Pirates of the Burning Sea- OPEN BETA!

[Mrbloodworth]

Reposted From MMORPG.com

Written by: Rick Saada

Titled: Dev Journal Response to Feedback

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading the feedback from beta users posting here on MMORPG now that the NDA has been lifted, and after some discussion with Kevin (Isildur) Maginn, our Lead Designer, I’d like to take a few moments to address some of the common concerns that have been raised in these posts. A lot of it is good feedback for us to hear (and has been echoed in the beta forums as well), so I’d like to call out a few of the issues and either explain why it’s that way (if it’s not going to change) or how we’re going to address it.
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The first and most frequent comment has been about our use of instancing. As many posters have noticed, we do a lot of it. More in fact than we’d like, but much of it is for good reason. The underlying reason for most of our instancing is that a continuous world doesn’t work well for a ship based game set in an even remotely realistically scaled Caribbean. We started out, several years ago, trying to do just that. We had realistic speeds, realistic distances between islands, realistic island sizes, etc. It was *horrible*. Taking 45 minutes to an hour to sail between even nearby islands was excruciatingly dull. There’s a lot of empty water out there, and crossing it in real time was work, not a game. On the flip side, if we made the sailing time for movement between islands reasonable, the combat portion of the game became maniacally fast and arcade like, not at all the strategic and tactical battle we were trying to build. The answer, then, was to use two different timescales. On the sailing map where you move between islands, the travel speeds are unrealistically quick, the geography is more iconic than realistic, and the view is more bird’s eye than crow’s nest. When a battle needs to be fought, we drop you in to an instance where you can fight it out at normal speed, with more detailed terrain if you’re near land, and at a view that is close in to your ship for excitement.

Given this model, though, we discovered that zoning from a port to the open sea, only to sail a very short distance before entering a mission instance, was two annoying load screens instead of one. So we moved to having nearby missions available directly from each port. This sped things up for the player considerably, but at the expense of having as many people sailing on the open sea at once. Of course since they were only popping in and out for a moment each, we didn’t think it a great loss.

The other advantage to instancing is that it gives us a lot more control over the user experience. We have a much better idea of what the player is going to show up with, and can tune things accordingly, without being as worried about a random level 50 sailing by and blowing the enemy out of the water. We also eliminate the problems of spawn camping or ninjaing of targeted NPCs because only you and your party can enter the instance. Like the warehouse or other door missions in CoH/CoV, once inside it’s all yours.

It’s not a perfect system, of course. You don’t get to watch other people fight as much as we’d like, and if you want to sail around helping noobs you’re not grouped with it’s hard to do so.

Another common comment, in various forms, is about the variety of content in the game. People have mentioned ports, missions types, and terrain as places that we need to add more variety, and we agree with this completely. Earlier in our development, when having avatars at all was a post-ship feature, the towns were expected to be very simple. When we decided to add a customizable avatar you could walk around, we started adding ports you could enter. But even then we had expected them to be mostly socialization spaces and a place to pick up new missions. It was only when we started adding avatar combat to the game that we started extending the number and variety of avatar spaces available. Our art team has been going gonzo creating new ones, but we knew we weren’t going to be able to have unique ones for every port. We decided instead to cover all the basic sizes and types of ports in the first pass, and now we’re going back and adding more custom ones with kind of a top down approach. We’ve already done Port Royal (the British Capital) and Tortuga (the Pirate Capital), and our artists are already at work on Point-a-Pitre (the French Capital) for soon after ship. San Juan (the Spanish Capital) will follow after that, and then we’ll start work on replacing other town with more unique content. At the same time, we’ll be working on creating more mission spaces, particularly for the avatar missions. Since we added avatar combat relatively late in development, we didn’t have time to create as large a variety of mission rooms as we’d like. Naturally, our content/writing team is clamoring for more, and the artists will no doubt rise to the occasion.

Missions are in a similar state. We’ve got a great set of missions, over a thousand per nations, but as the beta testers have noticed they’re not all unique. Many are customized for each nation, but are essentially the same. Most are based on a set of mission templates that cover the standard types of missions (escorts, kills, delivery, etc) that appear in most MMO’s (although ours have much better writing J). Many however, are unique to a nation or a class, and some are more hand crafted, such as the Role Playing Story Arc (which got a devlog of it’s own on our site). It’s these unique and hand crafted missions that are our template for the future. We consider everything we’ve done so far a great baseline to get things going, enough to ensure that you’ve always got something to go out and do, some task drawing you on to the next port, and a goal to strive for. Now that the Caribbean has been strewn with missions, the content team is free to do work on more varied and interesting stuff, and they’re looking forwards to the task.

And finally there’s the speed of progression through the game and the end-game itself. As one poster noted, progression is currently way too fast (he mentioned getting to max level in 11 days). That’s already been tuned down, and will probably be tuned down more by ship. Isildur has pretty fine control over how much XP can be gained per hour of play, and how much is required for each level, so we can tune how many hours of play it takes to move up the ladder towards 50. My expectation is that we will keep the first 10-12 levels fairly quick, to get you some skills and access to a better ship such as the Mediator Cutter. Above that things will probably slow down quite a bit, although we don’t want to make it overly grindy. Our goal is to make the progression reasonable for a person who plays a moderate amount of time, rather than trying to slow down the unstoppable hardcore and making everyone else suffer. But even given that, we agree that 11 days is way too short.

Once you get to 50, it’s another matter. As has been noted, we currently have a limited number of things for maxed out players to do, namely the economic game and port conquest. While port conquest can be a ton of fun, we do need more and are already planning it. We’ve got plans for more raid style content, difficult repeatable mission aimed at experienced groups that can work together. We recently redid one of our early missions (Red Tide, which you can get at level 6-8) as an example of this, and it rocks. We plans to do many more of these, dispersed throughout the level range, with a large chunk of them at 50. Similar to the Task Forces that CoH uses. Several things that are under consideration include player port governance, society vs society grudge match battles, and of course the ever popular player owned socialization spaces (such as a customizable captain’s cabin you can invite friends to).

When all these things happen, is of course, up in the air. All these features go into the Thunderdome, and only some of them come out alive! But we want you to know that we’ve heard your comments, and are doing our best to address them, both now and in the future.

[Nevermore]

As one poster noted, progression is currently way too fast (he mentioned getting to max level in 11 days). That’s already been tuned down, and will probably be tuned down more by ship.

Well hello thar, grind!   

[HaemishM]

FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK TO THE FUCK FUCK FUCK

Fuck people in their tiny little earholes. So a player got to max level in 11 days. SO FUCKING WHAT? FUCK HIM IN HIS EARHOLE. How many hours did he play and how many hours did he play consecutively for much of that? When will dev teams learn?

FUCK WHAT THOSE ASSHOLES DO. If they get to max level, let them quit, because otherwise if you keep trying to cater to them, you will only alienate the non-OCD audience. You want the non-OCD audience more than you want the catass hardcore. If you tune your levelling curve to what the quickest levellers do, YOU WILL CREATE A FUCKTASTIC GRIND, AND THE ONLY PEOPLE LEFT WILL BE WHINY ELITIST CATASS DOUCHES WHO YOU CAN NEVER SATISFY.

[WayAbvPar]

I still feel like I barely know what I'm doing

I have been in the beta for months and still feel like this. I am really looking forward to the strategy guide to help piece everything together.

Re: dev feedback

Yet another game going to grindfests because 10% of the population levels quickly. I can't tell how fucking frustrating this is as a casual player. I play 3-4 times a week for a total of maybe 20 hours. I have never had a beta character over level 20 (my highest was a level 20 freetrader, which are a cast iron BITCH to level after about 12 if you take non-combat skills). I don't want to have to play the fucking game as a part time job in order to get to the max level (at which I can PvP on a fairly level playing field).

I want to know how many hours the people who leveled to 50 in 11 days played. There are degenerates that can level to max in other games in a day or two with optimized play/team play. Are we going to tune all the games to their leveling speed? Of course not. Why cater to the catasses? They are STILL going to level in a giant fucking hurry and bitch about the end game content, no matter how many roadblocks are put in their way. Why punish the rest of us for having lives?

Man, this has really bummed me out about playing this game on launch, and I already preordered. I am guessing the first time I get ganked at level 20 by 3 level 50s two weeks into the game I will be looking for the cancel button.

Edit- I see I am not the only one who feels this way. That doesn't surprise me.


Edit 2- posted a less vitriolic version of this over on the beta forums. Please post your displeasure there as well to at least make it more visible to the rest of the dev team and beta community.

[Mrbloodworth]

WHOOOO there guys, they seem level headed, at lest the writer does, if you read the rest hes trying to find the middle ground, and is QUITE aware that its pointless to "slow down the unstoppable hardcore and making everyone else suffer.".

Its right there, in the text.

Full block-o-text

As one poster noted, progression is currently way too fast (he mentioned getting to max level in 11 days). That’s already been tuned down, and will probably be tuned down more by ship. Isildur has pretty fine control over how much XP can be gained per hour of play, and how much is required for each level, so we can tune how many hours of play it takes to move up the ladder towards 50. My expectation is that we will keep the first 10-12 levels fairly quick, to get you some skills and access to a better ship such as the Mediator Cutter. Above that things will probably slow down quite a bit, although we don’t want to make it overly grindy. Our goal is to make the progression reasonable for a person who plays a moderate amount of time, rather than trying to slow down the unstoppable hardcore and making everyone else suffer. But even given that, we agree that 11 days is way too short.

[DrewC]

I'd also like to add that a level 20 fighting a level 50 isn't nearly as hopeless in Pirates as it is in, for example, WoW.

There's no inherent bonus from level in our game.  Increased level gives you more skill points, access to better ships, and access to better outfitting.  That does mean that a well equipped level 50 is going to have a huge advantage over a level 20 player, but at least the level 20 player can hit him.  Additionally very high level ships tend to be bigger and slower to accelerate than low level ships.  They also tend to perform much better at close wind angles.  My experience playing beta has been that I can usually run away from anything that I don't stand a chance of beating.

There are exceptions to that of course.  If you get unlucky and get pinned between a coastline and a big ship, with the wind going the wrong way, you're going to have a bad day.  If you're sailing a big slow merchant ship, frigates are going to have a field day with you. 

[WayAbvPar]

Our goal is to make the progression reasonable for a person who plays a moderate amount of time, rather than trying to slow down the unstoppable hardcore and making everyone else suffer. But even given that, we agree that 11 days is way too short.

Yes, there it is. Taking an extreme example and declaring it 'too short'. There in lies the problem.

[Mrbloodworth]

Our goal is to make the progression reasonable for a person who plays a moderate amount of time, rather than trying to slow down the unstoppable hardcore and making everyone else suffer. But even given that, we agree that 11 days is way too short.

Yes, there it is. Taking an extreme example and declaring it 'too short'. There in lies the problem.

I understand your worry.

@drewC: Thats sounds like what a Real PvP game should be, options, not power or gear. Where tactics can still win, regardless of level.

[Rasix]

That does mean that a well equipped level 50 is going to have a huge advantage over a level 20 player, but at least the level 20 player can hit him.

Anyone remember how this turned out for DAoC? In essence you still have a max-level or bust (especially with level limited equipment).  Also, in experience, people don't really care for the "but you can alway run away" option.

Guess we'll have to see how it plays out. This is a different beast (at least from the sailing) aspect from any mmo I've played. May work out differently here.

Why do I feel like I'm going to end up quoting Talking Heads lyrics in response to what I just wrote. 

[Falconeer]

I am DEPRESSED. That thing I just read reeks as the decaying body of an old EQ-era MMORPG.

I gave Pirates of the B. another spin today and it struck me (again) for its resemblance with the old Sid Meier's masterpiece with just 1/10 of the fun in it.
My biggest gripes are easy and simple: this is a wasted chance. The old Pirates! by using randomized events made the world feel much more alive than it will ever be here, where it IS supposed to be (a)live. While in Pirates! the scrawny traveler in taverns provided everchanging infos from distant places, the governor had daughters to marry (or not) and the encounters at sea had stories to tell, here more than 20 years later you are stuck with thousands of players but a dead PREDICTABLE world.

I am not advocating the goodness of randomized events per se, just saying that the 16th century has never felt LESS exotic and mysterious to me. It's all scripted, all well-balanced. NPCs are stuck there as lampposts ready to hand you out the same identical piece of gossip over and over, forever. Events, in Pirates! fooled you into feeling that the world was real. Crew threatening to mutiny, long lost sisters to retrieve. Years passing and real historic events going on. You aged, you got sick, you died. Here the tavern is as fascinating as a Nativity scene or a wax museum. Neat!.

Yes, some of those things can't happen here. Time can't go on forever so that rules out historical events, and there can't be permadeath. Some other things are supposedly there, in slightly different forms. And it wouldn't be fair to blame something that is still the norm for MMORPGs or was text-based 20 years ago. But shouldn't I expect significant improvements in 20 years? I think they had large shoes to fill and they failed. And today when I was sailing towards Port Royal (it's like 30 minutes without doing nothing... I could call it "point and forget" as I watched my schooner sloooowly approaching the Port Royal waypoint. I actually went to the store to get some milk and when I came back I was closer.. but not there yet) I wondered why I was playing a less satisfying version of the old classic? Couldn't help it and I quit.

Once again the levels fuck it up (They didn't learn anything from the original Pirates! or just EVE), the people fuck it up and the industry fucks it up!
And back to that long rant from the Lead Designer, it's depressing. They bring up excuses for having you zone in and zone out 25 times (count them) in 10 minutes for the economy tutorial before the game is out. They bring up excuses for not having an endgame (repeatable high end quests? HAHAHA) and they bring up excuses for slowing your fun down and adding to the grind to stop you as you would probably cancel the subscription should you get to max level (and notice there's nothing to do there) too early.

This game had TONS of Potential. Now it's officially crap in my book. EVE for infants with a piratey tone. File under: boo hiss.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not fully understanding where this extremism is coming from, his wording and blog sounded level headed. Its as if some people here think the dial can only go from easy, to hard, in two steps...skipping the fun option thats labeled right in the middle.

I always thought that betas where to tune the leveling curve.

[ajax34i]

But even given that, we agree that 11 days is way too short.

Yeah, PR mistake there, never justify a decision by giving an extreme example like this.  Give vague "we looked at the logs / performed an analysis / calculated the average, and agreed it was too fast" reasoning as to why.

[Slayerik]

Its too bad wen you take a fun game like Sid's and have to ADD NON-FUN

I woulda ripped off so many of the systems in place, and then just added the MMO parts.


The random encounters with NPCs would happen exactly the same way as an encounter with a player...so for just a minute you are thinking....is that a player??? Take an awesome game and build on it, don't inject grind.

[HaemishM]

That does mean that a well equipped level 50 is going to have a huge advantage over a level 20 player, but at least the level 20 player can hit him.

Anyone remember how this turned out for DAoC? In essence you still have a max-level or bust (especially with level limited equipment).  Also, in experience, people don't really care for the "but you can alway run away" option.

QFT.

If the level 50 gets ANY bonuses over the level 20 in PVP, it won't matter how good the level 20 is, everyone will wait until level 50 to PVP because they will have to. That's the problem with level-based PVP. PVP is not about being competitive (to most people), it's about being best.

But that's not what I got upset about. I got upset because almost every game that has involved levelling has always decided that the leveling was too fast in beta and have nerfed it shortly after release. And every one that has done this has turned into a shittastic grind. DAoC, Planetside and CoH are the three best examples I can give. In a game with PVP, where the endgame is likely to BE PVP at least at first, this is a bad thing because of what I mentioned above. At some point, you are either the highest level or you are meat and PVP players realize that.

EDIT:

I'm not fully understanding where this extremism is coming from, his wording and blog sounded level headed. Its as if some people here think the dial can only go from easy, to hard, in two steps...skipping the fun option thats labeled right in the middle.

I always thought that betas where to tune the leveling curve.

It comes from history. I've yet to see an MMOG developer that didn't overcompensate for what they perceive to be "levelling too fast."

[tazelbain]

What I don't get is other designers have already crafted a nice simple solution to this problem with the Rest XP mechanic.  There is no reason grind up your casual game to appease the extreme levelers.

[Mrbloodworth]

What I don't get is other designers have already crafted a nice simple solution to this problem with the Rest XP mechanic.  There is no reason grind up your casual game to appease the extreme levelers.

They don't have rest XP?

[Mantees]

Replying to Falconeer and Slayerik, I find strange what you guys are saying, because I find POTBS ship combat a big improvement over PIRATES!

[eldaec]

11 days for the fastest leveller in the game sounds too slow.

11 days for whomever got there first is no doubt approaching 100 hours played. Which is way too slow.

I have no idea why crazy people would want to make it even slower.

[HaemishM]

What I don't get is other designers have already crafted a nice simple solution to this problem with the Rest XP mechanic.  There is no reason grind up your casual game to appease the extreme levelers.

They don't have rest XP?

Nope.

11 days is a meaningless number, imo. You need to find out how that player played the game. Did he spend 8 hours at a time logged in and grinding missions? Was he always grouped or mostly solo? What faction was he?

If those factors have not been analyzed and considered, then adding grind to the level curve is a REALLY BAD IDEA. If they have been and FLS still thinks it's too fast, then it's probably going to end up being a mutual disagreement between myself and the developer. Only it'll mean I likely won't even consider buying the game.

[Venkman]

Is it 11 days /played or 11 days of playtime. Big difference. 11 days at the "casual average" of 2 hours a day is 22 hours. That's fast, in the context of the rest of the genre. At the same time, it pisses me off THEY think it's too fast. We've all been there and done that with level based games, and PotBS is trying a more WoW/Eve hybrid, using levels to motivate achievement but worldy commerce/trade components to compel immersion and stickiness. Cockblocking that with more time to level just means less people hitting that cap.

You only need to look so far as EQ2 and WoW a year after launch to notice this. The WoW leveling curve showed a goodly percentage of people at 60. The EQ2 one showed a goodly percentage in their 30s. Even if you just compare US+EU territories for both titles, the answer is obvious who wins. And this is for a game that really just has more of the same game at the end. With PotBS, you're blocking people from the "lifestyle" component.

Unfortunate. I truly hope they aren't driving themselves with the impressions of the psycho Achievonauts in beta. First, they're a completely unrealistic market segment. Second, there's a better than average chance they'll have burned themselves out by the time the game launches. This only leaves in its wake a game only for them when they themselves aren't even there.

This isn't a VG level of "uh oh". But it's not good to hear from a game that could have been different something always said by more directly-derivative titles.

[Modern Angel]

I will change my tune real fast if the levelling is slowed down much. I mean REAL fast. I've convinced about ten or so of my guild mates to give it a spin and possibly making it the new office game... and I fucking HATE when people pull that, "BUT I HAVE FRIENDS THAT WILL COME TO THE GAME AND YOU FUCKED IT UP ABLOOBLOOBLOOBLOO LEAVING", crap but, seriously, abloobloobloo. You need to tweak it down a bit, fine. But that 11 days played goes to 20 days played? No way. We've already played WoW and EQ2; I still play WoW. If I want to level forever I will go say hey to my buddies in WoW.

Don't do this.

[Falconeer]

Replying to Falconeer and Slayerik, I find strange what you guys are saying, because I find POTBS ship combat a big improvement over PIRATES!

Honestly, the ship combat is the least sucking part of the game. Too bad there's land combat too, which is godawful and 10 times poorer and less engaging than the old Commodore64 one.

And "big improvement"? It's the same, with just different kind of guns and ammo.

[DrewC]

It's been a long time since I played Dark Age, but my strongest memory of PvP in that game was finding a level 50 player AFK in the frontier and beating on him for 5 minutes without being able to kill him, because his health regenerated faster than I could deal damage.

He then came back to the keyboard and two shot me.

That will not happen in PotBS.

[Modern Angel]

It's been a long time since I played Dark Age, but my strongest memory of PvP in that game was finding a level 50 player AFK in the frontier and beating on him for 5 minutes without being able to kill him, because his health regenerated faster than I could deal damage.

He then came back to the keyboard and two shot me.

That will not happen in PotBS.

I can only speak for myself but that's not my concern. It's A concern but not my main concern. You guys have, from everything I can see, done a bang up job of listening to your playerbase when you need to and shutting your ears when that's required. So I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on this level speed thing *to a point.* To wit, how much slower are we talking. Assuming catass can get to 50 in 11 days we can pretend that Joe Average semi-casual dude can get there in 16-17... original WoW style. How slow are you going to make it, roughly? Slow it down by a fifth? A tenth? A quarter?

[Mrbloodworth]

Isn't beta caped at level 20? 

[Nevermore]

It's been a long time since I played Dark Age, but my strongest memory of PvP in that game was finding a level 50 player AFK in the frontier and beating on him for 5 minutes without being able to kill him, because his health regenerated faster than I could deal damage.

He then came back to the keyboard and two shot me.

That will not happen in PotBS.

Do you also remember what a boring grindfest DAoC turned into when at the end of beta they felt "progression is currently way too fast" and ramped down leveling to a crawl?  I sure do.  Can anyone name one game that was improved by slowing down advancement?

[WayAbvPar]

Isn't beta caped at level 20? 

Closed beta didn't have an artificial cap. I still only made it to 20 

[Mrbloodworth]

It's been a long time since I played Dark Age, but my strongest memory of PvP in that game was finding a level 50 player AFK in the frontier and beating on him for 5 minutes without being able to kill him, because his health regenerated faster than I could deal damage.

He then came back to the keyboard and two shot me.

That will not happen in PotBS.

Do you also remember what a boring grindfest DAoC turned into when at the end of beta they felt "progression is currently way too fast" and ramped down leveling to a crawl?  I sure do.  Can anyone name one game that was improved by slowing down advancement?

Eve?

[WayAbvPar]

It's been a long time since I played Dark Age, but my strongest memory of PvP in that game was finding a level 50 player AFK in the frontier and beating on him for 5 minutes without being able to kill him, because his health regenerated faster than I could deal damage.

He then came back to the keyboard and two shot me.

That will not happen in PotBS.

Do you also remember what a boring grindfest DAoC turned into when at the end of beta they felt "progression is currently way too fast" and ramped down leveling to a crawl?  I sure do.  Can anyone name one game that was improved by slowing down advancement?

I remember the post-launch group experience nerf VERY well. It is what caused me to quit the game.

[ajax34i]

It's a problem with games where there's no "end-game".  Before Blizzard put out the patch that made levelling easier, took me a month to get to 60, and then 3 weeks to then get to 70, playing 40 hours a week (which is a lot).  But then, and here's the kicker, it took me another week to get some faction drops, 1 month to get tier-1 raid gear, and at that point I was looking forward to at least 2-3 months to get to the final tier and consider the game "beaten".  Summed up, 2 months to get to max level, 4 months spent at max level seeing "content".

If getting to 50 is the only thing that players can do in this game, and there's nothing to keep them busy AT 50, then yeah, there's a problem.  Players don't view getting to max level as "part of the game", yet developers always seem to view it as "the game" and panic if it's over "too fast".

Is the point of the game to get to 50 asap so that you can then enjoy conquering ports and having nice clan-based battles of conquest, over and over again?  Or is the journey to 50 what matters?  Is the "battles of conquest, over and over again" part too shallow a goal in the eyes of the developers?

Shrug.  In any case, player mentality nowadays is that your MMO game begins at 50. 

[Wershlak]

And finally there's the speed of progression through the game and the end-game itself.

You've distinguished between the "game" and the "end-game". Gamers have discovered that if there is an "end-game" then your "game" will just be a giant cockblock to keep people subbed before reaching the "end-game"

Once you get to 50, it’s another matter. As has been noted, we currently have a limited number of things for maxed out players to do, namely the economic game and port conquest.

Well this is why I would buy the game. For the economic game and the port conquest. This quote seems to suggest I need to hit 50 to experience these. If I want boring MMO quests and grinding I have a lot of other options out there.

Can anyone seriously clarify if it was 11 days /played or just 11 days?

[Nija]

Isn't beta caped at level 20? 

They are raising the cap 10 levels every week in open beta. It was raised to 30 this past monday, and I already see level 30 Frenchies sailing around.

I'm 17 now and I'm not sure how much I've played. Most of my time is spent figuring out how everything works, so I'd say it's a big number.

I'm not worried about leveling speed, as I know that there isn't a single thing to do once you hit 50.

[tazelbain]

You've distinguished between the "game" and the "end-game". Gamers have discovered that if there is an "end-game" then your "game" will just be a giant cockblock to keep people subbed before reaching the "end-game"

Works both ways.  The end-game could just as easily be bullshit to keep players subed until developers have time extend the game.

[Mrbloodworth]

End game is a horrible, horrible lie.

[lamaros]

Once you get to 50, it’s another matter. As has been noted, we currently have a limited number of things for maxed out players to do, namely the economic game and port conquest. While port conquest can be a ton of fun, we do need more and are already planning it. We’ve got plans for more raid style content, difficult repeatable mission aimed at experienced groups that can work together. We recently redid one of our early missions (Red Tide, which you can get at level 6-8) as an example of this, and it rocks. We plans to do many more of these, dispersed throughout the level range, with a large chunk of them at 50. Similar to the Task Forces that CoH uses.

Fail. Fail. Fail.

I was considering buying this. Now I wont.

I don't want to play another retard level based PvE solo/co-op/raiding game. As RPGs MMOs suck.

Several things that are under consideration include player port governance, society vs society grudge match battles, and of course the ever popular player owned socialization spaces (such as a customizable captain’s cabin you can invite friends to).

You put in player port governance. Society v society stuff. Player spaces. Proper maintance of the economic game. Continued development of PvP.

ANY YOU MAKE THEM AVALIABLE TO ALL PLAYERS FROM A LOW LEVEL ONWARDS. YOU MAKE THEM WORLDS ASPECTS, NOT AN "ENDGAME".

Then you'll have a game I'll play.

But that's all in "consideration". Which means it's bullshit you throw around to keep players like me interested while you get your monkeys dishing out more insipid oxymoronic 'PvE MMO gameplay'. No thanks.

Why the fuck do you even need avatars in ports anyway.