Sea of Thieves temporarily yanks nearly all its big new stealth features following "significant issues"
Diddly squat.
Just days after the launch of Sea of Thieves' stealth-focused Season 14, developer Rare has yanked nearly all its new features - including the ability to crouch and don disguises - acknowledging "significant issues" arising from their addition to the game.
Rare had already been forced to disable a number of flagship new features ahead of Seasons 14's launch last week - that is, the ability to lay traps and to hang from ledges - as a result of stability concerns and a "high player impact issue" discovered during a final round of testing. As such, its decision to now remove crouching and disguises means only a tiny fraction of Season 14's announced features are currently available to players.
Speaking in a video update detailing the "drastic steps" earlier today, Sea of Thieves production director Drew Stevens explained the arrival of crouching had "introduced a number of knock-on effects to the wider experience". More specifically, it had lead to the return of a number of PvP exploits Rare has previously tried to stamp out, including the ability for players to switch weapons faster than intended and to control their air movements after blasting from a canon. Rare has also identified an invincibility exploit.
"We're really unhappy about the quality of Season 14's launch", Stevens acknowledged in his video update, adding that Rare is "taking this situation very seriously". He went on to explain the studio's first priority is "stabilising" the player experience, and it'll begin re-enabling features once it's "confident they meet our quality bar".
Crouching and disguises were temporarily disabled during emergency maintenance earlier today and the hope is to bring them back as part of a hot fix targeting "high impact issues" scheduled for next week. Stevens said that rather than rushing its release and "compounding issues further", Rare wants to ensure next week's hot fix brings "meaningful" improvements and is given "the necessary time [in] internal quality assurance".
As for traps and ledge hanging, the studio hopes to re-enable them as part of its regularly scheduled monthly update in November, which also promises "further fixes, improvements, and balancing changes". This update will see Rare trialling a new process behind-the-scenes that's intended to provide "longer time and focus for our internal testing" and allow for "additional hardening" with Insiders. If everything goes to plan, all commendations, rewards, and achievements associated with the currently disabled features should also return.
"We all understand how frustrating this has been," Stevens continued. "I know I've spoken about it before, and I'm sure you're sick of hearing it, but we know we need to do better here, and Season 14 has suffered from a lack of quality control... We're going to be all hands on deck through the next releases to get back in control of game quality".
Following today's changes, the only key Season 14 additions still currently enabled are the grappling gun and new blowdart weapon. And as to what's next for Sea of Thieves - beyond the steady reintroduction of those currently missing features - Rare hasn't yet said. Season 14 marks the end of the 2024 release roadmap it shared back in March, so it's unlikely the studio will be ready to share any major future plans until the year is through.