Rare has abandoned their plans to force players to pay Gold when they die in PvE scenarios, citing player feedback as the cause. Some players raised concerns over the recent announcement that Rare was planning to institute a death tax in Sea of Thieves and the developer has nixed the plan entirely.
Instead, Rare are shifting focus to creating ways for players to deal with griefing in the game. The ease at which players can continually attack the same players over and over again is a constant issue. And given the social nature of Sea of Thieves, it’s surprising that this issue wasn’t front and center sooner.
“Internally we are tracking sentiment and the top feedback issues on the game experience itself, and we are very aware of the topic of persistent player griefing (repeatedly being attacked by the same ships or players). We are discussing what short-term fixes we can make, and what slightly more involved fixes we will prioritise. We will share an update on this and the other top feedback points and our thoughts on them later this week.”
Other highlights from the Launch Status Update letter include:
- a new game client will be released today with a “wide array of fixes across our services, stability and game experience”. It is a full game update, not “just a patch”
- “We are very aware of the topic of persistent player griefing. We are discussing what short-term fixes we can make”.
- Player rewards being delayed is being addressed by the entire team with “all efforts being focused on addressing this ASAP”.
- Achievements being delayed – this is a work in progress with no ETA for now
- Peak time overcrowding – a series of fixes have been deployed and “broadly we feel we are on top of this now”
You can read the full status update on the Sea of Thieves site.
