[/p][p][dynamiclink href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWwHBKGjTuo"][/dynamiclink]
However, for the short version – let’s get stuck in. [/p][p][/p]
Season 17 Headline Learnings
[p]The overall player rating for Season 17 was 5.6 out of 10, vs Season 16’s 6.1 – so unfortunately, players found this Season’s offering 5% less satisfying than Season 16.[/p][p]This is in line with what we were anticipating; we announced the smuggling theme at the Xbox Summer Showcase to lukewarm reception, and can acknowledge that we struggled to win players over with the concept from there. Given that there were a couple of months between the initial announcement and release of the content, it’s fair to say that this sentiment felt prolonged too.[/p][p]The smuggling focus did lay some valuable groundwork for future events and features, with the upcoming Bilge Rat Weekender leveraging Smugglers’ Voyages, but we recognise that much of Season 17’s feature set did not resonate with you all.[/p]
[img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/37295600/53356535749562e5262ba5711d42ae2350856a15.jpg"][/img]
Season 17 Content Highlights
[p]When it comes to what you enjoyed: Black Powder Barrels and Reaper Fortresses were the most popular features of the Season, scoring 4.1 and 4.2 out of 5 respectively. Improved weapon switching was third most enjoyed of the Season 17 feature set, and this has really highlighted the importance and impact of significant quality-of-life updates to our core community of players.[/p][p]With some other key quality-of-life improvements on the way – stay tuned to our Developer Update series for news on these – we feel good about revisiting hot topics and making features and tools more enjoyable with tweaks and twists.[/p][p]Least popular of Season 17 were the Smugglers’ Hideouts and the Smugglers’ Route Run Voyages, scoring 2.9 and 2.6 out of 5 respectively. We hear you, and with the introduction of the Bilge Rats Weekender, our new pirate festival, we really hope to revitalise player satisfaction with how some of these features feel.[img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/37295600/3e8a3faae7da9749b6150a9f43ac5994c5a6344c.jpg"][/img][/p]
Game Health
[p]Game health improved regarding cheating and toxicity by 1% – which is a small improvement, but importantly not a regression. Given some of the in-flight work we’ve got going on at the moment regarding Hourglass and cheating/toxicity prevention measures, we feel confident that future surveys are going to show this needle moving further in the right direction.[/p][p]As discussed on the podcast, we have a cross-discipline strike force working together to tackle player toxicity all up – and we look forward to sharing some of the insights and changes that come out of this new internal initiative to make our game a kinder, safer place to play.[/p][p][/p]Live Events
[p]Ghoul & Glory and Season 17 Community Weekend scored highly on our Event schedule portion of the survey, both scoring 3.7/5. We don’t want to rest on our laurels there though, and we have some changes coming to Community Weekend, where we plan to refresh the feature set and make sure it’s feeling as fun and as fresh as it did when we introduced it back in 2022.[/p][p]However, we’re really buoyed to know that years on, these events are still broadly hitting the mark on providing you with fun and worthwhile reasons to play Sea of Thieves.[img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/37295600/0ad12ec0535ac4c9f4c9c8c0a8f9de1d8c278f65.jpg"][/img][/p]
