Live-service games need to respect their dedicated players more

polygon.com:

Sea of Thieves recently received its long-awaited “Captaincy” update, packed with features that hopeful pirates have been clamoring for since the game launched in 2018. You can now name your ship and decorate it with custom trinkets and cosmetics — simple but appreciated stuff like that.

But the wider update was not nearly as appreciated. Since the Captaincy update’s launch, the game’s subreddit and official forums have been flooded with posts decrying the new “milestones” system, a layered series of trackers that are supposed to “allow you to look back on all the unique things that you’ve done,” as the game’s creative director, Mike Chapman, phrased it in the studio’s recent season 7 deep dive video.

The thing is, Sea of Thieves’ most dedicated players have already been doing “unique things” — and plenty of not-unique things — for over four years. The game’s menu has pages and pages full of “commendations” that track everything from the distance you’ve sailed under the flags of specific factions to the number of skeleton ships you’ve sunk since achieving Pirate Legend status. But the new milestones all begin at zero progress, no matter how many dozens, hundreds, or thousands of hours a player already has in their log. Veteran players may have already earned tons of gold, completed hundreds of quests, and slayed dozens of Megalodons — but if you want any of those new trinkets or rewards, you’ll have to do it all again.

Putting new and veteran players on equal footing is one thing when it comes to new voyages or quests, but this is something else entirely: an indicator that Rare does not respect the vast quantities of time that its most dedicated players have already invested in this game.

Rare has already updated the