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Pirates of the Burning Sea - Launch Day Previews
Both Carolyn Koh and Laura Genender took part in the Pirates of the Burning Sea beta. Now that the game has launched, they give us their impressions of the nautical game in this Launch Day Preview
Preview by Carolyn Koh
“Gimme a 500 word preview of PotBS!” said Jon “Stradden” Wood. “I want to run it Tuesday with one from Laura.” Um, yeah, sure! I’d love to. Now I’m scared. Will Laura, our hard-core gamer gal blow this old Auntie gamer out of the water? Probably. I enjoy different aspects of MMOGs sometimes. “You’re weird that way,” my guild mates tell me, “but we love you anyway.” As tradeskill components show up in my mailbox and completed items wend their way to theirs.
So… what is Pirates of the Burning Sea like? These are my impressions:
The World: It’s historical and mostly accurate. It’s Pirates! What’s there not to love for a history buff like me? I enjoyed the early wonder (and scariness) of sailing to the headquarters of the European nations – the motherland as it were.
Avatars: I love them in one aspect – the customization is really great and their clothing is fabulous. On another, some of the animation just annoys the heck out of me and doesn’t look as smooth and polished as it could be. I remind myself often that avatars are a late addition.
Avatar Combat: Don’t be looking at PotBS if you are looking for an avatar combat heavy MMOG. This was designed as Ship Combat from the get go (five years ago) with an avatar combat system added in about a couple years back. Most avatar combat is to be had on missions and if you choose to grapple and board a ship on the seas. Your skills are your attacks and actually having a choice of styles is rather fun.
Ship Combat (PvE as well as PvP): You are controlling your ship and can zoom in and out of the action. In one aspect, it’s not as immersive as it can be if you are actually manning the guns or your avatar is actually at the wheel. On the other, it’s nifty as heck to watch your crew go about their duties, climbing the rigging, loading the canons, etc. There’s a boarding tactic that everyone loves and hates. Say two or three ships go after a much larger, better armed one. One ship is the sacrifice. It grapples and boards the larger ship, forcing both players into boarding combat while the other two continues using their canon. The larger ship wins the avatar combat by dint of numbers but loses the encounter. This has been heavily tweaked by the Devs so that grappling is harder, and savvy Captains will keep their speed up. It’s a lot harder to successfully grapple and board a fast moving target but still… Grrrr! Hate!
;)
The Role Play Arc: Cool as all get out. This is a branching, personal quest line that runs from level five through 50, in which you can gain allies, enemies and a love interest if you so choose – which is not limited by gender.
Instancing: There is a lot of it, and it is really very well done. For example, you enter from the general world into a structure like a tavern, accept a quest and exit into an instanced world as your quest continues.
Economy play:
Total love. You are controlling an empire, not putting items in a craft vessel and clicking “create.” It’s about resource management and playing the stock market. I’m a weenie when it comes to PvP and I totally enjoy being able to assist in PvP with trade. Yes, I’m a geek that way. I play Harvest Moon okay?
Okay, I’m running over my word limit. So, from this old Auntie gamer, Avatar Combat – meh. Ship Combat – cool. Economy play – geekgasm!
Preview by Laura Genender
Since I cheated and got to peek at Carolyn’s article while writing up my own, I’ll shamelessly steal her categories, too.
The World:I’ve never judged a game by its genre – whether it’s elves, spaceships, or elves on spaceships, it’s the gameplay and storyline that makes the MMO for me. That being said…PIRATES. Come on, PIRATES. It’s awesome!
I’m no Caribbean history buff, but I’ll agree with Carolyn that the game does a great job of remaining historically accurate. Unlike Carolyn, though, I didn’t have that feeling of fear or awe making my way around the ocean. Maybe it’s the lack of gravity/consequences in a game where death doesn’t even mean an XP loss – part of it is frustration with the limitations of “real world” mechanics. The instanced combat sailing areas feel head-bashingly slow to me.
Avatars:I hate to admit to playing dress-up with my character – I am supposed to be the hardcore gamer girl, after all – but call me guilty, I timed the client out at least three times while creating my pirate. Customization isn’t quite at City of Heroes/Villains level but it’s damn close; the variety of skirts, pants, puffy shirts, corsets, hats, bandannas, nose rings, boots, gloves, vests, coats, etc. is nothing short of amazing. The tailor shop (in-game character editor) allows endless changes with no charges or penalties; the only downside is you can’t save multiple outfits.
Avatar Combat:As diverse as the avatar editor is, the combat is a little dull and monotonous. There are only three different avatar combat discipline choices: Dirty Fighting, Florentine, and Fencing. In combat I haven’t seen much difference between the three, though I’ve only spent much time as a Dirty Fighter.
The combat system is kind of interesting in concept; while both characters (you and your enemy) have HP bars, you also have “balance” bars. When a character has high balance it’s more likely to block, parry, and dodge; certain skills and attacks will knock an opponent off-balance, making it easier to attack their HP directly.
There are about 10-12 skill trees that you can progress through per discipline, with 5 skills each (working out to 50-60 skills total). Dirty Fighters can progress in skillsets such as Powder Jockey (mostly crowd control skills) or Swordsmanship (improves your basic attacks). Sadly, to train the 2nd skill of a skillset you have to have the one before it; to train the 3rd skill you have to have the 2nd. For me to get Improved Flash Powder – a 4 second AE mez type skill – I have to have Flash Powder (single target mez) and Fine Powder (+accuracy to my pistol). I also probably want Off-Hand shot from the Firearms skillset, so I can use a pistol in the first place!
;)
Ship Combat (PvE as well as PvP):Ship combat, as mentioned before, is SLOW! Luckily, the AI makes up for it. The PvE ships that I’ve fought against are damn smart; I just got done chasing a sloop around a rock for 10 minutes, while it took potshots and my sail and kept its damage side out of my line of sight. While avatar combat has proven somewhat easy (and buggy), ship skirmishes have kept me on my toes. If only I could put a motor on my sloop.
The skills for ship sailing are based on your nation – Pirates, Spanish, etc. all have different skillsets available at their trainer. The pirate skills were a total hoot – I had one skillset called Flogging with skills such as Flog Gunners (to make them load the cannons faster). Like the avatar skills, you have to train skill 1, 2, 3, 4 to get to the 5th in a line. Ship skills become even more frustrating since I’ve yet to find an entire line that feels useful. A lot of the skills give you disadvantages or damage that I just can’t afford in combat, or skills I have no desire to waste my points on.
The Role Play Arc:The storyarc in POTBS is great; my only complaint, here, is that it seems to be repeated for every nation. I played through the first few levels as a Spaniard and as a pirate, and my experiences were practically identical. I’d love to see some variation for the purpose of replayability.
Instancing:Most of the missions I’ve received are instanced, and they’ve done a great job of using the technology. One of my earlier missions was to speak with a wealthy man about a map piece I found; while talking to him in his mansion, though, the city was attacked! I ran outside into a burning wreck of the town, and fought my way though some pirates. I made my way into the bar and took out their captain, saving the bartender. I then ran to my ship and chased away their sea support. The mission ended with me reaching port again, where the entire town turned out to cheer my victory. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as an instance which spans 4 areas and 2 combat styles.
Economy Play:The most successful part of the economy system, in my opinion, is that I don’t HAVE to do it. It’s a completely player-operated, stand-alone game of its own, but it’s not mandatory to enjoy the game. I’m a total crafting newbie and I very rarely take the time to make a sandwich, let alone a ship; I’m glad that there’s an interesting crafting system out there but I’m even more satisfied with the easy to use auctioneer.
Good review. I agree the avatar combat was a bit lacking. But the approach they took made it somewhat interesting, the balance and all.
The game shines in the ship combat, thats is what we all really wanted anyways. And they did it well. Looks great feels great...overall good fun.
The economic game is also a blast. I really like the fact that you don't have to stay hunched over your projects to compete. Labor stores up so you can just play and have fun for as long as you like and then when you are ready for a break, you can go and run all your labor out on your projects. It will be easy for players to help their guild in this aspect as well. Where everyone can have their projects that contribute to the guild, but not have to sacrifice fun(if they don't really dig crafting) inorder to do their part. Just build your project and head out to have fun, then when the guild asks for your materials you can jump back to that port, run your labor out, hand off the materials to your guild and head back out for more fun.
Overall I think it is a good game, and it will do very well. Good job FLS.
PIRATES! That's all I have to say about it, that and I wonder how many subscribers this game will bring.
Thanks for the previews. I'm taking a wait and see attitude on this one.
Is the land based game still laggy? Also, avatar combat was very, very slow, to the point where I was yawning and nearly falling asleep during combat. Did they patch the land based combat to make it quicker and more exciting?
Too bad the devs didn't put even half the required effort into the avatar system to make it fun. It is probably the worst avartar combat/movement system I have ever played. The ship combat on the otherhand is very well done, but the avatar combat drags it down. I felt as if the avatar system was something the devs put in the game, as a complete afterthought, and used the least amount of resources to pull it off.
As a total package I give it a grade of C, an A+ for the ship based combat and an F- for the avatar system.
I along with many of my friends beta tested the game, and we all agree that probably wont see any of our money unless the avatar combat system gets a major redesign.
Thanks for the reviews. I'm keeping this one on my radar.
I appreciated the review. I'd be interested in hearing a follow-up a month or so down the road, just to see if you both still like and dislike the same parts of the game. Right now, it sounds like avatar combat sucks and ship combat is as expected. Nothing in this makes me think the game is *fun*.
Potbs has had a good start, enough to win over opinions for the first few weeks of the honeymoon period.
Gameplay can become very repetative - its real test will be seen in re-newals after the 1st month.
Played closed beta & found that to get rewards means investing a lot of time - great if that's your thing.
Will attract more eve type players than wow types.
It doesn't sound like much has changed since the beta, sounds exactly like my thoughts back then. As an Eve player I was hoping for a little more from PotBS, however since the game is still new there's gonna be some more polish needed. I hope the devs can keep this game going long enough to give it the polish it deserves. There is a very good game at the core but with some more work it can be a truly unique and well done game. While the ship combat is slower paced and sort of Eve-ish it also is very different. My biggest gripe with PotBS wasn't so much the avatar combat which was a little laggy in beta but had some good concepts but all the instancing takes away from the immersiveness of the world. Also while this game may attract some of the Eve players the PvP in PotBS is nothing like Eve other than the slower pace and strategy of the fighting.
This is definately a game to keep an eye on and hopefully in a year or 2 it will get the attention and polish this game deserves and mature just the way Eve did after its release.
All I know is it is a number 1 seller at Gamestop,(Which comprises of GS EB and Planet X stores) and many stores have already burned through there stock, that hasn't happend since WoW launched. Go-gamer is already backordered and most folks are resorting to D2d or the SOE digital for there copy.
We will hopefully see a new server by the end of the week , but FLS will not be giving free moves..which sucks.
The principle behind the avatar combat is great - managing balance and iniative as well as HP, it's just the execution is clunky. You can play most of the game without it and it's not that offensive in the few avatar quests that come up occasionally. I find it fine in boarding combat if a little chaotic.
Like the reviewers say, there are quite a few aspects of this game which are fun.
What wasn't mentioned are the dynamic PVP zones - created/destroyed by people doing PVE missions and sinking NPCs/other players. This is what sets the game apart from the others - one day the area around your Spanish home port is safe, the next day you're working furiously with your whole nation to flip it out of PVP. The following day things have gone so badly that it's now owned by the French and it's up to your whole nation to get it back!
This and the economy are what the game is really about.
I'm confused about this last part? Does that mean you can be PvE'ing and then suddenly your in a PvP area? Isn't PvP strictly consentual?
No not strictly consentual, but you can avoid it. "Safe" areas can go unsafe but you can check where they are.
I got pwned trying to leave New Orleans earlier after that become contested. Those guys hit me hard, when I finally decided to turn and fight my computer crashed. When I got back in I was back in Campeche... missing all my loot.
Personally, I am very disappointed in the game. It has some nice points, the ship to ship action is fun, but they did not correct enough problems from the beta test. It is still far too easy to level in this game. And some of the skills are really lacking usefulness, which can lead to fotm templates.
I intend to wait for 6 months to see what they do with the game. I think the average subscription period for this game will not be very long.
eh, got me what the poster above was playing, but after about level 15 this game gets pretty dam challenging compaired to beta. Avatar combat while still not top notch is improved , no fight is now easy to win. Ship to ship combat is well top notch! finally all the animations are in :) and it is just a dam riot to play ;) Stories and more stories! If this game has one thing it has fun stories, if you play a game for stories this is top notch! if you a grinder then move along you will get bored. One story that got me good was going against and evil captain, he blows up his ship when I bored it, then I end up on an island were I meet another lost soul, we make a makeshift raft, get back into the water, find a fellow ship and I loose my dam leg! Allot more to that story but when I lost my leg I can't tell you how upset I was lol, I had the perfect look , but NOOO I have a stub wood one now :)
Finally pvp combat is fun now compaired to beta, actually nicly balanced and lag in sea or land I havn't come by sense the latest update. Whatever it was, was fixed. I can go into towns or missions things load then it smooth sailing land or sea.
When it comes down to this game it comes down to one thing, if you love the era you will love the game if you don't you probably won't. I am happy to see the increase of population and also to see my local store sold out as well and on back order. It gives me faith that there are us old folks out there that just love the era.
As it is now, I love it and the latest dev statement on what they are working on now that the game is stable really has me excited I can't wait!
That alone would make me quit the game. I despise forced PvP, and IMO, if it's non-consentual, ganking is the same as bullying.
I bet sailors in the early 18th century hated getting ganked too; like the pirates were "bullies" n' stuff. But hey! It's kinda like role-playing in that sense! You get to experience how pissy it was to lose a ship to a boat full of brigands in the Caribbean circa 1720! Sign a dude up!
This is so not the game for you, and may I recommend that you never play Eve Online either? The force PvP is a by-product of RvR mechanics. Eve has the same thing with alliances going to war against one another (in fact, one reason I came to play POTBS in beta was because I was trying to wait out a major empire war with my corp in Eve. I'm generally a carebear type).
That said, to PvP generally, you need to set your PvP flag to "on" while you are in port, totally voluntarily.
It is only when you get caught in the area around a port that is subject to contention from another national power that you can get drawn into involuntary PvP.
I have described this game as a simpler Eve in the age of sail. It really does depend on the player crafting to keep a society (guild) going, as you lose equipment at a hellacious rate in PvP. So you want the best ships and equipment possible for your level, but you'll burn through them fast.
Crafting supply chain is baroque, and no one crafter can make so much as a provisioning pack (necessary to building a ship) on one account, so the crafting encourages society-wide coordination of supply chain. Some people will love this, and some not. You will need one or more master shipwrights to more or less flog your crafters into coordination. That can produce some good RP too...:)
No one needs to craft, but a couple of hardcore PvPers in my society (The Highland Confederacy on Bonny, a lovely medium RP guild with a sense of humor [mostly] ) still do enough to craft their own ammo. They like it because you never have to gather resources. You build the iron mine, and it produces iron according to how many hours of labor accumulate. When you accumulate 3 days of labor, it caps until you work some of it down into more iron production.
Will it scale? That's my biggest worry. I am not worried about the combat being dinky on land/ship and tedious in parts of the ship combat (I'm used to the latter, at least, from Eve...:). Those dynamics please me well enough. It's whether the whole thing stands up as a model at high populations of higher level players, and whether the markets mature into something sane. Some tweaking will no doubt be necessary, and how will that effect the community?
There are some promised improvements I'm looking forward to -- the social mechanics are, to say the least, cranky and awkward. We need society warehouses, where we can exchange components without having to do person-to-person trades -- or perhaps, at least, the sort of guild-only auction they set up in LOTRO.
Like early SWG, this game is potentially a great base for RPers, since the culture behind the lore is so basic that even people who've just seen Pirates of the Carribean tend to fall into immersion fairly automatically, and I've seen just about *ZIP* in immersion griefing.
I didn't think I'd play this game past beta, and I'm mad to do so (I play LOTRO and Eve and have a life). But I want to see how it plays out.
Shava
This game seems quite similar to Sid Meier's Pirates apart from things such as trade and pvp obviously. Can you dance in it? I did quite enjoy that game especially the ship combat, so have just ordered game to fill the ever increasing gap till Age of Conan comes out - who knows this could be more fun.
ATB
Chrimwinster
No, there's no dancing, beyond a 3-second emote. And -- no offense to you -- but thank God there's no dancing.