Rare relieves how Sea of Thieves map works and more

Rare has revealed more info about Sea of Thieve’s map and more

Sea of Thieves might not have been developed by a massive triple-A developer with millions and millions of Dollars for the budget but the world size is pretty big. Every game has the same map size all of the time it doesn’t matter if there are fifty people playing online or two people but Sea of Thieve’s map is going to be very different then traditional video game maps.

In an interview with Windows Central Rare’s Executive Producer Joe Neate revealed interesting info about the game’s map size. Neate said, “In other games, you see developers bolting on new pieces as time goes on, but for us, the world size is intrinsic to the number of ships you see. It’s less about how physically big the world is, and more about the frequency of encounters. We have an exact ratio or metric on how many islands there needs to be, how many outposts there needs to be, to guarantee that average 15 minute to 30-minute ship encounter time. That’s something we’re iterating upon in the technical alpha.” This is a very interesting way to determine the world size. To make an online match interesting players have to be able to meet other players in a short amount of time. In game’s such as Battlefield with big multiplayer maps player numbers have to be very high so the game is fun. It there is less than 20 people in a game of Battlefield 1 player encounter would be very low. 

Rare also revealed that when the game is released they will look into increasing the number of ships per world and increasing map size. Rare said, “There are currently three subtly different biomes in the game right now, Shores of Plenty, Ancient Isles, and The Wilds – we don’t mark them on the map – but one’s more ancient civilization, one’s more Maldivian white sands, one’s more dark and oppressive. I’m sure beyond launch we’re going to expand the size of the map, as we grow. We’ll look at increasing ship numbers per world.” On paper these things that Rare revealed sound very fun but we have to see what it will be like in the final game when it is released. Rare says that right now they think this will be a good system for the launch. Rare also said, “We’ve got a lot more island designs waiting in the wings… and we’ve been considering when to build and add those in.” In online games repetition is a big problem but some developers such as Rockstar have been able to get players coming back to GTA Online with new content coming out every few weeks.

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Technology, Video Games, Rare, Sea of Thieves, Gameplay

Ali F
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