Pirates of the Burning Sea is constantly evolving, and the changes that occur also mean we have to adapt our customer service policies to ensure we can handle your support requests.
To coincide with 1.22 we're releasing a substantial update to these policies. Our CS team is preparing for the coming game changes and we're also adjusting our policies that relate to cross-teaming and in-game chat behavior.
All of these changes will be visible on our policies page when 1.22 goes live.
National Player Faction
National Player Faction is designed to allow you as players to have some powers to deal with people who work against their own nation. That means we are not going to be the arbiters of every flag incident that people don't agree with - and the system is tuned so that most spiteful flagging wont have a significant effect.
We are aware that there are always edge cases where people take things to extremes and in those cases we may need to step in. So, when we can link traitor flagging to a campaign of harassment, we will take action.
We're also aware that you might sometimes flag the wrong person, especially when you're getting used to the system and we'll be happy to help out in cases like that.
Active Nation Select
As you're moving characters around and choosing your active nations you might make a mistake. To mitigate this we will allow each account one mulligan to allow you to choose a different active nation outside of the regular cease fire period.
Un-deletes
As you are now allowed multiple nations per server, some of you may wish to un-delete characters that you deleted because they didn't fit with our old restrictions.
We are happy to un-delete characters, however we reserve the right to deny an un-delete request if a player is putting undue strain on resources. This will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
A character may be undeleted once only. If a player has a character undeleted and then deletes it again, it will remain deleted.
Cross Teaming
The cross teaming policy is being adjusted to be more clear. The text is below, with the changes in green.
Multiple Accounts
Players are welcome to have as many accounts as they wish and can even use them to have characters of different Nations on the same server. However, you may not
Participate on both sides of a port battle. If you receive an invite to multiple nations for the same port battle, you may only accept one of those invitations and must decline the other.
Use alternate characters to grief other Nations and/or sabotage battles with other players, including shot blocking or impeding movement.
Use ships of more than one Nation in any combat instance, except in a no-loss environment such as Duel or Skirmish.
This expectation also applies to families, significant others and roommates that share a home and play multiple accounts. Violations of this rule will be considered harassment and/or griefing, and will be policed as such.
Selling Durability to Pirates
Selling, gifting, or trading durability to pirates is a practice that is not allowed. Players who violate this policy will be subject to disciplinary action, with repeat offenders risking permanent suspension of their Pirates of the Burning Sea account.
In-Game Chat Behavior
In order to maintain transparency and consistency in our handling of bad behavior in our in-game chat, we are introducing an infraction points system. Those of you who are regular forum users will be familiar with the general concept, but the in-game system is tuned differently to be more appropriate for its in-game setting.
If you see someone using in-game chat in an inappropriate way, be it to insult, harass or threaten, you should file a support ticket to let us know. We will examine chat logs and then issue a warning or infraction points as appropriate. We have an exhaustive list of infraction categories and point scores, but just to give you a baseline a standard offensive language case will result in 1 infraction point.
If a point is issued against your account, you will receive an email letting you know what you did, and what your current point level is.
As I mentioned earlier, these policies will come into effect with the release of 1.22. We will continue to monitor and update our policies as the game and community evolves so that we can give you the best customer support experience we can.