The folks at Pirates of the Burning Sea have posted a new dev journal which looks at the inception and implementation of the new Brawling skill line.

In my original plan for avatar combat, there were two supplementary skill lines that any fighting school could take. For various reasons, we ended up having to cut one of those lines, leaving us with only the Black Powder optional skill line. Unfortunately, there was some functionality I really liked in the removed skill line; also, with only one optional line available, characters were by definition less diverse and less customizable.

Optional skill lines present a couple of significant challenges. The largest of these is, of course: how does it do damage without your weapon’s involvement? A key design goal of mine for every new skill line is that you should be able to take the whole line to its end, and with no other skills be a functional combatant in avatar combat. This caused me to immediately discard some of my ideas for a new skill line—‘Command’, for instance, doesn’t seem to have any way to do damage (or at least, not without adding some significant new code features, but that’s for a much later devlog).

Read more about Brawling in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

I  feel sorry for FLS now , they still talk with such enthusiasm after a year of trying to 'fix' the game but deep down they  know nobody cares or gives a damn about what they say or do to this failure of a game.

Originally posted by paulp146

I  feel sorry for FLS now , they still talk with such enthusiasm after a year of trying to 'fix' the game but deep down they  know nobody cares or gives a damn about what they say or do to this failure of a game.

Quite the contrary, actually.  Though I would say that your opinion would be true of, say, Tabula Rasa :)

I have to second Havohej. My last experience within PotBS was a few weeks back, when the initial remake of the combat system was implementend. Still being far away from my dreams of a pirate game it seemed that it has a very stable highlevel community that really enjoys to play, fight for harbors and such. Reminded me a bit of the old days of Warbirds, where tight groups of squadrons were fighting each other down to the bones almost every night.

Still have to take the time to recheck on the changes within the economy system. But some extra for the melee fighting doesnt sound too bad.

TR was a failure by design.. PotBS isnt too bad at all I d say.

Fact is that FLS have spent nearly 6 months re-vamping avcom at a time where many founder members were leaving due to other reasons.

The time would have been far better spent adding more content & features including balancing - delaying the avcom re-vamp until a year later..imo

Right on, they still haven't addressed the original game breaker that new player pvp totally sucks. If your new to the game and like solo pvp, forget about it. You have to level to 50 to compete, and the grind involved and gankfest that ensues due to no level restrictions (elite lvl 50's attacking lvl 8's) pushes most people out of the game. Without reasonable pvp, the pve gets boring fast.

They still haven't implemented skirmish which was Rusty's solution for this problem.

Rusty never could grasp that if this game had level based pvp it would have wide appeal and the red circle design was just total fail. No worries, Jumpgate Evolution is right around the corner to pick up the mass of gamers that POTBS could have had.

Jumpgate and PotBS are two completely different genres - Jumpgate will be competing for EVE's audience.

That said, I'd lay even money that Skirmish will arrive before Jumpgate Evolution.

Originally posted by johnyjet  

Right on, they still haven't addressed the original game breaker that new player pvp totally sucks. If your new to the game and like solo pvp, forget about it. You have to level to 50 to compete, and the grind involved and gankfest that ensues due to no level restrictions (elite lvl 50's attacking lvl 8's) pushes most people out of the game. Without reasonable pvp, the pve gets boring fast.

They still haven't implemented skirmish which was Rusty's solution for this problem.

Rusty never could grasp that if this game had level based pvp it would have wide appeal and the red circle design was just total fail. No worries, Jumpgate Evolution is right around the corner to pick up the mass of gamers that POTBS could have had.

 

 

  Sounds reasonable what u say. On the other hand it reminds me of Warhammer Online, where they seperated the PvP into Level-Segments. With the consequence that the world is scattered into 4 tiers and the real deal only happens now and than in the endgame tier aswell. So that solution doesnt seem to be that efficient for the level based problem :/ It may work slightly better in WAR for lowlevels. I personally didnt recognized it as being really satisfying till mid-level, where i stopped playing it.

In my opinnion it is always the same problem for PvP focused games with level based character development. Skill based seems to be the better choice for such environments. At least I cant remember a lvl based game that really solved the issue that is mentioned here.

FLS put so much effort in the sailing dynamics and it shows.   Its a sailing sim game.  The they threw together the avatar combat and rushed it out the door.   The game is stale and maybe FLS needs to make a hard decision.   Set a date when they can confidently release the game with all fixes in place.  trickeling them out half assed is just creating bad rep.  Hard to say without knowing the companys resouces and ability.   Even then is there a big enough market for this type of game?    I really liked it.  but the world is way too small.   The ship battles are killer.   If I wanted avatar battles I would go with another game.   My opinion is larger world to explore is needed. more shiip battles pvp and pve.   Whatever.  just an opinion.  Most will disagree.  good luck to fls.

Originally posted by Havohej

Jumpgate and PotBS are two completely different genres - Jumpgate will be competing for EVE's audience.

That said, I'd lay even money that Skirmish will arrive before Jumpgate Evolution.

Not to derail the thread, but from what I have seen on JE the only thing it has in common with eve is the fact its in space and there are lasers...