5 Improvements Sea of Thieves Needs to Fulfill its Potential

A More Fleshed Out Risk/Reward System

5 Improvements Sea of Thieves Needs to Fulfill its Potential

Even during the beta stages, it was obvious that Sea of Thieves had a few systems that were easily abused. The brig was a particular sticking point, but in the full release, the Scuttle Ship option really needs tweaking. Whenever a crew or pirate wants to quickly reset at the nearest outpost with a fresh ship, they simply have to scuttle it at no cost at all. It’s a handy tool for resetting your position if you get stuck in the game world, but players could also potentially abuse it when trying to follow other ships back to an outpost.

We don’t need a huge change here. Just charge a small amount of gold for each time you scuttle your ship. And while we’re on the topic of destroying ships, players should be given a small reward for destroying other player ships as well. Sea of Thieves is sorely lacking in the PvE and PvP department at the moment, and sooner or later, the game will just be filled with PVP players sinking each other’s ship for no reward at all once the PvE-centric players have gotten tired of the loot grind.

A Social Space

5 Improvements Sea of Thieves Needs to Fulfill its Potential

Sure, the outposts could be considered a social space. But at the moment, it’s basically a camping ground for players to ambush other crews and steal their loot. That’s perfectly fine, but it would still be nice to have a separate social space in the game where pirates could mingle with each other and even potentially find new recruits to form a crew.

There are talks of a new social hub being unlocked once a player achieves the status of Pirate Legend, but the road to becoming a Legend is extremely long and not everyone is going to make it. Sea of Thieves would benefit from some sort of social space akin to Destiny’s Tower, where players can interact freely and possibly befriend each other before setting sail. If Rare could add more NPCs or quests or other activities to the social space, even better.

More Enemy Types

5 Improvements Sea of Thieves Needs to Fulfill its Potential

There are literally only three enemy types in Sea of Thieves at the moment. We have skeletons (and recolored versions of them), the Kraken, and the sharks that spawn on you when you’re in deep waters. The combat system is already pretty lackluster in the game, and the poor enemy variety only exacerbates that issue when you’re just hacking away mindlessly during raids and island plunders.

Let’s get more mythical enemy types; hostile mermaids, sirens, and other tentacled beasts that live underwater. Let us be rewarded for taking down tough enemies like the Kraken. Even just a just a simple cosmetic item would give us a bit more of a sense of achievement, and it would act as an incentive to engage in these additional activities.

Better Faction Quests

5 Improvements Sea of Thieves Needs to Fulfill its Potential

As immersive as the sailing is in Sea of Thieves, the game suffers from an awful core gameplay loop. The three factions in the game have too little quest variety, and they all require you to travel to a random island and either dig up a chest, find an item, or kill a bunch of skeletons before returning to the outpost to get your gold reward. The fetch quests are all that’s available in the game right now, and it needs more if players are to continue grinding away at the PvE content.

As mentioned previously, if there’s not enough PvE content to keep players around, the PvP players aren’t going to find a lot of loot-heavy ships worth raiding. And if that sort of trend continues, it won’t be long before the size of the community suffers as a result.

Improved Ship Customization

5 Improvements Sea of Thieves Needs to Fulfill its Potential

Lastly, but certainly not least, better ship customization would go a long way towards making players feel like they have a unique identity within the game itself. While being able to create your own ship from scratch by choosing from pre-built parts might be too much of a stretch, why not give players the option to decorate their ships with cosmetic items?

The whole game is already centered around grinding for fashion and cosmetic items, so it only makes sense to go the extra mile and let players personalize their ships. And no, we’re not just talking about changing the sails and figurehead; we’re talking about personalizing the interior of the ship so it doesn’t look like every other sloop you see out there. Adding furniture and other items would help make a ship feel more like a personal hideout.

As it stands, Sea of Thieves is probably the most immersive pirate simulator game we’ve ever played, and it certainly has a lot of potential. But it’s not going to be able to maintain a strong player base for very long if we don’t get more substantial additions.