CEO Russell Williams Video Interview

Flying Lab Software is doing more than just working on Pirates of the Burning Sea. In this interview with Russell Williams, the company’s CEO, we learned what else they’re up to, as well as what’s in store for Pirates.

And then let us know what you think on the forums!

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A Look at Environments

The latest developer journal out of Flying Lab Software looks at expressing the personality of a region through the characteristics and quality of the environment in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Greetings and salutations from the environment team at Flying Lab Software! I’m Brad, the Lead Environment Artist.

My experience working with the entire Pirates of the Burning Sea team has been overwhelmingly positive and creative since I started here last year. It’s especially exciting being part of a crew that has made such spectacular looking environments within the world of PotBS. All of us are dedicated to producing a rich experience for each player within the game.

To help achieve this, we adhere to the national flavor that each town represents and create unique buildings to add to that flavor. We also employ the same approaches that other artists on our team use to give other aspects of the game personality.

Read more here

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Devlog: The Lure of the Sea – Part 1

The latest devlog from the folks at Flying Lab Software looks at efforts to get players out on the open ocean.

This is the first of two devlogs discussing the work we’ve done in 1.16 focusing on ways to give players more loot, more rewards for PvP, and more reasons to explore and fight on the Open Sea.

In this first devlog, I am going to outline three changes to the PvE side of the game. Next week I will talk about some complimentary PvP changes we’re also making.

Fleets

In general, fleets make up a small portion of the ships on the Open Sea – roughly 20%. These ships are also some of the most important; they’re more difficult than normal AI groups, they come with higher rewards and they’re one of the main ways that players generate Unrest on ports.

In 1.16, we’ve increased the rate at which fleets spawn in the Open Sea. They will make up a greater portion of all the ships on the OS, but changes in the spawn system are tough to spot unless you’re watching the Open Sea for a very long time.

Read more here

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Role Play Rooms

The latest developer journal from the folks at Pirates of the Burning Seas looks at the addition of Role Play Rooms to the game.

Today I bring to you: Role Play Rooms! We’ve been listening a lot to our role-player community recently, and they have been asking for some spaces that they can use purely for RP events. As a result, in 1.16, you will have your very own locales to hang out in and talk the talk, or dance the dance. Look for one in your nation’s capital!

We decided to look for existing spaces that we could re-use for this purpose, as creating new rooms takes a lot of time, but we didn’t want the new RP spaces to look identical to existing rooms in the game. The challenge was working out how to make them look different without changing any of the room geometry or re-doing the lighting. Either of those tasks would increase the size of the patch significantly, which is something we try to avoid. Luckily for us, there is a neat feature in our game editor that allows us to swap out one texture for another while leaving the underlying room intact.

Read more here

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On Fisticuffs, Combos, and Cannonballs

The latest developer journal from the folks at Pirates of the Burning Seas looks at improvements to the game’s combat mechanics.

For 1.16, we’re making various improvements to the combat mechanics of the game. We are improving the underpowered brawling skill chain, changing the debuff stacking mechanic in ship combat and adjusting round shot damage. These changes should help smooth out some areas that are currently rough and prone to exploitation.
Brawling Update

1.16 includes a set of changes to the brawling skill line. The changes give brawling more damage output while making it easier to maintain combos. There are fewer attacks that consume combo points and more attacks that benefit from combo points. We expect there to be another step after this one.

Read more here

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Support and Policy Changes

The folks at Pirates of the Burning Sea have posted notice of changes to their customer support policies and the reasons behind these changes.

The last time we did a Customer Service devlog, Nutch mentioned some changes we were implementing to the CS department to improve communication and response times on support tickets. Those changes helped us clear a backlog of tickets and allowed us to respond to new support requests much more quickly. Since then, I’ve taken on the role of CS Manager here at FLS and with the guidance of Nutch and Misha, am carrying on what they started. I’d like to talk about a few recent changes we have made to further improve the level of customer support.

As you may be aware, our in-game GM support was originally outsourced to a company located on the East Coast of the US. While they were able to effectively monitor support tickets, there were sometimes communication challenges between our internal Customer Service team and theirs. This could sometimes lead to service requests taking too long to be resolved.

Read more here

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Build 1.15: Black Bart’s Gold Live Thurs

Flying Lab Software has announced that Build 1.15 of Pirates of the Burning Sea will go live on Thursday morning.

We will be upgrading our North American, European & Australian SOE live servers to build 1.15: Black Bart’s Gold during the usual maintenance window (1:30am-5:00am Pacific / 9.30am-1.00pm British Summer Time) on Thursday, May 28th.

We had originally planned to perform this update on Wednesday morning, however the deployment of the patch to the download servers was delayed. We apologize for any inconvenience.

This milestone update contains our long-awaited Skirmish system, the next chapter of the Black Flags and Dread Saints story arc, Treasure Hunts, some changes to loot in missions, and much more.

Read more here

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PotBS Podcast: Episode 3

Flying Lab Software has posted the third volume of the Pirates of the Burning Sea podcast.

Time for another installment of the Pirates of the Burning Sea podcast!

In this episode, our CEO Rusty is joined by Lum (Game Designer), Deqlor (Content Designer) and guest host … me! Find out the answers to some of your questions about PotBS, as well as what’s going on behind the scenes at FLS.

Read more here

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Just One Last Time

The latest Dev Blog from Flying Lab Studios looks at the problems involved when players repeat missions in the middle of a story arc in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

When we create big mission arcs, we design them to be a fun, engaging, and most importantly, a linear experience. We want players to get a sense of story and to do something interesting. We also want to reward players who accomplish the goals for those missions. This changes when people farm missions, though. They’re participating in a kind of experience that’s not fun and not really what we had in mind when we put those missions in place.

Playing a mission over and over isn’t really the problem by itself, even though it isn’t what we originally intended. Even gaining a lot of money per hour by playing it over and over isn’t the problem.

Read more here

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Point Battle Test May 14th

FLS is looking for players to help test the new Point Battle feature for Skirmishes in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Point Battles are the newest Skirmish feature, and we’re keen to point it out to you so that you can give us your pointed feedback.

Let’s get to the point: We’d like you to log on to the Testbed server at 4pm Pacific (Mignight BST) on Thursday, May 14th. The point of this event is to allow you to create and test your own Point Battles.

To help drive the point home, we’ll be handing out some points of our own: an arrow through your hat! This pointy clothing item will be handed out to a character on the live servers of your choice.

Read more here

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Point Battle System Overview

FLS has posted an overview of the Point Battle system in Pirates of the burning Sea, which is a variant rule set of a typical skirmish battle.

Point Battles

Skirmish was created to give you a way to try out battles and experiment in ways that can’t happen elsewhere in the game. In a normal skirmish, you can set restrictions on what is allowed in a match. This leads to everyone building to the limit of those restrictions. Why take a player in a sloop if the same slot can be filled by a high end frigate? That’s where point battles enter the picture.
What is a point battle?

Every battle in Pirates of the Burning Sea is restricted by the number of players. With the point battle option checked in skirmish, the limit switches from player count to player strength. The battle creator can set a point value for each side in a skirmish, and then players can fill up each side until they hit the point cap. This allows organized groups to arrange battles and find good configurations for a point cap. Sure, you can field a full group of SOLs with a high point cap, but then you might find yourself heavily outnumbered by a mixed fleet of cutters, frigates and maybe a flagship. Ever want to try an all-sloop versus all-SOL battle? Now you can.

Read more here

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New Role-Playing Events

Flying Lab Software has announced two new role-playing events in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Deep within the dark, winding streets of Pointe-a-Pitre…

A spy is wandering in the shadows, preparing to meet their contact. This spy has sensitive information – maybe true, maybe false, maybe both – that will spark new and bloody tensions in the Caribbean if that information is passed along to its target.

Does this sound like an exciting adventure? You can read more about the latest role-play events in Pirates of the Burning Sea by visiting The Salty Sea Dog Inn!

There are two player-run events coming up, both on the Antigua server!

Thurs, April 30th you can come by the Empty Gibet in Tortuga for Rhum & Wench Night! Event starts at 8pm MST (7PM PST, 10 EST, 0200 GMT and 1200 AUS ST).

Friday, May 15th is “Spy vs Spy”! This is a role-playing variant on a “hide-and-seek” style event. The ‘spy’ will wander throughout Pointe-a-Pitre, and two teams of players will try to find that spy, racing against one another. More information, such as rules and prizes, will be forthcoming!

Read more here

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Dev Journal: X Marks The Spot

The latest developer journal out of Flying Lab Software looks at how they’ve implemented treasure maps and brought iconic "x marks the spot" adventures for pirate loot to Pirates of the Burning Sea.

For as long as I’ve been working at Flying Lab, I’ve wanted to add treasure maps to Pirates of the Burning Sea. We have had missions that involve maps before, of course, but they were always dealt with in the text only. Real “X marks the spot” treasure maps were not a priority as we geared up for launch though, so that’s how it stayed.

When I was outlining the Black Flags and Dread Saints storyline, I included a chapter called Black Bart’s Gold. I wanted Black Bart’s story to involve many classic pirate elements, so hidden treasure seemed a natural. When I wrote that outline, I assumed that we’d be dealing with any treasure maps the same way we had previously. It was Raymond, our Content Lead, who suggested that this was the time to figure out how to do treasure maps right. So Black Bart’s Gold will not only be Chapter 4 of Black Flags and Dread Saints, but also the first time we’ll have real treasure maps in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Read more here

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Musical Dev Log

The folks at Flying Lab Software have posted a new dev log which looks at implementing authentic music in Pirates of the burning Sea.

As you know, our game takes place in the 18th century. From a sound perspective, this is already pretty cool. There’s a lot that can be done with the more adventurous aspects of the game audio, but the everyday sounds one hears while walking in the various towns can also be exciting. What’s even more interesting to me is the music of that time.

Some of you may remember the music missions from last holiday season. For those missions, we recorded traditional seasonal music and placed it in towns. Adding this musical element to the towns made them feel livelier and brought greater authenticity and immersion to the gaming experience. In light of that, I have embarked on a new project to bring a richer variety of musicians and music into the rest of the game world.

Read more here

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Role Player’s Guide

The folks at Flying Lab Software have posted a brief guide to help role players find the right port to suit their needs in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

One of the things I enjoy in Pirates is the chance to roleplay with the players. I’ve been an RPer for many years, starting with Ye Olde AD&D 1st Edition. Yeah, I’m one of those gamers!

There has always been good Roleplay in Pirates, including many RP events hosted by some hard working players. We’d like to do more to help support these events and get the word out so you can find them, too!

To start, there is the General Roleplay subforum called The Salty Sea Dog Inn. You’ll find great in-character stories, listings of events and general questions about how to roleplay your character.

An example of a great story is Steward Serenitatis’ The Norfolk Dispatches

Want to check out an RP event? We’ve got two coming up this week!

Read more here

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GameStreet News

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Aion character profiles now available

Posted Thursday October 22, 2009 @11:08 PM

One of the most highly anticipated games this year so far is Aion: Tower of Eternity. In response to that and the overwhelming requests for it, we have added full support for automatically updating character profiles. You will now find the option available in the “My Characters -> Add Character” section of your account home page. Although the profiles we provide are not as extensive as what is available in-game, we provide all the stats and equipment that are made publicly available by the game developer outside of the game.

If you have an active Aion account, give it a try and let us know how it works for you. Feel free to offer any suggestions for improvements. Enjoy!

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Cartography Skill Training

MMORPG.com’s Vitaliy Dikker has provided us with this new guide to Cartography Skill Training in Ultima Online.

Cartography is the skill you must know if you want to be a treasure hunter. The skill allows you to decode treasure maps found on monsters, and then use them to dig up the treasure. It isn’t a very fun skill to train in but the ends do justify the means. Like most skills, it gains up fast and steady in the beginning but it crawls down to near halt when you get high up there. Pretty much the way you raise this skill is just by drawing maps over and over again. Pure excitement!

SKILL TRAINING

The first step in Cartography training is buying a mapmaker’s pen from a NPC mapmaker (or another player with a high tinkering skill can make one for you). Next is buying a lot of blank scrolls in any mage shop or blank maps from the shipwright who is usually where a lot of the NPC mapmakers hang out. I recommend using blank scrolls because they are much cheaper, and since they will stack in your bag you can carry more of them at one time.

Read Cartography Skill Training

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