Sea of Thieves' planned death fee will not be happening after all

While it like a well designed money sink with roots in immersion, people generally don't like giving their money away just like that. This is especially the case when the game in question doesn't have rewards that would incentivise players enough to keep grinding. Sea of Thieves is basically just a grind for cosmetics as it is and it appears the players don't want it to be slowed to a crawl, if it isn't already.

Captain of the Ferry of the Damned's death fee wasn't already implemented into the game and Rare were probably testing the waters with the announcement, in order to see how the player base will react. How the players reacted is evident by Rare's decision not to go through with the change.

Respawning also needs to be redone in PvP as players can just respawn and resupply their ship not far from where it was destroyed and re-engage the opposing pirates. Then the ones with the damaged ship get sunk, respawn at a nearby port and re-engage. This circular PvP combat can continue almost indefinitely, without a system in place to prevent it from happening.

Rare

Sea of Thieves

Joe Neate has also added that Rare are working on ''the top service issues to ensure everyone can play'' , referring to the and server overload issues the game is currently having. As Neate stated, this is Rare's top priority and they will be working on other feedback points afterwards.