Pirates of the Burning Sea

Finally, I can play this game for one month. It was my  3rd day playing POTBS, level 16, deleted another lv16 already. My opinions about this game as below.

1. Graphics - I have to put up with the serious glitch in the first 2 days. It is nearly 30% playable screen. So I decided to reduce the problem, my graphics card is Nvidea 8800GS, since the video settings looks kind of complicated so I went through it and set mostly on performance, the third day, the glitch reduced to 10% size on the screen. Now, I am reinstalling Windows and see if the glitch will disappeared or not. I mention this because it is the first thing if you want to play.

2. Land combat - the combat in this game is very different from any game I have played before. It's like a real time turn game. I mean the skill reset time are pretty long and lot of other non-attacking skills.

3. The Avatar running animation looks like crippler. It could be the basic 3D model problem. I have seen the model in The Movie (a sngle game title), they do pretty good. Seems British game companies has brought Sims to alive. 

4. The game is heavily based on sea battle, it takes long time to sink a ship similar to your level.

5. The thing I concerned the most was the sea battle design. I have played Cutthroat  many years ago (a single game made by a Chnese company but distributed by EA game). I found POTBS nearly used the same technology in sea battling. I think many people will not understand what I am going to say but I try. For example, the sea battle is like, the NPC ship is the core of circle like 360 degree, and you are trying to move into the core, whenever you turn left or right, the NPC ship affect by your move, it is like a line link between you and your target, you turn right then he turn reversed side. When the ship is slow down then your acceleration become out of control, normally, your ship started from 0 to 100 is very slow, but during the battle, I often see my ship burst out of range from the NPC ship, since I want to keep it closer but it is not possible. I kept pressing my keyboard but it doesn't help for sure.

It is very difficult to control the ship, W is move forward, but also accelerate the speed, and NPC ship change speed all the time, so you have to keep pressing W and S to slow it down, it is not possible to use only 1 speed because it's not automatic gear. And the ship has turning around range like vehicle, depends on how big is your ship and the turning range, usually it is very difficult or time taking if you want to reach to the core of the circle because it is always a circle between you and your NPC ship target.

6. Crafting is really in depth, but it is based on paper work, you dont actually mining or lumbering, everything is based on a manual, when you got a manual then you are registered with such ability. Most craftings in any game are not worthy, but the game will make something worthy not everything. Especially, at lower level you will found many recipes drop, but when you hit high level then you will see, I have played LOTRO, their crafting recipes drops everywhere at low level but when you hit high level then everything become rare. 

7. I just told myself few days before I play POTBS, any game build the HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME as part of the quest considered as not good game, and POTBS did that. Since Tutorial is not part of the game. Well, that my own opinion. 

8. The game have difficulty level so I suspect the game detect and decide to change difficulty level even you did not select different level. This makes the game play real disappointed because your stats and everything are still the same but challenge from Normal to HARD or HARDESR or CRAZY level without your consent. 

Long post, sorry for my poor English. And don't tell me you able to read only this last line.

I too played PotBS (BS for short) for three days.  Here is what I experienced:

95% of the time that I was in my ship in the game I was affected by network lag.  This means that I was able to sail my ship around for a minute or two and then it would stop responding to my commands and simply sail in a straight line.  After about five minutes of pounding on the controls trying desperately to turn  I would be either very very far away from the shore or scraping along the shoreline at which point it would finally see that I was apparently in the wrong place and the scenery would change drastically as I was placed right back where I began.  The game would then see that I had the rudder set to turn and would lock me into a circle for five minutes or so till it came back to check up on me again.  While sailing in my wonderful straight line or circle I could not log out.  My only option was to quit to the desktop and then figure out whether or not I dared to log back in (and deal with SOE's crappy login system again).  I updated my network card's drivers and changed the setting on the firewall and it didn't help.

I did actually get thru two complete battles somehow.  The battles seemed to either consist of me and the computer-controlled ship either circling around each other (both going either clockwise or counter-clockwise) or both going in the same direction parallel to each other.  There didn't seem to be a whole lot of tactics.  I tried loading the guns with different types of shot.  For example, Grapeshot. I found that my cruddy starter ammunition did such a small amount of damage and the cannon's loaded so slowly that the enemy's crew would actually regenerate just as fast as I could damage them.

"4. The game is heavily based on sea battle, it takes long time to sink a ship similar to your level."  A sea battle with an opponent of an equal level ran about 10 minutes.  Horrendous.  Maybe if it were entertaining then it wouldn't be so bad.  My crappy guns only fired every 15-20 seconds.  The time in between I'm sitting there with the enemy in my sights and I've got the time to review the enemy's health, my own health, the wind heading, my speed, finish my homework, read pride and prejudice and make a sandwich before I get to shoot again.  I can hardly imagine a person who might think this is fun.  After my 10-minute battle I was presented with either a dissapointing piece of loot (I got one of something that I already had a half dozen of in my hold for free from starting the character), or a dissapointingly small pile of money.

The graphics were great.  I had no problems with them.  I got to create my character with a system that was pretty cool: I got to pick out all my clothes styles and color them individually, which was cool.  The character looked pretty awesome when I was standing around town.   The animations were pretty bad and made me not want to actually walk around.

I did turn my graphics up to 1600x1200 resolution and the entire interface became so small it was barely visible.  Sure, there's the option to make the chat text larger so you can actually read it, but everything else on the screen was miniscule.  I ended up compromising by turning the resolution down to 1280x1024 and leaning in toward the screen a little bit.  Text that small may be alright for the internet, but not for a game with any action in it.

I experienced very little land combat.  It seemed to me to be pretty poor.  I boarded the enemy ship once and found that even though I'd done my best to beat down the enemy ship before boarding they were evidently in good health when I got on board.  My own crew went down in about ten seconds without inflicting any casualties and then I was at the swordpoint of six men.  I'm not sure how any of this happened, but something like that shouldn't happen at level 1 in a game if they want me to keep playing.

I never even found any part of the crafting system in the game.  Nor did I find any difficulty setting anywhere.

Concerning the glitch. There are lot of things you need to figure out how to get the best settings to meet with your computer. It is not only in the Video setting, I noticed in Interface, camera all need to fine tune a lot. So the glitch has reduced greatly by now, still happened in some incursions. Also, it happened the Rubber Band which means your avatar hit an invisible wall and struggling to move forward. I found this problem whenever off board and whenever I sprint. Sprint supposed to make you run faster but with rubber band effect. It is even slower than normal.

I haven't told you yet about the server and class. There are 4 factions but you can play only one faction and you are permitted to play only on one server as well. SInce the game title is Pirates of  ....., but if you play Pirate then you have no other career to chose, but you still have 6 slots to create new characters. I have no idea why to create more character because you are still a pirate without career, only difference is 3 different kind of skills.

I looted a building deed to be able to build ship, you can see the level on each ship but after I subscribed the deed, I can't find any level indicator but hell a lot of ship's name, Moderagi bla bla, the components neeed. You see, it may take you a infinite time to get the component but what ship you should produced for you, you don't know.

SO, I trying to search on the entire website on the Earth, I found fan site is kind of poor, means no information, and mostly are advertisement to sell something, including a guide to level. But I found German and French websites, guess I could save time to check there.

I have been played so many games provided with sufficient information about the game, now, it is like F2P provides no information. OK, Pirates of Caribbean Online from Disney does not have information as well but that game was not complicated. My previous game LOTRO have a user's friendly website.

For me, I think POTBS is kind of strategy game in crafting. Other than that, I still trying to get myself enjoy fighting with the ship mob running circle for few minutes and you have no possibility to getting closer to you target if you deal not enough damages to stop your target.

I am not sure if it is a bug or as I mentioned in above post. My ship running speed or some other stats being deducted even I euipped items to get better but in some incursion, my stat even lower than normal. And when my ship sailing downwind, it is impossible to get full sail because my ship being locked on by target. It happened 2 times today, I am kind of disappointed with this because my stats got nerf when the combat just trigered in 1 second.

I couldn't keep guessing what reason like this, but I have 2 guesses. First, the NPC ship not able to catch up with me because I have a fast boat, the speed stat was 16.95 speed, after equipped item can run up to 18 as level 12 ship. But sometimes, the speed being nerfed down to 14 in ship's stat page and the speed indicator on the screen was 13.7 something. It is not the wind problem because downwind should speed up but it was not.

In boarding combat, it was really problematic because all mobs are controlling by AI, they run so fast, and it is very hard to select your target. OK, as soon as you kill the enemy captain then the battle is finished but it is really terrible to select the enemy captain. One other terrible thing was the camera because I have to find the captain first and quickly select him, but my camera angle was forced to change to another target because when the other mob hit me then the screen will changed to the attacker. SO I have about 0.3 second to select my target, otherwise, I have to let the AI chose for me. If I drop the other mobs and run to the captain then I was nearly as good as dead when I finally locked on the captain.

There are so many things are not able to explain such as, why the low level mob have 3 times reinforcement call, and sometimes it was only 1 or highest was 5. I wonder if all the incursions just like fighting in sandbox.

Since if you want to know more about the game then you can buy from SOE, so there is nothing free to ask when you have further question. In that case, my thread could be worthy something.

Hey guys, i use to play this game i made it to lv 42. The higher lv you get the quicker you will be able to sink other ship even at your own lvl. once you start getting bigger ships its becomes a lot more fun and exciting, the reason i quit was because i lagd to much because my pc is garbage and it got to the point were the lag was so bad that i couldn't enjoy playing the game anymore. Specifically on the  Open Sea

Yesterday was a terrible day for me. I have lot of battles taken on ship and land. I am so much like to know how you guys dealing with the camera view in this game. It seems to me that controlling the camera view, zoom speed, interface ...etc are part of the skilla you need to use during combat. I changes resolution to 1400 x 900 in order to get larger view but it is only increased the resolution than more viewable background. I tried to pull back the camera way behind for first person view but the camera range is forever locked so the game playing all time like 10x Zoom size, which means the viewable background is very limited. 

In sea battle, when I move around mouse, my ship became so large covered up my entire 19-inch monitor. Why in the immense open sea  can only see part of my ship on the entire screen? I used mouse scrolling to zoom out but it just didn't work. The game seemed very intelligent to know that I was level 18 playing level 10 quest so the difficulty level changed to HARDCORE mode something, because it is absolutely difficult. I though you can change difficulty level from a NPC but did not know it does not matter you made the change or not but the game will decided for you.

During land combat, I was trying to select the target but if some mobs hit me from outside of my monitor viewable background then the camera will put me right in front of the mob. The view changed all of a sudden from 3 o'clock position to 9 o'clock, then I struggling to find the target I supposed to select, so I have to fighting with the game camera always since the game camera is one of the invinsible mob in every combat, finally Ifound him but got no time to select yet because when the camera view changed then my mouse pointer also changed to some where on the screen, I have to find where is my mouse pointer, btw, I don't think my Logitech game mouse is bugged.

OK, there is, then some unseen mob hit me again, the camera just brough my avata to no where again. So I run away from the mob, but the camera pull me back in half way. My experience is that don't try to run away from the attacker because the game may considered you as a coward so camera will pull you back again. The camera changed speed was about 0.2 second fast, I think it is too fast for human eyes to catch up with that speed. So I just fight with the attacker first because I don't want to fight with the camera.

The mob in the game all can run very fast and swift change from point a up to 5 meters away in 10 millisecond. If you are boarding the enemy ship then you may know it is difficult to select the enemy captain.

But it was so excited to sink 10 ships and it took me only 2 hours. The enemy ships were level 7 and I was level 18, my ship was level 16. It was a dark night sea battleground, I swear, my entire monitor is just totally black, if you have color swatch, it's black 100%, but there was a moon light shining on the sea, like a highway spotlight, it is very difficult to deal with such strong moonlight when you see no other thing. Just like someone use spotlight pointted to you in the dark.

This game seems to be very tricky which means the game is so dominant than everything you can do. But it was just beginning, maybe I will like this game later.

In this post, I have replied a question about skill or if you want to call it talent. It confirmed my earlier suspicion about the level difficulties. And I also think difficulty level is not a good solution to implant into MMORPG. Because it just ruin the game and can't get good balance. I also noticed that AOC have option to chose difficulty level as well.

In these two days, I gain level and skill point and some other items for better ability. I supposed so. But I have to overthrow my assumption about stats in today's battle.

I am level 20 and doing level 14 or 15 quests because there are too many quests. I have maybe the best sword for my level, and trained dodge, parry, block but sacrificed few skill pints to get them. But I still being killed by level 15 mobs. (Edit: the player's health and stats are always the same since level 1, it will not increased when you leveled up)

Normally, level 20 can beat level 15 easily but in POTBS have special function. It's level penalty, so it does not matter what level you are, you got hidden penalty, so the mobs level 15 could have special skills to kill you like you were level 10 even though you were level 30. Because when you started the instance then the game decided what penalty you have and the mob's ability.

In today's battle, the mobs have very powerful skill to caused damages over time, and the damages is stackable by different mobs. During combat, the player is not able to use potion to heal. So I lose more than half health in just few seconds. But the game don't want to beat you down just like that. The game offers you numerous chances to revive at same place to continue the fight again. The game just want you die than beat up the mobs.

Apparently, the difficulty level has been changed to higher level because I got a better drop as well, well, it was not better actually because I said better was the mob's level will not seemed to drop that type of item for reputation.

How about my skills? Well, I think it did not matter what skill you have or not because the game could reduced your PVE to Easiest mode as well.

There are so many skills but I tried to look for a tree but I found nearly half the skills are penalty, such as you get this ability then you have to suffer another ability as penalty. You get more damage but your defense will reduced equivalent percent as well. And there are many skills are not function if you do PVP.

My dodge is around 68, I think even I have 100 but I will still get killed by lower level mobs.

The combat almost total under control by the game, all you need to do is blind click. Because if you tried to move to left then you will get hurt. AND, since the combat is controlled by the game so your move maybe ignored by the game. When you are going to use skill to attack, it is very important to click ON TIME, and any lag will make your skill ignored then your avatar may do auot-attack or just nothing.

In sea battle, the boarding singal is very sensitive, it appeared 0.3 second so when you see the yellow icon turned to green then you have to click it fast enough within 0.3 second or you will failed. 

During sea battle, you use a lot W and S key because your ship maybe become Turbo Yacht all of a sudden and get pass your target or out of control, S to slow down, then the ship's front alway change to other direction, it will never be straight line so A and D are also important. But if you press S then you won't able to attack with Spacebar because the game considered you as S. Speed is important in this game, but it is piece of art by your operation on WASD and mouse clicks.  

What penalty level? it seems you try to battle more then one opponent and yes then they can and WILL hurt you. nice dodge btw i am 42 i have a dodge of 53 but i can handle 3 at one time but a fourth is going to hurt me (attacking me from behind) because they can lower your balance FASTER the you REGEN. These stats are the most inporetant in av combat.