Sea Of Thieves' New Mode Is Proving Popular For Avoiding 'Toxic' Players

Because safer seas is so limited I won’t play. Just let me have the full PVE experience. I get that the point of Sea of Thieves are the thieves.. but I have limited game time, so I can’t lose progress so my game time is a waste of time at the end of the day.

I’ll likely jump in as well @themightyant as I tried GTA online and it was so bad I havent touched a PvP since. My favorite…Amped 2, had so much fun just crushing trick lines with people from all over the world on the OG Xbox

It's a bittersweet addition to the game. It does give players something they have been begging for for over five years, however they really took a sledgehammer to the experience. They take away so much content that we have aquired over those five years if you choose to play on the safer seas. Reducing gold and experience earned to 30% of the normal take was fine. There should be a reward penalty for eliminating the pvp risk. If that was all you lost, it would have been a perfect addition to a game this late in its lifespan. But they removed so much more. I expect it was much easier to eliminate stuff than it would be to enable it on one crew servers. Taking away captaincy and the sovereigns eliminates most quality of life changes the game has implemented over the years. Losing world events, Athena faction, Mechant commodities, etc,. was all just too much. I've spent a ton of money on this game. I used to love buying ship sets and whatnot. Losing ship loadouts has eliminated that desire. Wish I could cash out my ancient coins.

I really like Sea of Thieves, I love the mechanics and even love the shared world experience.

However, sometimes there are things like the Tall Tales where I just want to get stuff done. I don't want to jump back because someone tucked on my ship and dumped a quest item overboard.

@themightyant Quick version. To a veteran player it's a deep cut of content that's removed, to new players its a way of staggering content so your not getting hit by 5 years of content updates all at the same time.

The idea is the "cut" stuff is basically endgame content, and I suspect intention is the exact effect it's having here keeping veterans on the high seas (public)

Might as well make a "safer seas" version of PUBG and Warzone too

I’d love it if it was a single player adventure. I can’t play this type of game.

I first played Sea of Thieves shortly after going into lockdown during the initial phases of the pandemic, and it became a mainstay diversion throughout. As many can tell from my comments here, I am a slow-paced casual-style-player type gamer, and just the exploration alone suited me perfectly. Obviously I was aware of the pvp nature of the game and the whole pirate theme, so the times somebody janked me didn't really bother me too much at first, but as more people started showing up during the pandemic and doing this, it became increasingly annoying and I eventually stopped playing altogether. Therefore, I for one, think Safer Seas was an absolutely brilliant addition for casual players such as myself, and it's been a blast revisiting again in spite of any reward deductions which never really mattered much to me anyway.

There is nothing worse than minding your own business trying to get the story content done and some jackwagon pulls up and sinks your ship.

I have said it once and I will say it again, if PvP is an option in a game, it becomes mandatory because multiplayer games have basically engrained "see other player, kill other player" into...well...everyone.

I miss the days when PvP really was optional and required mutual agreement to engage in PvP.

@themightyant Fair point with not knowing the SOT lingo does make my post rather incoherant to someone who hasn't played for years. @abe_hikura explains it rather well. To a new player.... safer seas will be fantastic. To a long term player just wanting to be able to chill out in the world they've played in for years.... the cuts to the content is almost a bridge too far. A lot of the "cooler" additions to the game, for example, "the Sovereigns" are a single quick sell point for all loot. In the old days.... you would have to physically run each piece of loot to the specific vendor that wanted that loot. So you'd carry all your chests to the gold horder vendor, and all your skulls to the order of souls vendor, etc. The Sovereigns were introduced in one of the later seasons where you could pull your ship to their special dock... and unload everything rapidly via harpoon. You could then sell all that loot at that one vendor. What once would take you 30 minutes to accomplish... you could now do in 30 seconds. Safer Seas took that away. Now you have to run all your loot back to those vendors. For what reason? The Sovereigns are not pvp content.... sure, you can argue that being able to sell loot quickly helps during a pvp session... but why take it away when all it would do is be useful in a pve session? It's a punitive move. Reducing the gold and xp payouts makes sense for balancing pvp/pve loot reward.... but taking away the easy way to sell loot was simply a way to punish those players wanting to play on safer seas. Rare never wanted PVE servers and finally.... after we begged long and loudly enough...they reluctantly gave us the bare minimum.

@GamingFan4Lyf Yup, press start, load game, complete and then maybe press the online button later. (Which I never did back in the day), but now it's all god dam integrated with every button click as soon as the game starts to load.

I think it’s absurd it’s gone this long without it, but it seems far too little too late, I wouldn’t try it unless it was the full experience.

I’m really not a fan of these pipe-dream PvPvE games, where the premise is built on the idea that people aren’t absolute hell to play with when in fact they are. My short time with SoT was downright miserable and I would have liked to play a Rare game in peace.

I hope they see how extremely popular it is and realize that group and solo content can exist equally. All games that have forced group content need to do this. If all content say in Destiny 2 could be played solo with no penalties I would have played the game for more than a few hours.

I realised that to keep toxic players at bay was necessary right from the start, because it's so easy to ruin hours of somebody else's life and his friends in this game.

I started playing when it was a beta so I have special titles and such and a friend (the one that only plays Sea of Thieves) helped me to get even better stuff playing together. There were no tutorials, no explanations at all, no maiden voyage, the UI was different and the content was sparse, but it was and is one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen and realistic as a pirate life. I only wished it got a 60fps update and then Series X came and made my wish came true. It's also one of the best games in Dolby Vision on OLED TVs.

The experience in Sea of Thieves is full of toxic players, liars that make you believe one thing and then stab you in the back. We suffered. Now, it's full of content, it separates controller players from mouse players. You don't know how quicker a mouse player can kill you in this game, it's like a laser against a tank turning 180°. That almost made me give the game up completely. It was so unfair and they didn't even care about the game. They were just trolling and ruining our session. No honour.

To separate keyboard/mouse players and controller players, to add a lot of free content, friendlier modes and online restrictions are the best things that have ever happened to Sea of Thieves and to its players. This game is much better with friends, but you can make friends in this game.

@taternuggets But you get all yours stuff back when you play the original mode, right? You only lose access to your stuff and the regular ratios while playing the safer mode?

I love sea of thieves. I have so many hilarious and fond memories playing with my friends and meeting people in the game. Love that they continued to support it and add on to the game. I played the closed beta and to see where it is now is amazing. I’m glad they give new stuff to old and new players.

Funny how people are only just now starting to enjoy playing the game now that they aren't forced to play it online with randoms. Says everything really.

As someone who still plays Age of Empires 2 by themselves against AI despite everyone telling me multiplayer is where the fun is, I can see myself enjoying the safer seas experience...if only they didn't neuter it for whatever reason. Why can't people just play the game how they want to play it?

@everynowandben huh? Those games aren't even remotely comparable.

@fizban3332 In some, even many ways, yes, but they're all focused around PvP. Removing that element fundamentally changes what the game is and how you would play it.

It’s probably my favourite multiplayer game, an incredible experience when it all comes together, but we just don’t really have the time for it. It can easily take a couple of hours to get anything done, and that’s just too much for me these days. I’m very much a casual gamer, but people rocking up and stealing my stuff never really bothered me. I mean, it’s a pirate game! However safer seas seems like an excellent addition for those who want it, and we might even give it another go at some point.

This is now a game I’ll play and come back to, now and then. I always enjoyed playing it as a chill time, taking out skellies and finding treasure, just riding the seas. Then you’d find yourself being ambushed by a 4 player team and lose everything - once that happened enough times, I just stopped playing.

With Safer Seas, I can just play the game as single player, or with a friend, and just enjoy the content. Happy days.

man the word “toxic” has really lost its meaning over the years.

Game should launched with this period. If so, I'd still be playing today. Not sure about others, but there is nothing LESS fun than being ganked in a game 24/7. The dark zone in the division just another example of this NOT fun play mode.

@Ocat This is the biggest missed opportunity in online gaming. They are too focused on having people fight each other via PvP. I'm guessing perhaps that it is harder to find people to properly play PvE where things may take a group effort to beat content. But I truly believe when they find a better platform for people to play together gaming as a whole will benefit overall. This is the type of news I wanted to hear to try Sea of Thieves after hearing horror stories of people just trying to play the game and being trolled like the old kill steal, spawn camp, or whatever method some annoying veteran/more experienced players are using. They are likely just doing it for fun but not realizing how much they are hurting the game overall and how people will stop playing the game leading to the game not doing well enough to support it.

I may try this game now. I've absolutely no interest in pvp that isn't a fighting game.