Everwild is Rare’s latest upcoming game, following Sea of Thieves, which was released in 2018. The new IP appears to follow groups of players as they cooperatively care for a tranquil environment, helping plants and animals grow and survive.
Everwild appears to be a big departure in tone from the studio’s previous game, a goofy pirate adventure with opportunities for PvP. Although the tones of the two games are very different, there is one problem which Sea of Thieves faced that Everwild can learn from.
Sea of Thieves’ Problem
Sea of Thieves is a great PvP game with a beautiful stylized game world and plenty of opportunities for hilarious interactions with other pirates on the open sea. However, there is one major problem which Sea of Thieves faces. Sea of Thieves limits the number of ships per server to 6, which, with a maximum of 4 players per ship, means a maximum of 24 players per server. This is intended to allow players to complete missions without fears of being griefed by trigger-happy crews, but there’s one major problem.
Missions in Sea of Thieves' Adventure Mode are rewarded with gold, but gold can only be used on cosmetic upgrades to ships and character appearances. This helps keep the game balanced and ultimately works well to make sure new players aren’t overwhelmed by crews who have been playing for longer. However, one of the main reasons to get cosmetic upgrades is to be able to show them off to other crews and players.
As a result, the limit of 6 crews per server is slightly counterintuitive. While the game couldn’t handle a huge amount of players per server without becoming a free-for-all mess, six crews across such a huge map like Sea of Thieves' means players can find themselves going session after session without running into any other crews, which can make collecting treasure feel lower stakes and even tedious.
Player Interaction in Everwild
Rare likely doesn’t need to worry about PvP in Everwild. The game’s tone suggests that it’s likely to be far more cooperative than Sea of Thieves. However, it would be interesting if groups of players who are taking care of nature could run into other groups, and even interact with and help them on their journey as well.
If this is going to work Everwild’s developers will need to make sure that there aren’t so few groups per server that these encounters are rare. If players don’t have to worry about PvP, the main concern will likely be that players will simply get in each other’s ways when trying to complete different missions.
Rare should try and make sure that Everwild players have opportunities to naturally interact with other groups in the world and show off their achievements. The studio should also avoid the circular problem the older game faces where players are able to get cosmetic upgrades in Sea of Thieves but only because there are so few players to show those cosmetic upgrades to that competition is low.
Ultimately, the exact execution of this will depend on what sort of game Everwild is shaping up to be. The way that missions are completed, how much the world is affecting by player progress, and the size of the map will all be major factors. While it is clear that the tone will be distinct from Sea of Thieves, that doesn’t mean that players should have few opportunities to interact with other players even in a non-hostile manner.
Everwild will launch in 2021 for PC and Xbox Series X.