[2023] Season 10 - State of Play Update

Hey Everyone,

Following the launch of Season Ten on October 19th, I wanted to share a quick update on the current state of play and what we are doing to improve the player experience right now. You can reply directly in the forums here https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/post/1850474, but sharing details below;

Server Performance
Following the October update we've seen the wave of reports from players who have been impacted in some way by poor server performance. We can also see from player data a significant spike in servers underperforming since the recent update, with servers of over 15 players being the most affected.

As the server is the focal point for most systems, an underperforming server has a significant impact to those connected. Players are experiencing a further regression to hit registration, extended ping spikes, rubberbanding while moving and a general desync across the experience. I appreciate that Season Ten was communicated (by me no less!) to include a suite of improvements to player combat, and it's incredibly disappointing for us that the initial experience has felt like these either haven't been delivered or have regressed. While we can't rule out any bugs that may have surfaced when live, we are not going to focus on investigating or balancing these individual areas until we have performance back under control and can assess the state of play with player combat in clearer, more stable conditions.

The team are investigating the server performance issues and working on resolutions to return us to an acceptable level. However, while these fixes may take time, we recognise the need to prioritise the player experience right now. With this in mind we are going to stabilise the experience for everyone by temporarily limiting the maximum player count on all servers to 14, along with a temporary limit of five ships per server. This change will take effect on servers at the same time this post is shared.

The team are working hard to implement improvements to server performance and we will return to the intended six ship limit as soon as we have performance back under control.

Guilds
Following a successful launch of the many complex systems behind Guilds, the experience for most players is being incredibly well received.
The team are however working to resolve issues that have been raised over the weekend, with fixes to issues with the 42 Ship Limit and Guild ships being locked after Hourglass play being the key focus for the team.

Firing from Cannons
While not an issue strictly introduced in Season Ten, Octobers update did not bring a resolution to this frequently experienced issue where players fired from cannons would collide with the ship and flop into water. While this continues to affect players, the team are prioritising a fix for this issue.

Fortune's Favour and Reaper's Riches Commendation Progress
Players having made progress in these Commendations prior to Season Ten's launch will have found their progress appeared to have been wiped alongside the introduction of the new grade. However, no player progress has actually been lost here - and the team are working to restore players' progress.

We appreciate all of the bug reports and feedback provided over the last few days and understand that it's disappointing that many of our players are experiencing issues right now. The team are working hard to hit these priority areas alongside others to improve the experience for everyone as we continue through Season Ten, thank you all for your patience!

Drew 'Sonicbob' Stevens

Hey Everyone,

Following the launch of Season Ten on October 19th, I wanted to share a quick update on the current state of play and what we are doing to improve the player experience right now. You can reply directly in the forums here https://www.seaofthieves.com/community/forums/post/1850474, but sharing details below;

Server Performance
Following the October update we've seen the wave of reports from players who have been impacted in some way by poor server performance. We can also see from player data a significant spike in servers underperforming since the recent update, with servers of over 15 players being the most affected.

As the server is the focal point for most systems, an underperforming server has a significant impact to those connected. Players are experiencing a further regression to hit registration, extended ping spikes, rubberbanding while moving and a general desync across the experience. I appreciate that Season Ten was communicated (by me no less!) to include a suite of improvements to player combat, and it's incredibly disappointing for us that the initial experience has felt like these either haven't been delivered or have regressed. While we can't rule out any bugs that may have surfaced when live, we are not going to focus on investigating or balancing these individual areas until we have performance back under control and can assess the state of play with player combat in clearer, more stable conditions.

The team are investigating the server performance issues and working on resolutions to return us to an acceptable level. However, while these fixes may take time, we recognise the need to prioritise the player experience right now. With this in mind we are going to stabilise the experience for everyone by temporarily limiting the maximum player count on all servers to 14, along with a temporary limit of five ships per server. This change will take effect on servers at the same time this post is shared.

The team are working hard to implement improvements to server performance and we will return to the intended six ship limit as soon as we have performance back under control.

Guilds
Following a successful launch of the many complex systems behind Guilds, the experience for most players is being incredibly well received.
The team are however working to resolve issues that have been raised over the weekend, with fixes to issues with the 42 Ship Limit and Guild ships being locked after Hourglass play being the key focus for the team.

Firing from Cannons
While not an issue strictly introduced in Season Ten, Octobers update did not bring a resolution to this frequently experienced issue where players fired from cannons would collide with the ship and flop into water. While this continues to affect players, the team are prioritising a fix for this issue.

Fortune's Favour and Reaper's Riches Commendation Progress
Players having made progress in these Commendations prior to Season Ten's launch will have found their progress appeared to have been wiped alongside the introduction of the new grade. However, no player progress has actually been lost here - and the team are working to restore players' progress.

We appreciate all of the bug reports and feedback provided over the last few days and understand that it's disappointing that many of our players are experiencing issues right now. The team are working hard to hit these priority areas alongside others to improve the experience for everyone as we continue through Season Ten, thank you all for your patience!

Drew 'Sonicbob' Stevens