All Hands on Deck! No Quarter Given!
Ahoy, corsairs! Today we'll discuss the RPG system from the original COAS and its controversial aspects. We'll cover it comprehensively, but without excessive details and technicalities. We'll also tell you how we've tried to address some of the problematic areas.
Improvements in brief:
All PIRATES stats now affect gameplay;
Improved personal and ship skills;
Rebalanced abilities (perks);
Expanded ship officer functionality;
Added a new parameter — Character Traits.
In "Caribbean Legend", BlackMark Studio took the path of almost completely reimagining the RPG system. We (ReCon Team) in "Age of Pirates" aimed to expand and build upon the original ideas while not drastically changing its core concept.
For newcomers, this will serve as a manual for our RPG system, and veterans of the series will find plenty of useful discoveries. But first — add "Age of Pirates" to your wishlist!
Chapter I — Attributes
Character development directly depends on initial "P.I.R.A.T.E.S." attributes. Attributes are measured from 1 to 10, and players can distribute values at the start of the game from 3 to 10 out of a total of 42 points. You can set some to maximum 10, others to minimum 3, thus defining unique character development tailored to your playstyle.
Sounds good... but here's the problem: some of these attributes simply did nothing in the original CoaS. Let's take a closer look:
Power — important at the start due to additional carry weight and influence on melee weapon skill progression. Debatable, but better than nothing.
Insight — provided nothing useful, yet it's an entire attribute! Now it will affect: — interaction range with encounters on the global map: easier to evade pursuers, communicate with allies, and avoid storms; — finding hidden items and stashes; — some skill checks in quests.
Reaction — one of the most important attributes for a combat build — the amount of energy that heroes often lack.
Authority — only affected the number of officer slots, and the name poorly reflected the original purpose and functionality intended for a Charisma analogue. In Caribbean Legend devs decided to make it a skill, but we went further.
Authority really doesn't sound right and isn't suitable for an almost static and innate attribute. We need a more comprehensive word, on par with Charisma, while keeping letter "A".
The solution was found:
A = Allure
Allure opens up opportunities for character interaction in social spheres and quest variability. It proved very useful and convenient for our writers.
Talent — determines the speed of character rank growth and the number of abilities gained. The problem is that this attribute is actually quite controversial. You're simply choosing the game's pace, since with auto-leveling most enemies will level up along with your character, and some enemies you can never outpace anyway. And ability points are always plentiful.
For now, to increase its value, we've optimized equipment auto-leveling for generated enemies and added skill checks to certain situations.
Perhaps in the future this attribute deserves even more attention.
Endurance — affects health point gain and carry weight. A crucial attribute for fighters alongside Reaction, so it doesn't need major improvements.
Success — let's settle the debates once and for all. Here's what it mainly did:
— gave a chance to get more loot (not better), and this doesn't apply to unique items. Instead of 25 pieces of trash, you'd get 50;
— reduced crew deaths from epidemics (part of this mechanic was cut from the original game);
— reduces rat activity.
Not much, and the Luck skill only confuses players. It's like having a Power attribute and a Strength skill.
We've made it so that in some activities, Success can bring you extra loot. In the future, after release, the Success/Luck issue will be resolved with a new character skill.
Chapter II — Skills
Character skills are divided into personal and ship skills. Reaching threshold skill values increases available points for upgrading abilities.
Personal
These are personal character skills that only affect the character themselves. We won't focus too much on them, as these skills work and have no obvious problems.
Authority — mainly useful for hiring crew, now renamed to "Leadership".
Luck — works great in many situations, but having Success as a duplicate is confusing.
Stealth — responsible for stealth mechanics, which worked very poorly in the original. We've comprehensively improved this mechanic. We'll show the changes in future dev diaries.
Light/Medium/Heavy Weapons — level up as you deal damage to enemies with melee weapons and don't require attention.
Pistols — renamed to the more comprehensive term Firearms and levels up as you deal damage to enemies with firearms.
Ship
These are officer skills that affect the ship and its crew. The situation here is somewhat worse.
Navigation — the most important skill, as sailing a ship of a certain class requires a specific minimum level. We may increase navigation requirements for some ship classes.
Accuracy — affects broadside accuracy against enemies. Ballistics in naval battles has been reworked, so a good cannoneer with this skill leveled up will come in handy. In the original, the difference between 70–100 Accuracy points was barely noticeable.
Cannons — only affects reload speed and volley coordination. We may also add reduced wear on ship cannons.
Boarding — let's dispel another myth: this skill doesn't affect boarding combat quality. It only affects boarding range and angle, as well as the chance of ship surrender/plunder. We've also added a small bonus to some mechanics.
Defense — only concerns crew preservation and their ability to survive, not physical ship protection. This causes confusion, especially for newcomers.
By abilities (perks), two officers are responsible for ship defense: Carpenter and Doctor, but in practice only the Doctor.
Crew preservation on the ship should typically be the responsibility of the Boatswain or First Mate. The latter isn't in the game, though they wouldn't hurt, while the former already handles Boarding.
In the end — it's all quite confusing. Healing or Medicine would be more appropriate names.
Repair — allows passive ship repair. Not the strongest skill, though it's offset by strong perks in the Carpenter branch.
Trade — affects not only trading but most money operations and various deals. Therefore renamed to Commerce.
Chapter III — Abilities
Also known as Perks! The following discussion is more for experienced players who've played the original. Let's clean out these Augean Stables:
Lack of Build Variety
Character progression always followed one well-memorized pattern. Build variety essentially didn't exist. BMS fixed this problem in Caribbean Legend, but we'd like to solve it our own way in the future - less radically. Besides, weapon and combat balance in Age of Pirates is significantly different.
For now, we can only assume we'll stick to classic archetypes: tank, damage dealer, leader, and shooter.
At this point, we wouldn't want to break the original experience before release. We want to understand together with you which direction to take on this matter. But we'll address this thoroughly much later.
Illogical Progression Structure
1. Personal Perks had numerous problems in the original, which we've addressed:
Offensive perks depended on defensive ones. Now these branches are separated up to a certain point.
Iron Will was among personal abilities. Now the perk has logically moved to ship abilities.
Musket Salvo required the Boatswain to level unnecessary perks. Requirements will now be different.
Trustworthy required Trade and Iron Will perks. Requirements will now be different, as will the name - Art of Deception.
No abilities for pistol and musket enthusiasts. Now there are new perks for pistoleers and musketeers.
Excellent Health required advanced defense. Now depends on Growing Health.
Berserker — an imbalanced perk that required only 2 basic perks. Nerfed it and renamed it to Rage. We're tightening requirements; you'll have to sacrifice something and make a choice: either defense or offense.
Cuirass — the culminating perk in the defensive progression branch. Logical, however the Professional Fencer ability is much more attractive. Therefore cuirasses become available to players too late.
We'd like to allow characters to wear cuirasses even without the perk leveled, but with some penalties.
Moonlighting and Jack of All Trades — broke the balance of the Allure attribute (formerly Authority). This attribute's value was already low, and these perks finished it off completely. So we've cut and rebalanced them without hesitation.
Now their new mechanics work like this:
- Moonlighting: an officer can simultaneously be assigned as any one naval specialist (e.g., cannoneer or doctor) and a boarding fighter.
- Jack of All Trades: can simultaneously be assigned as any two naval specialist + boarding fighter.
To maintain balance, these perks will only be available to certain unique officers and free captains.
And this is only part of what's been improved in personal abilities.
2. Naval Perks — let's examine them through the lens of officer positions:
Navigator — the only progression branch with few complaints: has many useful perks, good progression sequence, relevant at all game stages, gives the captain crucial Navigation, and even has an ultimate ability (more on that later).
Boatswain — if you think this branch was in perfect order, you're mistaken. The only useful things were Musket Salvo and boarding ships at almost any speed and angle. That's decent, but...
Progression is implemented illogically, and they barely affect crew and boarding process. Yes, their perks remain useful at all game stages, but the sequence of obtaining them and the final development ceiling suffer. Additionally, they lack a culminating ultimate ability.
Doctor — previously didn't feel like a full position. We've fixed this by adding about 10 new balanced perks to the doctor branch. Progression for this officer feels much better now, and they even have an ultimate ability.
Purser — the situation was similar to the doctor, with the only difference being they initially had greater value thanks to the Commerce skill. Now we've improved progression and structure, adding around 10 perks in total.
Carpenter — this branch initially had far fewer problems, and the officer was always in demand among players. However, it felt somewhat unfinished. We've fixed this too by adding several new perks and building a more logical development structure with an ultimate ability.
Cannoneer — reminds us of the carpenter situation: a decent progression branch and a relevant officer throughout the game. However, they're still missing something - both regular perks and an ultimate one.
For example, abilities could be added for reducing cannon explosion risk or increased damage to forts.
Lack of Ultimate Perks
By this we mean a unique perk that becomes available only to the main character after fully leveling a specific perk branch. There was only one such perk in the original game — "Master of the Seas".
We believe ultimate perks should be added for all naval specializations to provide players with progression variety.
Non-Functional Hero Archetypes
The main problem is that archetypes (corsair, merchant, adventurer) provide almost no unique bonuses, limited to non-unique perks only. This could be solved with starting unique abilities. But...
Chapter IV — Traits
We'd like to move away from the starting class system (in the author's opinion — it's just backstory and nothing more) and offer you our vision from ReCon Team, where players develop characters from scratch and fully customize them to their gameplay style. Therefore, the solution to this problem could be introducing a new character parameter — "Traits"!
Experienced players know that the original game had hidden character bonuses. For example, pirates received a unique hidden perk for contraband trading; female officers could be romance options, and the main character and experienced NPC fencers had a hidden "Energaiser" perk.
Now all this information becomes transparent and accessible thanks to an additional tab in the character interface.
Core Concept
These are special knowledge and character properties, much more powerful than perks. Traits cannot be previewed or chosen in advance; they can only be obtained at start and during gameplay.
Most importantly — traits can be negative! They come in two types: Static and Dynamic.
Dynamic Traits
If a character stops meeting the trait's requirements, it disappears, and vice versa.
Habits: alcoholism, gambling, kleptomania, etc.
Relationships: friendship, enmity, romantic relationships, etc.
Appearance: attractiveness, physique, sickly look, etc.
Moral Qualities: kindness, reputation, faith, etc.
Static Traits
Origin: race, gender, social status, family.
Personality: basic character traits such as optimism, pessimism, pacifism, bravery, cowardice, loyalty.
Innate Abilities: talents, predispositions, special physical characteristics.
Backstory: events that shaped the character's personality before the game starts.
Overall, traits really enliven freeplay and don't break the original City of Abandoned Ships concept. A basic version of this mechanic will be available at release, and we plan to develop it further post-release.
Questions?
Our game announcement made quite a splash, and recently we posted answers to the community's most popular questions. We've surely missed something, so if you want to get something out of ReCon Team or clarify anything about the RPG system — head to the comments!
:jollyr: