It's really quite simple, there are very few people that like slow leveling, just take a look at how WoW is doing.
In WoW you can level to 60 in less than 5 days, possibly even faster now with the faster leveling between levels 1-40, when player feels he is progressing and is powerful he will keep playing especially when all the interesting stuff is at the max level.
So in terms of progression, when player feels game is stale and slow progressing or struggles with some aspect of the game s/he has a possibility to stop playing, and of course you want to encourage playing.
I think you get at least one level per session in WoW, when you start out you can get 20 levels easy in single session and see lots of new stuff.
I might sound like a broken record, but i can almost gurantee you (Flying Labs), that this game will flop if you make (dont correct) the most common mistakes all games today suffer from. You still got the chance so dont underestimate this posting and read (and rethink) VERY CAREFULLY:
1. Avatars - boring. 8 Facetypes for thousand of players means look alike clonearmys in no time: DULL !
2. Social aspect (Housing, community gathering): If you dont put in housing (which EVERYONE can afford) you cut off the social type players and almost every female gamer (cuz esp. they love it). We have enough boring, non immerse, non diversity left-mousebutton mashers out there. Make a difference or suffer like the others. Plain and simple.
3. Deep crafting with a MEANING (best items are crafted): If you dont give creative playtype somthing to play with...nuff said.
Plain and simple: These points are making the difference from an immerse sandbox game with diversity to a dull single-mousebutton combat sim.
Consider it or fail like most of the other gamestudio, simple but reality.
But i swear: After companys cheating investors (PE), after studios going down the hill (Sigil), after devs screwing up the best games (SWG) the community is MORE then sick & tired of studios thinking they can get the big buck by rushing out a dull buggy game.
Im VERY fed up with such crap and not only will avoid any product of such companys (and watch their downfall).
That these guys started out trying to make a realistically scaled Carribean with realistic speeds and distances -- and they were surprised to learn that this was a bad idea -- it boggles the mind that they even got as far as they did with this game.
I guess they were hoping to learn the art of game design by doing? Because they obviously knew less than nothing coming out of the gate. Sadly, there is no way they could ever hope to learn enough to create a decent MMO starting with such absurdly naive scraps of hope and not much else.
I am amazed that you release a game that takes 11 days to max out, and then you admit it needs to be nerfed because there is not much to do at max level. Do you realize how stupid that sounds? What happened to your QA department? Do you even have any paid testers? It should take a year to max out.
ya well WoW should not have been relased then since you can max it out in 14 days although i think the record when it had a lvl 60 cap was 8 days
Personally I think WoW is too easy but most people who play WoW don't max out that fast. It's a game designed for casual players who typically take much longer, many months, to max out. By most accounts, players in PotBS are saying the leveling process is too fast. Also WoW developers, unlike FLS, don't claim there isn't much to do at max level, since it is a raid centric PVE game with endgame PVP design as well.
The record was something like 8 days but this was from a player who already had played the game through a couple of times,Also with WoW when you did hit 60 you still had a 15man 3x10 man and and a couple of 5 mans you could run that kept you playing and willing to pay the sub till the new content was added.I agree with samuraisword on this if the game only takes around 12 days to max out on your 1st run through and with only crafting and some pvp to keep you going then I feel it has been rushed out without more thought on end-game,I feel a bit sad for the devs as they really seem like a nice bunch of guys but unfortunatly nice devs alone doesnt sell the subs.This was a title I was watching and may continue to watch to see how it grows.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
Yes the record for WoW was by somebody that completed the game MANY times. He purposefully would plan routes on new servers and get server firsts. He tried this many times. He never went to the AH, never stopped for anything, never did any crafting. Pure levelling then logout. It doesn't reflect the games length of time to play.
Anyway, we're talking about this game. I played the beta for about 5-6 hours. Yes, not that long at all. The game seemed to be very much based on Sid Meijers Pirates! - which was a very good game for about the same length of time 6-8 hours.
So why did I only play for 5-6 hours? Well, there were the missions at sea, where you would repetitively kill pirates. All you did was turn your ship and then spam the fire button until your cannons fired. Then repeat.
The other missions were on land where you fought with your avatar. The fighting was... rediculously poor. Hindered further by some lag (which I take into account). It wasn't much fun and I would literally just be typing 1111211112111131111211113, etc. Great!
So I kept playing for some time longer, got some money for a new ship, upgraded and then realised that I hadn't yet done anything different!
Shoot ships in slow paced battle, or go on land with a terrible combat system. In ports you face the loading screen more than you do other people!
Perhaps this was just my taste, but I believe that once this is released its rating will be hovering around the 6.0 mark at best. Unfortunate as a pirate MMO could have been good.
I find it interesting, if a bit sad, that people equate "We didn't have time to do every possible idea we would have liked to have done" with "the game is unfinished and shouldn't be released," which seems to be the gist of the responses here. The fact is, *nobody* in this industry has time to do everything they'd like. WoW shipped without battlegrounds, looking for group, very little raid contents, etc. They've added them since, but that doesn't mean that everyone else has to have on day one every feature that they've added over the years. Heck, they shipped with broken classes (anyone play a druid at launch?) and their servers exploded the first week. And they are considered a *good* example!
There's *always* more work that can be done, and it's always a hard choice to pick what to do and what not to do. You've got limited time and limited dollars, and you have to pick your battles. The luxury that MMO developers have of adding content later is a two edged sword. It's true that a lot of games that ship are buggy as **** and crash all over. It's true that some have areas that are completely broken (anyone play a droid engineer?). But my saying that we don't have everything in at launch that we'd like, or that we plan to add more cool content down the road doesn't mean I think the existing game is broken. I believe that the game we plan to ship will be fun and stable on day one, and will only improve from there. Yes there will be parts that aren't as good as we'd like. That's *always* true. And we'll do our best to improve them as we go along. But even the parts that *aren't* perfect are still playable and fun. "Not perfect" doesn't mean the same as "unplayably broken."
Not that I really blame people that much, because the game industry has released more that its share of unplayably broken games over the years. But I take offense at the implication that my sharing our thinking on our design decisions and our plans to improve our game after launch means I'm saying our game is in the broken category. Will it be for everyone? Nope. We never expected it would be. But we hope a lot of people will give it a whirl, and that a sizable chunk of them will enjoy it and stick around. Which in the end is all a game dev can hope for.
O. M. G. Squared. That these guys started out trying to make a realistically scaled Carribean with realistic speeds and distances -- and they were surprised to learn that this was a bad idea -- it boggles the mind that they even got as far as they did with this game.
It wasn't that we were surprised that it didn't work as that we'd hoped to work around the problems we knew were there, but couldn't do it and make it fun. Of course, what you're saying is *exactly* what other posters here are saying we should have done. Seamless world + realistic scale + realistic speeds. There are people who are saying we're doomed to failure because we're not doing it that way, and you're saying we're idiots because we even considered it. Sigh.
I might sound like a broken record, but i can almost gurantee you (Flying Labs), that this game will flop if you make (dont correct) the most common mistakes all games today suffer from. You still got the chance so dont underestimate this posting and read (and rethink) VERY CAREFULLY: 1. Avatars - boring. 8 Facetypes for thousand of players means look alike clonearmys in no time: DULL ! 2. Social aspect (Housing, community gathering):
If you dont put in housing (which EVERYONE can afford) you cut off the social type players and almost every female gamer (cuz esp. they love it).
We have enough boring, non immerse, non diversity left-mousebutton mashers out there. Make a difference or suffer like the others. Plain and simple. 3. Deep crafting with a MEANING (best items are crafted):
If you dont give creative playtype somthing to play with...nuff said.
Plain and simple:
These points are making the difference from an immerse sandbox game with diversity to a dull single-mousebutton combat sim. Consider it or fail like most of the other gamestudio, simple but reality.
But i swear:
After companys cheating investors (PE), after studios going down the hill (Sigil), after devs screwing up the best games (SWG) the community is MORE then sick & tired of studios thinking they can get the big buck by rushing out a dull buggy game. Im VERY fed up with such crap and not only will avoid any product of such companys (and watch their downfall). Choose YOUR site, FL...
1. I'm sure artco would love to do more faces/clothes/items. As many as time allows.
2. As I mentioned, player owned socialization spaces is on the list.
3. Currently *all* items are crafted, so I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean something like what SWG with variable quality inputs and variable outputs, that's a completely different style of crafting than what we have. First, our game is it designed around production, not individual item crafting. Second, it would break the AH design if every item was different. How do you undercut someone's prices if every item is different? Third, it would mean that there's a crafting skill grind, which we have specifically avoided. You don't have to skill to 300, or 375 making things nobody wants in our game, and we plan to keep it that way. So if that's what you're looking for, I'm afraid you're out of luck. On the other hand, many people really enjoy the cutthroat economic competition our game offers, so give it a try.
4. Our game isn't buggy. We get constant feedback from our beta testers about how stable it feels. Yes there are bugs. Every game has bugs (heck I'm finding unimplemented dialog strings in Mass Effect, and that' s a single player game), but we don't have gameplay destroying frequently crashing unplayable mess kinds of bugs.
As for dull, well that's in the eye of the beholder, and you're as entitled to your opinion as anyone else. Many people are enjoying our game, but it's not for everyone. That's why there's room for a wide range of games in the marketplace. Not everyone wants WoW, or WAR, or CoH or EQ2 or Eve, or whatever. All we can do is make the game we want to make and hope that there's enough people who want what we've built to create a thriving community. Hopefully you'll join us, but if not, good luck finding a game closer to what you want.
Eh, for me, I use to bash this title when avatars where not going to be in. As time passed ,the dev team interacted more and more with the community and adding those things we wanted if possible. While it may have not been their first thought to say have avatars and the like, we truely will never know what their first concepts were. However after time, they have proven time and time and time again that they listen and interact with their community on a large scale. No one, not one company can be mentioned that does this.
To have such interaction and open honest policies makes me now an instant fan of the company. Also with the game, allot of things need improvements but as stated over and over again, name a game that didn't. Even DAOC that so many consider a sucesfull launch was horribly balanced. Does anyone remember the one shot scouts? Probably not, allot of issues in that game which did get better then turned for the worst when they decided to add grinding in the game.
All in all, it comes down to taste, it was openly admitted by the devs that this game won't be for everyone, in that retrospect you can see EVE and say the exact same thing. I for one will and have pre-ordered and will be here for the long run. I see it this way, if I can say my peace and know it is being listened to thats a good thing. When the community and the dev team actually talk about ideas then implimenting them that is just another plus factor. In all my years of gaming this has never been so open with any team. I will support that 100% and back it up with my cash.
There are things that I still am a bit worried about , the announcment of the "making it longer to level" as another posted here is ok, if you have the content to actually back that up. I know what content there is and if a dev reads this , the only thing I can honestly say is, "if you want to slow down the leveling process while still working on content, I would keep the leveling process pretty much were it was .,however during the 41+ levels slow that down a bit and even in the 30's, but in the 20's? BAD idea, again the only reason is I know what you have there and as far as the xp vs availible mission content I think the % will be off."
What I mean by this to sum , I don't think the missions avalible (even thou we have 1000+) per nation will be enough for a longer grind without doing repeats or farming mobs. The level at which we go from 1-30 currently is a very nice pace for casual players as myself. I would think the 40+ should be a bit tougher thou, by then you should also have enough ample time to make those new missions you speak of. Now this won't solve the grinders of the world, but name an MMO that has? The only thing I have seen work (and personally don't care for ) is bonus xp vs time spent in game.
Other then the xp being lowered, I like what I see for launch and can't wait. I know this game has allot of potential and see it daily. I have yet in my past MMO experiance , can think of any game that I had faith that the actual dev team will do what they say. I seen allot of cool MMO's in the past promise the world and never delivered. At least with this dev teams track record, if they say "this is coming" you can bet your high dollar it will. Good enough for me, can't wait for launch
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
Honestly, this game feels like a pay per month game that ends up being free to play after a few months. I like the gameplay, but on a very basic level. Riding in a ship, bombing others is fun, but I would never pay money to play this game. I would buy the game if it were free to play online though...It's worth that much.
Great they are listening to the players, I was also in beta and was VERY excited about POTBS. I had a fairly large guild and was pushing to dive in head first on release. Then after awhile in beta things turned sour. Thing just aren't much fun, the avatar combat is tacked on and lacking. The ship combat feel like its been taken right out of sid's PIRATES!, which IMO is a much more polished game. Oh well, I wish FLS all the luck but I would put money on this failing and going belly up.
I find it interesting, if a bit sad, that people equate "We didn't have time to do every possible idea we would have liked to have done" with "the game is unfinished and shouldn't be released," which seems to be the gist of the responses here. The fact is, *nobody* in this industry has time to do everything they'd like. WoW shipped without battlegrounds, looking for group, very little raid contents, etc. They've added them since, but that doesn't mean that everyone else has to have on day one every feature that they've added over the years. Heck, they shipped with broken classes (anyone play a druid at launch?) and their servers exploded the first week. And they are considered a *good* example! There's *always* more work that can be done, and it's always a hard choice to pick what to do and what not to do. You've got limited time and limited dollars, and you have to pick your battles. The luxury that MMO developers have of adding content later is a two edged sword. It's true that a lot of games that ship are buggy as **** and crash all over. It's true that some have areas that are completely broken (anyone play a droid engineer?). But my saying that we don't have everything in at launch that we'd like, or that we plan to add more cool content down the road doesn't mean I think the existing game is broken. I believe that the game we plan to ship will be fun and stable on day one, and will only improve from there. Yes there will be parts that aren't as good as we'd like. That's *always* true. And we'll do our best to improve them as we go along. But even the parts that *aren't* perfect are still playable and fun. "Not perfect" doesn't mean the same as "unplayably broken." Not that I really blame people that much, because the game industry has released more that its share of unplayably broken games over the years. But I take offense at the implication that my sharing our thinking on our design decisions and our plans to improve our game after launch means I'm saying our game is in the broken category. Will it be for everyone? Nope. We never expected it would be. But we hope a lot of people will give it a whirl, and that a sizable chunk of them will enjoy it and stick around. Which in the end is all a game dev can hope for.
The issue is that Blizzard and SOE are huge companies that had a lot of money to "fix" WoW and EQ2 after they launched. Althought FLS has some top notch talent, you guys can not possibly have the cash of those companies to "fix" as much stuff after launch. Of course no MMO starts with everything but either they have the capital reserves to "fix" the game after launch or they go the way of Sigil (Vanguard) or Auran (Fury).
The Avatar combat appears to need about a year of two of development to be ready for prime time. This may turn off normal MMORPG folks and thus your sales would not be as great as desired. Huge companies like SOE, Blizzard, EA, and Funcom would be able to keep the Team on board for that year even if sales are low. Can FLS?
The ship combat is very well done but the Avatar stuff including the overuse of instances will limit your reviews to around a 7.0 to 7.5 out of 10 once the game is reviewed by the major sites. Sites like 1up may even go lower due to those issues. I will still probably buy the game but those reviews will be very critical to your success. I think they will ding you on the following:
Instances. Just simply too much. Loading screens FTL.
Avatars. Everything looks tacked on and incomplete. It is really, really, bad.
No freedom. Characters can not even jump, swim, fish, etc. Plus they are on "rails" in towns. Invisible walls are very, very, very bad. For the love of God just make them jump. This is 2007.
Unbalance. Everyone will play British. The other countries and pirates may quit after a few weeks.
No immersion. You can not walk around on your ship. You can not sit in chairs, etc. This is a MMORPG and although these things seem trival, they are important to MMORPG Players.
The Open Sea area. Ships are zooming around like space ships. Ships bounce off of towns instead of docking. The OS ships look "funny" like little cartoons.
The UI needs a lot of work. I can not even tell what level my Guildmates are. I can not make my chat window less intrusive. It is just poorly done.
Communication. This is a RvR game but yet there is no voice chat or nice chat system, windows, or RvR support.
I have been playing the beta for a couple weeks now and I personally am very impressed. I beta tested Pirates of the Caribbean just prior to it's launch and it basically tanked. There were SO many bugs and unfinished things when it went live. This game seems very polished, especially when compared to that. POTBS feels like the Pirate game POTCO SHOULD have been given the franchise they had...
Second, quit whining about incomplete, buggy games. NOTHING to do with software is bug-free, nor has all the parts present when shipped. (Consider Vista anyone? Or XP before it, or Windows 95? Let's not even mention Windows ME...) It's just a matter of reducing the number as much as possible to make it playable/usable by the largest number of people.
I've been beta testing for something over 10 years. Some games have potential, some tank. IMHO, this one is a keeper and will get even better as time goes on.
When i 1st heard about this game, i visualized a more sandbox world. One where a player could explore the sea as well as the land. Where pvp was just as good on the water as well as hand to hand. Why the hell would they even put in a lvl sytem along side of a skill system. Did they get that from SWG CU. Now people are complaining that lvling is to fast. The skill point system is fine, and it would have been better to become a master of a certain set of skills that should take some time, but not be a grind fest by any means.
I think there are a few things that just killed it for me. The instancing being the biggest one as well as the lack of world openess, like many are saying being able to dock a ship and walk on the beach or even jump into and swim in the ocean. Also not being able to build a house or just explore the differant parts of the world.
This game could have been superb if it would have incorporated those such things. As of now, it really is not a very well thought out MMO and i forsee a very horrible release if it stays the way it is. If i was a dev on this game i would put off the release date and make the changes that could make this a very good MMORPG and not just a pvp centric ship batte game.
If i was a dev on this game i would put off the release date and make the changes that could make this a very good MMORPG and not just a pvp centric ship batte game.
Unfortunately SOE is 100% in control of when this game launches due to their contract.
If i was a dev on this game i would put off the release date and make the changes that could make this a very good MMORPG and not just a pvp centric ship batte game.
Unfortunately SOE is 100% in control of when this game launches due to their contract.
Um, that's not true...and why do you think you know anything about our contract?
Someone pointed out that the EULA said "Scheduled Pre-Boarding Party launch date and the game’s release date are subject to change at Sony Online Entertainment’s sole and absolute discretion. Platform Publishing is a D/B/A of Sony Online Entertainment LLC."
Rick says that SOE is indeed in charge to a large extent due to something with Perpetual and deal breaking legalese that I don't want to pretend to care about.
Looking at my statement I think stating 100% is incorrect as few things are as absolute, but I think Rick made it pretty clear what the terms are. Perhaps in some way FLS could delay the game if they wanted, but it would come with a hefty cost. Either repaying monies spend by SOE or being "the deal breaker" and sending them looking for another publisher of PoTBS.
Perhaps I am wrong and yes anything is possible, but I doubt it by the looks of things.
I'm guessing you either work for SOE or Flying labs when you refer to the contract as "our"? You might be right that I am incorrect or misstating something, but according to Rick in this thread: www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1733817#1733817 Someone pointed out that the EULA said "Scheduled Pre-Boarding Party launch date and the game’s release date are subject to change at Sony Online Entertainment’s sole and absolute discretion. Platform Publishing is a D/B/A of Sony Online Entertainment LLC." Rick says that SOE is indeed in charge to a large extent due to something with Perpetual and deal breaking legalese that I don't want to pretend to care about.
Looking at my statement I think stating 100% is incorrect as few things are as absolute, but I think Rick made it pretty clear what the terms are. Perhaps in some way FLS could delay the game if they wanted, but it would come with a hefty cost. Either repaying monies spend by SOE or being "the deal breaker" and sending them looking for another publisher of PoTBS. Perhaps I am wrong and yes anything is possible, but I doubt it by the looks of things.
Indeed I do work at Flying Lab - I am the art director - and I don't want to get myself into trouble talking about our contract (I'll let Rick handle that - besides, if I tried I would quickly reveal that I have no idea what I'm talking about). All I will say is that when it comes to launch dates, etc, SOE has been extremely respectful of and collaborative with our desires. If they are contractually in control, it sure does not feel that way.
That said, in response to the point you were responding to initially: when you put a game out there, lots of people have ideas about how you should design your game. Some of these ideas are good and some are not. Internally we also have lots of ideas about how to design the game, some get implemented for release and some get thrown out, while others go on the "waiting list". At the end of the day, I think our game is fun - and I'm not even all that good at it (artist) - knowing the people as I do here (smart, creative, reasonable) I have every faith that the design features to come are going to continue to be fun.
Flying Lab is the forth game company I've worked for (Sierra, Boss Games, Microsoft) and the 14th title I've launched. And after all that time and work, this is the first project I've worked on where the creative people are truly in charge. Start to finish, this game is being controlled by us and not some marketing-engine or randomizing agenda-driven executive. And what's even cooler is that no one here is so ego-bound as to not consider what we hear from outside the company - from people like you. It's quite remarkable and I don't want it to end. When I entered this industry I wanted to believe that all companies were like this, but I've spent 14 years watching the industry dash that belief to smithereens.
When we signed a deal with SOE, people outside the company assumed that we were giving up that control. This has not been the case or our experience - they didn't pay for the development of the game after all, so making a deal that gives any publisher control would not have made sense for us. Most of my time at Microsoft was in the game publishing org, so believe me I know how intrusive publishers can be.
Rather a moot point when the game launches I think. Pretty obvious to anyone that has beta tested it, that it has months and months of fixes awaiting it before it is a playable game. While they have addressed the abuse of the high end ships, everyone levels far far too fast in this game. What is the point of having levels if every gets to high level in a few weeks?
The major flaw with this game is, it should have been skill based instead of level based to start with. The avatar combat should be just dropped until it is ready for human play, at this point in time it really brings down the quality of the game immensely.
Because of all the flaws this will be another small niche marketplace game. It is a shame as it looked to have a lot of potential.
So just because the Devs listen to the playerbase does not mean they can do much about it. Always a shame when a good idea dies because the game was not ready for live play.
How many hours a day did you play? A guy made it to level 50 in Vanguard in 30 days but it was later revealed that he played 16+ hours/day with very little sleep and no other obligations. Time played is probably more important than real time.
...Because of all the flaws this will be another small niche marketplace game....
So, if a game isn't a big, mass-appeal game, it's useless? They knew from the beginning that a ship-based combat game set in the 18th century was not going to be drawing WoW, EQII, or perhaps not even EVE-like numbers.
It's certainly not the end-all and be-all of games, but no game is in my opinion. Neither is any software, product, or--gasp--person. Everything has faults and you can either learn to live with them and hope they get better, or you bail and go on your merry way.
For this game--as one should with any MMO, because they are all about change--I trust the Devs to make the game better and better. When I quit SWG (before the NGE), it was because I did not trust the Devs to make the game better, or even keep it functioning reliably.
Buying an MMO is not so much about what you get on launch day (and I"m not referring to freebies for pre-ordering). Buying an MMO is about trusting the Devs.
Apply lemon juice and candle flame here to reveal secret message.
Originally posted by U-Turn Originally posted by Annekynn If anyone is curious about the poster that got to 50 in 11 days, well that was me, original thread at http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32201 . You can blame any exp nerfs on me >:]
How many hours a day did you play? A guy made it to level 50 in Vanguard in 30 days but it was later revealed that he played 16+ hours/day with very little sleep and no other obligations. Time played is probably more important than real time.
Id say 3-5 hours per weekday and 6-9 hours on weekends. I certainly did not skip work, food or sleep to make the accomplishment. Ofcourse since then FLS has made changes to ships, outfittings, skills, etc, to balance the game more which will slow down progression a bit.
Playing an MMO used to be about trusting the devs. There is to much competition out there now for people to sit around and pay a subscription fee in the hopes that some developers are going to get around to making a game worth paying for. Someone can just as easily go back to playing the last game they enjoyed and wait for the devs of another game to fix what they put on the market. No need to sit around and suffer through boring repetative unfinished gameplay. Maybe if there is something enjoyable and worth sticking around for then maybe, but the days of waiting for potential to surface are gone except for the smallest of dedicated fans. I am not saying the devs of flying labs are not trustworthy, but at the same time am not going to pay for blind faith either.
MMOs get one chance now and they better hit the ground running. Not start off by making excuses and promises of future changes before the game even gets out of the gates.
Bsharp, thanks for the input. I'm glad you see an amicable releation with SOE. I don't think that really changes the nature of the contract or the final resting place of your game when the dust settles, but enjoy the ride. I'm still impressed at you guys for facing your fans and critics alike on the forums.
Comments
It's really quite simple, there are very few people that like slow leveling, just take a look at how WoW is doing.
In WoW you can level to 60 in less than 5 days, possibly even faster now with the faster leveling between levels 1-40, when player feels he is progressing and is powerful he will keep playing especially when all the interesting stuff is at the max level.
So in terms of progression, when player feels game is stale and slow progressing or struggles with some aspect of the game s/he has a possibility to stop playing, and of course you want to encourage playing.
I think you get at least one level per session in WoW, when you start out you can get 20 levels easy in single session and see lots of new stuff.
I might sound like a broken record, but i can almost gurantee you (Flying Labs), that this game will flop if you make (dont correct) the most common mistakes all games today suffer from. You still got the chance so dont underestimate this posting and read (and rethink) VERY CAREFULLY:
1. Avatars - boring. 8 Facetypes for thousand of players means look alike clonearmys in no time: DULL !
2. Social aspect (Housing, community gathering):
If you dont put in housing (which EVERYONE can afford) you cut off the social type players and almost every female gamer (cuz esp. they love it).
We have enough boring, non immerse, non diversity left-mousebutton mashers out there. Make a difference or suffer like the others. Plain and simple.
3. Deep crafting with a MEANING (best items are crafted):
If you dont give creative playtype somthing to play with...nuff said.
Plain and simple:
These points are making the difference from an immerse sandbox game with diversity to a dull single-mousebutton combat sim.
Consider it or fail like most of the other gamestudio, simple but reality.
But i swear:
After companys cheating investors (PE), after studios going down the hill (Sigil), after devs screwing up the best games (SWG) the community is MORE then sick & tired of studios thinking they can get the big buck by rushing out a dull buggy game.
Im VERY fed up with such crap and not only will avoid any product of such companys (and watch their downfall).
Choose YOUR site, FL...
Claude
O. M. G. Squared.
That these guys started out trying to make a realistically scaled Carribean with realistic speeds and distances -- and they were surprised to learn that this was a bad idea -- it boggles the mind that they even got as far as they did with this game.
I guess they were hoping to learn the art of game design by doing? Because they obviously knew less than nothing coming out of the gate. Sadly, there is no way they could ever hope to learn enough to create a decent MMO starting with such absurdly naive scraps of hope and not much else.
ya well WoW should not have been relased then since you can max it out in 14 days although i think the record when it had a lvl 60 cap was 8 days
Personally I think WoW is too easy but most people who play WoW don't max out that fast. It's a game designed for casual players who typically take much longer, many months, to max out. By most accounts, players in PotBS are saying the leveling process is too fast. Also WoW developers, unlike FLS, don't claim there isn't much to do at max level, since it is a raid centric PVE game with endgame PVP design as well.
The record was something like 8 days but this was from a player who already had played the game through a couple of times,Also with WoW when you did hit 60 you still had a 15man 3x10 man and and a couple of 5 mans you could run that kept you playing and willing to pay the sub till the new content was added.I agree with samuraisword on this if the game only takes around 12 days to max out on your 1st run through and with only crafting and some pvp to keep you going then I feel it has been rushed out without more thought on end-game,I feel a bit sad for the devs as they really seem like a nice bunch of guys but unfortunatly nice devs alone doesnt sell the subs.This was a title I was watching and may continue to watch to see how it grows.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
Yes the record for WoW was by somebody that completed the game MANY times. He purposefully would plan routes on new servers and get server firsts. He tried this many times. He never went to the AH, never stopped for anything, never did any crafting. Pure levelling then logout. It doesn't reflect the games length of time to play.
Anyway, we're talking about this game. I played the beta for about 5-6 hours. Yes, not that long at all. The game seemed to be very much based on Sid Meijers Pirates! - which was a very good game for about the same length of time 6-8 hours.
So why did I only play for 5-6 hours? Well, there were the missions at sea, where you would repetitively kill pirates. All you did was turn your ship and then spam the fire button until your cannons fired. Then repeat.
The other missions were on land where you fought with your avatar. The fighting was... rediculously poor. Hindered further by some lag (which I take into account). It wasn't much fun and I would literally just be typing 1111211112111131111211113, etc. Great!
So I kept playing for some time longer, got some money for a new ship, upgraded and then realised that I hadn't yet done anything different!
Shoot ships in slow paced battle, or go on land with a terrible combat system. In ports you face the loading screen more than you do other people!
Perhaps this was just my taste, but I believe that once this is released its rating will be hovering around the 6.0 mark at best. Unfortunate as a pirate MMO could have been good.
I find it interesting, if a bit sad, that people equate "We didn't have time to do every possible idea we would have liked to have done" with "the game is unfinished and shouldn't be released," which seems to be the gist of the responses here. The fact is, *nobody* in this industry has time to do everything they'd like. WoW shipped without battlegrounds, looking for group, very little raid contents, etc. They've added them since, but that doesn't mean that everyone else has to have on day one every feature that they've added over the years. Heck, they shipped with broken classes (anyone play a druid at launch?) and their servers exploded the first week. And they are considered a *good* example!
There's *always* more work that can be done, and it's always a hard choice to pick what to do and what not to do. You've got limited time and limited dollars, and you have to pick your battles. The luxury that MMO developers have of adding content later is a two edged sword. It's true that a lot of games that ship are buggy as **** and crash all over. It's true that some have areas that are completely broken (anyone play a droid engineer?). But my saying that we don't have everything in at launch that we'd like, or that we plan to add more cool content down the road doesn't mean I think the existing game is broken. I believe that the game we plan to ship will be fun and stable on day one, and will only improve from there. Yes there will be parts that aren't as good as we'd like. That's *always* true. And we'll do our best to improve them as we go along. But even the parts that *aren't* perfect are still playable and fun. "Not perfect" doesn't mean the same as "unplayably broken."
Not that I really blame people that much, because the game industry has released more that its share of unplayably broken games over the years. But I take offense at the implication that my sharing our thinking on our design decisions and our plans to improve our game after launch means I'm saying our game is in the broken category. Will it be for everyone? Nope. We never expected it would be. But we hope a lot of people will give it a whirl, and that a sizable chunk of them will enjoy it and stick around. Which in the end is all a game dev can hope for.
Rick Saada - FLS Dev & EPFBM
It wasn't that we were surprised that it didn't work as that we'd hoped to work around the problems we knew were there, but couldn't do it and make it fun. Of course, what you're saying is *exactly* what other posters here are saying we should have done. Seamless world + realistic scale + realistic speeds. There are people who are saying we're doomed to failure because we're not doing it that way, and you're saying we're idiots because we even considered it. Sigh.
Rick Saada - FLS Dev & EPFBM
1. I'm sure artco would love to do more faces/clothes/items. As many as time allows.
2. As I mentioned, player owned socialization spaces is on the list.
3. Currently *all* items are crafted, so I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean something like what SWG with variable quality inputs and variable outputs, that's a completely different style of crafting than what we have. First, our game is it designed around production, not individual item crafting. Second, it would break the AH design if every item was different. How do you undercut someone's prices if every item is different? Third, it would mean that there's a crafting skill grind, which we have specifically avoided. You don't have to skill to 300, or 375 making things nobody wants in our game, and we plan to keep it that way. So if that's what you're looking for, I'm afraid you're out of luck. On the other hand, many people really enjoy the cutthroat economic competition our game offers, so give it a try.
4. Our game isn't buggy. We get constant feedback from our beta testers about how stable it feels. Yes there are bugs. Every game has bugs (heck I'm finding unimplemented dialog strings in Mass Effect, and that' s a single player game), but we don't have gameplay destroying frequently crashing unplayable mess kinds of bugs.
As for dull, well that's in the eye of the beholder, and you're as entitled to your opinion as anyone else. Many people are enjoying our game, but it's not for everyone. That's why there's room for a wide range of games in the marketplace. Not everyone wants WoW, or WAR, or CoH or EQ2 or Eve, or whatever. All we can do is make the game we want to make and hope that there's enough people who want what we've built to create a thriving community. Hopefully you'll join us, but if not, good luck finding a game closer to what you want.
Rick Saada - FLS Dev & EPFBM
Eh, for me, I use to bash this title when avatars where not going to be in. As time passed ,the dev team interacted more and more with the community and adding those things we wanted if possible. While it may have not been their first thought to say have avatars and the like, we truely will never know what their first concepts were. However after time, they have proven time and time and time again that they listen and interact with their community on a large scale. No one, not one company can be mentioned that does this.
To have such interaction and open honest policies makes me now an instant fan of the company. Also with the game, allot of things need improvements but as stated over and over again, name a game that didn't. Even DAOC that so many consider a sucesfull launch was horribly balanced. Does anyone remember the one shot scouts? Probably not, allot of issues in that game which did get better then turned for the worst when they decided to add grinding in the game.
All in all, it comes down to taste, it was openly admitted by the devs that this game won't be for everyone, in that retrospect you can see EVE and say the exact same thing. I for one will and have pre-ordered and will be here for the long run. I see it this way, if I can say my peace and know it is being listened to thats a good thing. When the community and the dev team actually talk about ideas then implimenting them that is just another plus factor. In all my years of gaming this has never been so open with any team. I will support that 100% and back it up with my cash.
There are things that I still am a bit worried about , the announcment of the "making it longer to level" as another posted here is ok, if you have the content to actually back that up. I know what content there is and if a dev reads this , the only thing I can honestly say is, "if you want to slow down the leveling process while still working on content, I would keep the leveling process pretty much were it was .,however during the 41+ levels slow that down a bit and even in the 30's, but in the 20's? BAD idea, again the only reason is I know what you have there and as far as the xp vs availible mission content I think the % will be off."
What I mean by this to sum , I don't think the missions avalible (even thou we have 1000+) per nation will be enough for a longer grind without doing repeats or farming mobs. The level at which we go from 1-30 currently is a very nice pace for casual players as myself. I would think the 40+ should be a bit tougher thou, by then you should also have enough ample time to make those new missions you speak of. Now this won't solve the grinders of the world, but name an MMO that has? The only thing I have seen work (and personally don't care for ) is bonus xp vs time spent in game.
Other then the xp being lowered, I like what I see for launch and can't wait. I know this game has allot of potential and see it daily. I have yet in my past MMO experiance , can think of any game that I had faith that the actual dev team will do what they say. I seen allot of cool MMO's in the past promise the world and never delivered. At least with this dev teams track record, if they say "this is coming" you can bet your high dollar it will. Good enough for me, can't wait for launch
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
Honestly, this game feels like a pay per month game that ends up being free to play after a few months. I like the gameplay, but on a very basic level. Riding in a ship, bombing others is fun, but I would never pay money to play this game. I would buy the game if it were free to play online though...It's worth that much.
I have no complaints.
Keep up the hard work, continue to listen to the players, and the game will be fantastic.
Great they are listening to the players, I was also in beta and was VERY excited about POTBS. I had a fairly large guild and was pushing to dive in head first on release. Then after awhile in beta things turned sour. Thing just aren't much fun, the avatar combat is tacked on and lacking. The ship combat feel like its been taken right out of sid's PIRATES!, which IMO is a much more polished game. Oh well, I wish FLS all the luck but I would put money on this failing and going belly up.
The issue is that Blizzard and SOE are huge companies that had a lot of money to "fix" WoW and EQ2 after they launched. Althought FLS has some top notch talent, you guys can not possibly have the cash of those companies to "fix" as much stuff after launch. Of course no MMO starts with everything but either they have the capital reserves to "fix" the game after launch or they go the way of Sigil (Vanguard) or Auran (Fury).
The Avatar combat appears to need about a year of two of development to be ready for prime time. This may turn off normal MMORPG folks and thus your sales would not be as great as desired. Huge companies like SOE, Blizzard, EA, and Funcom would be able to keep the Team on board for that year even if sales are low. Can FLS?
The ship combat is very well done but the Avatar stuff including the overuse of instances will limit your reviews to around a 7.0 to 7.5 out of 10 once the game is reviewed by the major sites. Sites like 1up may even go lower due to those issues. I will still probably buy the game but those reviews will be very critical to your success. I think they will ding you on the following:
I have been playing the beta for a couple weeks now and I personally am very impressed. I beta tested Pirates of the Caribbean just prior to it's launch and it basically tanked. There were SO many bugs and unfinished things when it went live. This game seems very polished, especially when compared to that.
POTBS feels like the Pirate game POTCO SHOULD have been given the franchise they had...
Second, quit whining about incomplete, buggy games. NOTHING to do with software is bug-free, nor has all the parts present when shipped. (Consider Vista anyone? Or XP before it, or Windows 95? Let's not even mention Windows ME...) It's just a matter of reducing the number as much as possible to make it playable/usable by the largest number of people.
I've been beta testing for something over 10 years. Some games have potential, some tank. IMHO, this one is a keeper and will get even better as time goes on.
Randy
When i 1st heard about this game, i visualized a more sandbox world. One where a player could explore the sea as well as the land. Where pvp was just as good on the water as well as hand to hand. Why the hell would they even put in a lvl sytem along side of a skill system. Did they get that from SWG CU. Now people are complaining that lvling is to fast. The skill point system is fine, and it would have been better to become a master of a certain set of skills that should take some time, but not be a grind fest by any means.
I think there are a few things that just killed it for me. The instancing being the biggest one as well as the lack of world openess, like many are saying being able to dock a ship and walk on the beach or even jump into and swim in the ocean. Also not being able to build a house or just explore the differant parts of the world.
This game could have been superb if it would have incorporated those such things. As of now, it really is not a very well thought out MMO and i forsee a very horrible release if it stays the way it is. If i was a dev on this game i would put off the release date and make the changes that could make this a very good MMORPG and not just a pvp centric ship batte game.
Unfortunately SOE is 100% in control of when this game launches due to their contract.
Unfortunately SOE is 100% in control of when this game launches due to their contract.
Um, that's not true...and why do you think you know anything about our contract?
I'm guessing you either work for SOE or Flying labs when you refer to the contract as "our"?
You might be right that I am incorrect or misstating something, but according to Rick in this thread:
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1733817#1733817
Someone pointed out that the EULA said "Scheduled Pre-Boarding Party launch date and the game’s release date are subject to change at Sony Online Entertainment’s sole and absolute discretion. Platform Publishing is a D/B/A of Sony Online Entertainment LLC."
Rick says that SOE is indeed in charge to a large extent due to something with Perpetual and deal breaking legalese that I don't want to pretend to care about.
Looking at my statement I think stating 100% is incorrect as few things are as absolute, but I think Rick made it pretty clear what the terms are. Perhaps in some way FLS could delay the game if they wanted, but it would come with a hefty cost. Either repaying monies spend by SOE or being "the deal breaker" and sending them looking for another publisher of PoTBS.
Perhaps I am wrong and yes anything is possible, but I doubt it by the looks of things.
Indeed I do work at Flying Lab - I am the art director - and I don't want to get myself into trouble talking about our contract (I'll let Rick handle that - besides, if I tried I would quickly reveal that I have no idea what I'm talking about). All I will say is that when it comes to launch dates, etc, SOE has been extremely respectful of and collaborative with our desires. If they are contractually in control, it sure does not feel that way.
That said, in response to the point you were responding to initially: when you put a game out there, lots of people have ideas about how you should design your game. Some of these ideas are good and some are not. Internally we also have lots of ideas about how to design the game, some get implemented for release and some get thrown out, while others go on the "waiting list". At the end of the day, I think our game is fun - and I'm not even all that good at it (artist) - knowing the people as I do here (smart, creative, reasonable) I have every faith that the design features to come are going to continue to be fun.
Flying Lab is the forth game company I've worked for (Sierra, Boss Games, Microsoft) and the 14th title I've launched. And after all that time and work, this is the first project I've worked on where the creative people are truly in charge. Start to finish, this game is being controlled by us and not some marketing-engine or randomizing agenda-driven executive. And what's even cooler is that no one here is so ego-bound as to not consider what we hear from outside the company - from people like you. It's quite remarkable and I don't want it to end. When I entered this industry I wanted to believe that all companies were like this, but I've spent 14 years watching the industry dash that belief to smithereens.
When we signed a deal with SOE, people outside the company assumed that we were giving up that control. This has not been the case or our experience - they didn't pay for the development of the game after all, so making a deal that gives any publisher control would not have made sense for us. Most of my time at Microsoft was in the game publishing org, so believe me I know how intrusive publishers can be.
Rather a moot point when the game launches I think. Pretty obvious to anyone that has beta tested it, that it has months and months of fixes awaiting it before it is a playable game. While they have addressed the abuse of the high end ships, everyone levels far far too fast in this game. What is the point of having levels if every gets to high level in a few weeks?
The major flaw with this game is, it should have been skill based instead of level based to start with. The avatar combat should be just dropped until it is ready for human play, at this point in time it really brings down the quality of the game immensely.
Because of all the flaws this will be another small niche marketplace game. It is a shame as it looked to have a lot of potential.
So just because the Devs listen to the playerbase does not mean they can do much about it. Always a shame when a good idea dies because the game was not ready for live play.
If anyone is curious about the poster that got to 50 in 11 days, well that was me, original thread at http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32201 . You can blame any exp nerfs on me >:]
How many hours a day did you play? A guy made it to level 50 in Vanguard in 30 days but it was later revealed that he played 16+ hours/day with very little sleep and no other obligations. Time played is probably more important than real time.
It's certainly not the end-all and be-all of games, but no game is in my opinion. Neither is any software, product, or--gasp--person. Everything has faults and you can either learn to live with them and hope they get better, or you bail and go on your merry way.
For this game--as one should with any MMO, because they are all about change--I trust the Devs to make the game better and better. When I quit SWG (before the NGE), it was because I did not trust the Devs to make the game better, or even keep it functioning reliably.
Buying an MMO is not so much about what you get on launch day (and I"m not referring to freebies for pre-ordering). Buying an MMO is about trusting the Devs.
Apply lemon juice and candle flame here to reveal secret message.
How many hours a day did you play? A guy made it to level 50 in Vanguard in 30 days but it was later revealed that he played 16+ hours/day with very little sleep and no other obligations. Time played is probably more important than real time.
Id say 3-5 hours per weekday and 6-9 hours on weekends. I certainly did not skip work, food or sleep to make the accomplishment. Ofcourse since then FLS has made changes to ships, outfittings, skills, etc, to balance the game more which will slow down progression a bit.
Playing an MMO used to be about trusting the devs. There is to much competition out there now for people to sit around and pay a subscription fee in the hopes that some developers are going to get around to making a game worth paying for. Someone can just as easily go back to playing the last game they enjoyed and wait for the devs of another game to fix what they put on the market. No need to sit around and suffer through boring repetative unfinished gameplay. Maybe if there is something enjoyable and worth sticking around for then maybe, but the days of waiting for potential to surface are gone except for the smallest of dedicated fans. I am not saying the devs of flying labs are not trustworthy, but at the same time am not going to pay for blind faith either.
MMOs get one chance now and they better hit the ground running. Not start off by making excuses and promises of future changes before the game even gets out of the gates.
Bsharp, thanks for the input. I'm glad you see an amicable releation with SOE. I don't think that really changes the nature of the contract or the final resting place of your game when the dust settles, but enjoy the ride. I'm still impressed at you guys for facing your fans and critics alike on the forums.