Dev Chat Logs

Pirates of the Burning Sea: Dev Chat Log

<DelmarWynn> darkholm112: I would like to know if there were any plans for future add-ons involving the ability to walk around your own ship possibly even more customization of the inside
<[FLS]Rusty> Yes. The Captain's Cabin feature is near and dear to my heart. The idea is you'll be able to decorate your cabin with trophies, and people will come aboard before battles and see them.
<[FLS]Rusty> It's a natural way of having a socialization space that fits into the game world, instead of trying to lure people over to see your house, which is kind of creepy. :-)
<DelmarWynn> SwissMercenary: Are you going to round port battles to the nearest hour?
<[FLS]Taelorn> We've been discussing a lot of changes we're interested in making to the port battle system, including scheduling and invites.
<[FLS]Taelorn> While I can't say what we'll do yet, rounding off port battle times is on our list. We've talked about a variety of rolling battle times.
<[FLS]Taelorn> So it's a possibility.
<DelmarWynn> ArianaDeRoze-Blackbeard: Server Merges, Server Merges, Server Merges. What are your plans in regards to the population imbalance. Are there any plans to allow players to switch sides within their server without having to re-roll?
<[FLS]Rusty> It's a real issue we've been working on. We made some mistakes both in analyzying beta play patterns along with what we thought our servers could handle, and came up with a number that spread the population too thin.
<[FLS]Rusty> We find that all of our systems work better with a highly concentrated player base, and that our servers can handle it.
<[FLS]Rusty> So we've been working on a solution for it. We'll be talking about this in more detail on Monday.
<DelmarWynn> JackSimple: Are you guys generally happy with the number of PvP zones that are currently occuring on the server? Any plans on tweaks to make more zones or less zones?
<[FLS]Taelorn> It depends on the server and the population. On same servers, yes. On others, no. Any tweaks we make will be based on what we monitor for population and continued PvP zone creation.
<[FLS]Taelorn> Generally, the limitation of 12 PvP zones is there for a reason - because we expect highly active PvP servers to hit that number.
<[FLS]Taelorn> So, we'll be making adjustments based on how things progress.
<DelmarWynn> Keline_Fraser: Are you planning on adding a second win condition for the defenders to prevent the attackers from tieing up the defending force for 2 hours just by sitting outside gun range in fast ships as seen in the Orleans Port Battle today on Roberts?
<[FLS]Taelorn> We don't want attackers to drag out port battles with no intention of fighting. So, yes, we're interested in adding additional conditions/restrictions to help prevent this scenario.
<DelmarWynn> TheMaster42: A question: Are you guys pretty satisfied with the way pirates compete/fight in port battles after 1.2? Or are the changes in 1.4 meant to change some aspect of that (port battles)? If so, could you drop any hints? ^_^
<[FLS]Taelorn> I think pirates are doing moderately well in 1.2, but our skill goals are really aimed at 1.4. That includes port battles as well as OS PvP. I'm going to be writing a long series of devlogs soon detailing a whole bunch of stuff about the skills. There will be a devlog covering our plans for each career and what you can expect to see.
<[FLS]Taelorn> As for hints? We're cutting out a lot of the excess stuff and doing some reorganization to make more skill chains desirable. We want it to be tough to choose your skills because there are many interesting options.
<[FLS]Taelorn> We expect most careers will always have two required skill chains (such as repair), but other than that we like incenting different paths.
<DelmarWynn> Gibbons: Any plans on changes for the Herc pricing or stats?
<[FLS]Taelorn> There are some adjustments to the Herc variant stats in 1.3. They aren't drastic, but they include tracking and speed.
<[FLS]Taelorn> High-end career ships may see some price adjustments, but most of the changes will be to the stats.
<[FLS]Taelorn> The Herc specifically is a delicate ship - if the stats get just a little too good, then it kills everything else in OS PvP without any recourse.
<[FLS]Taelorn> Depending on how the 1.3 adjustments play out, we may make more changes in 1.4 or 1.5.