Pirates of the Burning Sea- OPEN BETA!

[Drogo]

Other people have echoed my main thoughts about the game. The ship combat was fun, but then again I loved playing Pirates. I wish they would have left the avatar game out of it, because it still needs a lot of work and was not much fun. The economy seemed like a pretty good system and looked to be fun to play around with if that is your cup of tea. I did not really get the chance to PvP, but I am not a fan of how they plan to limit PvP to contested areas and to reset the servers.

Overall, I felt the game was watered down a little too much for my tastes. I would have preferred a game that was more like EvE. The developers seem to be aiming for a more casual audience, and I cannot blame them, but a large single server with no resets would have been more interesting and might have enticed to me to play. I also think they would have been better served by a skill system rather than the leveling system.

I was excited to play this game when I first heard about it and I was really hoping for EvE on the high seas, but this game is not nearly as hardcore. It is not a bad game, and when it is free to try I would recommend everyone give it a shot because the setting is different for an MMORPG, but I will not be buying it at release. I think I am just not the target audience the developers were looking for. Overall I think it is a decent game with good ideas, but it still falls short of the mark.

[lamaros]

It sounds like they've tried to make it more 'casual friendly' by changing the wrong things to me.

EVE would be more casual friendly if you make the gameplay faster and FIX THE UI. But at the same time these things wouldn't take away from other parts of the game that are more 'hardcore'.

Unless they fix those things how do they expect to attract and keep people playing? If they don't fix those things and ruin the hardcore game it's a bit like shooting yourself in the foot.

[Hellinar]

I really enjoy the ship combat.  Slow doesn't bother me, as long as I have tactics to think about. I don't know if going round in circles is an optimum strategy. Its boring, so I stopped doing it. You can win an encounter by sailing round and shooting at stuff, which is fun. So thats what I did.

Avatar combat is just the same old same old. I'd much rather they had put more resources into stuff like weather on the high seas. Also, running through laggy towns does nothing for me. A captains cabin to meet the locals would have done.

The economy game is great. You give orders and leave your minions to do the work. As a merchant should. Your job is figure out what to make where, and where to move it to and sell it.

I don't know if it's a game I'd play long term. I'm pretty burnt out on MMORPGs like some other people here. I too fear the game will be taken over by uber guilds. But I will buy the box. If only because I enjoyed the beta, and the dev team wins the prize for the most committed and communicative dev team EVAR!

[SnakeCharmer]

My biggest pet peeve about it is that friends can't man my ship.  They can't even come on board my ship. 
I want a crew:  A navigator, chief mate.  Even a ships doctor. 

Other gripes beyond what I mentioned earlier:
I can't be a simPirate and decorate my ship. 
I can't call my ship home.

[BigBlack]

Now that the NDA is down, it sounds more and more like the game is shockingly similar to... Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean MMO.  Anyone who's played PotBS and a recent build of PotC care to tell me how I'm wrong?  All the strengths and weaknesses sound the same, with the exception that I actually kinda enjoyed PotC's avatar combat, and it's backed by a world-IP with interesting potential and a company with incredibly deep pockets.

Hell, after the latest watering-down, even the rough approaches to PvP sound the same.  The only tangible difference seems to be PotC's simplified economics, but I never played MMOs to bake bread anyhow.

[Modern Angel]

Now that the NDA is down, it sounds more and more like the game is shockingly similar to... Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean MMO.  Anyone who's played PotBS and a recent build of PotC care to tell me how I'm wrong?  All the strengths and weaknesses sound the same, with the exception that I actually kinda enjoyed PotC's avatar combat, and it's backed by a world-IP with interesting potential and a company with incredibly deep pockets.

Hell, after the latest watering-down, even the rough approaches to PvP sound the same.  The only tangible difference seems to be PotC's simplified economics, but I never played MMOs to bake bread anyhow.

See, i didn't find the pvp too watered down.

Essentially you have a town with a resource you want. Resources can only be gotten from contestable towns. So you start doing hit and run attacks on the NPC traders and police you see going back and forth. As you do that you gain contesting points. Enough contesting points and the city is fought over; whether you're invited depends on how many of those points you're responsible for so if the threshold is, say, 5k and you did 10 points you've contributed but you're not going to the big show.

When a town is contested there are HUGE concentric rings around it which make a pvp zone. At the outer layer you're susceptible to pvp attack by pirates (which is sort of a neat way to get pirates involved) while the inner ring is free for all, open pvp. Now, that may sound kind of lame but the pvp rings really are pretty massive. Port of Spain was always under attack and I had to give it a WIDE berth to get where I was going, putting me in the way of NPC pirates and making me sail against the wind. It has an effect, albeit maybe not as dramatic as some would like, on the world as a whole. I can completely see several of these rings overlapping and changing the way business is done on a fundamental level for the carebears.

[Bokonon]

They don't actually reset the servers monthly (or aren't planning to), right? I thought there was a certain amount "capture points" that all sides can accumulate, and when it reaches a certain amount, the parent nations call a treaty that resets the colonies' ownership.

[Modern Angel]

They don't actually reset the servers monthly (or aren't planning to), right? I thought there was a certain amount "capture points" that all sides can accumulate, and when it reaches a certain amount, the parent nations call a treaty that resets the colonies' ownership.

Right. The concern is that there's no current mechanic to balance the sides. In closed beta, for some reason, the Spanish were the bullies on the block. I don't know if they ever swept the map but they were definitely in the driver's seat.

[Tige]

They don't actually reset the servers monthly (or aren't planning to), right? I thought there was a certain amount "capture points" that all sides can accumulate, and when it reaches a certain amount, the parent nations call a treaty that resets the colonies' ownership.

Right. The concern is that there's no current mechanic to balance the sides. In closed beta, for some reason, the Spanish were the bullies on the block. I don't know if they ever swept the map but they were definitely in the driver's seat.

A microcosm of the slippery slope they started down last year.  Instead of saying no they tried to implement things into their existing framework that conflicted with their boiler plate game.  Once they started plugging dam leaks with fingers and bubblegum we wind up with stuff like this.  It's pretty obvious in PotBS, or any game for that matter,  what systems were closer to the original docs and what was tacked on trying to be nice in adding player requests or found their way in due to feature creep. 
 

[Simond]

EVE would be more casual friendly if you make the gameplay faster and FIX THE UI.

Tangent: EVE's UI gets upgraded tomorrow, along with teh shinee! Not the best time for PotBS to start open beta, really. 

[WayAbvPar]

They don't actually reset the servers monthly (or aren't planning to), right? I thought there was a certain amount "capture points" that all sides can accumulate, and when it reaches a certain amount, the parent nations call a treaty that resets the colonies' ownership.

Right. The concern is that there's no current mechanic to balance the sides. In closed beta, for some reason, the Spanish were the bullies on the block. I don't know if they ever swept the map but they were definitely in the driver's seat.

IIRC, that was only in the past couple of builds. Early on it seemed like the Brits were the superpower. The population balances should be interesting. I am assuming a shakeout of roughly 30% Brit, 30% Pirate, 25% Spanish, 15% French or something similar. Depending on where the uberguilds for each faction wind up serverwise will go a long way toward determining how a particular server will play.

I have preordered. Will probably do a writeup of some kind after the official launch (which will be after the prelaunch). I am really excited to see what new fixes/features they will have in the first couple of months of live. Played 1.00.16 last night with a Pirate until level 5 and already noticed some significant improvements over the last build. That gives me hope- the dev team really listens and understands what players are experiencing and does a pretty good job of addressing such.

If they ever get avatar combat as fun as ship combat I could see this being fun to play for a long time.

[Loredena]

i think in many ways my husband and I are the target audience.  We are hardcore casuals -- we have been playing MMOs since 99, we play for lots of hours, and we have lots of alts.   We don't raid, and we don't pvp (though he is more likely to then I am).  I love to craft, and to play the economy, and it was descriptions of the economy metagame that first attracted my attention.  If this game had hard-core pvp on the lines of EVE, I would not play it, but, because the pvp IS 'watered down' and avoidable, I'm still interested in playing.   I'll probably focus on the economy  metagame, but I"ll run missions as well -- I found the swashbuckling more fun then the ships actually (maybe because it is a gameplay style I'm used to) but ship combat got more entertaining as I got a better handle on doing it.  Though I still loathe the escort missions, I finally succeeded at one!   My husband is actually really looking forward to being the runner -- he is quite enthused at the idea of buying/making goods in one part of the world, and working his way through dangerous areas/pvp zones etc to transport them.

We have both pre-ordered.  Of course, as current players of EQ2, with Station Access, it's a relatively easy decision for us -- we just pay for the box, our monthly fee doesn't change.

[Yegolev]

I can't read all those posts, but let me say one thing really quickly: the MOG game-reset is long overdue.  Persistent worlds mean static worlds in practice, and designing in a reset (used in other non-graphical-MUD territorial-conquest games) is the Right Thing To Do.  Risk would suck if you never got to start over.

[Modern Angel]

On thing that does bug me is that I'm still not clear on where the classes 'fit'. Ship Captains get big ships, Privateers little ships... but I keep hearing how Privateers can act like Pirates sometimes but I'm damned if I know how. Freetraders are the main crafters but everyone can craft. Pirates are a catch all but don't seem to be great at any one thing; I'm concerned about their ability to take and hold ports since they don't have the group skills Captains have. It all seems a bit muddled.

[Modern Angel]

I can't read all those posts, but let me say one thing really quickly: the MOG game-reset is long overdue.  Persistent worlds mean static worlds in practice, and designing in a reset (used in other non-graphical-MUD territorial-conquest games) is the Right Thing To Do.  Risk would suck if you never got to start over.

Yes and *yes*. Even if someone may sneer and say that it's simply sports pvp writ large it's still writ large. I have no issues with a game reset.

[Nija]

I just tried it again this morning and encountered a broken quest within 30 minutes of character creation. Also, there are no 'linking' quests, at least on the french side. I just did every quest in the first town until I wasn't offered anything else. Except for that "talk to the bartender!" quest, where the bar door isn't clickable even after restarting the client. Maybe the BARTENDER will point me in the direction of the next port.

So I sailed out to the next port anyways, since that's the obvious thing to do. Maybe that's why there are no linking quests... But I was met with a bunch of people who seemed to know me quite well, and offered me a wide array of the same kind of shit as the first town.

Is there a way to change how fast the camera pans when you click and hold the mouse? Is there a way to increase the tab-to-target distance?

This game still seems 100% forgettable.

[Nevermore]

I only tried out the French until level 4 or 5 but I know the Pirates had some missions that lead you to other ports.

[Loredena]

I. Also, there are no 'linking' quests, at least on the french side. I just did every quest in the first town until I wasn't offered anything else.

Your class trainer should have given you a quest to go see someone in your class at another port; I've had that for all four of the classes, around level 5 I think.   Also, the Economy quest line will send you to several different ports, and you'll see other quests offered as you go.

[WayAbvPar]

Yep- Level 5 should send you off to another port, so you can leave the missions in the n00b town and go on to bigger and better things. You can always come back later and bang out the rest of the new town quests; I like to do that during late night so the town isn't so crowded. There are several slider bars and whatnot in the interface options; maybe what you are looking for is in there? I don't have them memorized, since I haven't done that much customization.

[Mrbloodworth]

They got a trial going yet?

[Slayerik]

So much potential, then it was turned into level based diku crap. 

Well, maybe I should try it before I really knock it, but FFS the Pirates Version of Eve would have owned. Oh well.

[Nija]

Oh. I ran out of quests before I hit 5, since apparently a major part of the chain is completely broke.

[Modern Angel]

Oh. I ran out of quests before I hit 5, since apparently a major part of the chain is completely broke.

See, I've not run into that. If anything I have too MANY quests; I have some left rotting while I outlevel them.

The levels are there but I never once have felt as though I'm grinding or that it's some sort of barrier. The main arbiter of your power seems to be ships and there's enough variety that you can slay at any level; I've take on substantially higher AI ships with a tricked out ship which I otherwise would have lost.

[Hellinar]

On thing that does bug me is that I'm still not clear on where the classes 'fit'. Ship Captains get big ships, Privateers little ships... but I keep hearing how Privateers can act like Pirates sometimes but I'm damned if I know how. Freetraders are the main crafters but everyone can craft. Pirates are a catch all but don't seem to be great at any one thing; I'm concerned about their ability to take and hold ports since they don't have the group skills Captains have. It all seems a bit muddled.

I don't think so much muddled as that the classes are more "flavors" of the same basic theme, rather than completely different meals. Makes balancing a lot easier I think, as Naval Officers don't "own" everyone else in combat, or Freetraders everyone else in manufacturing.

Pirates big deal is they capture ships, so don't have the expenses of buying new ones all the time as they level up. At least, that's the theory.

[Yegolev]

If you can't click on a door, try pressing X when within range.  I mentioned this one during beta.

[WayAbvPar]

Oh. I ran out of quests before I hit 5, since apparently a major part of the chain is completely broke.

What class/faction were you playing? I have never had that problem. Did you go and talk to the priest and the magistrate of the town? They always have a few early quests. Hell, you can hit level 3 just doing the tutorials and meet & greets at this point.

[BigBlack]

How much of a sense of 'place' is there between different locales?  This goes for both land- and sea-based portions of the game.

Can I actually journey to the 'far side of the world' and have it feel different and strange, maybe even make a living out there in the boonies with other outcast-from-civilization types, and have it really feel 'far away' from the main parts of the world?

Or is it like Risk, where you're in Australia, or you're in Kamchatka, but you never really escape the feeling that they're all just squares on the game-board?

Not to derail, but just to give a sense of what I'm looking for (This game is actually tempting me, the more I read), but I want a world that feels as big as AC1 felt before everyone got a million portal ties and it became ten-minutes-to-anywhere.

[Nevermore]

It's only in the Caribbean.  The ports look somewhat different but mostly variations of the same theme.  But I didn't get to see all that many ports, to be fair.  Maybe 4 or 5.

[lamaros]

So much potential, then it was turned into level based diku crap.

?!

What. Strong emphasis on levels and quests?

Gah.

[Nija]

What class/faction were you playing? I have never had that problem. Did you go and talk to the priest and the magistrate of the town? They always have a few early quests. Hell, you can hit level 3 just doing the tutorials and meet & greets at this point.

Privateer/French. I didn't see a priest/magistrate. I am level 4, I think. I don't pay much attention to levels. I just ran out of icons on the map that indicated quests, aside from some 'meet the bartender!' thing. I left that town already, but it's a very poor way to start the game.

[Loredena]

The meet the bartender quest is a quest line that sends you to meet all the key players in the port, in the process of which you pick up multiple quests.  You pretty much have to do the series to get flagged for some of them I think, others open up at 4 and 5.   Perhaps it is a problem that the game expects you to do the starter quest line, but it's not exactly a unique concept -- most RPG games I've played have something similar, and I generally do them right off the bat.

[WayAbvPar]

^^^^what she said^^^^

However, even at level 4 you can start hunting on the Open Sea (which is more fun than a lot of the missions, and can be faster XP if you are a quick boarder). Eventually you will to a high enough level to be eligible for quests in your new town.

[Nija]

I know what it is. I don't have downs.

Shit like this should absolutely be working this close to release and the fact that it's broken tells a lot.

[Modern Angel]

I know what it is. I don't have downs.

Shit like this should absolutely be working this close to release and the fact that it's broken tells a lot.

While there's some stuff that is potentially broken in the larger metagame sense I've yet to run across a single broken quest in three different factions/class combos.

[Venkman]

Players shouldn't need to run through every single quest in a port to get instructions or leads to the next one in their sphere. WoW gets away with this because it specifically tuned the quest XP in newbie areas to the exact number of levels you need to a) leave that area; and more importantly, b) do so with some cool powers.

PotBS meanwhile shares a problem with EQ2: there's so many quests in the newb port that you easily are able to outlevel them before you get to the one that leads you to the next port. The zones aren't that interesting the 15th time you go through them and people can get tired of going through the same sea battle with their invincible non-improveable ship. Yes their NPC character gains some swashbuckling powers. But even now that's still the weaksauce portion of the game (though not as bad as AA at least).

Better to get players down the ship upgrade path quickly, as that gets people thinking about the process: travel, trade, commerce, economy. I'd rather they push people out of newbie port a bit earlier with a bit more equipment.

YMMV.