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Originally Posted by Jarvel
Pirates need real PIRATE purpose.
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Yep. The problem is that we wound up having to spend our time on all the core systems, systems that affect everybody. Which meant some things, like the Pirate's part in the NvN, was effectively postponed.
But here we are after release. We all features/systems that we consider to be the most important, and have a great war between us everytime we do milestone scheduling. My two big ones are player governed ports (the elder game system for the freetraders) and putting in the supporting features for Pirates in NvN.
Pirates are conceived of as kingmakers (where they choose to spend their time should noticeably affect NvN), pressure relief (Pirates will win the map if the other nations are non-agggressive), and Pirates. For the last element, the idea of Pirates participation in NvN was directed less at winning the map, but at enjoying the ride. Which meant that Pirates get great rewards simply for taking ports and causing trouble.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get in the real rewards for Pirates taking ports. The idea was twofold: first, to provide a huge dose of cool flavor, second, to provide some great rewards. So when Pirates take a town, we'd replace the whole thing with the pillaging state, where NPC pirates are ripping things apart, taking whatever's not nailed down, strutting around like kings, and generally having a good time. New missions would appear here for Pirates which would let them cause terror in the town, and for any Pirate who docks at the town, they'd get special rewards as part of pillaging the town.
The idea is that taking a town would give you cool new content, special pirate only missions where you could be more of a ******, and cool loot. So Pirates would enjoy the NvN because each town gives them all sorts of bennies, even though they have to give it back. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get this in, so a big part of the Pirate motivation in NvN isn't in yet. It's something we plan to do as soon as we get past the "we're on fire!" issues.
We designed the game to have organic systems that feed back into one another, which is great! What's not so great is that we can't have one of key systems suck, because it breaks the other systems, which affects everybody. So we have to make sure those systems are behaving as expected before we can free up significant dev time. As we get past those issues, we'll be returning more to Pirates along with the rest of the classes and putting in more special purpose, class specific game play and content for them.
By the way, I'd love it if you popped by Janice's forum section where she asks about what's wrong with the game, and articulate the elements you think we're missing for Pirates. I think I know what a lot of them are already, but I could be wrong, and I'd like to start building a definitive list and getting community input on the priority of the items.