The rewards are basically from first to fifth. Joe: So there’s no reason to quit with 5 minutes remaining if you’re not in the first place. So even if you come last you get something. Shelley: Yeah, you get gold and reputation for whatever your position is. Shacknews: So even if you lose Arena, you still get rewards and gold? If you’ve only got half an hour, you can guarantee that you can play a match of Arena, come out with some rewards. So you get both: the on-demand version of the PVP, ship battle, and the competitive as well as the on-demand time-box experience. Whereas with Arena, you might not know how this session will play out but you know you’re going to play that 24 minute match and you know you’re guaranteed rewards at the end, because you get rewards for where you’ve placed. You might end up allying with someone and something else happens. You might see a skelly fort and you might end up taking on that. You might have a goal in mind but other things might happen. What we love about Adventure is that you don’t know, you don’t know how long your session is going to be because you don’t know what’s going to happen along the way. So with Arena, not only do you know what type of experience you’re going into. Shelley: We know there are players that love the ship combat who want a more on-demand version of that experience. Shacknews: There can be a division of players with those who just want to dig up treasure and those who want to do nothing but sink another player, even if it means they don’t get the treasure. We’re hoping that Arena can do that for the competitive side of Sea of Thieves. Kind of like how Adventure was a more accessible online multiplayer game – we saw it was a lot of people’s first multiplayer game and in some cases, players who thought they didn’t like multiplayer games found they enjoyed it in Sea of Thieves. It is competitive, but we’re hoping it’s a much more accessible competitive to a much broader audience. It takes the heart of everything that’s special about Sea of Thieves its silly sense of humour and its unique focus on not just one set of skills for a player. But it’s a Sea of Thieves version of a competitive mode. Shelley: It is a competitive mode – that is the heart of it. With Arena, are you looking at it as a way for people who really want a competitive mode? Shacknews: You were putting on the pressure! My hands were shaking – and that’s really quite cool. Shelley Preston: Just a Pirate Legend who’s won both matches. As part of that we would have shown you cooking, fishing, hunting for the Hunter’s Call, the harpoon, the expanded ship damage, and then we played the Arena. Joe Neate: We played Tall Tales to begin with, the first of nine quests that are coming in as part of the Tall Tale update for Adventure. Shacknews: So what have you been showing me today, what have I been able to play? The passion and dedication of the team at Rare is palpable and their commitment to Sea of Thieves and their community is unmatched. I didn’t think it was possible, but I walked away from the interview, and the day, even more excited about the future of Sea of Thieves than I already was. As part of the day-long event, I got to sit down with Senior Designer Shelley Preston and Executive Producer Joe “The Talent” Neate and pick their brains about the Anniversary Update, the future of Sea of Thieves, and everything in between. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance of getting to peek behind the curtain of one of my favorite games from 2018, and quite possibly one of my favorite games ever. In preparation for this major event, Shacknews was invited out to Rare’s studio in Birmingham in the United Kingdom to play parts of the update and to speak with the team. Sea of Thieves is celebrating its one year anniversary with a major update releasing on April 30, fittingly called the Anniversary Update.
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