I want to like it but right now I don't. I'm bored and my youngest seems to think getting drunk and vomiting on the map all the time is both hilarious and helpful.
It is neither.
To be fair, I've not played much of it but what I have played hasn't grabbed me. Having said that, i didn't like Oblivion or Mass Effect the first time around either, so I'll give it time.
You dont have any direction to begin with and can be hard to figure out what exactly you are meant to be doing and where you are meant to be going sometimes. For example I spent a good 15mins looking at a treasure map trying to find an island on the main map that was the same shape as it (I did eventually find it). But there can be lots of downtime while you find out where you are meant to be going and then if there is nothing eventful going on, on the way there then its a little underwhelming sometimes.
They could do with more things to do in between quests and when you dont know the map or where you are meant to be going there is a lot of travelling from A to B involved. Not to mention if you don’t come across any events like a big storm, a Megalodon, Krakan, Ghost Ships or any other players then it’s a lot of nothing but water and if you are in the open ocean there arent many obstacles to avoid so can point the ship in a direction and use the spare time to restock and check maps. I have tended to come across events when I dont want to, when I have a ship with valuable cargo and have been avoiding other players all of a sudden a Krakan appears.
There are so many games I have played recently that require endless travelling from A to B in the early game it can be a slog but once you build up your reputation you get bigger and better quests and more adventurous ones rather than 'Go here and collect this, take it there'. Dont think I will ever tire of the scenery and the water effects, its very pretty to look at and can be relaxing when things arent trying to kill or rob you.
With it being server/session based it’s sheer luck of the draw sometimes too unfortunately and depends what sort of mission you are on, again some are a lot of bringing one thing to another place and if nothing happens in between then it’s merely ferrying an item from A to B and gaining some gold. So much of the game is dependant on dynamic events, interactions and what events happen in between the travelling that the sessions will be a little hit and miss from time to time.
When Steve and I played we had Megalodon, Krakan and a storm as well as a few ships we had to do some evasive tactics to avoid that added some interesting tension. As well as someone who shot at both of us at an outpost but we didn’t actually see where it was coming from & when sailing around looking for a particular island a Skeleton almost took my head off with a surprise cannonball from a fort that we didnt see when we were passing the island. Even then with all of that it was a lot of travelling from A to B and takes a little while to unlock the more interesting quests, also not personally great at map reading and finding some quest items can be difficult especially on the larger islands or if they are in a body of water when you have to seek them out.