Rare's design director Mike Chapman has revealed that Sea of Thieves will have "tons of customisation at launch" and that even though the company will eventually introduce microtransactions, they're not the priority here. He also talked about the game's intentions on removing barriers between players and more.
Rare approached the task from a player-centric viewpoint, making sure that users are completely satisfied with their playing experience before ripping into their wallets, but did concede microtransactions are eventually coming. Indeed, what's the use of transactions if there's nothing worth "transacting" over.
With that in mind, the company left some serious development time reserved for addressing customer feedback. In a rare example of integrity in the industry, Chapman added that the game is built around a firm set of principles and that nothing monetary will ever be allowed to jeopardise the game.
Rare
Of course, every game needs a loser and Sea of Thieves is no different. However, seeing as how cosmetics isn't something you'll be able to change on the fly, there will be revenge stories as well, making the game an entirely different experience to today's hard skill based, grindey type of titles we've grown accustomed to.
Chapman reminded that Sea of Thieves will maintain solely cosmetic progression. This way, Chapman added, everyone gets to share the core game experience, unhindered by numbers as trivial as playing hours. If you want to show off though, you'll be getting your bling. Skill and power? No boy, you won't be getting your invincibility boots here, no sir.
"We want to remove barriers that stop players playing together", Chapman said. True, it would be very easy to disregard this as just some tree huggin' hippie talk but the proof is indeed in the pudding. The hippie kind of pudding. Okay, scratch that - that ended up sounding way too weird.
