[E3 Gameplay Previews] Pre-Alpha Demos from Actual Players
GamingTrendVideos had a chance to get some hands-on gameplay of the pre-alpha at E3 and record it for us to watch. So I watched it. Here's what we can learn so far:
- More details on the "Favorable Winds" fortune. In this scenario it yields "Strong southwards winds;" "Waters rife with Merchants;" and "Floating loot aplenty." Implication is that in some situations, there will be the opportunity to pick up flotsam as loot, as there was in Black Flag.
- The gameplay has a "Regional Rival" listed: Olivier "La Buse" Levasseur. It seems there will be AI "rivals" in various regions, and that these rivals can, at least, be other pirates. Unclear whether an "empire" can be a rival as well.
- The nature of the mission in the demo is to basically steal loot from Levasseur while he's distracted by attacking merchants himself. Contrast this with the objective of the first E3 gameplay demo, where the objective was for the player to knock over a merchant vessel themselves. It's unclear whether this is an objective that can be pursued in the "Hunting Grounds" / open world, or if this is specific to the "tutorial" that was being played.
- Additional objective details during the video indicated that completing the mission would "weaken La Buse's hold over the Quirimbas Ivory trade, so players may be able to influence trade routes and rival factions in the open world through their actions.
- The player was able to pick from three ships:
- The Black Horn Brigantine, with a reinforced prow for ramming and a high-speed ram special attack.
- The Jaeger Brigantine. This has more acceleration, but less firepower. It also has a special ability to fire a massive damage burst from its front cannons. Interesting to note that the two brigantines have different "Ship Stats".
- The Royal Fortune Frigate, heavily reinforced to withstand substantial damage. Its special ability anchors the ship and allows "for infinite firing and rapid reloading of broadsides." Unsurprisingly, this ship has much poorer maneuverability and acceleration, but huge firepower.
- Each ship had a "bar stat" for Firepower, Maneuvering, and Acceleration, as well as having its own Wind Profile (performance relative to wind direction), Hull Health, and special ability.
- Your ships have "levels," which is presumably an indication of the quality of their equipment and crew. In other gameplay, we've seen that basically everything has levels. AI ships have levels. Other player ships have levels. Forts have levels.
- The "Trim" function I previously identified seems to be a sort of "sprint" function, rather than involving constant tweaking to align the sails with the wind.
- Sail damage will cause a ship to sail slower / lose efficiency. Damaging the hull paves the way for boarding or sinking the ship.
- We got to see a "Cutter - Merchant - Small Cargo Transport" carrying General Goods and Ivory. The ship was described as "Poorly armed and will attempt to escape combat," so we know that AI ships will have different sorts of behaviors.
- The regional empire in this demo was the Kilwa (an island southeast of Tanzania in southern Africa), so we can add that to our known list of AI factions.
- In the course of sinking the first AI vessel, the player acquired ivory and general goods, as well as "metal scraps" and "wood planks." Unclear what these would be used for, but it sounds upgrade-y. They also got 150 Silver, which seems like it'll probably be a game currency.
- We see in the menu a "Cargo" screen, which shows the rarity of the cargo that the player collected as well as its market value (in silver). Implication is that you can sell this stuff for cash, at the very least.
- Menu also showed a regional map with a number of sub-regions. The map included information on wind direction in each area, the "protection level" of the areas, the dominant faction there, and the commodities that can be found. It also showed trade routes that could be plundered. Each sub-region shows its current "alertness level."
- You execute repairs "on the go," but it causes you to come to a complete stop while they're performed. You have a limited number of repairs available. Successfully boarding a ship can give you additional uses of the "repair" ability. If you are damaged during a repair, it immediately stops the repair.
- If any ship including your own drops below 25% of hull health, that ship is at risk of being boarded. It seems that if a ship is in "Boarding Risk" mode, it cannot board another ship itself, so two "Boarding Risk" ships have to shoot each other to death.
- Firing round shot into sails is not very effective. Shoot sails with chain shot. Shoot hulls with round shot.
- Defeating ships also seems to have a chance of giving you a "chest" of variable rarity. Implication is that boarding = better chests. Not entirely clear currently what the chests are specifically used for, but hey, it's loot.
- There did not seem to be any indication that you are ammo-limited during an excursion (i.e. there wasn't any evidence that it was possible to run out of rocket ammo).
- Having a bounty on you (from defeating non-pirate ships) can cause Bounty Hunters to appear.
- You get pop-up alerts in the UI for evolving situations in the world. One such alert was "Portuguese Warships notice pirates in Momboa." This seems to be true even if the relevant region isn't your region, so you can keep tabs on the changing world.
- Another alert: "La Buse Gang member Abraham Samuel sighted in Ibo!"
- The AI may at times send out convoys, similar to the naval convoys of Black Flag. When this happens, the game tells you about it. Expect a lot of competition for these convoys from other players, I'd guess.
- More "loot goods" revealed: Pearls, Coffee
- Optional "Opportunities" can arise during an adventure. In this demo, the player had the option to hunt down a particular merchant ship to collect a reward on them. You have a limited amount of time to accept these opportunities.
- If you get sunk, you lose all your cargo... but it stays where you died. Hypothetically, you could retrieve it... if nobody else gets to it first.
- At one point, an objective appeared to "Find the Buried Treasure in Matemo." So apparently treasure hunting is a thing that happens. However, the player didn't pursue it, so no idea how that works in the game.
- At the end of the gameplay demo, the guy got a "Personal Performance" scorecard of sorts. He got a rating on a variety of fields (ships sunk, silver earned, opportunities completed, damage received, and accuracy). Unclear if this is going to be a regular thing for Hunting Grounds missions, for gameplay in general, or if it was just a little scorecard for the pre-alpha demo itself.
There was also another gameplay demo from German YouTuber PietSmiet. Almost everything he says is in German, but the demo itself is still in English, if you care to watch that as well. Some highlights:
- In this demo, he had the "Hostile Takeover" fortune:
- Open war between the EIC and the Portuguese.
- Strong military presence with lots of warships.
- Shipwrecks litter the seas.
- The nature of this demo's mission was "Collect EIC Cargo to prepare to fight La Buse," so it seems that you can get into an actual throwdown with the AI pirate rivals.
- You can "Visit Location" when you reach a shipwreck. The game offered three options: Loot it, use it to disguise your ship (Deception), or salvage it for an extra Repair Kit. Whatever you select, the process is a very short cutscene.
- Crew can be incapacitated during battle.
- At one point it looked like the player's ship caught fire and rapidly lost HP. It appeared that doing nothing allowed the crew to put out the fire... but then he caught fire again and exploded (rip). It looked like he got hit by flaming artillery, so perhaps that's an option in the ship customizations.
- Friendly fire exists (and that includes friendly collision damage).
- Sometimes you see notifications about a valuable convoy/transport sailing through a particular region (a la Black Flag). Considering that this is a multiplayer open world, you can imagine what sort of chaos that might create...
- All in all, PietSmiet's gameplay was awesome and hilarious. Even if you don't understand German, believe me, you don't need to. It's worth watching this.
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