POTCO Analysis/Critics

LEO

LEO

Site Founder
potco_main.jpg

In Pirates of the Caribbean Online, players create and customize their own pirate, captain their own ship, and assemble a crew of their fellow rogues in an effort to become the Caribbean's most legendary Pirate. Along the way, players will interact with characters made popular by the films, like Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, and will also encounter a host of new characters and enemies unique to the game. To become the most notorious pirate, players must forge alliances, hunt for buried treasure, battle evil undead forces, and use cunning and strategy to outwit their foes.
Release Date: October 31, 2007​

Game Rankings: 73.14%
Overall Rank: 5074
PC Rank: 1300
2007 Games Rank: 350
2007 PC Rank: 83
Score based on 7 reviews

Publisher: Disney Internet Group​
Developer: Disney Internet Group​

Genre: MMORPG​
Owner: The Walt Disney Company​
Players: Online​

esrb-e10.gif
​

Source(www.gamerankings.com) ​

Requirements:​
PC:​
Windows 2000, XP, Vista
800 MHz or faster processor
512 MB RAM
32 MB 3D graphics card
DirectX 9 or better
700 MB free disk space
Broadband Connection (recommended)​

Free to play however if players desire to get all abilities, items, quests, etc. They must upgrade/subscribe for 9.95 a month (or other sale prices for more months)​

OFFICIAL INFORMATION​
_______________________________________________________​
Player Analysis/Critics​

I just want to write a review of this game always considering the information above especially the fact that this is a PAY TO PLAY GAME, DEVELOPED BY DISNEY but fails to impress many game critics compared to other major MMORPG game...​

POTCO is the only MMORPG game that i play and also Pay though i have tested other games. I like the game, i like the pirate idea in it, I like the content however recently the Hate of Bugs, Glitches, Lag and Delays in-game have been 'beating' my like towards the game. Bugs, Glitches, Lag and Delays are not something new to POTCO(or any game) but a player can take so much in especially cosidering that this is also a P2P game.​

Technical Bugs:​
*Runtime Error - Usually comes up after playing a certain amount of time depending on your computer and shuts down the game​
*Lag - Every big event where players get together, Invasions, Fleets with many ship and SvS experience lag off charts as everything is skipping, jumping place to place, instead of smooth movement, etc.​
*Delays - Skills appear and work seconds after they are pressed sometimes causing the death of a pirate, the sink of a pirate ship and loss of a battle in SvS​
*Freezing - Game freezes while doing something with enormous amount of lag which sometimes result in a "Black-screen" or "Game Not Responding" or disconnection from servers.​
*Numerous Server Shutdowns - We all have seen POTCO go down at least 10 times in the past 6 months sometimes lasting for more than a full day if not 3 or more days...​

Note:Some may have experienced these and some have not. I am running a quad core with ATI radeon HD 5 series with 30 mb/s internet speed.​

In-game Bugs and Glitches:​
*Swift Foot Glitch/Potion Glitch- Pirates have the ability to drink many swift foot potions allowing them to run super fast and jump very high. Uncertain if this happens with other potions. In many cases this causes lag...​
*Leadership bug - Leadership is totally useless ad puts the black pearl quest award completely to the garbage as it it only makes your skills fizzle instead of helping skills recharge faster.​
*Enemies Disappear - If enemies are attacked with a doll, or or other long range weapons, they will follow you however sometimes they just disappear going inside walls, underground, etc.​
*Boarding Permission fail - Boarding permission is a total failure as players can can TP to other players on a ship even if ship is closed to friends, guilds, etc.​
*In-wall Movement - Players can find certain spots to go inside walls, isles for sometimes to level, go to places etc. I know a lot of players do like this however i believe that POTCO should be glitch free as the game it self would be better that way.​
*Front cannon fail - In war sloops, the front cannon hits its own ship when moving forward and aiming at a enemy ship on the rear.​

These are not all the glitches, bugs and technical issues​

POTCO is an amazing game based on the movies with additional fiction adventures yet the rating is low compared to many other MMORPG games based on numerous game reviews. Reading through many of the reviews, i saw that gameplay and in some, graphics had a negative impact towards the game rating.​

My view of a solution:​
FIX ALL BUGS, GLITCHES, AND TECHNICAL ISSUES INCLUDING THE MAJOR LAG PROBLEMS, DELAYS, ETC. BEFORE ADDING ANY NEW CONTENT. DEVELOPERS NEED TO WORK IN FIXING WHAT IS ALREADY THERE INSTEAD OF IGNORING THE PROBLEMS, ADDING NEW CONTENT AND THEN LEADING TO NEWER PROBLEMS...UPGRADE/UPDATE THEIR SERVERS OR CHANGE THE GAME TO A SOFTWARE GAME LIKE WoW AS THERE IS NO NEED FOR THE GAME TO BE BASED ON WINDOWS 2000. GAME REFORMS ARE NECESSARY IF THE POTCO STAFF WANTS TO EXPECT ANY ECONOMICAL GROWTH THEN AFTER GAME REFORMS COMES NEW CONTENT TO MAKE US HAPPY...PLAYERS NEED TO WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE THIS GAME BETTER BY REPORTING ALL GAME ISSUES AND ASKING FOR A BETTER GAMING ENVIRONMENT(with also better graphics, music, more npc, voice effects, etc.) INSTEAD OF I WANT THIS, I WANT THAT, WHEN ARE WE GONNA SEE THIS, WHEN ARE WE GONNA SEE THAT. SORRY IF THIS OFFENDED ANYONE HOWEVER THERE IS NO REASON THAT A DISNEY GAME, A PAY TO PLAY GAME, POTCO SHOULD HOLD SUCH A LOW RANKING COMPARED TO OTHER MAJOR MMO GAMES.​

Criticize POTCO, Criticize me, Share and explain bugs and ideas to make POTCO better, however at all times, please DO NOT DRAMATIZE.​
 
FIX ALL BUGS, GLITCHES, AND TECHNICAL ISSUES INCLUDING THE MAJOR LAG PROBLEMS, DELAYS, ETC. BEFORE ADDING ANY NEW CONTENT. DEVELOPERS NEED TO WORK IN FIXING WHAT IS ALREADY THERE INSTEAD OF IGNORING THE PROBLEMS, ADDING NEW CONTENT AND THEN LEADING TO NEWER PROBLEMS...UPGRADE/UPDATE THEIR SERVERS OR CHANGE THE GAME TO A SOFTWARE GAME LIKE WoW AS THERE IS NO NEED FOR THE GAME TO BE BASED ON WINDOWS 2000.
Click to expand...
I agree 100% I've been saying much the same thing since I began playing shortly after the game was released.
 
I totally agree with everything you said. I have been having major lag so I'm not doing invasions anymore.:mad:
 
Game rank went from 83 in its pc rank in 2007 to 1300 today. I think POTCO being ranked 1300th is pretty negative because I believe it has the ability to be in the top 100s or at least in the top 1000.


A few unanswered questions i have that remain unanswered that i think have only made the game worse.
-Why was the ability to see other pirates in other ships removed?
-What effect does grape shot have now that you cant see pirates in other ship yet damage them?
-Why were the dead skeletons in front of ships removed when they only made ships better looking, realistic and had no negative effect?
-Why is the game lacking so many emotes seen in other games?
-Why do we never get asked about voting in new content ideas by public polls in the POTCO website or pols sent to our email?
These are not all the questions...
 
I did a test to see which uses more CPU, WOW or POTCO. It was sad to see that POTCO uses about 10 more % of my cpu considering the requirements for WOW are 25 GB with more advanced graphics and processor than POTCO. POTCO has lower requirements but more technical issues in game play than WOW including way more lag, delays, etc.

POTCO took about 25 % of CPU
POTCO CPU.png


WOW took about 13 to 15 % of CPU
WOW cpu.png


Ps: I do not play WOW, I just opened it up for a test to compare and show why POTCO needs to be updated/upgraded or changed for modern pcs.

 
I'll step up to the plate and try to anwser some of your questions Leo. Allthough I've not been on any other Disney game sites so, have no way of comparing their other games to Potco in terms of quality and performance, I've been playing POTCO from nearly the begining. For starters its my belief that Disney had no intention of making any realistic investment toward the improvment of POTCO in terms of money or skilled programmers. Hence the mess we've got.

A few unanswered questions i have that remain unanswered that i think have only made the game worse.
-Why was the ability to see other pirates in other ships removed?
-What effect does grape shot have now that you cant see pirates in other ship yet damage them?
-Why were the dead skeletons in front of ships removed when they only made ships better looking, realistic and had no negative effect?
-Why is the game lacking so many emotes seen in other games?
-Why do we never get asked about voting in new content ideas by public polls in the POTCO website or pols sent to our email?
Click to expand...

In my opinion the anwser to several of these questions seems to be that Disney programmers intentionally removed most of these elements in an attempt to make the game less demanding in terms of graphics, hence less laggy.
I remember when we could see pirates and enemies aboard other ships and chat with other pirate ships, we were also able to use grenades when attacking enemy ships and see damage inflicted by our grenades and grapeshot. I believe this and the ability to shoot holes in enemy sails were removed in order to tone down graphics . I doubt that grape does any damage to enemy ships now. Ships figureheads were also removed for the reason I mentioned, lowering the graphics. As to reducing the number of the emotes, my belief is that this was also an attempt to reduce lag. I never quite bought the story they gave us regarding "WHY" they took away the coin flip emote. Imagine all those afk pirates on all those servers doing the coin flip and the additional lag this created. They did finally attempt to reduce the numbers of basics in game and encourage them to buy unlimited by making them wait in line to access servers. Not as many of them as back in the early days. As to why Disney never asks for our vote on new content? In my view they don't care and aren't willing to invest the time and effort to truly improve the game.
 
Red Nations said:
...

In my opinion the anwser to several of these questions seems to be that Disney programmers intentionally removed most of these elements in an attempt to make the game less demanding in terms of graphics, hence less laggy.
...
Click to expand...
It would make sense that way and I personally would be grateful if it reduced lag however I asked a few SvSers who have been around since SvS added and before me. I asked - Was there more lag when we could see players on other Ships or is there more lag now? Answers were and i will quote a few each from a diff player "There was virtually no Lag then" and "Way more now...In theory it sounds great...they have made it worse the last few years...almost not worth playing" and "lag wasn't even close to as bad as it is now". I agree with them but i just wanted to support my answer and from this it's obvious that Disney is throwing invalid excuses at us for the removal of good content while at the same time, the Technical issues have only gotten worse over time.
 
I could never participate in SVS or PVP for that matter due to extreme lag and freeze up issues while in either SVS or PVP. I will have to disagree regarding there being no lag in the early days of POTCO. Lag back then could be just as bad at times and there were frequent crash issues which still occur today. I often remember plundering at sea and having members of the crew crash randomly, having to wait til they could log back in and return to the ship before porting to divide up the loot. I started out with an older computer that had a graphics card that was incompatible with POTCO and had a lot of serious crash issues especially when on and close to Padres. I've since played on a variety of computers ranging from older desktops and laptops to newer ones. Lag has always been there for me especially in crowded places such as invasions and at Tormenta. For me lag was no worse or better after they added SVS than before SVS was added. The lag made SVS and PVP unplayable for me whenever I tried those game elements. Teleport lag had always been bad for me and now seems worse on average although there were times in the old days when I can remember being stuck in teleport for as much as five minutes. Teleport also seems to cause random freezes and lag as another player teleports to me this is something that always seemed to occur in Potco. Another thing that seems to increase lag and game freezes are those popups that appear when they announce QAR, Treasure Fleet, and Invasions. I've noticed lately that lag and freeze up effect seems to be cumulative as with a memory issue, I'm running 1 gig of memory much more than the 512mb I was running when I began playing Potco. If this is memory related it shouldn't be happening on this computer.
 
Red Nations said:
I could never participate in SVS or PVP for that matter due to extreme lag and freeze up issues while in either SVS or PVP. I will have to disagree regarding there being no lag in the early days of POTCO. Lag back then could be just as bad at times and there were frequent crash issues which still occur today. I often remember plundering at sea and having members of the crew crash randomly, having to wait til they could log back in and return to the ship before porting to divide up the loot. I started out with an older computer that had a graphics card that was incompatible with POTCO and had a lot of serious crash issues especially when on and close to Padres. I've since played on a variety of computers ranging from older desktops and laptops to newer ones. Lag has always been there for me especially in crowded places such as invasions and at Tormenta. For me lag was no worse or better after they added SVS than before SVS was added. The lag made SVS and PVP unplayable for me whenever I tried those game elements. Teleport lag had always been bad for me and now seems worse on average although there were times in the old days when I can remember being stuck in teleport for as much as five minutes. Teleport also seems to cause random freezes and lag as another player teleports to me this is something that always seemed to occur in Potco. Another thing that seems to increase lag and game freezes are those popups that appear when they announce QAR, Treasure Fleet, and Invasions. I've noticed lately that lag and freeze up effect seems to be cumulative as with a memory issue, I'm running 1 gig of memory much more than the 512mb I was running when I began playing Potco. If this is memory related it shouldn't be happening on this computer.
Click to expand...
Looks to me like you always have had problems with your PC. The players i asked all have at least 4 GB of ram with other good resources. And i myself agree that there was less lag than today. I do not remember game crashing for a week 2 years ago. I used SvS an example for the ability to see others on on ships and honestly it puts down Disney's excuse that it reduces lag. SvS itself like any event lags because its usually to many players close together.

Ps: Here is a program for anyone that has bad lag problems due to to many programs running in your computer. It's not a cheat, it's not a hack and it does not have to do anything with the game itself, it just shuts down unnecessary programs in you PC.
http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html
 
I run the game with a intel pentium E6700 3.2Ghz, 4gb ram, 500gb hard drive... "Sometimes" even with these features I lag in svs. (1-2 seconds delay). And got dc couple of times bc the runtime error after 3-4 hours.
 
sam50 said:
I run the game with a intel pentium E6700 3.2Ghz, 4gb ram, 500gb hard drive... "Sometimes" even with these features I lag in svs. (1-2 seconds delay). And got dc couple of times bc the runtime error after 3-4 hours.
Click to expand...
I don't run the same processor but it is a quad core with a 8 gb ram and i still lag as well. There is so much a good pc can do. Your pc is to blame for the technical issues only if you have less than 2 gb of ram with a weak graphic driver...This game does not have high requirements therefore a 'great' or gaming pc is unnecessary. Most of the lag in this game comes from the streaming of information that's why the developers need to find a way to make the game better by upgrading or updating their servers or changing the game to a software game like WoW...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top