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In the best of all possible worlds they woulld either add COAS to TEHO as a DLC (which won't happen), or add some of the COAS features that aren't present in TEHO.
The main thing I miss is the sandbox. In COAS you either follow Rafael Sabatini's plot, or you play a Brit, a Dutchman, or a Spaniard in a sandbox. In TEHO you play a Frenchman, but you are locked into a story line.
I always play a Dutchman when I play COAS, so I'm enjoying TEHO because it lets me walk into English towns that usually shoot at me. But having to be French all the time can get old after a while.
There are a couple of minor changes to the map. I also haven't tested the coast of Central America to see if TEHO has some of the awful bugs that got taken care of in an unofficial COAS patch.
But most things are the same or very similar, though they look much better (and usually work better) in TEHO.
If finally gave up on COAS because I discovered there wasn't much to do in the sandbox, especially compared to TEHO.
TEHO is obviously more polished than COAS.
As far as I know both games use the same map. There are problems with the mainland in both games because the game scale is different there, and it's the same with Cuba although I don't go there much.
There were a few things I didn't care for in TEHO, and a few things that constantly annoyed me, so I wrote a mod to fix them as soon as we were able to unlock the TEHO code. A few mods I wrote for COAS made it into my mod, which is available on the Pirates Ahoy site, linked in another post.
I prefer the stock COAS game to the two major mods available.
If you don't mind being French, TEHO is the much better game. There are two DLCs planned that include an Englishman and a Spaniard, each with their own stories, so eventually you'll be able to play a different character.
Hook
As for the "cut content", anything not already published doesn't exist yet, and the DLCs that have been published were written after the game was released.
You have some limited ability to select starting stats now: there are four choices.
The game gets better after you get your ship.
Hook
PS. Same buggy engine? They've fixed a lot of bugs. No one has complained about the mast fall CTD and I've never seen it myself, while I got it in my first battle in COAS.
I haven't seen a CTD since version 1.4.1 was released.
H.
Edit: the Storm Engine still crashes when boarding
I don't care that my character is French. With a Dutch trading license, I can go anywhere on the map as long as I raise the appropriate flag, and can visit and trade with every colony. As far as I'm concerned, my character was born of an American mother and a French father and raised in France, although that's stretching a bit from the game, but Charles and his brother are actually half brothers in the game. I'm not concerned with accidents of birth and every game you've ever played has a different character.
You will meet both the Englishman and the Spaniard at some point in the Dutch Gambit, and new DLCs will make each of these the main character with his own story. Nothing wrong with that.
The problem with the COAS mods is that a vast majority of modded content ranges from amateurish to exceedingly amateurish, made by people with no concept of what makes a good game, and by a few who have no business doing any sort of modding. I found the Gentlemen of Fortune mod to be unplayable although there were probably a few good ideas in there. The Eras mod was built from the GoF mod and included the same problems and I couldn't play it either, but it has a few good ideas.
Occasionally there is good mod content, and so far the graphics mods for TEHO coming out of Russia have been very good to excellent. The script files are not included with TEHO, so there haven't been many script mods yet, and I doubt they'll be officially unlocked until the developers have finished all their DLCs. This is as it should be.
If you're going to compare the two games, compare the base versions. You can't compare a base game to one that has had years of modding effort put into it. Eventually modding will be unlocked for TEHO and it will have all the similar content.
Hook
Just to be clear I trully love COAS, for real. So many hours of fun, frustation and crashes but oh boy it was worth it.
You still don't get it, the problem with this title is that the game is a half-a*** copy/paste money grabing FIFA like. Nothing really changed, its the same thing. Actualy I prefer playing COAS, I have it on GOG. BUT if the company is doing this to raise money to make a similar game on a new engine, with lots of customization then go for it, make tons of money and launch a masterpiece. It's kind of hard to believe that because these days game companies only care about money and more money and more and more, it seems that nobody tries to make history anymore...
Look at Assassins Creed Black Flag, the game was bad but the ship combat is so good! Do something like that, change for the better, improve, toss Storm Engine in the trash can and look foward, not back.
If there's a new title NEW, not COAS again I'll buy it full price, even better I'll get multiple copies and gift it to my friends. We players only want a good and new game and the age of pirates franchise has so much potential. I got heartbroken when I realise what this title was.
Basically, the developers are a group of modders who were issued the rights to make an official update to COAS as a new game, and have to pay the publisher for each copy sold, and the publisher has final say in what they can and cannot do. They are professionals, however, and not your typical amateur modders, and they've done some very good things including fixing some engine bugs.
But they're limited in what they can do. There are only a few people working on the game. They don't have the capability to create a whole new AC4 game from scratch. You'll have to look for a triple-A studio with a team of over a hundred to do that kind of work. Even so, I'm amazed at how much they've been able to accomplish.
Even COAS was an upgrade to an earlier Sea Dogs game. There have been several of these since the original Sea Dogs 1 was published, and each one was better than the last, although I have no experience with all the variations on the COAS line of games. You can't expect TEHO to be any different. If there is ever a new game by another developer after TEHO, it will still use the Storm engine (which is actually quite good) and be nothing more than an update to TEHO, the same way TEHO is an update to COAS.
I liked COAS myself and even paid over $50 for a new boxed copy as the GOG version wasn't available at the time. After 800 hours of TEHO and a couple hundred hours of Pirates of the Caribbean New Horizons mod, I played COAS for a couple hundred hours and did some modding. It was a good game, but the sandbox was very limited compared to TEHO. When we got the ability to mod TEHO I came back and have about 900 additional TEHO hours since starting my mod.
I am a retired professional programmer, 41+ years of experience so far. My last job was for a game company.
Hook
As one of the Developers for Gentlemen of Fortune: ERAS(TM) and its original creator, I can not only say with confidence that we have completely rebuilt the engine from the ground up, but that it is now a completely NEW engine with less than 20 percent of the orginal content intact in some form or fashion. The new engine is known as the MAELSTROM engine (TM) and the Buccaneer's Reef gaming team legally owns it now. It is now native to DX9 which the Storm engine claimed but was never true - it was always DX8. We also have a fully functional 64bit version. If you look at our water alone, you will see it is FAR better than Storm could ever hope to achieve.
I will add, that what bugs remain are generally confined to original scripting problems and are extremely minor. This baby will run 12 hours at lighting speed and NEVER crash. We can run HUGE sea battles with dozens of ships simultaneously and there are NO issues whatsoever, Its ROCK solid. I invite you to try it. We have been and will continue to vastly expand and improve all of the original content and offer MUCH more content currently than any pirate or age of sail game on the planet.
Last I am a little disturbed by something said above and would like to address the following:
QUOTE: "The problem with the COAS mods is that a vast majority of modded content ranges from amateurish to exceedingly amateurish, made by people with no concept of what makes a good game, and by a few who have no business doing any sort of modding. I found the Gentlemen of Fortune mod to be unplayable although there were probably a few good ideas in there. The Eras mod was built from the GoF mod and included the same problems and I couldn't play it either, but it has a few good ideas."
Well considering that when we started GOF, many on our team WERE indeed rank amatuers and even "teen-agers" it is pretty damned amazing what we were able to put together. Last time I checked, there wasn't any rules about amatuers taking up modding - and in fact it is usually just a hobby enjoyed by a great many amatuers.
Also, I take issue with what some people might think makes a good game and what yet others might think makes a good game. Its not like this ("what makes a good game") is set in stone anywhere - right? There are about as many different types of games and tastes in genre and style as there are players. YES? Those who know nothing about history or the subject matter - and those who enjoy a rich tapestry of history woven into the fabric of a game that others with no attention spans or ADHD completely miss and/or thus care nothing for.
So pardon me for being a little offended at the ripe and smug superiority that comes through in that statement in a dead fish kind of smelling way and subsequently nominating LHookins for the biggest bottle of Massengill award of the year for it.
My team and I (and others) have been wondering for quite some time if Hook might have some kind of pecuniary relationship or other unknown interest with Blackmark based on the last year of commentary here and on another forum.
The fact is that Gentlemen of Fortune: ERAS has expanded FAR beyond the original and is now also much more efficient in speed and space requirements. Zipped it's 9GB and expands to about 20GB even though it still has all of the hi-resolution textures and lightning speed(formerly 50GB of content that was streamlined by a proprietary process created by one of our developers).
We will be following Blackmark and offering our own unique DLCs to ERAS this coming year of famous historical pirate battle scenarios. Our new map includes the entire Caribbean from Florida to Dutch Surinam(Saint Augustine to New Middleburg). There are dozens of more towns currently in the works than in the original Storm offerings. Yes we do have some old clunky looking stuff still laying about here and there, but it is quickly being replaced with new stuff all of the time. If you saw ERAS in 2014 or 2015, I HIGHLY recommend you look at it again now! Please visit Buccaneers Reef dot com for more information or to download the game. We are in fact VERY proud of our work, and several members of our team are indeed professionals in the technology and development industry in their regular jobs.
One final note: if one does a little bit of simple rough math and calculates the amout per copy sold of TEHO and each DLC X(times) the relatively easily obtainable sales numbers, IMHO it comes out to just a little more than a cup of coffee (especially in rubles). Also considering that Akella doesn't even acknowledge the title on their website and probably simply sold a one time licensing fee (which I am betting was not that substantial) to use their name as the publisher to avoid the ownership rights and public domain issues, and I think that the arguments above are as subjective as the statement I just made - time now. Not buying that vowel Pat and Vanna.
Did he trigger me? Did he piss me off? Yup. Damn right he did! This old retired Army Colonel has no PC conscientiousness whatsoever and will always call em as I sees em.
MK
And as for the inappropriate (for a field grade officer) comment on "pecuniary" even a short consideration should tell you that I wouldn't have made a mod that included bug fixes; they would have been in a patch to the game. I've had no direct contact with Blackmark.
Once again we have that smelly tone of superiority and smugness. OK I'll bite. Then how about actually telling us what that might be and spelling it out - instead of being a paragon of vagueness AND blatantly assuming that everyone else MUST share your opinion on the matter.
I have serious doubts you have even played ERAS and I am certain that you are completely unaware of the many significant improvements that have been made in just the last year alone - for you to compare it with OLD GOF. BUT.... we have a few good ideas. Right? Hey thanks. That means so much.
QUOTE: "And as for the inappropriate (for a field grade officer) comment on "pecuniary" even a short consideration should tell you that I wouldn't have made a mod that included bug fixes; they would have been in a patch to the game. I've had no direct contact with Blackmark."
Very nice to hear that since a great many of us have been wondering and discussing that possibility for a while now. In the military we were often subject to or even the victims of perception which is why that culture believes in "Bottom line up front" and SPELLING OUT WHAT YOU MEAN - so that one's intentions or vested interest is known. As for it being inappropriate, once again you are a victim of your own strange, vague and IMHO misplaced opinion. I was always proud to question spending on programs or money that looked out of place even without proof of mis-spending or perceived possible misappropriation or ethical issues. I am quite satisfied with my own intended and/or ethical use of of the word. Thanks very much.
MK