Carolyn Koh attended the Penny Arcade Expo. While there, she spoke with Drew Clowery, a Designer for Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Avatar combat is a system that was added to Pirates of the Burning Sea late in their design phase. Original plans in 2006 were to launch with ship combat and to add avatar combat only later in the game, however, the strength and voice of their community persuaded them otherwise. Since then, we've seen avatar combat evolve slowly through sneak peeks at various conventions and developer letters. Game Designer, Drew Clowery was brought on at Flying Labs in October of 2006 and since then has been dedicated to fleshing out, balancing and generally making avatar combat fun and exciting in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

"Avatar combat and small arms use is all about balance and skill execution," Drew told me. One of the basic tenets of the martial arts is about keeping one's balance. The techniques of breaking your opponent's balance and keeping your own are taught in arts as diverse as Judo to Fencing and Pirates makes full use of it as well. Combat is not a matter of hitting "A" and walking away. It is active and reactive. It is not simply a roll of a dice to determine a hit based on your skill and the number of points based on your opponent's defense. In Pirates, a modifier is applied, one that you can directly affect with skill and strategy.

Read the whole article here.

Looking forward to seeing how "balance" is different from "health" in combat--and of course really looking forward to the whole game itself.

Yarr!

Balance, and Health are still different.

Health is a measure of damage you can attain before falling down dead.

Balance is how effective you are at causing damage, or in blocking your opponents ability to 'hurt' you. More a modifier to 'to hit' and cause wounds over the ability to stay standing.

For example if we were in combat, and had equal balance our ability to block each others attacks would be similar. As one began to loose balance, the other would be able to land more hits thus causing more damage.

Health in turn is lost in taking damage, not loosing balance alone.

My balance may be lower, and your landing more hits, but if your using a small knife, and I am using a boarding axe, my damage output will cause your health to drop faster per hit, over your smaller attacks. Even though your getting through more easily.....

Regardless it's an interesting change in MMO games, and I hope this game does well.

I heard that the avatar combat SUCKED, but it sounds as though they're progressing. I'm not looking for a wow-killer; just something that will ease my MMO withdrawals. Something like sucky avatar combat could possibly ruin it for me, but hopefully that won't be the case. I can't wait to hear more from this one.

Still have to give them kudos for trying something different.   We just have to see if they can pull it off.  I'll be watching this game, that's for sure, it could make Talk Like a Pirate Day a whole new holiday lol

Originally posted by Azeroth04

I heard that the avatar combat SUCKED, but it sounds as though they're progressing. I'm not looking for a wow-killer; just something that will ease my MMO withdrawals. Something like sucky avatar combat could possibly ruin it for me, but hopefully that won't be the case. I can't wait to hear more from this one.

Even if the Avatar Combat isn't your thing the ship combat looks to be amazing.

Based on what I saw at PAX, FLS is trying something new with their avatar combat system. You have 3 stats, Health, Initiative and Balance. Balance determines if an attacks lands on your or an opponent. It is signified by a ring underneath the character. Initiative is built up using the Yellow attack skills, when you have enough initiative built up you can execute a finishing blow killing the opponent even if they have a lot of life. If you break an opponents balance, you can still finish them off in the normal manner of making their health hit 0.

There is no auto attack. Period. You have to activate all your attacks as well as other combat related skills that aren't specifically attacks such as active dodge and active parry. It seems to be an interesting combat system that I really want to give a more in depth look at. It is nice to see FLS trying to do something new so it isn't the same old fighting. And it fits pretty well.

I can't say I agree with the statement that their avatar combat sucks, from personal experience I'd say it doesn't suck. It is just a new system that will take time getting used to.

What i would like to see is this avatar combat PVP , and i am not sure if this will be ingame ?

Anyone knows ?

It is in during boarding of enemy ships.