Ganking isnt an issue in this game. Port Battles lock down primary and even that is restricted by a LoS. EvE is 1000 times worse for true blob ganking. OS PvP in PotBS is red zone or consent and 1 vs 1 easy to establish. Yes, there are griefer squads in PotBS but they are easy to avoid and dont impair the ability to play the game in most respects. The game died because it has no substance. Most of it is cosmetic, little is usefull and you cap out end game fast, very fast. Buccaneer, lv. 50 in a Treason Pirate flag ship. less than 6 weeks. The treason Pirate flag ship has 97 guns, broadside armor as thick as a brick. It still goes down in 3 broadsides because it also turns like a brick and has a stern. All sterns in PotBS ships are 25% the def of the broadside but hit mechanics makes them ship a block. So where does everyone run for? Your stern. PvP is 1 vs 1 or 6 vs 6 or 24 vs 24 ships trying to stern hump the other guy. First one to do it wins. Thats adventerous and fun 3 or 4 times if you lose. a dozen if you win. Then its a question of why the hell am I doing this? You win a map, get a free LSB in conquest rewards, then its, who the hell cares? Less than 2 months to be bored out your skull killed this game. Not something as avoidable as Ganking. Relying on the stupidity of MMOers and for the most part, MMOers are a smart bunch of gamers helped kill it. That and the unavoidable truth. They chose SOE right after the NGE fiasco. Emo the right or wrong, it was a big blow to the game.
Well, the stern thing is a concession to accuracy. That's also why wind matters.
As I pointed out before in this thread, I also don't think ganking killed it, but it perhaps made the game's future more precarious. That PotBS has no substance is an accurate statement, but I'm thinking that between PvE and PvP players, the ones to go for the sort of grinding involved in PotBS are the PvEers. I can't see PvPers bothering with that kind of stuff for too long before they up and quit for another game, and I even saw many cases of "PvPer's Logic" (which goes like this: "We have to do PvE stuff to go on PvPing, so why don't PvE players have to do PvP to keep going?") on the forums. Except that PvEers don't go about ruining someone else's day, especially in a game with ship loss, to have their thrill.
So PvEers leave, and the PvPers, suddenly left without their prey/source of enjoyment, follow them. When everyone realizes the endgame doesn't really exist (you hit 50, and then what?), everyone who was playing it for the endgame left. That's why you hear so much about "Port Governance", two years now since that carrot was first dangled (and that's not counting beta, because I wasn't there): it's everyone's idea of the endgame that wasn't there. FLS is promising it'll be released this year, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
On that entire PvE debate, there is a small but significant detail which always comes to mind, and it's Rusty praising the text of PotBS's missions, as PvE as it gets. Maybe PvE is badly supported in the game, I won't deny that it is, but compare the missions to what that PvP favourite, EVE Online, offers, and it's miles (light-years?) ahead. But PvE in PotBS is smashed against the game design, which makes it impossible to play or enjoy it, beginning with those red circles. Somehow a PvEer should find it fun to be stuck in a port for days because a red circle sprang up while he was there? Or to find some areas he needs to get to are permanently in the red (the entire Antilles)? The map, for one, is too small, taking away the sense of exploration. It should be meaningful to sail off into the unknown, even for PvP. Should you find a sail appearing on the horizon, wouldn't you dream of being afraid at whose ship it might be? Everything here is so neatly identified for you, there's no need for concern.
The economy? Same thing. I play games for the economy. What was there in PotBS? The inevitable closed-society setup. I made money, plenty of it, during the early months, when there were still many unaffiliated players who would buy on the market. Under a private-order scheme, there's no point for me to resume my old textile operation. I used to corner the market on wood tar and rope, but in the later months, my stock just gathered dust on the shelf, and this while prices soared. They used to blame the introduction of insurance in the game for that, but that doesn't explain why EVE has insurance yet is mentioned as an economic masterpiece. I think the problem stems from the lack of an opt-in option, where you have to buy insurance to be covered. PotBS's solution, on the other hand, was laughably simplistic: just manna from heaven every time you sank.
The other problem is that, in this game, the economy is just a means to an end, not an end in itself. No point in becoming rich, because all you can spend it on is ships, and I, for one, didn't want a Couronne: I never even made it to 50. That was PotBS's mistake number two: to have believed that economic players were the same demographic as PvPers (or, in this case, as RvRers). Economic players will gladly play a supporting role in a RvR effort, because they understand that money is what keeps the war effort going. But in PotBS, economic players were made redundant by the decision to not tie labour time to player time, but to a fixed structure time instead. Though your average PvPer may have despised playing the economy, he put up his ten hemp lots nonetheless, because that took him just a few minutes every day to produce the maximum amount, and he knew he'd benefit later on by having his ship replacements at cost. All of this meant not only that closed society production became easy to get going, but that your economic players, with their own little defined tasks, separate from the PvP but necessary, were, at best, cash cows to milk, and at worst, PvP deadweight, thereby stamping out both independent traders and the specific function of guild manufacturer.
I'm still debating whether to return to PotBS, courtesy of the free month, except that there is less than two weeks left to that offer, and I haven't found anything I actually feel like returning to in that game. So what would I do? Get a whiff of the atmosphere, which I particularly enjoyed? That'll take what, two hours, before I'm sated? If the game were still installed on my computer (with all builds/patches before May of last year), I could have bothered; but since I removed it, I'm not sure it's worth installing it again.
Ganking isnt an issue in this game. Port Battles lock down primary and even that is restricted by a LoS. EvE is 1000 times worse for true blob ganking. OS PvP in PotBS is red zone or consent and 1 vs 1 easy to establish. Yes, there are griefer squads in PotBS but they are easy to avoid and dont impair the ability to play the game in most respects. The game died because it has no substance. Most of it is cosmetic, little is usefull and you cap out end game fast, very fast. Buccaneer, lv. 50 in a Treason Pirate flag ship. less than 6 weeks. The treason Pirate flag ship has 97 guns, broadside armor as thick as a brick. It still goes down in 3 broadsides because it also turns like a brick and has a stern. All sterns in PotBS ships are 25% the def of the broadside but hit mechanics makes them ship a block. So where does everyone run for? Your stern. PvP is 1 vs 1 or 6 vs 6 or 24 vs 24 ships trying to stern hump the other guy. First one to do it wins. Thats adventerous and fun 3 or 4 times if you lose. a dozen if you win. Then its a question of why the hell am I doing this? You win a map, get a free LSB in conquest rewards, then its, who the hell cares? Less than 2 months to be bored out your skull killed this game. Not something as avoidable as Ganking. Relying on the stupidity of MMOers and for the most part, MMOers are a smart bunch of gamers helped kill it. That and the unavoidable truth. They chose SOE right after the NGE fiasco. Emo the right or wrong, it was a big blow to the game.
Well, the stern thing is a concession to accuracy. That's also why wind matters.
As I pointed out before in this thread, I also don't think ganking killed it, but it perhaps made the game's future more precarious. That PotBS has no substance is an accurate statement, but I'm thinking that between PvE and PvP players, the ones to go for the sort of grinding involved in PotBS are the PvEers. I can't see PvPers bothering with that kind of stuff for too long before they up and quit for another game, and I even saw many cases of "PvPer's Logic" (which goes like this: "We have to do PvE stuff to go on PvPing, so why don't PvE players have to do PvP to keep going?") on the forums. Except that PvEers don't go about ruining someone else's day, especially in a game with ship loss, to have their thrill.
So PvEers leave, and the PvPers, suddenly left without their prey/source of enjoyment, follow them. When everyone realizes the endgame doesn't really exist (you hit 50, and then what?), everyone who was playing it for the endgame left. That's why you hear so much about "Port Governance", two years now since that carrot was first dangled (and that's not counting beta, because I wasn't there): it's everyone's idea of the endgame that wasn't there. FLS is promising it'll be released this year, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
On that entire PvE debate, there is a small but significant detail which always comes to mind, and it's Rusty praising the text of PotBS's missions, as PvE as it gets. Maybe PvE is badly supported in the game, I won't deny that it is, but compare the missions to what that PvP favourite, EVE Online, offers, and it's miles (light-years?) ahead. But PvE in PotBS is smashed against the game design, which makes it impossible to play or enjoy it, beginning with those red circles. Somehow a PvEer should find it fun to be stuck in a port for days because a red circle sprang up while he was there? Or to find some areas he needs to get to are permanently in the red (the entire Antilles)? The map, for one, is too small, taking away the sense of exploration. It should be meaningful to sail off into the unknown, even for PvP. Should you find a sail appearing on the horizon, wouldn't you dream of being afraid at whose ship it might be? Everything here is so neatly identified for you, there's no need for concern.
The economy? Same thing. I play games for the economy. What was there in PotBS? The inevitable closed-society setup. I made money, plenty of it, during the early months, when there were still many unaffiliated players who would buy on the market. Under a private-order scheme, there's no point for me to resume my old textile operation. I used to corner the market on wood tar and rope, but in the later months, my stock just gathered dust on the shelf, and this while prices soared. They used to blame the introduction of insurance in the game for that, but that doesn't explain why EVE has insurance yet is mentioned as an economic masterpiece. I think the problem stems from the lack of an opt-in option, where you have to buy insurance to be covered. PotBS's solution, on the other hand, was laughably simplistic: just manna from heaven every time you sank.
The other problem is that, in this game, the economy is just a means to an end, not an end in itself. No point in becoming rich, because all you can spend it on is ships, and I, for one, didn't want a Couronne: I never even made it to 50. That was PotBS's mistake number two: to have believed that economic players were the same demographic as PvPers (or, in this case, as RvRers). Economic players will gladly play a supporting role in a RvR effort, because they understand that money is what keeps the war effort going. But in PotBS, economic players were made redundant by the decision to not tie labour time to player time, but to a fixed structure time instead. Though your average PvPer may have despised playing the economy, he put up his ten hemp lots nonetheless, because that took him just a few minutes every day to produce the maximum amount, and he knew he'd benefit later on by having his ship replacements at cost. All of this meant not only that closed society production became easy to get going, but that your economic players, with their own little defined tasks, separate from the PvP but necessary, were, at best, cash cows to milk, and at worst, PvP deadweight, thereby stamping out both independent traders and the specific function of guild manufacturer.
I'm still debating whether to return to PotBS, courtesy of the free month, except that there is less than two weeks left to that offer, and I haven't found anything I actually feel like returning to in that game. So what would I do? Get a whiff of the atmosphere, which I particularly enjoyed? That'll take what, two hours, before I'm sated? If the game were still installed on my computer (with all builds/patches before May of last year), I could have bothered; but since I removed it, I'm not sure it's worth installing it again.
So much here I disagree with... Vetarnias, PVPers are by nature extremely competitive. Many of us will seek to extend this competitiveness to the economy as well as to the open sea. Players like Garbad played the economy like a fiddle but were also top PVPers. And he's not the only one.
PVPers leaving because PVEers left... er no. Not really. The top PVP guilds on Rackham all left for the same reason: no one would fight them, they had become too good. Fail ATF, Corte de Sangre, GDM... if anyone saw them enter the red, they'd leave it as fast as they could. These guilds were pretty much bored out of the game. The ones who DID leave because the PVE players left, were those who liked to gank and found victims too hard to get.
The fail of the economy is not as much tied to fixed structures. Other games (like SWG) had the same 10 lot thing with great success, without the problems POTBS has and had. But SWG had an extremely complex economy, where almost everything was crafted, and where many different materials were needed by many different types of end product maker. In POTBS, there is really only the shipwright.
The POTBS economy is too limited, too simplistic, too boring. The click costs are high, and the initial doubloon drop nerf forced closed economies and low margins on the AH. The dailies seem to have fixed that aspect at least - the AH seems pretty lively on Antigua - but they also made it so that everyone and their mother now has high-end bundle boats. And now they're nerfing the dailies and talking about making bundles harder to get ... I'm watching in morbid fascination to see if we're going to get the same lose-bundleboat-and-ragequit cycle we saw before.
Did ganking kill the game? No, not by itself. It contributed a lot though. High levels killing lowbies in the red, nations specifically targetting the starter ports and again killing lowbies, who often didn't even realize what was happening. And in RVR, the play to crush mentality of some people drove many, many players out. Crushing even ONE nation (usually Spain or France) made the whole RVR concept a joke, since once any one nation was unable to defend itself (due to player attrition), map wins were no more than gobbling up that nation's ports, sometimes in as little as 10 days. Which drove out more of the crushed nation, making the whole thing even more meaningless.
And then of course there was the port battle system. I loved port battles. But here we of Rackham Spain had the one advantage a low-population nation has: everyone had a good chance to participate regularly. We heard of 100+ queues for the British and laughed, but really, it's not a laughing matter if such an important part of the endgame is both so random and so hard to even get a chance to participate in it.
First, you say the top PvP guilds left because there was nobody their own level left to fight. Of course, it would be heresy to ask them, in this case, to fight one another. Even in the names you mention, I can discern two or even three different factions. It does nothing to reassure me that PvPers want a fair fight, since they weren't even bothered to fight people in their league.
I never played SWG, but I definitely saw the economy was too narrow, too boring, etc. Well, EVE's was the same thing, but at least it was better at hiding it. The problem with PotBS is that it choose an ostensibly historical setting, making the economy's shortcomings even more obvious.
I remember those old threads where players were asking, apparently as seriously as could be, whether there would be slavery in the game. Yeah, by all means, everybody would think it fun and not at all objectionable to be a slave trader, though I'm sure some players would all too eagerly suffer a moral blanking out if they thought they could make a buck at it. So yeah, let's be selective about historical accuracy. But it doesn't mean that the entire economy of the Caribbean circa 1720 ought to revolve around shipbuilding, which is precisely what you got here. I even remember those European traders that bought the more useless goods, like cochineal and whatnot -- well, bartered, actually, as the only things you could get out of the deal were ship parts.
I know there's no real point to comparing a MMO with a single-player game, but look at the goods in "Port Royale". You have items for local consumption, building materials, staples for export to Europe, and European imports. Restrictive in some ways, but also far more representative of Caribbean trade in those years than the glorious self-contained world of PotBS trade, where it's all meant to serve shipbuilding. (Same thing with EVE, by the way, but the distinction is lost amid all the grind.)
I think that a change to the money flow would have had no impact on the decision to produce everything inside a society. Just take a look at this article, if you haven't already. Closed society production would have been done anyway, because nothing beats producing everything at cost. I remember one society specifically going that way from the beginning, because it guaranteed supply. But in the early months, there still was a market, owing to unaffiliated players or small societies that could not produce everything they needed.
And don't get me started on the bundleboats. I mean, it's not a science fiction setting where you get to make the rules that the largest ships require Ultrararium-458, which is to be harvested from the flower of the Typeanameatrandom plant, which blooms only once per century... It's a historical setting, so there was no justification for a First Rate costing 11 million doubloons (that's what they cost at launch anyway) when a Fourth Rate cost something like 300,000 doubloons. There can't be any justification for a price 50 times higher, except to maintain an artificial scarcity, which in the end greatly underestimated the potential for enduring drudgery of the average MMO player.
That little pricing curve, along with the levelling scheme, meant I found myself shut out of port battles a month into the game, and I started at launch. When I was level 25, they (that is, the self-appointed faction leaders) demanded level 40; when I reached level 40, they started demanding level 50's. And that was with the Blackbeard French, which could hardly grant themselves the luxury of being choosy. I remember a time when they asked anyone who wasn't 40-50 to pass, and they ended up with nine people, something like that.... Way to go (unless the finer point was: Don't go if you're not, as you'll be useless in battle and just waste a ship; in which case it's a design fault). Then later on, when I had transferred to Rackham, they asked everyone who didn't have a third rate and up to decline. I didn't own one, wasn't level 50, and happened to be a Freetrader, not a Naval Officer. At first, my memories of port battles were either my running away or getting sunk, but later on it became pretty much a waste of time just to hang around. Then FLS set windows for port battles, at times I couldn't attend most of the time.
Ah, Vetarnias... those PVP guilds I named were in 3 different factions, and they saw themselves reduced to only getting fights when their counterparts in the other faction were on line. Which, frankly, got old fast, especially since e.g. Fail was west coast and ATF East Coast. What I said wasn't exaggerated either, I sailed with these guys occasionally as a tackler, and it was amazing... we'd enter the red, and all of a sudden there'd be nothing else, while all around the circle groups were hovering, waiting till we'd leave. It was a cycle that kept repeating itself too: a group would get good, find itself avoided, get bored and leave.
As to the internal economy: they started the doubloon nerf in closed beta, and we all knew we'd have no choice but to go closed economy if we wanted to have ships at all, let alone pvp. I remember for months I only PVPed in the smaller ships because replacing the larger frigates - outside of PB ships - was simply unaffordable.
Bundles... our nasty surprise on going live. To this day, I think the damn things should never have been introduced at all. Better yet, I think there shouldn't have been any bundle boats. PVP in fourth rates (with equivalent ships for FT and Privs) was a lot more fun. There's 4rth rates for all classes now, incidentally: they Poseidon. Historically accurate, it's not, but at this point ... meh.
Port battles were a design mistake, pure and simple. The game is about RVR, about winning the map, and in order to do so, you literally need to bring the best you have because you can be certain the other side will. Allowing low level players to enter the port battles was a recipe for disaster (sloops, cutters etc in a LINE BATTLE????), causing much conflict inside the nations. A level 25 in a lexington literally couldn't do anything against a level 50 in a PB ship, the range difference alone would see to that. The later ship type discrimination for 50s was born from the same desire to win, but really even more problematic since it excluded those with less time to grind for the big boats (and one of the reasons I wish and wished all bundleboats gone from the game). They should have treated the whole thing as endgame content, but they should have had the skirmish system in place at launch, so everyone could practice and anticipate.
I agree on bundles. It's one of those things that never were justified, except to make sure lineships would be rare -- which for a while have been anything but. I remember writing (in my quitting post, I think) how I wished the developers would introduce a "Curse of God" build that would sink all bundleboats, but I wasn't expecting much out of it. They've allowed players to grind for them, and now the players have grown attached to those precious little things. Interestingly, there's a thread on the PotBS forum these days asking why players try to limit the number of first and second rates at port battles. But it's a problem when it's left to the players to put it in place, and I remember it wouldn't have been applied when I used to play.
Reading the official forum, it's amazing to see how little has changed. GB is still posting threads about how this or that issue is killing the game, while going on here about how the game is getting better and better; Beltpouch is still whining about his not being delivered easy preys to his doorstep; people are still concerned over that "expansion", or the closed economy, or whatever. The indication I'm getting is that nothing has changed since last May.
Speaking of which, it's quite funny that my memory of what I did in the game last April-May is a blank, except for one little incident, where I got into a conversation with a member of a major French guild. As my previous society had all left the game (not to mention switched to Rackham in April 2008, while I returned to Blackbeard as Rackham was dead a year later), I began asking whether there were any good societies to join. You won't be surprised that he started talking about his own society, and the whole thing took on the surreal appearance of a job interview: How long I had played the game, with which societies, what level I was, etc. etc. Then he mentioned dailies.
To my knowledge, I never went through any of those dailies, as I had left the first time before they had been brought in, and I didn't play them the second time. But I just despise the idea of dailies, because it isn't long before what you can do once a day turns into what you *must* do once a day. Just for the money, not because you actually want to play it. That's just grinding, and I don't think it's worth my time, especially for something meant to be entertaining. I remember doing quite a bit of that fail-on-purpose Woes of Santo Domingo thing, but after the third consecutive run, I'd had enough. But then, the whole guild was doing that... I don't remember if anything came out of it, but we were planning on getting a Second Rate, and I'm not even sure if the guy who obtained it outlasted me in the game.
As for port battles, remember that thing about shallows that players asked for, where smaller ships could be useful? Did anything come out of that? Or is it still dangled like a carrot? But yeah, that was a major design fault there, leaving smaller ships without anything to do. I wonder if they ever consider what would be the incentive for players who didn't start on day 1 to stick around. *I* started on day 1, and was quickly left with little to do because I didn't level up as quickly as other people. Design problem, and also a problem with the community, who treated every enemy lowbie as an alt carrying lineship bundles. No wonder it tanked after the first month.
GB is still posting threads about how this or that issue is killing the game, while going on here about how the game is getting better and better;
There is meant to be method in what to some appears to be conflicting posting, it is often the only way to highlight an issue on the main forums as the devs are more likely to take note there. It is really urgent that FLS address some of the key reasons for lost populations since closed beta before the release of the Power & Prestige expansion.
In my opinion the main issues have always been how to make PVP more sustainable in what was promoted a PVP game.
Most of the issues have come about by designing a PVP/RVR centric game with a budget ganking mentality & pathetic rewards. "Waiting for the next big failure" as Isildur the ex-lead design once put it, he knew what was going to happen so jumped his sinking ship.
The producer & lead design are the ones ultimately responsible, it was never a good idea to let devco set the priorities.
Rewarding high risk PVP has never been FLS's strong point, when they realised their mistake they introduced insurance & dailies plus halved the labour time but that still did not have the desired effect. By that time more than half the population had left.
It is still a game where closed eco-players rule & PVP is not very sustainable imo.
Grinding for treasure needs to be just that, a very rare opportunity to obtain real wealth. YAR! rare individual rewards of over a million dbls should not be ruled out.
You will be surprised at what players will do to get their hands on that!
Daily grinding the same missions was never the answer, nor was it meant to be imo.
The end game economy has become a zerg as to which closed econ-society can build the most bundleships often only obtainable with multi-accounts. This has the effect of excluding a vast amount of single account holders or forces them into a closed eco society with a waiting list for top end ships. Making them more rare wont stop it either, all that would do is force more boring daily grind.
FLS know about many players unfavorable views about LSB's but still have not let on what they intend to do. The next 3-4 months are critical that they make some difficult economic changes that are bound to upset some players. It will be too late to do it after P&P.
Can the game be saved? YES but not without a lot of QQing.
If they are going to make the seas burn, it must be NOW not after P&P.
Any pvp centric game is going to be rife with ganking as it were, you pay your money and you take your chances. One thing i wish they would do is shrink some of the massive pvp zones so by putting 3 or 4 towns into contention you basically block off the entire ocean so you have to go sailing all the way around to get anywhere.
Some of you pine for the "good old days" i guess those were the days when Fts and Nos debuffs stacked out the wazoo and pirates were a complete and utter joke in port battles. I do like that they seem to have balanced out the sides some. I do not like they seem to have scrapped their end game changes for pirates and just seem to have thrown the towel in and just gave us sols so we could do port battles decently.
I recall them laying out this grand vision of pirate end game as broken as it was at the time, to changing it from a standard line fight which all the nos had reload stacking buffs and range buffs no to mention their stacking debuffs so any time a nation took a pb seriously by pirates we stood not a chance. but changing to to a raid thing for pirates. guess that got scrapped.
I do and did like the pvp system the contention system lest took coordination and teamwork to try and flip ports, as pirates back in the day we usually had to target 3 ports at the same time in order to flip one. but now days seems like ports just get flipped at will the little i had to see while i was checking out the game due to my free play period.
What does suck about this game is that when half your pop is level 50 with sols and heavy frigates and enough gold in thier wallet to send these ships into pvp zones just waiting for lone and noob targets to hit. It makes the game darn near unplayable for noobs if they have to wait several days to get into a port they have missions in.
At lest as a level 50 pirate anymore if all things are equal and your captains have any amount of skill a 5 on 5 or 5 on 6 battle is not the slaughter it used to be after we got nerfed to heck after beta and nationals were so op . Granted it might be realistic that way but when your supposed to be a equal partner fighting for control of the map, it is a bit problematic when the game favored the nationals so much.
I do like the game however, and this game compared to sto which has no end game to speak of atm and the lack of any meaningful pvp the peek in at potbs is nice and almost makes me want to resub, despite the issues with the economy and the lack of a guild with my forced server transfer and the fact i got no money and i dunno where all these wonderful pve dailies are, and seems it is a prime lul fest on the part of the opposing factions to flip those daily ports and keep them in contention zones, when i see people spamming for daily groups seem most of those ports are flipped or in pvp areas.
and i got ganked my first day back in my free look i wanted to get a ship out of mt lol hard to see why our main shipyard port is almost always in a pvp zone half the time it is done by us and always get fleets of nos camping the place. but wanted to get my stripped cargo ship out of there and pick up some junk, really nice that the fast tackler of those big fleets can grab you and pull his whole 6 ships in with him when they 10 miles behind you lol, but i knew the risk and i had np with it i got sunk i got ported to tortuga which was much closer the edge of the pvp zone and got out huzzah.
i dunno abut the insurance looking at my p herc seems it pays out a paltry 170k or so which would cover the cost of the brass fittings for one lineship bundle and i know that ship cost me like over 700k with most of the mats produced at cost or near it in my old guild. so hardly seems lest to me that getting your ship sunk is some glorious payday. tho i guess w the 3 dura that would get me about half the db i would need to get the mats at cost to build another. oh but i would need another writ then and you can only get one for ensigns.
and arent there enough pvp centric rewards? movs buy you ship writs some darn good fittings and other stuff that can be very useful. love to get me some of those discordant level 50 fittings, but my mov stash is like 10 after my pvp time on rackham and having bought stuff back then. granted the daily stuff might be a bit op, imo as a pirate it made little sense for us to get moeny any other way than plundering pillaging and all that, i like the idea of rare treasure stuff or heck just treasure fleets dropping you know treasure, instead of 1 or 2 items at a slightly higher rate than farming noobie ships you can 2 shot in a level 50 ships.
the expansion looks good if and when it comes out maybe i will return and se what things are like. got a few days left on roberts where the community seems really nice for the most part.
If this game allowed players to take small islands, set up their own town, take territory much like an EVE Online on the high seas then I think the game would have done much better. It is just too limited as it stands, its like a standard MMO just with ships and there is like zero market or risk for losing ships anymore. its fun but it fails to meet the long term demands players expect these days.
My advise to Dev's if they want to revive this game.....take notes from EVE Online just use your imagination to convert it to your game because it isn't rocket science, players love sandboxes, get it?
If this game allowed players to take small islands, set up their own town, take territory much like an EVE Online on the high seas then I think the game would have done much better. It is just too limited as it stands, its like a standard MMO just with ships and there is like zero market or risk for losing ships anymore. its fun but it fails to meet the long term demands players expect these days.
My advise to Dev's if they want to revive this game.....take notes from EVE Online just use your imagination to convert it to your game because it isn't rocket science, players love sandboxes, get it?
Sounds like the FLS devs are already onto it with the next expansion.
Power & Prestige will have port governance as a main part of it's features.
I hear a lot of people saying this, I only tested the trial, wasn't really into it, but it had a great theme. But I hear people complain about ganking, was that really the biggest issue? Most great games are going to have ganking, as it allows for freedom and unrestricted gameplay. I know some people hate it, but I always felt like it gave MMOs a little teeth in them. Anyways, that couldn't be the only reason the game died, ganking is all over MMOs.
You are talking in post mortem, and asking why the game died. The game istn dead. Its still being developed and worked on, patches still roll out , and people still play.
It may be dead to you, but for many people the game is quite alive and kicking. Until they announce they are officially halting development , pulling the plug , ECT ECT, saying the game died because of ganking doesnt make ANY sense becuase IT HASNT HAPPENED.
The game may not be dead, but it is definitely on life-support, if SOE wasn't keeping it around to "bulk up" their stable of games for the station pass, it would be long gone.
With that said, "ganking" was not what killed the game, at least not by itself. You could dig up some of the old threads for more in-depth answers, but the short version highlights:
The game could not decide what it wanted to be - the devs tried to make it all things to all types of players and consequently failed at all of them
- it failed the "age of sail" purists because it included magic, magic like abilities, totally unrealistic combat and boats behaving like speedboats not sailing ships
- it failed the quest chasers because despite a few well done arcs the quests were boring, idiotic, repetitive and used the same zone maps over and over and over; also the personal combat system was deeply flawed
- it failed all the economic players because the economy was totally broken (in more ways than I can quickly explain)
- it failed the "large scale" or realm-based PvP crowd because faction warfare was dominated by tricks, gimmicks, exploits, loopholes and idiocy. Unrest bombing, alarm-clock port flipping, bugs in port battle invites, etc.
- it failed the small scale pvp crowd because it was relatively easy to avoid fights and really no reason to take the risks that could lead to small fights. "ganking" newbs was often the only fights they could get.
The game may not be dead, but it is definitely on life-support, if SOE wasn't keeping it around to "bulk up" their stable of games for the station pass, it would be long gone. With that said, "ganking" was not what killed the game, at least not by itself. You could dig up some of the old threads for more in-depth answers, but the short version highlights: The game could not decide what it wanted to be - the devs tried to make it all things to all types of players and consequently failed at all of them Potbs works well for players that like variety in game-play.
It has depth for those that are happy to try a bit of everything.
- it failed the "age of sail" purists because it included magic, magic like abilities, totally unrealistic combat and boats behaving like speedboats not sailing ships
There is no other "Age of sail" mmorpg that comes close, some role play compromise had to be made for the sake having fun. - it failed the quest chasers because despite a few well done arcs the quests were boring, idiotic, repetitive and used the same zone maps over and over and over; also the personal combat system was deeply flawed A lot of work has been done to improve this & much more variety is now in the quests.
Some of the newer treasure hunts & solo daily havana mission are well worth doing. - it failed all the economic players because the economy was totally broken (in more ways than I can quickly explain) The economy is NOT totally broken in more ways than I can quickly explain. - it failed the "large scale" or realm-based PvP crowd because faction warfare was dominated by tricks, gimmicks, exploits, loopholes and idiocy. Unrest bombing, alarm-clock port flipping, bugs in port battle invites, etc. Most of the hard core PVP play to crush lot have now thankfully moved on. Red circles are mainly for putting ports into contention, the best PVP is in the new Port battle maps - it failed the small scale pvp crowd because it was relatively easy to avoid fights and really no reason to take the risks that could lead to small fights. "ganking" newbs was often the only fights they could get. Make no mistake this game is about Pirates that do gank, it would not suit many soft bellied land lovers, however ganking can be avoided with a little skill. Since the server merge full 24v24 Port battles happen on a regular basis. In summary Potbs works like a mini-eve game, many improvements have been made since launch.
Thanks for providing even more proof that any game, no matter how badly it does, will have its rabid defenders. PotBS "failed" at being a successful MMO; the server merges and closures, mass player exodus and its state today are all the proof anyone needs that it didn't achieve the goals they wanted.
Has it improved since launch? Of course. Have they fixed lots of things? Yep. Is there some minority of players who like what they did or are happy enough with it to stay? Obviously, never said otherwise.
None of that changes the reality that for all the reasons I listed and more, PotBS did not achieve the success it could have if the Dev team had made some different calls along the way and done a number of things better.
Is the game dead? No. No game "dies" until the people making the financial calls pull the plug on it. SOE thinks, probably rightly, that PotBS fills a niche and helps their station pass program look more attractive, thus they will keep it around on minimal funding for a very long time. It's a fairly obvious business choice.
P.S. The economic system was horribly broken, but don't take my word for it - research any of the bazillion threads on economic imbalances and whole crafting societies leaving the game right after launch. I don't play presently, but I believe they have made many improvements in that regard, it would have been hard to make it worse
Thanks for providing even more proof that any game, Is the game dead? No. No game "dies" until the people making the financial calls pull the plug on it. SOE thinks, probably rightly, that PotBS fills a niche and helps their station pass program look more attractive, thus they will keep it around on minimal funding for a very long time. It's a fairly obvious business choice.
Thank you also for providing proof that the game is not dead, there is even an expansion being released this year.
In my opinion for an "age of sail" pirates game there are no real rivals out there that come close to Potbs.
Sure there were places where people were using the "port exploit" to capture them quickly and the red ring of doom would engulf certain starting areas. Its been so long I don't even remember what Country it was... but their entire newbie area was under the red glow because their new town was so close to a capture port.
So I'm sure that affected that Nation....
I remember setting up my assembly lines and seeing parts for a lot less than it cost to manufacture...
Because everyone (well most everyone) was taking advantage of the horrid AI... Do the broadsides they abandon ship loot away... was no point to assembly lines for a crafter. That and it was so easy to get the npc ai to abandon ship you could grind through rather quickly with no risk
It wasn't even an "exploit" because it was just "combat" and no tricks involved... things like that shouldn't make it into a live product.
I think I played France at first and I had a ship yard and did ok... and then I became a pirate and never looked back.. personally loved being a pirate.
I didn't quit over ganking but I know many did... In the end we just got bored (my group).
So as I said in my opinion it was a combination of things...
ganking, port exploits, crafter issues, horrid ai, to easy to grind out/get materials from ship combat, horrid port battle mechanics at launch... among other things.
Comments
Well, the stern thing is a concession to accuracy. That's also why wind matters.
As I pointed out before in this thread, I also don't think ganking killed it, but it perhaps made the game's future more precarious. That PotBS has no substance is an accurate statement, but I'm thinking that between PvE and PvP players, the ones to go for the sort of grinding involved in PotBS are the PvEers. I can't see PvPers bothering with that kind of stuff for too long before they up and quit for another game, and I even saw many cases of "PvPer's Logic" (which goes like this: "We have to do PvE stuff to go on PvPing, so why don't PvE players have to do PvP to keep going?") on the forums. Except that PvEers don't go about ruining someone else's day, especially in a game with ship loss, to have their thrill.
So PvEers leave, and the PvPers, suddenly left without their prey/source of enjoyment, follow them. When everyone realizes the endgame doesn't really exist (you hit 50, and then what?), everyone who was playing it for the endgame left. That's why you hear so much about "Port Governance", two years now since that carrot was first dangled (and that's not counting beta, because I wasn't there): it's everyone's idea of the endgame that wasn't there. FLS is promising it'll be released this year, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
On that entire PvE debate, there is a small but significant detail which always comes to mind, and it's Rusty praising the text of PotBS's missions, as PvE as it gets. Maybe PvE is badly supported in the game, I won't deny that it is, but compare the missions to what that PvP favourite, EVE Online, offers, and it's miles (light-years?) ahead. But PvE in PotBS is smashed against the game design, which makes it impossible to play or enjoy it, beginning with those red circles. Somehow a PvEer should find it fun to be stuck in a port for days because a red circle sprang up while he was there? Or to find some areas he needs to get to are permanently in the red (the entire Antilles)? The map, for one, is too small, taking away the sense of exploration. It should be meaningful to sail off into the unknown, even for PvP. Should you find a sail appearing on the horizon, wouldn't you dream of being afraid at whose ship it might be? Everything here is so neatly identified for you, there's no need for concern.
The economy? Same thing. I play games for the economy. What was there in PotBS? The inevitable closed-society setup. I made money, plenty of it, during the early months, when there were still many unaffiliated players who would buy on the market. Under a private-order scheme, there's no point for me to resume my old textile operation. I used to corner the market on wood tar and rope, but in the later months, my stock just gathered dust on the shelf, and this while prices soared. They used to blame the introduction of insurance in the game for that, but that doesn't explain why EVE has insurance yet is mentioned as an economic masterpiece. I think the problem stems from the lack of an opt-in option, where you have to buy insurance to be covered. PotBS's solution, on the other hand, was laughably simplistic: just manna from heaven every time you sank.
The other problem is that, in this game, the economy is just a means to an end, not an end in itself. No point in becoming rich, because all you can spend it on is ships, and I, for one, didn't want a Couronne: I never even made it to 50. That was PotBS's mistake number two: to have believed that economic players were the same demographic as PvPers (or, in this case, as RvRers). Economic players will gladly play a supporting role in a RvR effort, because they understand that money is what keeps the war effort going. But in PotBS, economic players were made redundant by the decision to not tie labour time to player time, but to a fixed structure time instead. Though your average PvPer may have despised playing the economy, he put up his ten hemp lots nonetheless, because that took him just a few minutes every day to produce the maximum amount, and he knew he'd benefit later on by having his ship replacements at cost. All of this meant not only that closed society production became easy to get going, but that your economic players, with their own little defined tasks, separate from the PvP but necessary, were, at best, cash cows to milk, and at worst, PvP deadweight, thereby stamping out both independent traders and the specific function of guild manufacturer.
I'm still debating whether to return to PotBS, courtesy of the free month, except that there is less than two weeks left to that offer, and I haven't found anything I actually feel like returning to in that game. So what would I do? Get a whiff of the atmosphere, which I particularly enjoyed? That'll take what, two hours, before I'm sated? If the game were still installed on my computer (with all builds/patches before May of last year), I could have bothered; but since I removed it, I'm not sure it's worth installing it again.
Well, the stern thing is a concession to accuracy. That's also why wind matters.
As I pointed out before in this thread, I also don't think ganking killed it, but it perhaps made the game's future more precarious. That PotBS has no substance is an accurate statement, but I'm thinking that between PvE and PvP players, the ones to go for the sort of grinding involved in PotBS are the PvEers. I can't see PvPers bothering with that kind of stuff for too long before they up and quit for another game, and I even saw many cases of "PvPer's Logic" (which goes like this: "We have to do PvE stuff to go on PvPing, so why don't PvE players have to do PvP to keep going?") on the forums. Except that PvEers don't go about ruining someone else's day, especially in a game with ship loss, to have their thrill.
So PvEers leave, and the PvPers, suddenly left without their prey/source of enjoyment, follow them. When everyone realizes the endgame doesn't really exist (you hit 50, and then what?), everyone who was playing it for the endgame left. That's why you hear so much about "Port Governance", two years now since that carrot was first dangled (and that's not counting beta, because I wasn't there): it's everyone's idea of the endgame that wasn't there. FLS is promising it'll be released this year, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
On that entire PvE debate, there is a small but significant detail which always comes to mind, and it's Rusty praising the text of PotBS's missions, as PvE as it gets. Maybe PvE is badly supported in the game, I won't deny that it is, but compare the missions to what that PvP favourite, EVE Online, offers, and it's miles (light-years?) ahead. But PvE in PotBS is smashed against the game design, which makes it impossible to play or enjoy it, beginning with those red circles. Somehow a PvEer should find it fun to be stuck in a port for days because a red circle sprang up while he was there? Or to find some areas he needs to get to are permanently in the red (the entire Antilles)? The map, for one, is too small, taking away the sense of exploration. It should be meaningful to sail off into the unknown, even for PvP. Should you find a sail appearing on the horizon, wouldn't you dream of being afraid at whose ship it might be? Everything here is so neatly identified for you, there's no need for concern.
The economy? Same thing. I play games for the economy. What was there in PotBS? The inevitable closed-society setup. I made money, plenty of it, during the early months, when there were still many unaffiliated players who would buy on the market. Under a private-order scheme, there's no point for me to resume my old textile operation. I used to corner the market on wood tar and rope, but in the later months, my stock just gathered dust on the shelf, and this while prices soared. They used to blame the introduction of insurance in the game for that, but that doesn't explain why EVE has insurance yet is mentioned as an economic masterpiece. I think the problem stems from the lack of an opt-in option, where you have to buy insurance to be covered. PotBS's solution, on the other hand, was laughably simplistic: just manna from heaven every time you sank.
The other problem is that, in this game, the economy is just a means to an end, not an end in itself. No point in becoming rich, because all you can spend it on is ships, and I, for one, didn't want a Couronne: I never even made it to 50. That was PotBS's mistake number two: to have believed that economic players were the same demographic as PvPers (or, in this case, as RvRers). Economic players will gladly play a supporting role in a RvR effort, because they understand that money is what keeps the war effort going. But in PotBS, economic players were made redundant by the decision to not tie labour time to player time, but to a fixed structure time instead. Though your average PvPer may have despised playing the economy, he put up his ten hemp lots nonetheless, because that took him just a few minutes every day to produce the maximum amount, and he knew he'd benefit later on by having his ship replacements at cost. All of this meant not only that closed society production became easy to get going, but that your economic players, with their own little defined tasks, separate from the PvP but necessary, were, at best, cash cows to milk, and at worst, PvP deadweight, thereby stamping out both independent traders and the specific function of guild manufacturer.
I'm still debating whether to return to PotBS, courtesy of the free month, except that there is less than two weeks left to that offer, and I haven't found anything I actually feel like returning to in that game. So what would I do? Get a whiff of the atmosphere, which I particularly enjoyed? That'll take what, two hours, before I'm sated? If the game were still installed on my computer (with all builds/patches before May of last year), I could have bothered; but since I removed it, I'm not sure it's worth installing it again.
So much here I disagree with... Vetarnias, PVPers are by nature extremely competitive. Many of us will seek to extend this competitiveness to the economy as well as to the open sea. Players like Garbad played the economy like a fiddle but were also top PVPers. And he's not the only one.
PVPers leaving because PVEers left... er no. Not really. The top PVP guilds on Rackham all left for the same reason: no one would fight them, they had become too good. Fail ATF, Corte de Sangre, GDM... if anyone saw them enter the red, they'd leave it as fast as they could. These guilds were pretty much bored out of the game. The ones who DID leave because the PVE players left, were those who liked to gank and found victims too hard to get.
The fail of the economy is not as much tied to fixed structures. Other games (like SWG) had the same 10 lot thing with great success, without the problems POTBS has and had. But SWG had an extremely complex economy, where almost everything was crafted, and where many different materials were needed by many different types of end product maker. In POTBS, there is really only the shipwright.
The POTBS economy is too limited, too simplistic, too boring. The click costs are high, and the initial doubloon drop nerf forced closed economies and low margins on the AH. The dailies seem to have fixed that aspect at least - the AH seems pretty lively on Antigua - but they also made it so that everyone and their mother now has high-end bundle boats. And now they're nerfing the dailies and talking about making bundles harder to get ... I'm watching in morbid fascination to see if we're going to get the same lose-bundleboat-and-ragequit cycle we saw before.
Did ganking kill the game? No, not by itself. It contributed a lot though. High levels killing lowbies in the red, nations specifically targetting the starter ports and again killing lowbies, who often didn't even realize what was happening. And in RVR, the play to crush mentality of some people drove many, many players out. Crushing even ONE nation (usually Spain or France) made the whole RVR concept a joke, since once any one nation was unable to defend itself (due to player attrition), map wins were no more than gobbling up that nation's ports, sometimes in as little as 10 days. Which drove out more of the crushed nation, making the whole thing even more meaningless.
And then of course there was the port battle system. I loved port battles. But here we of Rackham Spain had the one advantage a low-population nation has: everyone had a good chance to participate regularly. We heard of 100+ queues for the British and laughed, but really, it's not a laughing matter if such an important part of the endgame is both so random and so hard to even get a chance to participate in it.
Linna
A few points:
First, you say the top PvP guilds left because there was nobody their own level left to fight. Of course, it would be heresy to ask them, in this case, to fight one another. Even in the names you mention, I can discern two or even three different factions. It does nothing to reassure me that PvPers want a fair fight, since they weren't even bothered to fight people in their league.
I never played SWG, but I definitely saw the economy was too narrow, too boring, etc. Well, EVE's was the same thing, but at least it was better at hiding it. The problem with PotBS is that it choose an ostensibly historical setting, making the economy's shortcomings even more obvious.
I remember those old threads where players were asking, apparently as seriously as could be, whether there would be slavery in the game. Yeah, by all means, everybody would think it fun and not at all objectionable to be a slave trader, though I'm sure some players would all too eagerly suffer a moral blanking out if they thought they could make a buck at it. So yeah, let's be selective about historical accuracy. But it doesn't mean that the entire economy of the Caribbean circa 1720 ought to revolve around shipbuilding, which is precisely what you got here. I even remember those European traders that bought the more useless goods, like cochineal and whatnot -- well, bartered, actually, as the only things you could get out of the deal were ship parts.
I know there's no real point to comparing a MMO with a single-player game, but look at the goods in "Port Royale". You have items for local consumption, building materials, staples for export to Europe, and European imports. Restrictive in some ways, but also far more representative of Caribbean trade in those years than the glorious self-contained world of PotBS trade, where it's all meant to serve shipbuilding. (Same thing with EVE, by the way, but the distinction is lost amid all the grind.)
I think that a change to the money flow would have had no impact on the decision to produce everything inside a society. Just take a look at this article, if you haven't already. Closed society production would have been done anyway, because nothing beats producing everything at cost. I remember one society specifically going that way from the beginning, because it guaranteed supply. But in the early months, there still was a market, owing to unaffiliated players or small societies that could not produce everything they needed.
And don't get me started on the bundleboats. I mean, it's not a science fiction setting where you get to make the rules that the largest ships require Ultrararium-458, which is to be harvested from the flower of the Typeanameatrandom plant, which blooms only once per century... It's a historical setting, so there was no justification for a First Rate costing 11 million doubloons (that's what they cost at launch anyway) when a Fourth Rate cost something like 300,000 doubloons. There can't be any justification for a price 50 times higher, except to maintain an artificial scarcity, which in the end greatly underestimated the potential for enduring drudgery of the average MMO player.
That little pricing curve, along with the levelling scheme, meant I found myself shut out of port battles a month into the game, and I started at launch. When I was level 25, they (that is, the self-appointed faction leaders) demanded level 40; when I reached level 40, they started demanding level 50's. And that was with the Blackbeard French, which could hardly grant themselves the luxury of being choosy. I remember a time when they asked anyone who wasn't 40-50 to pass, and they ended up with nine people, something like that.... Way to go (unless the finer point was: Don't go if you're not, as you'll be useless in battle and just waste a ship; in which case it's a design fault). Then later on, when I had transferred to Rackham, they asked everyone who didn't have a third rate and up to decline. I didn't own one, wasn't level 50, and happened to be a Freetrader, not a Naval Officer. At first, my memories of port battles were either my running away or getting sunk, but later on it became pretty much a waste of time just to hang around. Then FLS set windows for port battles, at times I couldn't attend most of the time.
Ah, Vetarnias... those PVP guilds I named were in 3 different factions, and they saw themselves reduced to only getting fights when their counterparts in the other faction were on line. Which, frankly, got old fast, especially since e.g. Fail was west coast and ATF East Coast. What I said wasn't exaggerated either, I sailed with these guys occasionally as a tackler, and it was amazing... we'd enter the red, and all of a sudden there'd be nothing else, while all around the circle groups were hovering, waiting till we'd leave. It was a cycle that kept repeating itself too: a group would get good, find itself avoided, get bored and leave.
As to the internal economy: they started the doubloon nerf in closed beta, and we all knew we'd have no choice but to go closed economy if we wanted to have ships at all, let alone pvp. I remember for months I only PVPed in the smaller ships because replacing the larger frigates - outside of PB ships - was simply unaffordable.
Bundles... our nasty surprise on going live. To this day, I think the damn things should never have been introduced at all. Better yet, I think there shouldn't have been any bundle boats. PVP in fourth rates (with equivalent ships for FT and Privs) was a lot more fun. There's 4rth rates for all classes now, incidentally: they Poseidon. Historically accurate, it's not, but at this point ... meh.
Port battles were a design mistake, pure and simple. The game is about RVR, about winning the map, and in order to do so, you literally need to bring the best you have because you can be certain the other side will. Allowing low level players to enter the port battles was a recipe for disaster (sloops, cutters etc in a LINE BATTLE????), causing much conflict inside the nations. A level 25 in a lexington literally couldn't do anything against a level 50 in a PB ship, the range difference alone would see to that. The later ship type discrimination for 50s was born from the same desire to win, but really even more problematic since it excluded those with less time to grind for the big boats (and one of the reasons I wish and wished all bundleboats gone from the game). They should have treated the whole thing as endgame content, but they should have had the skirmish system in place at launch, so everyone could practice and anticipate.
Linna
I agree on bundles. It's one of those things that never were justified, except to make sure lineships would be rare -- which for a while have been anything but. I remember writing (in my quitting post, I think) how I wished the developers would introduce a "Curse of God" build that would sink all bundleboats, but I wasn't expecting much out of it. They've allowed players to grind for them, and now the players have grown attached to those precious little things. Interestingly, there's a thread on the PotBS forum these days asking why players try to limit the number of first and second rates at port battles. But it's a problem when it's left to the players to put it in place, and I remember it wouldn't have been applied when I used to play.
Reading the official forum, it's amazing to see how little has changed. GB is still posting threads about how this or that issue is killing the game, while going on here about how the game is getting better and better; Beltpouch is still whining about his not being delivered easy preys to his doorstep; people are still concerned over that "expansion", or the closed economy, or whatever. The indication I'm getting is that nothing has changed since last May.
Speaking of which, it's quite funny that my memory of what I did in the game last April-May is a blank, except for one little incident, where I got into a conversation with a member of a major French guild. As my previous society had all left the game (not to mention switched to Rackham in April 2008, while I returned to Blackbeard as Rackham was dead a year later), I began asking whether there were any good societies to join. You won't be surprised that he started talking about his own society, and the whole thing took on the surreal appearance of a job interview: How long I had played the game, with which societies, what level I was, etc. etc. Then he mentioned dailies.
To my knowledge, I never went through any of those dailies, as I had left the first time before they had been brought in, and I didn't play them the second time. But I just despise the idea of dailies, because it isn't long before what you can do once a day turns into what you *must* do once a day. Just for the money, not because you actually want to play it. That's just grinding, and I don't think it's worth my time, especially for something meant to be entertaining. I remember doing quite a bit of that fail-on-purpose Woes of Santo Domingo thing, but after the third consecutive run, I'd had enough. But then, the whole guild was doing that... I don't remember if anything came out of it, but we were planning on getting a Second Rate, and I'm not even sure if the guy who obtained it outlasted me in the game.
As for port battles, remember that thing about shallows that players asked for, where smaller ships could be useful? Did anything come out of that? Or is it still dangled like a carrot? But yeah, that was a major design fault there, leaving smaller ships without anything to do. I wonder if they ever consider what would be the incentive for players who didn't start on day 1 to stick around. *I* started on day 1, and was quickly left with little to do because I didn't level up as quickly as other people. Design problem, and also a problem with the community, who treated every enemy lowbie as an alt carrying lineship bundles. No wonder it tanked after the first month.
There is meant to be method in what to some appears to be conflicting posting, it is often the only way to highlight an issue on the main forums as the devs are more likely to take note there. It is really urgent that FLS address some of the key reasons for lost populations since closed beta before the release of the Power & Prestige expansion.
In my opinion the main issues have always been how to make PVP more sustainable in what was promoted a PVP game.
Most of the issues have come about by designing a PVP/RVR centric game with a budget ganking mentality & pathetic rewards. "Waiting for the next big failure" as Isildur the ex-lead design once put it, he knew what was going to happen so jumped his sinking ship.
The producer & lead design are the ones ultimately responsible, it was never a good idea to let devco set the priorities.
Rewarding high risk PVP has never been FLS's strong point, when they realised their mistake they introduced insurance & dailies plus halved the labour time but that still did not have the desired effect. By that time more than half the population had left.
It is still a game where closed eco-players rule & PVP is not very sustainable imo.
Grinding for treasure needs to be just that, a very rare opportunity to obtain real wealth. YAR! rare individual rewards of over a million dbls should not be ruled out.
You will be surprised at what players will do to get their hands on that!
Daily grinding the same missions was never the answer, nor was it meant to be imo.
The end game economy has become a zerg as to which closed econ-society can build the most bundleships often only obtainable with multi-accounts. This has the effect of excluding a vast amount of single account holders or forces them into a closed eco society with a waiting list for top end ships. Making them more rare wont stop it either, all that would do is force more boring daily grind.
FLS know about many players unfavorable views about LSB's but still have not let on what they intend to do. The next 3-4 months are critical that they make some difficult economic changes that are bound to upset some players. It will be too late to do it after P&P.
Can the game be saved? YES but not without a lot of QQing.
If they are going to make the seas burn, it must be NOW not after P&P.
Any pvp centric game is going to be rife with ganking as it were, you pay your money and you take your chances. One thing i wish they would do is shrink some of the massive pvp zones so by putting 3 or 4 towns into contention you basically block off the entire ocean so you have to go sailing all the way around to get anywhere.
Some of you pine for the "good old days" i guess those were the days when Fts and Nos debuffs stacked out the wazoo and pirates were a complete and utter joke in port battles. I do like that they seem to have balanced out the sides some. I do not like they seem to have scrapped their end game changes for pirates and just seem to have thrown the towel in and just gave us sols so we could do port battles decently.
I recall them laying out this grand vision of pirate end game as broken as it was at the time, to changing it from a standard line fight which all the nos had reload stacking buffs and range buffs no to mention their stacking debuffs so any time a nation took a pb seriously by pirates we stood not a chance. but changing to to a raid thing for pirates. guess that got scrapped.
I do and did like the pvp system the contention system lest took coordination and teamwork to try and flip ports, as pirates back in the day we usually had to target 3 ports at the same time in order to flip one. but now days seems like ports just get flipped at will the little i had to see while i was checking out the game due to my free play period.
What does suck about this game is that when half your pop is level 50 with sols and heavy frigates and enough gold in thier wallet to send these ships into pvp zones just waiting for lone and noob targets to hit. It makes the game darn near unplayable for noobs if they have to wait several days to get into a port they have missions in.
At lest as a level 50 pirate anymore if all things are equal and your captains have any amount of skill a 5 on 5 or 5 on 6 battle is not the slaughter it used to be after we got nerfed to heck after beta and nationals were so op . Granted it might be realistic that way but when your supposed to be a equal partner fighting for control of the map, it is a bit problematic when the game favored the nationals so much.
I do like the game however, and this game compared to sto which has no end game to speak of atm and the lack of any meaningful pvp the peek in at potbs is nice and almost makes me want to resub, despite the issues with the economy and the lack of a guild with my forced server transfer and the fact i got no money and i dunno where all these wonderful pve dailies are, and seems it is a prime lul fest on the part of the opposing factions to flip those daily ports and keep them in contention zones, when i see people spamming for daily groups seem most of those ports are flipped or in pvp areas.
and i got ganked my first day back in my free look i wanted to get a ship out of mt lol hard to see why our main shipyard port is almost always in a pvp zone half the time it is done by us and always get fleets of nos camping the place. but wanted to get my stripped cargo ship out of there and pick up some junk, really nice that the fast tackler of those big fleets can grab you and pull his whole 6 ships in with him when they 10 miles behind you lol, but i knew the risk and i had np with it i got sunk i got ported to tortuga which was much closer the edge of the pvp zone and got out huzzah.
i dunno abut the insurance looking at my p herc seems it pays out a paltry 170k or so which would cover the cost of the brass fittings for one lineship bundle and i know that ship cost me like over 700k with most of the mats produced at cost or near it in my old guild. so hardly seems lest to me that getting your ship sunk is some glorious payday. tho i guess w the 3 dura that would get me about half the db i would need to get the mats at cost to build another. oh but i would need another writ then and you can only get one for ensigns.
and arent there enough pvp centric rewards? movs buy you ship writs some darn good fittings and other stuff that can be very useful. love to get me some of those discordant level 50 fittings, but my mov stash is like 10 after my pvp time on rackham and having bought stuff back then. granted the daily stuff might be a bit op, imo as a pirate it made little sense for us to get moeny any other way than plundering pillaging and all that, i like the idea of rare treasure stuff or heck just treasure fleets dropping you know treasure, instead of 1 or 2 items at a slightly higher rate than farming noobie ships you can 2 shot in a level 50 ships.
the expansion looks good if and when it comes out maybe i will return and se what things are like. got a few days left on roberts where the community seems really nice for the most part.
If this game allowed players to take small islands, set up their own town, take territory much like an EVE Online on the high seas then I think the game would have done much better. It is just too limited as it stands, its like a standard MMO just with ships and there is like zero market or risk for losing ships anymore. its fun but it fails to meet the long term demands players expect these days.
My advise to Dev's if they want to revive this game.....take notes from EVE Online just use your imagination to convert it to your game because it isn't rocket science, players love sandboxes, get it?
Sounds like the FLS devs are already onto it with the next expansion.
Power & Prestige will have port governance as a main part of it's features.
You are talking in post mortem, and asking why the game died. The game istn dead. Its still being developed and worked on, patches still roll out , and people still play.
It may be dead to you, but for many people the game is quite alive and kicking. Until they announce they are officially halting development , pulling the plug , ECT ECT, saying the game died because of ganking doesnt make ANY sense becuase IT HASNT HAPPENED.
The game may not be dead, but it is definitely on life-support, if SOE wasn't keeping it around to "bulk up" their stable of games for the station pass, it would be long gone.
With that said, "ganking" was not what killed the game, at least not by itself. You could dig up some of the old threads for more in-depth answers, but the short version highlights:
The game could not decide what it wanted to be - the devs tried to make it all things to all types of players and consequently failed at all of them
- it failed the "age of sail" purists because it included magic, magic like abilities, totally unrealistic combat and boats behaving like speedboats not sailing ships
- it failed the quest chasers because despite a few well done arcs the quests were boring, idiotic, repetitive and used the same zone maps over and over and over; also the personal combat system was deeply flawed
- it failed all the economic players because the economy was totally broken (in more ways than I can quickly explain)
- it failed the "large scale" or realm-based PvP crowd because faction warfare was dominated by tricks, gimmicks, exploits, loopholes and idiocy. Unrest bombing, alarm-clock port flipping, bugs in port battle invites, etc.
- it failed the small scale pvp crowd because it was relatively easy to avoid fights and really no reason to take the risks that could lead to small fights. "ganking" newbs was often the only fights they could get.
Eric you nailed it.
Thanks for providing even more proof that any game, no matter how badly it does, will have its rabid defenders. PotBS "failed" at being a successful MMO; the server merges and closures, mass player exodus and its state today are all the proof anyone needs that it didn't achieve the goals they wanted.
Has it improved since launch? Of course. Have they fixed lots of things? Yep. Is there some minority of players who like what they did or are happy enough with it to stay? Obviously, never said otherwise.
None of that changes the reality that for all the reasons I listed and more, PotBS did not achieve the success it could have if the Dev team had made some different calls along the way and done a number of things better.
Is the game dead? No. No game "dies" until the people making the financial calls pull the plug on it. SOE thinks, probably rightly, that PotBS fills a niche and helps their station pass program look more attractive, thus they will keep it around on minimal funding for a very long time. It's a fairly obvious business choice.
P.S. The economic system was horribly broken, but don't take my word for it - research any of the bazillion threads on economic imbalances and whole crafting societies leaving the game right after launch. I don't play presently, but I believe they have made many improvements in that regard, it would have been hard to make it worse
Thank you also for providing proof that the game is not dead, there is even an expansion being released this year.
In my opinion for an "age of sail" pirates game there are no real rivals out there that come close to Potbs.
No one thing killed the game.
Sure there were places where people were using the "port exploit" to capture them quickly and the red ring of doom would engulf certain starting areas. Its been so long I don't even remember what Country it was... but their entire newbie area was under the red glow because their new town was so close to a capture port.
So I'm sure that affected that Nation....
I remember setting up my assembly lines and seeing parts for a lot less than it cost to manufacture...
Because everyone (well most everyone) was taking advantage of the horrid AI... Do the broadsides they abandon ship loot away... was no point to assembly lines for a crafter. That and it was so easy to get the npc ai to abandon ship you could grind through rather quickly with no risk
It wasn't even an "exploit" because it was just "combat" and no tricks involved... things like that shouldn't make it into a live product.
I think I played France at first and I had a ship yard and did ok... and then I became a pirate and never looked back.. personally loved being a pirate.
I didn't quit over ganking but I know many did... In the end we just got bored (my group).
So as I said in my opinion it was a combination of things...
ganking, port exploits, crafter issues, horrid ai, to easy to grind out/get materials from ship combat, horrid port battle mechanics at launch... among other things.