That Sinking Feeling

ZippyDodah

At first I was very excited for this game but as time has passed I've lost interest. The same can be said fro some friends I know who've tried beta and don't liek the direction this game is headed in. I don't think PotBS will have wind in it's sails when it's released and will sink soon after, it's going after such a small market with a limited budget, I don't know how they stay afloat.

free2play

I have every intention of trying this game. I also have no intentions of getting excited. It had an original release date for over a year ago and it's still not on the market. I see a column with another sea exploration based game in the works, so PotBS may want to get thier duff moving or thier ship will sail without them.

This game can be great. There is no way to know though untill they release it.

isildur

"PotBS may want to get thier duff moving or thier ship will sail without them."



Because you just know that we're sitting around goofing off, not
releasing because... I dunno, because we hate money or something.



I guess we could just release it tomorrow.



Wait, no.  That would be a terrible idea.



You can't have it both ways; it's either games that release early and
are buggy and broken, or games that release after a lot of QA time, but
take longer to come to market.

JackDonkey

I think people will like the customization of sails and flags....
except the people too introverted to get that stuff approved. 
Elitism might come into play with flag/sail design.  What else is
there to upgrade in the game, your ship and skills?  I think you
need to have item based upgrade potential for the game to do
well.  All the games I know have items or "stables" to upgrade, in
eve if you have 9 ships worth 200 million each in stations somewhere
that's how you upgrade, in those other games it's your many slots of
armor.  If pirates has something where you never lose your ship
and can only have so many in port there will be no room to
upgrade.  Can you buy better guns/cannons? can you get your own
sail design approved even if it's a bit off kilter, like a tye dye
sail?  So far to me it looks 9 or so ships, maybe a choice of
avatar weapon (cutlass or rapier), and a choice of sails/flags that are
all made by 2 or 3 guys that know how to use photoshop.



i'm eagerly awaiting my beta approval though... and I have been for like 2.5 years

ManicJedi

---

Originally posted by isildur
"PotBS may want to get thier duff moving or thier ship will sail without them."

Because you just know that we're sitting around goofing off, not releasing because... I dunno, because we hate money or something.

I guess we could just release it tomorrow.

Wait, no.  That would be a terrible idea.

You can't have it both ways; it's either games that release early and are buggy and broken, or games that release after a lot of QA time, but take longer to come to market.

---

You tell him. hehehehe.

Manic (aka Methos420 from the PotBS Forum)

free2play

---

Originally posted by isildur
"PotBS may want to get thier duff moving or thier ship will sail without them."

Because you just know that we're sitting around goofing off, not releasing because... I dunno, because we hate money or something.

I guess we could just release it tomorrow.

Wait, no.  That would be a terrible idea.

You can't have it both ways; it's either games that release early and are buggy and broken, or games that release after a lot of QA time, but take longer to come to market.

---

No, what I am saying is there are gross delays or a very premature initial release date was leaked. Everything I have seen suggests this is a QA about target market and if the PotBS crew are second guessing thier target market, the longer they go the more splintered the opinions on what the game should be, will become. If this is really about unforseen code problems, the Dev team need to accept that they set peoples anticipation up far too early. Games are like women in a certain way. No matter what one you want, you end up with the one that's available.

Molarean

Putting off the release date for such a long time really did kill the interest of a lot of indivduals and a number of communities, I wonder if the delay will be worth it or if the addition of the avatar combat will have killed the game before release.

If they had released the game when they were originally expected to it probably would have done very well during that dead period for MMORPGs when people were whining across the boards for a decent game to be released. The new release date is going to put them in direct compitition with some very anticipated major studio releases.

csquaredftb

oh boy.. everyone's so heartbroken about the "original release date" being put off... well if everyone's talking about that whole "december 31st" thing that was posted on mmorpg.com... that WAS NOT the original release date... actually.. there was no original release date to begin with.  People saw the game, got all excited.. saw that mmorpg.com posted it as to be released in Dec. 31, 2005, and when it didn't, everyone got all pissy.



So what's the dealio? Flying Lab Software has been very careful not to give the community false hope. In interviews they may say what their goals are, but they don't promise anything they know they can't handle. So what happened? In an interview during the summer of 2005, somewhere it was stated that they'd want to shoot for the end of the year, but like i said, no promises. What happens after that? "realese date: December 31st, 2005".. doesn't that seem strange to you? that it's the last day of the year? plus, if you're going to release in decemeber, it'd be bad marketing not to shoot before x-mas.



Since then, mmorpg.com has removed that release date and i've never seen any specifics on when the game was going to come out until recently. Anyway.. people should just calm the hell down. Perhaps it would've been easier if PotBS had said nothing at all, and no one even knew about the game until they were ready to release it. That way people wouldn't have been so heartbroken about it... and make threats to "rebound" with other games that are coming out, that are obviously a rip, and don't look anywhere near the quality of PotBS. Here's a tip.. stop anticipating and waiting. Just go about your life, and if you walk buy EBGames or something and see PotBS on the shelf.. THEN decide if you wanna play it or not.



ps- this isn't a rant over the original poster... this is just to all the people that have been complaining over and over and over about the same thing.

aubry

Originally posted by csquaredftb

oh boy.. everyone's so heartbroken about the "original release date" being put off... well if everyone's talking about that whole "december 31st" thing that was posted on mmorpg.com... that WAS NOT the original release date... released in Dec. 31, 2005, and when it didn't, everyone got all pissy.



So what's the dealio? Flying Lab Software has been very careful not to give the community false hope.

Please, if you think people are only upset about a December release date you havn't been around here very long.  I remember when they first announced signups for beta testing.  That was back when World of Warcraft was just going into beta.  I signed up and waited to hear from POTBS and in the meantime WoW went though multiple beta phases, then open beta, then 2 years of live, and now about to release a huge expansion.....and where is POTBS?  Still in limited beta!!!  Even 2+ years ago when they announced the beta signups it was at the point where many people were very tired of the delays and mixed signals......I imagine most don't even come around here anymore.  I pop in every few months just to see that the story hasn't changed.....just new people being strung along.

ManicJedi

the diffrence between WOW and PotBS is WOW is made by Blizzard a huge company and PotBS is made by a realitvly small company, Plus PotBS has gone through some major changes sense it origanl ideas were anounced. yes it get a little frustrateing waiting for the game to come out I will be the first to admit that. But  like the saying goes good things come to thos who wait.  I think people need to just chill out and wait. They have said the game will come out in June of 07 that is not to far away, now can that change yes it can but  that is life things happen that are out of your control. So like I said just wait and see, and cut the Devs a little slack they are busting their butts.

isildur

Originally posted by aubry

I remember when they first announced signups for beta testing.  That was back when World of Warcraft was just going into beta.

ORLY?



Because, um, I'm looking at the news archive right now, and I'm seeing that we sent out the first round of beta invites in December of 2005; we opened the application process on September 19, 2005.



WoW was released on Nov. 23, 2004.  It opened its beta signup process in January of 2004, and entered beta in March of 2004.



So either you're remembering Bizarro-World, or you're making things up.

I pop in every few months just to see that the story hasn't changed.....just new people being strung along.

You're absolutely right.  We aren't adding people to the beta at a rate of over 50 a week.  We haven't announced a firm launch date.  We aren't demoing the game at conventions all over the country.



Nothing to see here.  Move along.

aubry

Well, don't take anything too personally, I'm just basically trolling.  However, when looking through some of the forum posts on the official site I see a couple of other people that also remember an announcement of 'soon to start' beta process in January of 2004 - so I'm not alone (around the same time that WoW announced). 

One person even claims to have video of an announcement of a 2004 release date of the finished game - so I believe my memory is accurate about promises of beta that far back (maybe it was just the promise of signups instead of actually doing it).  However, it's hard to find any more evidence than that since the older forum content is no longer there...I guess they were deleted with the new site.  Anyway, I do remember passing on the WoW beta signup (not that I would have gotten in anyway) because I believed that POTBS was going to begin shortly.  Then again, I've had a lot of late nights in pubs since then, so maybe some of the old synapses are crossed.

 

ORLY?



Because, um, I'm looking at the news archive right now, and I'm seeing that we sent out the first round of beta invites in December of 2005; we opened the application process on September 19, 2005.



WoW was released on Nov. 23, 2004.  It opened its beta signup process in January of 2004, and entered beta in March of 2004.



So either you're remembering Bizarro-World, or you're making things up.

shermon15

Will be interesting to play from my perspective as a former naval officer.  I lost my original excitement about 6 months ago.  I am not sure how the game will sail as some smaller games do work well with a niche group of players like Eve.  Many of my friends lost interest when they found out they couldnt be on the same ship.  They dont want to be captains...  more like first mate or the bosun's mate.  Well hopefully they have a free trial or open beta because after making the mistake with jumping into Roma Victor I wont buy another MMORPG without trying it first.

ManicJedi

Originally posted by shermon15


Will be interesting to play from my perspective as a former naval officer.  I lost my original excitement about 6 months ago.  I am not sure how the game will sail as some smaller games do work well with a niche group of players like Eve.  Many of my friends lost interest when they found out they couldnt be on the same ship.  They dont want to be captains...  more like first mate or the bosun's mate.  Well hopefully they have a free trial or open beta because after making the mistake with jumping into Roma Victor I wont buy another MMORPG without trying it first.

I can tell ya PotBS is going to be nothing like Roma Victor the devs are actully working on this game   Never fear Rumor has it there will be an open beta. But I hope you play the open beta cuz you wanna help stress test the game severs and fine tune the last bits of the game before the final comes out. Not just play open beta just to see if you will buy the game later on.

Patch8686

My biggest worry for the game is that it'll suffer, through lack of customisability, that syndrome known as the "I-WIN" button.



However hard the balancers try, in all MMOs, you end up with one setup which is simply *better* than others. WoW has it, EQ has it, even EVE (in all it's infinite customisability) has it. It could end up that either you're in *the* good ship, or you're going to lose. That would, basically, sink the game pretty quickly.



Not that I know that'll happen. I've not beta'd it, and I have no idea what the finer points of the game mechanics are like. I do see that the dev team seem smart and dedicated to their game (far more than most) and it still looks as spiffy as it did way back when it was first announced. I'll still be trying it  :P

JudithWilliams

Originally posted by free2play


Originally posted by isildur

"PotBS may want to get thier duff moving or thier ship will sail without them."



Because you just know that we're sitting around goofing off, not releasing because... I dunno, because we hate money or something.



I guess we could just release it tomorrow.



Wait, no.  That would be a terrible idea.



You can't have it both ways; it's either games that release early and are buggy and broken, or games that release after a lot of QA time, but take longer to come to market.

No, what I am saying is there are gross delays or a very premature initial release date was leaked. Everything I have seen suggests this is a QA about target market and if the PotBS crew are second guessing thier target market, the longer they go the more splintered the opinions on what the game should be, will become. If this is really about unforseen code problems, the Dev team need to accept that they set peoples anticipation up far too early. Games are like women in a certain way. No matter what one you want, you end up with the one that's available.

Ummm... I really hope that isn't why my hubby married me... because I was available? That is some really screwed up logic... I bet you don't have a gf lol.

Thoemse

Eve has a very small market too and look where it is now.



If the devs are capabale and listen to their community i`d say this game has a bright future (if it gets released with the promised features).

tshack88

Well luckily for us for devs are more than capable and constantly listen to and communicate with the community, both players in and out of beta.  And again, just allowing user created flags and ships proves how much they listen to the community.  It's awesome

kjm2006

Originally posted by isildur

Originally posted by aubry

I remember when they first announced signups for beta testing.  That was back when World of Warcraft was just going into beta.

ORLY?



Because, um, I'm looking at the news archive right now, and I'm seeing that we sent out the first round of beta invites in December of 2005; we opened the application process on September 19, 2005.



WoW was released on Nov. 23, 2004.  It opened its beta signup process in January of 2004, and entered beta in March of 2004.



So either you're remembering Bizarro-World, or you're making things up.

I pop in every few months just to see that the story hasn't changed.....just new people being strung along.

You're absolutely right.  We aren't adding people to the beta at a rate of over 50 a week.  We haven't announced a firm launch date.  We aren't demoing the game at conventions all over the country.



Nothing to see here.  Move along.

You tell them isildur, I mean it's only 6 months it will be over before you know it!

tkobo

This is one of the few games i think will be worth a damn next year.Also the dev team strikes me as actually worth a damn also.

 

Now if youve read thru my posts, you know how ungoldy rare it is i have anything nice to say about MMO industry devs OR their "products"

Its possible these (PotBS)devs have simply fooled me.But as it stands now, the devs on this game dont seem anywhere near as narrowminded,arrogant or clueless as the rest of the devs in the MMO industry.

And to me ,the game seems to be solidly working its way toward its possible promise.

 

Though, as one poster said, i wouldnt mind a fantasy version of this game.But to me, id like to see it in addition to, rather than in place of the current version being made.

 

 

 

taz1989

I've been closely watching this game for a long time.  I signed up for beta when it first was announced and I have not been invited to it yet. 

That said, I feel that the game looks like it is heading in the right direction and feel confident that it will make it's release date in just a few months time.  I think the naysayers are premature on this one. In Roma Victor (a mess that I played for 1 evening) there were indications that the game was not everything the devs said it would be, in contrat PotBS has always looked to be a solid game, created by professionals.  Don't bash the devs bacause they missed a release date.  They had a good reason.  Also, many companies are reluctant to give estimated release dates.  That's because people have a fit when that date gets pushed back.

PotBS will be a game I give a try for sure.  I think it will hit the current release date.  If not, oh well, maybe next time.    

kjm2006

The feel I get from the devs is come hell or high water, the game will be released by the end of June, as they haven't given a date in june yet.