Pirates of the Burning Sea

I remember playing this on release and I thought to myself "WTF is this."  It was that bad.  Not worth the 49.95 I spent on it.  I dont think I even lasted two weeks of my free months. I guess the killing blow for me was going from one end to the map to the other end of the map in 2 minutes.  Right before I left, I noticed how dramatically the server population was dropping.....and this was 2 weeks after release.

How is it now? Is it worse? Have they done anything to improve it?

I resubscribed recently. The good; alot more ships on the ocean pve wise, city revamps that make other cities not so cookie cutter, and alot of additional tweeks. The swashbuckling is still rough, the maps still have invisible walls, and the game is still geared to packs of gankers.

I still think the game is rough.. I will let me subscription cancel on its own again.

Personally I'll let the developers work on the game more... but I fear by then another game will be out that will grab my attention and I will not return to the game.

This game isnt "dead" but it isnt the next World of Warcraft or something, it's a niche game like Eve, you just have to grow onto it. Theres still enough players to make the RvR and PvP fun.

IMO - this game is at least a year from being worth the price of a "standard" MMO subscription.

Swashbuckling needs to be rebuilt completely, a relevant end-game needs to be added (the current PvP for PvP's sake just doesn't cut it), the classes need further balance - and aren't really all that much fun anyway.

The missions are still pretty generic and more custom content needs to be added.  The towns need to be differentiated (they're mostly clones).

Finally - population is still an issue, not surprising given the above.

It's niche for sure, but EVE is a really inaccurate comparison.  There are too many competing games now for a game to release with so much left to do.  Provided WAR doesn't tank it'll pull a great many of the PvP players, leaving just those players that love the setting regardless of the game (of which I suspect there are not many).

What they are trying to tell you is this game is indeed, dead.  You see people sticking up for games they enjoy all over sites like this.  The problem is that I too saw a drastic decline in this game a few weeks after it went live.

I don't even want to hear that those subscription numbers are on the rise.  It doesn't work like that.  This is the same stuff that goes on in SWG, Vanguard, AoC, Tabula Rasa, all of them.  The games that if you log on you can easily SEE are dead, people will for whatever reason claim higher populations for...  It's amazing.

This game was so empty and soulless at launch that it will never come back.  Any money spent fixing this thing is a waste because the flaw is in the core system of the game.  It is inherintely broken with the PvP system it uses, the map it uses, and the lack of economy it employs.

There is no real reason to play this game, it's THAT bad.

It's not worth paying to play.  If it were Free to Play then I wouldn't be so critical, but they are still charging a premium for this game and that's absurdity.

This game is destined for the Station Pass and maintenance development team like SWG and all the other crapfests that SOE likes to host.  There isn't going to be a magical patch that brings the players back to this game, there isn't going to be an influx of people that suddenly go out and purchase this game, the numbers will continue to decline until this game is set to maintenance.

/fail

I haven't played in over a month (after my subscription ended), but I keep looking at the official forums to see how it is going.

And I don't think it's doing well.

First of all, dev interaction has dwindled to nearly a complete halt.  Rusty still drops by from time to time, and he ostensibly maintains a busy schedule, but the other devs don't post that often (use the devtracker option to find out).

In fact, the only one who seems to be holding the fort these days is Snap.  He's obviously a bright fellow, but he's also one of the recently hired developers who came in long after release.  As such, he has a clear mind when it comes to the game's problems (as he was not part of the dev team that created them), but he's certainly limited in what he can say publicly and is probably somewhere near the bottom of the organizational chart.

Still, what is troublesome is that Isildur, DrewC and the rest, including Aether, whose job description includes community liaison, are as a general rule completely absent from the forums.  Even though they have had some questions directly targeted at them.

Second, the PotBS community is debating the same old, same old regarding ganking and all that, even though I tend to agree with those who say that the real reason why people are leaving the game (or, at least, in this late stage) is the boredom, not the ganking.  PotBS is just empty PvP that, until recently, carried a heavy death penalty for practically nothing in return.  No port governance, despite all the promises, no economy to speak of now that societies have started producing everything in-house, and not much of a community except the wiseguys trading Bombay TV clips on the forums.

I have just returned to Puzzle Pirates today and rediscovered what an amazingly in-depth game that is.  Even though it will probably be deemed "carebear", it's actually quite fun; the economy isn't perfect, but it isn't dead, and the politics actually make sense, because you can actually have some measure of control over the world.  Everything that PotBS should have been, but wasn't.

Originally posted by Enigma

I guess the killing blow for me was going from one end to the map to the other end of the map in 2 minutes.

Are you saying it takes 2 minutes to go from Mexico to Guyana (left upper part to right lower part of world map)? If so, then you're either lying or need to get your head checked.

My guess is more along 30 minutes (based on numerous trips between Bartica and Puerto Cabezas). During that time, you'll curse up a storm as you dodge pointless NPC aggro, gankers in the red circles and the ever shifting wind which always seem to be timed so that you're running into the wind, meaning that you have to zig-zag constantly.

Trust me, I'm glad the map isn't bigger than it is.

The game has its share of problems, but map size is waaaaaay down on the list.

Originally posted by Faelan

Originally posted by Enigma

I guess the killing blow for me was going from one end to the map to the other end of the map in 2 minutes.

 

Are you saying it takes 2 minutes to go from Mexico to Guyana (left upper part to right lower part of world map)? If so, then you're either lying or need to get your head checked.

My guess is more along 30 minutes (based on numerous trips between Bartica and Puerto Cabezas). During that time, you'll curse up a storm as you dodge pointless NPC aggro, gankers in the red circles and the ever shifting wind which always seem to be timed so that you're running into the wind, meaning that you have to zig-zag constantly.

Trust me, I'm glad the map isn't bigger than it is.

The game has its share of problems, but map size is waaaaaay down on the list.

True, map size isn't a priority (besides, it can't be helped without starting over), but in the current state of the game the tiny map just makes an entire style of gameplay based on distance impossible.

With the map taking less than 45 minutes, there is no possibility of regional gameplay, i.e. you would play your corner of the map and rarely outside of it, you'd become a respected leader around, say, Louisiana but remain unknown in Hispaniola; the only people who would be seen in different regions would be long-distance traders carrying rare goods from the other end of the Caribbean but who would have little time left to do anything else (leading to the appreciation of the trader players, something which traditionally has been sorely lacking in the game); and when the time comes to defend a port, they should also add a requirement to actually sail there instead of getting an ocean-wide invite, which would also make defending a port a massively complicated logistical undertaking more reliant on local players than the Ocean's Usual Best monopolizing each port battle.

Here?  No. Until the collapse of the economy, everybody traded everything everywhere, with minimal time loss.  And port battles have become the purview of the same old elitist gray faces.  No sense of exploration to be found either.

Originally posted by AveBethos

There is no real reason to play this game, it's THAT bad.

Welll I'm not subscribed to the game at the moment, but I have to disagree with this: the ship to ship combat is really something special in this game - quite tense and strategic, absorbing and immersive.

The game has lots of flaws, but this one thing they nailed very well, and it's well worth subscribing for a month or two just for that, there's a lot of fun to be had with it.

I also happen to like the avatar combat too - as someone with an interest in martial arts, I think it's actually the most realistic representation of sword combat in any game ever (i.e. balance is everything).  Trouble is, that means it's not "cinematic" in the choreographed - and highly unrealistic - sense, so people think it's boring.