Rare responds to Sea of Thieves player feedback

With Sea of Thieves now over a fortnight old, developer Rare has emerged from below deck to respond to community feedback. Executive producer Joe Neate has put together an official blog post to address several issues that have emerged since launch.

Some problems, like spawn-killing and complaints about ships respawning too close to attacking vessels, have relatively easy, quick fixes. Others require some more work and some investigation into the underlying causes. Abuse of the brig, where shipmates can vote people into an inescapable jail, is being seriously looked into before Rare updates matchmaking options and private sessions.

“A key change we are working on is to allow players to select whether they want their ship to be open to others being matchmade with them, or closed so that it’s invite-only,” says Neate in the blog post. “This will allow players to manage how many people they want on their ship, invite friends and decide whether or not to allow other players to join them. We hope this mitigates one of the key reasons for people misusing the brig. It also has the added benefit of allowing players to sail the galleon with a smaller crew if they desire, or the sloop with a larger crew. We’ve had a lot of feedback and requests for this so we’ll be very happy to deliver this functionality.”

Perhaps the biggest complaint about the game, however, comes down to the perceived lack of content. Rare is looking to release a video showcasing its upcoming content plan within the next week or so.

“We hear and understand that people are keen to understand what our plans are for updating Sea of Thieves, beyond the top experience fixes,” Neate says. “We are currently in the midst of adjusting our roadmap based on feedback we have received since launch, with a ton of planning meetings continuing through this week. We plan to release a video next week updating everyone on how we plan to evolve Sea of Thieves moving forward. We totally understand that people want to see this ASAP, but the critical thing here is to have the right plan that allows Sea of Thieves to grow in the right way.”