As our Executive Producer, @JoeNineTee said in An Important Question for Joe and Gang, we’ve been talking about how best to respond to some of the big questions that we see on the forums. Fair to say, personal combat is an area that has lots of outstanding questions around how we’re planning to approach this in terms of the variety of weaponry and how this will feel to p

Delivering sword combat for a network game, especially as part of a first person experience, is particularly challenging. We’re busy prototyping sword combat to get it into exactly the right place before we add it to a build that some lucky players in the Insider Programme will get a chance to play and provide feedback on. We’ve tried a few different approaches and we’re getting closer to a solution we feel happy with. We know where it needs it sit in terms of the overall approach to combat, but we’re still keen resolve some remaining issues before its ready for a larger audience. As always, there will be much more to share in the fut

According to Rare, the studio wants to offer a balanced experience that's equal in almost every facet. In practice, that means a game with full feature parity, but more than that it means an equal playing field from day one. So Rare also says they're planning on launching Sea of Thieves day and date on both console and PC, with launch still on track for early 2

Speaking to IGN , Rare's executive producer Joe Neate confirmed that the first major post-launch Sea of Thieves update will introduce microtransactions. This update is expected around three months after Sea of Thieves ' launch and "anything in this area will not impact power or progression, and you'll always know what you're getting - so that means no loot crates," says Neate. Given the ongoing controversy surrounding pay to win loot boxes and the debate on whether or not loot boxes are gambling , many will be glad to hear that Sea of Thieves won't feature that mecha

For now, though, Rare will continue with the development of Sea of Thieves in preparation for its forthcoming launch. There's plenty to do, and Rare seems like they're adding new ideas as fast as they can come up with them. The studio just revealed how players can now get sick and vomit into a bucket, then use the bucket as a weapon against friends (or alli

What do you think about Sea of Thieves not being free-to-play? Is it fair for developers to still take this approach to multiplayer content, or has the era of paid multiplayer business models started to fade away? Let us know in the comments be

Neate is not the first developer to offer this explanation, with former Uncharted developer Amy Hennig also saying that loot boxes and microtransactions are a result of rising game development costs . This means that players can likely expect more microtransactions in games going forward, but many will be hoping that they follow Sea of Thieves ' lead and only offer cosmetic unlo

For those who aren’t aware, Cuphead is a "run-and-gun platformer" created in the style of 1930s cartoons. Players will enjoy a single-player campaign, along with multiplayer action. Like the other games on this list, there is still plenty of details yet to be shared about Cuphead , but needless to say, gamers are already lining up to grab this unique indie ti

This isn't the first time that Rare has talked about cross-play for Sea of Thieves , however. Earlier this year, when Rare first activated the closed alpha on PC, the team decided to try out cross-play just to see how it felt. Executive Producer Joe Neate called the experience "magical," explaining that it led him to question why any game would split player bases. But questions about balance and fairness prevented Rare from making it official straight away, however the more the studio considered cross-play, the more it realized there was no good reason not to include

This cosmetic content will "either be on a shoulder, like a monkey, or like a cat on the ship" or even potions that change the appearance of the player character (e.g a potion that makes them look very old). Neate also suggests that Sea of Thieves players will be able to earn the currency to unlock this content through normal play. For example, players may be able to earn premium currency as a reward for completing high-level quests, or the content could even be found in the game world. Neate also says that anything available via microtransactions will provide "emotional value, not mechanical val

For the above to work, we’ve embraced the concept of aiming down sights as a special state – if you want to fire at a target, you must hold the left trigger / right mouse button and aim down the physical barrel of the

Interestingly, Rare didn't have anything else to say about how Sea of Thieves maps of Thieves would be monetised after its launch next year. All Mayles could offer in that regard was a broad design philosophy that hints towards a content release plan similar to that of Destiny or other long-term investments like The Divisi