Microsoft has officially announced that Rare's multiplayer pirate action game Sea of Thieves will feature cross-play between Xbox One and PC. The announcement came during today's Xbox Gamescom livestream, which included some new trailers, a few announcements, and concluded with the launch of Xbox One X pre-orders. But cross-play for Sea of Thieves story guide|Https://seaofthievesfans.com/ of Thieves could be the biggest surprise, with the game's closed technical alpha implementing the feature, effective immediat

Today Sea of Thieves Lead Designer Mike Chapman posted on the game's forums to give more details on how personal combat with flintlocks, blunderbusses and swords will actually work on Rare's upcoming shared world adventure g

But didn't it seem like Microsoft was protesting a little too much about just having too much other stuff to showcase to make time for VR? E3 2017 really brings out the gaming community's optimism, after all, and more than a few people thought Microsoft's strict no VR policy was a red herring for a big announcement to come during E3 week. Sadly, Microsoft was simply telling the truth about its intentions for E3 2017, and there was nary a rumor regarding Microsoft VR by the time the show floor had empt

This one comes with the caveat that nobody really expected Microsoft to have a VR presentation anyways, as the company had attempted to make it very clear that it had no intentions of focusing on Microsoft VR technology when it had a lot of games to show and a new console to finally unv

Other honorable mentions include the mention of mermaids being listed as enemies although they appear to be benevolent in the beta, and other fruits joining the banana as food available to players. The full list of data below also features new maps, landmark locations, NPCs and Shops that have not been seen bef

We’ve also gone a step further compared to most other experiences that have aim down sights, in that the default position when carrying a gun around is not held in an aiming stance from the hip. Instead, guns that are not being actively aimed have their barrels pointing upwards or close to the player’s body. The reason for this is that players have to take a specific action to aim the gun (and be seen to aim the gun), which makes it much clearer to determine the intent of other players: if you see them aiming at you, you know they are trying to line up a shot. Conversely, if you come across another crew in the world who seems more friendly and their guns are raised, the situation can feel less hostile. Ordinarily, in a typical shooter, even with aim down sights, the gun is held outwards and from the hip and other players automatically look more dea

"One of the things we’re very aware of is the need for the balancing to be right. After running some recent tests, we found that PC players were 4.5% more efficient at killing skeletons than Xbox players, and this feels close enough that it’s something we’ll continue to monitor. However, PvP between platforms, or more importantly device input, is the big focus point for us as a Design team, and already we’ve been working closely with the Game Experience team to change the way the guns work to be better balanced for cross play. We’ve put in a bunch of telemetry around this, and with the change to guns it’s made them feel tonally so much more fitting, as previously they felt more like laser weapons than ancient plundered-and-pillaged gunpowder-driven blunderbuss

One caveat should be considered with this data dive. The assets pulled are not officially announced, and could, therefore, be cut content or take on a much different role in the final game, especially when a beta is usually never the same version of the game that's released when a game is launc

What Redditor m4rx hauled in from their dive into the Sea of Thieves data was pretty interesting. While many of the assets have yet to be decrypted, it turns out some the elements found were also present in the Pirate Legend video released previously by Rare. But there's also quite a lot m

But perhaps it's this deliberate restriction that lends itself to some interesting interactions between players and novel use of player skills as a means at working better together. While the skill at merely turning a map around to show others sounds ridiculously basic, it’s a clever move in context. A means to build bridges between similarly-plucked team-mates and better incentivises Sea of Thieves’ core, principle lesson in working together. Granted the perk is proven moot when, upon agreeing on a particular voyage, you simply get handed the same maps in your inventory, but the physicality of such interactivity in-game is welcome regardless. When it comes to your ship, though, all hands are most certainly on deck. There are sails to align and angle; potential hazards to flag and shout out to the player steering the ship (whom, if the sails are set at full length can’t see where they’re steering, again a nice nudging toward better relationships)…and if worse comes to worse, leaks to repair should you collide. Or even worse, cries of "FRAME-RATE!" -- as I had to do when a teammate is barking compass directions but I have no means to control the stuttering performance -- when the game (on PC) decides to nose-dive from relatively stable 60FPS to, at its worst, the high-teens -- the most notable drops occurring mostly at sea, relatively afar from shore.