PotBS Beta Update

Sti-fi · Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 1:56 am Post subject: PotBS Beta Update

Hey folks,

I recently sent the following beta update email to all of our beta testers. Rusty thought we should share it with all of you still waiting to get in the beta so you can see the kinds of things we're doing right now. Enjoy!

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We've been talking with you beta testers, monitoring the beta discussion forums, checking out the bugs you file, and playing the beta ourselves to see how things are going. We're now starting work to specifically address issues we're seeing in the beta to make it more fun.

To do this, we're happy to announce the formation of our Beta Live Team. This is a group of devs who we're taking off the schedule so they can make improvements to the game on a regular basis. While most of our staff are creating content and working on longer-term projects, the Live Team can identify weak spots and work to fix them quickly.

While our initial list of improvements is long, I'd like to tell you about the ones we're going to make first. Some of these improvements will be in the very next beta build, and others will take a little more time. But all are coming soon as our Live Team works to fix problems, improve gameplay, and make the beta more fun for every one of you.

Battle Markers
We are changing the battle marker art in the open sea so it'll be obvious whether or not you can enter that battle, as well as whether any of your group mates are in that battle.

Open Sea NPCs
NPCs in the open sea won't attack you although you can still attack them. This is just a temporary change while we do a new system for how they decide to attack you -- we want to make sure they don't chase you forever, for example. They won't stay like this for very long but right now it's just too annoying to tolerate. Until we get the system right, it's not worth letting you be attacked six times on your way to the next port. We definitely want the open sea to be a dangerous place, but not a stupidly annoying one.

NPC Surrender
Right now pretty much every NPC, even merchants, will fight to the death. We're going to implement a system for NPC surrender so that many battles can end when the NPC should surrender instead of them dragging out an obviously losing battle until the bitter end. Only appropriate NPCs will surrender -- many AI captains will still fight hard and long.

(We have a system for players to surrender as well, but NPC surrender is going to have a bigger immediate impact and we want to get it working first.)

No More Signposts
One of the first baffling things new beta players face is how to leave town and enter the open sea. We're putting a longboat at the dock of each town and clicking the longboat is how you're going to leave. We never intended the signpost to be a permanent solution and the longboat makes a lot more sense. Eventually we are also going to let you see your ship out in the harbor, so clicking the longboat is really how you travel back to your ship and from there to the open sea. It'll still be an instant exit -- we aren't going to make you sail the longboat out to your vessel -- but conceptually it's going to look and feel a lot better.

Mission Chests
Most of our current missions take place very close to the town where the mission patron lives. Some send you to other ports or areas, but for the most part the missions you get in Marsh Harbour or Jenny Bay or wherever have to do with local concerns and they take place very close by. But what this means is you leave the town and enter the nav zone, sail for a few seconds, click the mission chest, and then enter the mission. In some cases the chest is right outside the town as soon as you appear. This is goofy and a waste of your time.

We're fixing this by making such local missions accessible from two places. If you're in the town, clicking the exit to the open sea will give you the option to enter any of your local missions instead. If you're already in the open sea, clicking a town will give you the same option there.

There will still be some mission chests out in the open sea and we're going to add other ways to access new missions out there. But this change will make the existing local missions much quicker to access and remove several unnecessary loading screens.

Encounter Credit
Right now, if two players have the same mission and they play its encounter together, only one gets credit. We are going to change this so that when you complete the encounter, we check the mission lists for everyone in your group who has been in that encounter with you and if they also have the same stage of that mission, we give them the option of marking their copy of the mission encounter completed as well.

Mission Rewards
We are creating items that will only be available as mission awards, and then adding them to missions. Soon you'll be receiving loot as well as XP and money as mission rewards.

Valid Items
If you go to a shop and try to buy stuff for your ship, you see a huge list of items that aren't valid for your ship at all. If an item isn't for your size of ship (Small, Medium, Large, and Huge) then we will filter it out of the list. You can still buy that stuff in the All Items tab, but the Valid Items tab will only show you appropriate items for the ship you are currently captaining.

High-Rank NPCs
We are filling out the open sea with NPCs of ranks 16-50. They will be sailing in appropriate parts of the game world.

16-30 Missions
Our content team is almost done with a big batch of new missions for captains of ranks 16-30. You'll have *lots* to do, including things you've never seen before. We're going to release the entire 16-30 mission set all at once instead of piecemeal, and they'll be ready in the next couple of weeks.

Special Missions
We're also almost done with our first Epic Mission and our first Legendary Mission. The Epic Mission is a big scenario for a full group of players to tackle, while the Legendary Mission lets you experience a battle from the past at the helm of the famous ship that led the fight. You'll also find our first Adventure Site, an enormous area where dozens of captains can fight sprawling battles against NPCs and complete missions entirely within the site.

More to Come!
Our list of improvements is much longer than this, but these are a bunch of things we want to do ASAP to start making things better. You should see these kinds of changes happening often as our Beta Live Team gets going.

Meanwhile, we are close to releasing a new beta build and when we do, we'll tell you all about what's in there -- including much of the above.

Please visit our beta forums regularly. Here at Flying Lab, we meet every single week to discuss the beta forums, the beta IRC channel, and your bug reports, as well as our own internal playtesting. Our Live Team evaluates all of this feedback and decides what parts of the game to improve next. Your opinion really matters and we are grateful that you're spending your time helping us make our game better.

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John Tynes
Producer
Flying Lab Software
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