Captain's Log 23: Setting A Course

I had a feeling they'd just port the pvp changes over to pve.    It's an....interesting change.

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With the Mega March update, the claim systems on PvE will change from being lawless-esque servers to the following:

We will be making @ 800 claims available to the first players that can grab them.  One of our goals was to help the smaller companies and solos, so if you're a big company, go for multiple claims if you can manage it.  You smaller guys could really use something like an alliance to help even the playing field, and we will be working on something to help you with that, targeted for much later after the land rush.

For the majority of you who will never get a claim, we've heard your concerns and we know that you disliked the idea of living on lawless because of the quick decay rates and the fact that everyone can build anything anywhere.   So we've changed the claim system so that anyone can build anything anywhere and added upkeep for all your structures, and we've given you an Overlord wielding the Mighty Pinwheel of Destruction who can destroy anything you build.  Oh, and you have to pay his upkeep too.

Just don't call it lawless.  It's not lawless.  There's an overlord now.

All snark aside, my initial take on it is that, faced with a problem of how to implement a "no claims" system and prevent players from acting like asshats, they've just outsourced that job...to the players.  If you get a claim,  you're supposed to keep anyone from acting like an asshat.  Unless you ARE the asshat, in which case, it's a pirate game, you're a pirate!  Everyone knows pirates are asshats.

Lost along the way seem to be the previous gains we made in convincing anyone that regular normal people do need to be away from the game occasionally for business trips, vacations, surgery, and other inconvenient reasons.  We achieved the 21 day timer, but seem to have lost that due to double upkeep and short destruction window restrictions on the Mighty Pinwheel.

On the bright side, player shops and secure trading is good.

7 minutes ago, Kummba said:

(PVE discussion)

Will you store your (important) farm in an unsafe base? When u want to establish an outpost, u now have to set it up, wait for xx hours before "really" using it. When it gets deleted one hour before countdown runs out, u go to another island and wait xx hours again?

In current version and first revamp version, your base (if you could have set it up) was safe for 4 days form the start. You could use it immediately.

 

Now Atlas is a waiting game instead of a hunt, i strongly dislike.

yes, i chosen pillar spam and prevent revamp better than this alot, because i still can build and not control by anyone

My question is. What is going to stop the "settlement owner" from not spamming foundations all over the island themselves. We've seen in the past how greedy people are. I was willing to give the resource bank a shot. I was hoping that it would be the size of a claim flag without the ugly red circles. Or hell just limit the claim flags.  So now we are stuck waiting several more weeks for the *wipe* and the PTR. 

I'm guessing lawless islands will be done away with entirely?

I get some people wanted the player shops on their own turf like you were granting in PVP.

What is the issue with just keeping a 1 flag per person system. Keeping the resource bank with the upkeep? Tie in the resource bank/claim flag into one structure. When the decay/bank runs out they both vanish so a new person can move in? Make the player shop like a the tax bank structure where people could go check out someones wares when they stop at the island. 

To me moving the player shops away form Freeports is gonna make them a little more difficult to find. At least in a freeport they were centralized. 

So forgive me if I haven't had enough coffee or Dayquil this morning and my brain is a bit muddled with the flu. But now PVE only the settlement owner can have a tax bank? The rest of your "serfs". Will be pretty much  screwed in the process and be nothing but glorified slave labor the for the "settlement owner"?

Ok for a single player only claim points for one small island? Unless you are planning on redoing the entire map. Im not entirely sure how you expect that to work. Last time I recalled. There wasn't many small islands. Maybe you guys need to show and tell what on earth you guys are planning on doing. Visuals will go a long way other then some pretty text on a sheet of paper.

Are you planning on implementing small islands so you aren't shitting on your small company and solo players?

6 minutes ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

My question is. What is going to stop the "settlement owner" from not spamming foundations all over the island themselves. We've seen in the past how greedy people are. I

 

QFT - F then

Minus one Island in an PVE MMO, thanks for nothing

Once again it just shows they don't seem to get how PVE works.

On PVE why would anyone want to be a vassel to another player?

Islands will be a ghost town, players will stay in lawless once again. Once all the islands are owned.

It's totally shit for PVE. PVP it may work but nah not PVE. 

New players won't have any incentive. They won't ever be able to have their own land unless there is a dead man's shoes system. Even then the longevity it's going to suck.

(PVE)

And again, as potential Settlement Owner, how many hours per day you are willing to spend to remove unwanted entities? And for how long? Once u fucked up, and the island is partly spammed, will u continue invest the time to protect the rest?

I choose not claim for that reason.

Also people are stupid and may even spam just to offend the owner, even if they would not have spammed in another system.

My husband often tells me I overthink problems and solutions to the problems. They need to go with KISS-keep it simple stupid for PVE. Ya'll are making mountains out of mole hills and not listening to your PVE player base-basically causing the masses to leave and probably not return. Hell i'm even thinking about reinstalling ark or conan at this point instead of binge watching Outlander till the update drops. 

PVE community doesn't want to pay rent. They want their own plot of land to call home and do with as they see fit. I don't think anyone really gives a damn about paying upkeep as long as you aren't making a full time job out of it.

People want to build their own base-Not what someone else decides they want to see. Yeah I hate walls of behemoth gates. I don't care for lazy people who don't like to build walls. However the fence supports/walls not clipping into the ground make them kinda unsightly to see.  Last time I checked. The only real need for a behemoth gate was to keep your ships safe when harbored. Make them only placeable in the water. No physical need to have a behemoth gates for an elephant or rhino. You could simply just make a wider small gate for the animals to get in and out of.

You've mostly dealt the ship griefing exploits. I'm sure some individuals have still figured out how to sink ships without overweighting them. 

Yay for rewarding the no life/griefers even moreso now the ability to attain full islands and pillar off resources. Then charge i'm sure a 30% tax on top of it. I can almost guarantee some asshat is gonna behemoth gate around an entire island so no one can get in or out to get stuff.  See Lotus in the F grids. I really enjoyed looking at the walls of behemoth gates in mass quantities when I visited the F grids. Then the ability to not go around them. I literally had to get back on my ship and sail around the island to the other side.

This is how to simplify. Resource bank-if its not within an allocated distance. It rapid decays within an hour. Put the resource bank in with thatch construction have it double as a claim flag.  A sea claim flag was a pretty good size chunk of land to build an adequate base.

One resource bank per grid per person. It will stop the massive pillar/foundation spamming for the most part. Unless some entire company decides to be an asshole and that is where your GM's come into play.

Most of your PVE player base honestly doesn't give a shit about the dynamic atlas map and to see who has a really small penis and needs to claim everything.

If you still feel that you need to have the "I have a very small dick" contest. Then reward companies that have enough members to "own" an entire island-with claim flags/resource banks.  They are going to have to harvest their own resources and not collect tax from everyone who visits their island.

Resource bank/Claim flag max of 3. There needs to be a set limit so that people aren't abusing such as fast traveling/dying ot go to another grid to spam out entire islands.

So for PVE there will be a day one rush of the new patch where those with the really quick download and fastest internet connections continually spawn on different islands in an attempt to get to own one and all the rest of the player base have to suck it up and trust that nothing they build on their first day is destroyed by those people during the 12 hour window and also that the tax rate for the islands will not be set to maximum.

Considering it is for an upkeep system and these really only punish solo players and small groups seems to me that most islands will have Tax set to Maximum.

I am beginning to think that the ship is rudderless for any semblance of PVE direction and seems to be totally reactive and driven by the waves in whatever direction.

The Claim system didn't need reworking completely for PVE in this way it just needed to have limitations put on it to prevent the mass claim flag spam that was emblematic of the issue (along with fixing the overlap and decay timers issues)

TBH as Developer i´d throw the whole "PvE and PvP Servers" stuff over board.

Make a mixed Server. Single player has one Flag, a Company has 3 Flags and every further flag costs an expotential amount of mats/ discovery points.

Upkeep as you said has to be paid and depensd on Island ranking. Rank 1-3 Islands are situated in PvE and Lawless, Rank 3-5 are situated in PvP offering better/mor variete of mats. Rank 5 has the best tames, nodes and to settle needs a speciffic amount of discovery points.

Wenn ihr mit Englisch nicht so viel anfangen könnt, hier meine (freie) Übersetzung:

http://atlas-mmo.de/index.php?article%2F21-kurs-liegt-an-setzt-die-segel-in-die-wanten-aus-dem-capatain-s-log-23%2F&fbclid=IwAR2Zn2mSzDPJ5XB2grpNgWUrgf3KieaByaykU2Xw5jmlsAKK73uODD4Qj78

22 minutes ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

My husband often tells me I overthink problems and solutions to the problems. They need to go with KISS-keep it simple stupid for PVE. Ya'll are making mountains out of mole hills and not listening to your PVE player base-basically causing the masses to leave and probably not return. Hell i'm even thinking about reinstalling ark or conan at this point instead of binge watching Outlander till the update drops. 

PVE community doesn't want to pay rent. They want their own plot of land to call home and do with as they see fit. I don't think anyone really gives a damn about paying upkeep as long as you aren't making a full time job out of it.

People want to build their own base-Not what someone else decides they want to see. Yeah I hate walls of behemoth gates. I don't care for lazy people who don't like to build walls. However the fence supports/walls not clipping into the ground make them kinda unsightly to see.  Last time I checked. The only real need for a behemoth gate was to keep your ships safe when harbored. No physical need to have a behemoth gates for an elephant or rhino. You could simply just make a wider small gate for the animals to get in and out of.

You've mostly dealt the ship griefing exploits. I'm sure some individuals have still figured out how to sink ships without overweighting them. 

Yay for rewarding the no life/griefers even moreso now the ability to attain full islands and pillar off resources. Then charge i'm sure a 30% tax on top of it. I can almost guarantee some asshat is gonna behemoth gate around an entire island so no one can get in or out to get stuff.  See Lotus in the F grids. I really enjoyed looking at the walls of behemoth gates in mass quantities when I visited the F grids. Then the ability to not go around them. I literally had to get back on my ship and sail around the island to the other side.

This is how to simplify. Resource bank-if its not within an allocated distance. It rapid decays within an hour. Put the resource bank in with thatch construction have it double as a claim flag.  A sea claim flag was a pretty good size chunk of land to build an adequate base.

One resource bank per grid per person. It will stop the massive pillar/foundation spamming for the most part. Unless some entire company decides to be an asshole and that is where your GM's come into play.

Most of your PVE player base honestly doesn't give a shit about the dynamic atlas map and to see who has a really small penis and needs to claim everything.

If you still feel that you need to have the "I have a very small dick" contest. Then reward companies that have enough members to "own" an entire island-with claim flags/resource banks.  They are going to have to harvest their own resources and not collect tax from everyone who visits their island.

Resource bank/Claim flag max of 3. There needs to be a set limit so that people aren't abusing such as fast traveling/dying ot go to another grid to spam out entire islands.

I agree with most of your points. The island idea is nice, i like the idea behind it.
But i to am afraid that grievers that own a island, will even grieve more. I think pve just needs normal claims, though the idea is very nice. without the option to stop grievers it won't work.
A tax system would be cool if you could tax a building from someone else that lives in a other server. Like for example you have a base in A1 but you wish for a small outpost on A3. since i have a base in A3, i can allow you to build your outpost for a small taxation. And if they wouldn't remove alliances, after a while, if people get a long well, they can form an alliance and stop taxing each other and start working together. But everyone should be able to have a base in a own claim flag, that doesn't require you to pay taxes.

Please correct me if I have Ive missed something but with initial reading and reading again.

The first way i can see the system being abused is kinda long game, but you are an Island owner on PVE (cant speak for PVP as dont play it).

Over x amount of time you build your structures and keep it fairly manageable, other players comer along and start populating the island.

You defensively spam underwater your own ship yard and  so others cant block you in, (and maybe one or 2 others cotton on.)

However at some point you place a few strategic underwater builds nothing huge but enough to count when you need it.  

Land is going to be a premium again at some point. However all you need to do is then block in your current settlers, (should be fairly straight forward).

they have a choice find a way off the island with all their stuff, (if they can) or the stop playing. 

Great now you just wait demolish everything, collect the goodies and open up your land to colonisation, can even sell the land for gold.

May take while but seem viable or we will see various variations on this theme.

Im just trying to think like a bas***d as there will be many we will need to work against in PVE as there are trolls everywhere.

These pve changes are just pushing me out the door....and I don't want to go. The one flag per island just forces people to build under someone else's rule. I have zero interest in that, but as a solo player that's what I'll be forced into. Unfortunately, after 800+ hours, I don't see myself playing this game any more if that's the case. I do not understand what was wrong with the old system if you are adding islands, and were to limit claims to something like 1 per player....or some type of tweak that makes it work. The biggest problem with that claiming system was people claiming entire islands to themselves. There ended up being no land (or very little) available to claim. Please rethink this. You say you listen to the community, and on one hand you do....you are keeping the claiming system. But you are not listening to the community on what they want in a claiming system, because we have told you time and time again, in multiple posts, by multiple people, that we want the old system with limits.

I would rather have no claiming system at all than the one you propose.

2 minutes ago, Abysian said:

I agree with most of your points. The island idea is nice, i like the idea behind it. But to am afraid that grievers that own a island, will even grieve more. I think pve just needs normal claims, though the idea is very nice. without the option to stop grievers it won't work.
A tax system would be cool if you could tax a building from someone else. Like for example you have a base in A1 but you wish for a small outpost on A3. since i have a base in A3, i can allow you to build your outpost for a small taxation. And if they wouldn't remove alliances, after a while, if people get a long well, they can form an alliance and stop taxing each other and start working together. But everyone should be able to have a base in a own claim flag, that doesn't require you to pay taxes.

I was keeping that in mind. I figured polar outpost, desert and temperate/tropical. But a hard limit has to be imposed. Some companies could  have 30 players. If the claim flag is set to lets say a shore flag-That's well double the size of a typical claim flag. They will still own lets say a potential of 3 islands out of 255 grids. Still doesn't make a huge dent in the grand scheme of things. If they are forced to work for the upkeep. They are less likely to pillar off areas since each piece is going to cost x amount of resources to upkeep. If alliances are gone. Not going to be really possible to overtake multiple locations. 

I honestly seen no point to the alliances in PVE. We had about 10. The only thing it managed to give us was a personal chat and the ability to not take another allied claim flag.

TBH I don't care about taxes at all. I am one of those strange people that like to go out and harvest resources. But taking the taxes out of the equation makes people who own big islands. Well little bit more incentive to not take quite as much if they have to harvest themselves to maintain it.

1 minute ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

I honestly seen no point to the alliances in PVE. We had about 10. The only thing it managed to give us was a personal chat and the ability to not take another allied claim flag.

I used it for a lot of things. Having traders in different regions, so i could talk with them faster to trade. For friends that i've made and are living in a different server. I used it to help players that got stuck with there raft and had no other option then to start over because they didn't had land yet. Or people that lost their ship. I could invite those people in to an alliance, let them put all their stuff on my ship and help them with allowing to build on my claim or bring them somewhere. Hell i even used it just to chat because no one was online in the server

3 minutes ago, Abysian said:

I used it for a lot of things. Having traders in different regions, so i could talk with them faster to trade. For friends that i've made and are living in a different server. I used it to help players that got stuck with there raft and had no other option then to start over because they didn't had land yet. Or people that lost their ship. I could invite those people in to an alliance, let them put all their stuff on my ship and help them with allowing to build on my claim or bring them somewhere. Hell i even used it just to chat because no one was online in the server

Oh I did forget about that aspect. Ok need more coffee and Dayquil. Probably a good thing we aren't stationed in Everett, WA yet. I'd be at Grapeshots office in Seattle going what the hell are you guys thinking!

4 minutes ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

I'd be at Grapeshots office in Seattle going what the hell are you guys thinking!

If i could i would be going too. And probably do the same xD

20 minutes ago, Seren Du said:

Please correct me if I have Ive missed something but with initial reading and reading again.

The first way i can see the system being abused is kinda long game, but you are an Island owner on PVE (cant speak for PVP as dont play it).

....(some interesting stuff)

In the shorter term, what's the first thing everyone does when they get land?  Start building their base.  So you let them do that because they are harvesting stuff like mad for it and you're collecting the taxes.  As soon as the destruction window is getting close, wipe everybody off the island.  Rinse and repeat.  Nice fat tax bank and no ongoing responsibility to have to manage players and their squabbles.

Sooner or later word would get around about how you behave, so for step 2, you let a couple carefully chosen people stay and then you can claim all the people you're kicking off were trying to grief the others and you're the good guy.  As a side benefit his will lead to many un-entertaining forum threads with much "he said-she said" argument on them too.

I never was that active in a game forum before, because i cant belive what the devs are doin. They make decisions for pve from a wrong perspective.  The right way for pve would be, to look from the perspective of a solo Player for theire decisions. Just give every pve player the opportunity to have theire own and able to protect theire own, being a king of theire own. Not living under the grace of a Landlord which will mostly be a big company. This is a pirate game, with this changes it feels like a medieval royal game. Being a pirate is about freedom and being your own master. Most of us Players never will own a whole islands and will be forced to live under slavery.. paying taxes.. do what our landlord wants or we getting kicked of his land, by harassing us.

Not the best solution i think but a move in the right direction. The whole lawless thing was not going to cut it at all.

Well at 3k players on 4 servers. I can't imagine those numbers climbing to much higher over the weekend with the whole hook hand and peg leg update. I think they have pretty much "sunk" themselves with the earlier announcement of a wipe with a very long date till its gonna happen. A month in the gaming world and repeated changes that are pissing off both pvp and pve. It might be the final nail that goes into the coffin. 

Maybe they'll release the solo play map tonight to bide themselves some time but I doubt it.

2 minutes ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

Well at 3k players on 4 servers. I can't imagine those numbers climbing to much higher over the weekend with the whole hook hand and peg leg update. I think they have pretty much "sunk" themselves with the earlier announcement of a wipe with a very long date till its gonna happen. A month in the gaming world and repeated changes that are pissing off both pvp and pve. It might be the final nail that goes into the coffin. 

Maybe they'll release the solo play map tonight to bide themselves some time but I doubt it.

At this point, I just want them to get the network instability in the base game stable enough that we can play on private servers without grids going unresponsive left and right, and then I can just play on private and never wipe my own progress.

2 minutes ago, Remo Williams said:

Not the best solution i think but a move in the right direction. The whole lawless thing was not going to cut it at all. 

(PVE)

What make you think so, your expirience living on a lawless island?

There are many lawless island with really limited spam. It is mostly done by new or younger players. And often they only living on one island anyway.

For my understanding it would not be a problem, especially not with a good balance of upkeep.

Nobody needs to own Land, just a base!

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

At this point, I just want them to get the network instability in the base game stable enough that we can play on private servers without grids going unresponsive left and right, and then I can just play on private and never wipe my own progress.

Yeah the map that they are planning to release that gives the ability for all resources content in one map or whatever would be a welcome for that reason. Hell I even have access to 9 grids that I would gladly set up for that one map alone. But last time I checked we had grid crashing issues going in/out of stasis. I went back to official servers and ate the cost of that. I've been bored for about what a week now waiting on the Test Realm to go live. I don't see much of a reason to log in to official servers since it's just gonna be wiped out anyways and with the lack of population it makes traveling grids fairly boring.

17 minutes ago, Egon von Sturmberg said:

I never was that active in a game forum before, because i cant belive what the devs are doin. They make decisions for pve from a wrong perspective.  The right way for pve would be, to look from the perspective of a solo Player for theire decisions. Just give every pve player the opportunity to have theire own and able to pretect theire own, being a king of theire own. Not living under the grace of a Landlord which will mostly be a big company. This is a pirate game, with this changes it feels like a medieval royal game. Being a pirate is about freedom and being your own master. Most of us Players never will own a whole islands and will be forced to live under slavery.. paying taxes.. do what our landlord wants or we getting kicked of his land, by harassing us.

 

Agree, i like the idea of islands, but it will not work in pve. Everyone wants their own claim spot, their own spot they call home. Not someone else his land where you have to pay taxes, and can't do what you really want. They just had to limit the amount of claim flags 1 player or a company can do. That way everyone could find their own spot, and don't have to deal with all that. Most people choose pve to play how they want, on the phase they want. And not being forced by others. It's about enjoying the game, and their taking away the enjoyment for people. Now they're even removing alliances. It's hard to keep enjoying it all.