Pirates of the Burning Sea

I've been playing the australian trial, and here's what I don't like;

Not forced PVP.  I want a server where everything goes, people can fight in towns, in the ocean and such... maybe with consequences, but I want the option to be able to if I feel the need.

Two there's levels.  Levels?  Really? I have to climb a ladder again?  This is a game like Eve where your levels shouldn't really matter, but your skills.  They should have made it so that right away early on that the only differences between players is a few +/- bonuses from skills, and the rest relying on sailing ability/equipment and ship size/type.

I'm really turned off by this "Enter encounter" thing that they have going.  I want to be able to sail around  a huge rock only to find a pirate ship waiting to ambush me.  That's what I want. The thrill!  OH hit me!

To dive in further as I go along;

The combat is horrible.  The actual physical, one on one combat is horrible.  Also as a ship battle wears down sometimes the battles are really long and take awhile to finish out.  It's not very visciral and more mashing 1 a bunch of times and waiting for the other ship to fall.  I don't remember ship battles I always watched on TV taking so long or being so... boring I guess.  They could have made ships faster on average.

The quests also feel like a chore, like you have to do them to level.  In fact I'm not sure yet if there's another way to level.

As I've stated in many threads:

This game appears to have been designed by checksheet. Someone took all the elements they thought a successful WOW clone should have; grinding, PvE quests, PvP, crafting, and strategy. They then watered them down so as not to offend any players not interested in that area, checked off the boxes on the checksheet, and said, "Now we have a successful game, let's produce it".

It shows. The game does alot of things, but none of them well. Strip off the veneer and what you have is the same old vanilla game masquerading as something new. No, this developer was not thinking outside the box when they designed this game.

That, compounded with a frustratingly unstable game client that drops players while zoning, doesn't send out port battle invites correctly, and drops players entering port battles, is the underlying reasons that players are leaving when the first, free, thirty days is up.

As with Vanguard just over one year ago....give it 6 months and see where it is then. Personally, I think, just like Vanguard, the problem is in game design, and the same problems will exist even a year from now.

But, they are winning their number 1 priority, which is stopping gold sellers. Decreasing subscribers always leads to gold farmers leaving.

Based on the number of negative comments in the PotBS community aimed at WoW (which I never played), and the constant comparisons of Burning Sea to EvE (which I also never played), it would seem the model is less the former but the latter (along with Dark Age of Camelot).  I think that's pretty much confirmed by the developers adopting "no crying in the red circle" as mantra instead of regarding it as a running joke or maybe even as a cautionary tale.

As a matter of fact, while writing these lines I came across this quote from a developer on the game's forums:

"First, Open Sea PvP is a very low restriction PvP system. Characters can be attacked by virtually anyone, and they can most certainly be ganked. That's the nature of the system, and we're not changing that system. So we don't want to hear any crying about it. War's not fair. Open Sea PvP is war. Open Sea PvP is not fair. I recommend trying to figure out how to make it not fair in your favor.

Second, it's a reference to the fact that it's only a game, and not something worth crying about. I know MMORPGs are very immersive games, and many people poor a lot of time and energy into these games. I'm really happy that players are that excited about Pirates, but at the end of the day, it's important to remember that it's still a game. It's not worth losing your temper, or getting upset over. It's just a game." ( http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17695 )

The problem is, maybe a game like EvE can be a "succès d'estime" and perhaps even a commercial winner for a company from outside the mainstream headquartered in Iceland, but it probably is not for a large Japanese conglomerate heavily invested in multimedia.  EvE never made a point about being mainstream; instead it is resolutely niche in its appeal.  No wonder it's considered a success in their case and a failure in this one.

What you're getting in the end with PotBS is an uneasy mix of various concepts aimed to attract both the carebear and hardcore players -- a mix which needless to say is going to let both types down.  The EvE crowd is probably disappointed because the guilds ("societies") are forced to work for a nation instead of their own glorious objectives, and because the entire map isn't PvP so they can play a perpetual game of Gank the Newbie.  The more carebear players are probably drawn to the economy and grinding NPC's, and just avoid the red circles as much as possible.  But let them sink a few times and they're gone.  (I heard one player say last night he was quitting because he had been sunk three times; I can't blame him). 

As I myself have very little interest in PvP I have selected my class accordingly (freetrader).
Still, there are clearly major deficiencies in the game dynamics right now that make it impossible for me to enjoy the game to its fulles.  For a while at least, there have been complaints that port battles were turning into ships of the line trading heavy broadsides going downwind -- no more strategy than that.  The end result has been as elitist as it can be; already my nation (France) on my server (Blackbeard) is actively discouraging anyone below level 38 from entering a port battle, no matter how entitled they might be.  And I'm guessing that since the navy officer class is the only one which has access to ships of the line, which distance every other ships out there in durability and firepower, soon they will be restricting the port battles even more to exclude anyone who isn't a navy officer.

Nothing new about that, or about the relative uselessness of freetraders when every navy guy can get into trading.  Or about the national population inequalities.  As you might know, Blackbeard in particular has been plagued with exploits a few weeks ago, which saw a large part of the French nation leave the game until that were solved.  Essentially the British used a system known and defined by the developers as an "exploit", even after players were told it was considerd as such.  In the most notorious case, the British used exploits to force three simultaneous port battles against France, knowing full well that France only had enough players to afford defending one. 

The French nation's players started post upon post about that on the forums, demanding action and even a server map reset.  Then the game producer started a thread addressing the issue, saying basically: Yes, it's an exploit; no, we're not punishing anyone; and there won't be a map reset until the map is won.  The reason? "Well, the British won the port battles themselves honestly."  Sure, we can't fight them all, so the British use exploits to rely on their superior numbers to wrest two of our ports -- after being told it was an exploit.

After that, a patch was introduced to prevent the exploit, but the French position (well, for those who had not left) devolved into letting the British win the map so they could start over.  It became ridiculous enough that  the French did not even bother to defend their own ports if the British were involved -- but the British were in no hurry to win (why should they be?) and in the end were brazen enough to ask the French to pay for the costs needed to flip a town.  I opposed the French policy on the game forums, only to be responded with abuse both on the forums and in private tells in the game.  At one point I was even told it was against the interest of France to publicly oppose the policy, which always seemed to favour the players who left over those who stayed.  It will always be a testament to the average maturity of the average gamer that one of the high-ranking gals involved in the French leadership once chased me across the town where most of my production is gathered, and broke wind using one of the emotes whenever I was in the vicinity.

The game feels dead because everybody is on voice chat, leaving the actual chatbox to the increasingly annoying gold farmers, who post messages at a rate of two per minute.  The economy is going down because societies have a tendency to pursue self-sufficiency, which leaves the market to the unaffiliated losers who in the end can't compete.  Not to mention it is one of those games where someone holding more than one account is immediately at an advantage economically.

So here we have it: Ganking, dysfunctional nation balance, autocratic and immature players, rampant elitism, a looming recession, an uber-class of navy types, a mass exodus, and an unwillingness to acknowleldge, let alone remedy, the design shortcomings.  All legitimate concerns either ignored by the developers or unsolvable even by the largest amount of goodwill. 

And what are the developers bragging about these days?  The redesign of the French capital of Pointe-à-Pitre, which right now is a clone of the French starting port.  It's difficult to know how many players log into the game, but before they took the /whocount away the number was never in the three digits on the French side.  I suspect it's in the fifty-to-seventy range nowadays, but more than that, our capital is of really no use to us except for turning in pennants and such for rewards.  As we don't go there for the architecture but strictly for utilitarian purposes, a shack in the woods would serve just as well.

But this goes to say, to paraphrase a line from the Seven Samurai, the developers are concerned about beard trims when the game's head is about to be cut off.

I've been playing POTBS for a week and I find it boring and routine.  There is no crafting in a sense that you have a shop and can go to it and craft. But its done by stored labour hours. The more labours you have and gold the more of that 1 item is made. Such as 5000 in gold and 3 days of stored labour can make you 100 iron ore ingots.

The combat is dry both by sea and boarding. You attack a npc fire a few grape shots at it dock and kill the captain.  If you like sailing you can travel around the map and waste time I guess or find something too do like loot items maybe you get a 1 iron ore drop.

 You would have expected the could have done a better job after waiting for years for the game and having them scrap it once already. I won't be surprised if its sold too SOE soon.

The problem is the leveling system, and the requirements that you grind.  

This works fine for a game like WoW< but a game like Eve it doesn't work.

In Eve, you can pvp right out the gates and do damage to someone.  That is, if you know what you're doing.   In this game you can only do damage to someone a few levels above you.  That is the most retarded system, since there's no "level 10 pvp area" so you just die if you go into pvp anytime earlier than level 20.  The concept is just stupid, and it's like the devs have never played any of the other MMORPG's to get a feel of what has been tried and works and what doesn't.

I just hate this game in general.  I'm very glad I tried the trial, it's a really really really bad game.

Yep, PotBS has become very elitist less than 2 months into the game.  I remember being told by another player how you could reach level 38 from scratch in "a few days' casual playing".  Elsewhere the far more credible time frame of "two months" was mentioned to get from level 1 to 50.

Anyone who is not a hardcore gamer is being thrown out of the action, and soon I suspect that anyone who is not a naval officer will be as well.  If you're a gaming company, that should be cause for concern, but apparently nobody is caring to respond at FLS.

Very sad, at first I thought it was just growing pains and that time would take care of things.  But now that it has been confirmed it's more or less the company line, I have very few reasons to keep on playing since my end goals are diametrically opposed to what is being offered.

Originally posted by Vetarnias

Based on the number of negative comments in the PotBS community aimed at WoW (which I never played), and the constant comparisons of Burning Sea to EvE (which I also never played), it would seem the model is less the former but the latter (along with Dark Age of Camelot).  I think that's pretty much confirmed by the developers adopting "no crying in the red circle" as mantra instead of regarding it as a running joke or maybe even as a cautionary tale. 

What I meant from the comment that POTBS appears made from a checksheet comprised of what was necessary for a successful WOW clone was this. There is no need for the grinding, or the quantity of PvE quests in POTBS, EVE has neither. There are some quests in EVE, and you can rat in EVE, but only at the very basic, noob levels, to give you a hang of the game and some early cash.

POTBS, for all their statements on it being PvP, has quests all throughout the leveling up process. Matter of fact, POTBS has a leveling up process, EVE has no levels. POTBS has 'safe areas" for the PvE players, EVE has no safe areas outside the starter zones.

WOW clones have quests throughout, they have leveling, they have the grind, and they have "safe areas". You can also PvP in WOW clones, but not to the point to upset the PvE players. FLS made a WOW clone with the trappings of PvP. And the trappings of everything else. Yet POTBS fails to shine in any of these.

The comment "no crying in the red circle" is just a defense mechanism for FLS is say they don't want to hear from their customers. Then they turn around and decide they have to modify their game because their customer base voted with their feet and quit playing. So, now they are concerned and listening. Bullcrap on FLS, they had the makings of a great game, but only wanted "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" from their customers.