Pirates of the Burning Sea: PAX Interview with Chris Pramas

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Written by ReesyCup

Tuesday, 02 September 2008 03:41

Pirates of the Burning Sea:
PAX Interview with Chris Pramas

This year's PAX was a huge success, and so was the booth that housed the swashbucklin crew of Pirates of the Burning Sea. The crowds got deep and all stations were booked for a glipse at what Flying Lab Software has been up to with the last several patches...and the crowds were pleased. Pirates of the Burning Sea has gained some great additions over the last several months, so we pulled Chris Pramas, Creative director of flying lab software, aside to see what else could be in the works. There are alot of great things being considered from the Dev team, so if you missed this year's PAX, have a look at what changes have been made to Pirate's, and what could be coming your way.

MMOFury
5 sided PvP battles have just been announced, how do you feel this will effect the political atmosphere of the game?

Chris
I think its a bit early to say, what's interesting server to server is seeing how the nations organize or don't organize. Alot of times the French and the Spanish are not as popular of choices as the British and the pirates, but we've seen server victories from them because they get very well organized with the feeling like they are the underdog, or sometimes the Pirates will fight amongst themselves or get complacent. So I guess we will see, it is always an interesting environment.

MMOFury
Well, knowing that you go into battle and thinking you have an Allie, and then have that Allie turn on you in the end it is definitely going to be interesting how the 5 sided battles will effect player relations. I think it will definitely increase the conflict.

Chris
It sort of is reminiscent of the old board game diplomacy, in which you can make all sorts of deals beforehand but when it comes to actually making the play, you don't know what is going to happen.

MMOFury
What changes are going to be made to the UI for the new 5 sided battle system?

Chris
I am not aware of any adds for that specifically.

MMOFury
With 1.7 recently released, how successful do you think the update has been?

Chris
So far so good, since launch we have been able to add alot of stuff to the game. With each [update] it seems to gets better, and some people that haven't maybe looked at the game for 6 months I think would be surprised at how much stuff that we have happened to add.

MMOFury
Speaking of people coming back, do you think the free trial is bringing more people back into the game.

Chris
Well we haven't launched the free trials yet, but we are doing so shortly and that is the intent. If you haven't checked us out then check us out, if you looked at us back in January but haven't since, then come back and take a look to see the stuff we have done.

MMOFury
In addition to 5 sided battle, what other changes will be implemented in the same patch.

Chris
So we have done some new daily repeatable missions, we have put a few of those in and there is more to come. Those are missions you can do every 24 hours. There were some people that were grinding for xp and we recognized that and we tried to give them some more fun missions if they want to play the same missions over and over again we want to at least give them some variety and some things that are tactically interesting. There is a mission where there are a bunch of assault boats that are sending grenadiers on to a beach landing and you have to support them and fight forts and enemy ships, and make sure that too many of the assault boats don't sink before they can reach land. It is pretty different than alot of our ship encounters, we tried to mix it up for people.

MMOFury
In patch 1.6 there were eleven new ships that were added, have you seen a significant use on the new ships?

Chris
I have not seen any data on that so far.

MMOFury
Seeing a significant use of certain ships means we can look forward to more of that type being added in future updates?

Chris
Well, we love to add new ships because that is a fun thing to do. It is always interesting to see, particularly the larger ships that need to be built through the economy, how many people go through the effort of getting the recipes and putting everything together to start selling those ships at auction houses and seeing which ones get used alot.

MMOFury
Can you explain what the development team is working on with regard to avatar combat?

Chris
Well the basic idea was to make a system that was a little more intuitive and more fun as well. One of the problems with our original avatar system was that it also wasn't explained all that well. There was alot of stuff in there that if you became experienced with it, you could learn how to manipulate it. In our tutorials and things we didn't do as good of a job as we probably should have in explaining the intricacies of it.

The new system is to make it alot more easy to use and provide good tools for people to explain why balance is important. Like when is it a good idea to use a finishing move, and when is it a good idea to use a standard attack and that sort of thing. There is also alot more of skill balancing and animations as well. Another big thing that we are doing with [animations] is trying to give the factions in the game different fighting styles, so if you fight one evil pirate gang like the Iron Maiden, it will feel like its a different pitch then if your fighting the Bloody Arms.

MMOFury
What types of skill animation changes are you working on?

Chris
Some of the original animations didn't always make sense i guess, So we wanted to make sure we had new animations for them. Like you could be doing a practice move sometimes, when you were just supposed to be just skirmishing around, but you would see just gallons of blood coming out like you were killing them. And you know that wasn't quite right, so fixing things like that puts a different feel in it.

MMOFury
Of course everyone wants to know about possible expansions, what are some of the ideas you guys are considering if you put out an expansion in the near future?

Chris
Well one idea is keeping it strictly story based, which is really my purview as I am the lead story guy, and so one of the things we could do simply come up with a new big story that uses the existing elements, that doesn't add alot of new areas to the game per say. But, you know, another possibility is that we add a new seaboard and add the American colonies to the mix, or we do something with the South China Sea and add Asian [Elements]. Or, we could go crazy and add more supernatural elements, and then try to do something like under the sea.

MMOFury
Under the Sea, I like that. I think it could get really interesting to go with that angle.

Chris
Yea, because we have already introduced the Idea of Atlantis, using the Atlantis mythology it definitely could be [achieved]. These are all ideas that have been floating around but we have not nailed down what the next sort of big innovation is. Short term we are on the monthly cycle of adding content and doing more updates, but there is a need for something that's going to be more [Expansive].

MMOFury
When you're dealing with updates, it's smaller improvements. Expansions require much more storyline changes, so as far as any expansion is concerned, anything you have on the board is just in the idea stages.

Chris
Yea, it's a big job so we want to make sure that we do it right too, so we want to make sure that we don't put a year of effort into something and not have the fan support to. One thing that's really good about Pirates is that our community is really awesome and we get alot good feedback from them on our boards and chat, things like that. We are also determined what the people want to see more of, like how many people really love the Age of Sail aspect, how many people love the supernatural [elements], would they like to see more factions? We have talked about making the Dutch a playable faction, we have talked about doing something with Blackbeard, because in a way he is the most iconic pirate out there.

MMOFury
Well coming from Florida we definitely have [seen our fare share] of pirate lore and Blackbeard is one of the biggest of them. We will definitely keep our eye out for any updates on expansions, if you do have one do you think it is going to be a free expansion, paid...?

Chris
It depends, we may do an actual boxed expansion, or maybe something we just roll out as part of the monthly updates. It could be in stages as well, where we developer the story over multiple patches. You might see the start of it and not even realize that it's going to be a big deal and then it kind of ramps up and you then you realize something is changing in the world, something you wouldn't expect.

MMOFury
Well we look forward to it. That is all the questions we have, thank you for sharing your teams ideas with us, it has been great to hear about them.

Pirates official Site