1) a fairly accurate wind simulation; for sailors, the wind is everything! well done ship behaviour and ship battle simulation: ammo, boarding, crossing the T, use of the wind
2) very good crafting and resource system, all the good stuff is made by players!
3) cool PvP angle, the PvP zones have a large effect on the game, and these zones change all the time
4) better than average quests, with quite a bit of variety
5) very good custom creation, with a lot of options; tailors scattered around to redo your look
The bad:
1) avatar combat is clumsy, seems kind of primitive, (still way better than no off-ship combat)
2) repetitive use of town graphics: there are only a few (maybe 6) different towns, so with 80 ports, you see the same stuff a lot. Sea instances have the same issue: too few different setups, so it can become repetitive.
3) lack of Society warehouse: I understand why FLS doesn't want to do this, but it will have to be done. This is basically the whole point of being in a Society. Most MMORPG's have definite guild structure, but PoTBS is lacking, there is no guild-wide structure at all.
4) poor UI, with limited options; in general, options are basic: no easy to way to sort on level, time in the guild, etc
5) water and wind are not realistic; in some cases, totally still water with full wind, an impossibility in real life, breaks immersion.
3.) End game is realm based command and conquer PvP
Negatives:
1.) Needs a better guild/society GI
2.) Needs a better Email system or a "shared" bank/warehouse so you can share things via multiple characters on the same account
3.) Few memory leaks, lag in the largely populated towns
All in all this is a truly dynamic MMO. Unlike games like WoW where there is basically only one thing to do in the end - grind items. In PotBC you can spend your ingame time doing all kinds of things - thanks to the incredible economy systems they have designed and implemented.
1. SHIPS: Need I say more......It's what PotBS is all about. PVE, Good fun taking on 3 ships many levels higher and coming out ahead. PVP, A player can take on another many levels higher and with some thought and strategy actually have a chance at winning.
2. BIG PICTURE: The whole Nation vs Nation and port contention is awesome. Individual ports supply specific resources and with players creating pretty much everything in game, control of these ports/resources affect everything. Even as an individual, one can go to any enemy port, sink some enemy ships and see the unrest points go up. Naturally, the more working toward this goal the better but there is room for the solo-ist to contribute to the nation.
3. FLS: I've never dealt with a software company that seems to care about it's customers like FLS. They have got it right.....plain and simple. In a developer chat I saw a customer (Who was having a problem running the game on his rig.) throw out a question, among the many, stating so. The CEO (Rusty) of the company picked it up and they go into a conversation about how to resolve the issues. After not finding a solution the customer finely said "Ahhhh....that's alright, I'll just get a better rig to run the game." The "LOL"s rolled up the screen from the chatters. Rusty invervened back with "No, that's not the right answer." They went into a lengthy trouble shooting session trying to resolve this.
I remember thinking "He's not supposed to do that, he owns the company." I guess I just don't see things like that very often. Perhaps I should. Yep, that level of communication and customer service should be common place. Like the service you get when you walk into that mom and pop run business.
3 NEGATIVES:
1. AVATARS: The avatar combat feels clunky to me. So much so I don't care for doing missions as a large part of them are avatar based. I don't like boarding ships as they are avatar based as well. They look "ok" and the customization is decent it just feels really really unpolished.
2. INSTANCES: I have no proplem with the large number of instances. I can see the logic behind designing the game this way. I just don't understand why they did the avatar mission instances the way they did. Instance me a whole island to explore as opposed to the linear bread crumb trail we have now. If you instance everything, do it well. I don't care for DDO but Turbine did instances pretty well in that game. I also don't care for it but, Guild Wars took instancing to a new level and it works if you can get past the instancing. Instance me something to enjoy and explore....not something that breaks immersion.
3. GRAPHICS: I see both plusses and minuses here. Some of the graphics look fantastic, others remind me of my old Comodore 64. I know the developers dream is to make a game that looks and runs great on everyones rig, old and new. I however tend to be somewhat of a graphics geek and if it doesn't look like it belongs in 2008 it certainly isn't a plus......to me.
Alrighty, I can't promise I can keep it to 3 and 3 but what the heck. I have been playing fo rthe past 3 evenings on a buddy key, I will probably pick the game up when it runs out...(which is pretty much all that counts anyway) I haven't experience "everything in game, just what you can 3 evenings (lvl 10). Keep in mind the game itself is only a week old and many of the player driven features like the economy and Nation vs Nation isn't fully deveoloped yet.
Pros
Character creation. Very well done. It sorta reminded me of City of Heroes. Not quite on that level but close. I only made a pirate so far. The community seems enamored with black trenchcoats and black hats which is giving a "cloney" feel at times. Players are sheep what can you do? There are some really unique and fun / creative characters out there.
Ship Combat - thats been hit on enough. Wind, facing, crew, ammo...and much more all plays an important roll.
Grinding doesn't feel like grinding much, so far. The missions are entertaining and doesn't feel like the usual "go kill 10 rats" at least not as blatently as most MMO's. Yeah, you still get the occassional "go sink 10 red pirate boats but hey, that fun to do at least.
Unique setting...no Elves or Orcs...yet....I'm sure the community will howl for them.
Mission system has some fun things going on, you can get into an adventure pretty quick. No dragging yourself around for 10-20 minutes trying to get to a location. The game pretty much keeps you in the thick of the action.
Economy is totally player driven. How can you go wrong with that? I love player economies.
Fairly complex which should keep a more mature player around.
Cons
Avatar Combat. Now its not all bad, I see what they were trying to do. Its actually pretty in depth for an MMO. You need to watch you "balance" in addtion to building "initative". When you start to loose your balance, you stop blocking and parrying incoming attacks and getting hit more often. You need to build initative to use some of your more powerful attacks. Now that all sounds fine and dandy but what it does is focuses your attention completely on the hotbar and you never actually visually engage in the combat. You play "whack a hotkey". What would have work much better is a "click" to attack combat system or something along the lines of DDO's combat. Rather then feeling like a "swashbuckler" its more like "hotkey manager deluxe". Oh well.
Instancing and compartmentalized game design. The towns are smallish, I haven't run into any explorable areas yet either aside from the open seas. (which are a blast to cruise around in) Aside from that, not very impressed with the "game world" so far. Something along the lines of what "Sword of the New World" did would work well here.
Soloing....So far the pacing of the game pretty much keeps you solo at lower levels, with the PvE anyway. Considering the tempo of action, I don't see how this could worked any other way in any event. Missions are fast and somewhat simple. Now the meat of the game appears to be PvP so the PvE aspect is really there more as a catalyst for leveling more then anything else so its a moot point. The main issue is it doesn't promote any sort of "community building" early on. I guess we will see how that developes as the community matures over time.
Lag...Its murder at times. How is there so much lag in small little areas? They need to work on that. Its not gamestopping but pretty damn annoying.
Potential Pros
PvP. I only had a chance to shoot at the guy who gave me the key so far. It seems difficult and challenging in the ships. A couple of small, well outfitted ships could take out a larger ship IMHO. I haven't had a chance to really get out and experience it though but I am looking forward to sinking some of your guys boats.
Nation vs Nation. Good idea, looking forward to the drama and player politics it generates.
A few other things I am scratching my head about....
The EU servers....why on earth did they split them up by language? Now we have one server that is completely packed one that is ok and 2 somewhat "less then full" servers. Now maybe I'm wrong on this, my fellow European server players can correct me if I am , but that was a bad idea IMHO. They should just mark them as EU and leave it at that. I mean the game is about Brits vs French vs Spanish vs Pirates...so why on gods green earth would you seperate them in reality? (except for the pirates...unless of course, there are any actual Pirates out there playing the game, in which case...nevermind)
It does have a somewhat "thrown together" feel to it. Its like a lot of parts all pressed into one game. No voice overs, no intro movie, the tutorial sucks arse and doesn't really tell you anything about the core of the game. I get the impression that they got everything "working" and just launched. It could use a lot more immersive polish. Considering its an SOE game, I guess we are lucky it works at all.....
I would definately say its worth playing, especially if you are a bit jaded like me and looking for something that is different. It needs some fine tuning and polish. Hopfully we don't get an "NGE" shoved up our arse in the first 6 months. SOE really makes me nervous and generally speaking I don't like to get to attached to their games IF I bother to play them at all. (yeah, yeah, I know that SOE only publishes it but they don't even have a good track record with that either....)
The EU servers....why on earth did they split them up by language? Now we have one server that is completely packed one that is ok and 2 somewhat "less then full" servers. Now maybe I'm wrong on this, my fellow European server players can correct me if I am , but that was a bad idea IMHO. They should just mark them as EU and leave it at that. I mean the game is about Brits vs French vs Spanish vs Pirates...so why on gods green earth would you seperate them in reality? (except for the pirates...unless of course, there are any actual Pirates out there playing the game, in which case...nevermind)
It's about localization and some Europeans not speaking/understanding English so well. The devs are planning live events, and doing it in different languages on one server is an extreme hassle.
------------------------------------------------
Playing: Final Fantasy Online: ARR, Destiny Most memorable games for me: UO, GW1, LoTRO
Haven't played the live version... but I can give some input from the beta side keeping in mind of the beta bugs...
Pros:
Story/Quest lines. Very very well written. Love em, and some are fitted with well put quirky humor. Bartender in (bah can't remember the name of the starting island for Pirates).
Economy is 100% player driven. Ok well maybe 99% there are loot drops out there. In order to make a ship, you cannot do it with one PC, you need multiple people (or accounts). The tutorial is very well done in getting you started with this... even gives you starting supplies for it.
Ship combat. Very nice, immersive, gotta quite a few things to think about before, during and after a fight that you have to be mentally prepared for. But still, simplistic. The things they did and allowed for ship combat was very well done.
Player Submitted content. To be honest not sure if they are still doing this... But you could create your own flag colors and "avatars" on your sails. That would be your intellecutal property in game, and you could sell it if you like, use it yourself or whatever. Even had players creating ship designs for the game to use.
PvP. This is pretty awesome. All the way from initiating to doing it. Forget the CPU AI,, here is where you get to go up against players who are spec'd differently from yourself and using their tactics... even better when you are trying to flip a town.
Cons:
The economy... Granted it was beta, (before they went to SOE and their launcher) but it was shakey. You would find some crazy outrageous priced items. Or not find any at all... The problem with a nearly 100% player driven economy is that if the players don't do it all the way, the whole thing collapses on you. Hard.
Ship Combat/Quests. At first going on these missions and sea battles was pretty fun, but it gets old quick... very quick and unfortuantly turns into a button mash where I could design a macro and win the fight. Fights aren't quick, but predictable. Even with the manuevering. Once you get the hang of it, you can do it sleeping. This is for NPCs though... opening combat is the same with PCs.
PvP. This I have no idea if they fixed... There will be hotspots where people are pvp'ing... and usually this will involve front line ships... you get like 4 or 5 players working together, and 4 of them will be in combat with a NPC... the 5th will be just floating around very close by... he gets attacked by a pair of doesn't matter who... thinking they have a quick kill. Then the 4 in the private instance come out,,, and engage in the fight, those 2 aggressors quickly get killed. Unbalanced... it becomes a zerg fest being in open sea. Like I said, I am not sure if this has been dealt with.
Observations:
FLS (Flying Lab Software) built this game from the ground up, alone and with no help from anyone. They are a group of developers who wanted to make a game by players for players. Hugely down to earth folks. Good people and I strongly commend them for me waiting since 2000 for this game to be released when I first heard of it on the grapevine.
Avatar combat was put in late in beta. Lots of bugs to contend with. It was cleaned up a lot. Though it does need a LOT of work. Bear with them, I am sure it will get spruced up.
Positives - 1) Ship combat is incredible (both PvE and PvP). Strategic and balanced. You have to take into account the wind, ammo type, do you want to take out their sails and board them or sink them. Is it dark out? Raining? Lots of things affect the outcome, but mainly player skill means something. 2) The Economy is great. I love that crafting is different from the rest of the games out there by having "workers" do the crafting for you while you manage your warehouses and plantations and run trade runs, etc... 3) FLS - absolutely great communications. They may change the game into something that you want it to be, but they listen, answer and actually do make changes based on popular demand. They are there chatting with us at all hours of the day & night and they are just an awesome bunch of folks. They did slip up on the communication about Australia, and that sucked for those folks who were waiting on word, but I really do beieve that their hands were tied by legal matters on what they could and couldn't say. Of course, they could have always said just that...
Negatives - 1) Nobody can see the name of your ship. This annoys me. Something i truly loved in Earth and Beyond was naming my ship and everyone being able to see it. This is coming though, the devs have now said it's on their list... so hopefully this goes away soon. i want people to say "Oh snap! There goes the Raven Del Agua! 2) Avatar combat needs some love. Personally I enjoy it but I am in the vast minority and if it's upsetting 95% of the population then it's a negative for me. It certainly needs some new instanced areas, a serious tune up on the animation timing and a serious AI improvement, I can see this even being a fanboi 3) The UI needs some serious love. The quest journal is just painful to mess with. The chat box is horrid. You can move windows around the screen but they need a scaling ability for the UI elements and this stuff needs to be fleshed out quick. They just need some serious flexibility added to the UI and quick like. Nothing screams "unfinished" as a first impression than a half done UI as soon as one enters the game.
Excellent ^^ On the fact that nobody can see your ship name, i think there should be a on/off toggle, those who wanto see them can, those who dont, cant, cause there are just so many annoying ship names... i dont wanna see 100 Black Pearls and other plainly... stupid names
SOE!!!!! They are still as useless as the last time I dealt with them. I refuse to give them any more money
The economy isn't involving enough, all you is dump items on an exchange. I was expecting something a lot more detailed
Land combat was quite shabby, also on boarding combat you don't see the actual ships involved (nor the damage done before you boarded) only a standard model every time. Which made it a bit "static"
- pretty meaningfull pvp,tho you still have respawn and fight without much trouble if you have durability left on your ship
- nice setting,no more elves and gnomes running about
Negatives:
- repeative gameplay,mostly talking about missions on both ground and land,usualy they are kill X,or go to Y etc. plus the same scenery is reused for alot of missions,I hope they do something about this
- even tho devs stated that levels would not affect the chances of winning a battle only what ships you can use ,they affect battles alot ,thus the game is level based
- travelling is boring and anoying at times,either due to the wind being against you or just of the cartoonish map
P.S this is my personal oppinion of the game,I had a hard time finding positives,and 3 is the best I can come up with,while negatives are more that I can think of atm.Overall it's a nice game for people that want to take a break from the fantasy settings of MMOGs these days or the hardcore pvp of EvE online
Comments
The good:
1) a fairly accurate wind simulation; for sailors, the wind is everything! well done ship behaviour and ship battle simulation: ammo, boarding, crossing the T, use of the wind
2) very good crafting and resource system, all the good stuff is made by players!
3) cool PvP angle, the PvP zones have a large effect on the game, and these zones change all the time
4) better than average quests, with quite a bit of variety
5) very good custom creation, with a lot of options; tailors scattered around to redo your look
The bad:
1) avatar combat is clumsy, seems kind of primitive, (still way better than no off-ship combat)
2) repetitive use of town graphics: there are only a few (maybe 6) different towns, so with 80 ports, you see the same stuff a lot. Sea instances have the same issue: too few different setups, so it can become repetitive.
3) lack of Society warehouse: I understand why FLS doesn't want to do this, but it will have to be done. This is basically the whole point of being in a Society. Most MMORPG's have definite guild structure, but PoTBS is lacking, there is no guild-wide structure at all.
4) poor UI, with limited options; in general, options are basic: no easy to way to sort on level, time in the guild, etc
5) water and wind are not realistic; in some cases, totally still water with full wind, an impossibility in real life, breaks immersion.
------------
2025: 48 years on the Net.
Negatives:
If you watch The Karate Kid backwards it's about this karate champ that just kinda slowly becomes a pussy and ends up moving back to Jersey
Pro:
-great ship models and ship combat
-great avatar customization
-complex, player-driven economy with stored labour system
-port conquest battles, 25 vs. 25 battles are very intense
-user created flags and sails are in the game, user created ships got in, too!!
-dedicated and very communicative dev team, self funded, not dependend from a publisher
-historic setting with sailing ships, no orks, elves and other fantasy crap!
Cons:
-lack of society warehouse
-too many instances
-repetitive missions
-still too much levelling involved, too much grinding to get a port into contention
-lack of permanent pvp-zones on the Open Sea
-lack of freedom to explore the world
-----------------------------------
Life is too short to play bad games.
Positive:
1.) Economy system = best I have seen since UO
2.) Ship combat
3.) End game is realm based command and conquer PvP
Negatives:
1.) Needs a better guild/society GI
2.) Needs a better Email system or a "shared" bank/warehouse so you can share things via multiple characters on the same account
3.) Few memory leaks, lag in the largely populated towns
All in all this is a truly dynamic MMO. Unlike games like WoW where there is basically only one thing to do in the end - grind items. In PotBC you can spend your ingame time doing all kinds of things - thanks to the incredible economy systems they have designed and implemented.
BigCountry | Head Hunters | www.wefarmpeople.com
3 POSITIVES:
1. SHIPS: Need I say more......It's what PotBS is all about. PVE, Good fun taking on 3 ships many levels higher and coming out ahead. PVP, A player can take on another many levels higher and with some thought and strategy actually have a chance at winning.
2. BIG PICTURE: The whole Nation vs Nation and port contention is awesome. Individual ports supply specific resources and with players creating pretty much everything in game, control of these ports/resources affect everything. Even as an individual, one can go to any enemy port, sink some enemy ships and see the unrest points go up. Naturally, the more working toward this goal the better but there is room for the solo-ist to contribute to the nation.
3. FLS: I've never dealt with a software company that seems to care about it's customers like FLS. They have got it right.....plain and simple. In a developer chat I saw a customer (Who was having a problem running the game on his rig.) throw out a question, among the many, stating so. The CEO (Rusty) of the company picked it up and they go into a conversation about how to resolve the issues. After not finding a solution the customer finely said "Ahhhh....that's alright, I'll just get a better rig to run the game." The "LOL"s rolled up the screen from the chatters. Rusty invervened back with "No, that's not the right answer." They went into a lengthy trouble shooting session trying to resolve this.
I remember thinking "He's not supposed to do that, he owns the company." I guess I just don't see things like that very often. Perhaps I should. Yep, that level of communication and customer service should be common place. Like the service you get when you walk into that mom and pop run business.
3 NEGATIVES:
1. AVATARS: The avatar combat feels clunky to me. So much so I don't care for doing missions as a large part of them are avatar based. I don't like boarding ships as they are avatar based as well. They look "ok" and the customization is decent it just feels really really unpolished.
2. INSTANCES: I have no proplem with the large number of instances. I can see the logic behind designing the game this way. I just don't understand why they did the avatar mission instances the way they did. Instance me a whole island to explore as opposed to the linear bread crumb trail we have now. If you instance everything, do it well. I don't care for DDO but Turbine did instances pretty well in that game. I also don't care for it but, Guild Wars took instancing to a new level and it works if you can get past the instancing. Instance me something to enjoy and explore....not something that breaks immersion.
3. GRAPHICS: I see both plusses and minuses here. Some of the graphics look fantastic, others remind me of my old Comodore 64. I know the developers dream is to make a game that looks and runs great on everyones rig, old and new. I however tend to be somewhat of a graphics geek and if it doesn't look like it belongs in 2008 it certainly isn't a plus......to me.
http://www.straightdope.com/
Alrighty, I can't promise I can keep it to 3 and 3 but what the heck. I have been playing fo rthe past 3 evenings on a buddy key, I will probably pick the game up when it runs out...(which is pretty much all that counts anyway) I haven't experience "everything in game, just what you can 3 evenings (lvl 10). Keep in mind the game itself is only a week old and many of the player driven features like the economy and Nation vs Nation isn't fully deveoloped yet.
Pros
Cons
Potential Pros
A few other things I am scratching my head about....
I would definately say its worth playing, especially if you are a bit jaded like me and looking for something that is different. It needs some fine tuning and polish. Hopfully we don't get an "NGE" shoved up our arse in the first 6 months. SOE really makes me nervous and generally speaking I don't like to get to attached to their games IF I bother to play them at all. (yeah, yeah, I know that SOE only publishes it but they don't even have a good track record with that either....)
It's about localization and some Europeans not speaking/understanding English so well. The devs are planning live events, and doing it in different languages on one server is an extreme hassle.
------------------------------------------------
Playing: Final Fantasy Online: ARR, Destiny
Most memorable games for me: UO, GW1, LoTRO
Haven't played the live version... but I can give some input from the beta side keeping in mind of the beta bugs...
Pros:
Story/Quest lines. Very very well written. Love em, and some are fitted with well put quirky humor. Bartender in (bah can't remember the name of the starting island for Pirates).
Economy is 100% player driven. Ok well maybe 99% there are loot drops out there. In order to make a ship, you cannot do it with one PC, you need multiple people (or accounts). The tutorial is very well done in getting you started with this... even gives you starting supplies for it.
Ship combat. Very nice, immersive, gotta quite a few things to think about before, during and after a fight that you have to be mentally prepared for. But still, simplistic. The things they did and allowed for ship combat was very well done.
Player Submitted content. To be honest not sure if they are still doing this... But you could create your own flag colors and "avatars" on your sails. That would be your intellecutal property in game, and you could sell it if you like, use it yourself or whatever. Even had players creating ship designs for the game to use.
PvP. This is pretty awesome. All the way from initiating to doing it. Forget the CPU AI,, here is where you get to go up against players who are spec'd differently from yourself and using their tactics... even better when you are trying to flip a town.
Cons:
The economy... Granted it was beta, (before they went to SOE and their launcher) but it was shakey. You would find some crazy outrageous priced items. Or not find any at all... The problem with a nearly 100% player driven economy is that if the players don't do it all the way, the whole thing collapses on you. Hard.
Ship Combat/Quests. At first going on these missions and sea battles was pretty fun, but it gets old quick... very quick and unfortuantly turns into a button mash where I could design a macro and win the fight. Fights aren't quick, but predictable. Even with the manuevering. Once you get the hang of it, you can do it sleeping. This is for NPCs though... opening combat is the same with PCs.
PvP. This I have no idea if they fixed... There will be hotspots where people are pvp'ing... and usually this will involve front line ships... you get like 4 or 5 players working together, and 4 of them will be in combat with a NPC... the 5th will be just floating around very close by... he gets attacked by a pair of doesn't matter who... thinking they have a quick kill. Then the 4 in the private instance come out,,, and engage in the fight, those 2 aggressors quickly get killed. Unbalanced... it becomes a zerg fest being in open sea. Like I said, I am not sure if this has been dealt with.
Observations:
FLS (Flying Lab Software) built this game from the ground up, alone and with no help from anyone. They are a group of developers who wanted to make a game by players for players. Hugely down to earth folks. Good people and I strongly commend them for me waiting since 2000 for this game to be released when I first heard of it on the grapevine.
Avatar combat was put in late in beta. Lots of bugs to contend with. It was cleaned up a lot. Though it does need a LOT of work. Bear with them, I am sure it will get spruced up.
Goods:
Fun combat
Origional
PvP can be fun, though a bit unbalanced at times
Bads:
SOE!!!!! They are still as useless as the last time I dealt with them. I refuse to give them any more money
The economy isn't involving enough, all you is dump items on an exchange. I was expecting something a lot more detailed
Land combat was quite shabby, also on boarding combat you don't see the actual ships involved (nor the damage done before you boarded) only a standard model every time. Which made it a bit "static"
Positives:
- pretty nice economy
- pretty meaningfull pvp,tho you still have respawn and fight without much trouble if you have durability left on your ship
- nice setting,no more elves and gnomes running about
Negatives:
- repeative gameplay,mostly talking about missions on both ground and land,usualy they are kill X,or go to Y etc. plus the same scenery is reused for alot of missions,I hope they do something about this
- even tho devs stated that levels would not affect the chances of winning a battle only what ships you can use ,they affect battles alot ,thus the game is level based
- travelling is boring and anoying at times,either due to the wind being against you or just of the cartoonish map
P.S this is my personal oppinion of the game,I had a hard time finding positives,and 3 is the best I can come up with,while negatives are more that I can think of atm.Overall it's a nice game for people that want to take a break from the fantasy settings of MMOGs these days or the hardcore pvp of EvE online
Positive
1. Ship combat - I think everyone else has summed this up before me.
2. Economy - Again enough posts prior to mine explaining this.
3. PVP Balance
4. Port Flips
5. Pirates don't buy ships we steal yours.
Negative
1. Ground combat. Just bleh. Needs a lot of work
2. PVE missions all seem the same. Repetitive
3. Lag
4. Load times.
5. Graphics glitches.