Be careful to create too complex quests, long convos, a lot of text. One of the components of PoT that made it successful, was the simple, short non-lenghty convos and simple quests. If you create long conversations in the quests, you disable the player's fantasy, he should create his own quest/story in his head, and the only way to do that is to create very simple conversations in the quests that he takes.
I know what I'm talking about. If you increase the informative details, you further decrease the player's own fantasy, and vice versa. Take it seriously, look at the simple quests in PotC, see how successful they were, and how fun they were.
I have this "feeling" that when I launch Hearts of Oak (some time in the future) I will be met with lengthy conversations with people in some tavern on an island, don't do that. It's a big mistake. Keep it short and simple, if you follow what I've outlined here, the game will be successful, if you break those rules, the game will not exactly fail, but you will take away some of the fantasy factor, which will take away some of the fun too.
I have tremendous insight into game success and failures, take my words seriously. Don't ever underestimate simplicity. Where simplicity can't fill in the gap, the player will insert his fantasy. Where complexity is put, the player's fantasy must be disabled. Think of this as a slider, if you slide it more toward simplicity, fantasy increases, if you slide it more toward complexity, fantasy decreases.
A successful game lets the player create his own game in his head. The job of the developer is to trigger a specific "seed" of fantasy that the player can build on, but not more than that.
Always remember, what text bubbles and information can't do, the environment can. You can create an atmosphere that tells a thousand words that you don't need in a text bubble. Do you need to tell the player something, make him aware of that in the environment, just by looking at something. Fun factor is more important than realism.
Also be wary to make that simplicity interesting.
You can do two things, one of them is right and the other is wrong. 1: You can try your best to try to create an interesting story that fully informs the player about what is going on, to the lowest detail. 2: You can let the player create the story, in which that story must always be fully in correspondence with how he wants the story to be.
In step 1, you may succeed, in step 2 you will succeed.
Also, the first impression of a game is important. When a newcomer opens up the game and he never tried it before, it's important that the first thing he'll see, is not a text bubble or an invitation to a tutorial.
That is a very fucking big mistake, excuse my language. The first impression should be absolutely nothing, but a ship or a gun store, not a text bubble neither an invitation for a tutorial. Good luck.
If you give the player the first impression of an invitation to a tutorial, he goes something like this "Ah, it's that kind of guy, he'll direct me through the entire game rather than believe in my capability for learning a very simple fucking game"
The message you give the newcomer is this "You can't play this game and you don't match or fit to develope a character or play a role in this game".
Just don't do that, use your heads when you develope your games and you will succeed.
Let the player see something very beautiful that believes in his capacity to learn this very simple game, it takes 5 minutes for him to learn it. You can ruin his first impression forever, or you can let him waste 5 minutes to figure it out yourself. You know what you should do here.
The first impression should be violin, beer, gunshots, beautiful kidnapped ladies, drunk sailors, seagulls, anything but a tutorial.
The successful game designer played a good game and he loved it so much he decided to create a similar game so other people could experience his happiness. And he created a game similar to the other one, it had almost nothing in it, because a good game doesn't need much in it, as the real game is created in the head of the player.
The failed game designer played a good game, and he made a remake of the fantasy that he experienced in that game, all the good fantasies he had with that game, he put it into a new game, and little did he realize that it had to fail (Because it's not fantasy that creates fantasy, it's the other seed that creates fantasy). You don't implement your own fortunate fantasy experiences from a previous game and expect that to succeed.
Fantasy is a waste product which taste good, but it's not productive. It's not reusable. You see, fantasy is experience, when you realize that, you also realize that people can't reuse other people's fantasy experiences, you have to let them create their own, and the only way to do that is to keep the game very neutral (Sort of empty in an interesting way, if you understand me here)
Information is tyrranny, when you inform the player, you ruin his experience with his own self. If you need to tell the player, let's say, about an old wise man, it would be better to place an oak tree with eyes in front of him, so he can imagine a wise man rather than being told of a wise man. (Don't be afraid that he might miss out some vital information)
The only way that information can be told without ruining the fun, is by subconscious messages. Learn to use them through the environment in the game. You can give an infinite number of subconscious messages to the player without forcing him to shut down the game.
Let's say the player is approaching a tavern in the forest, would you have a character pop up a text bubble "Welcome to our Tavern" or would you place a wooden beer cup on top of the front door of the tavern?!?
You can tell the player a whole story worth of a thousand pages of text, through the environment without him ever knowing it, if you only know what you're doing. You can create entire stories that way. Don't have doubt in the words that the environment tell, it doesn't fail.
You create pollution if you mix up environmental "subconscious messages" and written text, it create a double factor of boredom. If the environment is doing the job, don't double do it.
I am too opinionated, but I am because I'm mostly aware of what I'm doing