Pirates of the Burning Sea

too little, too late, the game is dead jim....get over it

Originally posted by DJXeon

 Hot update: Release 1.5 is live on testbed.

• The Pirates have won their first  RvR server victory on Blackbeard.
• FLS have dropped "The no crying in the red circle" slogan.
• Most of the players that shouted down others in beta have left or gone quiet.
• There are generous insurance refunds that will make PvP much cheaper & less grind.
• We need more Nationals on BB & producers!

So all you players that got pushed out it's time to come back, get off your backsides & come play Potbs.

 

I for one have decided to call it quits.  I have little time these days, and not much more money, and I am spending both on Age of Conan these days.  I have serious reservations about that game too, but at least I haven't reached the boredom stage that now characterizes my relationship with PotBS.  And if anything, the reasons you mention all but indicate that things have gone downhill for the game to such an extent that it is questionable whether it will be able to recover.

Pirates, for starters, have very little chance of winning the map under ideal circumstances -- usually, they will finish second or third.  Now let's see the particulars of Blackbeard: entire French faction minus one society left for Rackham in April, and the French never recovered; Spanish usually had transfers from other servers, then after a while the Blackbeard Spanish either transferred away or stopped playing, and the expected Spanish win never materialized; most of the British armada transferred to Rackham, leaving a core of good players but inexperienced Brits outside of that.  The Pirates had all the elements they needed to win a map, provided they put enough dedication into it to flip enough ports to win.  With the Spanish and, especially, the French, putting in little to no resistance, it was all a matter of time -- so easy apparently that even the notorious Ginger Magician, self-proclaimed pirate king of Blackbeard, transferred to Roberts after the win.

Finally, the devs have dropped the "No crying in the red circle" slogan.  I knew that would come sooner or later, and the isildur devlog on "ambush gameplay" all but heralded its end.  But I suspect the devs have known for quite a while that something was wrong with that slogan.  Remember how infamous that DrewC quote about "not making it fair in your favor" became in a matter of days?  Then there was that earlier Isildur quote on another blog about the "next big failure" with specific mention made of Shadowbane's "Play to Crush".  And finally, there was the brief "War of Aether's Avatar" where my unfortunate quip about how Aether should drop his avatar (a large red circle with an eye and a teardrop in it) caused a few people to say exactly the same thing about what that avatar meant.  Perhaps that was what finally opened their eyes. Aether and I had an exchange of messages afterwards, where even he admitted that the way the slogan was being used by a segment of the community was "crass".  He also said in a board post that it was meant tongue-in-cheek to poke fun at the hardcore, so he was not exactly backing down on his beliefs when he took it down.  But I'm pretty sure some of the "hardcore" must have seen that as caving in to carebear pressure.

Now that quote seems to have disappeared from everywhere -- DrewC's signature, Aether's avatar (a while ago), but even on external sites such as Joe Ludwig's blog.  This makes me suspect the existence of a company directive on this.  The only places where the quote endures?  In the signatures of Ranker-type "hardcore" players.

The fanbois might have gone quiet, but we're stuck with their mess.  If anything, let's hope FLS survives this debacle to make another game, and that it will have learned how to deal with such people.  Or at least consider the Worst Case Scenario when taking down their advice, which seems to have unfortunately been ignored.

Insurance?  Good idea, but look how the "hardcore" scream to the top of their lungs how that is going to "carebear" the game.  It's perhaps the only case in personal history where I'm glad the bean-counter has won the day.  Not to mention it's probably the only option possible where you make player loss less incapacitating while not killing off the economy in the process.  Nonetheless, I predict this will lead to inflation for anyone who does not produce ships in-society.  Let's hope insurance payouts are based on a fixed percentage of purchase price and not cost, possibility of abuse be damned.  That's small potatoes compared to what has been done already.

Having more nationals is probably going to be impossible to achieve unless they have something distinctive about them.  Not to mention the challenge then becomes how to convince people NOT to roll British.  As for producers... I think it's another failing of this game.  Economic players have been driven away from the game by the "hardcore" who could find no salvation outside of PvP and who consider all PvE and economic players as their inferiors.  Being forced to pay for the PvP of others while being treated in contempt by the beneficiaries is a shortcut to sailing in the proverbial sunset. 

Besides, consider this: The "hardcore" don't need you.  They produce what they need, they grind for their money, then they go PvP and if any good at it, they earn more money that way.  They will gladly take you in port battles if they're short a few ships, but will greet you with a barrage of "please pass" if they are full. At no point do they come knocking on your door because they want to include you in the larger national objective.  Either they are desperate and will take anyone, or they will come in and bark orders.  The French, unfortunately, had and still have the tendency of working like that.  It gets tiresome after a while.

All in all, this patch will not change anything.  Besides, what is making me leave is not the ganking (I was ganked maybe twice in expendable ships, including a fallback on one glorious occasion), but because there is nothing beyond the PvP.  Port governance is the thing I am waiting for, but I'm pretty sure it will be quickly taken over by the usual suspects (among other problems this will raise regarding existing game mechanics, such as the quasi-certainty of needing to PvP your own side because those nations don't exactly behave like a monolith when it comes to policy).  So I will keep on reading about new developments made to the game, and I hope it survives, but my own return to it is doubtful.

Originally posted by Vetarnias

Pirates, for starters, have very little chance of winning the map under ideal circumstances -- usually, they will finish second or third.  Now let's see the particulars of Blackbeard: entire French faction minus one society left for Rackham in April, and the French never recovered; Spanish usually had transfers from other servers, then after a while the Blackbeard Spanish either transferred away or stopped playing, and the expected Spanish win never materialized; most of the British armada transferred to Rackham, leaving a core of good players but inexperienced Brits outside of that.  The Pirates had all the elements they needed to win a map, provided they put enough dedication into it to flip enough ports to win.  With the Spanish and, especially, the French, putting in little to no resistance, it was all a matter of time -- so easy apparently that even the notorious Ginger Magician, self-proclaimed pirate king of Blackbeard, transferred to Roberts after the win.

Finally, the devs have dropped the "No crying in the red circle" slogan.  I knew that would come sooner or later, and the isildur devlog on "ambush gameplay" all but heralded its end.  But I suspect the devs have known for quite a while that something was wrong with that slogan.  Remember how infamous that DrewC quote about "not making it fair in your favor" became in a matter of days?  Then there was that earlier Isildur quote on another blog about the "next big failure" with specific mention made of Shadowbane's "Play to Crush".  And finally, there was the brief "War of Aether's Avatar" where my unfortunate quip about how Aether should drop his avatar (a large red circle with an eye and a teardrop in it) caused a few people to say exactly the same thing about what that avatar meant.  Perhaps that was what finally opened their eyes. Aether and I had an exchange of messages afterwards, where even he admitted that the way the slogan was being used by a segment of the community was "crass".  He also said in a board post that it was meant tongue-in-cheek to poke fun at the hardcore, so he was not exactly backing down on his beliefs when he took it down.  But I'm pretty sure some of the "hardcore" must have seen that as caving in to carebear pressure.

Now that quote seems to have disappeared from everywhere -- DrewC's signature, Aether's avatar (a while ago), but even on external sites such as Joe Ludwig's blog.  This makes me suspect the existence of a company directive on this.  The only places where the quote endures?  In the signatures of Ranker-type "hardcore" players.

The fanbois might have gone quiet, but we're stuck with their mess.  If anything, let's hope FLS survives this debacle to make another game, and that it will have learned how to deal with such people.  Or at least consider the Worst Case Scenario when taking down their advice, which seems to have unfortunately been ignored.

Insurance?  Good idea, but look how the "hardcore" scream to the top of their lungs how that is going to "carebear" the game.  It's perhaps the only case in personal history where I'm glad the bean-counter has won the day.  Not to mention it's probably the only option possible where you make player loss less incapacitating while not killing off the economy in the process.  Nonetheless, I predict this will lead to inflation for anyone who does not produce ships in-society.  Let's hope insurance payouts are based on a fixed percentage of purchase price and not cost, possibility of abuse be damned.  That's small potatoes compared to what has been done already.

Having more nationals is probably going to be impossible to achieve unless they have something distinctive about them.  Not to mention the challenge then becomes how to convince people NOT to roll British.  As for producers... I think it's another failing of this game.  Economic players have been driven away from the game by the "hardcore" who could find no salvation outside of PvP and who consider all PvE and economic players as their inferiors.  Being forced to pay for the PvP of others while being treated in contempt by the beneficiaries is a shortcut to sailing in the proverbial sunset. 

Besides, consider this: The "hardcore" don't need you.  They produce what they need, they grind for their money, then they go PvP and if any good at it, they earn more money that way.  They will gladly take you in port battles if they're short a few ships, but will greet you with a barrage of "please pass" if they are full. At no point do they come knocking on your door because they want to include you in the larger national objective.  Either they are desperate and will take anyone, or they will come in and bark orders.  The French, unfortunately, had and still have the tendency of working like that.  It gets tiresome after a while.

All in all, this patch will not change anything.  Besides, what is making me leave is not the ganking (I was ganked maybe twice in expendable ships, including a fallback on one glorious occasion), but because there is nothing beyond the PvP.  Port governance is the thing I am waiting for, but I'm pretty sure it will be quickly taken over by the usual suspects (among other problems this will raise regarding existing game mechanics, such as the quasi-certainty of needing to PvP your own side because those nations don't exactly behave like a monolith when it comes to policy).  So I will keep on reading about new developments made to the game, and I hope it survives, but my own return to it is doubtful.

Good post & your points taken.

However i would like to add the following:

Pirates are already dominating on Blackbeard & R1.5 will increase their chance of map wins on all servers as they are increasing the pirates points for a port win.

If the hard-core societies need me or not they had better get used to it cause i'm going no-where.

[quote=Rusty;401233]

 We're working on incentives for experienced players so that they actively recruit newbies to play with them.[/quote]

test server patch notes

support.flyinglab.com/cgi-bin/flyinglab.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php

I think Insurance is probably the biggest change to come to PotBS pretty much since launch.  Apparantly values are set at about 90% of the value of the ship - so losses won't be anywhere near as great as before.

That, along with the fact that they're making quite a few tweaks to RvR - admittedly mainly to set things to more sane values after the new unrest system threw things a bit out of whack in 1.4 - as well as beginning to increase the points that Pirates get for pillaging a port (by a single point so far but apparantly that's just cause they're being conservative and don't want to turn it up so far they have to reduce it later - the main feature is that now they can alter the value). 

Plus they're altering the special outfitting so that it makes more sense across the board and making the rare outfitting craftable which will go some way towards reducing the 'Phat Lewt' side of the combat that's always irked me so much.

Regarding the 'intent to remove ganking' - I'm pretty certain that any and all dev teams would love to be able to implement a change as soon as they state the intent to make that change.  I for one welcome the announcement as what it was - a statement of intent to no longer actively support the ambush style gameplay that ganking is a part of.

And they're also going to be doing a major marketing push just as soon as they're ready - I hope that works and am cautiously optimistic.  Why?  Well, I know it might not seem that way to some but the vast majority of the gaming market's opinion of Pirates of the Burning Sea is "Oh, What's that? I've never heard of it.."  Sony really dropped the ball when it came to the marketing but to be honest I think that might play in Flying Lab's favour, because it's meant that the vast majority of players haven't been here for these first few rocky months.

I hate the posts that say "Why are they focusing on X, they should be focusing on Y". FLS, like the majority of gaming companies, is split into teams. ArtCo, DevCo, ConCo, etc. Each one works in their area only, obviously. So when someone says "Why are they wasting their time on visual upgrades to the towns when they should be fixing PvP", that just doesn't make sense. Are we expecting artists to switch over and work on the coding of PvP? Of course not. Just keep that in mind.

Wow the carebear force is strong within this thread. I had to read it twice but the force is still there.