Sea of Thieves has disabled its recently introduced stealth features due to a variety of issues that they have caused. The new mechanics, including disguises and crouching, launched as part of the latest Sea of Thieves season.

Sea of Thieves Season 14 kicked off on Thursday, October 17. Officially called Pirates of Mischief, this seasonal content drop introduced new achievements, tools, cosmetics, and stealth systems, among other content.

But some of these novelties have now been pulled from the game on Tuesday, October 22. Ahead of this move, Rare posted a video update in which Production Director Drew Stevens apologized to Sea of Thieves players for the fact that the new season's debut has been mired in technical issues. "We're really unhappy about the quality of Season 14's launch, and we're going to be taking some pretty drastic steps to get us back in control," the studio official said.

These drastic steps include disabling the stealth systems that debuted as part of Pirates of Mischief. These include disguises, crouching, traps, and the ability to hang from ledges. Based on early player feedback, Rare learned that crouching has caused a number of unintended consequences, like (re)introducing Sea of Thieves exploits such as quick switching and "air control from cannons." It also enabled an invincibility exploit, the studio official said. Rare hence opted to temporarily disable these mechanics to prevent their current implementations from impacting the community while it's working to address the newly reported issues.

We're really unhappy about the quality of Season 14's launch, and we're going to be taking some pretty drastic steps to get us back in control.

As for when this fix might come out, Stevens said that the developer is working on a patch that will eliminate multiple high-priority issues next week. Since Rare doesn't usually roll out Sea of Thieves updates over weekends, this stated time frame suggests the hotfix will most likely debut between October 28 and November 1. While the exact scope of the patch remains unclear, Stevens vowed that the update will introduce a "meaningful" number of changes.

Sea of Thieves fans' reactions to this turn of events appear to be somewhat polarized. While some players have taken to social media to say they appreciate Rare acknowledging the problems and apologizing, others said the company has done this same song and dance all too many times by releasing broken content and then saying it's sorry. Some of the more frustrated fans have started calling for Rare to take a step back and reconsider its approach to Sea of Thieves seasonal updates, arguing that its current development strategy just isn't working.

Posted: Oct 26, 2024 6:10 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://gamerant.com/sea-of-thieves-crouching-stealth-disabled-season-14-update-apology/