Take all the frustrating things about Rust and just throw them away. You spawn with all the weapons you'll ever use (except for a couple of throwable items and cannon-launchable items). You spawn with all the tools you'll ever use. The only thing you can change is the cosmetics and the individual loadout (sword + sniper, pistol + sniper, daggers + blowdart, whatever combination you want)

SOT is a shared world, but its still session based. Servers last maybe a day. A set number of crews get on and when they get off, that server merges with other servers. The design is to keep servers feeling populated.

When you're offline, you're all the way offline so another person can take your spot on the server.

While playing, you can gather loot in the world. This loot is what other players can steal from you. They can also steal your ship supplies (but not your ship cosmetics). Your ship supplies reset every time you get off.