Pirate Souls - Beta Progression

[Dona]

Hello everyone. It's been approximately two months since the release of the Beta/Early Access version of Pirate Souls. We had some issues during the first weeks, but we are glad to say that we overcame most of them.

Login

On the day of the release, the only way to play the game was by using an Hitspark (Nin Online) account. It was a bit confusing as people were expecting to use a Pirate Souls account or a steam one. We decided to add an option to create an account using Pirate Souls website and the use of the Hitspark one is now optional. Our plan is to make so that all players have a Pirate Souls account as first login method so if there is an issue with Hitspark login, they will not be affected.

Tutorial and Early Game

We had a lot of complains about the tutorial being "bare bones". The lack of guidance once outside of the Formation Center was not giving purpose to new players to continue playing. To make things more obvious, we added explicit icons to important locations and tutorial cards to important steps of the game. We also changed some early level quests and added a new low-level item, so the leveling process is more fun.

Some new players were discouraged by higher levels being real pirates and killing on sight. As an open world PvP game, this is something to expect. However, it doesn't match our vision of the game as we want Pirate Souls to be more about team PvP and exploration. Someone starting the game doesn't have the chance to form a team nor to explore. Quitting the game without seeing all what it has to offer is a bit sad. To bypass that issue, we introduced Peace Mode, a white flag disabling all kinds of PvP, so players can progress through their journey without being constantly killed.

 

Rubber banding

Some players were having rubber banding/lag issues that was making the game unenjoyable. After a lot of tests and resolution tentative, we finally found out what was causing that issue and the game is now much smoother running with high ping players.

Crashes Period

During approximately one week, a lot of players experienced some crashes. Those were caused by some rework we did to how assets (items, sounds, music, etc.) are loaded in the game. We wanted to fix micro freezes some players were experiencing when playing the game. Unfortunately, the tests we did were not complete enough to detect all the possible crashes. To apologize, we increased experience rates by 15 % for one day. We understood our mistake and next time, we will make sure to test with a small group of players first before pushing any major updates.

 

Main Focus

Our main focus is to increase the player’s retention before expending Pirate Souls Universe. We did a lot of updates having that in mind. The most notable ones are probably the ones regarding the early game experience, but we also pushed some updates for high-level players. The Marines's Fortress war event is the best example of that. It introduced a way to use achievements to gain more stats. It also made it possible to trade keys for higher tier keys or some reputation. Providing more long-term objectives.

Another vision we have for the game is for it to be a team game about hanging out with friends, exploring, finding treasures, and doing bosses together. Just like a pirate crew or a marine division would do. The first big update we did was the introduction of the higher-level boss Sauro. Who can only be fought by players on a crew.

 

Near Future Roadmap

• Automated events.
• Improve maps.
• Smoke fruit.
• New weapons.
• New cosmetics.

Long Term Road Map.

• Ship system.
• New Islands.

 

Thanks for playing Pirate Souls, your support does mean a lot to us! We will continue to work in order to make this a nice free to play game without pay to win mechanisms!

 

[kizumix2]

Early game is Disastrous, As a new player both me and my Friend has this to say... Why? all of it is down below

Implement Level Requirements to Zone (Yes this is a BLOW to the Open World Experience)

But this is to alleviate the Speed Running aspect of a New Player that just Happened to Figure out to just Go to Higher Level Areas and Kill those Mobs there

Like I when I first started with a Friend , The first few Hours we're Exploring... Then we gradually understood that this game is all About Levels cuz you won't be able to do any Content Pre 40 without getting PK'ed by Lvl 50's

So we ended up just finding Marine/Pirate Fighters and Spend HOURS literal HOURS to level up by killing them Over and Over starting at lvl 5... This would be the majority of our 2nd Characters... We then found Desert Eagles at the time which was amazing for EXP Farming... Yet Again we did those Bird for HOURS on end.

(Buffing the Eagles to have an Auto Attack made it so the Levelling became much more Slower as result... When LEVELLING is the only way you can Access the content the game has to offer, This really killed it for me and friend which at the time we were levelling new Characters to 50)

Why 2nd Characters already you just started? , Because the game does not do a Proper Job explaining the IMPORTANCE of Stat Allocation and would need the player to go thru Steam Guides 

HP Being Tied to a Stat that Players needs to Min Max from the beginning is a Big Flaw for New Players

Either change the way HP functions with Scaling per Level rather than per Stat Point or Lose Players because they found out that they fucked up Big time with their Stat Allocations and They're gonna need to buy a Stat Reset or Make a New Character.

Okay... Players now Spent 50+ Hours Levelling (Casual Play)

Now what can they do? , now they Can farm Keys and Fruits from Bosses!

That's it.

Why did the player Spent 50 hours levelling to finally be able to Consistently do the Only Content there is in the game?
(Consistently meaning... being able to PvP others for Bosses)

Why couldn't the Player just had access to a Content Rewarding Keys or Non Shop Weapons in Pre Lvl 40's?
(Yes I'm aware Mountain Bandit/ Somobatsu exist , But these Bosses does not scream to New Players to "Farm Them"... They don't drop some New Player Gear EXCLUSIVE to those Bosses)

Why was it all FOCUSED on High Lvl Play?
(Boss farming for Keys and Fruits are the only Content a Solo Player will be INTERESTED in)

These are the 3 Questions that comes to my mind of WHY the game's PLAYER RETENTION is absurdly LOW

The game was designed like a Roblox One Piece game of Grind Mobs to be able to do Higher Level Content... Rinse and Repeat

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by kizumix2

[Dona]

11 hours ago, kizumix2 said:

Early game is Disastrous, As a new player both me and my Friend has this to say... Why? all of it is down below

Implement Level Requirements to Zone (Yes this is a BLOW to the Open World Experience)

But this is to alleviate the Speed Running aspect of a New Player that just Happened to Figure out to just Go to Higher Level Areas and Kill those Mobs there

Like I when I first started with a Friend , The first few Hours we're Exploring... Then we gradually understood that this game is all About Levels cuz you won't be able to do any Content Pre 40 without getting PK'ed by Lvl 50's

So we ended up just finding Marine/Pirate Fighters and Spend HOURS literal HOURS to level up by killing them Over and Over starting at lvl 5... This would be the majority of our 2nd Characters... We then found Desert Eagles at the time which was amazing for EXP Farming... Yet Again we did those Bird for HOURS on end.

(Buffing the Eagles to have an Auto Attack made it so the Levelling became much more Slower as result... When LEVELLING is the only way you can Access the content the game has to offer, This really killed it for me and friend which at the time we were levelling new Characters to 50)

Why 2nd Characters already you just started? , Because the game does not do a Proper Job explaining the IMPORTANCE of Stat Allocation and would need the player to go thru Steam Guides 

HP Being Tied to a Stat that Players needs to Min Max from the beginning is a Big Flaw for New Players

Either change the way HP functions with Scaling per Level rather than per Stat Point or Lose Players because they found out that they fucked up Big time with their Stat Allocations and They're gonna need to buy a Stat Reset or Make a New Character.

Okay... Players now Spent 50+ Hours Levelling (Casual Play)

Now what can they do? , now they Can farm Keys and Fruits from Bosses!

That's it.

Why did the player Spent 50 hours levelling to finally be able to Consistently do the Only Content there is in the game?
(Consistently meaning... being able to PvP others for Bosses)

Why couldn't the Player just had access to a Content Rewarding Keys or Non Shop Weapons in Pre Lvl 40's?
(Yes I'm aware Mountain Bandit/ Somobatsu exist , But these Bosses does not scream to New Players to "Farm Them"... They don't drop some New Player Gear EXCLUSIVE to those Bosses)

Why was it all FOCUSED on High Lvl Play?
(Boss farming for Keys and Fruits are the only Content a Solo Player will be INTERESTED in)

These are the 3 Questions that comes to my mind of WHY the game's PLAYER RETENTION is absurdly LOW

The game was designed like a Roblox One Piece game of Grind Mobs to be able to do Higher Level Content... Rinse and Repeat

 

Thanks for those feedbacks, you brought up interesting subjects.

We will make sure to consider this for the future updates!

[Davidukq]

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[Davidplm]

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