Pirates of the Burning Sea

[Dr. Zeppers]

Sounds interesting, in some ways it sounds excellent, yet in others.... not so...

Originally Posted by CrimsonRabbit

How good is Burning Sea if you don't play very often...say past 10pm at night for a couple hours here and there. Is it something you can play that little or do you have to be more into the game and aware of what's going on on a daily basis?

I would be interested in knowing that myself, although I enjoy interacting with others in the game, I am not big on forming "teams" to defend my territories, etc. on any regular basis. Having played exremely competitive team games in the past, I wish to avoid them now. I'm long burned out on "team" play. Im not out to beat anyone except my own boredom.

How does the game hold up to us solo'ing privateering types? How big a role does the creation and selling of items play in the economy? I want to play, not work.

[Kat Sheffield]

What I think is nice about Burning Sea is that it's fairly easy to level. The fighting that you do on land, although it isn't much, gives you a much smaller amount of rep than the ships that you challenge on the sea. Of course, the higher the level of ship the higher the rep, but there's nothing as ridiculous as getting penalized for using stronger attacks on the ships, nothing along the lines of more hits = more rep. Just the usual, basic attack higher levels and get more rep. So this definitely means that you can level quickly with only putting a couple hours in here and there. And even if you're going to play late, that shouldn't be a problem - we're set on a European server that has a good number of Americans on it as well, so really there are people on all hours of the day. Unlike POTCO where things do get distinctly quiet late at night.

But as far as needing to keep an eye on the game, I think that all depends on the direction that you take. For instance, I went Freetrader, which means that I focus more on the economy, producing and selling goods, in addition to everything else. So I have to watch the market, know what goods are selling for and where, that sort of thing. But if you went another direction, Privateer for instance, you don't have to worry about any of that if you choose not to. We have people in the Society who aren't even going to bother with that aspect of the game until they hit fifty. They just want to level, work on their skills, and sink plenty of ships along the way.

Also, not only does the rep come quickly but the gold as well. For the missions, when you complete one you normally get both a nice chunk of rep as well as gold and loot items that serve a purpose. Obviously, the higher the level the mission the better the rewards. But I will say that being part of a Society is helpful, because there are missions that you simply cannot do on your own; sometimes you only need one extra person, sometimes the specific group missions will tell you to bring "at least four", etc. But, you can bring help on almost any mission that you would like. For us, this has replaced our "Plundering Nights" from POTCO. We work on the same missions together, complete them so that everybody gets credit. It's just nice to sail out together and truly have something to do.

I have read that people do solo the game, although I can't understand why. So they do say that it is possible, but I would think that it's not very helpful. When a call goes out to defend a certain location or to attack another one, it goes out in the local chat for everyone to see. So, it's your choice whether or not you choose to go in. From what I have seen this early in, the game can be as simple or as complex as you wish to make it. If you want to do nothing but missions and attack ships and/or ports, you can do that. If you want to start producing goods and selling them for profit in the auction houses you can do that as well. I think that the Devs there were very careful to give their players choices.