The State of the Game, December 2009

[Sven Osymthe]

I agree with a lot of what has been posted here, but to only some extent.

New enemies??!! The only new enemy that we saw this year is the Thrall Captains. Not one other enemy is new. They are only different levels and names assigned to old enemies. A Stump is a stump, regardless if it is called Corrupt or not.

That s true, all the new enemies are just renamed/re-leveled enemies we've all come to know, and I would like some new ones as well. But to me, it doesn't really matter what they are, just the level they are. Unless these new enemies are equal, or greater than the Thrall's max level, then they wouldn't even matter to me. Again, to me, the level is more important than the appearance.

I would also like to address the redesign of the islands. The old Port Royal, Tortuga and Padres were just as functional as these new ones, and in some ways were even better. The face lift the islands were given was interesting, but they did nothing to enhance or improve game play.

I agree with this a little bit. I like the old, and the new islands, but I feel as if the newer ones are more functional. The newer ones look like they were originally intended to be, unlike the old ones which were pretty unorganized. And on a negative note, the islands did do nothing to enhance or improve the game play, it did for some people, but to me it just brought in more lag.

Next, the caves. I really like the graphics improvements (level of detail) here. BUT, I feel that these new caves are almost completely a waste of developer time. The old Lava Gorge and Catacombs were truly caves. The new versions are nothing more than tunnels. The old versions were very functional and felt more like CAVES and CAVERNS, not just paths through a mountain.

I like some, but not all of the new caves as well. Not because they don't look like caves, but rather because there is very little originality. What I mean, all of the caves have pretty much the same appearance (different enemies, items, and what not, but in the end, all of them have the same "tunnel" like look). I would have preferred the old catacombs stay, and some more wide open caves as well, pretty much, keep some of the old and bring in the new.

Next, the GM events and role-playing. These are aspects of the game that people either love, or else they hate them. I personally have attended exactly ONE GM event. It was a lag fest and I garnered exactly NO information from it. After it was over, I felt that I had just wasted 30 minutes of good game play time. I have not attended any since then.

I completely disagree with this. From the looks of things, people must at least enjoy the events, one way or another, because if they didn't, they wouldn't go to it to make it a "lag-fest". And the events can't really be judged based on a single appearance, to get the most out of it, attending multiple is a must. I've gone to quite a few, and have learned a lot of what they are planning on releasing one day. The saying "don't knock it til you try it" comes to my mind here, you may have just attended a bad one, try finding a quieter one, and everything will be much better (the GMs will focus on what it is they aimed to get out of it, rather than putting up with interference from the audience).

The increases in Notoriety and Weapons levels was, in my opinion, the best thing that Disney did for the game this past year. It gave many, many pirates something to do again. Even grinding weapons is better than doing nothing with those pirates that we all had worked so long and hard to get leveled up.

I agree, this was one of the best updates of the year, although, not to me personally, but to a wide variety of people. I really couldn't have cared less if they updated the cap prior to a new story, I don't like leveling a lot, I prefer to enjoy the game with friends, rather than alone. Plus, once we all fully mastered, there is nothing left to do except repeat the same process as before.

Next the Invasions. I believe that the invasions are a method to help pirates reach those new level 50 marks. The rep earned during invasions is huge, and serves no purpose other than to pop your notoriety! The invasions themselves do relatively little for individual weapons levels, and does nothing toward any quests. Although it is fun to be able to say that we successfully defended our server, they can be monotonous after a while.

That is true, but indirectly. The invasions are intended to follow the story line, but at the same time, they offer pirates a easier path to 50, while encouraging them to take part in the invasions. As said before, the invasions aren't directly intended to help level anything, they do, but that is not the main point of them. They still want pirates to do as they did before, run around questing, leveling, and that sort of stuff until they master, rather than get the whole deal on a simple invasion. It does get monotonous, but nobody has to take part in the invasion, its there to be used, but not being forced upon us (unless we enjoy the practically free notoriety rep).

Comments in reference to the GM events and Captain Rott quests. One of my major problems with the GM role playing and the Captain Rott quests is that they are limited. Once the Rott quests were removed from the game, now there are an entire new generation of players and pirates who will never get the opportunity to do those quests. Same with the role playing. Once a role playing event happens, it is over. The role playing events are limited in scope, do not happen on all servers, with all players, even when they are prearranged, let alone when they are spurious. Other players will never get the opportunity to ever see these events. Now the entire segment about Constance Sorrow is coming to a close, and any player who may have just joined the game, or who may join the game in the future, will never know what this is all about. Role playing in a game such as this one is not truly viable, unless you can get the role playing to ALL the players. Not just all the current players, but to future generations of players. Having role playing events that can only be attended by some players, or events that leave the game, OR having quests that are limited in time, and then disappear:: These things are not good for the game.

I 100% disagree here. This is actually good for the game in the end. New players should not be given the chance to attend these events if they joined after the event took place. Just like in our everyday lives, opportunities come and go, if we don't take them when they come, we're just gonna miss out. And with this kind of approach, should Disney just open founder access back up to the rest of the people who join/joined? No. As others have said, the newer people can check the archives to find out what happened. Plus, if Disney took the time to work on reshowing everything to new players, that would more than likely delay them from more important things.

This year, that trend is continuing. Long time players have/are leaving in droves again. Even those who are staying are decreasing their game time. Large groups are moving to other games. Disney hasn't lived up to the hype they themselves put out throughout the year. I'm not going to address any supposed "promises" that were made. I'm just going to say that Disney made statements that they were going to do things, release stuff, and they haven't done so.

I think Whale and a few others perfectly summed this up. Friends leaving, and friends joining, that is not a reflection on the overall population of the game, rather those you have interacted with. Personally, I have never seen less than 20 people online, on my friend list. That may seem small to some, or large to others, but those friends are those who have been playing between the launch date, and the end of 2008 (with the exception of a some). Meaning simply, some people may have more friends leaving, but some people may have a large portion still playing. If someone were to judge how many people still played, they should check the server list, when i'm online there are a few quiet servers, but a lot of ideal and busy servers, meaning simply, people are playing.

As for the promises, again, Whale and a few others summed it up perfectly. None of us can judge how easy, or how hard it is to make adjustments to the game. The developers have multiple challenges that they must face, one, making sure people like what they're aiming to add, two, getting the additions to work properly, and three, follow the story line. For example, if we're sitting here with the main story being, Jolly Roger invading islands, where would a Kraken fall into this? How would we get the Kraken to work properly? And would all the players actually want the Kraken, or would they prefer a new story quest?

Content is what goes in your Journal. If it doesn't end up there, it isn't content.

Although many people agree with this, its just an opinion, not a fact. Small, large, good, bad, content is merely an addition to the game.

Personally, before ANY large amount of content comes in I would like them to address any issues that would take away from the enjoyment of that newer content. Such as, the amount of memory this game uses? The length of the load screens since the fog update? These are two things that are bothering me. I used to be able to play multiple pirates on one computer, no lag at all, but once the new islands came, it was hard to play one with no issues. As for the load screens, there is no reason that a game this size should take around 3 or more minutes to load once you log in.