YARR MATEY!!! Welcome to Miagi’s Corner Part IV ye land lubbers! So lets get ready to jump in and strike your colors, ya bloomin' cockroaches!

Oh and the all important question – Why’s the rum gone!?!?!?!?!?

Unlike prior reviews, there will be 2 reviews in some areas, one for naval, one for land. The reason I did this is that there is just that much of a difference between the two, and to accurately critique the game, I feel that it would be best to divvy up the score.

Overview
From Pirates of the Burning Sea's official website:

Graphics (Naval = 8, Land = 7, Overall = 7.5)
The graphics critique is performed using the balanced graphic’s settings and under a DX9 environment.
System being run on:
AMD 4200+ X2 64
2gigs DDR2 800mhz RAM
ATI x1600 Pro 512meg

There are 2 worlds in PotBS, the naval world and the land world. Under the DX9 environment, I am still amazed at the beauty and detail of the ocean, the ship, and the characters aboard the ship. You see the sails as your ship rides over them, you see your crew running up and down the mast lines, repairing the hull, and you can also watch as your ship takes damage. The naval portion is beautifully rendered and it is really a joy on the eyes.



Shadows and reflections are also wonderfully done on the naval portion. Graphically on the water, the graphics are top notch.



Land game’s graphics are more conceptual than realistic. Certain areas are gorgeously done, and most instances the graphics are very pretty. Animation’s of you avatar though are lacking.



Most combat animations are rather simplistic and poorly done, and need a lot of work to them. The dev’s had admitted that avatar combat, graphics, animations were in need of a revamp, but this is because it was added later on. The concept behind PotBS was originally a pure naval game.



Character creation is pretty good, wide variety of clothing and looks (hairstyles, earrings, etc) so it is pretty easy to create a character in your image. And you can at any time go see a NPC and re-cloth your character in new clothing


Sound (Score = 8)

Sound in PotBS is one of it’s stronger points. There is a lot of immersive sounds in game which give you the general feeling of actually being in town or at sea. You can walk by a group of musicians and the music will fade or get louder as you get further/closer to them. You can walk by and hear NPC conversations, and at sea, you can hear the seagulls, the waves, and the crew yelling and chatting.


Performance (Score = 7)

In the beginning, there was severe performance issues and lag. You couldn’t walk anywhere without the dread lag monster hitting you. But near the end of beta, they seemed to get a good handle on things, and there was very little lag at the end. My major gripe is zoning. You zone for everything. Shops, cantinas, quests, battles, everything is instanced. While loading times are fairly short, this can kill some immersion.


Gameplay (Naval = 8, Avatar = 6, Crafting = 9, Overall = 7.7)

Naval Combat is more of a naval simulation. You control how fast you go by dropping more sails or heading into / or against the wind, so real time decisions are needed to devise a strategy. Whether you want to try to outrun a target, or aim for it’s sails to slow them down using a chain ball and targeting their sails, using plain cannon balls and going after the hull, or actually targeting the crew to reduce their numbers, thus leaving them to repair/reload and react slower, or to bring down their numbers so that you may grapple their ship and board them, which would then take you into combat upon their ship.

It’s not just a point and fire type naval combat system, but depending on the ship (54 in game at the moment), you need to adjust your strategy differently. For instance, you in a small frigate would not want to go head to head with say

The naval portion once again shines over the avatar combat, and while described above in the graphics section, still needs a lot of work and tuning.


You can train in a multitude of skills, and each profession has their own specific set. Playing as a privateer and a free trader for the British navy in PotBS, their skills are different in many ways.

There are a total of 45 skills for each Career. The skill trees are composed of 9 skill chains, each 5 skills in depth. A player will be able to reach the end of a single skill chain by Rank 15, and is then considered somewhat equal to a Rank 50 in that skill chain. So you can mix and match your skill chains and go as far into one as you want, or not at all.

There are 3 avatar styles of combat
The three styles are:
One facet of PotBS that really stands out when compared to the current MMO competition is the economy system. The game very much follows the player-driven sandbox model made popular by EVE Online, where everything is player-made. While you can buy some items off NPCs, they are of inferior quality, and are generally not worth bothering with. Instead of using the character to craft different things while grinding up your "crafting skill", you act as a "business tycoon", and just direct the gathering and manufacturing operations.

In practice you manage industries like lumber mills and shipyards and those do the actual manufacturing. Each character is limited to ten plots related to manufacturing, and you can store up to 72 hours of "labor" even while offline, and then use the stored up labor (and doubloons, to pay the wages) to produce things. Manufacturing also ties to trade - each raw material is available only in limited areas, and each nation has its own auction houses for doing business, so there is plenty of lucrative trade to be done between different nations and ports. It remains to be seen if there are any unfixed loopholes, but in general the whole economy and manufacturing system seems very well thought out and complex.


PvP in this game is also very though out, and quite complex, especially the port contention. When a nation would like to take over a port, there are multiple stages which need to occur before city can be taken over.

Port Contention is the system used to determine which nation controls the various ports of the Spanish Main. By completing special PvE missions, killing NPCs around an enemy port, or even dumping goods on a port and unbalancing the economy, nations can accumulate 'contention points.' When one nation has accumulated enough points, the port goes into contention.

The early stage of port contention is reflected in the creation of a Pirate PvP zone. This zone is shown on the minimap as a circular area around the given port, letting all players know this area is contested. Pirates (and Privateers with the right skills) are free to attack any of the other nations in PvP combat, but the 3 nations cannot attack each other. In this stage the defending nation can counter the contention and return the port to normal. If they fail to do so, the Port Contention goes to the next step.

In the second stage, a smaller, open PvP zone is created around the port. This is also reflected on the minimap and known to all players. In this zone any nation can attack any other nation. Like the Pirate PvP zones, there is a chance that this area will overlap nearby ports, forcing careful travelers to chose their path if they wish to avoid combat.

Finally, a Battle Royale takes place to determine if the port is going to change hands. Twenty Four players are chosen for each side. Players who earned the most contention points have a higher chance of being selected to represent their nation. The Battle Royale is an instanced 25 v. 25 massive ship battle. Whichever side wins takes control of the port.

Any nation (England, France, Spain) that wins a Battle Royale takes control of the port instantly and the port returns to a normal state of things. If the Pirates win the Battle Royale, they loot the port for a few days, after which they sail off and the port returns to the control of the nation that they originally stole it from.

Taking over a port gives you access to the industry and resources in the area, as well as provide an area of influence and combat staging area’s for future campaigns.


Quests in the beginning are very VERY linear, but as you open up and get higher in skill levels, the game becomes much more of a sandbox. You are given a lot of freedom later on. One I noticed was with freetrader. I saw that you could specialize in production of certain goods, such as cannons, ammo, sails, etc, buying and seliing resources, or smuggling (yes you CAN smuggle between nations).


Controls/Interface (Naval = 8, Avatar = 5, Overall = 6.5)

The controls in the naval combat are quite good. You can either control your ship and combat from you mouse, using sliders and buttons, or you can use the more common WASD and spacebar for controls and firing. Both of which are easy to use. The avatar controls seem a bit clunky and awkward, and if you care used to EQ2/WoW style of mouse camera action….beware. A lot of times you use the right mouse button to look around and then click on the left mouse button to move in EQ2, but in PotBS, if you do this, the camera snaps back to its original position and you run the original direction and not the one you were facing. There are a couple other little annoyances with the avatar combat controls, but I think they will get fixed / cleaned up fairly quickly once it goes live.

The interface is very clean, and easy to use…minimal clutter on the screen. You can have multiple toolbars, with a menu next to it. So if you need to switch between naval and avatar combat skills, or have a bar set up for items and other things, you quickly go to the menu button to the right of the hotbars and look for the name of the bar you made and quickly switch over.


Community (Score = 8)

The community in the game actually seems quite mature, and is a nice breath of fresh air from say the communities in Tabula Rasa and WoW (no offense to those who like these games, just the community seems god awful to me in those 2). There is the occasional “OMG this game sux the big one!!11” but overall, its quite a pleasant atmosphere.


Customer Service (Score = 6)

The actual CSRs I cannot comment on, but the patching and downloading via the launcher had issues with patches, and the actual game, which took me 6 hours to DL, turned out to be corrupted and had to download it in a series of parts. I HATE wasting time J The devs also seem fairly active on the official forums, so they do give out a lot of information.


Roleplaying Value (Score = 7)

Lots of emotes and tools to succumb to most of your roleplaying needs. Emotes are both visual, text and moods, and your character can change clothing at whim. My only gripe with the roleplaying value is the lack of housing and guild halls (which will be addressed in future publishes according to FLS…wooot)
Here is a concise list of emotes I found thus far (grey = visual emote)




Other (Score = 8)

The developers are really letting the playerbase get down to dictating the game. From everything to the economy, pvp, ports, to finer details such as the sails and flags on your ship (which you can submit to actually appear IN GAME for your characters).


Overall (Score = 7.3)

A pretty darn good MMO. If you are looking for a change of pace from the traditional orcs and goblins, and are a history buff, and if you liked Sid Meyer’s Pirates! Your going to love Pirates of the Burning Sea, the first “AAA” naval MMORPG. The shining points in this game are:
-100% player run economy
-Nation vs Nation combat and port control
-Roleplaying features
-And of course, Naval Combat! (/end Mortal Kombat voice)


Miagi’s Deep Thoughts

The community and genre of this game are definitely a breath of fresh air. If they get avatar combat working to the level and detail that you have in the naval combat, this game could be absolutely kick ass. My only concern is that this will be a niche game, and not developed to please the masses like WoW is. This is a double edged sword, and only the future can tell how well this game is received.

Though I think with the number of servers FLS is launching with, they are being a tad ambitious, but I could be wrong.

/shakes magic 8 ball

"Cannot predict now"