Captain's Log 23: Setting A Course

Just now, Raine said:

Perhaps so, but in that case we are talking about a n=1 situation.  To be fair, that's the same in my own case or in the case of anyone replying to this thread.  We can speak only from our own experience.  But the preponderance of n=1 experiences stated on these threads seems more supportive of the claimable experience  than of the global lawless experience.

Honestly,  I agree with sadie, the wipe and limbo are hurting the gane most right now.   Exploits drove away a ton of people.   

I don't care if they use all lawless,  revised claims,  no claims and repairs,  or don't change a damn thing personally.  Hell, turn off land building and force me to live on ships and I can make that work. 

Just stop wiping progress. 

I'm with ya. I loved the desert and the tundra. What people didn't like were the massive amounts of gators/snakes. Lack of water etc. I actually planned on making my way to either tundra or desert with the character wipe. Most people prefer the tropical/temperate/equatorial zones due to them being a bit easier to start a new character. You aren't dealing with the heat/cold.

I know they are planning on reworking the animals spawns. Some islands the gators, snakes, vultures severely needed to be toned down. J10 comes to mind offhand. 

The tundra the amount of SoTD's were insane. Of course very few people wanted to live there. Hell id averagely lose a few ships to mean whales/sotd's cause if the wind left me. I was stuck floating and couldn't outrun being swarmed by so many things at once. Mean whales have a huge target range on them. 

Just now, Archsenex said:

Hell, turn off land building and force me to live on ships and I can make that work. 

Waterworld.  That would be an interesting development for sure.

Just now, Raine said:

Waterworld.  That would be an interesting development for sure.

I actually wanted to be entirely ship based until they hosed gardening on ships.   

Give me farm ships and a resource bank and I will use nearly no land (just taming pens).

I don't know why they insist on no bank or kennel on pve.  It makes total sense

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

I actually wanted to be entirely ship based until they hosed gardening on ships.   

Give me farm ships and a resource bank and I will use nearly no land (just taming pens).

I don't know why they insist on no bank or kennel on pve.  It makes total sense

Lol I was all for making a galleon to live on-until I ran into H15. That day we lost 2 galleons to 3 mean whales and 10+sotds. That was several weeks worth of work shot right to hell.

3 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

I agree with sadie, the wipe and limbo are hurting the gane most right now.   Exploits drove away a ton of people.   

I don't care if they use all lawless,  revised claims,  no claims and repairs,  or don't change a damn thing personally.  Hell, turn off land building and force me to live on ships and I can make that work. 

Just stop wiping progress. 

Yes, exploits did create a large exodus.  They have been trying to correct those, and some of those corrections created their own special problems.  But part of the purpose of a beta game is exactly that, to find the exploits and fix them.

As for  the wipe, I can understand a limited wipe.  If you're changing up the claiming process and you want to see how that works, you need to clear the board and start over.  However, I don't agree with wiping the characters.  I don't really see the point of that.  Is it possible it has to do with Company redesign?

 

1 minute ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

Lol I was all for making a galleon to live on-until I ran into H15. That day we lost 2 galleons to 3 mean whales and 10+sotds. That was several weeks worth of work shot right to hell.

Well yeah, dont take your farm ship to those places

I started a thread in pve around letting us store resources and tames.  @Jatheish @Dollie in the first livestream, captain lecture mentioned solving problems tangentially.  Why not reduce our NEED for bases like you said you always wanted.

Re enable farming on ships

Give a resource bank in freeports for pve

Allow kennelling of tames ar freeports for pve

And I will need VERY little land

1 minute ago, Raine said:

Yes, exploits did create a large exodus.  They have been trying to correct those, and some of those corrections created their own special problems.  But part of the purpose of a beta game is exactly that, to find the exploits and fix them.

As for  the wipe, I can understand a limited wipe.  If you're changing up the claiming process and you want to see how that works, you need to clear the board and start over.  However, I don't agree with wiping the characters.  I don't really see the point of that.  Is it possible it has to do with Company redesign?

 

My guess is a combination of a few things. Company redesign. Accounts that can't be deleted. I'd almost think they are gonna rework the skill tree to some degree. Maybe they are gonna alter the discovery points yet again. I know the FOY buffs weren't working all that properly. They'd kick on and off. Something mighta got hosed when they turned off the old age debuff. To many variables to really say.

Just now, Sadie Blackhawk said:

My guess is a combination of a few things. Company redesign. Accounts that can't be deleted. I'd almost think they are gonna rework the skill tree to some degree. Maybe they are gonna alter the discovery points yet again. I know the FOY buffs weren't working all that properly. They'd kick on and off. Something mighta got hosed when they turned off the old age debuff. To many variables to really say.

My foy was very consistent.  I lost it If and only if I crossed servers while piloting a ship.

So I just came off the wheel 

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

Well yeah, dont take your farm ship to those places

I started a thread in pve around letting us store resources and tames.  @Jatheish @Dollie in the first livestream, captain lecture mentioned solving problems tangentially.  Why not reduce our NEED for bases like you said you always wanted.

Re enable farming on ships

Give a resource bank in freeports for pve

Allow kennelling of tames ar freeports for pve

 

And I will need VERY little land

Hey I didn't do it. I hate driving galleons. I mean I really hate them. They dont' turn at all! Someone else decided to umm not just go south back to n14 and took the easy route to go north through h1-h15 etc. I was only there trying to be the repair queen! 

1 minute ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

Hey I didn't do it. I hate driving galleons. I mean I really hate them. They dont' turn at all! Someone else decided to umm not just go south back to n14 and took the easy route to go north through h1-h15 etc. I was only there trying to be the repair queen! 

Ah, we were basically of a mind to never send the supply galleon to polar without a whale schooner escort.

But hey, you learn.

Just now, Archsenex said:

Ah, we were basically of a mind to never send the supply galleon to polar without a whale schooner escort.

But hey, you learn.

Lol I secretly cheered the day the galleons were sunk. Even with reroll. Im a brig girl. I love the look. I love the turning radius. 

But yeah. Since day 1 I struggled my rubberbanding ass out of freeport. Had a few other people that sacrificed themselves to be food for me as I piloted the little crappy raft out of freeport to get land. We ended up with multiple claims. 

Some I gave away. Some were stolen. But traveling around the grid. Think at this point I have 75% of the map discovered. I can sympathize with every new person that comes into the game. I'd randomly check for flag spots to give away to people looking for land. The system as it is. Doesn't work. I don't think the entire lawless woulda worked either. 

They had the right idea with the claim flags. Hell I thought that was the greatest idea I had ever seen. Unfortunately several companies had to abuse the claim flag system. 

Lawless even when the game first started. I never seen much of a point to them. They coulda made use of that land in other ways.

I don't fear that I won't be able to find a new place to call home. Hell id be a very nice Landlord. Just don't fill up my island with behemoth gates and you can build whatever the hell you want. Sometimes I think about jumping to PVP to see how it really is. But then I remember my early ark experiences of having my tames, bases and with this-ships taken out while I was offline and it turns my stomach.

What I don't like with the pvp changes is only the "owner" can build cannons. With them I can sympathize that too. The whole point of pvp is to build defensive structures to defend your own turf.

Also, how do you guys feel about this idea 

5 islands in a grid

3 use a claim system. One of the three (current, 1 flag per island, decay and repair) for the sake of this argument, its just a claim system

1 is lawless

1 is no build.  At all.  Guaranteed resources available that can never be blocked.

I think no build islands mitigate the resource block problem nicely.

Also, we have got to have more discussions when 90% of the forum base is unconscious.  So productive!

28 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

5 islands in a grid

3 use a claim system. One of the three (current, 1 flag per island, decay and repair) for the sake of this argument, its just a claim system

1 is lawless

1 is no build.  At all.  Guaranteed resources available that can never be blocked.

I'd try it.  Seems like a good compromise.  

Just one alteration, though.  Might make the no-build island buildable only for animal traps with a very accelerated decay rate.  Like 1-day or even 5-hour decay. Or even a dev-built unlockable permanent trap.

3 minutes ago, Raine said:

I'd try it.  Seems like a good compromise.  

Just one alteration, though.  Might make the no-build island buildable only for animal traps with a very accelerated decay rate.  Like 1-day or even 5-hour decay. Or even a dev-built unlockable permanent trap.

Make crabs not require the damn Kraken, then just carry your taming "candidates" back to your boat.

Pens are.... very annoying design in the first place.

I'd put the no build island with your big resources like metal, specialty trees, plants etc.

Lawless model it like a freeport with generic resources so when the idiots do and will behemoth gate/foundation/pillar it out. You aren't losing that much. It will still give the people the ability to attain more land via pillars etc.  Keep the accelerated decay/damage as it is intended on a lawless island. 

Some people really don't like the claim flag system or the tax rates so that is a good alternative. 

Honestly Id just rather them do away with the taxing all together. It just causes a lot of headaches cause people will constantly be fighting over the good spots. Its one headache after another and just feeds the griefing.

42 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

5 islands in a grid

3 use a claim system. One of the three (current, 1 flag per island, decay and repair) for the sake of this argument, its just a claim system

1 is lawless

1 is no build.  At all.  Guaranteed resources available that can never be blocked.

The only way it would truly work is what 90% of the population has been asking for since day 1. One flag per person-On claimable land.

But they have to put something where when the person quits the flag despawns.  They also need to stop altering the flags. Decay and Rapir is a good idea that they should be able to implement with that system. 

2 minutes ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

Honestly Id just rather them do away with the taxing all together. It just causes a lot of headaches cause people will constantly be fighting over the good spots. Its one headache after another and just feeds the griefing.

I wonder why they used it in the first place.  In our case, we actively encouraged use of our claimed resources.  It didn't benefit us as much as it allowed others to access the resources easily.   Not having it would not have made much difference to us - although in other cases with other Companies, it might have made the difference between a decision to gate off resources or allow access to others, especially on PvP(?)

4 minutes ago, Raine said:

I wonder why they used it in the first place.  In our case, we actively encouraged use of our claimed resources.  It didn't benefit us as much as it allowed others to access the resources easily.   Not having it would not have made much difference to us - although in other cases with other Companies, it might have made the difference between a decision to gate off resources or allow access to others, especially on PvP(?)

Some people are just really territorial

12 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

Pens are.... very annoying design in the first place.

Honestly, I find them very useful structures in certain highly-lethal conditions.  We were in one Lawless area where the lion/tiger/spider/scorpion spawns were unbelievably overwhelming and it was the only way we could survive getting from our ship to our little base - taking refuge in the trap.  Of course, that didn't help with the damned cobras.  And while I think of it, in what universe can snakes strike and kill through stone walls?  That is patently ridiculous!  

2 minutes ago, Raine said:

Honestly, I find them very useful structures in certain highly-lethal conditions.  We were in one Lawless area where the lion/tiger/spider/scorpion spawns were unbelievably overwhelming and it was the only way we could survive getting from our ship to our little base - taking refuge in the trap.  Of course, that didn't help with the damned cobras.  And while I think of it, in what universe can snakes strike and kill through stone walls?  That is patently ridiculous!  

We didn't use the disposable taming pens most people did, we built our with air-gaps where there were 3 spaces around the taming area to the next layer of walls, to prevent cobras AND a-hole players from just killing our tames.

Then we put the storage area on top of that.

However, with the advent of the Crab it would change that approach entirely.  In Ark, once you had an Argentavis or a Quetzal you brought the candidates to your base rather than the other way around.

1 minute ago, Raine said:

I wonder why they used it in the first place.  In our case, we actively encouraged use of our claimed resources.  It didn't benefit us as much as it allowed others to access the resources easily.   Not having it would not have made much difference to us - although in other cases with other Companies, it might have made the difference between a decision to gate off resources or allow access to others, especially on PvP(?)

Honestly i'm not sure. Maybe all along they wanted to go more towards a feudal system. They needed to see how the game would play out first? But as you can tell by the forums. People don't really want that type of system. They made the mistake of saying it was by studio wildcard. Most people came over from ark and are use to- Having your own land to do with as you see fit. 

Taxation probably wouldn't have been so bad if it had been a set rate. But people automatically went for the max rate. When we had 30 claims at one point. I never had to harvest for metal, wood, gems, stone etc. If I did very little of it. Before I gave away most of our turf to newbies coming into game.  (Ok don't laugh) I didn't know you could access the tax bank. It sat for like 2 weeks before I seen you could access the damn thing and get the resources out. 

I never gated off my resources. I dropped my tax rate to around 10%. It was supplemental at best. 

I think it was dark and light you could Elect your city official via votes. I never really messed around much with it. Only put like 400 hours into that game before I threw the towel in. But I do recall that the elected official could set building rules and tax rates. 

4 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

We didn't use the disposable taming pens most people did, we built our with air-gaps where there were 3 spaces around the taming area to the next layer of walls, to prevent cobras AND a-hole players from just killing our tames

Having a hard time envisioning that.  Do you have a screenshot perchance?  Brilliant idea to have the storage atop the pen.  Must've been quite high if you were trying to trap giraffes.

5 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

However, with the advent of the Crab it would change that approach entirely.  In Ark, once you had an Argentavis or a Quetzal you brought the candidates to your base rather than the other way around.

That's true.  But I don't think most people will have access to a Crab.  I suspect argies and quetzes are easier to obtain in Ark than a Crab would be in Atlas, but time will tell.

See I mostly free tamed all my animals. It's a little harder. But pens screw with me and I end up dying. God knows ive tried to use public taming pens. But either the animal falls the wrong way and I can't feed it. Or I get knocked into oblivion. For me it was easier to strategically plan where my animal was gonna get knocked out. Cross my fingers and go for the adrenaline rush. I've solo tamed all my animals. It can be done. But you do have to expect death and well most animals I knocked out close to my ship so in the event that they killed me. It wasn't a long run back.