f13.net

Koboshi has submitted a review for us of his recent experiences in Puzzle Pirates.

Arrrrggghhhh! Linkage! (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1108692657&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

My Valentine's Day gift to my girlfriend was a Puzzle Pirates subscription for each of us - we've been playing on and off for the past couple of weeks on the free trial version.  It's the first multiplayer game I've found that she likes, meaning it's the first PC game I've found EVAR that we can actually play together.  That right there makes it a winner.

It's so cutesy it makes me laugh, but I think it looks like a lot of fun. Someone please explain the dynamics of the drinking puzzle to me, I can't get many answers on that.

It's one of those games I would dearly love to play, except I've just never really enjoyed puzzle games much. I prefer to suck at twitch games. :)

It's exacty like Alchemy (http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=alchemy&src=gamestack).  The only difference is that it's multiplayer, so the goal isn't clearing the board, it's making sure that you're the one who gets the most points in the process.

I've been playing this game fairly steadily since subscribing, and I've only now found my way into the commodities market interface.  It is brilliant.  All the drudge work of comparison shopping and running a store (what SWG merchants refer to as "gameplay") has been eliminated or automated, allowing players of the economic game to easily focus on the big picture, and to manage their business without being logged in constantly.

Admittedly, I only saw a small corner of it, which was the process of supplying one's ship with rum.  There's no walking from store to store seeing who has rum in stock, looking for the best price, walking back to the lowest-priced store only to find that they've sold out or that their rum is inferior... none of that.  You sit on your ship, click on the hold, and click "Trade Commodities".  A list of every commodity available on the island is at your fingertips.  You don't care about most of them, so you hit the filter for "ship supplies", and it shows you the two things that your ship needs - rum and cannonballs.  About twenty shops are listed there.  You hit "sort by sell price", and it shows you all the shops that sell fine rum, what their asking price is, and how much they're willing to sell at that price.  You say how much you want, and the exchange is done.  No getting gypped because you didn't spend an hour walking all over the island, no annoying inventory management.

Puzzle Pirates continues to surprise me with how they by all appearances started with complex, involving systems and then ruthlessly excised every part that wasn't fun, leaving behind nothing but good game.

</fanboi>

While I don't know all the details about how it works now - I have the lifetime subscribtion but plays WoW - this is what I found as well. The last 4-6 months of beta I hardly sailed, I just built and sold ships and slowly became a millionaire. And it was fun, goddammit.
The best economy in any mmog from my limited experience. Everything was player made - there was no loot. Or rather loot was stuff that the player driven economy used and resold.

Apparently if you play Puzzle Pirates for too long, you'll get this message (never seen it myself):

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v454/pipmuk/pizza.jpg)

The only way it could be better would be if it included something about a poopsock.

Ah the poopsock. The mythical last gateway for the catass gamer. We should start a Jeff Foxworthy type thread. You might be a catass if...

See you on the battlefield server, then? :)

/whore

I signed on for a free trial today! Yeah, I know, bigtime necropost, but I just wanted to let people know that this is fun. You get a free month and you never have to put a Credit Card into the system. That's...awesome. I'm going to pay these guys something even if I don't go past the first month because the game deserves it. Try it out if you haven't yet.

And I ran into Yegolev on my first day. Go figure, I'd find somebody from F13 in game.

Yea, happens. In nearly every online game I've played, lurkers or posters from f13 have found me without saying anything on the boards. It's neat stuff.

I play as Sinkhole on Viridian.
Viridian is always free.

I signed up for the free trial yesterday.  The funny thing is that I normally don't use my "real" handle right off in a game, in case I don't like it.  Boarding a random ship and seeing Paelos... weird.

You are scaring me, man.  We need to meet up for lunch.

Yep, I'm e-stalking people now.  :-D

Not really, it's freakishly coincidental. If anybody sees a Paelos in-game, it's almost 100% guaranteed its me. I'm the only one in WoW, so that says something about the originality of the name.

I should have mentioned that I subscribed.  Yarrr.

I subscribed back in February.  Haven't played in a month or two what with various other games sucking up my time, but I don't really mind giving the Ringers my $10 a month regardless.

I've puzzled my ass off for about 4 days now. I have a new sword, a Legendary ranking in sailing, and a high position on a crew. This is the least grindy game I've played, and you get to pillage! YAR!

I am working three jobs since I'm mostly just good at alchemy.  Sailing sounds fun until I realize it's nothing but half-ass bilge-pumping for me.  Man, I suck even at Puzzle Pirates. =)

Since the is no PP board, they fixed all that crazy "slow loading" lag in a patch last night.
It's pretty smooth, that was really getting fustrating.