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What did PotBS do wrong?
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One of the interesting things with FLS is that the strategic decisions rest with Rusty.
My Mother always used to say "people find their own level".
Well, Rusty chose to sign with SOE and then with Telstra (Australia). Both companies subsequently let him down badly and neither conducted their business properly.
So, what does that say about Rusty?
Well, it says a couple of things IMHO:
It says he does not have the business acumen to ensure contracts will protect him and his company properly.
It also suggests to me that the people he spoke to were 'his sort of people'.
(This is not a new opinion BTW - I hinted at this pre release)
Now while the people who 'sold him' on those contracts were undoubtedly smooth taking marketing types - I would expect a person in his position to see past that?
As for Danicia and the Forum:
It was this way pre-release. I remember when Danicia arrived at FLS and she locked critical threads (always with good reason of course!) always turned a blind eye to Fanboi-ism and it was under her that the technique of Fanboi Flaming appeared as described in this thread
When the game went live there were more problems and accusations of bias... including in game.
Danicia is another example of Rusty 'finding his own level' IMHO. Danicia is not 'evil' or overtly bias. I don't even think her intention is bad. She probably considers herself fair and balanced?
But the reality is she is NOT the right person to be placed in charge of an MMO Community Forum.
Just FYI Havohej people were hounded out of PotBS from the very beginning via Meta Gaming both on the forums and in game. There is a thread or two on this forum IIRC.
I totally agree with your comments & hope for the sake of Potbs & FLS that they or Rusty does something about it.
If not they will never have a happy community & Potbs will never be played the way it was intended.
I know I am jumping in really late, but I feel I need to tell why I felt that PotBS was such a huge failure for me. Just as a note, I have not played since March of 08, so this is just the viewpoint I had.
Let's ignore that it had the most unfreindly player base I had ever seen in any MMO I had ever played, the failure dealt, for me, more about what the game didn't do.
1) It didn't even playing feilds.
You know, I don't care if my level 20-30 got attacked by a singular level 50. That would have been fine. It would have at least felt closer to fair. It was the fact that you couldn't do that. No coding at any point was written to prevent team ganking on destruction of ships. Just a simple peice of code that basically said "You have to roll which one of you plays to destroy this one ship" would have been enough. This made doing anything near a red circle pointless, as you could not get any reasonable matches, and the second you got a party together, no one wanted to have a reasonable match. I seriously doubt the economy was the issue here, as we had plenty of means to get ships on Blackbeard at that time.
2) Where are the Piratey things?
Damn Historical. Sure wasn't on the box description. Not one treasure hunt. The AV combat was appalling, and boarding actions were not freindly in the least (See issue #1). No real swashbuckling action. No changing National Allegiances. Just about EVERY THING that Sid Mier's game did right was purposfully written out and dropped from the game. There was not a SINGLE THING in this game that made you feel that you were playing in a Erol Flynn film. It barely gave you the feel of being in a Hornblower novel. This game failed just utterly in creatring a descent pirate feel past the opening scenario.
3) Useless parts of the economy
Lack of Documentation KILLED the market game for the casual gamer. No one bothered to write a comprehensive manual, nor a comprehensive Help system. At least a chart on what goods produced what would have been a tremendous help to players starting out. I invested in Leather and Silver, as a free merchant. I saw my silver sell once in a blue moon. Maybe, just maybe, I was lucky enough to get it moved. Otherwise, it just sat there. By all logic, Silver should move. It's one of the FREAKING REASONS that the Spanish Main was established. It should have had some importance, but no. It's practically ignored by the game. The complete disconnect from the world economy and the driving forces of exports to a totally insecular system was a real disappointment for me.
4) It wasn't Multiplayer Sid Mier's Pirates
Ultimatly, my expectations for a Pirate game were not met, because what I expect a Pirate game to be about was extablished back in 1988. You needed to have
1) Sea Battles where you could attack a ship, board it, and take it's crew. Fail.
2) Find treasure maps where you can go looking for buried treasure. Fail
3) Attack a port, and take on the fort, for whatever reason. Didn't even have to take it over. Just a simple Sack would have been nice. Failure in more ways then I can describe.
4) A minimal plot where you actually defeated villians and discovered worthwhile things. Partial Failure. The Coarsair plot was interesting, but it was just not 'piratey' enough for me. It just ended up being tedius and dull. A fake romance I didn't need.
5) Trade System that didn't honor the big movers of the era. Complete Failure. When Sails are worth more money then Sugar, Cotton, Rum, Silver, Gold, or any traditional commodity you care to name, you have something SERIOUSLY wrong.
IF the game was just about Sailing Combat, no boarding, and a simplified economy, maybe it would have been something... but it would never have survived as a subscription game. To this day, I still think that this concept never should have became a subscription game. A lot more people might have tolerated it more if it hadn't.
That's the real sad part to me.
Everything out there is orcs, and elves, goblins and dwarves, magic and levels, with a few sci-fi games thrown in. Not one decent historical MMORPG, counting POTBS and Gods and Heroes. Okay, Gods and Heroes was about as historical as POTBS turned out to be, just without the elves.
It's like developers are stuck in the WOW game box and have no creative thoughts.
Ten more years of elves, dwarves, and hobbits on the horizon, mateys!
Just shoot me now.......put me out of my misery.
Okay. And for yours, Garbad posted himself why he was leaving about a week before he actually left. If he did go out in a flaming blaze of glory, I was asleep or working and the threads were gone before I got to the forum. The whole "flaming the military" thread was mentioned a few posts back; that happened well over a week before Garbad's forum account went inactive... this is why I seriously doubt there was a ban, especially if the rumor is that the ban was because of that thread. As I opined before, it's more likely that when he left PotBS for EVE he canceled his SOE Station stuff.
Another poster here said he posted with an alt forum account or something; I saw no such post and I troll pretty actively. Still, it is possible I may have missed it. If so, so be it. Most of Garbad's haters never made a positive contribution to any community at all, let alone that of PotBS; all they do is chest-pound and smacktalk on server subforums so at that point I wasn't overly concerned with reading the "yay Garbad is gone" threads anyway. I've seen people hounded out of games, as you put it, due to metagaming (like ventrilo/teamspeak infiltrating) and forum drama surrounding smacktalk and PvP, you're going to have that with PvP games... I'd like to think Garbad was more mentally tough than that, especially given what a funny forum PvPer he was in his own right lol
With regards to Danicia, she's not "in charge" of the whole forum. Traebien is lead forum mod and Rhaegar, being the community manager now, is presumably the guy at the top of that particular hill. I got a forum warning directly from Rhaegar after what I felt was a VERY creative expression of amusement, but which may have been *ahem* over the top. I was one post away from a forum ban of my own, which was made clear in no uncertain terms
That said, I'm not big on the "you weren't there so you don't know" argument (in fact, when things are clearly recorded it's not an argument at all). But with this, the record isn't there anymore - it's been deleted. I already agreed that thread/post deletions aren't the best way to go. A forum mod should make a post briefly explaining why the thread is being locked, lock the thread, issue warnings to the posters violating rules and if those posters persist with new threads, ban 'em after however many warnings policy requires (EVE-O's was three, when I got my first WoW forum ban I wasn't warned at all). Again though, anything to be said about that now is he-said/she-said and completely meaningless - even the following:
Having watched it all play out, two temp bans were earned but apparently only one was received. I don't know PotBS's standard since I haven't been banned there yet, but on the EVE-O board it probably would've gotten me 7 days from Mitnal if I were doing what he was doing. One of the VDD guys also earned a temp ban in my opinion (I won't say which one, it would only serve to create more unnecessary drama), but probably escaped it because he wasn't creating threads whose sole purpose was to flame and incite more forum drama. Forum drama which then carried over onto an external forum, resulting in a promptly locked thread.
I can easily agree that there was probably a lot of slick talk involved in the SOE and BigPond deals (I'd like to note that if my most recent submission is approved for publication it was written well before this post). I can also agree that by the time PotBS was becoming a reality Rusty, or at least his attorneys, should've seen problems coming. I really wish FLS would come out with a full disclosure on exactly what their contract with BigPond stated was BigPond's responsibility and exactly where the fault lies in that whole affair, but we all know that's not ever going to happen, so... welp.
Lucky you, I can only tell you the facts of what happened to me, I had about 1 infraction in 18 month's then because I was the only one prepared to stand up to the forum intimidation on Defiant from you know who I suddenly got a barrage of infractions all from Danacia a couple of which were totally ridiculous presumably because you know who was reporting just about any of my posts they could.
The thread that got me banned about forum moderation had other red name posts in it but Danicia felt insulted so I was banned in a similar fashion to how you know who feels insulted if you say anything but nice things to them.
There was no warning given.
Well they got what they wanted even thou they don't play Defiant there is now a feeling among many Brits that posting on the forum is a waste of time because if you dare say anything against you know who it will get reported & your playing life will be made a misery.
Not good at all as these guys only respect their own; you can argue it was all meant in good fun & only a game so why did the you know whos rejoice when I was gone if it wasn't deliberate?
Okay. And for yours, Garbad posted himself why he was leaving about a week before he actually left. ....
Okay. But I wasn't talking about Garbad. There was some real nasty stuff that happened shortly after release. FLS really didn't handle any of the community management very well.
...
That said, I'm not big on the "you weren't there so you don't know" argument (in fact, when things are clearly recorded it's not an argument at all). ...
Sorry if you took it that way - that was not the intent. The fact is FLS have always handled the community issues very badly. It goes back (once again) to the fact FLS don't seem to understand the psychology of MMO gamers and MMO communities.
...The FLS forum moderation might be fine for a Single Player game - but in an MMO Forums and Game Community flow over into one another. To make it work you really have to have a handle on it.
When the game first went retail FLS let a lot of things go on that they should have stomped out fast.
Meanwhile (IIRC) Danicia was busy banning people from the forums who had contributed to the actual game by submitting boat models!
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Lucky you, I can only tell you the facts of what happened to me, I had about 1 infraction in 18 month's then because I was the only one prepared to stand up to the forum intimidation on Defiant from you know who I suddenly got a barrage of infractions all from Danacia a couple of which were totally ridiculous presumably because you know who was reporting just about any of my posts they could.
The thread that got me banned about forum moderation had other red name posts in it but Danicia felt insulted so I was banned in a similar fashion to how you know who feels insulted if you say anything but nice things to them.
There was no warning given.
Well they got what they wanted even thou they don't play Defiant & there is now a feeling among many Brits that posting on the forum is a waste of time because if you dare say anything against you know who it will get reported & your playing life will be made a misery.
Not good at all as these guys only respect their own; you can argue it was all meant in good fun & only a game so why did the you know whos rejoice when I was gone if it wasn't deliberate?
The no-warning bit sounds all too familiar. I am not entirely sure what their full internal policy is, but the customer relations part (warnings, explanations) often fails or lacks entirely. (And no, I never got an infraction or warning, but I know a lot of people who did, up to the point of temporary bans.)
Linna
The avatar movement animations and instancing ruined this game for me. Aside from that just about everything in it is awesome. The whole ship combat was really well done.
If you can live with the instancing the new av-com is definitely worth a try.
Okay. And for yours, Garbad posted himself why he was leaving about a week before he actually left. ....
Okay. But I wasn't talking about Garbad. There was some real nasty stuff that happened shortly after release. FLS really didn't handle any of the community management very well.
...
That said, I'm not big on the "you weren't there so you don't know" argument (in fact, when things are clearly recorded it's not an argument at all). ...
Sorry if you took it that way - that was not the intent. The fact is FLS have always handled the community issues very badly. It goes back (once again) to the fact FLS don't seem to understand the psychology of MMO gamers and MMO communities.
...The FLS forum moderation might be fine for a Single Player game - but in an MMO Forums and Game Community flow over into one another. To make it work you really have to have a handle on it.
When the game first went retail FLS let a lot of things go on that they should have stomped out fast.
Meanwhile (IIRC) Danicia was busy banning people from the forums who had contributed to the actual game by submitting boat models!
An example of that will always stand out in my mind. That was very early on, late February 2008. British on Blackbeard use the instaflip exploit to eco-bomb three French ports within minutes. French faction wasn't large enough to fight more than one of the battles. The three battles occurred at once and, as predicted, the French only managed to fight (and win) the one battle with the most importance, Grenville. The other two ports were lost by default, including Cayo.
French outcry on the forums: It's an exploit, give us our ports back.
What did FLS do? Nothing. The FLS reasoning, courtesy of Joe, in a nutshell: While instaflips were exploits, the port battles were won honestly, so no map reset. The whole debacle is here. I can't remember how many French left the game over that. Then players told FLS that the Blackbeard British were now dragging their feet to delay a map reset as much as possible, with hints of the word "blackmail" here and there. FLS' reaction? Nothing.
Didn't they realize it's the LAST position they should have taken when the first map victory on most servers had not yet happened?
On other matters, I did see Garbad's short message in GB's thread (it was the thread I used for comparison regarding the avatar and signature matter a few posts above). I wish he could have been more specific, though it's clear enough: boredom.
It's funny about that, I'm not really sure who was the motivation to change the direction of the game away from casual, and move to more hardcore. I can't believe FLS thought that one up all by themselves. There are far more gamers that have a job, a wife, and kids that can only grab a few hours a night/day of gaming then there are 16hr/day uber leets.
After France imploded on Rackham the free market dried up and I had to join a society. I actually was told that they didn't give a fuck that I produced small and medium ships, I was to change my production to sail cloth. Prior to that I was independant, having fun, and immune to the French national politics.
I was told to go out and sit in the Gulf of Mexico by New Orleans in case Spain tried to PvP our newbs as they tried to run missions. It was a waste of time for several reasons. That, and I was never allowed, no matter how many times I asked, to go out to the Antilles and help grind a port out there so I could participate in a port battle. Matter of fact, I was distinctly told that if I as ever invited to a port battle I was to decline.
1. Spain wasn't the problem. Spain controlled New Orleans ever since the first or second port battle there. The problem was some French society kept insisting on going back to New Orleans, putting into contention, and then getting their butts kicked in the ensuing port battle. It was a matter of "place your keyboards on the floor and step away from the computer dumbasses". I sat out there many nights, and only once saw a few Spanish show up to grind PB contention points. I have no idea when your side got their points for PBs.
2. Spain was out in the Antilles PvP action, when they could. They had imploded just before France. The only ones that seemed to ever drift down to New Orleans once in a while was the pirates, and they only stayed a few minutes then got bored and left. Usually they headed out to the Antilles too.
3. France had very few newbs left to run missions. They had gotten digusted with France constantly putting New Orleans back into the red circle, and dropped by then.
Anyway, I could read a book, go afk on my computer, log out, sleep, or do just about anything except be seen by my society in the Antilles. I could craft anything as long as it was sail cloth. I could play my little heart away, as long as I did what the society leadership told me to do. But I couldn't build durability for my frigate if I lost it without my society leadership's approval.
So I took my money, and went to Havana, and bought my frigate endurance off Spain (maybe Garbad?). I produced enough sail cloth not to get thrown out of my society, bought refined sugar and meat in Havana, and sold ships provisions in Havana. I bought a Santiago Galleon for my freetrader in Havana. It got so it was easier and more fun to play the game with Spain then France, if that makes any sense.
Spain seemed more open market, less control freaks.
Anyway, I grew sick and tired of the bullshit, and just did what the rest of the French had done, and voted with my feet.
Thank you very much for that account of Rackham when it became a ghost town. I originally transferred there in April with the rest of the Blackbeard French, because our position on the old server was hopeless, while the Rackham French had attracted most competitive PvPers in the game (including the Kidd French and their First Rate, if I recall).
At first the French did very well indeed and well set on winning the map. But I knew it couldn't last. I saw some exodus before I left myself, but the bulk of it happened during the summer, and after Warhammer came out, the server was pretty much deserted (based on what I was reading), even more so than then-dead servers like Blackbeard.
I like to think that there's a lesson in this: Your rowdiest, leetest, most hardcore players will be the first to desert you at the first moment of boredom or at the faintest glimpse of the next shiny new game. But that's not exactly news, is it?
It's funny about that, I'm not really sure who was the motivation to change the direction of the game away from casual, and move to more hardcore. I can't believe FLS thought that one up all by themselves. There are far more gamers that have a job, a wife, and kids that can only grab a few hours a night/day of gaming then there are 16hr/day uber leets.
After France imploded on Rackham the free market dried up and I had to join a society. I actually was told that they didn't give a fuck that I produced small and medium ships, I was to change my production to sail cloth. Prior to that I was independant, having fun, and immune to the French national politics.
I was told to go out and sit in the Gulf of Mexico by New Orleans in case Spain tried to PvP our newbs as they tried to run missions. It was a waste of time for several reasons. That, and I was never allowed, no matter how many times I asked, to go out to the Antilles and help grind a port out there so I could participate in a port battle. Matter of fact, I was distinctly told that if I as ever invited to a port battle I was to decline.
1. Spain wasn't the problem. Spain controlled New Orleans ever since the first or second port battle there. The problem was some French society kept insisting on going back to New Orleans, putting into contention, and then getting their butts kicked in the ensuing port battle. It was a matter of "place your keyboards on the floor and step away from the computer dumbasses". I sat out there many nights, and only once saw a few Spanish show up to grind PB contention points. I have no idea when your side got their points for PBs.
2. Spain was out in the Antilles PvP action, when they could. They had imploded just before France. The only ones that seemed to ever drift down to New Orleans once in a while was the pirates, and they only stayed a few minutes then got bored and left. Usually they headed out to the Antilles too.
3. France had very few newbs left to run missions. They had gotten digusted with France constantly putting New Orleans back into the red circle, and dropped by then.
Anyway, I could read a book, go afk on my computer, log out, sleep, or do just about anything except be seen by my society in the Antilles. I could craft anything as long as it was sail cloth. I could play my little heart away, as long as I did what the society leadership told me to do. But I couldn't build durability for my frigate if I lost it without my society leadership's approval.
So I took my money, and went to Havana, and bought my frigate endurance off Spain (maybe Garbad?). I produced enough sail cloth not to get thrown out of my society, bought refined sugar and meat in Havana, and sold ships provisions in Havana. I bought a Santiago Galleon for my freetrader in Havana. It got so it was easier and more fun to play the game with Spain then France, if that makes any sense.
Spain seemed more open market, less control freaks.
Anyway, I grew sick and tired of the bullshit, and just did what the rest of the French had done, and voted with my feet.
Thank you very much for that account of Rackham when it became a ghost town. I originally transferred there in April with the rest of the Blackbeard French, because our position on the old server was hopeless, while the Rackham French had attracted most competitive PvPers in the game (including the Kidd French and their First Rate, if I recall).
At first the French did very well indeed and well set on winning the map. But I knew it couldn't last. I saw some exodus before I left myself, but the bulk of it happened during the summer, and after Warhammer came out, the server was pretty much deserted (based on what I was reading), even more so than then-dead servers like Blackbeard.
I like to think that there's a lesson in this: Your rowdiest, leetest, most hardcore players will be the first to desert you at the first moment of boredom or at the faintest glimpse of the next shiny new game. But that's not exactly news, is it?
I disagree, the exodus started long before any other games came out. Age of Conan and the Warhammer beta only sped up the process. And some of the most hardcore were the ones to stick it out longest, like Garbad and the people from Fail, Grenouilles des Mers, ATF and of course Garbad. And those who left were spread over all segments: crafters, merchants, PVEers, role players, casual and hardcore pvpers.
Linna
There was an interesting article I came across a while ago at spiritofrevolution.com/mmorpg/pirates-of-the-empty-sea/; however, that website has now vanished, and I think that the article offered so many good points regarding the problems of PotBS that I have taken the liberty of posting it here (with links to the original photos, hosted elsewhere). The author was one Nighttide, who according to the article was a member of Brethren Court on Bonny:
Pirates of the Empty Sea
Author: Nighttide
17 Nov
I used to play Pirates of the Burning Sea, back during open beta and the first couple weeks after launch (technically pre-launch, I suppose, but that doesn’t matter now).
It was a decent game. Nothing groundbreaking, but different enough in setting and gameplay to warrant a purchase. What I didn’t expect was for the game to totally bomb the moment open beta ended and the actual game began.
There is no crying in the red circle
During the open beta, I was one of those half-hearted apologists for the developers. I knew the downsides of the game, but due to the openness and transparency of the devs (or the illusion of such), I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, if only for a little while.
Like with anything else, however, the apologists are always wrong.
Players would complain about common issues: incomplete and horribly implemented avatar combat; bugged quests; how lame it was to be a pirate; the questionable economy; disappearing arms and torsos. But one issue in particular sowed the seeds of a conflict that to this day is still contested: that there is no crying in the red circle.
Quick explanation: In Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS), the goal of each nation (or faction) is to take and hold sea ports. When a port is contested by an opposing faction, it becomes a hostile territory, as designated by a red circle on the map around the port in question. Within this red circle, anyone may be attacked and sent into a player-versus-player (PVP) battle.
The problem with PVP within PotBS is that the majority of battles consist of massive ganking — being outnumbered, having your single pirate sloop attacked by six British nuclear submarines. Over and over (and over) again.
Ganking wasn’t even the issue, though. Not for me, anyway — ganking happens in all PVP-oriented games.
No, the real issue was the developers’ attachment to this idea, that if you wandered into the red circle, you deserved to die a most horrible and bogus death. It became a cover for what I assume were balancing and design issues, or a sign of the arrogant laziness that has come to permeate this industry.
“You don’t like the game, leave,” was the attitude communicated to the players. So we did.
The end of beta was ironically the beginning of the end for PotBS, and the foundation of a brick wall, a disconnect that has developed (or so I’ve heard) between the game’s players and its developers over the year that it has been released.
Lessons from PotBS
It wasn’t all for nothing. Here are a few lessons from PotBS that future MMORPG developers should have in mind when designing their next big failures:
1. Do not, under any circumstances, use the Star Wars Galaxies game engine. I mean, no z-axis? Really?
2. Do not allow a sub-human demographic of hardcore PVP gamers to do your public relations for you.
3. At the end of open beta, you probably shouldn’t give everyone 1,000,000,000 doubloons and the best ship in the game. That means they’ll have already seen the end, and realized how substandard it really is, before the game even launches. Bad move.
4. If you’re going for a historically accurate, realistic setting, don’t introduce magic. Just don’t.
5. Give the game some purpose. Flipping ports is pointless if they’re going to flip back automatically in a few days.
6. It is not a good idea to change your initial design plan halfway through development, then proceed to tack on unfinished (and largely unwanted) gameplay mechanics.
7. Do not, under any circumstances (part two) allow Sony Online Entertainment to distribute your game. And if you do,
8. Don’t let your game be placed on Station Access. It’s a graveyard of total, unrighteous failure.
There’s one more bit of irony to the PotBS mess, however, and that is the prophetic words of the game’s lead designer, Isildur (no that’s not his real name):
“The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them.”
If only he had listened to himself.
Anyway, if you happen to have played Pirates of the Burning Sea, and if you played on the Bonnie server, and if you were a member of The Brethren Court: hello, goodbye, and it was fun while it lasted.
*cough*carebearwhine*cough*
</troll>
Seriously though, his point about the ports flipping back after three days, as we know, only applies to pirate port flips.
The rest of it was pretty much another repetition of bits and pieces of the oft-reposted complaints from the first 15 pages of this thread... we still see the same whine posted on the official forum every week or two.
Well, he talked what he knew about. I never played pirate, so I can't really comment on the pirate endgame, but it did seem to me that such endgame was particularly pointless. But you could easily make the point about nationals as well: What's the point of flipping a port if you know that in a month or two, you're still going to lose it after a reset, with not much of a reward for your efforts?
I understand why it's being done -- to prevent the Shadowbane scenario where one guild could take over the map and kill the server. At the same time, I'm not a fan of the idea of a world in which no real progression can be made because, poof, here comes the reset.
I would have preferred a much more fluid approach to map resets, in that the ports don't necessarily go back to their starting faction after a reset, just that they're evenly split. It's like a card game: You start a new game, you have the usual number of cards, but those cards aren't the same as in the previous game. Just exclude starting ports like Grenville or Bartica from the mix if you must, but everything else could or could not go back to you after the reset (ports that haven't been conquered stay with their starting faction). Even if that means no lignum vitae without those pesky taxes for the next round, but I'd prefer to have the bundleboats taken out of the game anyway.
Also, if this article was posted in November, based on problems the guy saw presumably before Bonny was taken down (in May?), and that people still "whine" on the forums about it, doesn't it indicate that the problems haven't been solved or even addressed?
I like your idea about randomizing who gets what after a flip. Coming from EVE, I'd personally prefer the one-server persistent model, but the Caribbean used by PotBS just isn't big enough for that sort of thing. Meh.
When I made mention of oft-repeated complaints that continue on the forum even now, I was talking about the players who complain when PvP happens to them in a PvP area - I should've been more specific. You're going to have ganking in a PvP game. If the existence of ganking means that a game is unbalanced, then WoW, WAR, AoC, EVE, the upcoming Darkfall, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc are all unbalanced and will never be balanced. And from what I could tell by how the writer of that article harped on "No crying in the red circle" as a bad thing, it was a major issue for him.
You know I've said a dozen times that PotBS does have its flaws, but that's not one of them any more than EVE-Online's "no crying in lowsec/0.0" is a game flaw - they've gotten their game up to 250k subs and 50k consecutive logins after 5+ years running. You'll always have new players whining about how unfair PvP oriented games are, where there IS no 100% PvP-free carebear server to accomodate them. Those players either leave for calmer waters (pardon the pun) or they "harden the eff up" as our Aussie players are fond of saying.
FLS is no CCP yet, not by a long shot, but the game's doing well enough that they've got time and a good foundation to build from, in my opinion.
You cannot make a comparison with the Eve situation. As I understand it, in Eve the PVP zone is a very lucrative place where you choose to go. In PotBS, the PVP erupts around places you NEED to go, up to and including new player ports. The fact that not even newbie zones are safe, has cost FLS tons of subscribers.
Ganking happens in all PVP games, yes. But in most games, including WAR, you can choose not to have the PVP intrude on your PVE. The whole 'no crying in the red circle' thing, and the vicious arguments erupting around it, have done the game a lot of harm.
Linna
To me (and many others) the fundamental problem of PvP in PotBS really had nothing to do with ganking, although that was a symptom of the issue: It was all caused by instancing combat.
Instanced combat *forced* 6 man gank squads because regardless of the actual balance of forces in the area, that was all the fight could ever be - at worst a 6v6. Didn't matter if you had one 6 man squad and the other nation had 30 other players sailing around, the worst you would ever face was 6v6 with your ships magically healed back to full everytime. Add in that it means no one could leap in to help those smaller/weaker players who go jumped and you had a PvP system completely engineered to cater to nothing but gank squads and 6v6 duelist teams.
That's why the comparison to EVE is so totally bogus. In EVE if your 6 man squad flattens me and I happen to have 20 friends nearby, we can and will come atfer you with the ability to take you down - that was never possible in PotBS. Thrown in all the bugs and gimmicks of the instancing system used to trap/bait people into long odds fights and you have the reason no one wanted to play it.
Never mind the absence of things like water depth that might have given a better balance to small ships vs large etc...or how horribly broken and abuse-ridden the "national pvp" system was.
You cannot make a comparison with the Eve situation. As I understand it, in Eve the PVP zone is a very lucrative place where you choose to go. In PotBS, the PVP erupts around places you NEED to go, up to and including new player ports. The fact that not even newbie zones are safe, has cost FLS tons of subscribers.
Ganking happens in all PVP games, yes. But in most games, including WAR, you can choose not to have the PVP intrude on your PVE. The whole 'no crying in the red circle' thing, and the vicious arguments erupting around it, have done the game a lot of harm.
Linna
I can tell you've never played EVE. A SMALL part of 0.0 (which is PART of the "PVP zone") is very lucrative. The rest of it is just dangerous and un-profitable. There are hundreds (literally) of mission-given agents in high security space who will send you into nearby lowsec to do your missions. There are factional missions that can only be found in lowsec. There are factional missions that can only be found in 0.0. What that means is there is PvE in EVE which you MUST brave PvP areas to get to if you want certain items that can only be gotten through either missioning for those factions or paying hundreds of millions of in-game currency on the contract market. Not to mention blueprints (think: Recipe books) that you can only buy from NPCs in 0.0 for a billion or pay 5x the cost to players who went there, bought it and brought it back to high-security space to sell.
Yes, I can make all the comparisons I want between PotBS and EVE - PotBS to many of the EVE players who play it (including myself) is referred to as "EVE-Lite".
On the first think about people not being able to help a smaller/weaker player who gets jumped, I've been chased off of lowbies by a 50 who came in with a bigger boat and I've chased people off of lowbies. If a battle isn't 1v1 from the time the timer ends, it's open to reinforcements up to 6 players on each side for 5 minutes. Now the 6v6 with 30 guys from the other nation sitting around it works so that when those 30 guys see that one of their mates has died, if the 5 minutes hasn't run out they can reinforce it back to 6. This is generally frowned upon by the folks who worry about e-honor and e-peen and whatever else you wanna call it.
In EVE, if you bring 20 friends to kill me and my 5 friends, we'll warp to "safespots" we already made all over your system and laugh at you for blobbing. Not let you take us down.. if you've got an interceptor, you may get lucky and lock one before he can get out lol. But gimmicks of the instancing system used to trap/bait people into long odds fights, it SOUNDS like you're talking about the old 9v6 SuperGank. That was removed from the game shortly after it was put in; FLS underestimated its players' capacity for unfairness despite being warned about same.
If you're not talking about the 9v6, I don't see how one could be trap/baited into long odds now that stealth has been nerfed hard (if you wanna be stealthy enough to matter, you gotta sacrifice both perm sail outfittings and 2 of your general outfittings) and battles lock 1v1 if nobody else enters before the fighting starts. Preparing Ship (which doesn't let you enter a battle or be attacked) lasts longer than the title so you can't just tag me outside a port with 5 friends waiting to jump in - by the time prep ship wears off it's just me and you (unless I had friends with me, that you'd've seen, which keeps the battle open for 5 minutes so your friends can join).
As to abuse-ridden national pvp systems, only thing I can imagine you'd be referring to their is unrest bombs via the Rebel Agent and that was nerfed a long time ago. You can no longer bomb a port from 0 to 10,000 unrest instantly. Unrest bundles are no longer effective beyond 5k or 6k unrest. If you're talking about how certain ports can be grinded from outside the red, yeah, everybody hates that except the noobs would otherwise have their starter ports in the red.
So YES, those were definitely problems. Those problems are gone now.