POTC and PAL
- Thread starter CaptainHook
- Start date
Yeah, I think this needed to be said. The transition from old client to new has all but eradicated the competitive POTC scene. I met a lot of my first MyVMK friends playing competitive POTC and they've been online far less in the past couple of months in response to the state of the game. I understand that a lot of development has been going into the new (and very cool) minigame, but I'm of the opinion that POTC should be priority one. For as long as VMK was around, and for as long as the minigame has existed on MyVMK, pirates has been the most popular minigame and the social hub of the whole community. The state of the lobby now is pretty sad. It's double credits on a day when most people don't work, when many college students are on break, and it's still not easy to scrape together 4 willing competitive players. Weekdays are even sadder. People have largely ceased to try to actually play POTC for fun, because it's just not that all that enjoyable in its present state. People have already gone into great detail as to the problems, so I'm not going to harp on those specific issues too much. But I do hope that Pirates gets a little bit of TLC in the near future. I would gladly sacrifice several weeks of new releases for that to happen.
See people come to me saying there are issues with POTC in the new client, but noone really gives me any indication of what they are, how to reproduce them etc... I don't run into any issues when I'm playing it, so I can't do anything about it without knowing what's going on there. As for the old client, that just breaks all the time and is the nature of the beast with something so ancient.
What do you mean by crashing at the end of the game? The new client doesn't give up when something fails so unless it's your browser terminating the page I'm not sure what you mean.
What do you mean by crashing at the end of the game? The new client doesn't give up when something fails so unless it's your browser terminating the page I'm not sure what you mean.
I can point out some issues I've had with potc on the new client - very often I'll explode and die out of nowhere when no one was even shooting me on my screen. Also a lot of the time it will show someone stuck on rocks so I'll be sitting waiting for them to get unstuck and end up getting shot by them because them being stuck is just a glitch. Lastly which I'm sure you're aware of but we can no longer see anyones scores while playing. Hope this helps!
Amy, it's not peoples browsers it's the new client. It's not just the problem with POTC, the Alpha client has caused problems with everything. Jungle Cruise can't be played, new players can't complete quests, daily credits from Ncp's can't be received, rooms don't load, crashing issues, ect... Potc which once was a fantastic game has become boring and frustrating. You can't play pirates competitively anymore because the shots are missed timed or you completely freeze in game and can't move. What's even more annoying is having to click on the chat bar a few times to write anything. Since Alpha has been released all I've heard from other players is complaints. Friends that use to come on to play Potc simply don't come on anymore as the game is not enjoyable since Alpha was released. I really do appreciate everything you've done with the game, but I as well as many others wish you would just fix it so it's playable and enjoyable again.
Another thing I'd like to add on to this post is when you're going to create a game in the POTC lobby, it'll bring up two screens once you've created a game. The same thing goes for when you join a game, you'll get two screens that'll pop up and have to close it out. Points still remain at 7 during gameplay, when going to shoot in the game the green arrow flashes/have to basically guess where to shoot. Cannons are invisible at times in the game...
Ahoy, @Amy and thanks for all of yer hard work!
I'm writing with some feedback to help you with troubleshooting. These are some issues I've seen with playing POTC on the Alpha client while running Windows 7 and using Google Chrome's latest version (65.0.3325.181). I mostly play competitive POTC and have played since the original VMK. While these are my personal observations, my friends and fellow players have made similar observations. If I can expand on any points or help you with any testing, please let me know.
These are the issues I've seen when playing POTC on the Alpha client:
As for the crashing at the end of games (reported earlier in this thread), I've experienced this issue when using MyVMKPal at times over the last couple of weeks. At the end of a POTC game, instead of returning to the lobby/dock and seeing pop-up dialog boxes describing your winnings, the game locks up. I have to close MyVMKPal and relog. I don't know if anyone has this problem using Alpha or not.
I hope this information is helpful. I really appreciate all the work you are doing and appreciate you asking for feedback. Again, if I can help with any more detail, demos, or testing, I'm happy to help and I'm sure other players feel the same.
Thanks and fair winds!
I'm writing with some feedback to help you with troubleshooting. These are some issues I've seen with playing POTC on the Alpha client while running Windows 7 and using Google Chrome's latest version (65.0.3325.181). I mostly play competitive POTC and have played since the original VMK. While these are my personal observations, my friends and fellow players have made similar observations. If I can expand on any points or help you with any testing, please let me know.
These are the issues I've seen when playing POTC on the Alpha client:
- After a POTC game starts from the lobby, the chat bubbles stay on the screen from the lobby until they scroll up and away.
- After a POTC game starts from the lobby, the music/sounds from the lobby continue to play in the POTC game.
- Controlling ships and cannons within the game is off (for lack of a better word)--the timing, the accuracy, the delay, or something is slightly off and inconsistent. It's hard to describe this one, but maneuvering and aiming are difficult. The game has a different feel compared to playing on the old client. I've tried to play more and adjust to the differences, but the timing/accuracy/delay seems too inconsistent to master.
- Mouse clicks to set a ship's direction do not always register (my ship doesn't respond).
- Double-arrow clicks to fire the cannons do not always register (my ship doesn't shoot).
- The scores do not properly display over each player's ship. This can impact players' tactics.
- At the end of each round, the scores on the scoreboard do not show. The scoreboard doesn't show the scores until the game is completely over.
- Each ship starts with an inventory of 5 ammos/cannonballs. However, once I shoot twice and have 3 ammos remaining, I can no longer restore my inventory back to 5 ammos by sailing over ammo icons to restock: the maximum becomes 3 instead of 5.
- If I am in a game and haven't fired any cannons, my ammo inventory will drop to 3 by simply sailing over an ammo icon, and 3 becomes the maximum instead of 5.
- When a player fires their cannons, the cannonballs sometimes fly in random directions instead of staying in a pattern. This impacts both offense (aiming) and defense (dodging).
- Ship damage versus remaining health seems to sometimes be inaccurate. I can have full health and be sunk by one regular cannonball at times.
- Sometimes, your ship takes damage and you don't see anything hit you--either you are hit by invisible cannon balls, or you successfully dodge a cannon ball hit but take damage anyway.
- Sometimes, I'll see an opponent stuck on the rocks and not moving on my screen, but they are actually still sailing around the map shooting at me on their screen.
- Occasionally, I can sail but not pick up any ammo or health.
- Ammo and health icons sometimes stay on the screen after someone picks them up, even though the item is no longer available. Therefore, sometimes when I sail over an item, it really isn't there and I don't get the item.
- Sometimes, I've been hit by invisible cannons that went through a solid island (such as those in Level 1). In other words, the opponent should not be able to hit me because the shot is blocked, doesn't even seem to fire, and hits me.
- When playing CTF, the flags do not visibly get carried by the ships that pick them up. In other words, you can't tell which players have the flags.
- Sometimes when playing CTF, a flag remains at the base even after someone has picked it up. A game message will correctly report that "Amy has captured the flag for her team," but the flag will still be displayed at the base.
- The need to click in the chat window during game play to type a message is inconvenient. It is much nicer to simply be able to type to talk.
- Sometimes after I click in the chat window to type during a game, the mouse-controlled green "compass" icon that steers my ship doesn't return to the screen and I can't move my ship. I recently learned that if I find the compass icon on the screen, I can place the mouse's text cursor over the compass, left click it, and then my mouse cursor becomes the compass cursor again and I can control my ship.
- For me to use the Alpha client, I have to use Google Chrome. The latest Firefox and IE browsers do not work reliably. The game sometimes fails to load, or loads with missing graphics or players in the POTC lobby.
- I think most players would still like to see all features from the original POTC game be included, such as the ability to switch teams in the lobby, add AI ships, face Kraken attacks for not moving, go into overtime with gold ammo, etc.
As for the crashing at the end of games (reported earlier in this thread), I've experienced this issue when using MyVMKPal at times over the last couple of weeks. At the end of a POTC game, instead of returning to the lobby/dock and seeing pop-up dialog boxes describing your winnings, the game locks up. I have to close MyVMKPal and relog. I don't know if anyone has this problem using Alpha or not.
I hope this information is helpful. I really appreciate all the work you are doing and appreciate you asking for feedback. Again, if I can help with any more detail, demos, or testing, I'm happy to help and I'm sure other players feel the same.
Thanks and fair winds!
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So I don't play pirates competitively, only capture the flag friendlies. The issues I've noticed is that sometimes it doesn't register that the flag has been picked up by the ship and it doesn't show the points are registered, so this is concerning sometimes for how we play friendlies. The "crashing" thing that people are discussing, isn't the fact of the client actually crashing and closing out, or that we see the "pardon our pixie dust" which is probably what you're thinking here. What I've experienced is that sometimes when loading into the game, the next round, or at the end of the game it just won't fully load. I've sat there and waited a good few minutes before seeing if it will load and it didn't. Then I have to close out the client and relaunch. During the time period of the game not able to load in, you can still type and chat with the other players but there won't be any ships and the tan square loading picture will still be there, but it'll be blank. I hope that's more clear rather than having everyone say that we are crashing.
oh probs should add that i play on the alpha client on my mac. idk if thats useful or not
oh probs should add that i play on the alpha client on my mac. idk if thats useful or not
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I also play POTC a lot and have experienced everything written in this post 1-22 also I'd like to add one more, we no longer can double click on left/right side of ship to fire cannons I got so used to that type of game play, please if at all possible bring back the double click mouse firing cannons feature. Thank You Amy
mfw when i show Amy a screenshot of her saying that my suggestion was helpful, but then she says she never even saw it.
CaptainJax you nailed it! Amy the bugs in Alpha are extreme to the extent that playing a normal game even for very experienced players has become impossible. If you do manage to log in on Pal the game play is normal, but you cant start a game in Lobby, and you cant switch ships either so you're always a pearl, chat in lobby doesn't show, players don't show, so youre forced to log 1 character on Alpha to see chat, players, and games starting, etc in Lobby, and 1 on Pal to play POTC. Whatever you can do would be great! I've tried playing on my iPad Pro with the new client but just cannot shoot at all, maneuvers great, but cant shoot, even trying with a bluetooth keyboard.