Pirates of the Burning Sea looks f***ing kick ass

[Ganhoodle]

I played during the stress test a couple weeks ago, and wasn't too impressed by it. It's missing the one thing that makes MMORPGS interesting to me: a huge seamless world full of other players. Everything is constantly broken up by different zones and instances. Want to attack that merchant ship? You have to wait for it to load into an instance. Want to board the ship after you've damaged it? You have to load again. Dock your ship on an island port? More loading. Walk inside a building? Loading again.

Basically it feels more like the Guild Wars-type, pseudo-MMO, where you only see other players in hubs, where you meet up before loading into an instance. I know many think instances are the way of the future for MMO's, but when a game is entirely instanced, I can't help thinking I'd be much better off just playing a singleplayer game. The feeling of being part of a huge seamless world, full of other players is the one unique advantage MMO's have over singleplayer games. In every other way they're grossly inferior. When you take the world away, there's really no point in playing an MMO. Also, one wonders why you still have to pay the usual monthly fee.

The ship combat was pretty fun, but it just doesn't seem like it will have as much mission variety (not that MMO's have much mission variety to begin with) as more typical land-based combat. It would make a great feature for a more varied game, but I don't think it's enough to carry the entire game.

 

[SuicideBunny]

erm, what bullshittery is this? I got the key from Eurogamer, but they're telling me to get the client from fileplanet, where THEY tell me I need a FP subscription to download it?

you need subscription for the big 5gb single file, the 3 smaller ones work with normal member accounts, but there's also a streamer on the potbs homepage, and someone made that 5gb behemoth into a torrent and put it up for grabs on pb.

 

[Astromarine]

ok, that makes sense. I was wondering why everyone was telling me it was available when FP was giving me a big Subscriber Only assreaming.

In any case, I downloaded it and have a rank 5 naval officer called Honor Harrington. So far I like the game, even though all the loading makes it seem sluggish. I don't share Ganhoodle's opinion, as I find the majority of players act in such a manner as to completely take me out of immersion whenever I see them, making the instanced worlds seem more appealing. For example, I liked that in the storyline mission the attack happens in an instanced version of the town where I have to save the people, instead of the mob ganking that would occur with a global scripted event. I'm the hero of this game, everyone else is merchants trying to sell me stuff in the Auctioneer. However, the transitions between instances are painful for now. Whenever I load the city, I have to wait for like a minute for the game to load all the people and textures, while I watch a slideshow of my character's idle animations. If the loading isn't finished yet, don't pretend like it is :D

I haven't started the economy tutorial yet, as I'm looking at the quests in the first town for variety and stuff. One thing that surprised me is the humor. I hope it's not just "beta placeholder text", to be replaced with uber-serious dialogue at release, because meta stuff like the Town Crier is hilarious to me. Some people might consider it immersion breaking, but I found it quite refreshing.

swashbuckling is so far the weak link, I felt. Especially group combat. Whenever I'm alone against several opponents, I think the game does a decent job, despite being too easy until now. But boardings, for example, are just kinda dull. Loading time, 7 guys gank the commander while I'm relatively hassle free from any enemies, commander goes down in 10 seconds, loading time. Also, I haven't yet felt excited by the prospect of actually looting any of the ships I kill. I'm sure that's due to the design of the economy as fully player-driven, but the net effect is that I'm not sure it will be worth killing all the ships in a quest, if it's not required (Ex: the rum salvaging quest). Since I only just got level 5, maybe the commendations for killing vessels are worth it, but I worry that players will largely disregard nonessential quests as the rewards seem to be so flimsy.

 

[errorcode]

you'll be happy to know that we're currently working on the drop tables for nearly all of the mobs in the game to give them more interesting loot. Things like better gear, unique to that group items (Like Bloody arms clothing bits, etc), and quest starting drops like treasure maps and the like.

they probably won't end up in game on day 1, but will be going in with patch 1.

Who all still needs beta keys? I finally got a couple from our community manager to hand out.

 

[SuicideBunny]

swashbuckling could use some reworking. it's too damn easy (99% of the time) or too hard (like the end fight in the first sword quest series, unless you simply run away, since enemies seem not to heal).

other than that, the game seems fun so far.
being able to constantly switch clothing for free = awesome (and vain)

 

[errorcode]

also, you can continue to unlock new clothing by doing the career missions (and other missions do have clothing rewards as well). So your wardrobe is always growing. And we have plans for more clothing options in the future.

Then there are the pets, which add a whole new layer of vanity :D

Swashbuckling is still being tuned. You're right, as it stands it's either too hard or too easy and we've been struggling to find that "sweet spot" in between. Please, when you hit missions where the swashbuckling is too hard or way too easy, bug it. We spend a lot of time going through the beta bug lists and tuning, fixing, and polishing based on what we get back.

 

[Astromarine]

The most important question I have about the game is whether the company knows and accepts that they are making a niche game. Now, it just so happens to be MY niche, and I'll play it happily from what I can see so far, but I can see it won't sell much. It shouldn't matter though, EVE has a bit over 100k subscribers I think and it's been going on for years. It works because the game was planned, designed, and budgeted to be profitable WITH 100K subscribers. I just don't want the heads of the company / SOE to go "Only 50000 sales in the first month? DISASTER! Cut! Streamline! Clone! Eviscerate!"

 

[errorcode]

yup, we set out to make a niche game. The game started as just a naval combat simulation game and just sort of grew as we decided on more things we thought would be fun. Since we self fund we could get away with that.

We've also kept our costs down and don't need a large audience to see a profit. We figure that we'll get a decent subscription base at launch and then continually grow that. We're keeping the whole team on pirates for the foreseeable future to continue adding content and features, polishing, and just generally working with the players to keep making pirates better. This game is our baby and we're sticking with it as long as we can

 

[errorcode]

yup, we set out to make a niche game. The game started as just a naval combat simulation game and just sort of grew as we decided on more things we thought would be fun. Since we self fund we could get away with that.

We've also kept our costs down and don't need a large audience to see a profit. We figure that we'll get a decent subscription base at launch and then continually grow that. We're keeping the whole team on pirates for the foreseeable future to continue adding content and features, polishing, and just generally working with the players to keep making pirates better. This game is our baby and we're sticking with it as long as we can

 

[Astromarine]

well, sweetie, you sure know how to sweet talk me, dontcha?

Honor Harrington is level 8 now, just doing solo missions in the first town. Plan for today is to start the econ tutorial and to proceed with the navy career missions. Weird that I can't see the skill that people say I should get at level 5 to get commendations. Do I have to do the quests first before getting it?

 

[errorcode]

yeah, you want to do your career missions as soon as they come available. They generally give you access to career defining core skills (not to mention new clothing options).

Every 5 levels you'll want to break from whatever you're doing and pursue your career missions.

 

[SuicideBunny]

you might want to work a bit on balancing the coolness. pirates own frenchies so much, it isn't even funny.

 

[errorcode]

how so?

our internal numbers are showing a pretty balanced population, with more in britain and pirates, but not as large a gap as we were worrying about.

 

[Astromarine]

I don't think the factions is the problem. from what I've read around, it looks like people complain mostly about class imbalances, with the free traders bitching that for a game that depends on combat this much, they shouldn't have to choose between getting their career's skills early or not sucking in combat so much. which I guess makes sense, though I haven't played a FT yet. errorcode, any idea if you guys are planning on easing up on the FTs a bit? Specifically their mercantile skills sharing a skill tree with the combat stuff?

also, which one are you in the "civilized" world? I wanna see what you're like when in a family friendly environment. :twisted: gavin? Being a codexer, it would make sense to be in charge of a branching storyline :D

 

[SuicideBunny]

compared to the pirate towns, french cities look like crap, especially due to the capitol looking almost exactly like the starter town, pirates also have more eye patch options at creation, and those blood suckers get to capture ships directly instead of having to "collect" dozens of enemy ships in order to be able to upgrade, which is annoying.

how come we frenchies don't get a volcano to throw prisoners into?

also, how do i get the next lvl of commendations/pennants? way past upgrading time to mediator cutter...
+ it might be just me sucking a lot, but 'red tide' seems annoyingly difficult... failed it three times now, even though i already finished lots of higher lvl quests.

 

[Astromarine]

red tide is a group only mission, read about it here: http://potbsvault.ign.com/View.php?view ... tail&id=66

 

[SuicideBunny]

gwarghs, it could say so in the friggin description. i lost two good vessels to those bloody pirates.

 

[errorcode]

Red Tide is a bitch. i hate our group mission indicator and we're working to change it to something clearer soon. If you open your mission log and look at Red Tide you'll see a little icon next to the mission name....yeah, thats what we use to tell you that it's a group mission.../facepalm

As for the real world and all that, i'm Bert. I didn't have a hand in the role-playing storyline, which was Gavin's baby. The pirate, privateer career lines, and spanish national missions are mine, as well as a large handful of side missions in the midlands and highlands. I also had a hand in making sure the missions were spread as evenly as possible between the ports and nuts and bolt shit like that.

As for the french towns looking pretty 'meh' at the moment, don't worry. that won't last. If you take a look at Tortuga and Port Royale you'll have an idea of what we're currently working on for the french capital.

Pirates do get more eyepatch options, it's true. But as we get more clothing options created we intend to balance that out a bit.

As for the freetrades, i honestly don't see it as a problem. Now, let me preface that with the caveat that i'm in the minority on that around the office. I just feel that Freetraders, with their skills, control the markets and the trade off is that they have to group more to do combat heavy activities. To me that's balanced. If they wanted to be a combat class they could have rolled a privateer or navy officer, but they wanted a freetrader.

But i know our designers (the system guys who handle this shit) are looking closely at all of the career balance issues and are constantly tweaking things to get them right. If folks just don't find it fun, then it'll get changed.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

If folks just don't find it fun, then it'll get changed.

Your game is doomed. "ZOMG y cant i kick his ass jus coz im a trader lol dats laem".

 

[Quigs]

Went to bestbuy last night to pick up the new LOST dvd's, and saw this game right up front as soon as you walked in the door. Just the pre-order box, but still, grats to j00 guys for somehow getting the prime real estate.

 

[errorcode]

If folks just don't find it fun, then it'll get changed.

Your game is doomed. "ZOMG y cant i kick his ass jus coz im a trader lol dats laem".

meh, it's a game. The point of it is for people to enjoy it and, maybe even more importantly, enjoy each other in it. Thats why we listen to our players, keep open dialogs with them, and if they bring up a valid point we can admit we were wrong and they were right.

although, i think folks are wrong about freetraders.

 

[Astromarine]

well, as I said I've never made a freetrader yet. But I think the gripe is that they either want to be able to level solo like everyone else or they want to level in out-of-combat activities, because with the need to either get combat skills OR get merchant skills they feel they're spreading themselves thin or playing a weak combat class. I don't think they want to dominate the seas as a trader, just some options (maybe hauling quests, for example)

Still, not my gripe so I won't argue. :D Now I'm off to play the game.

 

[psycojester]

So far i've got Milo Bracca up to being a lvl 20 naval officer and convinced a core group from my WoW guild to come play the beta. Running as a wolf pack to take down bigger ships is bloody awesome fun, we managed to kill a pirate in a captured Cerberus Frigate using 5 Bermunda sloops.

BTW is it possible for naval officers to unlock the small eyepatch or are we permanently stuck wearing a flag?

 

[Jaime Lannister]

I like it. It's definitely a thinking man's MMO.

Seriously though, a warning to FLS: Dumbing it down will probably not please the action kiddies enough and will cause almost your entire niche to leave. Look at SWG.

 

[errorcode]

where do you see evidence of dumbing down?