One of the central criticisms revolving around Sea of Thieves pertains to its lack of raw gameplay mechanics. Rare's "continuous delivery" approach should begin to fix the problem soon.
Rare's Sea of Thieves has been polarizing. While the game focuses on multiplayer mayhem at its core, players have been disappointed with the lack of cosmetics, enemies, and, well, things to do. I somehow I got the impression that Sea of Thieves would have more meat at launch, and I think the way Rare described the developmental process to me, in part, triggered some of those expectations.
In interviews with Rare at its headquarters in the UK, the studio described how the company would be able to manually toggle new features, tweak settings, and more on the fly, shipping rapid updates in the process. Certainly, since launch, we have seen a fair bit of tweaking. For now, the studio has been focusing on bug fixes and addressing some of the game's biggest annoyances, like small respawn distances.
Rare gave a presentation at GDC 2018 (Thanks, The Red Dragon) describing its processes for rapid updates, and how we should begin seeing more content hitting the game sooner rather than later.
"Continuous Delivery" is a developmental method that aims to maintain overall code integrity while developing new features. Each team will be responsible for a small batch of features, while everyone works on the same developmental pipeline.
Rare compares the complexity of a "traditional" development cycle to its own linear pipeline, where features are built and merged in parallel to the main code, rather than separated and merged later. Rare says this reduces code conflicts and costs, making the game more sustainable over time, and it allows for faster feedback from players.
Just this week, Sea of Thieves producer Joe Neate noted how the studio plans to alter its roadmap based on player feedback, with the aim of revealing future features as early as next week. The only reason Rare is able to adjust that roadmap so easily is due to the nature of Sea of Thieves' code, which was designed from day zero to be "modular" and more easily updated than some of the larger, more complicated online games. When I visited Rare, I noticed how every studio was set up with large monitors to inform the game's various teams of the current state of the code.
Rare notes in its presentation that it aims to release updates on a weekly basis, with the hope to refine its processes moving forward to increase velocity.
Whether Rare achieves its aims of speedy content updates remains to be seen, but at the very least, it looks as though we should get a glimpse of the future very soon.
Microsoft can't afford to scuttle its Sea of Thieves opportunity
The game is currently available at retailers for $59.99 or as part of the monthly $9.99 Xbox Game Pass subscription.