Captain's Log 23: Setting A Course

1 minute ago, Abysian said:

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. 

So, if they're open to REALLY radical ideas:

Retire PVE from the official network.  Implement a  centralized redis database for character data, and a centralized chat system that is cross-server.  Essentially, the official network is just chat and character data, not world data.

Allow private servers to hook up to that database, such that characters on private PVE servers can travel from one server to another without needing to be part of the same "cluster."  Allow people to define their own adjacency, so I can say "going east from my grid will take you to X person's grid."  Undefined edges take you to a random server in this setup.  You can blacklist any server you want so you never randomly go there.

People have total control over the grids that they pay for hosting.  Implement reasonable limits and require that to be part of the distributed official, you cannot change the multipliers (so double weekends are still controlled by the official schedule).

It's very radical, but basically if you find a person who's being a dill-hole, just blacklist them and keep going.

@Jatheish If you're basing claimability on anything as fluid as number of players in a Company, how do you plan to handle it when members of that Company leave it or just quit playing the game?  It's possible a mass exodus from a Company would drastically reduce its "island points" and then what?  Is the Settlement then defunct?  Does it go to the next tenant with the highest number of Company players?  What if they don't want the hassle of dealing with the settlors, but just want to live there in peace?

2 hours ago, Seren Du said:

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.

 

You have a point.  The claim system as stated above is in its third revamp, and still has major faults.  Constructive suggestions are being made.  I like that, but I don't see anything yet that will give PvE players a sense of ownership and incentive to continue developing their gameplay with better and better structures like stables/better and larger shipyards/better buildings and an enhanced sense of community.

On PvE its as simple as set a radius around built items where others cant build near...

Increase the to close to nearby foundation radius.

Simliar to what a flag radius was.

With a limit of radius you can hold,  like 2 flags or what ever per person

Just now, Raine said:

You have a point.  The claim system as stated above is in its third revamp, and still has major faults.  Constructive suggestions are being made.  I like that, but I don't see anything yet that will give PvE players a sense of ownership and incentive to continue developing their gameplay with better and better structures like stables/better and larger shipyards/better buildings and an enhanced sense of community.

You are correct, i have written constructive ideas on the forum before, basically set the claims to the size of the company but dont let entire islands be claimed. Have a hard limit for huge companies. Let them decide do i waste all my flags in one sector or do i spread them out.

Add some dynamics to it, put claims in the hands of the players but have a limit to how far they can go.

First, hopefully the (Ark style) Blue pinweel  will removed in future and reworked with an "atlas" style Window system

the war concept looks a cool idea for testing a system agains offline attacks

but the rest ist can make more problems maybe

here are my ideas for the claimsystem i postet somewhere weeks ago

-Company Archievmend Unlock´s
-We removed the Sea Claims and bring a new  Claim System into the Game.

-Now Every Company Start with 1 Company Flag (can placed from the Company Window) for claiming a part of the Island.

We increase the Size of the Circle for give some more place to build. (like the old sea claim circle)

If ur Company grows up u gain one more Company Flag  but you have Maintain the Company Flags more flags = more costs . to an Max count to 25 Flags. (every 5 Players joins the Company u archieved one more unlock.) 5 Players 1 Flag 10 Players 2 Flag to an hard cap of 25 Flags/ 250Player)  changed to the upcomming patch member nerv.

But we chose the attacking claim system whats aktuall is in the Game

You have to choose a "War Time" on your Territory where your building take a "normal Damage stat" outside this window your base strutcutres get an high ammount of Damage reductions so its very hard   "mostly make no sens spend so much time" for kill one door. the war time can only choosen once on setting your first claim flag and take so long the company exist.

If u Attack an enemy Base in the "War time"  place  a Flag(5 min Cooldown for the Attack Flag) in the Company Flag Circle the Claiming attack starts and works like the actual claim system. More Flags u have so faster is the enemy claim. So Big Companys have more space to build but loose it faster and need an active Playerbase for maintain all the Flags. Small Companys can deffend their Territory longer and have an easyer way for Maintain their Baseflag. (If you Not Maintain a Flag...Your Claim circle turns grey and your Structures will get damage over Time... so unused/Inactive island will be cleard up and give some place for new players)

We added more Unlocks to the Company achievement system  for give small Boosts on smaller Tribes and make the managment of an Great Tribe easyer.
Players:
5 = 1 Flag
10 = 1 Flag Buffs every Player in own Territory ( Increase Health Regen. Decreased Vitamin Cost. decreased the Overwight movement penetration )
15  =1 Flag
20  =1 Flag Unlock Taxiation Bank
25 =1 Flag ( every 5 Player one more Flag i dont  counting  up anymore )
40 = Crew Cost less gold p/h in own Territory
60 = Unlock Lighthouses ( Give Buff on Anchored Ships they dont recive "Sea Dmg over Time" anymore around the Lighthouse and removed in a certain Radius the Fog of War on the Map
80 = Give Accsess to 5x Big Premade Towers with 3 Cannons Snap points (needs a 5x5 Foundation) but will Cost a lot of Stone Metall Wood and Gold Bars
100 = Give Accsess to an Big Premade Castle Give with (Needs an 20x20 Foundation) So much cost but gives your big Company a good Base deffences Structure (We make a lot of Designs we loved in the Castle so u can pick up from 3 Different Types of a Castle with his own Design) 

Maybe we change some achievements or give other Buffs for balance. 

25 minutes ago, Seren Du said:

25 minutes ago, Seren Du said:

... set the claims to the size of the company but dont let entire islands be claimed. Have a hard limit for huge companies. Let them decide do i waste all my flags in one sector or do i spread them out.

Add some dynamics to it, put claims in the hands of the players but have a limit to how far they can go.

 

 

 

I agree.  Don't let entire islands be claimed, unless they are infinitesimally small.  However, all a company has to do to game the system is massively recruit new players - the ones who won't be able to have a claim because after all, they're just solo or small groups.  It doesn't matter if these players quit the game and Grapeshot kills them off after 4 weeks of inactivity (per Patch Note v.16.33), they're still on the company roster.  So you could end up with a 3-5 active-player Company owning a whole island with all their tenants paying their taxes for upkeep.  That would be feel like a very poor gaming dynamic to me.

6 hours ago, globytheoldpirate said:

PvE taxe rate is a bad idea IMO.
It's a PvP feature, people will be taxed because other came first, and can't be take off, seems a bit unfair.

Taxe system should be, at least be set max at 10% for PvE if it stays.

30% taxe for PvE is.. meh..

I agree. I never liked taxes in real life, so seeing it in game just made it irritating. I can understand needing 10% for upkeep, but 30% is way to much.

All I got from this is that we're getting the PTR on March 20th, not the wipe. lmao, WC stop setting release dates, you can never keep 'em.

1 hour ago, WildWyvern20 said:

All I got from this is that we're getting the PTR on March 20th, not the wipe. lmao, WC stop setting release dates, you can never keep 'em.

In this case, I'm glad Grapeshot is flexible.  Maybe it shows they're listening to player feedback.

PVE 20-30 flags per company.  AND THAT IS IT.

That would allow for many small outposts or one big base. Make any structure not placed in a claimed territory fall apart within 3-days unless picked up no timer renew. Allow full time pickup of structure items this way folks can still build taming pens and such but pillars and foundations will not last outside of claimed territory. with 20-30 flags per company no one company can take everything. This is NOT for PvP ....

At least for pve servers id really like us to be able to keep our fountain of youth buff. It is set up to enhance characters that have played the game for awhile and to at least carry that over seems that it would be listening to the community. 

Could we have a list of dates please as we were ALL taking the 20th off work for the release but looks like will be the Test server around this date now? 

Joke about taking off work...will call in sick.

I can't describe how ashamed i would be, if i would be the owner of this company or a person in charge. This is absolutely not acceptable in any way. Get a grip.

Discuss with your departments, think about it twice and IF you give out information - DONT change them.

If our company would work like that, i would be unemployed now.

This is what happens when the devs don't actually play the game they are designing... A PVP game where there is only a small window to actually PVP is really a dumb idea.

"Um, attention every on this island...Our company wishes to attack you tomorrow, say about...3pm!  You scallywaggers, all better be ready to die, each and every one of you, arrrrg!!!!"

Quit screwing this IP up and just remove the claim system as you do not know what you guys are doing! Please, just convert all of the islands to Lawless, except the Freeports and let the player community police ourselves.

5 minutes ago, vaylain said:

 

Quit screwing this IP up and just remove the claim system as you do not know what you guys are doing! Please, just convert all of the islands Lawless, except the Freeports of course and let the player community police ourselves.

The devs probably don't play, but we don't know that for sure.  They may have undercover dedicated testers for all we know.  I've seen the claim system bantered back and forth on one of the kernel mods for Atlas, but nothing was ever resolved on it.  

Personally, I believe some kind of claim system could enhance gameplay, but right now it's in Gordian Knot stage.  Ockham's Razor is the best way to slice that knot.  But global Lawless?  Nah...might as well dump the idea of PvE entirely because otherwise what we'd have is PvP on one hand and PvPvE on the other.  No true PvE server.  L story S: not a fan for global Lawless.

I'd probably agree with the "remove claim system" argument, at least for the time being.  Trying to fix too many things at once isn't helping.

Lawless on PVP is self-regulating

Lawless on PVE was in the process of stabilizing out.  Of the lawless Islands i went to, few of them were even significantly populated, and fewer still were the "worst case foundation spam" that people are afraid of, and that was before you guys lost 50% of your PVE players.

Maybe it might be better to just put it all lawless, focus on fixing the big problems with lawless (foundation spam and ass-hole behemoth gates).    Only allow people to put 4 Behemoth gates on an island, it's a simple fix and may not be perfect but it's a fix.  Come up with something for foundation spam, even if it's just manually taking reports from the community and issuing warnings/bans for disruptive behavior.  You will burn less manpower that way over churning through iterations.  Hire an intern, they can handle checking if it's clear that pillars are aggressive.  Make lone pillars/foundations or structures with less than 3 pieces decay on a ridiculous timer, 5 minutes, hell even 1 minute, since it won't be demolishable as long as the player is there building a real structure.

Iterate, if you try and start fresh, you go through an entire new iteration process.

Also, pillar spamming lawless is way less damaging than pillar spamming claim land.  Most of the spam was defensive anyway.

Addendum:

If you're really adding 200+ islands, AND probably 400 or so claim islands that were more or less ghost towns (they really were)... unless you suddenly get a massive, MASSIVE influx of people trying to be disruptive a-holes, there will literally be more islands than a-holes to spam them

9 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

 

Lawless on PVE was in the process of stabilizing out.  Of the lawless Islands i went to, few of them were even significantly populated.

We must not have been close to one another.  Of the PvE Lawless I'm familiar with, one was so heavily spammed with pillars, buildings and foundations that only seagulls spawned there anymore, and that was because they flew in off the ocean.  Others were people maliciously pillaring around one anothers' small bases, and in other cases viciously pillaring in ships in harbors or ships in shipyards.  That's a problem that needs correction, because people are NOT going to police themselves.

Edit to say: Been there, done that, and got the bloody handcuffs to prove it.

6 minutes ago, Raine said:

We must not have been close to one another.  Of the PvE Lawless I'm familiar with, one was so heavily spammed with pillars, buildings and foundations that only seagulls spawned there anymore, and that was because they flew in off the ocean.  Others were people maliciously pillaring around one anothers' small bases, and in other cases viciously pillaring in ships in harbors or ships in shipyards.  That's a problem that needs correction, because people are NOT going to police themselves.

We had bases in 5 different grids on PVE lawless, and none of them were particularly bad.    

Also, didn't they turn off clipping of ships and pillars?  You can drive through them.

I'll agree on shipyards though.  They should have a 4 hour non-refreshable demolish timer.  Pre-build your ship, build it, deploy, and get out.  Move the new upgraded ship to be an upgraded skeleton blueprint rather than an upgraded shipyard blueprint

Edit:  permanent upgraded ships from your invincible PVE shipyard sounds like a very poor idea anyway

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

Also, didn't they turn off clipping of ships and pillars?  You can drive through them.

 

I'll agree on shipyards though.  They should have a 4 hour non-refreshable demolish timer.  Pre-build your ship, build it, deploy, and get out.  Move the new upgraded ship to be an upgraded skeleton blueprint rather than an upgraded shipyard blueprint

No, they did NOT turn off clipping of ships and pillars on PvE.  We had this happen to us only this past week.

Problem with pre-building your ship is that it may take you time to gather the mats over several days or a week or so, depending on how much time you can devote to it from your real life demands.  And if you don't have a base or another ship, where do you put the mats?  In  the meantime, someone has seen your shipyard and they don't like you or they're trollish and they decide to pillar it in, before you even start building.  If your shipyard has a 4-hour non-refreshable timer then again, you can't even put your mats in a Ship's Resource Box on the shipyard whilst you go collect yet more...this would be incredibly difficult for a solo player or small Company to achieve at 1x normal rates.

2 minutes ago, Raine said:

No, they did NOT turn off clipping of ships and pillars on PvE.  We had this happen to us only this past week.

Problem with pre-building your ship is that it may take you time to gather the mats over several days or a week or so, depending on how much time you can devote to it from your real life demands.  And if you don't have a base or another ship, where do you put the mats?  In  the meantime, someone has seen your shipyard and they don't like you or they're trollish and they decide to pillar it in, before you even start building.  If your shipyard has a 4-hour non-refreshable timer then again, you can't even put your mats in a Ship's Resource Box on the shipyard whilst you go collect yet more...this would be incredibly difficult for a solo player or small Company to achieve at 1x normal rates.

You're on lawless.  you can drop a single foundation and a ship's resource box on the land before you ever even bother to deploy your shipyard.  then you can take your week to find a couple hours to gather mats.

Or, you can just use a ramshackle sloop, they're starter ships and can easily hold a smithy and the weight for your first schooner.

as for clipping, I'm curious then, as I have accidentally driven through multiple docks and piers when I wasn't paying attention

4 hours ago, Seren Du said:

 

 

3 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

You're on lawless.  you can drop a single foundation and a ship's resource box on the land before you ever even bother to deploy your shipyard.  then you can take your week to find a couple hours to gather mats.

Or, you can just use a ramshackle sloop, they're starter ships and can easily hold a smithy and the weight for your first schooner.

as for clipping, I'm curious then, as I have accidentally driven through multiple docks and piers when I wasn't paying attention

On Lawless, you might be able to drop a foundation and a resource box to collect your week's worth of mats, not a bad idea.  I'm not a ship builder, but I don't think all the mat requirements are revealed at the start, so you can't be sure you have what you need to achieve your next ship within a 4-hour demolishable shipyard timeframe.  Of course, you could rely on Wiki IF the mats are posted, but then you have to cross your fingers that whoever posted them was correct, and that the devs haven't switched it up in the meantime.

Ramshackle sloops aren't a terrible idea, but will they hold the mats required for a brig or a galleon PLUS the corresponding shipyard if that's what you decide you're building?  I suspect not, but I haven't done the math.

As for pillaring the ships in, the pillars were topped with rambling stone platforms and we tested whether the collision on them had been removed from the game.  I can confirm that at least on PvE, it has not.  Collision on pillars and platforms placed in the water is still a thing.  It still allows malicious gameplay on a PvE server.

1 hour ago, vaylain said:

This is what happens when the devs don't actually play the game they are designing... A PVP game where there is only a small window to actually PVP is really a dumb idea.

"Um, attention every on this island...Our company wishes to attack you tomorrow, say about...3pm!  You scallywaggers, all better be ready to die, each and every one of you, arrrrg!!!!"

Quit screwing this IP up and just remove the claim system as you do not know what you guys are doing! Please, just convert all of the islands to Lawless, except the Freeports and let the player community police ourselves.

Best post. This is what I want to.

Regarding the 4-hour demolishable shipyard, we've used our existing shipyards multiple times to build replacement ships for those which were destroyed.  They're also not a bad place to dock your ship, because at least then you might be able to dock fairly close to your small lawless base to offload other mats or animals you've acquired elsewhere.  It seems reasonable to me.  On a strictly Lawless server, you might have to dock on the other side of your island, far from your base (which could be in a very hostile environment with many apex predator spawns).  Sure, it's a survival game, so some is to be expected.  But I think it enhances gameplay if you can dock with some relief that you are finally in a safe zone close to "home" and might actually be able to get your hard-won valuables back to base in order to use them.