Sea of Thieves Review (Johnny Whoa)
This game is actually very fun. It's got a huge open world to explore and sail through, and if you can get in with some friends it can be a great time. Mechanically, the game is phenomenal and I'd love to sink hundreds of hours into it.
But the community is the worst I've seen since League of Legends. I imagine there has to be a tremendous overlap in the player base between them, because it's too depressing to consider that there are THIS many people who are THAT terrible to each other. I haven't been able to sail a single voyage in ages without having someone chase my ship for hours while screaming every slur they know into their awful $10 microphones.
I tried to love this game, I really did. Those few times I got to just play with my friends I had a great time. But there is no matchmaking - when you set out, you're up against anyone who might be playing. You can have 10 hours of player time to their thousand. It doesn't matter. And if you're not interested in the PVP aspect? Tough luck, there's no opting out. Most players don't bother with the world events or the voyages, it seems. They just sail around looking for someone who already gathered up their treasure and then chase them for hours. And that's not hyperbole - I've seen players get chased (and have frequently BEEN chased) from one side of the map all the way to the other. It shocks me that someone is still having fun with that, that someone is just THAT dedicated to ruining someone else's time that this is how they spend hours. There's no downside to this style of play, either. I imagine the game encourages it.
The sea monsters and AI ships are a lot of fun to fight, but they actually make the toxic community WORSE. If the kraken decides to wrap itself around your ship while someone's attacking you, you're just doomed. The AI will lock onto one target and utterly ignore anything else in the vicinity, usually leaving them free to, once again, scream all the naughty no-no words that their parents don't let them say when they're at home while you slowly die from the combined onslaught of a literal kraken and another player ship.
There's no way to coordinate joining a server with your friends' ships already on them to form an alliance together if you wanted to try to just play with friends, either. Rare seemingly attempted to fix this by coming up with community days and community weekends, where rewards were massively increased. This encourages teaming up with others on the server to maximize benefits across the board. This somehow seems to only make the toxic community WORSE. In the entirely of the last community day weekend, I was unable to speak with a single player. Most of them were just screaming - not even words, just screaming incoherently - into their mics while chasing/attacking any ship they could find.
The game also has a serious problem with hackers. I can't count the number of times I've seen someone board my ship and stand around getting blasted by shotguns and facetank all of it without moving. Supposedly the game has a report system, but it relies on an Xbox account and requires you to know the person's name. Most hackers I've seen have had incomprehensible names or are just literally nameless, not that it matters because I'M PLAYING ON STEAM AND DON'T USE AN XBOX ACCOUNT.
Maybe I just have the worst luck in the world. Maybe there are some decent people to play with out there. But I haven't found them, and I can no longer convince my friends this game is worth playing, so why would I bother playing it without them?
This is a great game utterly ruined by a terribly toxic community.