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Plundering the free seas: Pirates of the Burning Sea dev talks about F2P
Curious about how a subscription-based MMO makes the transition to a free-to-play model? It's not as easy as one might assume, and Pirates of the Burning Sea was no exception. In a recent devlog, PotBS's Misha takes us behind the stage to look at the logistical details and hurdles that had to be taken for this jump between business models. While the team had been mulling over a microtransaction model from the beginning, it was only after a lot of discussion with SOE that the publisher showed the team a way this could be implemented. Following that, the team had to tackle several tricky issues, such as expired trial accounts, boxes still in the stores and all of the subscription types it had in place. Next, the team ran the system through quite a bit of testing to iron out the snags. "Those who helped us test F2P in the early days will recall pets on their own little boats in the midst of battle, trying desperately to help out. You could zoom in and see a pig or chicken standing in a commanding position overlooking their hardworking crews. This bug is one of my favorite ever, and I'm still a little sad that we fixed it." It wasn't just the software that needed to be tested but also the physical setup. At one point, Misha writes, "For whatever reason, we were suffering hardware failure after hardware failure." While the F2P transition was slated for Thanksgiving 2010, it failed to hit the date. "We hit a major issue on our side and SOE hit a major snag on their side. So, no Thanksgiving F2P. On the one hand, we were really discouraged that we hadn't met our target. On the other hand, we were incredibly glad we had tackled these issues before we went live," she writes. Eventually Pirates of the Burning Sea "soldiered through it all" and made it to the live servers, much to the team's delight. For a full rundown of this saga and the true tale of commanding pigs, head on over to Pirates of the Burning Sea.
Pirates of the Burning Sea to introduce 'Roleplay Rooms' in upcoming patch
Pirates of the Burning Sea is a bit of a departure from some of the other MMO titles on the market since its setting is rooted in history rather than built upon pure fantasy. Given this backdrop, it stands to reason that some players would enjoy logging in for some anachronistic 1700's-era roleplaying in Pirates of the Burning Sea as privateers and pirates. Flying Lab Software has decided to give PotBS's roleplayers a dedicated venue for their player-run events, "Roleplay Rooms", which is the subject of a devlog written by Xenobia. The devlog is all about the repurposing of old interiors; some altered color and texture here, a motif changed there, and you've got spaces ready to be used solely for RP events. It seems simple, but these changes proved to be tricky in some cases given the objects incorporated into such rooms, and Xenobia describes how the interior revamps were done, illustrated with before and after shots. Check out Xenobia's "Roleplay Rooms" devlog for more info about this feature that's coming to national capitals in patch 1.16.
Pirates of the Burning Sea takes bold step to curb mission farming
The latest devlog for Pirates of the Burning Sea is written by Lum and focuses on improving the game's mission system, particularly fixing the problem of mission farming. Lum writes, "When we create big mission arcs, we design them to be a fun, engaging, and most importantly, a linear experience. We want players to get a sense of story and to do something interesting. We also want to reward players who accomplish the goals for those missions." He says that mission farming and the in-game monetary rewards aren't necessarily the problem, although it's not what the devs had in mind for players. Lum says that since people stop to repeat the most lucrative parts of a given mission arc, they're not experiencing the game as it was intended for the players. Even worse, some players make faction choices on the basis of how lucrative a certain mission with that faction is. Flying Lab Software wants to change missions in Pirates of the Burning Sea so that players are continually progressing through stories rather than motivated to remain in place to reap the gold harvest.%Gallery-12977%
Lineage 2 talks aerial combat arena and changes to the olympiad coming with Gracia Final
Aerial combat is cool and all, but wouldn't you like a PvP gametype to go with it? Of course you would, and now you don't have to wait too long!Lineage 2's last expansion on the Gracia continent, Gracia Final, will be adding a brand new aerial combat PvP arena to the world, as well as making some changes to the olympiad event. The Aerial Cleft, the new PvP arena, will pit players against one another as they race to shatter crystal cores and score points for their side. To the victors go special Emery shards that can be combined with Star Stone pieces to create attribute cores to change your class up.As for the olympiad, now you can participate in teams of three instead of one on one! Also, the olympiad event will now reward olympiad tokens upon winning, so victors can spend their tokens for the equipment of their choice at the olympiad vendor.The full developer log is included after the break, so continue reading for the full explanation of the events from the words of the developers themselves! Also, check out our screenshots of the expansion in the gallery below.%Gallery-50892%
Pirates to get more RvR love from Flying Lab Software
Pirates are always the underdogs in MMOs, aren't they? That seems to be the case in Pirates of the Burning Sea, where the Pirate nation has been at a disadvantage with the game's Conquest system. While their ports can't be controlled (permanently) by another nation, they're likewise unable to keep the ports they conquer. The latest devlog from Flying Lab's Lum is titled Pirates and Conquest and addresses this disparity between the Pirate nation and all other nations in the game. One solution they plan to implement is increasing the four points that Pirates gain by capturing a port to five. Lum explains, "Currently, Pirates get four points every time they Raid a port, while Nationals get 10. This means that for a Pirate to keep pace with Nationals, they have to win three port battles in order to get the same amount of points. Since every nation can only attack three ports at a time, this means that Pirates would always have to have their maximum amount of attacking ports at all times, and then they have to win all of those battles." Ouch. However, by increasing their capture points to five, Pirates will only have to win two battles and won't need to maintain constant port attacks to stay on par with other nations.
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New Empyrean Age devlog explains the lack of alliance support in factional warfare
There is a mothership crashing into an enemy station, a distraught news caster, and a frightened mob in a video that marks the beginning of factional warfare for Empyrean Age. Fans of EVE Online have been waiting years for the release of factional warfare. However, something is missing from the conflict that is causing a few outbursts and even some rather large explosions. Players were informed that alliances are not allowed to participate in the factional warfare.EVE Online has many alliances, and some of them shifted their fire towards CCP when word reached players that their alliance had to sit this one out. The hail of rocket fire caused Greyscale to hop onto the forums and post a response to some of the concerns. Within the post were a few key notes: Alliances will not dominate factional warfare and their exclusion encourages players not in an alliance to participate Alliances, mechanically speaking, cannot receive standings from factions Role playing guidelines dictate that the major factions do not want alliance politics meddling in their affairs The alliance and factional warfare devlog by Greyscale is still causing ammo to ping off the sides of the CCP flagship, but at least there is an explanation. Capsuleers, especially some of the veterans and alliance members, remain a bit uneasy about the rule. Pilots are encouraged and welcomed by Greyscale to offer their suggestions on the EVE forums, so feel free to toss in your two isk!
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Class changes coming in PotBS Patch 1.4
Ahoy mates! With all of the server changes and patch discussions coming out of Pirates of the Burning Sea, we thought we'd bombard you with some more useful information. PotBS skills are going to get overhauled and the changes will soon be upon us. Pirate, naval officer, privateer, or free trader, PotBS patch 1.4 is going to change the way we sail the seven seas.The changes are being broadcast in the form of several devlogs. So far, the privateer and the naval officer skills are receiving a bit of a spring cleaning. Each has had their skills shuffled around a bit to appeal to players who have had common complaints concerning their trees. For example, sanctioned piracy for the privateer is now a free skill at level 15! There is nothing better than receiving a free letter of marque from the monarch for tossing cannon balls and looting gold. The swabbing of the poop deck, so to speak, is coming soon, so be sure to read the PotBS patch 1.4 devlogs for info on your profession of choice!
AoC dev blog update looks at the polishing process
The latest entry in Age of Conan lead designer Ole Herbjornsen's 1UP Blog discusses, in quite some detail, the process of optimizing and polishing the game using the "tools of the trade". His emphasis is on the fact that this cleaning up is done on both the code and data, not just one or the other, and often both at once.Along the way to arriving at this point, Herbjornsen lists off a number of scary sounding developer tools, like "showmeshid" and "occluder monsters". The reassuring explanation of the especially frightening occluder monsters is that they are flat rectangles with a very low polygon count, that can be spawned in the game world, and are used to test (among other things) how a system's frame rate is affected when they block out certain parts of a picture. Check out the blog for more of Herbjornsen's interesting developer antics.
Captain skills tuning for all classes in PotBS build 1.2
A recent devlog at the Pirates of the Burning Sea site talks about the changes that are coming to captain skills (your at-sea arsenal) with build 1.2. It looks like every single class will have changes of some sort coming. These will be in the form of global changes to certain types of skills, and changes specific to each class in the game. The global changes include: stopping speed buffs from stacking, reducing the morale cost of skills that cancel upon taking damage, and the addition of crew recovery rate increases and decreases to some existing skills.The remaining changes coming to skills in build 1.2 are too numerous to list here, but we'll go over some of the highlights.
PotBS devlog looks at Open Sea Battle placement in 1.2
The way things currently are when engaging in an open sea battle in Pirates of the Burning Sea, players can often be dumped miles away from each other inside the private battle instance, even if they were very close when going in. This is one of the problems that is going to be fixed in build 1.2, and a devlog on the official site has gone over the planned changes.Little fixes to the system never seemed to solve the problem satisfactorily, so an entire overhaul was necessary. The old system placed people relative to one point in the center, but in 1.2, a closer version of the positioning on the open sea will be seen inside the instance, due to new spawn point tracking. Additionally, the angle of attack will now only be measured upon the initial strike, and not for each new person entering, so that it won't be possible to have a circle of ships spawn on one unlucky victim. The system that decides how far back you will be placed when you join a battle late has been tweaked, to stop people being dumped in a random spot when the intended area would have been invalid, and there will also be a few more options you can set for auto-joining a battle. Read more about these new features for build 1.2 via the link below.
Devlog for PotBS looks at ship tuning and new ships in build 1.2
The Pirates of the Burning Sea site has published a new devlog to do with the upcoming build 1.2, and this time around we're treated to details on some of the ship tuning that can be expected with the patch. There will be some global changes to make scouts a bit faster than they are, and some ships that have light top-deck batteries will see these guns move up a weight class or two. Most warships will also have their deceleration and turning deceleration multipliers increased, as a fully outfitted warship has been more maneuverable than intended.Apart from the global changes, there are some changes to specific ships as well. You can visit the devlog to see what happens to each of these, but the ships being tuned in some way are: the Arcadia, the Mignone, the Oliphant, the Cerberus, the Mystique Polacre, the Raa, the Myrmidon, the Tigre, the Capricieux, the Corsair, the Hercules, the Deliverance and the Defiant. Phew! Finally, a bunch of brand new ships will be introduced with 1.2, including the first high-level ship that can run against the wind effectively. Check out the full details at the devlog.
PotBS devlog discusses the art of town creation
There's a lot more to building a town in a game than just plotting out the buildings and filling in key NPCs. You can leave it at that (and it's unfortunate when that's the case), but to stop it from feeling like a ghost town, certain steps can be taken to build up the ambiance of a locale. The latest devlog available at the Pirates of the Burning Sea website is penned by the game's technical artist Xenobia, and focuses on the process of breathing life into the many port towns in the Caribbean.Some of the curious little events you might notice in PotBS's towns could probably be attributed to Xenobia. A woman kicking and screaming while being taken away over the shoulder of a pirate, drunks in various stages of consciousness -- things like this are of no consequence and will keep going in the background regardless of whatever else is happening, yet they greatly enhance the feeling that you're in an actual town. Visit the devlog to see what goes on behind the scenes -- including how it all looks in the Maya software -- when bringing a game-town to life.
Champions Online promises lots and lots of adrenaline
A second devlog over at the Champions Online official site gives a little glimpse of what we can expect to find ourselves playing once this new superhero MMO hits our hard disk drives. Titled, "Furious Action, Off-the-Charts Adrenaline" Our initial impression was to put on a gas-mask and some fly-fishing boots in preparation. However, after reading through the article our demeanor softened -- just a little. It's a bit reassuring to know that there are still developers out there willing to take some risks in the design of their games. They seem to have gone with an all out action-sounding combat system, where players don't use an auto-attacks or recharge abilities. Beyond that it's pretty vague, so we're left to the guessing game.
Morality plays a part in Stargate Worlds' quests
Cheyenne Mountain's Chris Klug served another dev diary to RPG Vault. This is the third such diary, and it continues the work that the previous entry began -- an exposition on Stargate Worlds' quest and storytelling philosophies.Klug describes a mission he had worked on in Earth & Beyond, in which players were forced to make a critical moral choice. Apparently Stargate Worlds' missions will follow a similar formula. This sounds a bit like what you'd find in Mass Effect, but it's (apart from Earth & Beyond) not something we've seen much in MMOs. Tabula Rasa claims to involve some choices like that, but that's about it.Klug promises to go into more detail later, but for now, the diary doesn't have much. This is what we've come to expect from Cheyenne -- frequent, tiny drops of information.
PotBS beta devlog: Ships of the Line
A new beta devlog has been posted to the Pirates of the Burning Sea site. The topic of discussion is the powerful Ships of the Line (SOLs) and some very large changes to how they will play out in the future. The initial SOL concept was to make these ships extremely difficult and costly to obtain, but in turn they would be able to turn the tide of a battle due to their immense power. In actual implementation during closed beta, only half of this was fulfilled: they were much easier to get than intended and people were churning them out.Now that the game is in open beta, the changes that have been made to SOLs bring them back in line with the original concept. They will cost a lot more to make, and the items required to build them will vary in level, meaning that lower level players can contribute to the construction. Another change is that the difference in cost between Fourth, Third, Second, and First Rate SOLs has been increased. Because they were previously similar in cost, people would skip straight to the First Rate SOL, which really unbalanced things. Now there will be a bigger cost variance between these ranks of SOL, and the First Rate will be very expensive to fix after being damaged, making it a major decision on whether to bring one to a battle, or to stick with the less powerful but less expensive versions.All of these changes have implications for various classes in the game. For example, the SOLs are one of the main reasons to become part of the Navy, so of course, this changes things for them in a big way. The full beta devlog has information on how the Navy will be altered with respect to the SOL updates, and how it will affect others as well.
First STO in-game screenshot released
In the past, Star Trek Online devlogs have been light on gameplay information. Perpetual's Mike Stemmle usually writes about the development team, concept art, and things of that nature. But this time it's different. Not only does Devlog #5 include juicy details about interacting with NPCs, but it also includes the very first in-game screenshot. Sweet!We can learn a couple of things from this screenshot. First of all, the graphics are neither cutting edge nor outdated; they're right in the middle. This is arguably a sweet spot for MMOs. Second, the LCARS influence can be seen on the UI, but it's not overt. In fact, it's barely there. We do find it a bit alarming that the game features a standard MMO "1 through =" action bar -- a tired convention that's begging for innovation.As far as the NPC interaction stuff goes, though, it all sounds good.
STO devlog 4.0 reveals nothing except the dev team's geekiness
Star Trek Online news is still sparse. We've heard nothing since we read the third devlog over a month ago. Now the fourth devlog is out, and it completely lacks new information about the game itself. However, it does eliminate any fears you might have had that the team at Perpetual Entertainment were not true Star Trek fans. We already assumed they were. After all, they're computer programmers and/or sci-fi artists. Plus, they're making a Star Trek MMO.The individual members of the development team answered questions like, "What's your fondest Star Trek-related memory" and "If you could bring one character from the Star Trek universe into Star Trek Online, who would it be?" The latter of those was the most amusing question. "We got a lot of requests for Q, Data, and Khan," the devlogger writes. "That explosion you just heard was the design team's brains trying to figure out how to integrate two dead guys and an omnipotent space god into the game."Indeed. As for the omnipotent space god, though, we think Richard Garriott might have a big enough ego to roleplay the part. Just a thought!
Star Trek Online devlogs explore strange new world-building techniques
If you've been following Star Trek Online, then you know we get the sweetest little tastes of information in Perpetual's monthly devlogs. This month's devlog is about game art -- specifically, putting together different building-block pieces of it to form a variety of locales. This is appropriately demonstrated with pieces of a Vulcan town -- "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," get it?While that's (Vulcan voice) fascinating, the highlights of the devlog are arguably the little bits of concept art. Most if it is Vulcan stuff, but devlogger Mike Stemmle did toss in the above-pictured TOS Doomsday Machine. If you're a real Trekkie, that bit alone should make the wait unbearable. We're trying our best to be patient and to not let Perpetual's Gods & Heroes self-destruction get to us. To quote Spock, "you must have faith that the universe will unfold as it should."[Via Warcry]
