Rare launched Season 14 of Sea of Thieves last week, bringing a myriad of features focused on giving players more options to be stealthy and athletic in the pirate adventure experience. However, right before launch, it was revealed that two major features that were announced earlier were being disabled due to needing more testing. Now, right after launch, more features are being removed temporarily as Rare fights rising bugs.
Production Director Drew Stevens posted a developer vlog today to the official Sea of Thieves YouTube channel, saying that the team is seeing significant issues with Season 14.
"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," says Stevens. "Our first priority is stabilizing your experience in live, we'll then move to reenabling features once we're confident they meet our quality bar."
Following a short maintenance update today, October 22, Rare is disabling the new crouching and disguise effects that were added with Season 14 last week. The studio says that these were causing old exploits like quick switching, air control from cannons, and invincibility to return, and that it needs time to resolve the issues.
For those looking for a quick hotfix though, Rare had some bad news. After going through a stricter quality assurance phase, the team is planning to bring a larger update next week that will address major issues and hopefully re-enable crouching and disguises.
"We all understand how frustrating this Season's launch has been. The team are working hard to bring these features back, but crucially, with a heightened focus on the quality of the experience," adds Stevens. "Big changes to process are always going to take time, but we're going to be all hands on deck through the next releases to get back in control of game quality."
Another major update to Season 14 is planned for November, which is slated to bring the last-minute disabled traps and 'hanging from ledges' features to the sandbox, alongside further fixes and balance changes.
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