Flying Labs has been hard at work developing what would be the first MMO Pirate game to hit the market with their title “Pirates of the Burning Sea.” With the E3Expo coming up and the newly updated website having a fresh makeover for the game, we were able to steal Thomas Sitch away for a brief time from development to talk about the game, hopefully he won’t have to walk the plank for chatting with us instead of swabbing the decks.
Thomas thanks for taking the time out to speak with us. With E3 just a short time ahead, I imagine you and the team are pretty busy. You’ve been around the block a few times now, but for those who do not know you or your current involvement with Flying Labs how about a self-introduction. Please, feel free to pimp yourself and ham it up.
Hello! I’m Thomas Sitch (I run under the handle “Grogbeard”) and I’m a developer at Flying Lab Software in Seattle, Washington. I’m a lifelong video game aficionado, and I’ve spent the last five years working on Massively Multiplayer Games. I also like running up the Jolly Roger, brandishing my cutlass, and frightening my coworkers.
I imagine working on a historically accurate MMO game requires extensive research. How much have you had to learn? What have you found most fascinating while doing research? Have you been traveling on historic period ships?
Fortunately, we have some remarkably good writers and history buffs at Flying Lab, so the actual need for me to do research has been fairly low. I used to run around with pirate re-enactors, sailed on the Pilgrim to Santa Catalina, and studied a lot on the period, so you could say I came into the project forearmed with a ready knowledge of history.
Rapid fire session starting now:
Were you in the Navy?
No.
Do you own a boat or sail?
I don’t own a boat, but I love to sail. I used to crew onboard the schooner Valkyrie out of Santa Monica.
Are you afraid of water?
Cold water. Doesn’t stop me from surfing, though.
Ever been lost at sea?
Depends on how you define “lost”.
Life vest; yes or no?
Absolutely. When the boom knocks me overboard, I want my sorry unconscious ass to float.
Having grown up on movie classics, like Captain Blood and the Sea Hawks with Errol Flynn and being a tabletop role-playing gamer share with us some aspects from within game. Is it about the story and the progression or is their an end-game which will open up and flourish for a community?
We’re really eager to let you step into those archetypes from Captain Blood to Treasure Island to Master and Commander. It’s a big part of the avatar system and a big part of the story arcs that form the mission system.
We have a story progression that defines each individual character, and it will unfold a little different for every player. However, the strength of an MMO is shared experience where players generate content for each other, so there is a definite post-max game.
Players are the ships while at sea. What about their land-based avatars? How much customization will a player have for their avatars, so that everyone does not look alike when out-and-about? Will players have custom facial portraits of themselves that can be displayed and create biographies for other players to view? Can ships be customized through quests to die the wood and sails to create the “Punky Pink Pirate?”
We believe it’s extremely important for people to be able to project themselves into their characters, especially in an era with so much romance and popular culture attached to it. To that end we’re giving players a lot of power to customize both their avatars and their ships.
City of Heroes was a big inspiration to us in that department, and the direction we’ve taken character creation in. We have lots of clothing and color options, and are using some great new avatar technologies like full-color colorizable textures, normal mapping, and dynamic self-shadowing.
As for pink pirates, well, our artists have limits they want to set on aberrant color schemes. The color options, while many, are designed to discourage choices that will make peoples’ eyes bleed. But yes, you’ll be able to find or buy various colors of paint for your hull, dye for your sails, and thread for your sail emblems.
What about a rewards type page that may list accomplishments for quests or unique developer driven events?
There will be a tracking list for past accolades and the completion of important mission arcs.
The game is divided into factions, more-or-less. What about guilds and clans? Can players customize their national flags or fly guild colors to represent a fleet of ships with Admirals as Guild Masters and flag ships?
Guilds are very important and we support them. You can create your own flag from scratch and submit it to the game through our user content system, so this will likely be popular with various guilds. While the game has a strong RvR (Realm versus Realm) focus, there are a lot of mechanisms for guildmates to be in the same battles during blockades and other game events, and even mechanisms for guilds to create and schedule their own events against other guilds or nations.
How much thought has been given to the casual and solo player who can only play for a few short hours a week? Can a single player just home from a grueling twelve hours of work sail out to sea and accomplish a mission in one session without requiring finding a group, waiting for a mob boss to spawn, and hopefully not die to have an entire evening wasted?
Hell yah. Our mission system is designed to let you step into your pirate’s boots for a short session and accomplish something meaningful: Give us 45 minutes and we’ll give you a fun time. That’s not to say that it’s all of the game is soloable, however. The RvR system is built on the principle that it takes lots of people working together to make real changes happen in the world. But everyone can participate in those changes by playing in the big events – it’s not just a guild activity.
The bane of most MMO developers, Player versus Player combat; it is often avoided or tacked on as an after thought, often times not that enjoyable or balanced. What are your five personal beliefs to a successful, immersive, challenging and rewarding PvP game? Yes, it’s a loaded question. How have you integrated those beliefs into PotBS since it has been designed from the ground up to include PvP combat?
Okay, well talking from my own philosophies, here are five things that come to mind:
1) PvP needs to be designed from the outset of the game’s development. ‘Natch.
2) Players need to know when they’re getting into PvP. Some may scream “carebear”, but “ganking” is very bad for player retention. There needs to be a diversity of play styles.
3) As you learn PvP, the initial cost of failure needs to be little to none. We don’t want you souring on the game because of early defeats.
4) PvP has to be used to harness players to create content. Players make the most challenging adversaries, so they need to be able to motivate scenarios.
5) The results of player versus player need to be capable of having a lasting effect on the game world, not just racking up more XP. That, of course, is the holy grail I think we all seek.
I think all of these will be very evident in Pirates of the Burning Sea, and much of it has been fundamental philosophy throughout the team.
Sticking to the PvP crowd for a bit more, how will PvP play out during and at end game within the quest system and overall storyline of the game? Will fleets have co-op team PvP quest to hold ports from opposing navies which require their quest to secure the port?
You cleverly touch on several elements of how our high level PvP play works. You can conquer persistent ports for your nation, so that real parts of the game world actually change sides. Port conquest is driven by a number of things, including PvE (Player versus Environment) missions to sabotage supply lines, infiltrate the port, etc. Once the port goes into contention, the big deciding factors are Player versus Player battles.
Will PvP be a means of advancement throughout the game, with unique rewards and challenges within a quest type system? No gank-fests or zergs for teh win with a type of siege system?
The lower levels of the mission system provide a lot of Non-PVP or PVP optional gameplay, especially as you flush out the story of your character and define your persona and reputation in the game world. Every good pirate needs a parrot on his shoulder and some good stories to tell, after all.
That said, the mission system is built to actually dovetail to PvP events. You may find that at a high level of the British Navy advancement mission arc you have to organize a skirmish against Spanish Costa Guarda. The mission stage lets you spawn a siege/blockade/battle type game event, where players from both England and Spain sign up to compete. You can only complete the mission if your side of players defeats the other side of players.
Risky missions may even send you into the nearest PvP-enabled danger zone, which crop up in the open game world around ports that under contest. For example, a pirate mission could order you to “tax” merchants trying to provide relief to the blockade of San Juan.
The game doesn’t require you to be a l33t PvP badass, but it will mean that you will probably want some friends to help you out with the occasional white knuckle, adrenalin pumping foray into hostile territory.
What preventive measures have been placed to ensure lowbies are not farmed within the PvP system?
The players control which parts of the world are PvP enabled, by organizing port conquests. While a port is in contention, the world around it is PvP enabled. Players can band together to throw more ports into contention, or work to defend them from conquest in the first place. Players who are leery of PvP can steer clear of those temporary danger areas, but prices in that contested port are likely to skyrocket, tempting those players into organizing group forays into the danger zone to reap fat profits while fighting off enemy players. It’s a very exciting dynamic that gives you opportunities for great reward with appropriate risk.
Of course, you have to know when you’re going to be facing PvP. Players will always know where the current PvP regions are and will be warned when they get near them.
Will grog be an important resource commodity that we can plunder from other ships, sell on eBay for exorbitant fees ruining the in-game economy?
Ha ha… I certainly hope so (except for the ‘ruining the economy’ part- I’m always pro-grog), but I’m not speaking in any capacity for Flying Lab on that one. It’s my dream to get a cooperative marketing deal with a major rum producer.
“We’ll set sail with Captain Morgan…”
“Pirates of the Burning Sea” has been in development since late 2002, with Flying Labs being an independent Studio. Now, everyone wants to get into the pirate game, how much pressure is on the team to “Do It Right” as an underdog and what has been the most challenging aspect with the design so far?
We enjoy our status as an underdog. In an industry where a lot of publishers are willing to take fewer and fewer risks, and innovation continues to decline, we’re out there forging into a new genre with new styles of gameplay. We’re also following in the steps of Valve and distributing Pirates of the Burning Sea with Steam, exclusively over the Internet.
“Doing it Right” is all important. We have a smaller feature set at launch because we want those features to shine: realtime tactical ship combat, sophisticated missions, big game events, and great avatars.
The biggest challenge in design is keeping a laser focus on our core features and not getting killed by scope. There are a lot of things we want to do, but some of them will have to wait.
What about the most rewarding aspect, and what is the teams most anticipated aspect?
For me, the most rewarding aspect of the design is getting to really exercise ideas I’ve had for the last several years. I was able to bring a lot of my residual knowledge and personal insights on sieges to the table, and with the collective brainshare at FLS we were able to come up with something greater than the sum of its parts for big game events that engage lots of players.
I think at the moment the team’s anticipation has really been climbing on our avatars. Our biweekly playtests have been boasting a colorful cast of gentleman privateers, aloof military commanders, and dangerous pirate ladies. I’ve nearly missed group missions because I got caught up in seeing how this cravat looks with that hat and this other pistol bandoleer.
Tease us: What can we expect to see in the next couple of weeks, and more importantly when will all of us be invited into beta?
It’s E3. You get to see Pirates of the Burning Sea in all of its glory. Beta? That question’s above my security clearance.
Will there be a traditional open beta?
As with most MMPs, we will go through a series of progressively more open betas. We will certainly have signups so lots of gamers can help us refine the game prior to release.
If folks want to learn more about the game that may not be covered here what is your personal direct phone number so readers can call you in the middle of the night and ask those all important questions, or do you prefer them to seek plunder elsewhere?
While I love to chat, the game will get delayed if I’m up until 2AM gabbing, so I recommend folks direct their attention to www.burningsea.com. Hopefully we’ll be putting together some fan gatherings and some sneak previews in the not too distant future as well. Then it will be peoples’ responsibility to keep beers in my hand so my voice doesn’t run dry (invariably a win-win situation).
Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, and looking forward to seeing more of the game, (subtle hint) soon.
Always a pleasure!
Discuss: Arggh, There be pirates here.