A dark cloud hangs over Sea of Thieves developer, Rare over a feature which threw many players “overboard”
It has been a rather interesting few days for Sea of Thieves players. Since the game’s launch last week, the game has been plagued with a batch of maintenance dates which downtime ran as long as 3-4 hours. But it’s not the recent maintenance schedule that has landed Rare in a boiling cauldron, it’s a feature that developer, Rare had proposed that spanned massive outburst from the community.
Rare planned to implement a type of death tax for the game in which players will be fined a fee for dying. And we already know the plethora of ways one can die in the game which its probably one of the more imaginative aspects of the game. This was met with negative criticism which led to the developer reversing the decision to implement the feature. This proposal was first announced in a forum last week where Rare has quoted stating the background of the tax.
Rare proposed a death tax on players fro dying which was met with massive outcry. The developer had to shelf the feature indefinitely. Source: Brendon Jacobs/screenshot
Many have disagreed with the decision to penalise players for dying as some have commented how this was a form of micromanaging the in-game economy considering how difficult it is for a ‘matey’ to earn gold.
“Strongly disagree. This will absolutely destroy the game for newer players. As well as increase toxicity. I see people intentionally killing people in ways that cost the most money for the sole purpose of making them lose more. I think a better idea would be an increased respawn time if the death was more avoidable. This would punish people for being careless but not take their gold away which is ridiculous,” one poster commented.
Another poster wrote: “Death Cost is a bad idea. Personally I have fun randomly blowing up my teammates with gunpowder barrels. Death cost removes the ‘sandbox’ ‘make the world what you want’ type of feel. new players are going to see the biggest impact. Please don’t do this.”
Rare eventually clarified on the situation, revealing the developer’s true intention of the proposed feature on the thread.
“Please note, we never intended to charge players for PvP related deaths, as we understand the negative impact this would have on player experience.
“We understand that this addition to the release notes was a little confusing, and in the future we will ensure that any future updates we discuss give you a better understanding of how and why we’re implementing it. Sea of Thieves is constantly evolving, and any feature we will test, monitor data and listen to your feedback to ensure we’re making the right decisions.”
Well, ye mateys. You can still get consumed by the Kraken and keep ye gold…
