So, like I said a week or so ago, I had planned on picking up Pirates of the Burning Sea. I am a huge fan of pirates and, as such, it only made sense for me to at least give the game a shot, right? Now I am here, I have been playing the game for about 3 days (I have been super busy this week) and I am starting to get curious as to whether or not other players feel the same things as I do about the game. I guess I’ll start from the top.
First, let me start by saying: Pirates of the Burning Sea is a refreshing take on MMORPGs. The game can be a whole lot of fun at times. This is all, of course, without mentioning the jaw-droppingly beautiful graphics. Seriously, sometimes after a ship battle with some NPCs I’ll just float around some looking at the water and sunset. It is a very nice touch, and one that, I think, breathes life into the game. Suffice it to say, I think that Pirates of the Burning Sea has nailed down all of the ship combat and movement. So what would I change from here?
Well the first, and most important thing I’d change about PotBS is the avatar design. Seriously, they look lifeless and generally give me the feel that they are stringed puppets. Sometimes, if I look closely enough I can almost convince myself that I see the strings. . . This is a very serious concern for the game, not because avatar movement/combat is a huge part of the game (it’s not), but rather because the developers have seen it fit to introduce the player to the game by starting him/her out as an avatar. Not a good idea, in my opinion, with those avatars. This also goes without saying that the avatar combat needs a general reworking as well.
In addition to the avatars, and their combat, the towns are also mostly abysmal. They are quiet, empty, and very much dead. I don’t mean there aren’t a lot of players there either. The starting town I was at had a bunch of other gamers inside and yet the town still felt dead. It could have been a Hollywood set for all I could see. When I say dead, I mean the NPCs don’t have much of a presence there. Now, I really hate to compare this game to World of Warcraft, really I do, but I have to go with what I know. In WoW, you’ll often notice that a lot of the towns have a whole lot of flare and presence. You’ll see guards on patrol, NPCs randomly roaming around yelling stuff out, and sometimes even fighting amongst the NPCs. It makes the towns feel alive, and it was one of my favorite aspects of WoW. I could be in a town with no other gamers and yet still not feel alone. In PotBS, I always feel like I am by myself. Of course I haven’t been to most of the towns so this could vary from place to place.
Well, that’s about it. There are some smaller things that I’d change if I could, but they really don’t require elaborating here. Like I said before, the game nails down the ship combat/movement, and even the economy is pieced together very well, as long as you are able to understand it. However, and I stand by this, one of the main things that is going to hold PotBS back is their avatar gameplay. While it’s not the main focus of the game, itself, it is still a big enough part of the game that it will cause a negative impact amongst new players. So please, Flying Labs, let’s get cracking on some fine tuning for that aspect of the game.
What would you like to change about Pirates of the Burning Sea? Let’s here it!
I only played the beta a little and was annoyed by a number of things. The most glaring to me was the instancing. Instance after instance after instance. Buildings in town. Instanced. Quests, also instanced. Random fights on the open seas. Hey, somehow those are instanced as well. What you want more? How about an instance inside an instance? And even better, an instance inside another instance that you have to hop into and out of a dozen times just to learn how to build a damn lumber mill!
Extremely poor game design as far as that goes.
The area is way too small. I can sail from the Atlantic coast of Georgia to Louisiana in 10 minutes with my starter ship. It didn’t feel like going anywhere was actually an adventure.
The land-based quests are pitiful. I stopped accepting those after finishing the first one.
Ship combat was fun. But the fact that you cant happen upon a battle in-progress and choose to aid one side or the other is lame. Perhaps if the gaming area were bigger than a medium sized lake, it wouldn’t be an issue since you wouldn’t be happening across combats in progress every other minute.
Great game concept. Good job on the ship combat. But many of their design decisions just left me feeling annoyed and disappointed.