Captain's Log 23: Setting A Course

These forums is why we can not have nice things. 

9 hours ago, Kow cow said:

After the 12 hour period has passed, they will not be able to demolish the structures using the pinwheel, and must manually destroy it

Landlord still can demo everything after 12HR,

If you follow the quote chain we were talking about PvE.

Manually DESTROY it means using weapons which is PvP. On PvE they can't do anything to it after the 12+ hour window which is why they have said they are likely to expand that window.

Why does every convince themselves that on PvE any structure will be at complete mercy to settlement owners forever? That is a ludicrous thing to do. Have some sense people and read the log properly.

This is exactly what was posted.  They are considering a change, but the plan as it stands at the moment is a 12-hour window for landlord destruction on PvE.  Period.  After  that, it's permanent.  I tend to agree the devs need to balance that a little more on PvE

• Claim owners will be able to demolish structures (via the pinwheel) on their settlements temporarily as long as the structure has been placed within the last 12 hours. After the 12 hour period has passed, they will not be able to demolish the structures using the pinwheel, and must manually destroy it. Claim owners can do this outside of raid hours or warlike. This exists as an anti-griefing mechanism. On PvE servers, we may extend the time beyond 12 hours as players will not have the option to destroy via PVP.

19 hours 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

I agree. I would be happy to live on a ship instead of in a base. The current land system on PVE is horrible and the new one is not much better. I will probably try it anyway. After the wipe I will build a small base in lawless for tiger and elephant taming as well as some crop plots and build my main base on a Brig or a Galleon. I like Brigs more, so I will probably have some scattered around anchored near the interesting islands.

What's the point of a claim system in pve?

Dont think anyone really has a good answer other than greed.

Everywhere should be lawless.

I do like the decay overtime on buildings. I think as long as your foundations/ceilings are connected one "resource box" should keep from decaying. I like that boats will destroy after time. The cuddler of boats on shore was not fun to deal with and made islands look trashy.

There dose need some type of freind/ally system. I dont want to be forced to play with my company only. 

A lot of the confusion on the part of the devs quite possibly comes from the fact that they gave people what they asked for, not what they wanted.

People asked for "a claim system" which to the devs means taxes and land ownership and management and the tenant system they proposed.  They specifically have said several times in the past that "we want the claim system to include other people building on the claimers land"

What people WANTED was "the ability to deny others the right to build on a piece of land" which is the exact opposite of the claim system.  So they weren't asking for what they wanted (insert conjecture as to why).

However, it's abundantly clear that people HATE the idea of taxes.  You know where was great for not paying taxes?  Lawless.

Make everything lawless AND FIX LAWLESS

Increase build deny range, not decrease it

Make structures rapidly decay based on the number of conjoined structures.  1 piece = 1 minute.  20 pieces = 1 day.  Go  up from there.  Either raise the cap on demolish to 14 days, or allow companies 2 "vacation modes" a year that pop their buildings to 14 days.

That's an interesting interpretation, but not the only one.

On PvE, the devs may be reaching for something similar to a core mod they used to develop the game.   That mod encourages settlements, aka 'villages' or 'towns', and also a healthy economic/commerce structure.  It's clear the devs want people to own shops and do business with each other, which is exactly what the core mod does.  It allows people to 'claim' land without an official claiming system, but also to build right next to each other without fighting for territorial rights.

In this mod, buildings can be individually owned, but with the narrowest of walkways, alleys or roads between them.  There are Commons with community workplaces built so that new players can use workstations like smithys without needing to claim land to build their own.  More successful players build apartments on the waterfront for those who are new, or who need to dock overnight to do business or taming.  There are individually owned farms and breeding facilities as well.

The feeling in that mod is far more community oriented than in the Atlas game.  There are banks which function more like our real life banks, and taxes also a feature.  The core mod features medieval buildings which are aesthetically more authentic than Atlas's are, but there's no fault in Atlas going with something more similar to Ark.

I think that core mod gives Atlas some precedent for development of community cooperation and commerce without having a claiming system and without the desperation involved in a land rush.  It also gives people the feeling of sovereignty over their own holdings, which is what I think our PvE playerbase is really reaching for.

It has no problems with spamming foundations, pillaring or even passive aggressive PvPvE which is what's happening on Atlas PvE at the moment.  That's not to say that it's perfect, it's still a WIP, but it has definitely made strides in directions I think would work well for our Atlas PvE playerbase.  

So my interpretation of what the devs may be reaching for is different from yours.  But in the final analysis, we really don't know what Atlas devs have in mind - we're all just guessing.

On 3/8/2019 at 2:48 PM, Ktorr said:

Funniest thing I have heard in a LONG time.

Then I guess you have no clue how a true sandbox works. The community does, in fact, police themselves. They form social structures and military factions to battle over the control and order of certain territories. They form server-wide rules and customs to ensure a certain level of harmony. This all without the intervention from any outside entities, IE: developers.

I bought the game and you do not let me play!

Give me 1 flag without taxes!

I gave you money to be in slavery with the owner of the settlement?

You are definitely killing the game!

5 hours ago, vaylain said:

Then I guess you have no clue how a true sandbox works. The community does, in fact, police themselves. They form social structures and military factions to battle over the control and order of certain territories. They form server-wide rules and customs to ensure a certain level of harmony. This all without the intervention from any outside entities, IE: developers.

I understand that's how it is supposed to work, just that it rarely ever works out that way in a practical sense.

On 3/10/2019 at 9:07 AM, Archsenex said:

Make structures rapidly decay based on the number of conjoined structures.  1 piece = 1 minute.  20 pieces = 1 day.  Go  up from there.  Either raise the cap on demolish to 14 days, or allow companies 2 "vacation modes" a year that pop their buildings to 14 days.

 

I've never been crazy about that idea.  Keeping in mind that these places would be "home" if that change was made -  nobody gets to have a sign?  What about things like water barrels, smithys, small shipyards?  Those are all 1 piece.    I set down a crop plot and by the time I get my seeds into it, it's gone?  Small buildings could have less than 20 pieces, do I have to rebuild them every day?  What if I take a really long time to build something?  I get 16 pieces of it down and the next day I have to start over.  Don't build anything small and don't build anything at all that you can't finish in a day.

And looking at it the other way, what if I want to spam with that rule?  I build a sidewalk - 60 interconnected pieces.  Or if you set a 14 day timer for things like water barrels, people will just spam water barrels.

Have the devs give me 2 vacations/year?   What if I need 6 long weekends instead?  It's just not very flexible.

(for pve)  Just give everyone 1-5 claims.  No upkeep/cost.  Normal repairs for injury to buildings and anchored ships.  No build radius around important shared things like discovery points.  Everyone gets a nice buffer around them.  Spammers don't have anyone to grief.

BEST way for PvE is:

-1 player or 1 company start only  have 1 flag at the beginning with limited/small radius. ( bigger company will have more radius then singleplayer )

- the flag radius can be wider by doing quest (hard quest) , the quest can be start when reach 'x' char level. ( force player to do quest )

-players/company can relocate their flag but after x days.  so player/company will have to think before placing the flag (force them to explore )

- players/company can offline up to 21 days. after that all things inside can be demolish by others.

Well I was excited for this patch but the sudden change to even worse PvE claim system than the current one makes me pretty much for sure not coming back to the official servers after the wipe.

If you want PvE claims then they have to be contestable by declaring war and if you want them to be safe then people shouldn't be able to claim an entire island in one go.  Especially if they can leverage the absurd taxes.  If you are worried about blocking off rare resources that is easily fixed with just having those resources act as foundations blocking off building near them.

On 3/10/2019 at 9:07 AM, Archsenex said:

Increase build deny range, not decrease it

 

This all it did on Lawless islands when it was reduced was resulting in even more pillar spam on the islands.

I appreciate all the effort being put into updates but me and my buddies who play are concerned about PvE stuff.

For starters, there ain't a whole lot to do.  Once you build, once you tame and have what you need, there really isn't a whole lot to go and do thats meaningful.  You can fight ships and acquire blueprints but after awhile that becomes rather boring and lackluster at best to do.  In terms of content on islands to do there really isnt much to do.  On islands its all just animals that you can destroy quick with no rewards other than meat and resources. No cave systems, no dungeon style stuff, just animals and resources.    You go to power stone islands you encounter monsters that are damn near impossible right now(Fire elementals, rock elementals) and also encounter higher level animals which can be taken out but don't offer much in terms of rewards.  The massive structures on the power stone islands are just visual fodder(they do look awesome) and don't offer anything all that fun other than looking at them.  Are these going to be some sort of dungeon content allowing us to go into them and kill stuff for rewards or items?

The PvE content is lackluster and desperately needs more things to do, more things to acquire because if you're not on a PvP server there simply isn't much content.  Blueprints are great an all but bring in actual dropped ITEMS instead of blueprints.  Add stuff to islands that make going to islands fun and thrilling other than just oh this has this animal  on it and this resource on it.  There's no desire or want to explore islands because aside from animals and resources, there isn't much to do on them.   You have 918239813 islands but they're all the same basically with just animals and resources. No "hey lets go to this island to go to this cave or dungeon for these items".  Islands should be unique, should have unique stuff to acquire(thats not resources or animals), unique monsters on them.  PvE content currently is 1 of 2 things.  Its either way too easy or way too difficult.  Easy in the sense that theres only animals on islands that you can kill with either firearms, bows, or tamed creatures and than the too hard part is power stone islands.  Monsters or at least the big ones like elementals or cyclops are too difficult(unless you kill cyclops with balista) and unkillable like the elementals. 

You guys put the underwater trenches in power stone island servers  and if you're writeup is accurate, the monsters down below will be equivocally difficult as on power stone lslands which isn't good unless you add good rewards to it because other than exploring it, there's no point in going down.  

Overall there needs to be more unique things to see, do, and acquire.  Adding new islands are fine and dandy but there needs to be things to do, see and acquire on them that are NOT resources and animals because the other 700 or so islands you guys have are replicas of each other with just resources and animals on them. Adding new biomes is great and look forward to it but again there needs to be more things to do and acquire. Make going to areas not only about exploration but worth the time.  I spent countless hours driving my boat around the world only to realize that damn near all the islands are exactly the same with absolutely no reason to go to them other than for resources. Pretty big waste of time actually. 

On 3/7/2019 at 1:59 PM, Dollie said:

General Claim Changes

We’ll be making some general changes to the system which will impact both PvE and PvP servers: 

• Claim owners will be able to demolish structures (via the pinwheel) on their settlements temporarily as long as the structure has been placed within the last 12 hours. After the 12 hour period has passed, they will not be able to demolish the structures using the pinwheel, and must manually destroy it. Claim owners can do this outside of raid hours or warlike. This exists as an anti-griefing mechanism. On PvE servers, we may extend the time beyond 12 hours as players will not have the option to destroy via PVP.

 

I honestly think that this is a horrible idea for PVE. You are basically giving one person/company the ultimate power to destroy anything built by others within 12 hours or longer. You can bet this will get abused. I can picture it already. After the wipe it will be a mad dash to claim every island there is to claim. The ones who get them will then patrol it non stop (together with their company mates) and destroy everything people build. The only thing this will accomplish is to funnel people into the lawless zones, which will become overcrowded.

Even if your base doesn't get destroyed you basically have to pay 3 types of taxes. 1) X% tax when you gather, II) Pay upkeep for the island's owner flag, and III) Pay upkeep for your own base.

I am living in lawless now and I will just make a dash again for my current spot and reclaim it. That way I will not run the risk of having my base demolished and I only have to pay upkeep for my own base, which I expect is based on how big I build. So if I keep my place small the upkeep is probably not too bad, and doable for solo player like myself.

Honestly, I don't see the attraction of moving out of lawless under this new system. I am onboard with the idea of 1 claim per person. Heck, even the old idea of making everything lawless sounds good to me. Either way, everyone can find a nice spot to build their own place and be king of their little hill. That's what I personally like about these games, having my own little place to build which nobody can mess with.

I was considering coming back when they said no claims...  This Captain's log has completely changed that idea back to "FUCK THIS GAME!"

RIP

5 hours ago, MindOfMadness said:

I was considering coming back when they said no claims...  This Captain's log has completely changed that idea back to "FUCK THIS GAME!"

RIP

Probably another player that just got the game at most a week ago and can't find land.  It took me almost a week to find land and as long as you're not a douche your neighbors will probably let you join them and then you won't have to be a solo player because power stones and the Kraken are absolutely impossible by yourself. I've been to so many Lawless Islands and see Foundation spamming and all that great stuff and if the whole map is Lawless especially in PVE i just dont see finding an island to settle without having to move because of a single tool that griefs the whole island. But i just wish they would put a little more detail with their updates.

Hey First of all:
Thanks for the good work u got a lot of feedback right know i see.

2. Can u give us plz a Timeline for the Wipe?

Time(Date+ Time+Timezone)

My company Wants 2 take a Vacation for it.

There are mixed Information about it.
Testserver on 20.3
Wipe @22.3? (older)
but also 7 days after the beginning of the Testserver is the Wipe (27.3)

What is the Real Date and plz give us a Countdown with timezones

Still Loving this game but right know the servers are dead couse the early announce of the Wipe.
Put i get it.

THX Dully
(plz a Timeline  )

14 minutes ago, Dully said:

Hey First of all:
Thanks for the good work u got a lot of feedback right know i see.

 

2. Can u give us plz a Timeline for the Wipe?

Time(Date+ Time+Timezone)

My company Wants 2 take a Vacation for it.

There are mixed Information about it.
Testserver on 20.3
Wipe @22.3? (older)
but also 7 days after the beginning of the Testserver is the Wipe (27.3)

What is the Real Date and plz give us a Countdown with timezones

Still Loving this game but right know the servers are dead couse the early announce of the Wipe.
Put i get it.

THX Dully
(plz a Timeline  )

I would strongly recommend you do not take vacation for the game, in fact the developers themselves would never recommend taking vacation for the game.

5 minutes ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

I would strongly recommend you do not take vacation for the game, in fact the developers themselves would never recommend taking vacation for the game.

I like taking time of for the game i have a lot of fun with my company so why not?
even "all the bad parts" of the game i do not see any problems with it

i know how to manage my time and workload and i know whats makes me happy

26 minutes ago, Dully said:

Hey First of all:
Thanks for the good work u got a lot of feedback right know i see.

 

2. Can u give us plz a Timeline for the Wipe?

Time(Date+ Time+Timezone)

My company Wants 2 take a Vacation for it.

There are mixed Information about it.
Testserver on 20.3
Wipe @22.3? (older)
but also 7 days after the beginning of the Testserver is the Wipe (27.3)

What is the Real Date and plz give us a Countdown with timezones

Still Loving this game but right know the servers are dead couse the early announce of the Wipe.
Put i get it.

THX Dully
(plz a Timeline  )

There is no real timeline atm. In a ideal situation, the testserver will go live on the 20th and a week after the wipe on official. 
But i expect there will be bugs on the ptr that need to be fixed first. We might see the wipe at the end of this month or early next month.
But like i said, there is no real timeline atm. If you really want to take vacation, you'll have to wait until there is more info

3 minutes ago, Abysian said:

But like i said, there is no real timeline atm. If you really want to take vacation, you'll have to wait until there is more info

That is what i want more infomations

Just now, Dully said:

That is what i want more infomations

I think you will have to wait until this weekend, of maybe next week when the ptr launches. Maybe then they will have more info for you.
Right now there is no real info, and everyone is just guessing, so you'll need to wait a little bit longer.
 

2 minutes ago, Dully said:

I like taking time of for the game i have a lot of fun with my company so why not?
even "all the bad parts" of the game i do not see any problems with it

i know how to manage my time and workload and i know whats makes me happy

You understand me wrong, I don't mean don't take the time off to play the game, I mean don't take time off based on a wobbly timeframe given by the devs.

If the devs said the wipe was going to happen on 20th March there's no guarantee it will, you might take a week off, but before the 20th March it gets delayed a week, resulting in possibly you not being able to cancel or rearrange your leave. It has happened to many many players before, and the devs themselves have told people they shouldn't take leave based on the ETA dates.

Completely up to you what you do, but if GS came here now and said official wipe is on 27th March, a week after PTR, and you book leave and then wipe gets pushed back a week, and you end up having nothing to do for a week, then you'd have to accept that and take full responsibility. So, just be cautious of any date given to you.

For love of the "god" NO Settlements ON PVE  FFS. It all will go back as it is at the moment. Have some IQ guys. Of course, the majority who wore and are landlords will cry in your ear for the claim flag existence in PVE area.