The Perplexing Nature of Sea of Thieves’ PVP

I’m not sure that I’ve ever played a game as confusing as Sea of Thieves. It’s just such a baffling hodge-podge of ideas that constantly bounce off one another. What’s especially weird is that most of them seem like they should work well together. At least, on paper they do. However, the reality is that there is almost no cohesion to Sea of Thieves’ many constituent parts, and playing it in the most boring way possible is almost always the most effective way to get things done. I’m no game designer, but I’d hazard a guess that wasn’t the intent of the design team.

Before we go any further though, I think I need to provide some context. My partner picked up Sea of Thieves during the Steam Summer Sale. After watching her play for a bit, I decided to pick it up too. The core gameplay loop didn’t really look like my cup of tea, which I’m sure my regular readers already worked out, but it would give us a new game to play together. Plus, Valheim wasn’t in my usual wheelhouse, and I rather enjoyed our time together there so maybe Sea of Thieves could also win me over.

Now, back to my torrent of confusion.

The basis of Sea of Thieves design is fairly straightforward: kill other players, steal their shit, and sell it. It’s supposed to be a player versus player (PVP) experience at its heart. This makes sense – pirates were all about sailing around, blowing up ships, and selling the cargo for a profit. We may romanticize pirates now, but they were all absolute scumbags. Ergo, Sea of Thieves tries to facilitate that same sort of experience by providing a sandbox playground of thievery, and double crossing.

Except that’s not what happens.

I mean…the whole pirating thing might happen, but my 35 hours of playtime have provided a wildly different experience. The sailing, and the destroying of ships is there, but the whole bit about selling stolen cargo is completely absent.

See, in order for you to actually steal cargo from a ship you’ve sunk, the ship in question has to be carrying something to steal. To help facilitate this, developer Rare dotted the whole play area in Sea of Thieves with all sorts of things for players to collect. Buried treasure, bounties, and supply crates are everywhere. There are also quests, world events, and sea forts that award mountains of the aforementioned goodies to any players that complete them.

Ok – we’ve found our basic gameplay loop. Sail around collecting loot, and kill any other players on sight because they’ll be doing the same thing. If we win then we can loot their sunken corpses for extra treasure!

Except that’s not what happens. Quite the opposite happens actually.

While the core of Sea of Thieves seems like it should work, it fails to account for our pitiful monkey brains. Thousands of years of evolution have made most humans extremely risk averse. As a result, almost anyone with anything to lose will go out of their way to dodge a fight with other players. I have no short supply of anecdotes for times when we’ve sailed up to players as they were loading some cargo, only for them to immediately turn tail and run. And if we actually manage to catch them, the fight almost entirely revolves around the defending party trying to flee. There’s no incentive to stay when you don’t know how much cargo the other ship is carrying. It’s better to cashout what you have than risk everything for an unknown reward.

Conversely, if you were planning to go on a killing rampage, why would you do so while carrying cargo? That’s a huge liability, and our monkey brains don’t like loss so we’ll do everything in our power to prevent a loss. Therefore, you’re likely going to sell off all of your valuables before you go on the offensive. That way you maximize your potential payout, while having absolutely nothing at stake if you lose.

Are you seeing the problem here? One side holds all the risk, while the other has none. The result is a game that would more accurately describe itself by being called Sea of Cowards.

I’ve been on either side of this now across my time playing Sea of Thieves, and it doesn’t exactly make for a riveting experience. It’s just a lot of running. Or…sailing. You’re either sailing after someone, or from someone. In both cases it’s a wide stretch of nothing until the attacker relents, and finds something better to do.

Well, okay there IS a third thing that happens, which I can only describe as a murder hobo showdown. This is when 2 groups with nothing to lose engage in combat, and repeatedly kill each other. The first couple times this happened it was kind of entertaining, but the novelty has worn off as has my enthusiasm for this sort of engagement. I don’t necessarily need an incentive to be invested in a fight, but what’s the point when there aren’t any stakes? The combat is stiff, and lifeless like an MMO, so it isn’t fun enough to engage with combat for its own sake.

That’s why Sea of Thieves perplexes me. It’s a PVP game where you’re not actually encouraged to participate in PVP. Well, that’s not true – Sea of Thieves clearly wants players to engage with one another, but they forgot to take any human psychology into account when designing the game. There are no checks, and balances against playing Sea of Thieves like a coward, so players are free to play it in the most boring way possible. Or as rabid murder hobos. Take your pick.