Captain Monty
Landlubber
Hello All
Surprisingly no one here seems to be talking about POTCO yet, so rare poster though I am I thought I would raise the subject...
I started an account a week or so ago (with a much more Piratey name than this one) without expecting much due to the distinctly odd looking cartoony ship graphics and a number of reports of bugs and the like - not surprising in a newly launched game.
Some of the criticisms levelled at it are reasonable - fair to middling graphics, a fair bit of lag, no character customization after the initial creation, linear quest-lines and limited weapon choices, but........ actually..... it's GREAT ! I absolutely love it so far, and for reasons I think you lot will appreciate.
After creating your character (loads of options, but get it right - you can't change it afterwards, oh, and the hat choice is rubbish!) you follow some instructional quests to familiarise yourself wth the game and eventually end up on Port Royal - at which point you can carry on with various other instructions based quests or have your first proper go in your new Sloop. Answer to "Question 1" for all proper Pirates Ahoy types is YES, you can and must walk the deck (or decks). When you eventually (in my case) pluck up the courage to interract with other players you will find that you can bring them onto your ship (or go to theirs) as crew. Someone, not necessarily the captain (owner) of the ship takes the helm and everyone else roams the decks until they are required to man the cannons. Once he or she has taken charge of the wheel the captain gets a pan-able view from above and initially behind the ship so that they can see enough to navigate. Broadside cannons can only be fired by the captain and take a long time to reload, all other cannons must be individually manned by people and have a much faster reload rate.
Whilst the ships do have a weird simplified Disneyesque look about them the combat graphics are actually excellent - splinters fly everywhere, the decks shudder, dirty great holes get blown in hulls (yours and your enemies) sails get torn and masts come down. There is a full day/night cycle too, so, combine all that lot with a beautifully atmospheric sunrise or sunset and you very much start to "get it".
But that's not the best bit (nearly finished
). Long story short: Last night me and my crew of four went out on my light frigate (can carry a maximum of eight crew), and among other types of ships attacked a "Flagship". These are boardable. The crew ran from one side of the ship to the other to fire the cannons (not fully manned you see) according to which side I needed to present, then when enough damage was done (at which point green "boarding targets" appear) fired grappling hooks at the ship until we were secure. At this point I (as helmsman at the time) pressed the boarding button. This results in all (not all sometimes, but I won't go into that) of us swinging over (yes - you see yourself doing it) onto the other ship and battling the crew with our cutlasses. This is just great - you really feel like you are there - particularly since you can see your own ship bobbing away alongside too. All this happens in real time - you can watch other crews do it from afar if you wish. After we had in this case (OK - we often lose) beaten the crew, we swung back onto our own ship and watched the ship we attacked sink - providing us with an amount of plunder. We carried on like this until the hold was full then in traditional manner went back to Tortuga and
divided the plunder. The game does that automatically according to how much you took part, and the Captain gets a little extra to pay for repairs to the ship if required. If you lose by the way you just end up in the nearest jail and have to escape again, you don't lose anything other than damage to your ship. If you are the captain and get "killed" then your ship stays out there with what's left of the crew if it has not sunk.
Now, it may not have POTCs beauty and complexity (I have been playing the various Mod versions for years and it can't be beaten yet), but that's proper pirate stuff that
Hard-core MMORPGers are unlikely to like it since it's very much a pick up and play for occasional fun affair - not much grinding, no trading at all, very few shops and really not that much apart from ships and weapons to spend your hard earned booty on. For me that's perfect since I am married with a pretty full life so would never have the time to play a proper "grinder". Mind you, POTBS might tempt me...
You can play the initial game for free by the way - but it's with Flash ads enabled (which still cause serious lag despite a couple of patches), in a window and you can only buy the basic ship. You can still crew on the big shops though. I have paid for the full game for a month to come now and very definitely do not regret it. I did this despite being a UK resident - you just take the space out of your Post code and choose whichever US state the automatic selector takes as it's best guess for that code. There are still a few small bugs, the occasional disconnect and a little lag, but this is Disney, they will no doubt fix it.
Blimey - I was only going to write a few lines. Thankyou for reading if you got this far...
Surprisingly no one here seems to be talking about POTCO yet, so rare poster though I am I thought I would raise the subject...
I started an account a week or so ago (with a much more Piratey name than this one) without expecting much due to the distinctly odd looking cartoony ship graphics and a number of reports of bugs and the like - not surprising in a newly launched game.
Some of the criticisms levelled at it are reasonable - fair to middling graphics, a fair bit of lag, no character customization after the initial creation, linear quest-lines and limited weapon choices, but........ actually..... it's GREAT ! I absolutely love it so far, and for reasons I think you lot will appreciate.
After creating your character (loads of options, but get it right - you can't change it afterwards, oh, and the hat choice is rubbish!) you follow some instructional quests to familiarise yourself wth the game and eventually end up on Port Royal - at which point you can carry on with various other instructions based quests or have your first proper go in your new Sloop. Answer to "Question 1" for all proper Pirates Ahoy types is YES, you can and must walk the deck (or decks). When you eventually (in my case) pluck up the courage to interract with other players you will find that you can bring them onto your ship (or go to theirs) as crew. Someone, not necessarily the captain (owner) of the ship takes the helm and everyone else roams the decks until they are required to man the cannons. Once he or she has taken charge of the wheel the captain gets a pan-able view from above and initially behind the ship so that they can see enough to navigate. Broadside cannons can only be fired by the captain and take a long time to reload, all other cannons must be individually manned by people and have a much faster reload rate.
Whilst the ships do have a weird simplified Disneyesque look about them the combat graphics are actually excellent - splinters fly everywhere, the decks shudder, dirty great holes get blown in hulls (yours and your enemies) sails get torn and masts come down. There is a full day/night cycle too, so, combine all that lot with a beautifully atmospheric sunrise or sunset and you very much start to "get it".
But that's not the best bit (nearly finished
). Long story short: Last night me and my crew of four went out on my light frigate (can carry a maximum of eight crew), and among other types of ships attacked a "Flagship". These are boardable. The crew ran from one side of the ship to the other to fire the cannons (not fully manned you see) according to which side I needed to present, then when enough damage was done (at which point green "boarding targets" appear) fired grappling hooks at the ship until we were secure. At this point I (as helmsman at the time) pressed the boarding button. This results in all (not all sometimes, but I won't go into that) of us swinging over (yes - you see yourself doing it) onto the other ship and battling the crew with our cutlasses. This is just great - you really feel like you are there - particularly since you can see your own ship bobbing away alongside too. All this happens in real time - you can watch other crews do it from afar if you wish. After we had in this case (OK - we often lose) beaten the crew, we swung back onto our own ship and watched the ship we attacked sink - providing us with an amount of plunder. We carried on like this until the hold was full then in traditional manner went back to Tortuga and divided the plunder. The game does that automatically according to how much you took part, and the Captain gets a little extra to pay for repairs to the ship if required. If you lose by the way you just end up in the nearest jail and have to escape again, you don't lose anything other than damage to your ship. If you are the captain and get "killed" then your ship stays out there with what's left of the crew if it has not sunk.
Now, it may not have POTCs beauty and complexity (I have been playing the various Mod versions for years and it can't be beaten yet), but that's proper pirate stuff that
Hard-core MMORPGers are unlikely to like it since it's very much a pick up and play for occasional fun affair - not much grinding, no trading at all, very few shops and really not that much apart from ships and weapons to spend your hard earned booty on. For me that's perfect since I am married with a pretty full life so would never have the time to play a proper "grinder". Mind you, POTBS might tempt me...
You can play the initial game for free by the way - but it's with Flash ads enabled (which still cause serious lag despite a couple of patches), in a window and you can only buy the basic ship. You can still crew on the big shops though. I have paid for the full game for a month to come now and very definitely do not regret it. I did this despite being a UK resident - you just take the space out of your Post code and choose whichever US state the automatic selector takes as it's best guess for that code. There are still a few small bugs, the occasional disconnect and a little lag, but this is Disney, they will no doubt fix it.
Blimey - I was only going to write a few lines. Thankyou for reading if you got this far...
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