Pirates of the Burning Sea

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gizbug

Platinum Member
May 14, 2001
2,621
0
76
The server disconnects are terrible.
Plus, if you are just doing the stresstest, that beta ends Monday. So basically you play/lvl your guy, then you can't play it anymore. NICE.
 

KeithTalent

Elite Member | Administrator | No Lifer
Administrator
Nov 30, 2005
50,235
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Originally posted by: gizbug
The server disconnects are terrible.
Plus, if you are just doing the stresstest, that beta ends Monday. So basically you play/lvl your guy, then you can't play it anymore. NICE.

Well I'm not too worried about that, I just wanted to try it out. I went through about 4 wipes of LOTRO, so I'm kind of used to it now. :p

You are spot on about the disconnects though, even for a stress test, it is brutal.

KT
 

Canai

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2006
8,016
1
0
It's fun. I got in for about an hour today before the servers went down, and I must say I like it. Ship to ship combat is very nice, and it's good fun.

Unfortunately the server crashed again so I can't play for a bit :(
 

Skott

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2005
5,730
1
76
Sounds like they need to put more work into the host servers then. Did you do any boarding? I read a review of how it works so far and it sounded interesting. After you manage to grapple the enemy ship you can board it in waves. You can get up to 4 waves of your men to board and the enemy gets four waves too to defend. I think it was 6 or 8 men plus your leader/character to a wave for each side. Your character can do certain attack styles and such things. You had to be careful not to use up all your men because you needed to be able to sail your ship after the battle. Overall it sounds like a pretty heavy graphic intense game.
 

Canai

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2006
8,016
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Yeah, but as far as I can tell they have been down more than up :(

No boarding yet, but hopefully it'll be working tonight.
 

Skott

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2005
5,730
1
76
I dunno about 'supposed to crash'. I know they try to push the envelope with them but if you can throw everything at it and not crash it then its that much better. But like you said it is a stress test to see where they need to improve things.
 

Bibble

Golden Member
Feb 20, 2006
1,293
1
0
I got a key but the download was going at only 60kb/s or so. Additionally, the first time I tried it just stopped at 63%, and the second time it stopped at 80%. I gave up after that. Oh well, I'll just stick with the Crysis beta.
 
Apr 17, 2005
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how does this game work? are you a pirate and there are all these other people out in the open sea and you can go and fight them and stuff? i dont really know how mmos work.
 

Canai

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2006
8,016
1
0
Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
how does this game work? are you a pirate and there are all these other people out in the open sea and you can go and fight them and stuff? i dont really know how mmos work.

I'm in the same boat... as far as I can tell, you can do instanced ai missions, or just go out in sea with other people and pirate them ? or something along those lines...
 

Auryg

Platinum Member
Dec 28, 2003
2,377
0
71
I don't like it. For those that are wondering - yes, you got out on the open sea with your ship and you can fight/board people. What they don't tell you that when you go out to sea you're basically on a map, zoomed out, and you can see all the ships around you. It's hard to explain, but the end result is that you're just basically using the sea to find people/NPCs to have instanced battles with. It's not like you can come around the bend of a peninsula to see two ships fighting, and decide to join in. "Boarding" is when you use a skill (when you're close enough and going to right way and the such) that brings you to an instanced fight. An instance within an instance.

They dropped the ball with this one. A pirate MMO had a lot of potential, but as it is the ships in Ultima Online were more fun. You stayed in the ships' perspective.

And the size of the world sucks. I crossed about half of it in 10 minutes. Not hard when they bring you to a downsized map when you go out on the sea =/
 
Apr 17, 2005
13,465
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Originally posted by: Auryg
I don't like it. For those that are wondering - yes, you got out on the open sea with your ship and you can fight/board people. What they don't tell you that when you go out to sea you're basically on a map, zoomed out, and you can see all the ships around you. It's hard to explain, but the end result is that you're just basically using the sea to find people/NPCs to have instanced battles with. It's not like you can come around the bend of a peninsula to see two ships fighting, and decide to join in. "Boarding" is when you use a skill (when you're close enough and going to right way and the such) that brings you to an instanced fight. An instance within an instance.

They dropped the ball with this one. A pirate MMO had a lot of potential, but as it is the ships in Ultima Online were more fun. You stayed in the ships' perspective.

And the size of the world sucks. I crossed about half of it in 10 minutes. Not hard when they bring you to a downsized map when you go out on the sea =/

yeah thats waht i was hoping for...like thousands of people in an ocean and you can fight, or a bunch of people together to form an armada. how freaking sweet would that be?
 

KeithTalent

Elite Member | Administrator | No Lifer
Administrator
Nov 30, 2005
50,235
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I'm just going to say it's not for me, there is not much else to say. Auryg covered some of my thoughts plus the graphics and playstyle overall just do not work for me.

KT
 
Apr 17, 2005
13,465
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Originally posted by: Canai
Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
how does this game work? are you a pirate and there are all these other people out in the open sea and you can go and fight them and stuff? i dont really know how mmos work.

I'm in the same boat... as far as I can tell, you can do instanced ai missions, or just go out in sea with other people and pirate them ? or something along those lines...

from what i understand games like wow have people get together and do ai missions to get stuff. seems really lame and useless to drop 15 bucks a month on something like that.
 

michaelsslave

Senior member
Sep 17, 2007
466
1
0
i think the graphics are utter crap for a game coming out in this day and age, it als got kinda repetitive
 

manimal

Lifer
Mar 30, 2007
13,560
8
0
Ive played a few days of the beta and a week or so on the pre-release. Its been fun and starting the group oriented stuff seemed really fun. The mission system on the other hand is very boring and the repitition of the same types of quests gets old really fast. The leveling to 20ish is very fast and can be done by a grinder in 20 hours or so if you have enough ingame money.
 

hooflung

Golden Member
Dec 31, 2004
1,190
1
0
This game is basically what happens when someone wants to clone EVE but not pull both the triggers on a double barrel shot gun. The ground game is just aweful and very repetitive. The sea part of the game is fun and refreshing. The economy is tricky, kinda like EVE and is all tied to logistics and territory control.

Because the DEV's of the game wanted to forgoe the open ended PVP problems that plague EVE like blobbing 500 people in one system they dumbed down the PVP into instances that are either 6 vs 6 or port battles that are 24 vs 24. This makes the PVP more like Guild Wars except it hurts when you loose, like EVE. The problems EVE has, therefore, are not the problems PotBS will have. Does that mean it has no problems? Nope, because you can do multiple 6 v 6 at the same time. So your 100 v 100 EVE fights are now 16 6 v 6. And while 24 v 24 port battles are going on, 6 v 6 can happen outside that. So, avoiding one solid fight has just tempered it into *possibly* multiple manageable battles. Problem is that people can camp outside these instances to gank once you leave that one fight you iirc. Moreover, there is a TEF system akin to Star Wars Galaxies and WoW where you can put up a PVP flag anywhere which is just begging for exploitation, which is already happening with 5-6 on 1 ganks. Once a faction has won the server, everything resets and port contention starts over from scratch. That has me scratching my head a bit why they did that but w/e.

In the end the game has merit. It has a host of good things. Small bands of players can affect the entire server without being devastated by blobs like in EVE. But it has its prices in shady game mechanics and immersion for sure. Also, Carebears will have a tough time in this game. I also see players exploiting the alt system on other servers and bolstering a side that is winning by making alt societies that won't have a hard time living in certain areas because XYZ faction has it on lockdown. Very, very shoddy mechanics on that one. Dedicated gamers will dictate the game completely whether its PVP or the market.

Also, all the servers are in Seattle, even the European servers ( which are going to be moved to VA or PA ). East Coast gamers combined with English speaking EU gamers can put the Roberts server on lockdown 24/7. I am EST and playing on Roberts atm.

Yarr.
 

pontifex

Lifer
Dec 5, 2000
43,806
46
91
is there a free trial for the live game? i couldn't get the dumb thing to even finish updating when the beta was going on.