It looks like the developers at Flying Lab Software will be doing a lot of renovations by the time its next 1.4 patch for Pirates of the Burning Sea hits. Taelorn outlined the first devlog entry detailing the new changes that will literally overhaul the face of this swashbuckling, piratey MMO title.

The developers explained that the new changes will be implemented in hopes of giving players more character options. Also, they noticed that the existing skill tree tends to waste a lot of points due to neglected duplicate tiers. The new patch will try to streamline this aspect by making things a lot more simpler, while giving players a wider range of options to explore.

Finally, Taelorn explained that the new patch will introduce a skill landscape system which will give the game a more balanced feel overall and help fix the problems with the current skill system. To give you a better idea of what to expect, here's a list of the new stuff you scurvy sea dogs will be seeing once the new patch rolls in:

• Tiered Skills - The tiered captain skills are all gone in 1.4, replaced by a single skill. Eliminating the duplicate skill points opens up a lot of new skill options, and we’re making adjustments to other skills.
• Respec & Dockyards - The first is a bug fix so that there shouldn’t be any more problems with respec - upon logging into 1.4, you will receive a forced respec to reallocate your skill points. Aside from that, everyone will start with an inherent four dockyards (five ships including their current one), and it won’t be possible to increase that number.
• Group Buffs - Generally, there’s less speed available from group buffs to help reduce the speed gap between lone ships and full groups. In several cases, group buffs were “split” into two effects. So, they’ll provide a buff that hits everyone in your group (including you) and a separate buff that only hits you.
• Intensity Multipliers - Attack skills can now have intensity multipliers. These show up as three new values on skills:
• Base Intensity: On a successful attack, the effect of the skill is multiplied by this value
• Per-hit Intensity Bonus: With each piece of shot that hits, the effect of the skill is multiplied by this value.
• Maximum Hit Bonuses: This is the maximum number of shots that can add to the effect before they stop increasing the strength.