Back to the Beginning

So I take a brief respite from EVE-Online to discuss another title, Pirates of the Burning Sea. Published by Sony Online Entertainment (read: Bastards), and developed by Flying Labs Studios, the game did relatively well early on, but has since taken a nose dive into obscurity due to complete lack of proper marketing (see: Bastards). I can go into great detail about why such blunders are not uncommon from SOE, but I must digress. PotBS is a well thought out game, with some pitfalls, but it controls well, is easy for a new player, and is overall quite enjoyable.

So I created my character in PotBS, named once again Khamal Jolstien. I'm fond of this name, as I came up with it for a short story I had tried to write some years ago. I never really use any other name with persistent world games. I guess the familiarity is what keeps me using it.

I went against my better nature and created a French Naval Officer character, choosing rather average looking attributes. He is blonde (the other hair styles were bleh), with a gotee, and is the most different looking of any character I've made. He does, however, blend in with his environment pretty well, so all is well. The whole purpose of his design was to match his time period and his associations.

I start off in a social engagement with an important officer of the French Navy. As the party goes on, pirates raid the shore and storm up to the party. Swords and pistols are drawn and the officer is wounded. I personally engage a few of the rascals with a saber, handily bringing them down.

The controls are pretty standard. The W,A,S,D keys move my character. Clicking starts an engagement, and pressing a number chooses a special attack assigned to it. Controlling is relatively simple, but can get frantic trying to choose attacks while defending yourself.

I move into my first vessel, a Heavy Corvette (which is not heavy at all). She has only a few guns, (4lbs) but can move around pretty easily. W and S raise and lowere the sails, A and D control the rudder. Spacebar fires the guns when a target is selected (provided the guns are facing the target, of course). Right clicking a target in a firing arc will also fire the guns.

What's interesting is how closely they modelled the vessels. Each ship has its own sailing characteristics, dictated by the rigging and sail type. Triangular shaped sails, such as on a Sloop or Xebec, allow for excellent sailing at a broad reach (perpendicular wind). This is advantageous as much manuevering occurs at these angles. Square rigged ships, such as frigates, need wind at their backs to reach top speed.

Currents are easy to understand and use in the game as well. Arrows on the map and visible in the water alert you to a current and which way it is running. Riding one provides a significant speed bonus while in transit.

NPCs are simple, with branching conversation and simple combat AI. Speaking with NPCs with quest icons (the well known ! icon) allows you to choose a mission for experience and doubloons. It's intuitive and simple to understand. The only problem is you don't always understand where to go. Usually back to the coxswain to travel by longboat, sometimes to a location within the city. Waypoints help understand where to go, however.

The only problem with the environment in PotBS is that it feels propped up without the massively multiplayer feel to it. The population is unbareably low, which can be frustrating for players looking to socialize. Even worse, it makes areas feel just plain empty. As a new player, and eventually an experienced player 25 - 26 levels into the game, I have yet to group with a player, and only interacted once. This missing element (a pure population problem) hurts the game far more than if they failed at any of the interactions with their game.

Overall it is a fun game. Combat in ships is very fun, and the entire scene could be very well used as a single player game. (It has been done to decent effect by Firaxis', Sid Meier's Pirates!) The few players I did speak to and run into barely reacted to me, too preoccupied with whatever they were doing. Another new player did speak for a few moments, but assumed I was an alternate character from an old player, and not an actual fresh user. My appearance seemed to have little effect on how players reacted to me.