This Ocean Ain’t Big Enough for the Six of Us
Online games require constant improvements, balancing, and tweaking. This is especially true for live-service games, like Sea of Thieves. Recently, the game was updated to allow more ships in a given server, but after player feedback, Rare decided to dial it back.
The change made earlier this month allowed a maximum of six different ships and sixteen players per server. While you may think that more ships may be more exciting, the result left a lot to be desired. After some quick math, having six ships and sixteen players in one server meant that each ship would have an average of 2.6 crew members.
Not only is this impractical gameplay-wise, but this messed the gameplay performance. Sure, the PC and Xbox Series X|S might be able to handle more ships, but Sea of Thieves also needs to be functional on Xbox One.
After overnight feedback we’ve lowered the ship count per server from six to five, while maintaining the cap of 16 players. This allows for a wider variety of ship sizes per server, and our matchmaking system will work to deliver this while we monitor impact on game performance.
— Sea of Thieves Info & Support (@SoT_Support) January 21, 2022
To smooth things out, Rare has dialed back the number of ships to a server from six to five. Up to sixteen players can still join a server though. This helps change the average number of crewmates per ship and the different kinds of ship they can man.
Four years after launch, Sea of Thieves still enjoys a respectable player count. You can bet that Rare will continue to add more content and support the game as they have been doing. Sea of Thieves is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
What kind of changes would you like to SEA in this game? Let us know in the comments below.
