Rare Reveals they Removed Friendly Fire for Sea of Thieves Because of Too Much "Subterfuge"

In an interview with AusGamers, Rare's Gregg Mayles and Joe Neate revealed they had to set up a series of rules to stop cooperative teams from killing one another in order to steal each other's treasure.

"Initially we, somewhat naively, allowed players to do absolutely anything, we just said “right, you’re pirates [so] you should be able to do anything”,” Gregg explains. “And for a while it was great -- crews would operate and sail together, they’d get to an island, dig up some treasure and then they’d shoot each other. So almost 100% of the game was ending with crewmates shooting each other, and these people knew each other, it was the dev team working together; all friends outside of work, but as soon as they got some treasure they were trying to work out ways to take out their own crew to take their treasure.”

[Shubhendu_Singh]

So...No mutiny ? No walking on the plank judgment ?

Arrghhh...PreOrdered Cancelled matey.

lol jkjk, easily the most exciting MS IP for me. Can't wait. (will wait though)

[freshslicepizza]

“Some people will just want quests,” Neate says. “You know, “I just want to go and do this and be able to achieve something, and then come back and spend my loot on upgrading my ship”, or something.

“Some people will just want the social side. Get on a boat with loads of booze and loads of instruments and just [make] a party boat -- just sailing around and being stupid and having fun.

“Other people will just want to get into their ship, then find another ship and sink it. And that’s cool too.”

looks good and nice to know you can play it in many styles.

[NeverEver]

Pretty clickbait title, if you actually read the full article it says they tried taking it out but decided on giving more social rewards for not turning on each other instead of removing friendly fire altogether.

[billythepunk]

No, they did take it out. I was one who interviewed them. They just knew they couldn't take one element away without replacing it with something else.

[Dasteru]

Just create a reputation system. All players have a reputation based on their social behavior, that can be viewed by all other players. If someone is known to regularly kill their teammates, then nobody will invite them to their crew. Bad players would be stuck playing the game solo.