f13.net

Thank FSM, they are mostly unfucking the chat UI (http://www.burningsea.com/page/news/article&article_id=10662).

If this is the ONLY thing they did with 1.2 it might be worth it, but it sounds like there is a lot more coming.

More Dev Logs here (http://www.burningsea.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7). Lots of changes upcoming (hopefully soon!).

Good stuff. Yeah, they mentioned the first few updates would be refining the stuff that got shipped too early. They shipped a functional game, which is undertandable, but some features were only barely functional. (Also understandable.)

I question the need for a LFG system, though. It seems to me that any LFG tool will go unused, as players prefer to spam "ninja SWM asl LFG for Cavern of Silicon Please Sent PST plz!"

Yeah, I can't imagine ever using LFG. I group with society mates or not at all.

I think if LFG isn't useful on day one then no one will ever use it no matter how much tweaking is done.  Is there much LFG spam in the game?  I've been in a society since day one and turned off nation chat after the first couple days so I don't see it if it's happening.

There's a fair bit, I think. Not as much as WoW or EQ of course. Most of the serious grouping is over port battles, and those groups are determined by the game system rather than chatting and inviting.

Screw all that, when are they going to fix the Auction house? It's a nightmare to use.

How so?  There are a few gui changes I'd like to see but it doesn't seem all that bad for the most part.

The AH could definitely use a bit of love. Erasing all numbers in the price field after an unsuccessful bid would be a good start. Not cool to go to make another bid and accidentally add it to the end of your first bid. I have done it but not had enough money to cover the offer, thankfully, but many others have run into it and paid dearly.

I wouldn't mind if they got rid of that blind auction crap, and yes, made it just like WoW. I swear, it's like they chose a worse system only to be different.

Some good changes, but I just really feel that they're a million miles away from where they need to be with this game. And FLS just feels amateur-hour to me on some things--that they just don't get some of the issues with the design that are emerging with brutal clarity, especially with the way they set up the economy and then seriously crimped the currency faucet just before launch.

There's potential in PotBS but I don't know that they're going to have the player base and thus the income needed to realize that potential.

That's the same thought that I had in early beta.  I applaud this game for what it was attempting to do.  Sadly, implementation is hard.

The latest Devlog and resulting discussion regarding PvP gave me a bit more hope (should be accessible via the link in the OP). It sounds like they are hearing the complaints I have from nearly everyone, so they are working towards unfucking a lot of things, starting with increasing Open Sea db drops (I actually had one yesterday that gave me twice as much XP as db..that is fucking retarded).

The UI changes are going to be nice.

The drop rate for doubloons and other loot is roughly doubling. This should help people afford to PvP more often.

Yeah, but the economy in structural terms is still really screwy, in a way that some of the dumber players don't really grasp. "Oh, it's so realistic" or "I'm making plenty of money on the AH, you don't need to do missions or OS grind". I can't even bother disabusing the dummies who think it's "realistic", whereas the latter bunch (if they genuinely believe that) haven't grasped yet that production is a sink, not an original source of currency value--that trade is just pushing money around that enters through missions or OS grinding. Doubling the Db drops isn't enough of a fix: there's a whole lot to be done to make the economy "game-like".

Full Patch notes (http://www.burningsea.com/page/news/article&article_id=10680). Too big to clutter up the thread, but well worth a read. Lots of changes/fixes, and a bit of content as well.

Yipes, I didn't think they'd release the new group mission so soon. Very cool.

Yeah that sounds like it might be fun. I just wish they would release the goddamned patch already.

I'm coming to this realization in a rough way that puts a bad taste in my mouth.