Release Notes - October 17th 2008 - OPEN
 

Release Notes - October 17, 2008

• Added new Quests for Level 5 Weapons. These new Quests are unlocked when a weapon reaches Level 20 and only after the Level 4 Weapon Quest for that weapon has been completed. These new Quests involve defeating Boss Enemies, so make sure you have a crew to help fight them! The Level 5 Weapons are:
  • Pirate Blade (L5 Cutlass Weapon)
  • Bloodletter Dagger (L5 Dagger Weapon)
  • Grand Pistol (L5 Pistol Weapon)
  • Taboo Doll (L5 Voodoo Doll Weapon)
  • Vile Staff (L5 Voodoo Staff Weapon)
• Boss Enemies can now be found in the Caribbean. They are marked by a glowing skull icon over their heads and are much more difficult to defeat than normal enemies of the same level. Some boss enemies will always spawn in the same location, while others are more rare and randomly spawn throughout the world.
• The Dagger has been rebalanced with new abilities:
  • Backstrike - Attacking an enemy in the back using a Combo Attack now does a Backstrike and deals extra damage. However, attacking an enemy from the front with a Combo Attack deals less damage than before.
  • Attunement Breaking - The Asp and Throw Dirt skills now can break Voodoo Doll Attunement on players and enemies. If a player using a Voodoo Doll is hit by these skills, they will lose their attunement and will need to re-attune their targets. Also, players who recently had an Attunement broken will be immune to further Attunement breaking for 30 seconds. Skeleton enemies who have their Attunement Broken will be unable to cast voodoo hexes for a short time.
  • Interrupt Ability- The Asp, Throw Dirt, and Viper Nest skills can now Interrupt another player who is charging an attack (such as Take Aim, Long Volley, and Staff Hexes). Interrupting a charge will cause that player to have to start his charge over again.
  • Throw Dirt also now gives a 25% reduced accuracy instead of 40% and lasts a shorter duration.
• Trainer NPC's at local blacksmiths can now retrain your weapons, by retraining a weapon you can refund all your spent skill points and allow you to re-choose your skills for that same weapon.
• Captains now have more control over who boards their ships with a new ship-boarding permission system. Additionally, players at dinghies now have a better interface for finding ships to board.
• The Game Options interface is now more clear and easy to use.
• The maximum size of Guilds has been increased to 500 members.
• Fixed a major issue in Privateering affecting when players can make ship repairs.
• Fixed a bug where players were not allowed to sell a ship if they could not carry the gold received from the sale.
• Pistol and Grenades deal slightly more damage in PVP now.
• The targeting sights for weapons now only turn red when the enemy is within range. The Voodoo Staff targeting sight turns yellow when the target is within range of a Blast and turns red when the target is within range for the selected Hex.
• Improved the sky, as well as updated and optimized many visual effects throughout the game.
• Health meters for enemy ships should no longer randomly disappear.
• Enemy ships can now attack your ship after you've disabled a flagship (but not after you've boarded it).
• Players can now replay The Black Pearl Boss Battle even after defeating the Goliath.
• Fixed some animation issues with NPC's that occur when players interact with them, also updated NPC movement to be smoother and less erratic.
• Fixed an issue where crew members were not receiving their crew bonus when sailing on larger ships.
• Fixed a bug preventing enemies from recovering Health and Voodoo. Since enemies now recover Voodoo again, Hex Eater no longer permanently disables a Voodoo Doll using enemy. Constant Hex Eater shots will still keep an enemy's Voodoo near zero (preventing heavy spell-casting). Once the shots stop, the enemy will recover his Voodoo slowly and begin casting spells again.
• Green and Grey leveled enemies yield slightly more Reputation Points than before

omg omg omg WOOOO
Obvious long update lol
ill wait bout 15 min hopefully done updating

Yup new enemies new bosses and lots of bug fixes! I cant wait :D my goal is to complete all of those quests by the end of the weekend.

all of this in the open game and not on test anymore? even with all of those issues i keep reading about?

Yay! But now I have to wait until this workday is over before I can go check it out...Aaarrrrggggghhh!

Yes all the stuff on test has been moved to open. With or without bugs i guess.... i mean the update itself had tons of big bugs fixes.

Yes! Now we can deal with Doll users in Pvp! Not to mention redo skill points!

The Good:

Much of the updates are the bomb - The new Options Screens, Ship Boarding interface and Retraining of Weapons, New Weapons, new Skiy Graphics, lots of stuffl are all great additions. :)

The Bad:

The big bugs we wanted fix - didn't happen, and they took away options forcing players to now use more glitches to level up... the dagger will now be used even less (becoming almost like gernades), and as for Hex Shot on the Pistol...

The Ugly...

What a bunch of bull. Not only does it NOT slow them down any, but the spells they cast vs the 'voodoo' they regain are out of wack.

All I got to say is I'm glad all my pirates are 40's because this is a sad day for anyone wanting to level a pirate...

So now three weapons (Gernades, Pistol and Dagger) have become useless all within one update... and I believe this loss alone outweighs the gains...

Arrrg this SUCKS! Why that is the dumbest thing ever geeze disney do you get anything right?! Off to the grog blog!

Hmm, excited and terrified, all at the same time. :undecided:

I've been looking forward to new stuff for my 40 to do, so I'm happy to see it, but if its now harder to level my least favorite weapons, that's not going to be fun for my other pirates once the quests are done.

Oh, well, off to go see how good (or bad) it is! :Hcool:

Its good and bad!

Grrr i wonder will there be an update where disney doesnt get rid of something good and replace it with something worse?

What was wrong with the dagger? I havent heard ANY rants or suggestions to change the dagger skills so what does disney do.... they change the dagger skills. However stuff that we have been ranting and suggestiong about for over a year still hasnt been added or fixed?!?!

I noticed yesterday that all the threads on the Grog Blog are closed to new comments...interesting timing there! Just as the new updates come out they've disabled the feedback. What a coincidence.

Yes what a coincidence indeed!

If you need me ill be on kingshead mass murdering the navy to relieve stress!

Does it seem to anyone else that many of these updates are designed to force players into group situations, and make it much harder for those players who prefer to do their pirating solo?

that's why i thought they were going to wait... id rather have them wait and fix what needs fixing then rushin things out and screwing up.

woooohooo!!! yea baby!!
I cant wait to come on this Afternoon!! woo

about those bugs, who cares? lol. we got what we wanted, and that usually brings bugs with it

well, i just finished downloading the update. WISH ME LUCK

hmm... don't like the voodoo recovery think thats evil.
seems like their PR department needs a new head otherwise they'd realize KEEP WHAT THE PLAYERS WANT not take away something we like
(well time to find the new beneficial bugs that accompany every update)

More and more everyday :) What other reason would they have to implement some of the changes they did?

First - many of the new options are great :D The skill reassignment is a much overdue feature, along with many of the new tidbits put in. I don't want to take away from the fact that these new features are a *two-thumbs-up* from almost all pirates :D

My issue is the 'you give'ith, we take'ith away approach' - and its always taking more away and giving us less in return. They said they would fix bugs - but the 'bugs' they fixed only makde it harder for players (all Leveling Type 'bugs' like the KH Fence, Hex Shot, things that helped a pirate) - and didn't adress the REAL bugs affecting players (like SvS player cheats against other players)...

These 'player against player' bugs are the ones that are ruining the game - not the 'player self-improvement' bugs (which I still don't think they were bugs - intentional slow-downs to prevent players getting anywhere is what this really is).

So - in review of what Andrew posted earlier - sure, we get new stuff for pirate masters... so what? Them new weapons aren't getting you anywhere at L40 anyway... your new reassigned skills are useless at 40 - its already mastered... SvS is not fixed well enough which might of been where reassignment of skill may have been some good use...

So whats my benifit again? Run around for new weapons with stronger attack power which would weaken my REP hits even more should they ever raise the cap with no option to at least level up at a decent rate? You'll only finish those quest in two weeks and want more... but the rest will now have to suffer while trying to level...

The more I type, the more I'm getting disgusted with it... guess I'll go get a coffee :D

I think the idea behind the hex shot was to slow the progress of a player to get to lvl 40. I think it was a bad move. More people will just exploit existing or new glitches to level.

This game just keeps getting more and more greared towards the 12 yearolds. (button mashing no thinking brand of leveling)

I feel as if I'm being punished because I have figured out the best ways to level.

I guess there is always WoW.

I agree good MMO games make you think but POTCO has turned into a button mashing game. Walk up to someone and press CTRL 1000000 times! Wooo how fun!

that should have been the first thing to update the 40/25 levels. you have new quests and what not but they seem pointless once those levels have maxed out.

Notoriety should be updated to lv 80, weapons at lv 50 with new skills.Much better way.Also, i cant even replay the Boss Battle till i complete the pistol quests.Way too many in there.I got pistol to 31% in 10 mins, way to fast to get a new weapon.The ship permissions need to be permanent.When you leave your ship it goes back to just crew and friends.The Assassin boss is really hard.I did 1500 damage with flaming skull and it barely scratched it.Didnt even attempt a raider.

So, as my review, the bosses are super awsome, the new weapons i dont know, but the "upgrades" to the weapons suck.Ship permissions are fine, but i think every pirate would rather have a below deck area.

OMG!!! GUYS!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The thing im most exited about is that now, you can board ANY public ship that is out there! :O! only that they can block you though... oh well

the jails look a little different too.

WOO HOO! I'm SOOO HAPPY!!!!!!!

Well im about to go check this out, updating now :) Kinda happy, but at the same time i know there were a lot of issues, i don't think they should have done it this soon...

With public access, youd need to be on a busy server for good results, and that brings more lag.I personally dont need it.Just so i can get a larger crew.I mean, unless someone has something higher than a War Frigate(imposibble).

well its time i go see how bad these reports are and i'll be back later to gie my two cents.

i love the new updates! i can't board my ships!! woo freakin hoo!

Disney was so not ready to release this. Even yesterday I sent in eight bug reports on test. Don't be too upset if the site goes down for "emergency repairs" several times this weekend. grrr I just don't understand the rush to release sub-par content, when they know it's not working.

Say hello to Neban The Silent!

http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/o...17_17-8-40.jpg

I was helping my friends fight him then we just took turns. One fights and the other two heal.

Yes and Neban has a health over 30000

Looks cool! Will have to try some of it out late tonight!

I rather like the Dagger changes as it is easier to level (as it does less damage) and it makes a counter-Doll. Don't like the Hex-eater change at all, even though it may be warranted: I guess it's reasonable (don't get wacked up by feelings here).
Good or great changes in my opinion.

A bad change in my opinion, though the Dagger has been generally bettered with these changes.

Meh changes in my opinion.

The one that says ~Enemy ships can now attack your ship after you've disabled a flagship (but not after you've boarded it). was a glitch people would disable a flag and sail away and nothing can attack them.

I think us on POF complain WAY to much, guys appreciate they ever even added this, this really upsets me

Yes but this a game thousands of people pay for and millions play it isnt the type of game you can half do updates and finish them off after they have been released. There is a reason why the Test server was made it was to TEST all updates to get rid of all the bugs that get reported in new updates.

I know that: perhaps they should only be targetable and able to do damage when they are not grappling or grappled.

You could do this before through lookout, you mean you like boarding peoples ships without thier permission? Such is an act of mutiny, this pirate deserves being marooned (make sure there are no seaturtles about either).


I see the increased the guild list, this is nice for large guilds, but why dont they increase the friends list which would be a benefit to everyone?

And fixing all the individual leveling glitchs and leaving th Ship vs Ship a mess was plain stupid POTCO, your big statement about listening to us was BOGUS. I certainly HOPE a developer is reading this because from my perspective, they arent listening to us at all. They hear a couple words, and then do what they think we meant without actualy reading our comments. Sorry POTCO dev's but this is your doing, not ours, everyone screamed for Ship vs Ship cheats to be fixed, you said you were listening and you eliminate the glitchs noone cared about and left the ones ruining your game.

Its actually a bit disgraceful on POTCO's part in my opinion.

I do love several of the new features, however, thank you for those.

2 main focuses for me here was the reassignment, and SvS being fixed... Grade this update: an Incomplete

You misunderstand Zeppers. The system rocks. It allows you to limit whoever imaginable.

Complain too much? I've been testing my tush off on this new content, and sending in one bug report after another. No way, no how, was this ready to come to open, that's all I was saying. So, hold off on your complaints when the site goes down for Emergency maint., or crashes on you completely, if you appreciate this sub-par addition to the game.

lol i just found a gravedigger in Tortuga graveyard sliding around in the 'T' position, i think he dreamed of flying :D Also, f12 doesnt remove chat :( and having problems of enemies running at me from really far away when i dont even do anything. But i'll focus on the good points until then lol, now i know how it feels to be a tester, something i'm glad i'm not at this point :D

They're working on it. This was the major glitch that effected my SvS gameplay. I can usually handle the other cheats alright.

Aye yea f12 no longer removes chat :(

i agree! right now i rather be here at the forum posting and playing at the activities forums than playing those "great" new things! they could have taken more time. i have been reading the many issues that tester were having. they are a lot! they rushed it and messed up yes, am i complaining yes, am i paying for the game yes, do i get to play... hell no! i can get to my ships! wait!!! im getting close to rant mode...

Can anyone else not get into Pirates right now??? I try to select my avatar and everything crashes. Anyone else having this problem??

I'm there now working on my quests. lol when grenades are thrown at me i get flung into the air, it's hilarious.

I agree, this wasn't ready, though a lot of bugs resulting to new stuff had been fixed, I sent in at least three bugs yesterday of kings jail doc grogs, tattoo parlor on padres black out or partially black out in just rooms alone.

Dislikes that I for sure sent in. Killing in one shot with not even a fully max siege bomb in pvp. Dagger 25% decrease in damage to front attack. Rare occasion of a back stab doing only 8 points more than front - half the time. Cutlass - dagger combos set in stone rather than a choice. Leaving a lost point to recover in blade instinct again, if you had 5 with good combo's already set up. Grenade leveling, pity anyone not done with that yet. Hex shot now a lost item to pistol.

Paying customers now recently have lost dagger damage. Lost cannon damage and around half max damage to pvp ships. Choice of combos skills in cutlass and dagger, where cutlass has 5 combos and we have a total of 25 points. Hex shot in pistol. Grenade on the hot plate doing single shot kill with complaints soon to follow.
The question I have to ask is the people paying gained what exactly?
Only thing possibly I can think of is a 2 point increase in 2 of 5 weapons that weren't degraded, that takes half a day to complete.

Though I see things that I like in additions to the game, I can only see the main results. Paying customers are degraded, everyone gets new additions, such as bosses. All founders get something for Halloween, paying and non paying each get 31 chosen to receive something. It looks quite obvious to me I am in the wrong category to pay for everyone else to get perks, while my accounts are degraded?

== soon to be one of many whinning to make my free-bee as good as suckers that pay for this.

First off, I am not a tester, nor is it a "privilege" that I ever want to have. Testers, thank you for what you do for the game. With that out of the way, I agree Poison Elf. I'm not one to complain, unless it is warranted. This update seemed way too rushed, IMHO. While there are features that I like, mainly the point reallocation, degrading the weapons that were already hard enough to level, making them now virtually useless (if they could even be called useful in the first place), is not a way to make me want to keep paying to be a pirate errand boy for a bunch of lazy NPCs and button mash just so I can level up weapons to a point where I have nothing useful left to do with them, except for protecting fellow pirates.
Also this whole thing about fixing "bugs" that actually helped us level and didn't hurt anyone else (like the KH fence and to an extent the flagship glitch for grenades), yet not fixing the host of SVS problems that they said they would, does not help POTCO development's waning credibility in my opinion.
I'm sorry but if this trend of updates degrading the gameplay continues, I have better things to spend my $10 per month on. It's becoming an interactive chat room, and frankly mates, I have better things to do with my free time. It's not that I won't miss the friends I've made either.
Ok, my rant is done. This has been an editorial by the manager and sole employee of this station. Thank you for your attention. Now back your regularly scheduled program.:128:

I hate this update, lag, glitches.
OMG i hate this

I'm not horribly dipleased with the voodoo regenerate thing, since the only thing I used gun for was hex eater.

The dagger... I'll still use it because its anti- doll now, but not quite so frequently.

All in all, it's ok, but a little rushed. I hate that you have to get the 4th level of weapons first, tho. I also haven't noticed any bugs... yet.

This is horrible just walking around towns on dead servers the player keeps stalling. Buildings take forever to appear causing me to walk into them. While launching my own ship twice I was under the floor Game crashed twice leaving me with a black screen of evil and on the one computer I had to reboot along with the flashing buildings cause the game graphics options don't help anything other than the appearance of the game but hurt the overhaul play of the game making it unappealing.

the excitement we all felt is dying really fast!

No kidding! Lol i went from Yay Yay Hooray! To BOO Boo This Sucks! In less than an hour!

Some of the updates are cool like the bosses and graphics and skill point relocation but they fixed some bugs that werent causing a big problem compared to ones like the svs glitches and stuff. And the hex eater shot update was terrible. i give the update a generous 7 out of 10

Overall, I really like this update.

I love the skill point re-allocation, the ship boarding options, the better display of Captain's Orders, the bosses, and having new quests.

Initially, I was dismayed at the changes to Hex Eater & dagger skills. However, after playing the updated versions and comparing them to my previous style of play, I've realized that I enjoy the new version more than the old. I'd gotten bored with gun & dagger, and hadn't really realized it; the update has made these weapons a bit challenging again, and I really appreciate that.

I don't love some of the new bugs that came along for the ride, such as sprinting Navy guys & skeletons - it's tough to kill 5 Grenadiers when they won't stop running! Unlike some of you, I haven't had any show-stopping issues or crashes with this release, and I'm optimistic that minor updates along the way will smooth things out quickly...

I give this update 8 out of 10, but I'm still hoping to see a new quest chapter before my game subscription lapses...

I've seen a friend with the level five Cutlass and it just looks like the Iron Cutlass. I like Fine Cutlass better. Soon as I get unlimited again I can either ignore the quest or do it and claim my reward.

I totally agree about the new cutlass. I likes the fine cutlass better too.

After playing this pretty much all day yesterday, there are things I like and things I don't. For one, I like the weapons quests. So far, they have actually been fun, but what happens when they're over? So my level 40 has new weapons... to do what with? Once she has them (which won't take very long since I got 2 of them yesterday) she goes back to leveling nades, then goes back in the box.

I'll admit to being in the minority and actually liking the fact that the kingshead and catacomb barrier glitches are gone. And I used them! But I found yesterday that I had to be more creative in how and where I threw my nades so that I could defeat an enemy without dying. Much more fun than hiding behind a wall collecting free rep. For the first time in 3 pirates, I actually liked this weapon!

I love the new bosses. Even the easy ones will give my baby pirates something to do. I love being able to retrain my weapons. My first pirate made more than a few mistakes, so I retrained all of hers.

Overall, I liked the changes. The bugs are annoying, but they usually fix them quickly. I just wish they would give my 40 more to do. Something that would last longer. Like a story quest... :sp003:

Well, here's my take after playing for about 4 hours last night.

Bugs I found:

While we can no longer hide in the rocks in the Catacombs on Padres, the grenadiers can. The first grenadier you encounter coming into the Catacombs from Lava Gorge melts into the near wall. The corner back wall where you could glitch through to the unfinished path...another grenadier glitches in there.

Navy seargent at the top of the tree-lined path on Kings glitches into the stone wall.

The floating seargent on Padres, just past the wooden bridge by the shipwright, is still floating and will now chase you nearly to the far arch into the village; the one that leads to Romany Bev's path.

Behemoth was firing double firebrand broadsides. Not just a graphics glitch...both rounds were damaging my war frigate. First round bloomed up around my ship from nowhere. The second round fired from the Behemoth as usual. The 2 rounds occurred with only 1 second's pause between rounds.

Navy on Kingshead giving their best 50-yard-dash tries.

More grenadiers in the game overall (not a glitch, but makes some areas feel very crowded).

Hex shot still did stunning damage to a witchdoctor in Tortuga graveyard (stopping him from using his doll), but one in Murky Hollow on Port Royal wasn't fazed a bit by it.

Undead bandits and giant scorps in Wild Woods on Tortuga are competing in world's fastest athelete competitions. An undead gravedigger in Kings Run on Port Royal is apparently training for that same event.

When running, you will know you've been hit by an enemy because you will immediately show down to a walk, even before a hit point is registered, and before a loss of health or dizziness shows.

Many structures, on multiple servers and multiple islands appear to be lit by spastic strobe lights as you're running toward them.

Enemy NPC ships needed for quests are not being "spotlighted" and do not always appear as a gold star on the compass.

At least one EItC Ogre seems to have now gained "come about" ability. Was making the tightest, quickest turns I've ever seen an NPC ship execute.

As mentioned before, F12 doesn't remove chat. Very annoying.

When changing servers, or tp'ing, chat disappears. A bother when you're in a conversation and have to keep opening the chat back up.

You cannot type the name of the Boss enemy brigand Bonerattler (in the Catacombs on Padres) into the chat box. This seems arbitrarily weird. He's a legit NPC, so why his name should trigger the filter is beyond me.



Now...to not just complain, there are some things I like:

Skill reassignment. Yay! I played this game solo for so long, with no guild affiliation, and not aware that POF existed, that I made some atrocious skill point choices. It's nice to be able to correct those mistakes.

All enemies that "sprout" from the ground now seem to give off a noxious green/yellow glow before they begin to appear, so you don't run right over the top of them as they spawn.

Boss enemies are challenging. Neban the Silent is a booger! He's a very formidable opponent.

I'm still questing for the new weapons, so I don't have an opinion yet on them one way or the other.

I do like the new game interfaces. And I also like the new weapons sighting changes. Nice to know right from the start if an enemy is out of range or not.



So, there are my observations.

I almost spit out my coffee reading that. lol

Took me a minute to take down that 90mph scorp.

How about the mini enemies too? Seems like some spawn as little bitty buggers.
Prolly just graphics since the tags are small on them too...

Im overall happy with the updates, curious if anyones done more testing in ship vs ship to see the scope of issues there. Have the cheats been resolved?

Was told boss battles would be repeable, which until this update was Takeing the black pearl.

When I requested repeatable boss battle, repeating that is what I meant.
Not making a bunch of uber critters, calling them bosses.

Let us redo "THE" boss battle please Potco?

I went to the swamp in Tortuga and I walked past the huge gator but it didn't do anything. I saw a Boss but couldn't tell which because the gator, a giant crab, and a grenadier all attacked me for no reason at all.

That shocked me because:

1) The Huge Gator doesn't usually attack unless you attack it.

2) The Crab wasn't even there.

3) I was like a mile away from the Grenadier!

Has this happened before to anybody?

Both the huge gator, and giant crab spawns (Tortuga/Mistymire)are triggered by a pirates proximity. If another pirate triggered it, and you walk by, you'll see it there yet it may not bother you until you attack it. The crab often is not there until you walk up and then it spawns, it will attack anything that gets close. The grenadiers do seem to be a bit more aggressive.

I think aggressive is a weak word for it. Ridiculous might be more accurate. I was going through Becket's Quarry, and not only did 6 things lock on to me, they didn't even bother to follow me. They just stood where they were, hitting me with apparently magical cutlasses that reached through rock and over several yards. I know because I had to hunt them down and kill them before I could get back to what I was really trying to do.

This is not cool. :zn3lhg:

And btw, I want my old weapons back. The three I have so far ( doll, pistol, and cutlass) are ugly. We need an option to change weapons, like we have for clothes. Do the quests, get them all, then use the one you like.

I'm liking this less and less.

You can redo the black pearl boss battle.You need to go in lookout and click treasure maps.

on a scale of 1-10 i rate the update a -5 , the quest were poor, about 30min apiece to complete if that long. lot of new issues. hex shot not workin and so on.

Disney POTCO updates are to the game what the EITC having Jones' heart was to the movies' Pirates.

~Mad Ange

I haven't seen any of the mini enemies yet.

I rarely do SvS, so I can't help you there Zep. Rackat would be the one to answer that. He loves SvS.

The undead Spanish on Cutthroat are brutally agressive also...4 attacked at once and one (I'm sorry - I was so shocked and trying to stay alive at level 39 that I didn't see which one) was armed with 2 daggers; one in each hand. And boy was he scoring some big hits on me.

*edited to say: Yes Zep, Jason is right. In lookout choose treasure map and you can redo the quest for the Pearl as often as you like. No new BBs though.*

Wow the more i play the more im getting fed up with some of these updates! I wont be standing near an enemy and then from like 300 feet away literally off the compass comes an enemy acacking me and i get killed. I am getting really mad cause they attack you for no reason and you arent even near them.UGH!!!

As for the masses of baddies attacking you for no reason, I sent it in as a bug on test, but I guess they were serious...

Here's what I posted about it 10/7

Alwtown when updates come in on Live, anyways, good to be back, and I found the Stump Boss on Outcast. He drifts Islands, but, he hid in the water and I lured him out with my daggers, so, he's findable, you just gotta watch your compass well.

Oh great, looks like i wont ve visiting outcast for a while.

Has anyone else noticed that duration for Full Sail and Ramming Speed have been drastically reduced. And Come About, which was decently effective at one skill point before, has been rendered nearly useless at that level?

I think I'm capable at sailing...I managed to master it before I ever even knew there were sailing glitches, but I'm finding it impossible to t-bone enemy ships now, and as so many tag on you at once I'm repairing at least 40% damage to the war frigate after each voyage.

I'm now in the position of wanting nothing but an increase to the notoriety and skill levels so that I can sink more skill points into previously mastered abilities. Because there just aren't enough skill points to go around at level 25 to effectively perform anymore.

Now I would just say to the devs "Don't give me anymore weapons, no more enemies...just another BB and raise the levels on Notoriety and Mastering".

*edited to say I just sent an email to Big D stating the aforementioned position*

Here Here! I think we should flood them with this request. Disney, your lev 40's are getting bored. Couldn't hurt.

Remember that thing over Skelly ships? Well...
http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/o...18_16-9-18.jpg

This is also new
http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/o...8_16-12-45.jpg

Stump boss
http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/o...-18_7-6-54.jpg

Check out this team attack
http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/o...18_7-33-43.jpg

My Least Favorite pieces of the updates
 

I'm sure everyone has already posted a grip of issues about this update, here's mine the ones that might make me stop playing altogether:

1) Micro Bosses in areas that the Lag and the ability for every NPC within 500 yards to hit you with a magic cutlass makes it virtually impossible to enjoy, even if you win.

2) The new ship combat issues. I like the readout on the side with what my talents do as I deploy them. . . I like the new interface and I like the ship controls for people boarding. . . but I'm seeing Galleons at three times the speed as they were, ghosts that do crazy ivans like they had thruster rockets on their bow and I'm unable to gain the weather gauge on ANYTHING as a sailing master . Makes it very hard to work the ship and a lot of the pace that I enjoyed is gone.

3) More pointless quests that don't reveal any new areas or stories, they just keep clustering us to old areas and over packing them with stuff so we lag more. . .


Here's what I'd like

1) Thin some of these areas out again. ( Becketts, Kingshead, LavaGorge). . . Balance them with tough characters that don't lag out the enjoyment.

2) Extend the virtual areas so that players can explore a bit more. Give us more areas to explore and not cluster so much.

3) Clean up the graphics a bit more! Especially the static screen shots. It's time, the game isn't in Beta anymore. You're Disney, give us some impressive pictures to enjoy.

4) Make the interface look a little sleeker, so we don't feel like we're stuck on an SNES interface. Some of those ratty little Gif were fine to begin with, but it's time for an overhaul guys. Compare to WOW or something, get the design quality into this Decade before this decade is over.

5) Some sort of small mail system so we know our friends are still around.

Up until this update, the enjoyment of playing with others and generally sailing about has made the other things a small issue. The interface and design is tolerable and the monotony is broken up with the social aspect we all like. . . but as these things evolve, we want to see the parts we like enhanced and everything else get better.

I feel like they're SOO close, yet SOO far. .. .

The enemies seem ok now, but, they all come at you too much. Plus, PvP, geez loueez. Too much damage.

Venom Slash, the dread scorp boss in Wildwoods on Tortuga is very interesting. You can nearly stand on top of him and he doesn't attack.

Not an incredibly formidable opponent, but he yielded 100 rep points for my level 39 pirate.

He may be my new favorite foe.

Here's his mug shot:

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u...venomslash.jpg

So the bosses even though are ranked 14 give alot of rep to higher levels? I also noticed that a lvl 19 boss was green on my lvl 40 pirates...

if u get reps thats nice, they still havn't address the noterity cap or gold cap. the new weapons quest were boring and short petty much useless for a level out pirate, but it was somthing to do. when my years up i will hav to look real hard at payin i think big D will end up losing a lot of people if they dont start listen to the masses.

few thing they need to do.
more story line
raise the noterity cap to at least 60
raise the gold and add thing to purchase at least u could spend it.
raise skill lvl on weapons or more weapons to purchase
give lvl 40 pirates something to do or be able to hav more than 4 pirates

Aye, we'll need around level 35 cutlasses to take on The Assassin's full strength, and have it as a fair fight. I personally like the Assassin Boss, though, he is very rare, he's in Beckett's quarry, just kill the enemy that is near Samuel, and he should appear after killing the enemy there a few times or so. BTW Davy, people are already saying they'll be leaving because PvP glitch was tooken out, and judging by the amount that used to do that, a lot of people are leaving.

I hate this update because they took away voodoo hex!!!
more stupid quest too

This update has cause so much lag everywhere I go that the game is nearly unplayable. I was with some lower level guildmates on Kingshead, helping them out and we had to switch servers about 8 times to get one that wasn't really lagging and glitchy.

These updates provide nothing exciting or challenging for us lvl 40 pirates. Disney is coming real close to losing me for good.

lol, I WAS marooned. couldn't use teleports, all ships at the locker, sure signs of basic access. I had to glitch off the island, and it DID look like sea turtles. I couldn't get a screetshot, though. but you should have seen them when the saw me, gliding across the water, board their ship, and kill 'em. ( it was an AWESOME glitch, I call it the ' in case you've been marooned, ' glitch. MUHAHAHHA.

Advantages

1)Skill reassignment - awesome.
2)Bosses - FUN, i can take on a 30 boss by myself, it's awesome! (takes about an hour though lol)
3)Setting who boards your ship, very useful for the guild now.
4)SvS glitch - fixed YAY no more cheaters (except those who know how to make their ship INVISIBLE and fire THREE explosives at once *coughtredqueencough*
5)Graphics look much better, loving the sky. :)
6)Enemy ship health bars no longer vanish when i use 'open fire'.
7)Boss Battle now repeatable (no rewards though right?)


Disadvantages

1)TINY enemies, as cute as they are you can't just step on them...needs to be fixed
2)Kingshead glitch is now gone, i'm going to miss that for leveling on my little pirate, though i like the fact i have to find a new way :), as well as the fence thing apprently (haven't tested it).
3)Enemies running at me from really far away. I hate it! I went into the catacombs and was bombarded with about 3 gypsies, 2 raiders and a grenadier when i wasnt anywhere near them!
4)Hex eater is now useless, even if it's said to drain 'most' voodoo.
5)Weapons are UGLY. I like the doll that is all, but the others look awful. Cutlass doesnt even look like a cutlass anymore...
6)Enemies sprinting from one end of Kingshead to the other (as well as running in the air!) Floating navy still not fixed.
7)Notoriety rewards for new weapons - but what about us level 40's!?
8)Liutenants are all spiky and look rediculous when they fight (seen this on another thread which i need to take a look at to see if i can solve it) But undead french look stupid now, watched as a undead frenchy 'slid' up to my friend and 'poked' her with their cutlass, was very funny.
9)PvP still not fixed, still pirates running around Tortuga in pvp
10)Weapons do less damage
11)Seabeards expand and become fat when using taunt, then shrink back to normal size!!!????? (Apparently urchins do too?)
12)When a grenade is thrown at me i fly up into the air for a few seconds then land, as funny as this is i don't think it was part of Disneys plan right?
13)Buildings etc flashing as you're running towards them

Basically, MUCH more disadvantages. I'd post more but i have a ship race to win!

This is probably one of the only things I saw I would disagree with since my rant the other day of where I think this is heading. One thing while testing I ABSOLUTELY had no problem sending in CHEATS people were doing in the pvp systems. I don't believe these should be hidden and protected secrets for certain people to try to take advantage of others because they are terrible players.

With this said, why did we have to wait several releases for some of this to be straighten out. Being in a good size guild on test, that question I believe answered itself for the most part. Testing a lot of this solo can go only so far, felt like pulling teeth to get help testing things requiring others. Frankly, the test server needs a huge overhaul to TEST, rather than just play.

Result: Cheats popping out more and more compounding each other. Disney's solution appears to be take skills from characters and degrade higher the level ya get characters. Definitely where I have the most issue. Why should I be getting a lot of characters whacked in skills, because the problems of cheats was decided to be ignored. In last month or so, cannon, cutlass, dagger, and pistol took a hit, that is 4 of a total of 7 skills.

Recent events was a 6 month ago decision, where were they then? If players are going to be held back in leveling, try to be forced to not solo play. Why wasn't it done at the time it was needed? Now that most the population has 40 level characters, this results in all others being limited to what past players had to do. Even more complaining to follow -no fare blah blah blah.

With this attempt of cutting solo play back. I took several characters through the entire new content in complete only playing yesterday. Altering characters specially first few I made, to max siege bomb, throw, long volley, and cranked out every new boss standing back nailing them with grenade. Easy solo task, if you haven't seen the result of what these will do in pvp, you should maybe take a look.

As disgusted here in other posts, yes you can do bb battles, but also a attempt to cut out play players want - 2 or more choice for crew. Not sure but may have mentioned this previously I thought this was where this was heading while testing, that solo bb was being cut out. Specially after so many tries solo at level 40 and the mass damage the higher level takes versus the huge amount of cannon reduction.

I can only state my own views, and that is I want to see things go forward, not backward. Doing all latest updates with several characters in one day, and getting reductions to stuff isn't what I consider forward. Nor very much excitement for the masses of 40 level characters that have happen to be there a long time.

My hotkeys don't seem to work anymore. How can I fix this? Is this happening to anyone else? It is so lame not being able to use the hotkeys!

Works fine for me, sure you didn't turn off F lock or something?

how do u become test? Also who decides if u become test?

The potco staff sends out inivites to the oldest members every now and again. You must have a clean record; in other words, they only send them out to the oldest members who have not been kicked for 72 hours.:)

Since I wasnt criticizing the system, im not so sure it was me that misunderstood. I was only criticizing what sounded like wanting to jump on ships without permission. Actually I think the issues over defaults (unless they were already addressed) are null, it seems to default to the boarding rules we had prior anyhow. I like this feature its nice.


I was mistaken however about repeating the main boss battle. Access to it was just never mentioned. If you have reached the boss battle you can do it over and over by going to "Lookout" and selecting Treasure Maps.

Actually, you can still solo the BB. Just don't choose a number and it allows you to solo. Which was a surprise to me since everything else seems to be aimed at ending solo play.

Hmm, perhaps I was mistaken on the solo bb. I will have to try it again, maybe I missed something. This is a entirely new set up, that we didn't see on test. I did try it though and wouldn't let my character go if I didn't choose one of the crew numbers 2 or above.

Ok looks like I got it now, first panel does it, not going into options, but that appears to just set lookout for other players, the two times I did it i didn't go anywhere while searching for others window just remained up. Maybe a bug, or it is waiting for others to join like pvp, not sure.

elf - I just logged back in. The trick is don't click on "options"...just click on the wording "Recover the Black Pearl". That way it takes you straight to the BB alone.

Censorship of the Level-Capped Caribbean
 

Its official, I'm done. I'm not here to complain, but seriously--this is the update I was waiting for? Disney's latest update confirms my suspicions entirely... this game is built and designed to cater to 12 year olds. (No offense to any minors that may be reading this.)

It makes my stomach turn to know that this "massive" game update consists of nothing more than a few bug fixes and 5 new weapon quests that can be completed in less than 48 hours by a one-eyed chimp thats missing half his fingers.

I'm going to save the forum some space and not go into all the ridiculous problems this game has, but I will touch on the one issue thats caused me to cancel next month's payment... Why not raise the level-cap? Why not raise the cap on weapons? Why not add more skills to the weapons? Why?! It hurts to see a LVL40 pirate running around trying to complete a quest and seeing them get no rep for their mastered weapons, and no noto for their LVL. What hurts more is to see a LVL30 running around doing the same weapon quest getting rep and noto for anything. Seems like a move to get everyone to LVL40, with an arsenal of AWESOME, BALANCED weaponry, (note the sarcasm there). Whats the point? Why not make some more powerful, make them HARDER to master... make at least one aspect of this game rewarding?

...when it all boils down, I realize I'm putting to much hope into a game that will never come close to being the MMO it could be because Disney is, well... Disney. Notice how all the threads on the Grog Blog closed when this "awesome" update went live? They don't want feedback... not negative feedback anyway. I wrote a very nice article and added it to the blog there--it never got posted, (and yes, it was much sweeter than this one). Disney pays some shmuck to sit there and filter anything that comes through to make sure all the negative blog-action gets cycled to the back.

Anyhow, my rants is over. Peg me for being a hater or whatever... but I'm done with pirates. Good luck for anyone trying to sell an account to this bump game as well... I will tell you this though--There was a young man willing to pay $750 USD for a founders account. =\

Yup, got that far, and loading the game etc. My character just would never go after that point while window remained in lookout for other players. Maybe try a differant account and characters see if it works there.

dont bother going to kingshead anymore- they fixed that as well. the fence no longs holds the navy at bay. same goes for any glitched area of padres you were going to.

Well i dont mind the fence and invisible being fixed its all the enemies running away and disappearing and flying that gets annoying!

lol yesterday i was facing a bouncing tiny swamp alligator, after 5 minutes of trying to shoot it i decided to throw a brace of daggers and hope that one of those would hit it. It worked :D As much as im ranting about the problems that came with these updates, sometimes i just have to laugh at how some things have ended up and how in the world we got bouncing enemies and such. Especially when i saw the gravedigger sliding around in the 'T' position (he liked aeroplanes). I just have to laugh at some of them instead of getting angry.