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What did PotBS do wrong?
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The problem With PotBS is that its too much of a SIM in a mythical era.
Its difficult to build a game in a mythic era as the tiem seting for the game, without any fantasy or more inclined into a story of treasures and civilizations.
Its a good sim thou but after doing the pvp port battles and one or more lines of quests its the same there after.
Building, crafting and materials was something interesting but made too complicated to atrack a more wider audience.
It was made for grouwn ups who loved sims and not for kids.
In most part thats what I think went wrong with an excellent idea of a game.
I enjoy it a lot but it became boring and some of us don't like mindless here to there time in order to kill time in a game.
Level based grind fest and PvP is basically high level gank-a-thon. Not Fun!
Agree 100%.
While not all of my fellow beta testers agreed with many of the issues that I railed against many did and where drowned out by a dedicated core group of people who had FLS's ear and just had no clue how things would be received in live. Nothing is better evidence of this wrongheaded ideal and the disconnect between what they thought was good but had no chance of live success than the whole 'no crying in the red circle' thing.
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Achiever 60.00%, Socializer 53.00%, Killer 47.00%, Explorer 40.00%
Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
Agree 100%.
While not all of my fellow beta testers agreed with many of the issues that I railed against many did and where drowned out by a dedicated core group of people who had FLS's ear and just had no clue how things would be received in live. Nothing is better evidence of this wrongheaded ideal and the disconnect between what they thought was good but had no chance of live success than the whole 'no crying in the red circle' thing.
Still, we must not discount the actions of the developers themselves, who did far more than just pay lip service to their player core, by adopting "no crying in the red circle" for themselves. DrewC's infamous "unfair in your favor" quote, Rusty's "art of the gank", Aether's avatar, the masthead of then-FLS producer Joe -- these all gave an impression, rightly or wrongly, that the company didn't care and didn't want to hear about any criticism of its choices.
Then they clung to it for four months, until around the time Isildur's "Ambush Gameplay" devlog came out. By that time, it was too late.
Actually, I think FLS did stay true to their core - that is the problem. Their core had ideas and wants that where never going to fly in the marketplace. I remember bringing these things up at various times through the closed beta and getting shouted down by a very vocal core few when it was terribly obvious that once live came around the broader playerbase would hate it. 'No crying in the red circle' was part of it but the economy was also part of it as I new there was no way in hell enough players would be enough into the economy to afford the ship loss penalties which would play badly with the 'no crying in the red circle' stuff as well.
All in all FLS just did a bad job of reading what the broader customer base would want and listened too much to the 'fanboy' types saying PotBS could do no wrong.
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Achiever 60.00%, Socializer 53.00%, Killer 47.00%, Explorer 40.00%
Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
Yeah, and where are those Fanbois now? Are they supporting FLS and the game they wanted with their $$$?
BTW - Hi SwBgHz! nice to see you again.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Yeah, and where are those Fanbois now? Are they supporting FLS and the game they wanted with their $$$?
Most of the people who were cheering for "No crying in the red circle" have moved on to other games. They just couldn't find enough victims to gank since the population was so low.
Potbs is primarily an RvR economic game with some PVP combat as a bolt-on.
Players do not need to PvP to enjoy it but FLS kept on promoting it as a PvP game so it attracted the wrong market or type of players.
PvP players became dependent on shipwrights with many frustrations.
Shipwrights are not totally dependent on PvP.
Players that do not participate in the economy soon shout for cash & ships or give up.
The vision to make Potbs a PvP no crying game failed.
The vision to make Potbs an RvR economic game with some PvP should succeed.
I'm quoting myself here because I was wrong... I said six months.
In fact: TWO WEEKS.
Look here
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124161
Oh and look at who showed up there too? Kazamx (post # 129)
The reply to Kazamx's post (post 130 from Holo) should make you all laugh.
"well lets hope people realise that there is no fun in ninja'ing everything at 5am and get bored pretty quick."
So, if any Developer ever reads this I just wanna say:
When designing a RvR / PvP game design some kind of Pop balance in FIRST - not as an afterthought.
If you can't think of a way to introduce some kind of balance then forget RvR and PvP and design a PvE game instead.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I'm quoting myself here because I was wrong... I said six months.
In fact: TWO WEEKS.
Look here
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124161
Oh and look at who showed up there too? Kazamx (post # 129)
The reply to Kazamx's post (post 130 from Holo) should make you all laugh.
"well lets hope people realise that there is no fun in ninja'ing everything at 5am and get bored pretty quick."
So, if any Developer ever reads this I just wanna say:
When designing a RvR / PvP game design some kind of Pop balance in FIRST - not as an afterthought.
If you can't think of a way to introduce some kind of balance then forget RvR and PvP and design a PvE game instead.
About Warhammer: I saw that coming, even though I wasn't affected myself when I played there. My cancelling the game and uninstalling it mostly had to do with Warhammer being even less stable on my computer than Age of Conan was. There was no community to speak of in the game, and the community outside of it was all about cheerleading and dismissing any complaint, such as that Warhammer Alliance website.
Looks like the varnish is wearing off already, though. I was pretty sure that faction imbalance would catch up with it if left unchecked, as well as its lack of depth. It's a very superficial game once you get to know it. What I don't understand is why the WAR cheerleaders on the PotBS forums (remember them?), many of whom had made it into the WAR beta, couldn't see this or chose to disregard it. Now I'm expecting them to get whiny any moment now.
But Mythic must be blamed for not predicting it. My attention, for instance, was directed to this Road to War promotional game by Mythic, which ran from early August to early September. There were probably multiple entries on both sides to get an edge, but the final numbers tell you all you need to know:
Total Order players: 41,423.
Total Destruction players: 57,708.
Still, you're going to get plenty of comments like those in that Warhammer Alliance thread: "So you think Order loses Altdorf because of career imbalance?! You know, the easiest thing to do when losing, is to blame the game and the developers. I pity you." I remember another comment saying that if Order was overwhelmed by enemy numbers, it just needed to "play smarter" -- as though Destruction couldn't do anything similar. Try as it may, Luxembourg is never going to be a superpower, and it has nothing to do with lack of ability.
It's true, however, that there is place for improvement in the quality of the PvP. For the record, I have never been a fan of solo PvP, which in this game is exceedingly simplistic. Yet I've seen many PvPers having no grasp of group PvP (see the threads on being surprised that "kiting doesn't work", "running in circles is useless", etc) just rushing into battle as they have been used to doing. I usually play tanks, but this time I decided on a ranged character (engineer), and I couldn't count the number of times I ended up fighting in a melee one-on-one against a superior foe, while another player just next to me ignored the monster I was fighting (and losing against) in melee and just rushed well ahead to kill another, never mind that I have often assisted other melee fighters in their own fights. In one ideal setup, we had one engineer (me), a priest, and a melee fighter, and we completed a public quest just between the three of us. But under normal circumstances, never underestimate the selfishness of the PvP player who wants to pad up his tome of knowledge.
The question, however, is how you're going to make sure faction imbalance doesn't happen. First you have complete might-is-right laissez-faire in the manner of Shadowbane, which failed. Then you have the map resets and underdog tools of PotBS, which failed. Then you have the Warhammer approach of rigid factions and no depth whatsoever. I think the game will be a failure, but it will remain to be seen how much could be blamed on faction imbalance.
Psh, pirates get wenches. when's the last time you saw a ninja with a bunch of chicks hanging off his arm?
Everyone knows you can't SEE ninjas.
An update: Today's interesting debate on the PotBS official forums concerns the situation of the Australian server, Invincible.
One poster playing on Invincible made this comment:
"Hmm, I don't know whether I should come in with the "I told you so" rhetoric or not....
We told you not to go with Telstra/Bipond...but you ignored it..."
To which Rusty replied:
"People come in with that whole "I told you so" thing in all sorts of inappropriate moments. This is an appropriate moment, though I wish it weren't."
The most forthright admission in a few months by a member of the FLS team.
Link: http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39307 . The relevant comments can be found on page 5.
Still, Rusty's position merely shifts the blame on Telstra/Bigpond for not pulling their weight in this matter. I wish an Australian player (Gyrus?) could give us more details of how much visibility the game had in Australia. Nonetheless, Rusty's comment is refreshing in that it directly admits that the Australian server is not doing well at all (though there have been oblique remarks to this effect for a few months).
Furthermore, it begs the question. If the Australian server is faring badly with all factions at "Light", what does that mean for the four other servers, since they are all at "Light" even in prime time? (This is according to ArmEagle's site, which updates activity levels every 10 minutes.)
Even the Antigua-Our-Last-Hope of recent months has activity levels impossible to distinguish from the others.
Will Sony be blamed then? Or will FLS consider that the game's own flaws might be responsible?
Well I just played the game on trial. I could not get beyond level 12 because of that. So obviously can only provide a limited perspective into the game.
That being said, I was very disappointed by the sailing part. The skill points seemed to make little or no difference in a fight. Now obviously I was not loaded with sailing skill points, but still, I could not see a difference with any of them and I pretty much tried a lot of them over several characters I started. You can easily get to level 12 in a day.
One thing I did notice, when you rake a ship at either the bow or stern, you should do very heavy damage, just don't see that happening in this game. Perhaps they had to tone it down from the pvp aspect, but it certainly is not realistic in that regard.
I certainly would not purchase the game from doing a trial. You get so limited an experience as to not being worth even playing with a level limit of 12. Now I do appreciate the free trial, but you might as well make it a 3 day trial with such level limits, it would not make much of a difference.
While it is difficult to pinpoint any particular problem, the game just did not do very much to interest me at all. It really seems a shame too, as I have always been enamored with the age of sail.
Okay. Well - my last comment on this topic on the FLS boards was this
http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showpost.php?p=271031&postcount=13
Telstra has made no effort at all IMHO. All they had to do was put the damn disks on the counter with a sign saying "FREE COMPUTER GAME TRIAL" and that may have made a huge difference?
The client did ship as a free cover disk on ATOMIC magazine. But, at about that time there were issues with installation too. http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showpost.php?p=285905&postcount=23
Which set an all new low... still the last patch (1.08?) did manage to get the Bigpond Logo on the Splash Screen.
Then again...
(IF YOU ARE WITH FLS - LOOK AWAY NOW - THIS MAY HURT...)
the failure of the Aussie server, along with the fact many of the Ambassadors (Free Accounts) no longer play really suggest that you cannot even give this game away?
I really suspect this is why we hear so little from the Dev Team about other markets (Russia and China) now?
Australia with the free client and free trial period was always the one to watch as far as Rusty was concerned. (there are quotes to this effect on the FLS Forum).
I guess I need to say a big "I told you so" here too. If you do a search in the Beta Archive at FLS for my Posts (Guy Russon) then you will find that many people told me I was worrying for nothing about the Aussie Server being separate to the SOE servers... sadly - I was far more right than wrong.
Oh and for posterity http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/162260
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Many thanks for the explanation, and that fantastic earlier link.
So, if I understand correctly:
1) FLS could have released in Australia through SOE but chose not to. I'm expecting that a large company like Sony would also handle the Oceanic market. And in many cases, the Oceanic and North American markets are lumped together -- because it makes sense. Both are English-speaking, and if there is any geographical division, it's usually between North America and Europe. Therefore, it was FLS's decision to leave Australia out of the Sony deal, not SOE's limitations.
2) Despite not releasing through SOE in Australia, FLS did not seem to have a publisher there until some time after the North American/European release. And that it displayed a complete lack of knowledge of the Australian market. I find it rather strange that a telecom company like Telstra would also deal in video games.
What is BigPond GameArena exactly? Based on a quick glance, it looks like a game download service -- in a direct-to-drive format -- aimed specifically at Telstra's client base, with maybe a premium for others. But is it also a bona fide game publisher? By the looks of it, it looks more like a way to add value to its Internet packages than a separate venture -- which may explain that incident where you were told you had to make a purchase to obtain the game.
Looking at the GameArena link, the PotBS deal seems to be one of a kind, as most other games on that site seem to have been published by others, with GameArena having the direct-download rights. (Also, I know nothing of the Aussie telecom market; does Telstra have a monopoly thanks to government legislation, as we used to have in Canada? One thing is for sure: Our beloved Bell, to my knowledge, never entered the gaming market, so I have no idea how Telstra manages it.)
3) I'm assuming the game never made it to New Zealand -- well, unless players there imported a (presumably US) copy. Would that be correct?
Russia: That would depend on what their relationship is with Akella. Since they had a hand in ship design, I believe, they are the most likely to publish it.
As for China, who knows? The gamer mentality there is different, and I think that the grind and PvP aspects of PotBS make it very close in character to Korean MMO's, and it could work there, but on a radically different business model.
This link also covers a lot of background
http://archive.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20460
The last couple of pages of that thread were where I kept updates - start about post # 123 in that thread.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Keeping the Oceanic market separate was a completely absurd thing to do.
Just consider:
Australia + New Zealand = 25 million people, more or less.
US + Canada + UK + Ireland = Roughly 400 million people, and that is not taking into account English speakers in other European countries, where in many places it is the second language.
If we exclude the three servers in another language than English, PotBS had, at launch, eight servers, or roughly one server per 50 million people.
Yet you were expected, with a population only one-half of this, to end up with a healthy server?
It would seem that FLS got greedy with the Oceanic market, failed to realize the new server would be ghettoized, and soon the company got burned by what seemed to be a nonexistent promotional campaign.
Yeah. I did the same math somewhere.
And yes, part of the problem FLS had (aside from the design choices in the game itself) was the very poor - nonexistent marketing done by their 'partners'.
I still find it hard to believe that no apparent benchmarks were set as part of the SOE or the Telstra contract?
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I'm wondering if it was FLS trying to get some distance from SOE. FLS got a lot of bad publicity when they announced their deal to have SOE publish the game and then SOE made huge mistakes at launch.
I'm wondering if it was FLS trying to get some distance from SOE. FLS got a lot of bad publicity when they announced their deal to have SOE publish the game and then SOE made huge mistakes at launch.
This doesn't explain:
1) Why they went with SOE in the first place if it had such a bad reputation. Lack of an alternative maybe? So either FLS had informal talks with Telstra before SOE (but finalized later), or it insisted on leaving the Australian market out of the SOE deal for reasons unknown.
2) How FLS could have known that SOE would make mistakes at launch (unless they feared its track record, in which case it's return to #1).
I think it's safer to think (based on Rusty's posts from that time period) that they were expecting the Australian deal to be a cash cow for them, which didn't materialize.
I'm wondering if it was FLS trying to get some distance from SOE. FLS got a lot of bad publicity when they announced their deal to have SOE publish the game and then SOE made huge mistakes at launch.
No. Oceania was excluded from the SOE contract when it was signed by FLS. At that time they still did not have an Australian partner lined up.
So exactly why it was excluded is still open to debate (and only Rusty and a few FLS insiders will ever really know I think?). There was a suggestion that SOE either told FLS they did not cover Oceania or thought they could not provide the 'market penetration' that FLS wanted?
I doubt that the latter was the case - SOE was happy to sign the contract for Europe despite knowing that they would have to hand off to a third party there...
So I doubt business integrity was an issue for SOE... (and don't mention Spain!)
FLS suggested they wanted to do something special for Australia?
'Ping' was suggested as a reason for local hosting IIRC?
Perhaps they did have this in mind - they definately did not do their homework however.
It all fell through... and now the 'Aussie server' is in the same room in Seattle as the other servers.
I think the idea was sound - but FLS/PotBS and Telstra/Bigpond/Game Arena are not the People or product to do it.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I can't speak from much experience as I haven't played the game but I did read on a few forums the launch was less than stellar,again I could be wrong because I barely bothered to remember due in large part to my second reason. Pirates I would think would tend to fall into too great of a niche market to be highly successful,you couple that with a bad launch and you have a prescription for trouble.I've always noticed games offering gear and such that looks like pirtes and a "few" in game that seem to imitate them but I have never found them as interesting as that myself and I'm not sure many others will in general.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I was a long time beta tester for this game. In fact, I was 1 of the original players selected for beta.
And I can tell you the reason this game was not successful was because the devs abandoned what they originaly set out to do.
The changes this game endured during beta was more dramatic than any ive ever seen. Graphics aside, every aspect of this game changed. The intent of the original game was much more sandbox than the final product.
In an effort to please everyone, they pleased nobody.
I think the biggest problem is that some penpusher thought that a pirate themed mmo would be popular.
People only rejoiced in its announcement because it doesn't revolve around elves and orcs.
In order for a game to make it in todays market, I'm of the firm belief that it will need to be of a different ilk, and not published by SOE.
For me, the reason this game failed was simply because of the endgame, or lack thereof.
If a team won the game, ie. had so many points, then the game was over and the map restarted. I can see this working for a game where rounds are 30 minutes or so, but for a game that lasts several weeks, it's just tedious and boring. They made the game with 4 factions, but only made battles where 2 factions could fight at a time. Then there was the pirates total inability to have any effect on the other nations, which made them useless to play.