Flying Lab has posted a new dev journal which details the revisions they are making to avatar combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Let’s talk about avatar combat.

I’ve said before that our swordfighting system is where our ship combat system was a couple of years ago: the foundation of the system is there, and we’re confident we’re on the right track, but we still have serious iteration and polish to do.

Over the last few months, I’ve been working almost completely off the radar on just that: a major iteration of the avatar combat system. At the same time, most of the content team has been doing the same for the avatar missions; the animation team has been revising all the swordfighting animations; the UI team has been revising the UI and the particle effects; and the sound team has been iterating all the sounds of avatar combat.

In short, we’ve been stripping avatar combat down to its foundation and building up again. We’ve learned a lot from the first major iteration of the system; we know what worked and what didn’t, what was fun and what was dull. We’ve gathered a lot of feedback from you as well as feedback from our internal test team. We’ve applied that knowledge to create a new system that (in my naturally biased opinion) is much more fun and engaging, as well as easier to learn and easier to use.

Read more here.