Just as an update, I liked how the dev's directly addressed the large, concerned playerbase with some of the large-scale issues they are facing.  I think that was a major step in the right direction.

They admitted that their missions are repetitive at the moment which seemed fairly straight forward to most on this discussion, with promise of more to come.  I can appreciate their honesty, and I hope such a thing does happen to turn the public opinion around on this one. 

Also the mentioned disparity between instanced combat and the "under-realistic, over-boring" openworld sailing system and the reasons and potential for this was also addressed, although I don't think they have a good fix for this, they might buff it out a little.

As for the people saying that people shouldn't post negatively, I say, look at the article, it is clear that the writer read this post at one point or another... therefore our concerns went straight to the top. 

In the light of their article, I logged in to see if anything had been set into motion... and it had not, but that is to be expected as it is in fact beta.  So at this point it is still a rather disappointing game needing much more work than I would imagine they have time to implement before shipping. 

since the dev's took the time to read the communities feedback, and write a direct response, I'm not going to give up on the game until launch, but if I don't see some big improvements, I'm certainly not going to waste my money.

PS:  I hope this post gives insight to those who cannot/don't want to get into beta.  I hope it saves some people a little time, money, and disappointment if the dev's drop the ball on their admittedly lacking game before launch.

..

Originally posted by smitty0356

Just as an update, I liked how the dev's directly addressed the large, concerned playerbase with some of the large-scale issues they are facing.  I think that was a major step in the right direction.

They admitted that their missions are repetitive at the moment which seemed fairly straight forward to most on this discussion, with promise of more to come.  I can appreciate their honesty, and I hope such a thing does happen to turn the public opinion around on this one. 

Also the mentioned disparity between instanced combat and the "under-realistic, over-boring" openworld sailing system and the reasons and potential for this was also addressed, although I don't think they have a good fix for this, they might buff it out a little.

As for the people saying that people shouldn't post negatively, I say, look at the article, it is clear that the writer read this post at one point or another... therefore our concerns went straight to the top. 

In the light of their article, I logged in to see if anything had been set into motion... and it had not, but that is to be expected as it is in fact beta.  So at this point it is still a rather disappointing game needing much more work than I would imagine they have time to implement before shipping. 

since the dev's took the time to read the communities feedback, and write a direct response, I'm not going to give up on the game until launch, but if I don't see some big improvements, I'm certainly not going to waste my money.

PS:  I hope this post gives insight to those who cannot/don't want to get into beta.  I hope it saves some people a little time, money, and disappointment if the dev's drop the ball on their admittedly lacking game before launch.

You started your topic on the 13th.

Dont say that this game is a sandbox game.

If this game is a sandbox game then lotro,wow,eq2 ect. is also a sandbox game.

I tried this game out and was shocked, i realy was, this is NOT the same game i read about over 2 years ago.

What happend why did they dumb down the game into a simple emty shell of a mmo?

This game certainly requires more than one evening to get a good feel for... hell any game does. To those that said you tried it only one night then quit -- that's pretty dumb on any level.

I'm not reading every post in here but my greatest advice if you are interested in this game is to play for a couple of days, get up to level 10 or so with missions, then start forming Open Sea NPC (PvE) convoy raiding groups. The group teamplay aspect and larger sea battles make the game a lot more interesting and will get you better adjusted for PvP combat later if that is your thing.

To address the economy: The first post is wildly inaccurate in the short economic descriptions and positions you offered. Auction House costs, like most games, are entirely player driven. This game introduces a new(?) concept with the AH where it will not show a buyer the LISTED item price, but the LAST price paid for that item in a particular port, as well as how many units/price at that port for a particular time period. Ex: Select Logs, Common, look to the right and it will say : 2 hours ago, 50 units, 200db each. 8 hours ago, 20 units, 150db each. At the bottom will be an "average price paid" listing. This system is more complex and takes a bit to get used to from the standard AH system of other games. As an economy buff, I enjoy this aspect a lot. If I price an item at 45db, the market may be steady at 100db... so if someone offers 95db, my item will sell for that. The game will also give you a chat report saying how much someone paid for your item compared to what you listed it at.

So far, raw material production in itself seems a lot less profitable than having a solid production line. For example, while you may just want to build an Oak Logging Camp, go ahead and build a Lumber Mill and perhaps a Carpenter Shop as well, as finished goods have greater profit margins (generally) than selling the Logs, Oak.

Obviously the avatar aspect of the game leaves a lot to be desired, but it was most recently added and the game is definitely more focused on the ship aspects [devs modeled the ships after historical blueprints, etc.] Obviously if you enjoyed the Pirates! combat system you will find yourself in a familiar setting here.

Overall the gameplay is pretty average right now but can be immensly fun with a group of 3-6 people fighting 6-8 ship NPC convoys, etc. PVP is exciting because players actually lose their ships and cargo. Pirates can steal player ships, etc. All of these aspects are appealing to me and it's definitely a playable game.

I'd recommend checking out the beta before it ends on Jan 1st, and playing the game more than one day. Ask in Nation chat for any help as it seems the community is quite helpful. Do missions and familiarize yourself with the game. Hit level 10-15 and find a group to hunt with.... enjoy.

In closing, the FLS dev team seems really tied into the community and will listen to players. I am confident in this game expanding and becoming even more attractive for people in the future.

Killvin I find your number 1 listed complaint is no jumping....

Weird.

On a side note, before I checked out the beta the other day I read posts on here and was almost turned off before I even tried it. Luckily I gave it a whirl for more than a day and enjoy it enough to buy the preorder at the moment.

big mistake dude.... buying on impusle.  Aside from this game being terrible atm (may improve), but preorders are a dangerous business.  Good luck

I played many different games. Most monthly pay games. I recently quit WoW due to not enough time. I had been playing Eve for about 2 years but got bored with it due to many reasons.

I played PoTB beta and at first it was like all new games, I couldnt get enough of it. But just like other betas, the pattern repeats in game play. You might get bored of doing missions.

my first impression of this game was that it maybe a copy of Voyage Century, many similarities between the two. I like game play in Voyage Century better when it came to certain things.

For me, I thought this game might be new game to move to with few of my friends that moved to WoW from EQ after 5 years of game play and most are tired of WoW as well. But after playin for good amount of time, I turned on the game and just didnt feel like playing it anymore.

I am still looking for the excitement I had playin Epic tales of EQ and discovering WoW. I made a lot of good friends from guild from EQ that stayed together till like 8th expantion of EQ, Half moved to EQ2 and other moved to WoW. Really wish, I can play something really Epic like that again to have that great guild and great team of people playing together again.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

If you haven't made it to level 25 you haven't even begun to play the game.

If you are in beta you should recommend to the Devs that the game should start at level 25.

I played the beta and i played beta's before of other games. But i stopped playing this beta pretty soon because the shore action was so incredibly silly and crappy i found it a waste of time. I loved the theme though.

i enjoyed the sea battles VERY much, loved it, Found hardly any weird bugs or stuf, looked solid and finished. But once you get on shore it's terrible.  That part (both instance and city) is so unfinished i can't imagine they dare to release it.

Further the city-lag is just unplayable, you get in and out as soon as possible because there is no way you even try to communicate there with others. It takes my fun away when you walk into a street and you toon gets set back to the start of the path like 3 or 4 times because of lag... and the walks are pretty long and streets arent that interesting to walk through.

If you invite a large group of beta players this close to release you better have something to show and it should be just debug, finish and performance testing. 

So beside the sea battles which are terrificly done, it looks great and you really feel steering and sailing your ship and it hurts when you get hit. But that's just half the game (well for the first 25 levels anyway).

I still might look into the final game when they got their shore action right because i loved the sea battle.

Nothing beats a 20 vs 20 port battle, when one wrong line by the lead ship, or an unintentional division in the ranks of the defenders spells doom.

This game's strength is its sea battles, particularly its pvp sea battles. If that's not your thing, this probably isn't your game.

I've actually gone ahead pre ordering this game just be reading up on it before hand. Like a few others mentioning on these boards I've been following the game since a few years back and as far as I can tell, without playing the beta, is that they're on the right track.
People who aren't interested in helping the devs and/or don't want their first hand experience ruined by bad beta code, should try my way of skipping beta and getting straight into the retail version. Whether or not I'll like the experience will be proven after a few months of testing the product.

I love the game, it hawe flaws. But as fan of this time period i must say i hawe best fun from long time, possibly pre cu swg. and i cant w8 till 7th to come back

Worst game you've ever beta tested???? I can only assume you haven't tested many games.

POTBS isn't the best game ever, but it isn't the worst either. I found it enjoyable enough to warrant purchasing the game. The game has potential, which is the most important thing.

I agree with the OP, when i joined the Open Beta my first thought was oh geez it feels like Voyage Century with upgraded graphics but VC is free to play :/.

Originally posted by -aLpHa-

I agree with the OP, when i joined the Open Beta my first thought was oh geez it feels like Voyage Century with upgraded graphics but VC is free to play :/.

This is treu. PoTBS economy is less of an grind though. For some odd reason though I do prefer PoTBS. Even though VC is way bigger and has more.

Originally posted by Iijs

Nothing beats a 20 vs 20 port battle, when one wrong line by the lead ship, or an unintentional division in the ranks of the defenders spells doom.

This game's strength is its sea battles, particularly its pvp sea battles. If that's not your thing, this probably isn't your game.

Lol. During the beta event, I tried to snag me a SOL on my beloved xebec. It just sat there in the instance, so I had my hopes up the captain was AFK. I'd spawed at an inconvenient angle, so I manoeuvered closer to the stern. And just when I was getting in position to rake him from behind, he used the exit. Whoever it was must have been laughing their asses off....

Yes, combat can be slow... half the fight is getting in a position where you can actually do some damage... but damn if it isn't the best pvp kick I've had in years... If that captain had panicked and turned, by the way, i'd have had him... I think...

=)

Linna

Not sure if it was touched on....but multiple ports CAN be set into contention.   There are several ports that cannot be conquered, but aside from those, most ports can be "conquered". 

For someone like me who is more a casual PVPer unless I can find a good solid group, I like that my PVE mission choices can and DO have an impact on the overall world in the game.  Do a mission at an enemy port and increase unrest.....or, do a mission at one of your ports and reduce unrest.  Granted this often times means entering a PVP zone where pirates can attack you, but it can be rewarding in the end. 

Also...for the poster speaking on how the dev's responded to his post:

Here is a little insight I will give.  Flying Labs Software is, in my opinion, one of the better developers out there.  I have not had experience with them until PotBS, but I would give them

They are EXTREMELY informative of status of servers during beta, warnings and apologies during outages of any kind.  The CEO as well as all the developers actually respond to the smallest of posts in the forums.  They allowed the community to create ships as there are somewhere around 10 or 20 ships in the game that were created by the community....you can create your own custom flags and sails....I could go on and on.  

So yes, they know that there is a lot of work to do, but I whole-heartedly believe that they are working as hard as they can to implement these fixes/additions in a timely fashion.

Originally posted by Deathstrike2

Fairly accurate review.  I gave up on it after 1 evening as well.  Maybe in a year or so, it'll improve.  Maybe not.

Look, I played beta and didn't like it either, but had enough awareness to realize that it's because the game is not my type, and it does not offer what I am looking for. But then, I also don't play RTS's for the same reason....but I don't bitch about how Universe at War sucks because it's not enough like Halo 3!

Okay, nuff said. POTBS will be fun for people who like it. But not me.

Accurate review, this game sucks ass and I gave it up after 1 night as well...

But the avatars / characters you create are brilliantly done, so fire the level design team and give the character modellers a raise.