Pirates of the Burning Sea takes bold step to curb mission farming

by James Egan May 18th 2009 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Historical, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Forums, Game mechanics, Quests, PvE

The latest devlog for Pirates of the Burning Sea is written by Lum and focuses on improving the game's mission system, particularly fixing the problem of mission farming. Lum writes, "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."

He says that mission farming and the in-game monetary rewards aren't necessarily the problem, although it's not what the devs had in mind for players. Lum says that since people stop to repeat the most lucrative parts of a given mission arc, they're not experiencing the game as it was intended for the players. Even worse, some players make faction choices on the basis of how lucrative a certain mission with that faction is. Flying Lab Software wants to change missions in Pirates of the Burning Sea so that players are continually progressing through stories rather than motivated to remain in place to reap the gold harvest.

Gallery: Pirates of the Burning Sea core gallery

Lum says, "We want to reduce the desire for players to farm missions, and one of the ways we accomplish this goal is with reduced loot in non-repeatable missions. We want you to turn those missions in, see the rest of the story, change factions... We want to reward you for completing a mission, not farming it."

Their solution to this problem is rather bold: reduce or outright eliminate loot drops from mission NPCs. Lum adds, "In 1.15 you will no longer get loot from killing NPCs in missions. This does not affect loot dropped by NPCs on the Open Sea, so keep sinking those Fleets. We hope you will complete 'Just One More Time' one last time and enjoy the remainder of that chain, or even explore a new Faction."

How well the removal of loot drops from mission NPCs sits with the game's playerbase remains to be seen, but PotBS players are currently sounding off in the official forum post connected with Lum's devlog "Just One Last Time".

Tags: devlog, experience, factions, fantasy, farming, flying-lab, flying-lab-software, gold, historical, loot, lum, mission-farming, missions, npc, npcs, open-sea, pirates, pirates-of-the-burning-sea, pve, quest-farming, quests

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Plastic Rat said on 1:50AM 5-19-2009

*sigh* The age old problem.

Designers designing games to be fun vs. Players playing the game solely to fulfill some nebulous concept of 'winning'.

Games were great before people started turning them into a means of compensating for real life personal shortcomings.

Dblade said on 4:17PM 5-19-2009

Plastic, the players do so because winning...is fun. To be honest a lot of what designers make fails so hard at creating fun as opposed to padding hours spent or fufilling their own idea of what good gameplay is.

Mrgutts, that idea is fine if you are talking about work. But with videogames? Not so much. The point of playing a game is to be lazy, and we should have to work at it?

Herb said on 2:06AM 5-19-2009

Let the people play the game the way they want. Diablo 2 was never designed to be power acted/leveled through but thats what makes it so popular to this very day.
Players will always find loopholes and those loopholes sometimes end up being better than how the game was originally intended to be played. More examples TF grenade hopping, and tribes skiing.

Nebulous concept of winning? I take it you have never embraced the PvP side of any game. There is a clear cut winner/loser. In POTBS it is making someone lose months of work for a ship in some cases.

Games have always been about winning/losing sorry to break it to you, sports and any recreational activity just about not just video games.

Amana said on 3:00AM 5-19-2009

Different strokes for different folks though..?

Some enjoy the participation and view the outcome as an interesting side-benefit, whilst others are in it for the outcome alone and view the journey/participation as a necessary evil along their road to domination.

In the 'old' days, it's my opinion that games were made 'because they can'. Technological limitations and a minority social share meant that programmers (note not 'developers' or 'designers') could make whatever got them excited at the time.
These days it's a far more complex process involving market share, demographic considerations, ongoing profitability, political correctness, et al.

Designers have such a large amount of obstacles to consider and traverse before a single line of code gets typed, that it's no wonder titles these days seem watered-down and directionless.

*sniff

MrGutts said on 7:00AM 5-19-2009

Amen! Preach on...

Today's generation and last is brought up with this sense of entitlement. They think they are entitled to everything under the bloody sun with no work involved. Hell you see it in kids sports all the time, EVERYONE gets a trophy we don't want to hurt anyone feelings now do we because they lost at something and may learn a valuable lesson in the process.

Yeah a little off subject I know..

Plastic Rat said on 10:01PM 5-19-2009

MrGutts hits the nail on the head.

Designers are stuck making games for a generation (my generation sadly) that feels entitled to everything and doesn't want to put in the work. Yes, entertainment takes effort. Everything worthwhile takes 'effort' to some degree, and what makes it rewarding is seeing and appreciating the reward for your 'effort' that you put in. Receiving a reward for not putting in effort IS NOT REWARDING.

Yet people will argue and whinge and continue to try and get the most for 0 effort by simply bitching. Then they'll complain that everything is watered down, unfillfilling and unrewarding.

Beyond that, MMOs are not there to be 'won'. They're like pen and paper RPGs. The 'win' is in the enjoyment of playing them, not the outcome. Anyone exploiting something in an RPG has missed the point completely. Sadly a LOT of players miss the point, continuously.

Dread said on 9:15AM 5-19-2009

Dear God....why would you intentionally want to grind one of the same 8 mission types over and over and over again? Its bad enough that every mission in the game is one of 8 basic types with just a few small detail changes and you have to grind through them and grind through Open Sea repetative battles just to get to Max Level....but to intentionally do it afterwards??

*shudders*

Herb said on 10:42AM 5-19-2009

Mrgutts way off left field.

Amana Diff strokes for diff folks is fine. But in the case of games I suggest not trying to make it what you want it to be (unless you are a developer and can change the game) but more accept the game's general direction and if it isn't for you theres another game out there that hopefully caters to your audience.

For example with your free realms is more for the people that just enjoy just doing whatever, while any game with PvP I would most definitely say goes further away from that view. Although it is certainly possible to enjoy a game with pvp in it while totally ignoring the competitive RUSH to MAX LEVEL mindset.

I don't think it is a terrible thing for POTBS to change the way money is made in their game, I just wanted to offer the viewpoint that "broken" mechanics have worked for games in the past.