... I walk by this game at the stores and just have to shake my head.

The problem isn't with the game, it was with FLS believing people would play within the spirit of the TOS, not the literal meaning. Can? and Should? are two entirely different questions to the majority of MMO players. But now FLS is having to restructure their entire game because of the players that think the questions are the same.

The game crashed for me when the herds were let in for open beta and I didn't make it past the first month after that.

The entire feeling of the game changed from a duel of gentlemen to thugs slugging it out in the mud.

My last day came when I did fairly decent against two pirates (still lost though). Refit my ship to leave ... had to fight them again. Refit my ship to leave ... lost again. Tried in the starter ship ... again, thanks.

And the apparent collapse of the server population proves a lot of points at the cost of a potentially great game. Most specifically that nobody likes a ganker.

In order to fix this game, FLS needs to:

1) Allow an inroad for new players. There needs to be some kind of ability comparison between groups such that 6 lvl 50s can't squash a new character. The best solution would be to force a tax that if the 50s intercept the newb, she could chose to fight, try to run or pay a percentage of the overall cargo value. Paying allows for a very brief non-attackable status. It currently takes way too long to become more of a help than a hindrance. The longer the time line, the greater the chance of being annoyed before you're able to defend yourself.

2) Reduce the number of PvP ports to five. One for each nation and one "general" one. Control of all five results in a production bonus or something but doesn't reset the server. How defeatist is it to win and have to start over.

3) Remove Pirates as a playable faction. I didn't find a single Pirate that didn't use their "race" as an excuse to gank. The other option would be to keep pirates, but make their faction Perma-death.

Right now, FLS has pointed her ship into a maelstrom.

a- You must PvP or leave.

b- If you PvP, you gank or  lose.

c- If you lose, you can no longer PvP. See a.

d- If you gank, everyone you kill can't PvP. See a.

I've heard all the "No crying in the Red Zone" but that always comes from the Gank Herd. And the "Go play a carebear game then!" I've heard that too, and I have. But so has most of the player base, and with it, our money.

It's like that movie, Pitch Black, with the monsters that killed everything and eventually had to eat each other. And the poor people that want to try it are like the crew crash landing. Not embraced, but fed upon.

Originally posted by whpsh

It's like that movie, Pitch Black, with the monsters that killed everything and eventually had to eat each other. And the poor people that want to try it are like the crew crash landing. Not embraced, but fed upon.

In that movie the people didn't know about the creatures inhabiting the planet. In POTBS people know its main focus is PvP and they still whine.

Originally posted by whpsh

... I walk by this game at the stores and just have to shake my head.

The problem isn't with the game, it was with FLS believing people would play within the spirit of the TOS, not the literal meaning. Can? and Should? are two entirely different questions to the majority of MMO players. But now FLS is having to restructure their entire game because of the players that think the questions are the same.

The game crashed for me when the herds were let in for open beta and I didn't make it past the first month after that.

The entire feeling of the game changed from a duel of gentlemen to thugs slugging it out in the mud.

My last day came when I did fairly decent against two pirates (still lost though). Refit my ship to leave ... had to fight them again. Refit my ship to leave ... lost again. Tried in the starter ship ... again, thanks.

And the apparent collapse of the server population proves a lot of points at the cost of a potentially great game. Most specifically that nobody likes a ganker.

In order to fix this game, FLS needs to:

1) Allow an inroad for new players. There needs to be some kind of ability comparison between groups such that 6 lvl 50s can't squash a new character. The best solution would be to force a tax that if the 50s intercept the newb, she could chose to fight, try to run or pay a percentage of the overall cargo value. Paying allows for a very brief non-attackable status. It currently takes way too long to become more of a help than a hindrance. The longer the time line, the greater the chance of being annoyed before you're able to defend yourself.

2) Reduce the number of PvP ports to five. One for each nation and one "general" one. Control of all five results in a production bonus or something but doesn't reset the server. How defeatist is it to win and have to start over.

3) Remove Pirates as a playable faction. I didn't find a single Pirate that didn't use their "race" as an excuse to gank. The other option would be to keep pirates, but make their faction Perma-death.

Right now, FLS has pointed her ship into a maelstrom.

a- You must PvP or leave.

b- If you PvP, you gank or  lose.

c- If you lose, you can no longer PvP. See a.

d- If you gank, everyone you kill can't PvP. See a.

I've heard all the "No crying in the Red Zone" but that always comes from the Gank Herd. And the "Go play a carebear game then!" I've heard that too, and I have. But so has most of the player base, and with it, our money.

It's like that movie, Pitch Black, with the monsters that killed everything and eventually had to eat each other. And the poor people that want to try it are like the crew crash landing. Not embraced, but fed upon.

Come give WAR a try.  Mythic has years of experience dealing with this problem.  Nothing lightens my mood more that to see an enemy player enter a zone where they would be ganking and see them turn into a Chicken (with 1hp).

Do stay away from the Open servers though.  They are put into place so that the sociopaths and the gankers will have a pace to go.  I doubt if more than one or two of those will remain after the first month or two.  Play Core or Core RP for the best experience.

Good Hunting

Originally posted by Shoal

...
 

Come give WAR a try.  Mythic has years of experience dealing with this problem.  Nothing lightens my mood more that to see an enemy player enter a zone where they would be ganking and see them turn into a Chicken (with 1hp).

Do stay away from the Open servers though.  They are put into place so that the sociopaths and the gankers will have a pace to go.  I doubt if more than one or two of those will remain after the first month or two.  Play Core or Core RP for the best experience.

Good Hunting

Although it may be a little early in the game to call it... Mythic have made a basic mistake.

No RvR side balance - in much the same way as PotBS had none.

They have a "side cap".  As predicted, all this appears to be doing is annoying people and forcing people to change servers.  It's not a solution.

They - like FLS - thought the 'nice' Beta players were an indicator  of general population behaviour after launch.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by Shoal

...
 

Come give WAR a try.  Mythic has years of experience dealing with this problem.  Nothing lightens my mood more that to see an enemy player enter a zone where they would be ganking and see them turn into a Chicken (with 1hp).

Do stay away from the Open servers though.  They are put into place so that the sociopaths and the gankers will have a pace to go.  I doubt if more than one or two of those will remain after the first month or two.  Play Core or Core RP for the best experience.

Good Hunting

Although it may be a little early in the game to call it... Mythic have made a basic mistake.

No RvR side balance - in much the same way as PotBS had none.

They have a "side cap".  As predicted, all this appears to be doing is annoying people and forcing people to change servers.  It's not a solution.

 

They - like FLS - thought the 'nice' Beta players were an indicator  of general population behaviour after launch.

 

Still, WAR should be able to avoid the real-life identification problem which made the French and Spanish so unpopular in PotBS, as long as the two sides are nominally equally competent at PvP.  How many people playing evil baddies in MMO's are genuine serial killers?

WAR's problem, I think, is that they have way too many servers.  30 for North America?  6 for Oceania?  Isn't it a tad overly ambitious?  Reminds me of Age of Conan, which actually added many servers a week after release, only to see those deserted when people didn't renew.

Originally posted by Vetarnias

...Still, WAR should be able to avoid the real-life identification problem which made the French and Spanish so unpopular in PotBS, as long as the two sides are nominally equally competent at PvP.  How many people playing evil baddies in MMO's are genuine serial killers?

 ....

It doesn't matter who or what people associate with in real life when it comes to a horribly balanced RvR MMO.

I play WWIIoL and the Axis are totally overpopped right now (and usually are).  Many of the people who play Axis in that game have Allied associations - but it's cool to be the baddies.
That leads to imbalance as the kids who only like to win join the side which is "rolling".

All RvR games have this issue - human nature.  The solutions have to be designed into the game from the very beginning - not as an afterthought. 

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by Vetarnias

...Still, WAR should be able to avoid the real-life identification problem which made the French and Spanish so unpopular in PotBS, as long as the two sides are nominally equally competent at PvP.  How many people playing evil baddies in MMO's are genuine serial killers?

 ....

It doesn't matter who or what people associate with in real life when it comes to a horribly balanced RvR MMO.

I play WWIIoL and the Axis are totally overpopped right now (and usually are).  Many of the people who play Axis in that game have Allied associations - but it's cool to be the baddies.
That leads to imbalance as the kids who only like to win join the side which is "rolling".

All RvR games have this issue - human nature.  The solutions have to be designed into the game from the very beginning - not as an afterthought. 

 

I didn't know that WW2OL had such unbalanced factions, nor that the Axis would be more popular (though in hindsight, I can see why).

Still, in the case of PotBS, it was something which several players saw coming from the start.  Some societies were openly saying they went French or Spanish because they knew it would offer them a greater challenge, as the herd would go for British or Pirates.

If the players themselves saw this would be taking place, did the developers notice?  And what did they do?  Even in beta apparently the British were vastly more popular than other factions.

Still, that problem of faction imbalance you mention can happen in any RvR game, either with pre-formed sides (PotBS) or strictly guild-based (Shadowbane being a classic example).  At this stage, what worries me more than the simple question of faction imbalance is that of ready-made large guilds and assorted cronies rising to dominate a server.  Since these guilds were created long ago, it makes the actual struggle for power within the new game in question completely moot, as the matter had been settled long in advance.

An equally interesting question, and closer to your point, is how to reconcile a persistent world with mechanisms for avoiding political stagnation.  PotBS's method of resetting ports is not only unsatisfactory, it changed very little as every new round was an equally predictable affair.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by Vetarnias

...Still, WAR should be able to avoid the real-life identification problem which made the French and Spanish so unpopular in PotBS, as long as the two sides are nominally equally competent at PvP.  How many people playing evil baddies in MMO's are genuine serial killers?

 ....

It doesn't matter who or what people associate with in real life when it comes to a horribly balanced RvR MMO.

I play WWIIoL and the Axis are totally overpopped right now (and usually are).  Many of the people who play Axis in that game have Allied associations - but it's cool to be the baddies.
That leads to imbalance as the kids who only like to win join the side which is "rolling".

All RvR games have this issue - human nature.  The solutions have to be designed into the game from the very beginning - not as an afterthought. 

I will have to second that. In my experience balance doesn't happen in the same way the players don't police themselves. After all, there is a school of thought claiming that without restrictions of the laws and punitive powers of the state the civilization would be impossible.

I gave PotBS a real try and was excited in the first week becuase the idea seemed really great. The RvR imbalances and whatnot did not bother me at first because it varied on servers but they merged a lot of servers together and instantly they all had the same trends everyone's been talking about. That wasn't the only problem I had with the game though. It was the lack of scenery and repetition of mission types. It was almost as if they didnt even really try to have any content outside of the PVP. Anyhow with all the repetition I was extremely bored with it after a month and just didn't renew. I'm kind of in between MMO's at the moment, I have my trusty lifetime account at LotRO which is fun but I'm looking for something new.

Today I went to my local game store to purchase a copy of another MMO which shall remain nameless.

There were two copies of PotBS on the shelf, price tags yellowed by the passage of time.  The two copies were already there when I bought Age of Conan at that store four months ago, and have probably been on that shelf since release in January.

Not an exceptional number of copies -- just two.  Yet they remain unsold.  While it is true that the game might have had some major distribution issues early on (thank you very much, SOE), the game is still out there. So in this case, you cannot blame the population problems on the game being inaccessible.  It's there allright.  It just doesn't sell.

Maybe a new advertising campaign will help, but as much as I want PotBS to succeed, if they continue on making every patch a step back from the last one, it's all going to be in vain.

Originally posted by Vetarnias

Today I went to my local game store to purchase a copy of another MMO which shall remain nameless.

There were two copies of PotBS on the shelf, price tags yellowed by the passage of time.  The two copies were already there when I bought Age of Conan at that store four months ago, and have probably been on that shelf since release in January.

Not an exceptional number of copies -- just two.  Yet they remain unsold.  While it is true that the game might have had some major distribution issues early on (thank you very much, SOE), the game is still out there. So in this case, you cannot blame the population problems on the game being inaccessible.  It's there allright.  It just doesn't sell.

Maybe a new advertising campaign will help, but as much as I want PotBS to succeed, if they continue on making every patch a step back from the last one, it's all going to be in vain.

Most people I know (that played before) would not play Pirates of the BS if it were F2P. Myself included. Hell, the Disney F2P pirate MMO is much more successful and fun than this game ever was, and it's DISNEY ffs.

How bad is that?