Pirates of the Burning Sea - Another Viewpoint

by Kwee

I read Leon's assessment of Pirates of the Burning Sea and found myself agreeing with almost everything he had to say, and yet I'm playing it quite a bit. What's going on? I guess it comes down to flavor.

Before I describe flavor, let me say that I think a good 70-80% of the MMO market is with repeat customers. Possibly more. Yes, there are new folks joining: significant others, youngsters, hitherto hermits. But let's face it. If you have a computer, are interested in something besides porn and business, and can tear yourself away from Youtube or Mah-jong, then you've probably tried an MMO. Heck, there are free ones out there and plenty of betas.

So here we all are savoring these different games. And the main thing I would focus in on Leon's review is this:

"I could see a future of repetitive missions stretching out before me. But, to be fair, in most MMOG's I have played they have tended to be Fantasy or Sci-Fi, so there was and still is a great and varied collection of mobs to meet throughout the evolution of your character."

Having played many genres of MMOs, the "future of repetitive missions" usually strikes me in ALL of them by level 2 or maybe 5. Yes, an orc is harder than a deranged hobbit. Yes, the dragon took a bunch of us acting cooperatively, whereas the snake that turned green at level 3 was pretty easy. And yes, the simple "Corsair Pirate" captain I fought at level 6 seems about as tough as the "Tortuga Tyrant" I face at level 30, because - although I now have all those cool skills - the bad guy I face is symmetrically tougher.

You may disagree, but my main point here is that combat in MMOs is basically the same from level 3 or 5 all the way to end-game. Yes, you use different skills in a group or raid. Yes, sometimes buffing is more important than DPS. Yes, you can learn different types of attacks. But to hold one game to task for "a future of repetitive missions" is to hold a close lens to that game while ignoring the same view of others.

With regard to PotBS without getting too specific: There are missions where boarding an enemy is more important than killing it. There are missions to rendezvous with forts or leaders while avoiding direct combat. There are missions that demand some group members go after one set of goals while others do something else.

So, for missions, I maintain that PotBS is no worse for repetiveness than any other game. . . and much less so than many.

The 70-80% of us that have tried one of the EQ games or LotRO or Wow or Vanguard have things we like about this or that game. And certainly some games have better UI, or guild support, or mentoring, or houses or whatever. I agree with many at TheBrasse.com that EQ2 did an awfully good job in these support areas. PotBS doesn't. Yet. I hope "yet" is the operative word. It's a very young game.

More to the point for many will be the quality of the graphics. Or, as in Leon's case, the "design" of the graphics. As Leon said:

"Waaaay too clean!" The starter town was way too neat and tidy, brand spanking new, bright colors, not a good start for me, I like 'lived in', not 'yet to be lived in'."

I have a low-end graphics card and almost always run games at the performance end of the spectrum rather than the quality end, and I don't even think about it 'til I see an amazing video on Youtube (there are some amazing videos for PotBS there). But I know many of you care about how trees, faces, buildings and the world look. PotBS isn't gonna get the geeks on G4 TV oohing and ahhing about looks. Towns in PotBS are pretty straightforward. They don't have a lot of detritus or personality other than how they are laid out.

In fact, Leon didn't mention this, but several towns have the SAME layout. Granted, buildings might be in different places, but the path you follow is the same.

So, PotBS is middle-of-the-road in graphics and graphic design.

The same applies to character generation. There are lots of options to choose from for clothing and colors. But only 12 or 14 different faces. You can't adjust the nose or eye-slant or ear-size.

To get technical issues out of the way, there HAVE been problems with players downloading the software online. Without going into detail, it seems like a good 20-40% of players weren't able to successfully download the different betas on the first try. And some of the testers have had troubles with SOE's launcher. I wish this was better after all this time, but I don't hold it against SOE or Flying Labs Software (the developers of PotBS.) There are a LOT of hardware configurations out there - not to mention operating systems. We'd like everything to work out of the box, but we didn't buy our systems out of a box (most of us) so there will be problems.

And that brings me, finally, to flavor.

As far as I'm concerned, the best thing an MMO can offer is a community of RL people - good or bad, helpful or clueless, caring or sarcastic - that makes you feel involved and wanting to come back for more. Granted, the PotBS development team keeps pointing out that this game is about pirates - Yarrgh! But when the day is done, 30 levels of swinging at fantasy characters is gonna seem similar to 30 levels of maneuvering ships on the high seas and aiming at sails, hull or crew, or going after forts or boarding ships.

Wait a minute. It IS different!

But for many of us, the real flavor of a game is how we interact with others online. Pirates of the Burning Sea has, I think, the most intertwined and full economic game since SWG, and even more so. You can solo in the game and "swing at monsters" but the economic advantages of cooperation are deeply manifest in this game. Players that cooperate to build ship outfittings, consumables, and, indeed, ships themselves, are going to be much more successful than even the most uber solo player. It's more complex than I want to detail here. You really need to work and plan together.

It's that cooperation that makes me keep playing this game. In these days of extended betas, I could play a game for a month or more, get the fluff of it, and then move on to the next beta without ever paying or feeling like I've missed out on something deeper. But to log on to theconsortium.net (my guild's site) and see new strategies and hints EVERY DAY for PotBS is something else again.

PotBS has an economic structure that requires and rewards every bit as much planning and work as SWG did, but it lacks two things yet. It doesn't have the city or guild layout that SWG had. And it doesn't have the dancer-musician sort of individual gameplay buff that SWG had.

Pirates of the Burning Sea is not a great game, yet. It has PvP features that are new and exciting, but it has the same shortcomings as any new game. It hasn't broken new territory in terms of "gameplay," though it offers a different type of gameplay. Its graphics aren't groundbreaking, and the UI and support for guilds, mentoring and chat aren't up to EQII standards.

But it has an economy and style of play that just BEGS for cooperation, and rewards it. I like making a difference in the game with my productivity in addition to how well I swing my cutlass. I like how the economy is greater and more complex than any single gold-spammer can take advantage of.

All that said? I do not think PotBS is going to be very popular and may very well fail. Damn shame. If Pirates of the Carribean by Disney had been written this way it might be another story. But that says more about us as consumers than it does about the game.

~Kwee