09/17/2008    |    Devlog    |    FLS_Pramas    |    Discuss

Just about two years ago I joined Flying Lab as a world designer. I came out of the tabletop game industry, having worked on pen and paper roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The format was a little different but the goal of producing great games with compelling stories was the same.

The content team had a pretty lofty goal back then: 1,000 playable missions at launch. It was even more ambitious when you consider that the avatar combat system was still in development when I joined FLS. We were creating swashbuckling missions back then with these placeholders that said “avatar combat here.” In the end though we got it done and populated the Caribbean with towns, NPCs, and missions that would take characters from 1st to 50th level.

This summer I was promoted to become Flying Lab’s creative director. I am now in charge of the developing story of Pirates of the Burning Sea, which as I’m sure you know is a many-tentacled beast. We have four nations, dozens of factions, hundreds of NPCs, and thousands of missions. That’s a lot to keep track of.

Many people at the Penny Arcade Expo asked me where we’d be taking Pirates of the Burning Sea and that’s a fair question. What I’m working on now is a short-term plan and a long-term plan.

In the short-term we’ve been looking for gaps in the game that need to be filled. One thing we noticed in the months since the game’s launch is that it wasn’t always clear where to go to get more missions. Some people would finish the missions in the starting area and then not know where to go next, which is why I recently wrote some new missions that make that transition easier. We’ve also added the Broadsheet Peddler to the high-level towns. This canny fellow can assess your character and tell you where to find more missions appropriate to your level and nation. In Milestone 8 we added a bunch of new daily missions to counteract the grinding some folks have been engaged in. You can do these once a day and each one offers a different tactical challenge.

As for the long-term, that’s what we’re debating internally right now. We are tossing around a lot of ideas, but we have not finalized anything yet. That being the case, this is an excellent time for you, the captains of the Burning Sea, to let us know what you’d like to see coming up. Would you like a new epic story? More supernatural content? A new playable faction? New vistas to explore? At FLS we really value community feedback, so let us know what you think on the forums.

The Burning Sea has many stories left to tell and we’re just getting started.

09/17/2008    |    Devlog    |    FLS_Pramas    |    Discuss