Test Release Notes - October 7, 2011
 

Updates:

• Ship Customization and Upgrades! (need we say more?)
• Loot and plunder all new rare materials from Bounty Hunter and Warships in order to upgrade Medium Class and War Class ships' armor, speed, and cargo hold.
• Visit any Shipwright to begin your Ship Customization and Upgrade path.
• Upgrades will provide your ship abilities that can be customized to fit your style of play:
• Upgrade your cargo hull to maximize your plunder.
• Battle at sea with the latest armor the shipwrights have to offer.
• Streamline your vessel for speed with the latest sails and rigging.
• Personalize Medium Class and War Class ships with brand new sail colors, patterns, and logos.
• Face off against enemy fleets in the brand new Pirate ship type, the BRIG - also customizable!
• All Light Hull class ships now made available to Basic Access Pirates - including the Light Galleon and the new Light Brig!
• Island NPCs now chat new town gossip regarding Ship Customization.
• On/Off First Mate Toggle for Scoundrel of the Seas voice (in the Audio - Game Options Menu).
• After looting at sea, Pirates can now take all items that do not take up Inventory space by clicking the "Take Small Items" button.
• Captains can now choose to not board a grappled Flagship, without waiting for the boarding timer to run out.
• New names submitted by you Pirates have been added to the Create A Pirate name-picker.
• Five new "Talk Like A Pirate Day" phrases submitted by you have been added under Expressions in SpeedChat.
• Fixed several teleport bugs.
• Fixed a bug with ships that would occasionally get stuck at sea.
• Fixed a bug that incorrectly allowed player limits on a ship to be exceeded.
• If you currently play on Test through a browser, please download the Pirates Online Test Launcher today by clicking here for PC or here for Mac.

Known Issues:

• Occasional crashes may occur when teleporting or walking through doors or tunnels. When reporting these bugs, please be very specific where you were and what you were doing at the time of the crash.
• Pirates may teleport under land or be able to access out of game world environments near the shoreline. Please report any bugs you may encounter using the in-game feedback form and be very specific where you were and what you were doing at the time.
• Occasionally ships will slide across the water. We will be fixing this as soon as possible.

Forget ship customization! This is a blessing all in itself!

A bit upset about this... having meetings on ships was nice so we can have privacy, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Okay now that I'm done with that: WOO! It's here! These look like they'll be really great. Can't wait... but I shall, because I'd like this to arrive bug free. Glad it finally reached test. Let's all get to testing!

Figures that this is posted the day after I post a rant about how long they're taking. :laughks2:

Woot! I am excited!

I just saw the War Brig in their YT as well. Now THAT is a ship I would feel piratey on!

Guys, with all good news, the bad must arise.

Peddlers on test have the outfits for Nov. - The diplomat outfit.

And, here, is the jacket:

http://www.imageurlhost.com/images/y...wrp2x7icik.png

Looks like the rising of the EITC pirates on coming... :zu04s0:

So far I haven't encountered any bugs with ship customization or the new ships. There are, however, a few bugs with teleporting, textures and NPC ships -- but they're not really major. If the POTCO team works quickly to fix those few glitches, I feel that this update has potential to be released to Live next week or the week after.

Personally, I'm fine with this. I honestly think the male Diplomat outfit looks pretty fancy :laughks2:

I got some pictures for you guys.

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...17055407_n.jpg

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...35547646_n.jpg

http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...03899352_n.jpg

Me on somebody's War Brig. I have to admit. I love this ship class. It has a mixture of all the others ship types.

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...57195464_n.jpg


I could not get any pictures of cuztimization, I only had enough coins for a light brig, and you cant upgrade them. There were no cuztimized ships open to board until after these picture were taken. I will post more later.

I keep crashing when trying to log on test server. Anyone else?

Me too. I'm gonna keep trying. It was working fine earlier.

Are they fizing bugs on test right now or something? Because i'm not able to get onto test.

Aye mate go to the test site: http://apps.test.pirates.go.com/pirates/#/home

The banner says its down for bug repairs.

Man, haven't been on in forever. Now I'll have to get on!

Great. Finally we get ship customization and my computer stops working, AND my unlimited access runs out. Hopefully this will all be fixed by the time it hits the normal servers. Oh well, enjoy the new update!

I am glad they are testing this. I hope they test thoroughly and listen to all of the reports sent by the testers. Please Testers send them everything that seems out of order. Without you guys the update might go to live with bugs and other bad things.

I agree. We all need to do our part and submit all glitches. I know everyone is excited to get on Test just to buy the Brig and loot, but we also need to pay close attention to the bugs. A very exciting update I must say.

Well, we testers flooded Disney with bug reports, and test has been closed for awhile now.

Test is STILL down!?

Test's probably going to be down until tomorrow.

I am kinda dissapointed Test is down, but then again there were MANY bugs and glitches. Hopefully it will be back up soon with fewer problems. Apart from the many small problems, I expect this to hit live within the next two weeks.

Don't trust the Player's Wiki. Trust Disney.

I just checked that thread and there is literally no evidence to back this claim up. Do not believe them.

Plus one to that!

My guess test will be back up Monday afternoon Pacific time. I know I sent in a ton of bug reports, and so did all the testers I spoke with.

I also reported bugs that are on live as well, thinking we have the dev teams attention. So I am hopeful they make a patch kick it back to us and we report like mad some more. My goal is to report every problem I know of in game multiple times.

Also I noticed this update brought new spawn points. I spawned at Fort Dundee a few times. Spawned under the water on the Padres docks a time or two as well.

I can say one thing, this update when it hits live will change the game forever, as El Patrons weapons did in April of last year. The Brig is absolute personification of the classic pirate ship. The upgrades ye can apply will make this ship do exactly what ye wish it to do!

I will post screen when test resumes!

I hope it dose not take that long but thier was alot of glitchs.

As an Admin of the Players Wiki, I would like to apologize for the misunderstanding. That date was based on someone pretending to be affiliated with Disney in the Streamlined War Brig Video Comments. We have young and egger users who get excited over new content. Like Del said, if Disney didn’t say it, don’t believe it.

I personally think this is the biggest sailing update yet and maybe for a long time to come. Might also be on the top three biggest updates added to the game entirely. The content is just awesome and the Brig looks like the 'best looking' pirate ship(and to not forget the stats are great as well). For a start, the customization is more than what I expected and the price for it is fair(for live). In a few words...this will definitely be a game changer.

Now to get to the issues...The biggest flaw with Disney when adding new content is that they do not do a god job delivering the content to live. I am really hoping that this does not happen with the current content in test. If this is to be a positive game changer - they cannot ease up(or dumb down) the content; keep the customization prices high so pirates get influenced to sail for ship parts and plunder(it will also give a feeling of accomplishment afterwards to pirates); make sure that sailing skills do not fail, make sure current bugs in live and new bugs created by the latest update are being fixed; and most definitely make sure that LAG is being handled because pirates might 'explode' with this new update.

They need to make sure they are not rushing things and i already noticed that they begun with a mistake. "Hope to have it up this weekend. Working out some last minute hiccups. :)". This was posted on YouTube less than an hour before test was updated. Now, i know a lot of pirates were happy that they got a glimpse at how great the content is but when they said "this weekend" than they updated a hour later, doesn't really add up. I know it's test but no one was able to stay on for longer than 10 minutes...It doesn't even take testing to know that something is wrong and probably 3 developers could of gone on test and seen all the bugs we experienced. Thus, they must capitalize on everything and not lie themselves to make us happy because it will not work on the long run. The Developers must work calmly while thinking of how Pirates will be effected in this path and what changes will make pirates a better game on the same path.

This is a update that could bring old players back to the game and could influence current players who are two minded to keep playing. That is why I urge Disney to do all they can to make sure that this update will be handled correctly and will be delivered to live as a 'clean' as possible. Testers, It's our obligation to make sure that we do all that is in our power to make this an awesome update that it is by reporting any bugs or glitches we find. We voluntarily asked for this responsibility therefore think of test as a job to make Pirates Online Live a better game. We should be thankful to those who gave us this job and grateful for being able to test at all. We cannot hold back to a bug or glitch because we like it because it will effect the game negatively -that is wrong and you are not doing your duty as testers.

(PS: Live players, you can also help by posting any bug on live to be tested by the testers on test server so bugs/glitches may be fixed ASAP)

I tried to get on and it was closed. But thats a good thing! Problems getting fixed makes this come out faster!

@leo

Already bugs they purposely skipped on fixing:

1) Fast Switch "/afk" for PvP modes.

2) Potion combination (Swift Foot still accumelates, how could they ignore this exploit?!)

3) Texture settings. Medium and High graphic settings are still broken. They cause sudden game freezes when nearby or downloading other player pirates.

Still finding some others they always forget to fix :/

Will post later.

i agree with both of you. i wish i could have gotten on earlier to see it but thanks for telling them the glitches so we can have a lot more fun on there. See you guys on the Test Server! ( when the server comes on -_- ) lol :icon_treasure_chest

Test is back and open! Get a move on those reports soldiers!

I'll try getting on Test tonight to submit reports after I purchase a Light Brig. My Test Pirate spends too much..... LOL. Hope to see you there.

Test is up and running!

This has been added by a button that says Parley. ( then the X )

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...29774784_n.jpg

Another Reason why this isnt on live yet...

Got some SS's to share:








If you want me to screenshot something specific just say something.

But, that's awesome when it happens :D

This is a problem on Live as well; not just Test.

Yea Ik that, but this one is different. This happens VERY occasionally when a captain leaves the wheel and another person takes it soon afterwards. Everybody then gets clitcheed out and after 10 or so minutes you get DC

I hear there is something new on Raven's Cove... is this true?

But it makes you look like Superman... without the creepy hairdo.

After testing the Ship Customization Update for a day, I must admit that I am extremely impressed. With all great updates, there will be glitches and bugs. Here are some screenshots I took of the new Brig/Ship Customization Update. (My brig is customized with the extra cargo hull)

A great update would not have bugs. But i agree, this content is pretty impressive and does look like a positive game changer. Bugs, glitches and lag must be fixed for when it comes to live to be a fun update to play with.

There are already problems in live so testers make sure you test and report those as well.

I have one question though. What changes did the developers make while test was down? When i went on, it was pretty much the same. Hunters had problems staying close, repair would glitch you, boots were still white, and almost every bug was still there since the release on test. Only thing that i noticed was less DCing but that was only by a small %. I think there are problems that should of been fixed before this ever coming to test because so many of the are obvious and they could of been tested by a couple of developers...

Looking at the pics, I'm really likeing the War Brig. It's exactly the same as what my impression of what a pirate ship back then would look like.
I was able to tp to a guildie who was on a War Brig, and the deck is as large and impressive as the SOTL.

Red Sparrow! LOL! I must say that red isn't his colour...

Well, this is rather interesting. I'll have to test this out later.

I had a chance to login to Test last night and purchased a Light Brig and Brig. Outside of submitting various bug reports (which I expected) I must say I am pretty impressed with this update. The ships are well designed and seem to handle well. Once all the major bugs are identified and addressed, I really think this is going to add a fresh change to the game. SVS will be interesting as well.

Yes, this will take some time before the update will be released to open. Already a noticeable bug is that I'm unlimited access, yet when I logged in my name tag was blue and there was no option for the Gold founder tag.

EDIT: Unless they did away with the founder name tags on test.

Does the cargo upgrade reduce speed/turning?

No. Cargo increases armor and cargo space, but unlike the other hull upgrades it doesn't reduce any other aspects.

Great! I'm definitely getting that then!

I doubt it, they would probably just fix the textures on the model which should fix it for all of them.

Does anyone know what the new grog material is for? It says something about trading, but it isn't very specific about who.

Gave my War Sloop the Open Fire I Rigging Upgrade - this was the epic result:
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...pOpenFireI.png
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...Customized.png
I must say, it really looks good.

The hat looks sorta cool in all white, I woudn't mind buying another..:laughks2:

So I gave my ship a Streamlined I upgrade. Now it looks like a racing boat, or a lolipop.

http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/83/4...2_16-43-50.jpg

If you could, please PM me on this, it sounds.... interesting...

This is what I see EVERYTIME me and crew ports to a island

That happens to me too. But I noticced that I still keep loot like money and materials.

http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...RedDervish.pnghttp://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...edDervish2.png
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...tideCobra3.pnghttp://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...ptideCobra.png

(Wow, those pictures take up a lot of space)

Those are my other two customized Warships. I'm quite proud of their design, especially my Shadow Cobra's (Shadow Red Dervish) design.

I hope they have an eagle design for the sails... Emily will be sad if they don't!

How about an Eagle claw! They have that.

That'll probably have to do... I'll make it work when this comes out on live.

Wow nice designs... \might just have to steal them lol :sailr:

Thank you.

Got screenshots of a lovely Reinforced War Frigate.
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...Reinforced.png
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...einforced2.png
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...einforced3.png

I must say, the sort of "ironclad" look is really awesome.

Do they have a nice little clover design to throw on my sails?

Alas they do not! But ye can get a wasp!

No, but there's an idea to throw at them when St. Patrick's Day comes.

Well then, last night, I definitely had a rockin' plunder run!
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...lly-hoLoot.png
You have to look closely at that one. I was late with the screenshot, but you can see I got both a Loot Skull Chest and a Rare Ship Materials from that Tally-ho.'

http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...estPlunder.png
And here is the overall haul.

I have another question. Right now on live, if you dock with too many loot containers and they don't all fit on the page, the game won't give you them. Were you able to get all 8 of those loot pouches, etc.?

From what I've seen if you get two or more of the same item it will show the item with a x2, x4 etc.

On test they solved the problem by not giving us loot at all! LOL

Considering I have never gotten Loot Containers at sea that aren't Ship Materials or Rare Ship Materials, I really don't know the answer to that. However, in the past, I've gotten lots of Loot Pouches, and other containers, and even though they showed off screen, I still got the items within.

OMG now there's rank 4 upgrades that let you have partial fury and firebrand broads! and even more speed, turning and armor boosts! (every single one has a cargo decrease)

I have not seen anyone with rank 4 upgrades yet so is i am wondering is this a rumor or is there someone with rank 4 upgrade...seems hard to believe.

http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...nesUpgrade.png
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...esUpgrade2.png
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...ebrandShot.png
There's your proof.

Anyway, after a lot of looting,
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...stPlunder2.pnghttp://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...stPlunder3.png

I've finally gotten enough Iron to upgrade my War Sloop's hull!
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...Reinforced.png

And for all you Streamlined crazies out there, here is Seagull's War Brig
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...treamlined.png

I have a War Brig with streamline I, a sloop with Streamline II. Have not seen anything other then round come out on a broadside. If it dose happen I will screen it.

As to a level 4 upgrade, dunno if there is one. Let me get something to level 3 to find out.

There is a Rank IV upgrade. Once you upgrade to Streamlined/Reinforced/Cargo III, you can then upgrade to either Skulls & Bones, Fortune Hunter or Firestorm. Skulls & Bones = 15% chance of firing a Fury broadside, Fortune Hunter = 20% chance of firing a Firebrand broadside, and Firestorm = 15% chance of firing a Firebrand broadside. Screenshots of the Skulls & Bones upgrade can be found in CaribbeanThunder's post, above your's.

Wow, this is going to be awesome!

Two questions though..

Did they remove the normal and royal chests? Because from what I've seen you can only get loot containers and materials.

Also, do you have to upgrade your ship in order to change the hull's color?

They did not remove regular Cargo. Loot Containers now remove regular Cargo like it had orignally been meant to. When Loot Containers first arrived, it originally did this, but a later update broke it.

Yes, you need to get either Cargo I, Reinforced I or Streamlined I. Each of these has a different Hull type.

Reinforced:
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...Reinforced.png

Cargo:
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...RedDervish.png

Streamlined:
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...treamlined.png

1. No, normal and Royal chests are still there. It's just when you get Ship Materials/Rare Ship Materials, they replace normal/royal chests. More valuable plunder drops replace the less valuable ones -- this happens on Live too.

2. No, you don't; nor do you need to upgrade your ship to buy emblems.

Well, had an awesome plunder run just now!

http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...stPlunder4.png

Loot only replaces Cargo Crates, Treasure Chests, Royal Chests and Loot Pouches. It will not replace Loot Chests, Ship Materials, Loot Skull Chests or Rare Ship Materials.

I was aboard! We did it twice!

Well met Sir!

So ifI understand correctly:Rare Ship/Ship Materials>Skull/Loot Chests&Pouches>Royal/Treasure Chests and Crates?

It seems like the best buy is the Cargo in my opinion, get a armor and cargo boost is great, but costs 60,000. Thats really cool of the broadside upgrades!

Well, if that means that Rare/Ship Materials, Loot Chests and Loot Skull Chests can replace anything else except for each other, then yep, that's right!

Well then, I finally got my War Brig Streamlined I AND Speed I!
http://i1236.photobucket.com/albums/...reamlined2.png

Now all of my ships are upgraded!