Pirates game

[Chris]

All pirates games I came across were not good (except maybe Puzzle Pirates, but it is not exactly BBG). These used the beaten to death mafia script with pirates going to jail or hospital and ships being used as equipment. The few original ones betrayed the pirates inheritance by focusing on trade or other non bloody things.

The core of being a pirate is to attack and loot. Constant and frequent fight, not hiding in ports because of being afraid of being killed. Courageous sea fights, treasures buried on islands, escaping from royal navy, pursuing fat merchants, clashes with other pirates. How to design such game?


Thoughts:
Such game should definitely have a strong PvP element, because PvP gives the most intense fighting/competition/bloodbath feeling. The game should be about attacking and getting resources/gold. There should be an enormous incentive to attack, constantly over and over again. The only reason to not attack would be some built in attack limit. There should never be a pirate that asks if he should go on a sea to loot or not. The answer should be always to go and lot The question could be only where/whom to loot. There should be some hindering of other players (pirates), but maybe not via regular attack option, because it could made them *think* too much before attacking and we do not want it

[Mufasa]

I think if done right it could be really cool. You'd inspire competitiveness (and retaliation) between the players and it should keep players interested. Are you going forward with this or just mapping out ideas?

[Chris]

Are you going forward with this or just mapping out ideas?

I just described how an ideal pirate game should look like. Describing ideal final outcome is a trivial task, the real question remains. How to design such game?

So, yes, more like collecting ideas, especially for game mechanics.


Implementation ideas:
1) players engange in PvP to get control of sea area (vs player pirates). Then they engange in PvE to hunt for merchants, the outcome depends on their sea control (vs NPC merchants).
2) players are individual pirates and they join a crew of a ship to get loot (sounds cool but there are plenty of unfilled holes in this concept...)

[Sagefire135]

defiantly dont forget about buried treasure, and hidden coves to serve as home base.

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[Nox]

I think (2) would be quite restricting... I'll give players command over whole ship.

You may also have royal ships escort or a group hunting down pirates.
I'd use some reputation system and build some mechanics around it... off the top of head - ability to declare revenge on someone after being attacked (other players get notified): in given timelimit he should defeat the player (there might be some modification to combat, like more damage done, more taken) and with much higher reputation modification outcome and more loot (if successful) and adding the name to his revenges list...or something like that

Maybe be able to either be really pirate or corsair for some country with some pros and cons...

[lindhsky]

Instead of upgrading your ship by buying a totaly new ship everytime I think it would be more fun if you had a lot of different parts on your ship that you could upgrade. It could be anything from how much damage a ship could take to cannons. Perhaps also different types of crew. Some things could be bought/hired for money but to get a good cannon-shooter you might have to have x amount of reputation points as well. Other things could be found or even plundered. I would love to play a game like that.

[Chris]

I think (2) would be quite restricting... I'll give players command over whole ship.

Yes, it would be more tricky to design properly...

I will pursue the option (1) (PvP+PvE), if you have other concepts (like 100% PvP) please share.


PvP & PvE mix:
Players have 2 pools of action points, for PvP & for PvE.
* They use PvP actions to attack other pirates, if won they get reputation and skill points and their crew gets experience. It produces also fame points which can be spend in ports to hire specialists/henchmen.
* They use PvE actions to perform merchant hunting. 1 action point to scout the sea and they can encounter a ship, then they decide if they want to attack it which is another 1 point or 10 points to return to port and unload cargo hold. Merchants have statistics like nationality (4 nations, you better left be in a good term with one or you will have trouble finding ports that allow you to enter), danger level (or maybe they auto win with NPCs?) and cargo value & capacity (the best are highly valued goods that use not much cargo hold space).

PvE is used for getting gold, PvP for getting score, power, upgrades, skills.

I wonder about other pirates interfering with PvE. Like you encounter a merchant ship but there is a pirate nearby. You need to challenge them first before getting to the merchant.

[Mufasa]

it's a pirate game after all, so instead of fame, make it notoriety. As for the situation when there's another pirate nearby, I say first come, first serve! In fact, it may fuel a battle if one pirate goes to plunder and then gets a "Sorry XYZ-The-Dog got here first!"

[Sinzygy]

I always wanted to use the following concept, but never had the time to properly think about it:
To force players to attack more, I always thought it was necessary to reward the attacking player with a) resources and b) bonus.

So instead of fame I propose some sort of frenzy, bravery or morale stat. Each attack increases your crews bravery, which will make them in turn better in the next combat. So each won battle would increase the attack rating for your next attack by 1%-2% (and yes, this is supposed to stack, so that after n successful attacks the player should have 1.01^n-10.2^n increased attack power.
But if the player stops attacking, he will start losing points in his bravery/morale/whatever-stat and thus making him less effective on his next raids.

To counter this, I also propose a "determination"-stat. It works in the same way the bravery-stat works, but affects the crews defensive abilities. You lose, your determination-stat increases.

And to make things a bit more interesting: every time a players bravery-stat increases, his determinations-stat decreases. Players that are attacking more often, will themselves be weaker against other attacks.

Of course, this idea still needs a lot of refinement, but I hope the basic concept got through.

[Harkins]

A webcomic I read just posted about the game Star Pirates, an advertiser of theirs.

I've been poking around a little, it looks like it's mostly PVP like you were looking for, though as you can guess from the name it has a space theme instead of high seas fantasy. It even includes captchas like you were thinking about.

[Chris]

I always wanted to use the following concept, but never had the time to properly think about it:
To force players to attack more, I always thought it was necessary to reward the attacking player with a) resources and b) bonus.

So instead of fame I propose some sort of frenzy, bravery or morale stat. Each attack increases your crews bravery, which will make them in turn better in the next combat. So each won battle would increase the attack rating for your next attack by 1%-2% (and yes, this is supposed to stack, so that after n successful attacks the player should have 1.01^n-10.2^n increased attack power.
But if the player stops attacking, he will start losing points in his bravery/morale/whatever-stat and thus making him less effective on his next raids.

To counter this, I also propose a "determination"-stat. It works in the same way the bravery-stat works, but affects the crews defensive abilities. You lose, your determination-stat increases.

And to make things a bit more interesting: every time a players bravery-stat increases, his determinations-stat decreases. Players that are attacking more often, will themselves be weaker against other attacks.

Of course, this idea still needs a lot of refinement, but I hope the basic concept got through.

The chance of success do not affect frequency of attacks. Only reward and penalty affect it. If the reward is sufficient and penality non existant then player will attack as much as he can no matter the odds of winning.

"But if the player stops attacking" - why would a player want to stop attacking? I don't get this part...

Offensive bonus for attacking and defensive bonus for defending would result in 2 types of players. Those who can attack anyone while being raided as well and those who can not attack anyone and no one can attack them. With such setup it would be unplayable.

An attack bonus would make sense if the was some decision, or a type of player. Like if you attack "good" player you get bonus to attacking other "good" player and lower for attacking "evil" player (results in split targets).

Rum, I strongly believe the biggest morale attack boost for a pirate comes from rum

[pixlepix]

How about you have some players playing as a small iland empire trying to expand its empire, and some playing as bloodthirsty pirates. A game for 2 kind of plyers.

[Chris]

And I couldn't resist and bought pirates domain Now I will have to make some pirates game

Any pirates related ideas?

[CygnusX]

If I were to sign up for a Pirates game, I'd crave some Pirates vs. Sea Monster action.  Not sure what the story would be here, but certainly sea monsters guard the most sacred of treasures.  On top of that, I'd want to start with a small ship, and have to work to build to a bigger one.  There would also have to be tons of pirate tasks.  A small list would include:

1) Pillage a merchant ship at high sea
2) Obtain a treasure map
3) Navigate through jungle until I reach the x-marks-the-spot
4) Hunt down and kill those giant sea-monsters

Battle other pirates
Battle ninjas hired to kill me
Escape the Army Fleet that pursues me.

Edit:  To include order.  Items without numbers are secondary requests.

[Chris]

Can you sort them from most desired to least desired?

[saljutin]

I would go with treasure maps - more stages:
1. find "boss" who drops treasure map (look at 2.)
2. fight his minions (ships, maybe first capture his officer then torture him to tell you where that "boss" is)
3. fight "boss" get treasure map (drop or not)
4. search for that treasure (maybe some hints first where to travel - and at end try to find treasure somewhere around that point - use turns to dig)
5. it should be hard to find but ultimate reward!

so here you have PvE implemented (goal of PvE is to get treasure map), then add PvP, trading between cities, owning land and you have winner

[dbest]

1. learn the art of sword fighting
2. learn the art of captaining a ship

3. either carry out a mutiny against your existing captain or buy a new ship...
4. move from location to location...
5. find treasure
6. attack other ships (player or bot)
7. visit city to drop gold in safe location
8. accept orders from a lord to guard certain area..

[Chris]

I get a feeling that collecting treasures is more important to players than plundering merchants Also it is interesting how low "fighting other pirates/players" is... Also I get an impression that players interaction is not a priority in that kind of game?

The desired game from a few post above would include:
You have one character with erpegish statistics, it is "you".
You have a ship and a crew. Upgrades, cannons and specialists included.
You have some personal items, maybe found as a treasure? Like sextans, cloths, rapiers, pistols, parrots, hats.
There must be a legendary cursed ship as an event.
There are seamonsters and sirens as events.
The mechanic could involve robbing players/NPCs and then quickly hiding the loot in a cove.
There must be some location mechanic, mostly for treasure hunt.

Off topic: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/312757/pirate-king?size=large They say everyone likes to play pirates games

[Marek]

You mentioned Puzzle Pirates in your first sentence and I think it's a game worth learning from. Not all of its concepts apply to BBGs, but note how they designed their game: they made a bunch of puzzle games and made sure they were fun to play. Then, they put a pirate theme on top. It was a smart move because they didn't let the pirate theme dictate and restrict their game ideas. The result is a game that is fundamentally fun and uses pirate themed fun and humor as an added layer on top of that, rather than relying on the theme as the source of fun. Those are my thoughts.

[dsheroh]

I get a feeling that collecting treasures is more important to players than plundering merchants Also it is interesting how low "fighting other pirates/players" is... Also I get an impression that players interaction is not a priority in that kind of game?

When I think "pirates", I either gravitate towards:

1) "Long John Silver" - Treasure maps and buried chests
or
2) "Captain Jack Sparrow" - Swashbuckling fights against HM's Royal Navy

Fighting against other pirates isn't really a big part of either version, so, no, I wouldn't rate direct player interaction very highly in either case, unless there are two player factions: Pirates (quick and canny) and Royal Navy (numerous but incompetent), although that goes somewhat against the spirit of the pirate theme (or at least my conception of it...) because the pirates should pretty much always win, which would be frustrating for Royal Navy players.

I could still see a place for indirect player interaction, such as looking for other pirates' buried treasures or trying to trap them by drawing them into a hopeless fight against the Royal Navy, but I have a hard time seeing that as the primary activity.

[gnoh]

Call the pirates privateers and then you'll have a reason for pirates to fight other pirates.   State sponsored piracy.

[Chris]

You mentioned Puzzle Pirates in your first sentence and I think it's a game worth learning from. Not all of its concepts apply to BBGs, but note how they designed their game: they made a bunch of puzzle games and made sure they were fun to play. Then, they put a pirate theme on top. It was a smart move because they didn't let the pirate theme dictate and restrict their game ideas. The result is a game that is fundamentally fun and uses pirate themed fun and humor as an added layer on top of that, rather than relying on the theme as the source of fun. Those are my thoughts.

Hmmm, would it work if I made a pirate island management game? Sort of like Tropico 2. Or is it too niche/weird for people who google for "pirates  online / mmorpg"?