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Topic: Pirates of the Burning Sea- OPEN BETA! (Read 229292 times)
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Sutro
Terracotta Army
Posts: 165
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I think a mix is called for; if you try to board in the larger engagements where you have allies and somesuch you're gonna get absolutely shredded while you're conducting the boarding action. In any instancer where I have more than 1 ally I go for sending 'em to the sea.
I've found that 3 ships is really my limit; it's pretty dang hard to do more than three at a time somewhat regardless of the ship choices just because PotBS is very much bout economy of numbers, whether that be in boarding or in sea combat. Missions where I have to kill more than three ships I usually either cancel or abort them.
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Mrbloodworth
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15148
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I think a mix is called for; if you try to board in the larger engagements where you have allies and somesuch you're gonna get absolutely shredded while you're conducting the boarding action. In any instancer where I have more than 1 ally I go for sending 'em to the sea.
I've found that 3 ships is really my limit; it's pretty dang hard to do more than three at a time somewhat regardless of the ship choices just because PotBS is very much bout economy of numbers, whether that be in boarding or in sea combat. Missions where I have to kill more than three ships I usually either cancel or abort them.
I was in a 6 man group, most level 10, sinking level 23-25 X2's. Fun times.
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Xanthippe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4779
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I caved and joined Fileplanet so I could play this.
I didn't like it the first time I tried it, but I really enjoyed it the second time. I have a level 9 freetrader, and am trying to figure out what I'm doing. Playing Spanish side on the not quite as crowded server.
I don't know what freetraders do, or what other professions do, or what I should be picking for skills.
I'm beginning to dislike swashbuckling less, and getting used to the quirky animations.
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geldonyetich2
Terracotta Army
Posts: 811
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I got my first taste of this game today too. El Geldimo, foppish knave of the Spanish Navy, was born. It's not bad game at all, very much a worthy Pirates! online. Though I imagine it'll become a grind the deeper I get into it.
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Soukyan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1995
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Okay, I tested this quite some time ago and enjoyed the sailing tutorial. I figured it could be a fun game. Then I landed in port and was bored out of my fucking skull running around town. I am going to give it another shot in the next couple weeks. Is there some reason every is playing the Spanish Navy? Is it just hatred for the French or is it similar to DAoC in that the "realms" were of various levels of completion before release? Are the Spaniards getting all the polish first? Please to be educating me.
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"Life is no cabaret... we're inviting you anyway." ~ Amanda Palmer"Tree, awesome, numa numa, love triangle, internal combustion engine, mountain, walk, whiskey, peace, pascagoula" ~ Lantyssa"Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus." ~Marcel Proust
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Cadaverine
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1655
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I honestly can't tell the difference, aside from Pirates getting to commandeer a derelict every 2 hours.
Maybe I r dumb, and am missing the deep, and thought provoking, tactical nuances of "crossing the T" to victoly, but it's just blah. Or maybe I just set my expectations too high in believing FLS would deliver Eve with cannons and cutlass', sans sucky bits.
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Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
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Modern Angel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3553
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The factions are essentially skins, the classes are not. Pirates are both a class AND a skin so once you go Pirate you're limiting your future alts. The French side is filled with people I don't want to play with. The British side is by far the most populous and I don't dig playing the most populous anything in most games. So Spain by default, I think.
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Cryo
Developers
Posts: 15
NCsoft Europe
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I played it a couple days during the open beta, even though I knew it wouldn't appeal to me (I'm not really into pirates and sea based combat), but I'm usually testing all new games anyway.
I didn't really liked the graphics (yeah I was set on low details because playing on my laptop with a poor gfx card, but some games actually still looks good on low details, wouldn't say this was the case here), and the gameplay was a bit confusing at the start. After doing a few missions I was more comfortable with it, but still it wasn't fluid enough for my taste.
The concept of the game is actually original, and the most interesting aspects of the game seems to be the group PvP and the economy system (which I scratched only the surface of it, so I won't comment). But still, I'd say it will remain a niche game at best, which is alright because there wasn't any real MMOs (purposely excluding Puzzle Pirates and the other one I forgot the name) based on pirates until recently. And the FLS crew seems to be knowing what they are doing, judging from the last patch and the various improvement made since the closed beta.
I won't be playing it but I wish them good luck with their game, it sounds promising and would recommend it to people into pirates and naval battles.
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Tannhauser
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4436
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'Allo Mon Ami! My name is Paul Grandsard, a French lieutenant and captain of the "Bretagne". I sail across the Rackham world, well mainly along the Florida coast, with my trusty and crusty little rude French sailors. We wear berets, smoke, and do not care to bathe. Anyway, enough of that, to the meat. Having just made lvl 9, I feel completely qualified to review the entire game. Ship Combat Easily the best part of the game, ship combat is pretty fun, glad there is collision detection. It's fun to shoot from both sides of the ship and the battles can be somewhat tactical. I like the various buffs and debuffs. I was bored with the ease of play until I found the 'Ship Captain' who lets you increase the difficulty but I don't know if your rewards are boosted as well yet. Ground Combat Well it's a mess. I have a skill that is supposed to grant me 40 Initiative but only seems to work half the time. I like the idea they are going with, it just needs lots more work and polish. Only in one match did I even take a single hit point(!) and in that match I was up against 3 NPC's who destroyed me. I have a pistol equipped but maybe I have the safety on since I can't shoot it. Probably need a special skill, I mean pulling a trigger is HARD. Crafting My dreams of sitting on my plantation veranda sipping mint juleps while my slaves pick cotton have not come true. You buy a warehouse and mills, etc. but they are not hacked from the Florida jungle. No, they appear as tiny boxes on your crafting panel. Sigh. The good news is that crafting is in 'real time' and seems really interesting so far. I did handicap myself by basing my fledgling trading empire at Tampa while everything seems to focus on Granville. This means I must make the long and dangerous trip round the 'horn' of Florida where npc assholes await to delay my arrival. They are not really a threat, I just outrun them when we get into the tactical field, but precious trading time is wasted. Graphics and sound are good and seem to have a good flavor for the era. It has a somewhat steep learning curve, but the tutorials do a decent job. Just the freshness of the game is pleasing, allowing me to overlook some of it's teething problems. With about 6 months of polish this will be a great game, but since it will be out early next year it looks like we will be buying a beta. Tannhauser's Bottom Line A fresh setting, good graphics and sound and crafting keep this MMO from a watery grave. So I give PotBS a B.
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WayAbvPar
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I was bored with the ease of play until I found the 'Ship Captain' who lets you increase the difficulty but I don't know if your rewards are boosted as well yet. IIRC, there is a marginal increase in the XP and db rewards from the quest. The real reward comes from the additional XP and db from the extra kills. This makes ship-based missions awesome, but avatar-based missions unbelievably sucktastic.
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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Der Helm
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4025
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Ok, managed to get back in! Thanks Signe ...
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"I've been done enough around here..."- Signe
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Xanthippe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4779
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The sailing game is awesome. The swashbuckling game is not. I haven't flagged for pvp so I don't know how that part is - I'm way too green to be anything but fodder. The missions have a sameness to them, which is fine.
The economic game, though, has really captured my attention. It seems incredible.
I'm pre-ordering. I mean, if I'm playing this game even for only 2 or 3 months, I must have a parrot.
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Nija
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2136
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Upon further review I've decided to not play at release. It might be a good game a year from now. I'll check back later.
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Sutro
Terracotta Army
Posts: 165
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OK, so here's the view from level 29. (plus some assorted levels on the non-Blackbeard servers) 1.) Avatar combat gets better. In later levels, you've got much more strategery to figure out, as well as a lot more combat options. Things become somewhat more twitch as you start working your "draw people away from the pack and CC" them strats in boarding, and start managing the cooldowns on your ever-increasing list of skills. Those defensive skills you used to never touch become pretty dang important. 2.) Ship combat stays the same. Kind of. Because the sloop and xebec classes just don't cut it anymore past 25 or so, you're putting in with some heavy frigates that have terrible acceleration. It's tough to get the corners/block the bow/board like it was in earlier levels. Wind management becomes KEY. If you can trap your opponent(s) into the wind, that's a big part of a win right there as you can cruise right up to their stern and unload into their structure. Wow, that sounds nasty. Anyhow, you'll find yourself having more shootouts instead of jockeying to board, which may or may not be fun depending on your tastes. Unless you've got skills like desperation fire or such to speed things up, it can get pretty tedious. 3.) Grinding... gets horrible. Sorry Drew. There's no other way to put it. The grind past 20 becomes almost intolerable. By this point you've seen all of the instances avatar combat (avcom) uses, and the jungle and beach ones are GODAWFUL overused. The NPCs are in static spawnpoints and will be in the same spawn patterns. With only a very few exceptions (and refreshing they are,) they will be in the same positions and your goal will be to look for a foozle that spawns in one of about three or four places. You will find yourself sending silent prayers that the foozle is in one of the close-by ones. Overall, the avcom missions feel like the proof-of-concept for CoH's instancing system. Ship combat missions come in about five varieties, and you will become absolutely sick of every one of them in pretty short order. 4.) "Preparing to Play" So a lot of the grind and such could be avoided by PvP, right? Well, kind of. PvP is a raw loss-generating activity - unlike, say, UO where the economy doesn't actually -lose- anything, it just gets transferred; when you lose in PvP a LARGE sum of money heads straight to the toilet. While open sea is good for experience, real money comes from missions... and missions get old. It's a case where you seriously have to do missions to support a PvP habit, since they're the primary faucet of currency for the entire economy. How much money are we talking about? Well, let's say you want to be competitive and keep full outfittings on your ship. Six slots of large outfittings will run you around 18-30k, depending on your level. All of that heads to the shitter when you die. A ship deed, with three "deaths" on it, can cost you upwards of 50k for the 30+ game. Pirates can capture stuff, sure, but there's a great deal of time involved in finding the ship you like... and if you haven't set up an elaborate positioning of spares, one death will set you back a couple of hours trying to find another one. A mission at my level can net me between 1000-2000db, and take between 15 and 45 minutes to do. So, each time you die, that's about 5-6 hours of missioning. (again, assuming full outfittings) Sure, if you have a good economic system going this can help somewhat, but remember that the faucet where the money to buy your econ-produced stuff comes from, again, missions. So if you're not a top-of-the-line economy guy, you'll still end up being part of the faucet. And the top-of-the-line economy folks probably won't be doing intensive PvP, if I were to make an unquantifiable statement with no basis in fact. In the end, since I'm interested in PvP, I spend a lot of time "preparing to play." I spend a majority of my time in-game doing things I don't like doing for the few times I can do what I like to do. Want to be the lone pirate of the seas? Forget about it. If you're not running in a pack of 4-6, you're just an easy kill for someone who's in one that has an even half-decent tackle ship. Spawn points in PvP are ad hoc, so you can dodge bullets sometimes... and sometimes have no chance when you spawn 100y off of a fourth rate. To finalize, even all this sounds terribly negative, I'm still torn on whether or not to buy. A lot will depend on if the folks I run with end up playing; the only way I'd be able to tolerate the missioning/xp grind is with some other folks to shoot the shit with. Right now, only one other person plays, and he's pretty anti-social. So I've spent almost all my time solo, and it's sucked. I've looked for groups a few times with the group search, but I've never seen a public group posted. It'll be interesting to see how this game unfolds. It doesn't have disaster written on it, but at the same time a lot of folks are like me, kind of on the fence about it. There's reasons I still log in, but the higher I level, it becomes harder and harder to do the missions over and over again. After one night of setting up the economy and managing it every 2-3 days, that's all the work that it needs... it just gets tiresome. Yet the port battles are tres cool, even if they do represent hundreds of thousands of doubloons going to the bottom of the sea with not a whole lot of tangible benefit for either side. The naval manuevers are in there, people actually do talk about "nelsons" and splitting the line and all that. Port battles and PvP feel very period and very thrilling. We'll see. -Sutro
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Der Helm
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4025
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3.) Grinding... gets horrible.
Sorry Drew. There's no other way to put it. The grind past 20 becomes almost intolerable. By this point you've seen all of the instances avatar combat (avcom) uses, and the jungle and beach ones are GODAWFUL overused. The NPCs are in static spawnpoints and will be in the same spawn patterns. With only a very few exceptions (and refreshing they are,) they will be in the same positions and your goal will be to look for a foozle that spawns in one of about three or four places. You will find yourself sending silent prayers that the foozle is in one of the close-by ones. Overall, the avcom missions feel like the proof-of-concept for CoH's instancing system.
Ship combat missions come in about five varieties, and you will become absolutely sick of every one of them in pretty short order.
Now that is something I'd like to see a dev answer. Edit: Quoting helps ...
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« Last Edit: December 21, 2007, 07:53:41 AM by Der Helm »
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"I've been done enough around here..."- Signe
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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In short: Eve.
Not to diminish Sutro's post of course. It's just that except for the use of levels and avcom, that's the very essence of what makes Eve so loved by a narrower marketbase. And even that isn't a bad thing because let's face it, if PotBS hits just Eve numbers, they'll be doing better than pretty much anything SOE has launched or integrated into their system since SWG.
So basically, PotBS provides what this genre needs for part of the audience tired of Fantasy-themed spoon-fed DIKU. It's not perfect, but the type of people who are attracted to it could like that lack of perfection because it lets them create their own conditions for success. Unfortunately, often "perfect" really means "contrived to the lowest common denominator".
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Xanthippe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4779
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I haven't yet preordered - played the game and became more confused!
I made a Freetrader, thinking I can level by outrunning pirates and doing Fed Ex missions. I can't. I have to do combat missions, despite the fact that I don't really want to combat, I want to trade and craft.
So what exactly can I do that a privateer can't? I can see all of the auction house listings. I have fewer fighting skills. I can level faster, it seems, by getting pennants or something I'm still kind of confused about.
Ok, so I guess now my main character will be a Privateer, who can build whatever wherever just like my Freetrader can. I can use my Freetrader to look at the auction house listings and then log on my privateer to go get the stuff? Assuming my privateer hasn't lost that faction, I guess.
If I make another character on the same server, it's in the same faction. Ok, I can understand the reason for this, however...
Every player can only build 10 lots per server. Not per character that must be levelled up, but per server.
So I figure that the hardcore merchant people are going to be buying two accounts. Does anyone remember the buff bot thing in DAOC? Is this a way to get people to pay for two accounts? I don't understand why the limitation. It seems to me that the time limitation of having to level another character through the incredibly repetitive missions is punishment enough.
What is there to encourage people to roll French or Spanish instead of British? Since the Brits have the most people in beta, it stands to reason they'll be the Albion of the Caribbean as well. What prevents the British from ending up completely dominating?
From what I could see, the missions are mostly the same for the different sides or at least very similar.
My character is level 14. Experience gain seems a little slow, because I'm assuming that it becomes even slower later. The point of the game appears to be to contend for ports, which means being at Max_level. It sounds like I'm going to burn out by 30 like CoH.
I may still buy, because I love launch mmos (I have a sickness about being there at the beginning, which I find fun with all the bugs and everything) and I'm a sucker for gifts like parrots. But I have concerns.
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Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
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My interest just went from medium-rising after talking to a friend I let use my FP account who was telling me how cool ship combat was to not interested at all in the time it took to read this: In the end, since I'm interested in PvP, I spend a lot of time "preparing to play." I spend a majority of my time in-game doing things I don't like doing for the few times I can do what I like to do. Want to be the lone pirate of the seas? Forget about it. If you're not running in a pack of 4-6, you're just an easy kill for someone who's in one that has an even half-decent tackle ship. Spawn points in PvP are ad hoc, so you can dodge bullets sometimes... and sometimes have no chance when you spawn 100y off of a fourth rate. I was sort of hoping for a play to crush, winners gain $$$ in pvp for winning and losers have to go grind for 6 hours and eventually quit because they are bitches system. No, that should not have been in green.
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A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
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Slayerik
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4868
Victim: Sirius Maximus
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My interest just went from medium-rising after talking to a friend I let use my FP account who was telling me how cool ship combat was to not interested at all in the time it took to read this: In the end, since I'm interested in PvP, I spend a lot of time "preparing to play." I spend a majority of my time in-game doing things I don't like doing for the few times I can do what I like to do. Want to be the lone pirate of the seas? Forget about it. If you're not running in a pack of 4-6, you're just an easy kill for someone who's in one that has an even half-decent tackle ship. Spawn points in PvP are ad hoc, so you can dodge bullets sometimes... and sometimes have no chance when you spawn 100y off of a fourth rate. I was sort of hoping for a play to crush, winners gain $$$ in pvp for winning and losers have to go grind for 6 hours and eventually quit because they are bitches system. No, that should not have been in green. Don't you know that Pirates have always just been in it for the good fights!
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« Last Edit: December 21, 2007, 11:30:53 AM by Slayerik »
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"I have more qualifications than Jesus and earn more than this whole board put together. My ego is huge and my modesty non-existant." -Ironwood
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Nevermore
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4740
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It's all about the mad props!
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Over and out.
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WayAbvPar
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Server list should be out for Christmas- let's get all the Spanish-leaning folks on the same server if possible.
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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Xanthippe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4779
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I found the trading quests. I don't know if I can level solely off of them or not.
The economy is skewed what with this being beta and beta ending soon.
Is it ending on the 23rd for real?
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42652
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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Hmm, well if open beta ends on the 23rd, I'm not sure I'll end up buying the game. I've enjoyed the ship combat, but the avatar combat is just not fun, and all the grind talk has me really gunshy about dropping $50 on this.
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sidereal
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let's get all the Spanish-leaning folks on the same server if possible.
Les Espagnols peuvent sucer mes testicules
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« Last Edit: December 21, 2007, 12:37:16 PM by sidereal »
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THIS IS THE MOST I HAVE EVERY WANTED TO GET IN TO A BETA
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Hellinar
Terracotta Army
Posts: 180
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I found the trading quests. I don't know if I can level solely off of them or not.
The trading quests reputedly give about 20% of the total experience you need to reach 50. Four or five of them will get you a level at 18 or 19. Slower than grinding NPC probably, but fun if you are a trader. What worked for me was building the relevant lots and producing stuff yourself. Make the cost of the buildings back by selling some of the product. Some things though, like gold, you can pick up at way less than production cost at the AH. I suppose you can do them with any class, but I haven't tried.
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Sutro
Terracotta Army
Posts: 165
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I was sort of hoping for a play to crush, winners gain $$$ in pvp for winning and losers have to go grind for 6 hours and eventually quit because they are bitches system. No, that should not have been in green.
It wouldn't be entirely fair of me if I didn't mention that there is a benefit to winning; each ship gets a "mark of victory" and whatever cargo the other ship was carrying. Ten marks of victory can get you some OK stuff; on the pirate side there's some pretty good general mods that can be gained. Sometimes the cargo is OK, but someone who's about to lose has a couple of ways to circumvent you getting even these rewards. If the loser abandons ship, no mark of victory is received, and cargo can always be destroyed. It's a bitch tactic, but I fully own up to destroying a 20K agamemnon deed when I started memory leaking out in a PvP area in open sea, froze up and got jumped by a pack of 4; I didn't load in before I was already getting pounded and sails to 60 percent. Damned if I'm going to reward a bunch of fuckers for jumping 4-1 someone who's obviously lagging/leaked out.
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Abelian75
Terracotta Army
Posts: 678
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It's a bitch tactic, but I fully own up to destroying a 20K agamemnon deed when I started memory leaking out in a PvP area in open sea, froze up and got jumped by a pack of 4; I didn't load in before I was already getting pounded and sails to 60 percent. Damned if I'm going to reward a bunch of fuckers for jumping 4-1 someone who's obviously lagging/leaked out.
That's actually kind of cool. Of course ideally destroying cargo would take a little bit of time and perhaps impede your combat/manuevering slightly, but that does seem like an interesting mechanic, if unintended.
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Modern Angel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3553
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I've cooled somewhat because I'm not looking for a grindy game but I still intend on buying at release. Even if I only make it to about 30 or so that's about 10 levels more than anything else except for WoW.
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Xilren's Twin
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So I've been attempting to play and have a question. Both last night and this morning at 8am EST, i'm attempting a tutorial mission and and lagging and rubberbanding like mad. I couldn't even complete the intro mission first time, and the boarding/grapping mission b/c my ship wouldn't move (sails go up, starts to turn, hop back to umoving and sails down; repeat for 10 minutes).
Now I could maybe understand that at 10pm on a heavy load server, but at 8am with a light load I was seeing the same thing. Is this typical performance for this game or is them some known issue with the tutorials?
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"..but I'm by no means normal." - Schild
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geldonyetich2
Terracotta Army
Posts: 811
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3.) Grinding... gets horrible.
Sorry Drew. There's no other way to put it. The grind past 20 becomes almost intolerable. By this point you've seen all of the instances avatar combat (avcom) uses, and the jungle and beach ones are GODAWFUL overused. The NPCs are in static spawnpoints and will be in the same spawn patterns. With only a very few exceptions (and refreshing they are,) they will be in the same positions and your goal will be to look for a foozle that spawns in one of about three or four places. You will find yourself sending silent prayers that the foozle is in one of the close-by ones. Overall, the avcom missions feel like the proof-of-concept for CoH's instancing system. This being an MMORPG, I was expecting a grind, something exactly like this. However, just because I was expecting it doesn't mean I want it. Tis' a better world where the developers simply stop making you gain levels at the point where they run out of content.
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WayAbvPar
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So I've been attempting to play and have a question. Both last night and this morning at 8am EST, i'm attempting a tutorial mission and and lagging and rubberbanding like mad. I couldn't even complete the intro mission first time, and the boarding/grapping mission b/c my ship wouldn't move (sails go up, starts to turn, hop back to umoving and sails down; repeat for 10 minutes).
Now I could maybe understand that at 10pm on a heavy load server, but at 8am with a light load I was seeing the same thing. Is this typical performance for this game or is them some known issue with the tutorials?
There is definitely still some improvements to be made in killing the latency beast. If you haven't already, try dialing down the viewable avatars to 20. I seem to recall the tutorials being a bit laggier than the rest of the game, and the n00b towns are absolutely the worst for lag.
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Open beta ends the 23rd? Didn't realize it was so soon. No way I'm preordering. I'll wait to see how things are going, sometime in February.
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DrewC
Developers
Posts: 27
Flying Lab
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"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized." Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1864-1912)
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Abelian75
Terracotta Army
Posts: 678
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rubberbanding like mad.
This game rubberbands you? On ground missions/towns I assume? How important are the ground missions for character advancement? I'm surprised they went with rubberbanding as opposed to just trusting the client... would it really be a disaster to just let people use teleport hacks in avatar mode until you catch them with logs? I dislike rubberbanding greatly. I remember when guild wars launched there was a bug where the server would rubberband you if you took a turn around a corner too tightly. Irritated me sooooo much.
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taolurker
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1460
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Apologies for Brucing this, to answer a bunch of things. So I've been attempting to play and have a question. Both last night and this morning at 8am EST, i'm attempting a tutorial mission and and lagging and rubberbanding like mad. I couldn't even complete the intro mission first time, and the boarding/grapping mission b/c my ship wouldn't move (sails go up, starts to turn, hop back to umoving and sails down; repeat for 10 minutes).
Now I could maybe understand that at 10pm on a heavy load server, but at 8am with a light load I was seeing the same thing. Is this typical performance for this game or is them some known issue with the tutorials?
There is definitely still some improvements to be made in killing the latency beast. If you haven't already, try dialing down the viewable avatars to 20. I seem to recall the tutorials being a bit laggier than the rest of the game, and the n00b towns are absolutely the worst for lag. There were a couple of things posted on the forums for issues like Xilren is having, one of them was an issue with specific routers, and the other was a modification you add via an ini file, that can probably help. Visit this Thread. 3.) Grinding... gets horrible.
Sorry Drew. There's no other way to put it. The grind past 20 becomes almost intolerable. By this point you've seen all of the instances avatar combat (avcom) uses, and the jungle and beach ones are GODAWFUL overused. The NPCs are in static spawnpoints and will be in the same spawn patterns. With only a very few exceptions (and refreshing they are,) they will be in the same positions and your goal will be to look for a foozle that spawns in one of about three or four places. You will find yourself sending silent prayers that the foozle is in one of the close-by ones. Overall, the avcom missions feel like the proof-of-concept for CoH's instancing system. This being an MMORPG, I was expecting a grind, something exactly like this. However, just because I was expecting it doesn't mean I want it. Tis' a better world where the developers simply stop making you gain levels at the point where they run out of content. I also noticed that levels get progressively harder after getting to the mid twenties, but I still find grouping on the open seas to be more experience faster than doing the missions. The missions are leaning mostly toward copies, especially in their layout or maps, but but I also saw many that were quite different, including the RP story arc ones, and many that are not close to where the newbie area is. It's not by any means extremely slow, and there is still turning in pennants and commendations in your capitol city for "exp books" which I just used to gain nearly an entire level. It's not impossible to level, and honestly using a smaller, lower level ship nets extremely more experience than using an upgraded higher level one, and this has all the difference when running missions and the experience curve. For anyone not wanting to grind, give up playing MMOs altogether is the only suggestion I can make. I haven't yet preordered - played the game and became more confused!
I made a Freetrader, thinking I can level by outrunning pirates and doing Fed Ex missions. I can't. I have to do combat missions, despite the fact that I don't really want to combat, I want to trade and craft.
So what exactly can I do that a privateer can't? I can see all of the auction house listings. I have fewer fighting skills. I can level faster, it seems, by getting pennants or something I'm still kind of confused about.
The main benefits of freetrading are you being able to use any auction house, see all the listings, use huge hauling vessels, and also get recipe books or trickles of experience for crafting things. Other classes don't have any of those abilities. You do need to combat some to level, but that directly relates to being able to actually captain your ship. Again grouping to do killing is where I'd recommend you'll get the majority of the combat experience you need. For me, I'm looking around for pre-order boxes near me, but not finding any.. I do intend to purchase for launch, but I also can't say for how long as I still have a few doubts about the game that don't seem like they'll be remedied before this beta ends. WOOT! Anyone who was Spanish on Blackbeard look for Laozi Mi'Karma and I can even assist with making better ships, upgrades or even a small loan of doubloons.
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I used to write for extinct gaming sites details available here (unused blog about page)
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