safer Seas is an awesome possibility for new players or mother and father with youngsters who don’t wish to take care of the chance of random strangers, and Rare intends to broaden on that avenue of play.

“One of the things we’re doing leading up to the PlayStation 5 release is bringing in something called Solo Seas,” says Neate. Solo Seas is at the moment slated to launch on March 14. “It’s still online because you’re connecting to servers, but you don’t need a multiplayer subscription to experience that. It’s another avenue to experience the game, potentially fall in love with it, and then graduate to Safer Seas or the shared world.”

Image: Rare/Xbox Game Studios

While Safer and Solo Seas provide interesting choices for conflict-averse players, Rare says the bulk of playtime is nonetheless being spent in the shared world. Over 2024, it intends to present players extra instruments to work together with one another and the world. Many on-line video games deal with increasing the sport world, introducing new areas and territories to discover. For instance, Rare added the Devil’s Roar, a lethal stretch of sea noticed with lively volcanoes, in 2018. But in any other case, the workforce has been dedicated to overhauling the core map slowly. Outposts have fallen and been rebuilt, new risks have emerged beneath the seas, and the world is considerably extra dense with tales, targets, and encounters.

Rare has additionally modified the sport’s pacing, which used to require a number of hours of dedication for a very satisfying expertise. I bear in mind operating round outposts and gathering up provides, loading them on the ship, and then setting out for 4 to 6 hours with buddies. There was loads of crusing between targets, managing the ship’s stock, and scheduling treasure drops at outposts. While it was positively enjoyable, it additionally required cautious scheduling and sufficient stamina to sit down and stare at a display that lengthy.

Image: Rare/Xbox Game Studios

Now, voyage time has been considerably reduce down, going from round 45 minutes to 10 minutes. “People can come into Sea of Thieves, understand more about what they need to do to progress, but also meaningfully feel like they’ve accomplished something within 10 minutes,” says Chapman. “I mean, emergent occurrences could come their way, and they could choose to opt into that, but the fact that you’re not thinking of Sea of Thieves as this multi-hour play experience every time you play really opens up the game to new players in a way we haven’t with our previous updates.”

When I first began Sea of Thieves, I jumped proper onto my ship, sailed to Snake Island, and died to snakes. Now, a new participant will get some extra tutorials to steer them by means of the primary few hours. It’s an enormous change, and one which makes the sport more easy to suggest to pals to allow them to encounter the bizarre and wild sandbox encounters that I like.

“This year is all about paying back to that sandbox,” says Neate. “I’d call it a classic Sea of Thieves year in terms of new tools for people that interact with all the different motivations and play styles. One of the words we’ve been using quite a lot is ‘mischief.’” Neate teased an upcoming merchandise known as the Horn of Fair Winds. What it really does is a thriller, however since winds are so important to chasing — or escaping — from one other ship, it looks like it’ll be excellent for enabling hijinx. Rare’s fixed refining and reiterations of its core content material are an enormous half of why I maintain returning to the sport, and I’m excited to see how the seas change over 2024.