omghi2u

the content WAS amazing in my opinion. for the time it was definitely the best mmo out there content wise. the mechanics kinda blew though.

andrewmedina

braddie

LordCiego

unmarkedone

RedOne

ZerkWerk

1. hit a button
2. go make a sammich

Eventually step 1 got phased out entirely. I'm having much more fun now.

liquidnumb

2) It's not our fault the game is shit.

JamesR87

they realize that what truly makes a game fun is its core mechanic, not necessarily its content (i mean it helps but without a fun mechanic at the core no one is going to sit throught it). Anyone still play CS:S? then you understand my point. i've been playing Counter-Strike (v1 and source) since 2001, any mmo's out there that can boast the same about its players other than UO?

just look at the core gameplay mechanics (for this example i'm using combat) of all the current mmo's. its a 2 step process.

1. hit a button
2. go make a sammich

andrewmedina

hungerfan

OtakuFille

Swizzler121

mrdietsoda

I think this is the most telling statement in this discussion. Whatever else it is, PoTBS makes the mistake of hiding its best gameplay from new players and in making it only one of three dominant game modes.

This is exactly the opposite of the example of WoW. Part of WoW's success is that the game is an exercise in scaling. Blizz developed a core gameplay mechanic that is fun and fundamental and kept it the same from level one to the level cap. They then scaled it up iteratively in a variety ways as the player developed their skills. This makes the game very incremental and therefore approachable. It is also seamless: when the WoW player moves from land to the water, the core gameplay remains fundamentally the same. When a WoW player moves from PvE to PvP, the core gameplay remains fundamentally the same. What keeps peoples interest is the constant addition of variations to the core system, not utterly different systems.

What this does is capture the imagination of the new player. As soon as the new player logs out of Elwynn Forest for the first time, their first thought is "that was nice... I wonder what all the other zones look like." You've got them at that point, and then by continuing to develop the gameplay seamlessly, you keep them.

My experience with PotBS is that there is scalability in the various systems (ground melee, naval combat, economics) but that these systems are distinct and severable rather than unified. As a result, the player is continually affronted with having to learn the new systems, continually frameshifting their gameplay experience, and only getting to do the fun parts (naval battles) as a reward for all the boring pats. When they hit a steep learning curve like that they are going to feel that they've taken a second job instead of a game.

Now, the WoW model has its own drawbacks, namely repetition without enough difference. But from a business perspective, its much more favorable to have players drop a game after two years than never get into it at all.

Obiter

Thats why I stopped playing WoW and now play the ultimate stress reliever: Super Smash Bros Brawl!

fenderfuel08

Honestly, if you haven't tried this game you are missing out, especially if you love PvP.

lojo

fenderfuel08

Justo84

madbassman39

Zakuen

The quests were counter-intuitive and the game was ug-fuckin-ly.

The problem wasn't with the "pirate theme". The problem was that it was a sub-standard effort.

After the free month was over, I'm now using the cd as a coaster on my coffee table.

EndersGame

Delusions

Jomo7

Sir_Crocidile

-The people.
-The grind.

We spend our entire lives competing against other people for jobs, money, social status, tickets and many other things. I play video games to get out of this competitive mindset and just enjoy things as they are. However, by using MMOs as my escape, I never get out of the competitive mindset as I am now competing for gear, mobs, money, and parties/raids, generating even more stress rather than relieving it!

Hopefully after seeing Tabula Rasa and PotBS do not-so-well, most companies will stop looking at MMOs as a low-risk venture and start investing in other higher-risk projects. At least, one can hope.

psychobaka

BUT! There is a great game in there if you give it time. PvP is the most fun I've ever had in any MMO with player skill being more important than your "phat lootz" (although part of the battle is indeed, choosing the right ship). The economy is really awesome, with ways to really have some fun with it - like a lot of people said, it is very Eve and that's a good thing.

Flying labs is changing a lot of stuff in its upcoming patches, including the ability to skirmish against your own nation and other much needed fixes.

This game is very PvP centered and if you hate it you're not going to like this. The whole point of Pirates being to take over the map (the carribean) and in order to do that you're going to have to beat some french chap over the head with your cannons. And you're going to have to have friends to do it with. I have yet to understand why people play MMO's as single player games, but in Pirates you're definitely not getting the full experience playing by yourself. A point was made that you won't get the really cool stuff without a society (meaning guild). Yes, that is true. The really big ships are a huge team effort to create but it is worth it when your society shows up with the biggest ship your enemies have ever seen and run for their lives.

It's a really great game if you give it a chance...

but I think that they're going to have to start giving out buddy keys if they don't want their game to die on them. Seriously, why they aren't doing that is unbeknown to me.

Play pirates! It's on sale at Target! You won't regret it.

(as an aside, if you have stairs in your house, we have a kickass society on the Rack and should hit us up for buddy keys)

looselybased52

Benstein

Postdata:

Pirates vs Ninjas vs Aliens vs Robots

Tei

Phantom_Photon

That said, I'm subscribed to PotBS, and I love the game. There's just one thing missing - proper LFG/grouping mechanics. Just like in EvE. With people out in their ships most of the time and with only chat channels to go with and combat actually requiring focus (unless of course, you just suck or want to take ship damage unnecessarily), it's difficult to find a group and there's very little group content to begin with.

I believe the server merge is a good idea - no game should begin with 10+ servers unless it's been marketed and hyped to death and has a fuckton of preorders.

Conceptually the Avatar Combat system is brilliant, the problem isn't so much with the system than it is with the "feel" of it.

Ship combat is near-perfect.

Koztah

Pirates are cool, no cool pirates = global warming!

Tei

el_rezzo

Launch day:
Why isn't anyone signing up?

Sullyville

I mean, $40 for the game, then $15 a month?!

I was willing to pay that for WoW, because it was developed by Blizzard, who, as we all know, have a terrific track record (Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft ... nuff said).

PaulMorel

Señor Vorpal Kickass'o

Munkey_Funk

desterion

2.Make it for Mac and then we'll talk. If it is available for Mac, then I blame their marketing dept for not being informative. If it's not, then yeah, good, they deserve it.

jonathan.

mtheumer

Phil

Rhys

That Lamer

Flawless101

I don't play MMo's anymore. I noticed the more I played them, the worst I got in every other game. I lost my nice twitch response for FPS, my thinking skill for RTS. So...6 month out of a MMO now and I'm rocking the score boards again.

Anyways, that was off topic. PotBS was nothing new in the genre. Sure it had pirates, but it was basically EVE on the ocean.

macr0planet

Lixie

- Non consensual PvP.[1]
- One class is overpowered (naval officier)

[1] PvP become "almost" unavoidable.

Tei

@cordsie: Agreed. That's how guild wars got popular. They took a lot of the elements of WoW and turned them COMPLETELY upside down (travel times, dependency on the best gear, and so on..) The next big seller will have to do the same..offer something that is a completely different experience. Also the graphics need to be pretty but not extremely dependent on video cards and on the fly rendering. A lot of games lately seem to rely more and more on the 3d modeling and less on the textures they put on the models and lower the system requirements. Examples: Tabula Rasa looked like crap on my computer. NWN 2 on the highest possible settings still looks like crap. Guild Wars and Lineage 2 look as beautiful on my INTEL "Graphics" laptop as they do on my gaming desktop. Too many people are buying computers with lots of space and next to no video card power. Making a game like Pirates of the Burning Sea, that will not run on this laptop but will run on my OLD gaming desktop which has half the processor and memory power, is like the game company saying "Hi, I want to shoot myself in the foot and alienate more than half the market from ever being able to play my product." Successful games like Guild Wars and WoW both go to great lengths to make their games as playable on as many systems as possible.

Ajh

I'd be happy to buy a game, have fun and then move on. All that pointless grinding to unlock other aspects of the game is just artificially prolonging the game.

Asbestos_Underwear

dsmx

The ship combat is great, but ends up being quite monotonous. Quite a few of the missions are just cut n' paste with names/places changed. That wouldn't be bad if you didn't run into them so often. Then you realize all of those "cool" tasks you hopped to accomplish can only really be done by large player organizations. Mix in an EVE-like economy system, and there's no reason for your average gamer to play.

Pirates of the Burning Sea isn't the next WoW, it's just another EVE. The difference being that both EVE and PotBS are boring on the 10-20minute scale, with the real fun lying in the metagames of economy and politics which few will put in the time to reach.

Siegeman

masterdingo

masterdingo

SapphireC

cordsie

Luke Plunkett

Livid

masterdingo

Methusalah

WOW was a big success because it gathered all the good things from previous MMOs and made it work together just right, but even that gets boring.

Krumm

Captain Impulse

t0nt042

Jusoon

valero

[www.3dtotal.com]

Hey Luke,

Did you play this game? The way that you came at us was a bit abrasive. If I were interested in this game, I'd play it. Unfortunately, I can dedicate time to one MMO at a time, if any at all. I'll try out anything with a free trial, but will ignore anything without a free trial. If companies can't give me a taste, then I can't justify giving them a dollar.

masterdingo

The core gameplay is great, but they just went horribly wrong in design somewhere.

Erwos

It was boring. Great idea! Awesome concept! Really boring game...

Werrick

PotBS intrigued me at first but lacked the sparkle of something genuinely different - and without a trial to test it out, I'm certainly not investing in the game when there're so many like it available for free.

Achenar

Ninga > Pirate ;)

SAKY

nxp3

If they'd let people be parrots, this would solve all their problems.

Islandkiwi

I tried the beta and it was just too much like every other MMO but with another skin. The ship combat was fun and economy model was interesting but it was just as much "work over fun" as everything else in the genre.

Vodun

katboi

Morberis

ThatsMrOffDutyNinja

Kaizuden

Glazun

Silus

Channing

Jay

nimagraven

[www.msnbc.msn.com]

Eltigro

ThatsMrOffDutyNinja

recscue

Iceking5