Pirates of the Burning Sea, the latest MMORPG coming from Sony-Entertainment / Flynig Labs Software, found its way to the shelves on the 22nd of January. Of course, we pounced at the chance to review it, just for your reading pleasure.
After successful installation it’s time to choose among 10-some servers, and this time there are European servers as well, so you won’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to play in U.S. “prime time”. After choosing among four factions (British, Spanish, French and, of course, pirates) it’s time to choose your profession. Each of these factions can choose among three professions: naval officer, privateer (under the protectorate of one of the crowns) and free trader.
Each of these careers carries specific skills that have their pros and cons. For instance, traders will have bonuses on manufacturing and trade; pirates will be able to steal ships, whereas naval officers will get ships as rewards for successful missions. This, of course, doesn’t mean that traders won’t be able to fight, but due to their profession naval officers will have certain advantages.
As far as character design goes, you’ll have a huge palette of clothing, footwear and hairstyles at your disposal. There are even different glass eyes and peg legs, all to make you as unique as you want to be.
You spawn in a town and a simple tutorial guides you through the first couple of missions, and explains the basics of building, manufacturing, naval and land combat.
Economy
The economy within the game is based on principles of a self-sustainable economy – meaning supply and demand govern it. Everything in the game is manufactured by some player, be it cannon ammo, cannons or the ships themselves. The prices vary from town to town because the players themselves set the prices. The currency is called Dubloons and sales are done through auction-houses in each city.
Auction houses are a place to buy, sell or simply monitor the market growth; meaning you can check whether skins are sold in this region, amounts of it, when was it sold and, of course, for how much. That’s when supply, demand and healthy competition come in. Before deciding on what you want to make and sell, you need to find a raw material that’s not too common in the area and the one that you think players might want. The ,pre common the raw material is, the lower the product price ends up to be.
Sales are carried out by auctioning your product and setting the price. As soon as someone buys your product, the money automatically ends up in your account. Potential buyers can’t see the price that you have set, but they can check how much it cost when it was sold in the market, so don’t expect to sell skins for 500 Dubloons if the average selling price is 60. In case there are more people selling skins on the same market, the cheapest one will be auctioned first.
For instance, player A is offering 10 skins priced at 30 Dubloons a piece, and player B is offering 30 skins priced at 60 Dubloons each. A buyer tests the market by offering 20 Dubloons for 20 skins and receives a message that he can’t buy this product for that price. Then he offers 40 Dubloons for 5 skins and trades successfully. Player A sold his skins for 40 (although his specified price was 30), while player B has to wait until all the cheaper skins are sold, in order to meet his specified price.
This system works well and leads to healthy competition that forces you to constantly adapt your pricing on the market. Still, the prices vary from region to region, so if a town has plenty of skins, the profits from producing it will not be that high. Still, you can choose to exploit exactly that and buy it where it’s cheap and sell it where it’s expensive.
Production
For manufacturing, you are given 10 lots on a construction site in your town. The first object is a Warehouse, which is a prerequisite if you want to build anything else.
Most objects take up one slot (bigger shipyards take up two), but you can choose to tear down older and obsolete buildings and make space for newer ones. In order to build a structure you have to get a construction plan (construction deed) as well as the materials (wood, metal, etc). You can buy all these at an auction, loot it, or get it as a mission reward. After constructing your building, you’ll need the recipes for specific product manufacturing. Basic recipes come with the buildings, while more advanced ones have to be learned from the books (such as ship spare parts manufacturing). Books can also be bought, looted or received as a reward.
After getting everything and constructing the building, you need to supply money, raw materials and workers in order to actually manufacture anything. We built a Tannery in order to produce skins. In order to produce 10 skins you need 60 Dubloons and 8 hours of labor. Laborers appear after construction so you don’t have to wait. From time to time you open up your Tannery, and voila – 24 hours of labor result in 30 skins. Skins are produced in a couple of seconds and the laborers go back to 0.
However, this is quite basic stuff, so if you want to build something more complex, like a ship, it will be virtually impossible to do it all by yourself. The reason is simple – you need the sails, cannons, hull, etc. so it is a good idea to become a member of a Guild where you’ll be in contact with different craftsmen who might help you in your task.
You can read about economy and manufacturing in detail, here.
Combat
There are two types of combat in the game: naval and land combat (face to face).
Naval Combat
In naval combat your goal is to maneuver your ship out of harm's reach, while at the same time you shoot your cannons at your opponent (NPC or player).
You can attack players in two ways – you can attack a player with a PvP flag raised or attack any player that’s in a PvP zone (even without the PvP flag up, so if you’ve packed your ship full of goodies, take the flag down and steer clear of PvP zones). These PvP zones appear as enemy nations attack towns and cause “disorder.” The longer the siege is, the greater the PvP zone around the town gets, which in turn makes it difficult to trade and sail through those waters.
The combat itself is down to maneuvering your ship minding the wind, and of course, using different types of ammo. Some types of ammo are better for destroying the hull, some for destroying the sails, while others are best suited for decimating the crew. The battle will also depend on different skills, such as maneuvering, rendering the enemy immobile, etc. Depending on your training and skills, you can choose among a couple of different tactics. You might prefer shooting the enemy’s hull until you sink the ship, destroying his sails and then circling around and shooting your enemy like a sitting duck or simply disembark on the enemy ship and engage is sword-combat with the crew and its captain.
However, being a successful combatant isn’t just about being skilled, but being equipped, too. Of course, it depends on the tactics you prefer: if you like sinking ships by destroying the hulls, then you need a heavy armored ship with lots of cannons. If you prefer disembarking, then you need to have a lot of crewmembers, while smaller and feistier ships are perfect for destroying the sails on bigger, less mobile ships, rendering them immobile.
Equipping the ship is, of course, a must. Every ship has upgrade slots reserved for the sails, hulls, cannons as well as general upgrades. These items can be either manufactured or bought on the market. You can find out more about ship types and characteristics here.
The length of combat depends on you and your opponent’s levels, as well as the number of ships. So, it can last anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour, and sometimes even more (for instance, if you’re fighting in groups of 5v6).
If you lose your ship in a battle, you are spawned in the port, and your ship loses one durability point. Depending on the ship you can have anywhere from 1-8 durability points (the bigger the ship, the less durable it is. When your ship loses its last durability point, you lose the ship and have to go shopping for another one.
Land Combat
Land combat (disembarking on the enemy ship is also considered to be in this category) is carried out by calculating numbers of crewmen. The captain with more crew will be entitled to reinforcements or re-spawns until his crew is all gone.
Your fencing skills depend on your style and training (Fencing, Dirty Fighting, Florentine) and you can learn combat styles for each level you gain. Land combat depends on three things: lots of crewmembers (that’s never a bad thing), your level (your and crewmembers’ hitpoints are calculated with this) and different moves execution.
Conclusion
This game is really impressive. The production and trade system based on real-life economy are excellent and enables for pretty much anything you might do in a real world economy. Although we played it in early stages (pre-order and couple of days after the release) everything worked without a hitch. The prices often vary because everyone strives to produce low and sell it for more. As a result of this there are real “struggles” to set and find the best prices and markets for your products.
We were forced to lower our asking price on many occasions because there are cheaper products on the market and our investment was just sitting there, unwanted. Players and clans are organized and function almost as a production line in order to get cheaper manufacturing resources for their own needs, as well as to stay competitive on the market. We congratulate the software team on accurately translating the real-world economy system to the virtual domain and making it self-sustainable.
As far as the action goes, if you’re a fan of quick-paced gaming – then this is not a game for you. The ships are quite slow, and success doesn’t depend on rapid button pressing or reflexes, but rather on devising tactics that will send your enemy to sleep with the fishes. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no adrenalin rush during combat; quite the contrary. Defeating an enemy is not a simple thing (this is not the case with NPC’s), so every combat situation is different and the adrenalin is most certainly there. It all depends on weapon of choice, weather conditions, types of vessels, so almost every battle is suspenseful and uncertain until the final moments.
Of course, losing your hard earned ship makes you try harder in order not to lose it, so you end up trying to turn the tides in your favor until the end. We’re not thrilled with the land combat portion, but we can’t say it’s bad, either – especially knowing that the fight doesn’t have to be just fencing. We’ve used it mostly when we destroyed the enemy sails and disembarked on his ship in order to see his “ugly face” and throw him into the sea ourselves.
The downside to this game are mostly common with MMORPG’s. Gaining levels proves to be time consuming. Although it seems that levels advance more quickly than in DaoC, it’s still down to endless NPC sinking and amassing experience. If you’re not a person of strong character and can’t set your limits (which is often the case with MMORPG gamers), we do believe that your parents will find you wide awake at 6 A.M., still bashing your keyboard (yours truly is recalling his early days of gaming).
Then, there’s always the financial issue, and it’s quite important because after all – programmers and gamers still have to eat. Still, it’s not too bad; apart from buying the game you have to pay 13.99 € each month in order to use the servers.
All in all, this game is a great novelty in the MMORPG world, and we recommend it to anyone with lots of spare time and couple of Euros/Dollars to spare.