In this week’s Sea of Thieves developer update video, Executive Producer Joe Neate digs into the latest update for Rare’s high-seas sandbox and discusses the team’s battle plan for the game’s future development. This week’s update brought with it a few minor but meaningful changes to the game, including the addition of letters of recommendation for both the Sea Dogs and the Hunter’s Call trade companies, which will effectively allow players to spend doubloons to “kind of purchase progress within [them].”
The devs also made some improvements to the Shroudbreaker Tall Tale to provide slightly clearer directions at the start of the Tale, which should allow players to “get […] into the flow of the tall tale itself much sooner.” And last, but not least, the arena has received some matchmaking tweaks to ensure that players are matched up against different crews between each session instead of staying in the tavern and repeatedly playing against the same groups.
Neate also reminisces about the team’s time at E3 and details how the experience brought him back to the studio with a reinvigorated passion for the work ahead. Although the content updates for the game’s first year have been “a bit sporadic […] ’cause it’s all been about just throwing content in and getting updates out when [the devs] can,” Neate says, the team has discussed making some changes to the development process going forward that Neate says will “do a much better job of giving people a predictable, regular cadence of things to look forward to and new things to do” going forward. The devs aren’t ready to talk specifics yet, but Neate says that players will see the changes “starting to roll out over the next couple of months.”
