02/27/2008    |    Devlog    |    DrewC    |    Discuss

One of the things we’re most proud of in Pirates of the Burning Sea is our ship to ship PvP. We feel that we have created a deep, enjoyable system for player versus player combat, with interesting and complex battle possibilities. Unfortunately our PvP has some fairly significant barriers to entry. The biggest of these is that you’re risking your ship every time you go out. While we like this risk, and the context and meaning it gives to our PvP, it’s a bit daunting, especially for new players. In light of that we’re adding a couple of new systems to help ease new players into the PvP experience: duels and skirmish battles.

Duels are fairly straightforward: you and another player agree to a no risk ship fight. Both of you must be in a town when the battle starts (though you can be in different towns), and you join the battle in the ship you are currently sailing, with the outfitting you currently have equipped. You and your opponent enter a private instance and have at it. All the normal ship combat rules apply, but when you’re sunk your ship does not lose a point of durability and retains all of its outfitting. Cannon ammunition you expend is still gone, and if you choose to use consumables you don’t get them back, but you cannot lose your ship. At the end of the battle you’re returned to the port from which you entered the battle.

The goal here is simple, we want you to be able to try out PvP without having to risk the ship you worked so hard to get. That includes trying out new strategies and builds intended for the real thing, so you will be able to duel against players from your own nation, as well as other nations. We think that duels will go a long way towards making PvP accessible, and will also be quite a bit of fun. Our current target is to have duels available to you in the 1.3 patch.

But we’re not stopping there. The next big step is the Skirmish system. The Skirmish system takes the idea of a duel one, or seven, steps further. Where duels are quick, no risk, one on one battles, Skirmish battles allow players to set all of those variables, and more, themselves.

The Skirmish system, at its core, functions similar to the lobby system of a first person shooter. Players can create games, set a wide variety of options and modifiers on that game, and then post that game to a list of all available games on the server. Other players can search that list, find a game that looks interesting and join the lobby for that game. Once everyone in the game lobby is ready, the player who created the Skirmish can start the battle.

There will be a wide variety of options available to the battle creator: different maps, limits on the numbers of players, limits on level, limits on ship size, and so on. But the most exciting option is ship loss. By default Skirmish battles function like duels: no ship loss, no PvP rewards (no exp, no loot, no MoV). However, you have the option of creating a Skirmish battle with a little more risk, one where you can lose your ship. Why would you do that? Because if you’re taking the risk, you also reap the rewards: experience and Marks of Victory. We have a few additional rewards planned for our PvP risk takers, but we’re not quite ready to announce those, yet.

The other big option for Skirmish battles are the variant battle types. This option is still very much in development, but conceptually variant battle types give you the option to create Skirmishes with goals beyond ‘kill everyone on the other team’. In an FPS this would be things like capture the flag and king of the hill. Those battle types don’t work quite as well in the context of our ship combat, but we’re working on creating some variants that do. We’re not ready to talk about details of how those variants will work, but you can expect to see a devlog talking about them as we move closer to the release of the Skirmish system.

As the Skirmish system is a massive new system, with lots of code work and moving pieces, it’s possible that some of the options I described above will not make it into the initial release of the system. In fact, it’s possible some of them will be cut entirely if testing shows them to be exploitable or, worse, not fun. We don’t have a rock solid time frame for the Skirmish system, but currently it looks like you can expect to get your hands on the first iteration in patch 1.5.

So that’s our plan to make PvP accessible to a wider range of players. These new systems are not going to replace the existing PvP gameplay in Pirates, and we will continue to add to and improve the Conquest experience for everyone. However, we think these system will provide a gateway for players new to PvP to get involved in it, and a way for experienced PvPers to have a little low intensity fun.

02/27/2008    |    Devlog    |    DrewC    |    Discuss