DevBlog 2 -- Courtesy of Fodderboy, Operations Manager

DevBlog

January 21^st, 2021

We would like to start this DevBlog off by offering our hopes and prayers for the safety of all while the Covid pandemic continues to afflict so many, and to further offer our condolences to those who may have lost friends and family to it.

It is hard to celebrate PotBS's accomplishments under these circumstances, so we will merely wish PotBS a subdued "Happy Anniversary" and a /tiphat for adding yet another year to its storied and enduring history. May her journey continue to her next celebration and beyond.

As it has been quite a while since the last DevBlog, we want to first touch briefly on what has transpired since the last DevBlog before going ahead and giving some information about what is coming next (which is the main purpose of DevBlogs).

PotBS Status

Since the last DevBlog several things have been accomplished. A new installer and launcher have been implemented, the venerable (but problematic) BitRaider launcher has been retired, all the game libraries have been updated, several serious bugs have been fixed and the build process has been restored.

While these accomplishments have taken longer than expected, they were required to restart the build process needed to begin new content development. But now, in the world of content development in PotBS, the ship is off the reef, afloat and underway. We have reached a point where changes in game content can now be made.

Though we are underway, the ship is still not fully repaired. There is a major content development blocking issue revolving around the ability to add new text or change existing text in the game. The issue stems from the loss of a proprietary third-party tool that had been used in past development associated with Sony Online Entertainment. We need to restore or replace this process. Until this issue is resolved, the changes that can be made to content revolve around the manipulation of existing data. As limiting as this issue is to content development, there are still many things that can be done. So, repairs will continue while we are underway and we are sure the next big question for most Captains is -- underway to where?

 

Two Ships, Two Destinations

Staying with the ship metaphor, we technically have two ships. The ship that is currently underway is the Antigua and Roberts code base, while the one that is being towed at the moment is the Legacy server code base. Most of the work done so far serves both ships, but only one is currently in a position to start making changes. In view of this voyage, these two ships will have different destinations, but Legacy isn't ready to start sailing off on her own yet.

The Legacy code base is still in a hulk state. While it is being towed along, the crew will be working on repairs to get her into a condition to start maneuvering under her own power, but the engineering crew is split as there is still work to be done on Antigua and Roberts to keep her seaworthy. This means to some degree work on the Legacy server must wait when any urgent work needs to be done on Antigua and Roberts. Most engineering work done benefits both ships, but pure work on Legacy’s takes place after developments with Antigua and Roberts.

So Legacy will continue to be towed for the time being. We will update on her progress whenever new information is available. When she is ready to move on her own, her destination will be in the direction of the game of the past, while Antigua and Roberts will steer towards the game we envision for the future. The content team will not start working on Legacy until she is close to ready to start maneuvering, so their initial focus will be on Antigua and Roberts.

Yet Antigua and Roberts can't introduce anything new that requires us to add new text at this time. We have new loot for example that is ready to be integrated into the game, but it all requires new labels and new description text to go with it – in every language.

When this text issue is finally cleared, we will be able to integrate the new loot, but until then we have to work on other areas of the game that can effectively move forward towards our long-term goals. Undoubtedly, we will encounter other issues during development that will require rearrangement of what is being worked on (or planned to be worked on next), so it is best to anticipate changing plans, portions of work being bumped to a later build or the design of something evolving over time if its implementation is still quite far off in the future.

For a moment, we want to touch on what types of changes might be expected in the long term future for the servers at a very high level before going into some things that can be expected in the next content build. Our hope is that with some examples of where we want to go in terms of the development destinations of our two code ships, players will get some sense of the scale of changes we intend to implement over time.

Destinations (The Future)

The Legacy server's destination is a recreation of the past, and the classic game of its time. Its purpose is to make the classic game available to players who prefer that style of PotBS. Any evolution of its destination (should the server have enough players to drive future development) will stay within that style of play. As the old style of play are well-known features, there isn't much need to elaborate on them in this DevBlog. The future of Antigua and Roberts, where changes can start will be our focus.

A lot of our long-term plans for the current servers aim to address issues that stem from restrictions. We know certain restrictions in the game do not work well with modern audiences.

• Leveling just to be able to sail certain ships in the game is not popular, so we are looking to remove ship level restrictions from the game.
• Characters not being able to move from one nation to another is counterintuitive to many players. Few want to build up another character from the beginning just to experience other parts of the game, so we are also looking to remove this type of restriction.
• We know most players wish they could capture ships regardless of their chosen career, so we are also looking to implement this ability.
• Most players that come to the game want to be able to play without being concerned about PvP if that is their choice, so we are looking to make that possible.
• We know the game is a bit too complex in many facets and so we want to simplify some things, provide much better tutorials for others, and address an often-overlooked navigation issue that frustrates many players in finding locations in the game.
• AvCom is often viewed as needing improvement and needs to be overhauled.
• We also want to make ships more customizable to the degree Captains can actually select what types of cannon their ships are using and be able to change them when they choose -- without having to build a whole new ship.
• We also know that some things have not been working well on a grand scale, perhaps throughout the game's history. The Pirate nation has historically struggled to be successful in conquest game play, despite overwhelmingly outnumbering the other nations of the game.

We do not feel this is attributable entirely to game mechanics, as the greater part seems to stem from the concept of a Pirate nation that does not really fit into the mindset of the average pirate player. Pirates are generally in it for themselves. Any Alliances are often quite short-lived.

We want to break the Pirate nation up, take it out of the traditional conquest system and have pirates be more like actual pirates -- society or individual-based, competing among themselves for riches and glory. We want to dive deeper into the role of the pirate, allowing them to do more things pirates would do, such as hire themselves out as mercenaries to national factions, engage in smuggling operations and of course -- good old traditional ship-based piracy.

Not that we want to leave the national factions out of overhaul as well. For them, we want to make each more unique. We want the French to be more French, the Spanish more Spanish and the British more British. They may gain unique ships for each nation, have major differences in national markets and possibly unique national currencies (specie) for each.

We want them to have a greater feel as an organized nation, complete with major changes to how Governorships work, organized national navies and much more robust trade with off-map (Continental) markets.

We also want to add more playable nations, such as the Dutch, Portuguese and Danish as new playable factions that function in the manner of the plan like the Pirate faction that is independent of the traditional conquest structure and more individual-player or society-based.

At the grand scale, the game will change substantially over time and in doing so will reinforce the status of Legacy as the old guard continuing to sail into the future carrying the torch of the game's origins.

These plans are ambitious, large scale and will take time to implement. It is hoped that as PotBS grows and more development team members are added, we can accelerate these plans. Until that time comes, we will proceed at a steady pace, working within our existing staffing limitations to reach our overall goals for the game.

We hope these short examples of the types of changes we intend to implement will give some players a sense of the general direction we are heading. Of course, more immediate information may be more valuable for players anticipating upcoming changes in the next build.

The Next Live Build

Even if we are able to resolve the text addition/change issue we are currently experiencing, it will not happen fast enough to change what is likely to appear in the next content build as the work is already in progress, and we would likely push these changes out before changing development priorities to take advantage of the resolved situation. Working with the limitations the following are changes likely to be seen in the next build:

Ships:

• Obsolete Ships (with the possible exception of the rated ships) will be removed from Treasure Aisle. All obsolete ships that can be produced without Treasure Aisle recipes or structures will be removed as well.
• Partner level ships (not premium ships) will be added to Treasure Aisle. To make that a bit clearer, ships that currently require a Treasure Aisle recipe or come with a Treasure Aisle structure will be added to Treasure Aisle for Burning Sea Point costs. Premium ships, those with Treasure Aisle components like rate keels and Pieces of Eight components will not be added to Treasure Aisle.
• All Mastercraft series ships will be retired. Their construction recipes and the loot books that provide the will be removed. We plan to retire the subscription-era Mastercraft ships so we may reintroduce a new Mastercraft series in a new ship form at a later date. The new ship form in this reference are the ships we plan for the future that have a greater degree of customization options that the current ship form used in the game.
• All Stripped versions of ships will be retired along with their recipes. These ships will not exist in the new ship form we are building as technically in the future any ship would be able to be used in a stripped form by customizing it in that manner rendering these older models redundant.
• Tiny ship recipes will be retired along with their recipes. These ships like the Mastercraft series will be re-introduced at a later date along with the addition of smuggling gameplay and special-purpose missions/functions designed for them.

All retired ships mentioned above will continue to exist on the Legacy server and they will not be obsolete there (you will be able to build them).  Existing obsolete ships in player inventories on the current servers will continue to be usable in game now, as well as in the future.

Economy:

Originally, there were plans to do more work on ships that what is listed here, but the move-up in schedule of changes that removed the free-to-play economy slots opened the possibility of needing to make further changes to the economy due to the reduction in overall production capabilities. Like the free slot change, we had planned to begin a reduction in the overall number of structures used in the economy to help with economy slot usage. Now that the free-to-play slot change has been made, we will also move up the schedule on some of these economy changes and work to incorporate them into the next upcoming build.

The reduction plan calls for the eventual retirement of all original subscription-era structures, which in time will have them only available on the legacy server. As part of that plan, some structures will be combined into greater, multiple-use structures. In other cases, the original structures will be retired in favor of the later-added structures that often serve the same purpose (for example, Forge/Refinery). The whole plan may require two or more builds to complete. In the first phase of reduction, we will start centralizing recipes in the structures they will be used from by removing them from structures that will be eventually retired. In the second phase of this process, the structures intended for retirement will be retired and structures of similar function will be combined into single structures. An example of this would be the Plantation structures being reduced to a single Plantation structure that can grow any crop that is available to the associated port the structure is located in.

During this process there will be adjustments to recipes. Some may produce more items for each recipe run, some may have changes to labor usage, some may have reductions in their outputs and others may become more expensive to run -- all as part of reshaping the economy in preparation for the additions that will come with the new loot that will be added to the game and new economy play options.

This is also a two-phase process intended to work in conjunction with changes in the NPC market agent economy. The first phase will be based on early information gathered on the economy after the free economy slot changes. The second phase will come as a reaction to changes in the first phase, with NPC agents helping to achieve the results desired to prepare for the next generation structures that will come after some of the larger sets of changes.

The fine details of these changes are too granular for a DevBlog, and so will be included in the patch notes for the build when it is ready and moved to the Test server.

The NPC Auction Agent adjustment code is already in place and will begin altering NPC buy and sell orders after the first phase data is gathered, but prior to the release of the next build to the Test server. It is our hope that the next build to the Test server will occur before the end of February, with the NPC Auction Agents beginning their first sets of changes approximately one week from the Anniversary date.

There may be some other small adjustments being made for this build (time permitting), but the primary focus of the next build will be on economic changes and setting the stage for the future ship changes described above.

We hope this DevBlog gives folks some ideas as to what to expect in 2021.

We anticipate the next DevBlog will be coming in February. If the build is not ready by then, we will update its status as well as present additional information on what will be coming in the third content build.

Until then, fair winds and Happy Anniversary PotBS!