PotBS

[Sweeman]

Were a "me" in a parallel universe in the PotBS beta, he would have just started playing Pirates of the Burning Sea. He knows bizarro-Noptov mentioned that some LoW folks are "playing", is this the case?

Edit: Failed attempt to out subtle Raveneye.

[Erudite]

I played in TBTSNBN briefly. I had major issues with both lag and gamma correction, though, and got frustrated very quickly. From what I was able to do, it was pretty fun. I do hear grindage sets in later, and I hate grindage. :lowsad:

[Caranthir]

Heh, I wasn't even aware it'd been released.

[Greebo]

Link?

[Lycos]

http://www.burningsea.com/faq.php

Says it's in closed beta!

[Raveneye]

It's still in closed beta. Release date has been pushed back from June to an unknown timeframe. Best guess is likely August. Disney is releasing Pirates of the Carribbean Online in June to coincide with the movie, so PotBS is best served by waiting a bit until people tire of the Disney offering (which is supposed to be pretty shallow, no pun intended) and market their game as a deeper, more involved alternative.

In any event, the NDA for PotBS is still in effect. Were I in the beta, I would be unable to talk about such things as the rich PvP port contention system, the deep shipwright-based economy and the myriad of options available to players looking to build and outfit their own ships. I might or might not also have talked about how the missions are currently pretty repetitive and how the overall "feel" of the game needs some serious polish before it's ready for prime time.

If you want to check it out for yourself, go to http://www.burningsea.com and sign up for the beta. They will be allowing as many as 2000 additional people into the beta soon (another major build revision is supposedly being prepared for release to the testers) as they will be looking to stress test.

I might even see you there, if you know, I was actually in the beta.

[noptov52]

Ditto what Raveneye said.

[Greebo]

Thanks :)

[Raveneye]

Looks like the release date has been pushed back even further. No official word on when yet. They are letting up to 1000 people at a time into the current phase of beta, with the goal of reaching 10,000 at some point.

In any event, signing up now ought to pretty much get you in fairly soon, so if you're interested go create an account on the website and fill out the quick beta application.

[noptov52]

People complain about dev's not meeting release dates, but in this case it was wholly justified. Should be a solid game once they're done.

[Raveneye]

Server wipe coming on September 10th. At that point I anticipate they will be letting even more folks into beta (maybe another wave of 1000+), so if you are interested and haven't signed up yet, now's the time to do so.

While I can't divulge details, I will say the game is improving nicely over the past few months.

[noptov52]

While I can't divulge details, I will say the game is improving nicely over the past few months.

I agree. It has come a long, long way this year. Plenty more work to be done, but it should be a quality game at release.

[deepfred]

glad to hear it's coming along, will be playing this one if it's included in station pass which i assume it will be.

[Sylvene]

Latest news:

Pirates of the Burning Sea, the MMORPG featuring high seas action and adventure in a bold world of pirates and plunder, is scheduled to be available for pre-order starting Tuesday, October 23rd at participating retail locations.

PRE ORDER FEATURES:

Players who pre-order the game will receive the following:

* An invitation to the ?Pre-Boarding Party? allowing them access to the live game up to 15 days prior to launch, and the ability to keep their characters, skills and equipment after launch with purchase of game and paid subscription (characters will have a level cap of 20 during the pre-boarding party)

* Captain?s Best Friend ? a blue and yellow parrot
* Mighty Blades - Swedish Rapier, Old World Steel or Musketeer?s Matching Blades (depending upon which fighting style is selected)
* Original Game Soundtrack CD ? 60 minutes of pirate themed music (comes in pre-order box)

[Raveneye]

That a pretty sweet deal for a pre-order. As if the in game stuff (parrot, weapon) weren't incentive enough, you get the soundtrack (let me just say, regardless of the NDA, the in game music is awesome) too.

If they seriously open the servers for pre-order folks 15 days in advance, you can easily reach 20th in that time (max level is 50 so far), so that would be a huge advantage, especially if coordinated across a guild planing to play a particular nation on a specific server.

[Sylvene]

Launch Date: January 22nd, 2008!

News on their main site. ;)

[deepfred]

so... anyone gonna jump in and buy it?

[Caranthir]

Hey,

It's on the Station pass, right? If it is, I'll probably get it.

[deepfred]

aye i'm pretty sure it is.

i can't make my mind up - i wasn't in love with the betas i tried, while i can see it has great potential i fear it's going to be a little too close to eve where beyond a certain point there's not much you can do without being in a big guild (pvp) or crafting like crazy. the solo/casual game seemed to be lacking beyond the basics (ie repetitive once you've covered the basics of ship & melee combat).

would love to hear otherwise tho.

[Raveneye]

I burned out on this game in the beta unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid game and FLying Lab has done their best to insure it has something that will appeal to everyone, it's just that after playing for 18 months and being forced to restart 5 times over that period, I've had my fill of high seas adventure for now.

Be warned, this is not Pirates of the Caribbean Online. PotBS is much more mental of a game, requiring a lot of planning and foresight to succeed, especially in the economy. Calling it "Eve with Sails" is fairly accurate, though you'll spend far less time grinding in the economy because raw materials are produced in abstract even when you are offline.

Basically the game revolves around three major aspects:

1) Your ship.
While you have an avatar in game, and some missions do require avatar combat, it's really your ship that is your "character" in game. Avatars can be equipped with a small range of weapons, armor and equipment that helps boost their effectiveness in swashbuckling combat, but ships can be equipped with a dizzying array of upgrades, add-ons and boosters to make them customized for a variety of purposes. Add to that the fact that there are literally dozens of ships you can choose from, and the combinations are endless. Your ship is how you travel, it's how you fight 80% of the time, and it's where you will spend the vast majority of your game time. Custom colors, flags and sails can give ships unique personalities or tie guilds together through uniform appearances. This is not WoW or Everquest, if you were hoping for a pirate that you could customize with epic armor and a flaming cutlass, this is not your game.

2) The economy
The economy in PotBS is based on "lots" located in ports. You have 10 lots you can manage, and they can be spread throughout as many ports as you like. Every port has specific resources tied to it, and those resources influence what sort of structures can be built there. Structures can either harvest raw materials, refine raw materials into components, and/or fashion components into finshed goods.

A perfect example of the PotBS economy at work is shipbuilding. To build even the smallest and simplist of ships you will need wood, iron, cloth, stone, leather and provisions. You will need a lumber camp in a port with oak forests to harvest logs. Then you will need a mill to process the logs into boards, masts, keels, etc.. You will need an iron mine to produce iron, then a forge to smelt the iron (using limestone from a quarry) into ingots, nails and other components. You will need leather made in a tannery from hides gained from farms or hunting lodges. You will need cloth for the sails, gained from textiles mills that produce it from raw materials from plantations. You will need provisions, which are made form things like beans, wine, cheese, rum, meat and fish, all of which come from various raw materials sources. You will need guns, forged at a Weaponsmith from iron and wood. Finally you need to tie all this together into a ship with masts, sails, hull, guns and whatnot, which requires a shipyard. Shipyards can be small, medium or large, with each being able to produce larger ships but taking more lots. The larger yards can only be built in ports with deep harbours.

So you can see how building a single ship is a monumental effort that requires a robust economy to support it. In fact, it's nearly impossible to build a ship all by yourself, you simply can't build enough structures to do it solo. However, the economy is entriely player based, so while you may be able to crank out 75% of your ship parts yourself, you can sell or trade your overflow production to other people for the other 25% of the pieces you need. I was able to build my own ships in beta, forging trading alliances with other ship builders to support one another with pieces each of our ecomomies could not produce on their own. You can also trade looted and/or manufactured goods to European Trader NPSc for some components like cannon, wine and other hard to find goods. There is a lot of room within the economy for people to get very wealthy with only modest production. I never wanted for income during beta, even with the limited player base I was making hundereds of thousands of doubloons once I got the hang of production.

3) Combat

Here is the real star of the game. Naval combat is a mix of Sid Meier's "Pirates!" and something more strategically complex. Sailing your ship in combat you must account for factors such as wind speed and direction, location, range and number of both your guns and your opponents, ammunition type used, hull strength and even number of crewmen if you want to initiate boarding combat. It takes a bit to get used ot the sailing model, but it's easy once you're used to it. Just as in real life, a broadsides is recommended, whith being able to do so against annother ship who is angled away from you being the ideal situation to minimize return fire. Smaller, faster ships have the manueverability advantage, but woe be to those who sail into the broadsides of a 50+ (or even 100+) gun ship of the line. Ships that close to within 40 yards or so can attempt to grapple and board, where the outcome is then determined by avatar combat on the deck of the ship.

Fighting the NPCs is fun and exciting. I got to where I was good enough with the smaller faster ships that I could often close on a larger vessel, soften it with some grapeshot to reduce the number of crew, and board it, fighting the captain and his crew to take the prize mostly undamaged. Larger ships just blow stuff out of the water, often employing chain shot and other sail reducing ammo to slow faster ships and make getting a devestating broadsides easier.

PvP is the crux of the game. Ports are assigned to a faction at the start of the game, but can be put into contention by attacking ships sailing in the waters around them. Once enough contention points are built up, a battle will ensue where ships from both sides can get invited to participate. Winning that battle either captures the port or saves it. It's important to control ports as it makes the economy much easier if you own the ports where the resources you need are located. While it is poissible to build up reputation with the other factions so that you can trade in their ports, you do so at a distinct disadvantage (heavy taxes on all production) that make it undesireable to do so. Also, only the "merchant" character class can effectively trade in other factions ports.


So basically the jist of the game is: Explore the map, fight NPCs and do missions for loot and levels, build up your level/economy/wealth to afford bigger and better ships and outfitting, and then use those ships to explore further, complete more missions and eventually join in the PvP port contention end-game.

[deepfred]

heh, well i couldn't help myself and got it anyway - RE thanks for the write up, it was very influental, until i broke down and realized that given its basically Eve in the 1700s, that i should stop paying for afk levelling and start playing something that is essentially free (for me as station pass holder) after the buy in.

and while i'm glad i did (cause i got further in than i ever did in open beta nd have seen more intriguing stuff in the process - primarily much better quests that draw you into character development), gawd this game is buggy as hell.

i'm currently spewing on their tech help forums cause i'm shocked at the number of CTDs and getting-lost-during-zoning that's going on. it's worse than vanguard ever was, and that is saying something.

having said that, most of the rest of the game is terribly solid, and they are responding to my bitching on the forums with claims of a major improvements on the CTDs in the next (pre-launch) patch.

anyway, RE you described the game very well as far as "need to know" info. i'm thinking that transitioning to this from Eve as a station pass holder will be a more economical and sensible move, and i do get some entertainment from playing a spanish guy as the roleplaying can get rather fun.

the thing i have done now that i hadn't done in open beta is to get in a group - group missions with an actual group are amazingly fun. rare (so far). but incredibly fun. it is one of the most unique dynamics in an mmo i've ever seen, and terribly cool. but hey, only done it once - who knows if it is that cool up to lvl 50.

blackbeard, rackham and roberts seem the only servers with much action atm. i think they have way too many servers and expect a server merge not long after launch, much like vanguard.

i'm playing as Chewy Esconduales on Blackbeard, a level 10 Spanish Freetrader, atm. no doubt will be starting up a NO or Privateer soon... somewhere... prolly BB as well.

have been pleased with the number of folks on and interaction between them all - especially considering that spain is not a popular faction anywhere. but the spaniards on BB seem to be veterans of beta and are really moving along on progression of tradeskill oriented stuff, among other things (lots of nearly 20 NOs running around).

/shrug

[deepfred]

PS - i tried starting a toon on several servers with the name Inigo Montoya, and they are all taken - dunno if someone got in there quick on it, or it's just blocked cause of obvious attractions...



"You keep using that word... I do not [ah] think it means what [ah] you think it means.

[deepfred]

"I donna suppose you couldda speed things up?"

[deepfred]

update:

getting into it much more, i've gone and joined probably the largest guild on blackbeard for spain - "Insanity" - which turns out to be a good collection of folks so far. they have probably have more 21s than anyone else atm (6 or so and quite a feew getting close) and are already crafting level 21 ships. it's a group effort crafting wise, and they're already doing some PvP as of today.

they've got a vent server, and are close to having some forums, i'll post the forums when they're up in case anyone is interested.

after i got a forge, limestone quarry and iron mine set up, i shelved the freetrader for now (the hours are racking up in the meantime). levelling up a naval officer to compliment him by the name of jesus carnale.

feel free to holler if anyone signs on.