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POTBS big waste of time

Aye Fred Bob,
Morgan Trouin is me name
Loot'n and Plunder'n is me Game ,lol
Was a pleasure sail'n wid ye Fred Bob <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sailr.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":sail" border="0" alt="sailr.gif" />
 
Hey Guys!

I've always kept track of all your work on Pirates of the Caribbean Build mods and such.. I'm a big fan <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

As far as Pirates of the Burning Sea goes, there is a few avenues that they need improvement on, but most of them are cosmetic things. There is no exploration of your ship (a crying shame if you ask me), nor is there any aimer for your gundeck (another crying shame... little skill involved when firing a ship with no aimer). There is no actually good storm battles (no waves, lightening needs work... etc.) There is no telescopes that function like one (to see the other ship stats like in PoTC).

However, having played 3 character to lvl 50 (2 - Freetraders, and a Naval Officer), I have to say that this game is REALLY nice for PvP, and society-based gaming. It has an aspect of taking over ports that is really nice as well. As far as marketing and money-making, unfortunately as of now, there are really only a couple ways to make good money... and selling stuff on the auction hall is not necessarily the best way (unless you make a lot of ships or consumable items that everyone buys). The best way to make money seems to be mission grinding (the repeating of missions that give good money), finishing a LOT of missions, or Open Sea grinding of NPCs. Money is an issue in the game, as to get your best ships requires literally millions of dubloons. The best ship in the game costs nearly 16 million ( I haven't even reached 2 million after playing for this long, so you can imagine how much that is - or you can spend real money to get some Chinese kid to grind it for you LOL).

I am still addicted to the online game, and I like the option of sailing with REAL PEOPLE. It definitely rocks when you see the different strategies, tactics, and really cool-looking ships/graphics that go along with PoTBS. The learning curve is a LONG one, but it's really quite fun after you know what you're doing.

Just my thoughts <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
I bought this game for 40 bucks back in 2008 thinking it was a pirate rpg, but I ended up returning it because it turned out I had to pay for a subscription too! I just started playing for free but don't really know what the main storyline is and what I'm supposed to do. Potco was so much clearer and simple to learn.
 
This game is mostly about the PvP and player run economy to be honest. You can fleet and stuff. To follow the storyline and learn more about the quests that are available you can visit the POTBS Wiki. Just do a search using your favorite search engine and you will find it.

Cap'n Drow
 
I just quit POTBS for good at level 36. The reason? One word: GRIEFERS. The game caters to the scumbags because they are the ones who poor huge amounts of cash into it and they making it unplayable for anyone else. They refuse to address the issue so I refuse to waste my time on what is a fairly poorly designed game to start with that has no respect for the people playing it...
 
That's too bad, I thought this game would be awesome when it came out but never tried it because of the sub. I still haven't tried it because of the word of mouth hasn't been positive.
 
It has some real potential but seems to make a point of falling short of it at every turn. I'm not really a big fan of MMO games in general for this reason.
 
PotBS is a great Game! It's with Sid Meier's Pirates the best Pirate Game that I ever played and I played a lot :p
But when you dont like PvP it's nothing for you..
Dailys and Epic missions are lame after a few times ^^
 
I found that PotBS's main problem (for me) is their appearant war being waged on content (particularly ships) at the behest of a small handful of inept lazy wannabes who refuse to take the time to learn the concept of naval warfare and target the most fun ships for devastating nerfs or even full removals(this was the case for 1st and 2nd rate Lineships). Also targeted are the ships designed for speed and menouverability such as Xebecs, cutters, and sloops.

The fact is with their constant nerfing all bets are off on all of your ships, a solid ship today could be made a worthless piece of junk overnight or even gone. This is very annoying concidering the amount of time and effort you have to put in to get some of these ships

I spent the good part of a month and a half to make a Trinity 2nd rate (which felt like a great achievement for me) but only 3 days after I launched the ship I heard from a fellow society member that they were removing the ability to make such ships from the game rendering the ship too risky to really use (with so many ways you can get a ship sunk some of them out of a player's control), which after a month and a half's work was very crushing resulting in me giving up on the game.

But by some good fortune, I shall soon be re-uniting with the ship I lost to FLS dev BS almost a year and a half ago, thanks to SeaNorris, Armada and of course the ship's original creator Remus77.
 
Over the past year I have played this game in bursts. I'll get on a break or hit a lull in my schoolwork, then start up PotBS. With all honesty, PotC+Build Mod is much more realistic and enjoyable in terms of gameplay... the reason I like PotBS so much is the character creation and ship customization process, not to mention the fact that it is an online game with (what should be) a player-driven economy. I was looking forward to meeting other players and building a naval squadron, then engaging enemy ships and helping my country achieve victory in the Caribbean.

Alas, this is not the case... just as Noriruru said, this game is being overrun by gamers who haven't the slightest clue as to how warfare in the age worked. They take out most of the ships you initially joined with hopes of someday commanding... and the ships have become disposable means to accelerating yourself to the top of a leaderboard... leaderboard? Since when was this game about you? Even as a pirate, there are fraternal bonds that brought them together into a sort of coalition. The simply fact is that the game is starting to fall shorter and sorter of my expectations. The game is ridden with griefing/ganking, selfish nationals, and you feel more like you're running through a spray-n-pray free for all with loosely outlined teams that aren't really working together.

I've recently had a thought. My roommate is a Star Wars fanatic who used to play Star Wars Galaxies... but soon joined the emulator because the hardcore fans who were just as capable as the developers could produce a better version of the game. What if there was a way to emulate Pirates of the Burning Sea? To make it into the game that it was intended to and should be? I'm a socialist... not in the political sense, but in the sense I prefer to interact with other humans online when playing games... that is the biggest drawback to PotC that I wish we could change. I also wouldn't mind finding out how to completely customize out ships and characters.

The gameplay, realism, and scope of the Build Mod + the mechanics, graphics, customizing features, and online gameplay of PotBS = the game I am dreaming for.
 
Commodore John Paul Jones said:
I'm a socialist... not in the political sense, but in the sense I prefer to interact with other humans online when playing games... that is the biggest drawback to PotC that I wish we could change. I also wouldn't mind finding out how to completely customize out ships and characters.
Click to expand...

I have never been much of a social gamer myself, mainly though because I would let myself become too addicted and end up spending all my time playing and missing work and other things. That may happen one day with CoAS, Jan Marten was recently able to re-activate the multiplayer option from AOP in the German version of CoAS! It is very simplistic compared to the MMO that is POTBS, but it would still be awesome to be able to go head to head and compete against an actual player! Now that we have the source code for storm 2.8, If we actually had the coders, we could turn the Storm engine into something very special!
 
How about co-op over internet, maybe co-op vs co-op mode for CoAS. Imagine You, and your friends going on quests, sinking Golden Fleets, Capturing towns together or while competing against each other. It's way more fun than that PvP nonsense of mmo's.
 
Commodore John Paul Jones said:
Over the past year I have played this game in bursts. I'll get on a break or hit a lull in my schoolwork, then start up PotBS. With all honesty, PotC+Build Mod is much more realistic and enjoyable in terms of gameplay... the reason I like PotBS so much is the character creation and ship customization process, not to mention the fact that it is an online game with (what should be) a player-driven economy. I was looking forward to meeting other players and building a naval squadron, then engaging enemy ships and helping my country achieve victory in the Caribbean.

Alas, this is not the case... just as Noriruru said, this game is being overrun by gamers who haven't the slightest clue as to how warfare in the age worked. They take out most of the ships you initially joined with hopes of someday commanding... and the ships have become disposable means to accelerating yourself to the top of a leaderboard... leaderboard? Since when was this game about you? Even as a pirate, there are fraternal bonds that brought them together into a sort of coalition. The simply fact is that the game is starting to fall shorter and sorter of my expectations. The game is ridden with griefing/ganking, selfish nationals, and you feel more like you're running through a spray-n-pray free for all with loosely outlined teams that aren't really working together.
Click to expand...

Not only is much of the remaining PvP-based community ignorant about naval strategy and about how different ship types work, they are also quite visious in their ideals and won't hesitate to forcefully run the casual PvE types, actual ship Inthusiasts, Sensible, competent PvPers and anybody else who challenge or even question the status-quo out of the game. (often with actual help from the DEVELOPERS THEMSELVES, of all things) I know this because my PotBS forum IP is currently perma-banned because I dared to speak out against their removal of 1st and 2nd rates when they did that, express concerns about the future of other endgame ships, and suggest other balancing alternatives. Whenever I would make a suggestion a small group of players would berate me and then proceed to report me for "trolling/flaming" and get my threads taken down. There were about 4 of these individuals, they were, Ulot, Josh_Brown, Stokes234, and Maibec. and these guys also did this to other concerned players as well. The closest I ever got to actually trolling or flaming was to tell some of these clowns to "learn to play" the game instead of wrecking it for their own selfish goals.

There also appears to be more as well these days.

I occasionally pop on to PotBS as there are still some ships they still have there that I like to sail that we haven't got our hands on yet. And on a more recent occasion I overheard a british faction player mention in the chat window about how he beat some some spanish faction players in PvP only to be threatened by an FLS GM that he'd be banned if he didn't take a dive on his next round with those players, which is curious concidering that the spanish faction wins 9 out of 10 map conquests. This suggests the existence of under the table dealings, WWE wrestling style match scripting, and ingame virtual mafias (devs included). This is not unlike an event I heard about taking place in the game EVE online that is said to have have sparked an ingame player revolt and subsequent war ingame when that game's developers appearently sided with one particular society forming their own empire and tried to have their way with the rest of the players on that game. However in EVE the rebels somehow won. However if this kind of thing is actually going on in PotBS as the rumors are saying I suspect the outcome will be far different as any Dev/Player group empire in PotBS would probablly just ban any who don't just roll over for them left and right as FLS is KNOWN to do.

Commodore John Paul Jones said:
The gameplay, realism, and scope of the Build Mod + the mechanics, graphics, customizing features, and online gameplay of PotBS = the game I am dreaming for.
Click to expand...

Seconded! :yes

A properly moderated BotBS/PotC build mod hybrid is something I'd jump onto in a heartbeat.

Right now on PotC it takes me almost half an hour to an hour to do individual ship and character repaints (depending on the texture complexity) to make my own personal ships and captains. with hit and miss results (especially with characters).

There aren't very many good younger looking male captain types that aren't either Jack Sparrow, William Turner, Blaze Devlin or very generic soldier types to choose from.
Female captains do fare better model wise but still you can only do so many repaints of Beatrice Devlin, Danielle, and the 6 to 8 towngirls before you need some fresh stock.

There's something to be said for the kind of dynamic economy found in PotBS and the more interactive shipbuilding there too.
Collecting shipwright materials (wood, cannons, sailcloth etc) and then building your ship really adds a more personal touch to getting a new ship than just buying one with gold pieces. Also things like randomly spawning warzones, ports changing hands and other unpredictabilities do make for a more interesting gameplay, but we can definately do without all the greifing/ganking, leaderboard p***ing contests and all that other unnecessary drama you find on PotBS.

All in all the PotC build mod and the CoAS GoF mods are by far your bets for all your age of sail seafaring and combat needs. :drunk
 
Well this discussion clinches it for me Mates. I have had POTBS in a box for some time. I loaded it up awhile back, but was having some issues with the handshake (you realize you basically have to deactivate your firewall to play this game) when the Sony Interactive site got hacked and a bunch of personal info was stolen. I was unwilling to take the plunge when that happened. Recently I have been recovering from multiple surgeries and am working on retirement, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I have a super fast connection so wanted to give POTBS another try. After this discussion, I won't even bother wasting my time. I would have joined ages ago if they offered a Dutch faction. I had heard bad things about the lack of historical authenticity and I hated the gay colored sails, but was willing to look the other way. I will save myself the frustration now.

Thanks for the good info. As Thagarr said, our German friends figured out how to activate the multiplayer in their COAS version. One of them is hosting it though. Once I get set up after retirement and start my consulting jobs I will have time to set up a small server farm at my home and may entertain hosting such a capability for US players.

MK
 
I stumbled onto this message in the POTBS forums while looking for something entirely unrelated. This was posted by one of their devs "Fodderboy" last month. It seems that they have been listening to their critics. Noiruru will be happy to hear that they are bringing back 1st and 2nd raters. Sounds like they are fixing a whole lot of things. Seems to me that they must be losing members or not attracting enough new players to make the enterprise worth the effort. The message clearly imparts a desire to make things more authentic and meet the needs of their different types of players. It especially noted the desire to make things better/easier for the new player. Hopefully they will achieve the balance they are looking for.

I still have no plans to play. I've said it before and will say it again that the only way I would play that game is if they would make the WIC faction playable or add a Dutch faction. If they really wanted to be authentic they would have the English Navy flying the combined allied flags. After all in the era they are portraying, William III (Prince Stadtholder of the Netherlands), was also the King of England.

I don't consider the little groups the players have formed under other crowns/servers to be a legitimate Dutch faction. This faction needs to fly the tricolor, the Geus naval jack or the princes flying triple-tri (defense)

Anyway for those who are interested here is the message. MK:

"Now that 2012 is well and truly underway we are excited to let you know what we have planned for the 5th year of Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Philosophically, we have two main goals:

Increase the immersion of the game by trying to bring more elements of the early 18th century.

Layer the game in a way that will improve the game experience for all the different kinds of players we have in our community, (e.g. casual, hardcore, PvE only, PvP only, etc.).

There are sure to be some growing pains to as we work to achieve these goals, but we are confident we can maintain the core elements that established PotBS as the game our veteran players know and at the same time craft a more welcoming experience for new players.

So with our goals established here’s an overview of what we envision for the next year:
The Near Future

2.10

2.10 will be the first milestone build for 2012, and will include Society Warehouses! Societies will be able to build warehouses in multiple ports to facilitate the sharing of items between society members. This has been in the works for a long time, and we are very excited to add this feature to the game.

Other major features planned for 2.10:

The addition of another new ship the Peregrine frigate.

A first pass cleaning up ship outfittings – we will begin to reduce the number of redundant or unused outfittings

Introduction of ship combat level – group strength will use a ship’s combat level in order to better account for a ship’s actual combat strength rather than simply using the level required to captain it.

1st and 2nd Rate Ships of the Line

Another huge feature planned for the early part of the year is the reintroduction of 1st and 2nd rate ships-of-the-line. Yes, you read that correctly.

It is important to note that we are not simply restoring the old first rate recipes to the game, nor are we keeping the ships the same as they were before they were removed; these will be brand new recipes and the ships that they create will be new as well. Any 1st and 2nd rate ships that still remain in the game from before they were removed will be nerfed to compensate for their lack of scarcity, and the new recipes will be introduced in a manner that allows us greater control and oversight regarding their total number in game.

We are of course aware that the previous iterations of these ships had all sorts of problems related both to their relative strength and their over-abundance, and we have spent a lot of time in recent months working out ways to overcome these issues as part of a larger overall plan to rebalance most of the ships in the game. We will update you with more information when we are closer to releasing them back into the wild.
On the Horizon

2.11 will include a lot of economic changes. Most of these changes will involve bringing in some historical elements we feel are necessary to improve overall game play such as a greater distinction in production costs for true military warships compared to civilian merchant ships and those that fall in between. They also involve changes to upkeep and the introduction of new trade elements to the game that will move the economy beyond being purely geared toward ship and consumables production.

One byproduct of these changes is that there will most likely be a greater emphasis on the transportation of goods (i.e. hauling). We understand that for many players this isn’t their favorite component of the economy which means there will be a lot of pressure on us to improve this segment of the game. Since this activity is for the most part exclusively an Open Sea activity we intend to put more focus on making the Open Sea more interactive by re-visiting NPC interaction, creating different levels of risk and reward in transport and in particular an attempt to revisit the entire sinking/surrendering mechanics. Ultimately this will involve re-examining OS PvP rewards with an end goal of having an Open Sea with more action beyond that currently found only in the red.
Over the Horizon

Most of the previously mentioned development goals we have are all geared toward setting the stage for the one item we feel is the most important item on our list of goals for 2012 a complete overhaul of the Conquest system. We feel that while the system functions in its current state it doesn’t function as well as it could, and often leaves many players dissatisfied either by their inability to participate in a meaningful way or in a consistent one. This is a critical issue as we agree with many of our players that Conquest is intended to be the end game and long term playability in PotBS is dependent on it being fun.

It’s difficult to give a comprehensive list of everything we’re going to do in 2012 because things often change as we work through the design and implementation. Some things might get dropped in favor of other ideas that we don’t even know about yet. So bear that in mind when you read the following tentative list of features we plan to work on this year:

Improved tutorials to help new players better understand the game mechanics.

Improved in-game communication tools to help compensate for the fact that we have so many players from so many parts of the world speaking so many different languages.

More work to improve Avcom and boarding action in game.

A culling and cleanup of Avcom gear similar to 2.10’s changes to ship outfittings.

A revamp of the Captain skill sets to feature fewer “magical” skills and more focus on tactical crew and ship management.

A revision of the port battle invite and port governance systems.

Some form of representation of the Crown for each National faction.

Related to above a Royal Navy structure for each National faction.

A true Privateer system with actual letters of marque.

A redefinition of the pirate role in RvR. This is the most ambitious and difficult goal we can envision. It might not be possible but it is something the entire dev team would like to see happen if it can.

And last but not least, we deeply want to improve the value of our Captain’s Club memberships. More than likely this will come in the form of exclusive segments of game features that are accessible only to active Captain’s Club members.

Each one of these items will be fuel for lots of interesting conversations both internally and also with you on our forums. Through the development process for these desired features and modifications we will continue with our roundtable discussions to gather feedback and ideas. We look forward to the coming year’s challenges as we continue the ongoing saga that is Pirates of the Burning Sea.

- Fodderboy – Producer, Pirates of the Burning Sea"

Link: http://www.burningsea.com/page/news/article&article_id=271242
 
I play POTBS now simply because my dumb intel graphics laptop can't handle the Build Mod so I can only play it when I come come every once in a while.
The economy is nice, so is the boarding/land combat with all sorts of different styles, moves, and focuses.
I think that Build Mod is honestly much more visually appealing, the physics of the wind and ocean are better.
Really POTBS can be fun, but it doesn't give the in-depth sailing feel that Build Mod does. When I play Build Mod I get immersed, I almost feel like I am there, with the colonies of 1650 and with Jack Aubrey.
POTBS feels like a game, and just that. In Build Mod I can be entertained just by looking at my schooner on patrol, rising up and down in the waves and it's flag slowly waving. I can go on deck and walk around, navigating through rocks in a violent storm while at the helm. I can go to my captains cabin, visit taverns, pick up wenches, and generally feel very immersed in the world.
In POTBS I can shoot things while arcade sailing, and it looks gamelike rather than immersive.
The only bonus is the multiplayer, but that really just comes down to group mass grinding; sink a fleet, leave, sink a fleet, leave, sink a fleet, leave, and so on.

I'll see how POTBS turns out with these new plans though, as it's the best I have in my current situation. Got a San Fernando, beautiful boat, but I would have rather sailed it in Build Mod.
 
Indeed I have heard of the announced return of 1st and 2nd rates in the upcoming patch 2.10 as well.

However I don't 100% trust this turn of events, given FLSs track record as well as all their talk about how they want to "keep these ships rare" is just ripe for all kinds of unfair gimmicks.

It sounds like they only want to give the "new" recipes to just the select, overprivileged few (maybe just their personal favorites) for all I know.
Also they intend to nerf all the pre-patch 1.26 1st and 2nd rates to "compensate for their lack of scarcity".

I've seen first hand the kind of havoc FLS can wreak with their ship nerfs so I can just imagine the kind of cruel and devastating fate they have in store for my beloved Trinity 2nd rate flagship.
She could easily end up another junk boat statistic and there seems to be no real guarantee that I (as a meer casual PvE type player) will have a fair chance at obtaining the means to replace her if that happens.

They originally took the ships away in a futile attempt to address a problem that is actually community maturity related NOT ship related. The problem they tried to address was fact that the PvP community doesn't tolerate anyone that isn't level 50 and sailing the biggest and most expensive ships their class can have participating in port battles. And for naval officers that Status-Quo eventually became 1st and 2nd rates. However this port battle elitism problem has existed LONG before anyone even sailed 1st or 2nd rates and will NEVER really go away. When they took away 1st and 2nd rates the Status-Quo for the naval officers became the Macedon hunter's 4th rate MoV refit ship, when they nerfed the Macedon the Status-Quo ship then became the Reason naval 4th rate refit.

I also bet their bid to "keep the new 1st and 2nd rates rare" is also bound to fail and/or create other problems ALL community maturity related.

For starters they underestimate the resolve of those willing to work for their prizes, if they have a FAIR means of getting the recipes then those who want them bad enough WILL eventually get them regardless of what extra gimmicks they throw at them and the ships will be common once again.

And if they DO reserve the recipes and deeds for only the overprivileged few then they will succeed in only WORSENING the port battle elitism problem they originally thought they'd somehow solve by removing the ships in the first place, as only members of this exclusive new 1st and 2nd rate recipe owner's club with built ships would end up being welcome in port battles, FURTHER alienating mainstream players from a huge part of the game that all SHOULD have an equal right to participate in but unfortunately don't.

In short FLS has learned NOTHING!
 
Wow i was just looking at old screenies of AOS2 (my cousin gave me his copy when I was little and I loved it! I was too young to understand everything though) Interesting that the Developers of POTBS were inspired by the same thing, shame it went so wrong, shouldve stuck with the Nelsonic Era :urgh Anyways I was thinking how great it would be to have a new game like that, with some features and the feel of the build mod thrown in too, and I discovered that age of sail 2 was based off the storm engine as well! I'm sure some people here knew that, but AOS2 had some features that would be great to have in the build mod (such as historical battles to play right from the main menu) Could be there any compatability between the AOS2 code and the POTC Code for these sorts of things? :hmm ( If so, I still have that Copy of AOS2 to borrow from)
 
Hi folks just stumbled on this today.

I played POTBS for the best part of 2 years then quit shortly after the go live just could not afford the money or the time in the end but by the time the game went live (out of Beta) I have 2 naval offers to lvl 50 2 freetraders to lvl 50 and a Priviteer a complete network to make my own ship and those of my alliance and was making ships to order right up to first rates. When i quit i had a 1st rate Prince with 4 durability a Triumphant 2nd rate and a 3rd rate I also had a couple of the big Frigates. My freetrader used a cross server trade network trading on three servers to get what i needed when i quit the game i had over 30m dubloons and resources to supply myself for another several months.

Now for me starting with early Beta the game was great but the basics of realism were never part of the game and the biggest downer for me was the lack of realistic sails crew responses to damage not being even in the game i tried along with many others to push for the realism element but the arcade feel was given to appeal to the magic lovers out there and to make the game more playable.
 
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