Pirates of the Burning Sea Interview, Part 3

This concludes our 3 part interview series with Taylor Daynes, Lead Designer for Pirates of the Burning Sea, a MMOG product from Flying Labs Software. You can still catch part 1 and part 2, plus the exlusive screens that all 3 parts offer.

Because of the dynamic nature of Pirates of the Burning Sea, we start with the historical world, but as soon as our players join it they'll take the course of history in whatever direction they choose.

Of course, one of the reasons why we chose the real world for our setting was so that we could incorporate all the famous and romantic 'pirate' cities and dens of thieves. Port Royale, Barbados, Havana, Maracaibo - these names resonate in our minds, reaching out from the depths of all the old swashbuckler movies we used to watch, and the comics and novels we used to read. Who hasn't wanted to walk down cobblestone streets to the tile roofed cathedrals and gorgeous colonial plazas of old San Juan? Who hasn't dreamed of the brine-encrusted piers and shadowy taverns of the famous pirate den of Tortuga? How could we pass up this chance to let players live in that world they've dreamed of for so long?

Will the game world progress through history? Will there, some day, be steam powered armored ships sailing the seas? Or will the world be caught in a perpetual stasis?

Pirates of the Burning Sea is a game of motion - and we currently expect the world to advance in sync with the in-game clock. With a day lasting an hour and a half, it will take almost six real-world years for the game to reach the War of 1812. If we're still going strong six years after launch, we'll be delighted. You can ask us what we're going to do about steamships then!

PotBS is a skill based system. Will the game incorporate an organic "increase as you use" skill dynamic, or will players be given an opportunity to pick and choose in what skills they apply earned points?

There are two values associated with every skill in the game: how well you've learned it, and how well you've practiced it. Players will be able to pick and choose what they formally study, and this applies to their knowledge of the skill. The practice of the skill, however, is the organic 'increase as you use it' skill dynamic. Your knowledge doesn't degrade with time, but your practice level does if you don't keep it up.

Given that the players are operating at a ship level, rather than at an individual level, are the skills with which the player is working reflective of the individual character who's captaining the ship, or representative of the skill set of the crew as a whole? If/when the game is modified to incorporate an individual perspective, how will these skills translate?

As captain of a ship, your personal skills of gunnery or sailhandling mean very little. On a ship, the officers and crew are the ones who do the bulk of the work, and it is their skill that determines the success or failure of an endeavor. Each officer is a full-fledged character just like your own and they have skills which are developed the same way yours are. In fact, it's quite easy for captains to lack any great skill in handling the ship as long as they surround themselves with skilled officers.

There are, of course, many skills which are individual in nature. Ability with a cutlass or small sword, for instance, is something the wise do not delegate to others.

So while all characters have the opportunity to learn and develop any of the skills in the game, most players will leave the ship-handling skills to the officers while they develop the individual skills for themselves.

What kind of opportunities will a non-violent player have to progress in the world? Will there be a society building aspect like in "A Tale in the Desert"?

A Tale in the Desert is an amazing testament to the interest and appeal of non-violent interaction. I have been interested in the viability of a completely non-violent game for a long time, and I'm heartened to see that A Tale in the Desert is thriving. But that game is about far more than non-violence: it is about building a society out of nothing, creating mutually agreeable systems of laws, and finding ways to share and advance knowledge.

In our game we are beginning with a very developed society and laws, and a historical setting that is rich with conflict. But Pirates of the Burning Sea is about competition of all kinds, peaceful and violent alike. Even initially, merchants are never required to engage in combat, and though they may need to defend themselves from time to time, they will never need to seek it out in order to succeed.

As the game progresses and we develop the avatar and land-based features of the game, more and more non-combat roles will emerge - store owners, crafters, and other tradesmen will obviously lead relatively quiet lives. Many of the positions of authority are also combat-light. Just like the real Caribbean, there are opportunities for players of all types - those seeking the visceral excitement of combat, and those seeking glory or wealth through less confrontational means.

Since the players can expect to find themselves sailing the high seas throughout the majority of the game, how will weather make its presence known? Does the game have global weather patterns, or virtual localizations of weather that we may expect in that zone/area?

For our first release, we'll have localized wind and weather effects. The wind will gust and careen about, confounding chases and playing havoc with fleets in formation.

We've designed a weather model which is based on real-world meteorological patterns, and which reasonably approximates changes in air pressure due to land and ocean temperature, wind direction and speed based on air pressure changes, pressure systems and fronts, cloud formation and precipitation. This is a fairly complex bit of code, and we're going to work on this after we get the first release out the door.

Speaking of rough seas, will there be certain parts of the world where the ship's crew will have to have a certain skill level just to enter (i.e. "The Rocks of Death", "The Dragon's Teeth", and other similarly named coastal features)?

We are not deliberately designing areas of the world that are inaccessible to people of certain skill levels. Just like the real world, we expect the seas to be filled with people with all levels of skill and experience - there are no 'newbie' zones or veteran zones. It remains to be seen whether or not we end up with particularly dangerous areas that develop a reputation for devouring the unwary.

While we're still talking about the weather, I'm assuming that a good captain is going to have to pay attention to wind speed and direction. Do you have plans on implementing "dead sea" areas? For example, a place where the weather conditions would naturally be so calm as to make sailing there a dangerous proposition for any captain who's uncomfortable moving so slowly?

As it turns out, there's rather a lot of wind in the Caribbean. Air is always just rushing about without any thought or consideration for sailors and their little boats. So while there may be temporary pockets of relatively still or turbulent air due to 'wind shadows' from islands, there certainly won't be large areas of dead air like the doldrums that players will have to contend with.

That's a pretty neat idea though - we'll keep it in mind.

One of the common conflicts in Massive Multiplayer game development is the choice between instant communication and breaking the immersion of the game, or artificially delayed communication and maintaining the atmosphere. Where does PotBS fall in these two categories?

There are certainly a number of situations where limiting communication is good for the community - especially when trying to keep children safe from predatory adults, and when trying to pitch that game to the parents of those same children.

Other games have incorporated features like this. For instance, DAoC blocks communication between members of different realms. This prevents conspiracies and alliances, and it stops grief-chat in its tracks.

We like alliances, and we love conspiracies. Cooperation would be hindered and negotiation would be nearly impossible with any sort of chat restrictions. Limiting communication in the context of our world would be both frustrating and unrealistic.

One of the natural limitations to communication in our setting would have been the difficulty and time-lag involved in sending messages to others while at sea. This issue has great potential for strategy, and could result in some very interesting and complex situations where news or orders haven't gotten to the fleet yet, etc. We tried very hard to think of a way to incorporate these features without hurting the fun and community of MMOG games, and in the end we were forced to concede to unfettered instant communication regardless of location. The reality of the situation is that if we limited communication in this way, it would only have hindered the 'honest' players, since everyone else would simply use a chat program outside the game.

Do you have any plans to port Pirates to other platforms?

Our graphics engine, Alchemy, is one of the most portable we've seen. With the check of a different box, we can compile it for any of the major consoles out there. Even different home computer platforms are possible. But we are limited by two factors: Valve's Steam software is presently only for Windows machines, and we're using Steam extensively; and we are not a large enough company to handle such porting projects ourselves. We do hope to expand the game's reach in the future as technologies and resources improve. And we're particularly interested in seeing how other people integrate their MMP games with the new PDAs and cell phones - that's cool stuff! We spoke with a game developer in China recently who is doing very interesting things in this area and it's clearly an untapped region of MMOG design.

All of us here at Warcry would like to send a big Thank You out to Taylor Daynes, who apparently is still answering questions from this interview at great length, even though all of the rest of the folks at Flying Labs Software have taken the liberty of locking him in the closet until he's over this obsession.