Pirate101 Design Q&A 1/12/24

• 2023 was a year of learning. Now they know what they can and cannot do, so they'll be looking into places to improve the game.
• The scope of the Pirate team is not super big, so they have to take what they can get. The hope is that someday if they grow the team and Pirate does better, they can do a world. However, they'll be exploring spaces they can reuse from Wizard or ones that already exist in Pirate for episodic content.
• They're focused on getting their analytics up to determine what systems need to be improved in the beginning of the game. If they see players dropping off at a quest, then they'll want to fix that.
• Are there plans to make all Companions similar? They're evaluating the system and looking into ways to improve it, but they're looking into differentiating companions so they fit different niches. If players want a certain playstyle, they can choose specific Companions for that.
• They will release unreleased Companions/Promotions with content that deserves it. It's a very narrative focused game, so it has to make sense in that context.
• Are there any worries Pirate will stop receiving support if there's no upper trend? No, Pirate has improved quite a bit.
• The story is definitely continuing. Sinbad is now part of the main storyline. They may not have the resources for a full world, but they still want to expand the story in smaller episodic content.
• For those of you interested in the story... they are continuing it with significant weight this year.
• Dom plans on doing Companion reworks. To what extent is still to be determined.
• They've wanted to do Companion Skins since forever, but they looked into the codebase and found it's far more complicated than they hoped. However, they are going to look into it more.
• Dom would love to see Polaris or Darkmoor. Any kind of world would have to go through writing, of course. They're enthusiastic to work on whatever world the writers want. Andrew wants Darkmoor too, he likes spooky stuff and thinks it's cool. We're going to a place soon he's really excited about, but can't discuss.
• Dom wants to talk to Ratbeard about why they changed Witchdoctors to be unable to chain off of Powers before they decide to revert that change.
• There's nothing planned currently for new Stagecoaches. If they do another Stagecoach update, they'd want to put it somewhere other than Skull Island.
• How hard is it to port stuff from Wizard to Pirate? It depends on what it is. They were thinking about transferring a certain system as they were under the impression that it'd be easy, but it ended up taking a lot of tech time and research, so they weren't able to do it necessarily. One example is you couldn't necessarily port Crafting from Wizard.
• They've been talking about moving the paywall or doing more Free Membership weekends for a while.
• Steam launch was a big success.
• They're in the early stages of talking about Crafting, but they can't just port it over from Wizard.
• They're open to re-evaluating Miracle Mitch.
• Ship Combat is one of the systems Dom would like to change the most. If they can't entirely revamp it, they'd consider removing it or pushing it back to another level. They know it causes a lot of problems early on.
• Kane's Robes and Lo Pan's Mustache. When will these unreleased items drop from somewhere? Andrew thinks they had a meeting about Lo Pan's Mustache, but they'll talk about those items regardless. They want players to collect items after all.
• They want to experiment with the paywall and may or may not be trying to do that in 2024. They need a good enough justification for it to be moved. It's how the game has been set up for years. It works well and makes more sense in Wizard, but it's something they need to have an in-depth conversation about. The heavy decision makers get very nervous when told people want to tamper with the core monetization of a product.
• The whole Loot system has to be re-evaluated since some drop rates are ridiculously low.
• Will we ever see a new Skyway? They'd love to make one, but they take up a ton of resources. They've very expensive to not only implement and build like most worlds, but they're also really heavy on the engine stuff. They put a Skeleton Key into a Vortex last year and thought it'd be interesting, but it turned out to be a nightmare to get working properly. Skyways are hit or miss right now since they're wildly big. (ATMOPINION: As someone who made a Skyway for the Darkmoor Fan Project, it is nowhere near as complicated as he makes it out to be. Large and hard to keep track of, yes. But there is no issue with the engine other than the game's performance. However, if it is difficult to make a new Skyway for them for whatever reason, then perhaps they should consider reskinning an existing one. If a normal Skyway is too large, then they should consider making a smaller Skyway.)
• Will we ever see a Companion gear system? It sounds cool, but they'd like to put efforts into other aspects of Companions.
• Right now, a lot of players discount the stats on gear and just look at the Power. They were questioning whether they would change that or not, but that's an open question and a big question. That's a very distinctive part of Pirate's combat system, and they'd want to really consider it before changing anything.
• The difficulty of Sinbad Part 3 will be lowered. It was initially designed for endgame players to challenge them, but Dom will go back and adjust it downwards so more casual players can get through it. Floating Dutchman and stuff won't change.
• When it comes to how many Episodes it takes to make a world's worth of content, it's a matter of wait and see.
• If Dom could introduce a Wizard character into Pirate, he'd like to see the Aquilan immortals for the comparison of how the Pirate interacts with them versus the Wizard.
• Teamup has been discussed and they need to look into it. (ATMOTIP FOR THE DEVS: Open DungeonQueueConfig.xml and put the desired dungeon's cluster ID in the cluster list. This gives the dungeon teamup support.)
• "It'd be nice to have features like Quick Sell! It's on our radar." *Hawkules frantically moving around.*
• Dom's favorite piece of content was the Floating Dutchman. He had to go back and research how combat triggers are set up.
• They are curious about Cargo and if they should do it or focus on something else. KI Engineers kept asking Andrew if he had seen the Cargo design document.
• They are not planning on doing a Battle Pass system right now.
• Will unused areas of Valencia Part 2 ever be implemented? Not right now, but as long as something fits the product, they could potentially use it.
• Hawkules has asked about giving content creators the flycam, but the answer was "too much time, too much effort."
• They'll work on bugs affecting PvP, but currently it's not the focus. A big PvP revamp is not in the books at the moment.
• Will episodic content come with a raised level cap? They are in debates about it. They'd have to look into having a decent size of new content to support that, which would come with new Powers. They don't have a good way of doing it right now, so it'd be best for them to wait.