Initially, the game offered a rich world, with a variety of equally rewarding paths for different play styles — solo or cooperative; casual or intense; economic or warfare or social. And the game was designed to synergistically engage all these interactions — a new player would join a crew, go on a cooperative pillage with new friends, then spend his money in a shop run by a solo economic-style player, who got his goods from a solo merchant/trading player.. or maybe wager his pay against puzzle competition players, etc.

As the best way to get in-game money was, for most people, cooperative pirating, there were always large and active crews looking to recruit and befriend new players, show them around the game, help them get started, teach them puzzling tricks, etc. The result: a vibrant, active community, with altruistic and helpful leaders, skilled mission commanders (resulting in more rewards for all) and thus a uniquely engaging and cooperative MMOG.

All this was destroyed with the introduction of poker to the game. The reason is not that is removed any functionality or potential from the game, but that it completely changed the social dynamic. Poker offers its big winners in-game income of literally hundreds of times more than the other venues (which, gave a balanced rate of income across the different play styles and interests) — and without nearly the requirements of time, puzzling skill, or social interaction that other “tracks” require. Of course, few people win that much… but the promise is there.

The result of its introduction was for all new players to see this “get rich quick” option and run to it, looking at other activities (such as participation in a crew and learning to do well at the cooperative, team puzzles) as merely something to exploit to get the next bit of money to gamble with. This attitude completely undermined the cooperative and skill-oriented nature of the game which had existed previously. As the society shifted, established players moved away or ceased to engage new players — meaning fewer opportunities for new players to get involved in the “human” side of the game or acquire pirating skills. This, in turn, made these game elements less fun and profitable for these new players.

The upshot, after some years of poker, is this:

* the community team-oriented spirit of the game is largely dead

* established players have little incentive to mentor or train new players

* the tradition of skilled & experienced leadership of crews is dead, resulting in less successful or rewarding or enjoyable group/team activities all around

* A huge gulf exists between the wealthy (now mainly the winning poker players – people often completely uninvolved in the rest of the game) and the impoverished players

* Very few venues remain for the new player to “break in to” the game, except by winning at poker, any more [precisely because the rewarding team-work activities led by skilled pirates have become far rarer and, those few which remain, often uninterested in taking on unknown new players].

The upshot is that YPP is now a fairly immature venue, which the majority of players using it either in isolation as a tetris-like-puzzles platform (for which it is still fairly good, though there are better and easier ways to play little puzzles), using it as a chatroom (for which there are far better and larger sites), or using it as a poker house (for which, again, there are far better and more active sites).

Though the old “functionality” remains – and even some engaging new functionality added in the last 2 years or so – the destruction of the society (leadership, skill, teamwork, community… and rewards for them) required for it to be truly effective has made that functionality largely unused or obsolete.

In short, other than for the player looking for a cute platform for some solo puzzle games (most of which can be found elsewhere, and without the cost or processing overhead), YPP no longer offers anything compelling – or competitive with other venues – to the new player… and no longer offers the established players the unique experience which first drew them to YPP.

In short: DONT BOTHER

A review of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates at MMO Gamer…

“It would be quite easy to simply wander around the world playing these games for hours on end without ever once interacting with another player.”

One could possibly do that, which is a good thing. It gives that person the option to do what he wants without needing to be tethered to 7, 19, or 39 other people. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case ingame. Most peopel go jobbing on ships, sail with their crew, or play games in the inns. It actually is one of the most interactive MMOGs out there.
While this may be fun, however, it doesn’t utilize the key benefit of the MMO genre, the fact that the game is played in a persistent world populated by characters controlled by other players around the world.

“As your pirate earns Pieces of Eight, different clothing options, pets, swords, and even ships and shops will become available.”

Rank determines availability of items. Certain items are subscriber only, and certain items are only for officers of a crew.

“Most of the purchasable items have no game effect, but as you might expect, new swords give you a bonus to the sword-fighting game (one of the most important ones, as it allows you to loot a ship once you’ve run it down).”

Swords don’t give bonuses, rather they have different drop patterns dependent on the type of and color of the sword. Also, while there are hundreds and hundreds of items in the game, useful items to aid gameplay are available from the various shops of the game. Pretty much any shop that you can work at is a shop that produces useful and needed items (paints, dyes, weapons, mugs, rumble gear, ships, etc)

The issues with steering new players along once they are ingame are something I’m up in the air about. On one hand, one could say that since newer gamers really aren’t prone to interacting much, the handholding really should be added. On the other hand, the subscription servers seem to retain a more social and interactive crowd as a result of the current design.

The writer has confused captaining a boat with captaining a crew. Anyone who is capable of owning a boat and is an officer in a crew can ‘captain’ a boat. Indeed, our crew captain drives less than many of the rest of us because of the time she dedicates to crew and flag politics.

That said, his comments about helping newer players mature from ‘clueless’ to ‘clued’ are on target. It seems often difficult for new players to figure out the lay of the land and find themselves a good crew to be part of.