Massively^™

The way things currently are when engaging in an open sea battle in Pirates of the Burning Sea, players can often be dumped miles away from each other inside the private battle instance, even if they were very close when going in. This is one of the problems that is going to be fixed in build 1.2, and a devlog on the official site has gone over the planned changes.

Little fixes to the system never seemed to solve the problem satisfactorily, so an entire overhaul was necessary. The old system placed people relative to one point in the center, but in 1.2, a closer version of the positioning on the open sea will be seen inside the instance, due to new spawn point tracking. Additionally, the angle of attack will now only be measured upon the initial strike, and not for each new person entering, so that it won't be possible to have a circle of ships spawn on one unlucky victim. The system that decides how far back you will be placed when you join a battle late has been tweaked, to stop people being dumped in a random spot when the intended area would have been invalid, and there will also be a few more options you can set for auto-joining a battle. Read more about these new features for build 1.2 via the link below.