During the closed beta for Sea of Thieves some gamers discovered a technique to abuse the sport’s brig mechanic. Developers Rare supposed it as a means for a ship’s crew to vote a disruptive participant right into a cell beneath deck. But the closed beta noticed groups of three mates voting a random participant who joined them into the brig simply in order that they didn’t must share their ship with another person.
Here’s some more we know about Sea of Thieves thanks to dataminers.
“In the closed beta, the brig is being abused because three players want to play together and a fourth player will join,” design director Mike Chapman explains. “So, for launch, we will allow you to play [with just] three-players on the galleon.”
Originally, the brig was supposed to lock up the trolls, not for use by them. It was launched as a sublime technique to cope with a problematic participant in-game.
“With the brig, the idea was not to do the obvious that you see in so many games – you vote to kick someone,” Chapman says. “You go back to the menu and you see why you’ve been kicked. I think it’s fair to say that, for a troll, that’s like the ultimate reward, like ‘I’ve done it, I’ve annoyed them so much that they’ve had to kick me’. The idea of the brig was to shift the power to the people who have been griefed.”
A unanimous vote will ship a disruptive participant beneath deck to chill off, however the different gamers can then punish this participant additional by selecting to work together with them as they’re trapped within the cell.
“The only way you can get out is if we agree to let you out,” Chapman continues. “We can come downstairs and be sick on you, we can play instruments around you, we can taunt you. You might try convince us to let you out, but the majority of the crew has to agree to let you out. The only way you can escape if they don’t let you out is, you have to press start, you have to manually quit the game. It’s a psychological shift. Effectively, you are killing yourself to escape prison. That was something very deliberate – to make you feel bad when you do it.”
For now, solo gamers are higher off taking management of a small ship, fairly than becoming a member of a crew of randoms. If you do select to affix a big galleon as a solo participant, you’ll nonetheless be on the mercy of the remainder of your crew, sadly. Hopefully those that play as a group of three will select the brand new three-person crew possibility, as a substitute of locking a random fourth participant within the brig instantly.
“The risk with a [report function] is that it can always be gamed,” Chapman says. “It’s a situation like, do we take 50% of a player’s earnings? You get all these kind of abstract punishments. As much as possible, we’re trying to put the power in the players’ hands. There’s always going to be these things that are a risk with random matchmaking.”
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