Pirates of the Burning Sea Dev Interview

During the Penny Arcade Expo, Flying Lab Software announced a few new additions to Pirates of the Burning Sea that Jack Sparrow hopefuls can look forward to come the game’s release in 2007. MMORPG.com sat down with game designers Taylor Daynes and Kevin Maginn to discuss these new additions. These include the on-foot battle system, Adventure Sites, and an in-game economy that may require some knowledge of real-world economy.

Unless you be plannin’ on looting all those pieces of eights you be plannin’ on spending, like the pirate that you are. But even pirates have a budget to attend to, right?

The on-foot battle system, called Avatar Combat, was originally supposed to be a post-launch addition to PotBS. But the dev team realized that “you only get to launch once, and if you launch without something that feels like it really should be a core featureÂ… users are not actually going to forgive you.” Avatar’s partly inspired from the same positional advantage combat as the ship combat system, which means no WoW-style “strafe battles.” Players will have three basic skill groups: Sword, Brawl, and Musket, which can be further broken down into specialized skills.

Avatar will also be present for PvE engagements as PvP engagements. While there are no free-roaming land areas for swashbucklers to explore, there will be persistent areas centered around landmarks and other points of interest, the dev team says.

Adventure Sites will be large, instanced areas which are capable of hosting hundreds of players. The first one’s called “El Dorado Coast,” populated by Mayan tribes being supplied by the Dutch with weaponry and ships. This Adventure Site isn’t PvP enabled, though the next one will be, they say.

Finally, the economy. Daynes and Maginn reveal it will be driven by the players themselves, and will be dictated by the same old supply-and-demand rules in Economics 101. “Essentially, anything out there in the game world that is at all interesting is player created.” Players must manage the entire supply chain: hire the laborers to collect the resources, hire the craftsmen who will make the products, and so forth. There is a “safety net” to make sure that players cannot not participate in the economy – call it Social Security? – but real world economics will definitely run the in-game economy. Suddenly we scurvy seamen may want to take a few lessons from real-world land-lubber merchants.

And apparently geopolitics will also be included in the mix. The geographic distribution of resources will be an important factor in the economy. If your country or territory doesn’t have the necessary resources for ship construction, you may have to buy it from rival countries, or (especially if you are a hated pirate) take it from them the hard way.

Via MMORPG.com

During the Penny Arcade Expo, Flying Lab Software announced a few new additions to Pirates of the Burning Sea that Jack Sparrow hopefuls can look forward to come the game’s release in 2007. MMORPG.com sat down with game designers Taylor Daynes and Kevin Maginn to discuss these new additions. These include the on-foot battle system, Adventure Sites, and an in-game economy that may require some knowledge of real-world economy.

Unless you be plannin’ on looting all those pieces of eights you be plannin’ on spending, like the pirate that you are. But even pirates have a budget to attend to, right?

The on-foot battle system, called Avatar Combat, was originally supposed to be a post-launch addition to PotBS. But the dev team realized that “you only get to launch once, and if you launch without something that feels like it really should be a core featureÂ… users are not actually going to forgive you.” Avatar’s partly inspired from the same positional advantage combat as the ship combat system, which means no WoW-style “strafe battles.” Players will have three basic skill groups: Sword, Brawl, and Musket, which can be further broken down into specialized skills.

Avatar will also be present for PvE engagements as PvP engagements. While there are no free-roaming land areas for swashbucklers to explore, there will be persistent areas centered around landmarks and other points of interest, the dev team says.

Adventure Sites will be large, instanced areas which are capable of hosting hundreds of players. The first one’s called “El Dorado Coast,” populated by Mayan tribes being supplied by the Dutch with weaponry and ships. This Adventure Site isn’t PvP enabled, though the next one will be, they say.

Finally, the economy. Daynes and Maginn reveal it will be driven by the players themselves, and will be dictated by the same old supply-and-demand rules in Economics 101. “Essentially, anything out there in the game world that is at all interesting is player created.” Players must manage the entire supply chain: hire the laborers to collect the resources, hire the craftsmen who will make the products, and so forth. There is a “safety net” to make sure that players cannot not participate in the economy – call it Social Security? – but real world economics will definitely run the in-game economy. Suddenly we scurvy seamen may want to take a few lessons from real-world land-lubber merchants.

And apparently geopolitics will also be included in the mix. The geographic distribution of resources will be an important factor in the economy. If your country or territory doesn’t have the necessary resources for ship construction, you may have to buy it from rival countries, or (especially if you are a hated pirate) take it from them the hard way.

Via MMORPG.com