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Recent Headlines for Pirates of the Burning Sea

The Balancing Act

By Keith Cross on Jun 12, 2008

The most recent Devlog from the folks at Pirates of the Burning Sea looks at the art of item balancing, and some of the changes that will be made in version 1.5 of the game.

Since moving from the content department to design, I’ve been tasked with maintaining balance among the various outfittings available for your ship or avatar. As a result, I’ve modified the majority of items in the game to one degree or another. Most of these changes are minor, but they are also far-reaching. In this devlog, I’d like to explain why I made these changes and how they’re going to improve your game experience.

Balancing all the hundreds of items in our game was a daunting task. To get a handle on it, I had to break the process down into discreet goals. We have a formula for evaluating items by assigning a point value, and my first goal was to identify those that had values well outside of the range for their level. While some players may reap the benefits of these items, they have a number of damaging effects on the game as a whole.

The most obvious problem is that it’s no fun to be sunk by a player simply because they have managed to stack a number of overpowered pieces of outfitting to achieve absurd stat bonuses. These items tend to generate a “golden path” so that you must have them equipped in order to be competitive in PvP. The consequence of these “must have” items is that all other items become “must not have.” Outfitting your ship is not so much about making choices based on strategy or play-style as it is about discovering and obtaining those few select pieces of gear. Instead, we’d much prefer that all items in your level band are useful. There should be an endless number of interesting and powerful combinations when outfitting your ship, not a single “golden path.”