3. A Suggestion for Mysteries

The Problem

I'd like to continue last week's topic of mysteries. 

One year ago, Rare announced two new features in Sea of Thieves: Adventures and Mysteries. The mysteries are supposed to be very difficult and require a whole community effort to solve.

So far, we've had only one mystery: the murder of Demarco. I do enjoy a good mystery, so I was excited about this, but in the end the Demarco mystery was a little difficult for a simple picaroon like Jimi to contribute much anything at all. Every day, I checked online for new clues. On more than one occasion, I would find that a new clue had been released AND solved all while I was sleeping! 😴

I was surprised to hear that even many well-known lore-focused content creators lost interest in the mystery early on. A small, dedicated group was able to solve it, and their efforts are praiseworthy. But I hope that future mysteries will be accessible to a wider audience.

I think the idea of a mystery for the community to progress "together" is interesting in theory, but I'm not sure if it's the best choice in practice for a community as large and international as the Sea of Thieves. The vast majority of players were left behind or left out.

The Pirate Lord was disappointed that more people were not actively hunting for his son Demarco's murderer. What can be done in the future to make more pirates want to participate in Sea of Thieves mysteries?

A Suggested Solution 

While it was interesting to look on as the most cunning minds on the Seas cracked the case, I thought it would have been even better if there were mysteries that the average pirate crew could take their time figuring out from start to finish.

Perhaps mysteries could be handled like an adventure but with a longer period of time for players to figure it out on their own. Rare could still create a sense of community around the event by leaving the correct solution unknown till the event end date.

In other words, players could work on the mystery at their own pace and form their own theories about what happened, but in the end the solution would be revealed to everyone at the same time, as we learned the fates of Golden Sands and Pendragon together. 

Jimi was still poking around Sea Dog's Rest for clues about Demarco's murderer, but the mystery was already over!

For example, in the case of a murder mystery, players could gather evidence on the seas (and perhaps even on social media as with the Demarco mystery) over a several-month period. Finally, based on the evidence they find, they could make an accusation in-game about the murderer, similar to the Clue board game. When the mystery-adventure ends, Rare would reveal the solution, and those who guessed correctly would get a special prize.

This would allow everyone to participate at their own pace, but still leave room for the kind of community-level sleuthing we saw in the Demarco mystery.

I hope that Rare will consider this suggestion as they design future mysteries!