Why does the game keep getting worse with each update?

[Catpn Plnaet]

The game really hit peak immersion and emotional investment last year, but ever since then it's felt like investors planted their 26 year old business school graduate stepchildren into the company, forcefully making changes in the name of "streamlining".

The entire quest system feels so stale and soulless, like it's out of some bland annually rehashed AAA title. The experience of buying the quests and storing scrolls in your ship was a huge deal, emotionally, aesthetically, and experientially. The entire point of this game was the beautiful balance of user friendliness while having actions which make it feel deeply enveloping.

The menus are also now very modern in style and format - it is now not only *not* intuitive, but again very immersion breaking in the name of tasteless productionization of features in the name of "impact metrics'.

Why? :( SOT was doing so well for so long. What will we lose in the name of "efficiency" in the upcoming changes?

[Cpl. Spellguru]

Quests were moved from a quest shelf to a quest table 3 feet away, end of the world?

Jester awards directed here please.

[‣Jʌv‣]

i can't even play the game anymore as it says anticheat is not installed...
Omg they better fix this..

[SolutionS]

I think someone with a creative and passionate vision of how a game could be should download UE5 and make something we would all enjoy.

[Catpn Plnaet]

my qualm is with each update for the past several months, they remove one immersive feature in exchange for *checks notes* more realistic rain.

things dont always need to be modern and "realistic". That is the absolute antithesis of this art style and the mood/vibe/aesthetic of this game.

Not all improvements are bad, but they keep fighting the law of diminishing returns like they're venmo introducing emojis to payments

[Ty3 Dy3]

lol layers of layers of bad coding. #ForeverFixHitReg

[Ty3 Dy3]

Originally posted by Cpl. Spellguru:

Quests were moved from a quest shelf to a quest table 3 feet away, end of the world?

Jester awards directed here please.

Do it yourself cheepo. Here's one for you.

[󠀡󠀡Smitael]

yeah game has been going down hill ever since that disney trash was added. now they only dumb down everything to cator to casuals, who probably don't even stick around for very long.

[Kodokushi-chan (罪深い)]

+1

[Helix]

One thing that was done some time ago and that, to this day, I hate is that they streamlined the cosmetic shops
I could be misremembering the exact details, but I think when I started playing you had to go to different outposts and sea posts to get different skins, like I don't think you could buy the kraken and the ocean crawler set at every outpost, as an example
And I remember liking that because it gave me reasons to visit specific regions sometimes

[AccelExhilar]

Don't forget they removed the actually pirate themed "arena" PVP mode too replace it with strictly 1v1 "competitive" duel mode. A game about pirates, and we get... 1v1 duels... As the main PVP "mode". They should at minimum add 2v2, 3v3, mixed-ship asymmetric fights.

What would be better is a revamp of the emissary / reaper system that encourages people too participate in a more pirate-like way. All I see in my server instances is reaper's fighting other reapers 90% of the time. Newish players probably avoid the emissary system as it is since there's usually 3 reapers sailing around, and players with a ton of hours have no reason too play emissary, with the pvp cosmetics tied too hourglass duels, instead of the games original main PVP system, that just needs a few changes too make it appealing.