New swordfighting on way for Pirates

By Oli Welsh Published 16 October, 2008

Burning Sea to get much-needed revamp.

In a recent developer blog, Pirates of the Burning sea creator Flying Lab has announced that it's working on a major revision of the game's on-foot swordfighting, or "avatar combat".

We felt this was the weakest element of the strangely absorbing nautical MMO by far when we reviewed it, so it's welcome news.

The fighting system is being overhauled, as well as the missions, animations, UI and sound.

"In short, we've been stripping avatar combat down to its foundation and building up again," wrote lead game designer Kevin Maginn under his "Isildur" alias.

Maginn said his original vision was "somewhat of a cross between Shining Force Neo and Bushido Blade. I wanted a system that would let me slice through armies of minions like a hot knife through butter, but that would be tactical and complex in a one-on-one duel between evenly matched opponents".

Quite some distance from the glacially slow, wooden flailing that made it into the final game then. "It was added late in the development cycle, and was thus the system in which I had the least confidence," he said. "What I discovered was... A good foundation with a very early iteration built on top of it."

The main changes involve starting with a full, rather than empty "initiative bar" (your resource for combat abilities), and removing finishing moves in favour of a system based entirely on initiative management.

Balance will no longer affect defence, fewer skills will be organised into longer chains, the effectiveness of all skills and equipment will be scaled up to give combat more impact, almost all skills will bearea-of-effect to make fighting multiple enemies more fun, and enemy archetypes and skills are being fleshed out for more variation.

Sounds like a good start. Check out Maginn's full article for a frank, detailed and interesting insight into the game design.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (2) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • nervouspete #1 3 years ago

    This is sorely needed. The at-sea game is the most fun you can have in combat in an MMO, in my opinion, but the swordfighting is so bad its like being beaten around the head with a rubber bladder. If they somehow manager to make a good showing, and polish the rest of the game, and revamp the map graphics so they look a bit less playmobile with towns looking out of place on the land surface, then we'll have something special.

  • RobKohr #2 3 years ago

    Really sword fighting is challenging to implement in games. It has many fast motions and they are very fluid. The only games I have played that made it fun were boshido blade and soul caliber, and only boshido did it realistically. When I was working on my own pirate game I avoided it all together. When two ships come close together you can chose to board, which becomes a computer calculated result based upon your crews. Not nearly as much fun as cannon combat, but I was realistic and knew it wasn't going to work out well.