181

We managed it with 4 last night, but we had 2 lvl 21’s.

With 5 people its cake, leave two to defend the fort, and your hardest hitters to kill the fleet fast. Unless your over the level req’s you really want 5-6 people. Also note having one person with all speed mods and boarding the ships as fast as possible helps, whilst the other two use chain shot to slow them all down.

182

Ship outfitting and comparison web/java tool.

http://www.exchangeguild.com/potbs2.php

183

I’ve encountered a potential issue - I stress potential because I haven’t spent much time in RvR games before so this is new to me. The Realm v. Realm setup means that certain Societies will be seen as more representative of their Nation than others. Diplomacy will be a bit of a mess as nobody can guarantee any agreement made with another side beyond what one Society will do. If one Society in a Nation turns out to be real troublemakers (in a bad way not a fun way) it tends to reflect on the whole Nation.

In Eve Online every association and relationship between players and groups of players was in the players hands. War, peace, trade and alliance. Here we’re entirely subject to the whims of fate as to who moves in next door with no National options to seperate us from their dealings.

It’s not as if we can switch our characters, intact, to other nations on the same server and if only one server suits our needs (say an unofficial roleplaying server) we’re pretty screwed. Even if that’s not the case, after grinding through a character or two is anyone going to want to start from scratch somewhere else?

Eve lets you roll with losses, determine your own friends, enemies and establish your own reputation. Here, you don’t have that luxury at all.

184

That’s always been my concern with ‘forced’ sides. Half the time you hate your own team more than the supposed enemy!

185

This is the one part I think you are expecting too much from. There will always be bad apples in any nation. But I think you are overestimating RvR. This is not like Eve, it’s more like DAOC with ships (and an extra nation.) I would highly suspect you’ll see less formal agreements (aka Eve alliances) and more pound-the-little-guy techniques instead. Don’t get me wrong, the Eve system would work well here too. But this is less about alliances, and more about hard defined national territories. Lets face it, nobody wants BoB part two here.

One thing I would like to see though is more formal society tools that ARE similar to Eve. Not really wardecs per se, but something that can initiate wars further than just nation vs. nation. In general I find the game’s society tools very lacking. It almost pushes people toward solo play en masse.

186

Ok, damn… I know DHL will get stuff to me here, but does anyone know of an online store which will have PotBS that will ship DHL to odd corners of the Pacific??

187

I haven’t yet had a chance, and am currently out of town, and so plundering from behind a different network (which works perfectly).

Once I play around a bit and decide I actually have something to report (e.g. that updating my router doesn’t fix it) I’ll fill out a support ticket.

188

Assuming Mysterio makes it as we spoke earlier, that puts our little group to 10 in size. In addition, I put a post up on the PotBS boards as well with most of our character names. Everyone here will be highest rank, anyone else we add can be lowest or 2nd rank (no idea what the differences are). I’m excited to see our numbers as grouping has been a LOT of fun, particularly taking down the Mississippi galleon last night.

189

No need to assume! Once I craft my character, I’ll be sending ya a /tell or mail asking for an invite. So you best be on! :-)

Does anyone else’s cursor (the triangular pointer) scroll very slowly? If it’s not already in the game (I and others couldn’t find it!), this game really needs a Mouse Sensitivity setting. It’s already been mentioned on the PotBS forums.

190

By the way just, just a note to let you know I’m still around, I rolled an alt pirate yesterday to help power level a friend who I talked into pre-ordering as well. So I think I now have:
Possum Joe - 15
Haytred Incarnate - 12

I was also crashing pretty badly yesterday, my 8800 GT should run the game fine but I get pretty random crashes that sometimes lock me up completely. I noticed a patch this morning, I hope it will help with some of that, it’s getting really annoying. It seems to be mostly 8000 series Nvidia getting bitched about in the support forums. And I didn’t know this morning but there are some issues with running full FSAA and AF which I might have enabled. At any rate, another great time with the game yesterday, I’m interested to see how well the servers handle the go-live on Tuesday though.

191

I’ve got a Nvidia Go card and I’ve had lockups and lag problems too (which may or may not be related). Oddly, those are all fairly recent. It was only really bad yesterday for some reason.

192

I finally got it installed. Woo! Just before they are going to take the servers down for tuesday’s launch. I don’t have a pirate’s luck I’ll tell ya.

Anyway, in my impatience I made a character named Ali Mony. She’s a level 1 pirate on the Bonny server. I’ll be making another pirate for mucking around with called Ad Hominem thanks to Erik. Though I like the cut of Ms. Mony’s coat, so I’ll probably be sticking with her as my main.

I’ve just played through the tutorial, but the interface is kind of confusing. Important parts of it feel a bit too spread out and the tutorial is pretty minimal. Still, me wants to get my yar on and seeing my crew on my ship while blasting away the Rats (hehe) was pretty exciting. The water does look pretty poor from a distance, but up close near your ship it isn’t bad. I don’t know what’s up with that, maybe it just doesn’t tile well. I get these weird stripes across the water sometimes, not sure if that’s an unintentional artifact or not.

Edit: Quick Question: Do the classes branch at all? I’ve got 6 character slots, but being a pirate I can’t select anything else. It seems like they should have made subclasses for the pirate, like “Smuggler” or something. Can I make two pirates that are relatively distinct as far as how they play and the bonuses they get?

193

Pirates just kinda mush all the other classes together. You’ll get a little bit of everything. Smuggling is one of the pirate skill trees.

Erik J.

194

After playing a pirate, trust me you can spec one very differently. They are kind of like WoW’s druid class. You can do so much it ends up being very flexible overall.

Probably the biggest thing to get over in the game is that despite the class being called Pirate, it doesn’t mean they are a PvP only class. To be honest, any class can be PvP and good or bad depending on skill selection (although FT’s would be a weak offering I think.) I do, however, look forward to capturing a few nice player ships. Yarrr!

195

Now how exactly does that work? I understand the RvR PvP, but I don’t uderstand the actual PvP style of play. Can any pirate just come along and attack me if I’m in a non Civilian ship?

196

No, and in fact, Pirates are no different from the other classes they have the same basic rules of PvP (below.) Note that the port part has been disabled in the pre-boarding this week so we’ll see all this stuff start to play out tomorrow when they go live. I guess more info will be had then:

  1. If you have your PvP flag set (done manually.) Very similar to WoW on a blue server, but you can only “flag on” from inside a port, then set sail to find a fight and “flag off” again in another port.
  2. If you are in an area/town under current contention. (see below)

On that last item, Wikipedia gives this:

Port Contention

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.

Pirate PvP Zone

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.

Open PvP Zone

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.

Battle Royale

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.

197

Well I’m really enjoying it so far, the visuals are just incredible. I saw the sexiest mmmmm mmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmm!! pirate on Bartica this morning. More like him! :) :)

198

Merchants of The Burning Sea (may be dated but mostly looks good):

http://www.merchantsoftheburningsea.com/

199

It’s too bad port contention and fleet fights are so contrived; but I guess it’s one way of keeping the numbers under control.

200

Hmm. Just got home from a trip and the client is telling me I need to activate. Naturally, my PotBS purchase is not visible in my account at station.sony.com and store.station.sony.com is unable to show me my activation code while it’s under maintenance (would have been nice to have received the code in an email).