Just days away from the start of Sea of Thieves’ stealth-focused season 14, developerRare has yanked nearly all its new features – including the ability to crouch and don disguises – acknowledging “significant issues” arising from their addition to the game.
Uncommon had already been forced to disable numerous original features before the end of Season 14 (i.e. the ability to set traps and stay off ledges) due to balance concerns and a “high-impact issue in the player” discovered during a final round of testing. As such, its decision to now remove crouching and cloaking is only a negligible fraction of the announced features of Season 14 that are now available to players.
Speaking in a video update detailing the “drastic steps” recently taken, Sea of Thieves production director Drew Stevens explained that the arrival of crouching had “introduced several knock-on effects to the broader experience.” “. More specifically, it managed to reverse numerous PvP exploits that Uncommon has attempted to remove so far, including the ability for players to modify weapons faster than intended and control their quick actions closer to canon’s devastating ones. Uncommon has also known an invincibility exploit.
“We are really unhappy with the quality of the Season 14 release,” Stevens said in his video update, adding that Uncommon is “taking this situation very seriously.” He went on to explain that the studio’s first priority is to “stabilize” the player experience, and will begin re-enabling features as soon as it is “confident they meet our quality standard.”
Crouching and cloaking have been temporarily disabled during limb maintenance in the past lately and the hope is to bring them back as part of a hot drug focused on “high-impact problems” slated for the next generation. Stevens said that rather than rushing to let it go and “make things even worse,” Uncommon wants to ensure that the hot medicine of the next era brings “significant” improvements and is given “the necessary time.” [in] internal quality assurance.
As for traps and ledge placement, the studio hopes to re-enable them as part of its monthly update scheduled for November, which also promises “more fixes, improvements, and balance changes.” In this update, Uncommon will be testing a seamless behind-the-scenes procedure that is supposed to provide “more time and focus for our internal testing” and allow for “additional hardening” with Insiders. If all goes well, all commendations, rewards, and achievements related to the currently disabled features should also return.
“We all understand how frustrating this has been,” Stevens insisted. “I know I’ve talked about it before, and I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it, but we know we have to do better here, and season 14 has suffered from a lack of quality control… Us.” “We will be all hands on deck over the next few releases to regain control of the quality of the game.”
Following recent changes, the only key additions from Season 14 that are still enabled today are the Grapple Gun and the Flawless Dart Weapon. And as for what’s coming for Sea of Thieves, beyond the stable reintroduction of those currently lacking options, Uncommon hasn’t said yet. Season 14 marks the end of the 2024 release roadmap it shared in March, so the studio may not be able to share any major velocity plans until the generation is over.
