Submitted by Nick on Sun, 01/13/2008 - 8:35pm
Posted in
- So I logged into PotBS for a couple of hours just now. And I have some seriously mixed feelings about it.
- I like the naval combat.
- I hate the land movement. Entirely WASD, with the mouse only affecting camera and not direction of travel. Haven't found an option to change it so far.
- I think the land combat is rather slow.
- Only Pirates are allowed to capture ships. This is the stupidest idea ever. Maybe limit it to only Privateers and Pirates, but not just Pirates. gah!
- I'm sure the download is a low-res texture pack, but I have to saw it's visually under-whelming at this point. The people animations seem especially stiff. Some of the backgrounds are nice though, odd juxtaposition.
- Character clothing customization is really pretty good. Lots of ability to manipulate how your clothes look, decent ability to choose hairstyles, not so much for anything else.
- The UI needs much more customizability. It is very basic, and kinda clunky-feeling to me. At the least I need to be able to resize my 'radar', especially since I'm using 1920x1200.
- It does have a fun factor, but ONLY PIRATES CAN CAPTURE SHIPS! This is thing that will be the deal-breaker for me, I think.
Things I don't know yet and am looking forward to exploring:
- the "Open Sea". This world may be quite vast. Can you go ashore? or only make port? What are travel times like from port to port?
- the first port I arrived in as a British Privateer, was small and easy to navigate. and very boring after about 3 minutes. I'm hoping other locations will be larger and more alive.
- grouping. I'm very curious about multi-ship combat
- Will I be able to get surround sound functioning under Vista's crappy sound support?
- Nick's blog
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Pirates update
Making it a comment because I can't post a new blog entry (i get the Life Field Required error, but there's nothing in the dropdown for the life field).
This game has turned out to be rather fun, in spite of the usual early retail bugs. I had forgotten I hadn't updated you guys since my first impressions, because I typed a much longer, more positive review and then I lost it, heh. PvP does play a central role in this game's design, not that you have to get into it too soon. The problem we had previously was we got onto a server with a poor community for our nation (in fact, it looks like only two servers are well balanced across the nations to make it really interesting).
Anyhow, we just started new characters on the Rackham server yesterday. Look for the Guinness Dogs society if you log in. We mostly play in the evenings, and we're all on Texas time, if you're interested in trying it out with us. I think we probably also have a buddy key or two floating around as well. OH, and my character is named Mad Billy McGuire (you have to use the full name for anything in this game by the way, for example: /tell Mad Billy McGuire, <message>). It took a bit to learn the syntax of some commands with this system, but you can also double click on any name in the chat window or social panel to send a tell.
Cool, you gave me a scare
Cool, you gave me a scare there :)
Saturday DDO is already on
Saturday DDO is already on the schedule, no need to change that. For anything else, the only other nights I can be up late enough is Wednesday and Friday. Though I'm gonna request a schedule change tomorrow, and if it works Monday will open up as well.
Does that mean Saturday DDO
Does that mean Saturday DDO is out for you, too?
As for LotRO, I'll ask Rick N and Mel directly. All three of us prefer DDO for the forseeable future, but I'll try to find out if they want to put any energy into hitting 20+ so we can all group. I doubt Rick N is up for anything outside of Sun-Mon, due to work schedule. For myself, I'l indifferent. LotRO is slightly better than E2/WoW, but several steps back from DDO for me. Still, I enjoy playing with you guys and am happy to keep up the occaisional foray.
I'm pretty much out for other MMOs for the forseeable future, though I'll try AoC when it comes out, after it gets 3-6 months under its belt. No more VG alpha/beta work for me. Warhammer *might* get a sniff from me, if all the rest of you flock to it and the raves are universal. I expect to see pigs fly sans trebuchet, long before that happens, however.
Ariande Bard 20 • Nightfall Ranger 19
The Avatars, Argonessen Server
lotro
Yeah, I'd rather like to get back to this. But with my new schedule, I'm looking at really only be able play on Wednesdays, and some Fridays, at the hours that could match up with you west-coast folks. Guess we need to know if those nights are amenable to folks at all. How far back are the lower level chars at this point? Can't be too far can it?
Sounds like they're
Sounds like they're shooting for an MMO mix of DDO and Sid Meier's Pirates!. A nice goal, but from what you say, they've got a LONG way to go. It would have to be nearly flawless to tempt me.
BTW Nick, we were mostly playing LotRO because you and Rick C have a driving interest in it. Is that still the case? I think Mel, Rick N, and I are having a good enough time w/DDO that we could just let LotRO lapse, but we ought to make a decision as a group. You and Rick N have a lot of time invested in the crafting portion of the game, and I'm happy to push deeper and see where it goes. Rick C is not really interested in playing with the lower level group, so it would fall to you and I to help get Mel and Rick N up to a level where they can group with our 22+s. Mike M seemed somewhat interested in WoW as well.
Apparently, the only Pirates
Apparently, the only Pirates can capture ships is a game-balance mechanic, because Pirates can't use the player economy or capture towns, which players from the other factions can. I think it is terribly artificial and would be better if privateers of all Nations could capture ships, as well as Pirates, but we'll see how it works.
Also, Alchemy fixed the problem with the sound.
And someone on their forums tells me you can't just go ashore, you can only make land at ports. (there are at least a few land missions that port you to a land-based mission-zone)
one thing better
Got mouse movement working, DDO style. whew, that's a significant improvement.