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FLS to Incentivise Population Balance |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 |
In a new devlog by Isildur, Flying Lab outline their plans to try and balance out the national populations:
What we’re going to be implementing over the course of the next milestone is a system of incentives to play an underpopulated nation. If your nation is significantly underpopulated, you’ll receive bonuses to earned doubloons and experience (and, potentially, other bonuses to be announced later). Even if you’re just somewhat underpopulated, you’ll receive some degree of bonus. We’ll be basing the determination of ‘underpopulated’ on weekly peak population of each nation on each server.
We’ll also be making the ‘underpopulated’ status of a nation on a given server visible on the server selection screen. This is important because, as Rusty has mentioned recently, we’re going to be making an aggressive marketing and free-trial push to bring new players into the game. A player making a new account and a first character will be steered towards the lower-population nations on a given server.
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 |
Misha has posted a new devlog about new features expected in 1.7.
It doesn't contain any new information, but it's quite a nice summary. |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Friday, 08 August 2008 |
So, Flying Lab have published their devlog on Nightflips, and unfortunately it seems to have confused and clouded the issue rather than clear it up once and for all, so I figured rather than just sending you to the devlog I'd do some analysis and explanation of my own.
The system Flying Lab propose involves picking a time slot 24 hours in the future after the port is flipped into contention. Then they alter this time randomly based on normal distribution. The actual port battle time is then set to be the next available pre defined slot after this time.
The pre-defined slots thing is the key to the idea - each port battle can only happen at set times predefined based on server peak users. For Roberts this peak occurs at about 8pm GMT so each port battle slot set would be centered around that time, with no slots being made available during the off-peak times.
What confused a lot of people about the devlog was that it implied that Roberts had a peak at US prime time - however this appears to have been a miss-speak. Roberts only has a single daily peak centered on 8pm GMT, and will not have port battles scheduled during its off-peak times.
So.. now that's cleared up.. PvP eh? |
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Aether Speaks Out About Nightflips |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Wednesday, 06 August 2008 |
After quite a lot of speculation, and what some would claim was a mass exodus from the Roberts server to Antigua, Aether has spoken out on the subject of 'nightflips', following Taelorn's comments in last night's impromptu devchat:
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Regarding Nightflips
Folks, I know the situation regarding nightflips, or what we call "off peak port battles" has been frustating. From the outside looking in, I can see how it looks as though we've been ignoring the issue, and for that I apologize.
The reality is that we've been hotly debating this issue for some time now, with discussion focusing on how any suggested mechanism would impact our customers. The good news? We have finally reached consensus on a plan that we feel will greatly mitigate the problems societies have been experiencing with off peak port battles.
We are currently evaluating the final text of this plan, which we intend to share tomorrow, soon after all the key groups and responsible parties have had the chance to review and respond. At that point, we will be looking to your feedback and input on the plan so that we can adjust the plan to suit.
Finally, a word on evaluating the impact of this issue: as a company, we feel this issue is immensely important, and I want to assure you that we are taking your feedback very seriously. Numbers aside, this is an issue that needs to be resolved to our customer's satisfaction, and we've done a poor job of reacting to this with the speed it required.
Best,
Aether
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Tuesday, 05 August 2008 |
Taelorn and Aether were nice enough to grace #burningsea with their presence and it all became one nice impromptu dev-chat, with subjects from PvP to PvE to UI and Towns covered in one hour of chat.
The full log follows, with the most pertinent bits made bold:
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Read more...
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1.6 Launched; Hotfix Planned |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Tuesday, 05 August 2008 |
1.6 - Blood In The Water - launched today, and many players are happy to find new ships and titles available for them!
However, port battles are being impacted by some malfunctions to the mission server and Flying Lab have a hot fix planned for Wednesday to sort this out.
There also seems to be some kind of mini-devchat thing going on in #burningsea. |
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1.7 - Black Sails At Dawn |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Tuesday, 29 July 2008 |
Black Sails At Dawn, the 1.7 patch for Flying Lab Software's Pirates of the Burning Sea has just been announced, with some threads posted on the Flying Lab Forum discussing this milestone.
None of the threads are particularly extensive however so speculation and theorycrafting will likely be high.
The upcoming changes mentioned are: Improved camera that rocks with the waves, New purchasable luxury clothing items, revamped - and skippable - tutorials with improved instructional UI, Missions planned for Talk Like a Pirate Day, New repeatable missions (apparantly a new type of mission) and mission completion XP being increased.
Flying Lab's news article is here. |
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Taelorn Posts New Dev Concept: Group Strength |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 |
Taelorn has posted on the FLS forums about a new concept of his - 'Group Strength'. This particular suggestion has been posed as a potential solution to the problem (or non-problem, depending on who you ask) of 'small ship ganking' - that is, a high level group being split up or engaged by a small ship that has no intention of actually engaging in combat and is just out to waste time. Apparantly Aether and Taelorn had a discussion about it and this concept is the result, and they want community input:
We add an indicator in the health UI that shows your group strength. If your group is small enough that it has essentially no chance of winning, then you cannot attack. Their fleet strength will be too strong, and your crew will be unwilling to attack.
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Group Strength only prevents attacking targets that are stronger than you. It does nothing about a big group attacking a small one. If we made it prevent attacking lower groups, then it would create situations where grouping is discouraged. It’d also create lots of situations where you can trick the system by manipulating your group strength.
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Now bear in mind this is just a concept, and one they want input on, so get to it! |
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 |
Build 1.6 is now on Testbed, so I suggest you go check it out!
Click on 'read more' to view the release notes; of particular interest this build are all the changes to ships, so go on and have a read. |
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Read more...
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Written by Robert "Xaphod" Goforth
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Monday, 21 July 2008 |
David "Taelorn" Hunt has posted a new devlog talking about more new ships planned for 1.6:
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When people see these ships, its common that the words power creep follow in short order. Thats because of whats changing in 1.6 for level 50 ships overall. Right now, theres enough disparity between a full group of regular 50s and a full group of 50s in the best ships that the fights will often go 6-0, even factoring out the inevitable player skill difference. The power gap between a 50 in the right gear and a new one is too great.
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Taelorn also goes into a fair bit of depth about what the rationale behind all these changes is. Well worth a read. |
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