As our Executive Producer, @JoeNineTee said in An Important Question for Joe and Gang, we’ve been talking about how best to respond to some of the big questions that we see on the forums. Fair to say, personal combat is an area that has lots of outstanding questions around how we’re planning to approach this in terms of the variety of weaponry and how this will feel to p

Delivering sword combat for a network game, especially as part of a first person experience, is particularly challenging. We’re busy prototyping sword combat to get it into exactly the right place before we add it to a build that some lucky players in the Insider Programme will get a chance to play and provide feedback on. We’ve tried a few different approaches and we’re getting closer to a solution we feel happy with. We know where it needs it sit in terms of the overall approach to combat, but we’re still keen resolve some remaining issues before its ready for a larger audience. As always, there will be much more to share in the fut

Noah: To think, the four of us were sailing around the ocean, looking for islands with treasure, avoiding rocks, all while other pirate crews were out there in the blue beyond just waiting to plunder us. The game doesn’t make traversing the most beautifully rendered ocean I’ve ever seen easy either: you need each crew member to be controlling a different part of the ship. Someone needs to steer, another needs to watch for land from the crow’s nest, someone can man the cannons, and someone has to patch up the inevitable holes in the s

Some prospective Sea of Thieves players may question the decision to include microtransactions, but Neate has an explanation for visit website the business model. “Ultimately I have to look at the reality of running a game-as-service as a business,” says the executive producer, adding that “My goal and everyone else’s goal here is to have as many people as possible working on this, and just keep giving people reasons to return, reasons to have fun. We have to run that like a business, you need revenue coming

The beta for Sea of Thieves happened recently, and to not many people’s surprise, dataminers got a hold of the game’s data. What perhaps was not expected is what they found hidden beneath the sea of c

We’ve also gone a step further compared to most other experiences that have aim down sights, in that the default position when carrying a gun around is not held in an aiming stance from the hip. Instead, guns that are not being actively aimed have their barrels pointing upwards or close to the player’s body. The reason for this is that players have to take a specific action to aim the gun (and be seen to aim the gun), which makes it much clearer to determine the intent of other players: if you see them aiming at you, you know they are trying to line up a shot. Conversely, if you come across another crew in the world who seems more friendly and their guns are raised, the situation can feel less hostile. Ordinarily, in a typical shooter, even with aim down sights, the gun is held outwards and from the hip and other players automatically look more dea

Ship customization seems to be another thing unearthed by the data-pirates. The files found seem to imply the ability to customize a ship’s cannons, capstan (pirate talk for ‘anchor holder’), livery, mast, and the captain’s wheel. There are additional sections as well, listed under ‘Ship misc’ is a harpoon

One caveat should be considered with this data dive. The assets pulled are not officially announced, and could, therefore, be cut content or take on a much different role in the final game, especially when a beta is usually never the same version of the game that’s released when a game is launc

When you think about pirate encounters from books or movies, you tend to think of dynamic encounters in which the crews start by selecting the right tool for the job, but then change their weaponry as the situation changes. We think about this scenario our game using the example of two ships meeting on the sea. In this example, the first thing that is likely to happen is for cannon balls to be exchanged when the ships come into range. Depending on how the crews decide to position the ships, this may lead to the ships getting close enough for players to use personal arms, such as flintlock pistols and the blunderbuss. With our approach to aim down sights, you’d see the some of the rival crew taking aim with their guns as the crews exchange shots between decks, while some players still continue to fire with the cannons. Following this, in the event of one of the crews boarding the other ship, they might then get the opportunity to get a single shot off while standing on the enemy deck, before then being forced into a reload…which is where swords come

Noah: We dug up the chest, fought off some skeletons with our muskets, and made our way back to the ship. Opening the chest would require us to sail to an outpost nearby: all the while remaining in danger from other pirates or the chest its