Jump to content

Darkweaver

Devs; why do you keep rolling over the small company & solo player?

Recommended Posts

The system was advertised as lords and tenants. A tenant should be able to exist through many different lords because in the real world, lords need them working the land. In Atlas, tenants are not needed so the option to erase them is given. The problem with this in PVE is that it becomes a player vs player to see who can grab and hold an island. I predict there are going to be a lot of one owner empty islands and a population (what’s left of it) shift to lawless. Disappointing direction.

 

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 minutes ago, Gomez Addams said:

The system was advertised as lords and tenants. A tenant should be able to exist through many different lords because in the real world, lords need them working the land. In Atlas, tenants are not needed so the option to erase them is given. The problem with this in PVE is that it becomes a player vs player to see who can grab and hold an island. I predict there are going to be a lot of one owner empty islands and a population (what’s left of it) shift to lawless. Disappointing direction.

 

 

5 minutes ago, DannyUK said:

Yes so we go down the route of settling on an island and you're given 48hr eviction notice? They want more people to settle on these islands, they did, some came off lawless and went there I stayed where I was on lawless, glad I did but now they give players the rights to say pack up your stuff because everything will be gone.

Many of them were relieved after the time period was up when they settled there because they knew they could live in peace without trolls coming in to demolish it. They are moving the wrong way if they want people to settle on these islands now. Why should people move all their belongings onto ships? It's just not logical to put this feature into PvE and as I said before PvP I would certainly agree with it.

I'm not alone, you don't have to be in a big company either, just use allied function. If you are playing alone in a big company I hope you trust them enough with all your things because i've been there and done that before, another story but anyway I'm quite happy to play solo but working with other companies.

No you're not.. pvp is player v player.. erasing buildings is not pvp.

Because someone could do it.  Doesn't mean everyone will do it.

It should be an option.  You just aren't willing to put yourself in the landowners boots.

You're only concerned with your selfish rights.  Not anyone elses.  I get it..

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
38 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

but you don't get to be an owner unless you were one of the first onto the server.

How does this even compute? You actually think this? I could make a new character.. add a few alt accounts, hunt some whales.. own an island is say.. 2-3 days.. Most of the smaller companies are made up like this.  Or they get their parent's, friends, neighbours to make accounts to join them.. essentially the same thing a company with 2-3 active players and 30 inactive ones.. You could have started a week ago and be owning islands now. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
14 minutes ago, Martyn said:

 

No you're not.. pvp is player v player.. erasing buildings is not pvp.

Because someone could do it.  Doesn't mean everyone will do it.

It should be an option.  You just aren't willing to put yourself in the landowners boots.

You're only concerned with your selfish rights.  Not anyone elses.  I get it..

1.  If you log on and your building is gone, it doesn't matter much to you whether it's gone because someone destroyed it using pvp attacks or erased it using a pve landowner wipe mechanic. Either way your building is gone, and whether some guy on the forum arbitrarily declares it not pvp on a technicality won't matter a hill of beans to the fact you had no recourse to prevent it in a game mode where you're not supposed to lose things because of other players.

2. No one is objecting to this mechanic because of the people who won't do it *eyeroll* They're objecting because of the wildly obvious and foreseeable way some folks absolutely will use it just to inflict misery on others. Your position is defending griefers in pve because they have the resources to buy an island and pay the fee.  That is what you're doing right now.

3. It shouldn't be an option. You just aren't willing to put yourself in the tenants boots. 

4. The level of hypocrisy involved for the guy who keeps stamping his feet and yelling in all caps about it being his island and he can do as he pleases with it to accuse others of only being concerned with their own selfish rights is just breathtaking. I don't get it.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

PvE Scenario 4:

Let's assume the company that owns the land doesn't leave in any formal way, but simply doesn't come back.
Let's assume their flag/bank is feeding and paying all their NPCs in the region and not the allied ones.

Image, that settlers grow suspicious after 8 days of absence because they noticed the animals where claimable and check the 'flag'-inventory for gold. Imagine, they are in time to notice that it needs refilling ... which they do.

Fast forward two weeks.
It is unclear if any of the landowning tribe's structures are subject to decay timers as that company still hasn't returned, but is almost certain that all of their not-reclaimed animals are dead. Their NPCs might still be alive if their original stack of berries in the flag was sufficiently huge.

Question:
Is there an end to this stalemate due to timers on the landowning company that has not been there in 22+ days?

PvE Scenario 5:

The follow-up: the single tennant of that island that has diligently kept the flag stacked with gold, goes on holiday.
Use your imagination.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

PvE Scenario 6:

A tennant, works full-time and has kids, plays a few hours a day, but not every day ... logs on on Tuesday after playing in the weekend, only to feed the animals and notices the message stating he has 7 hours left until the new landowner can raze.
He didn't have a big game session planned this evening. And he will need hours to pack-up, build elsewhere and then move. It hardly matters how much time he has, as he has to start early the next morning. What real (fun) options does he have?

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
39 minutes ago, Martyn said:

How does this even compute? You actually think this? I could make a new character.. add a few alt accounts, hunt some whales.. own an island is say.. 2-3 days.. Most of the smaller companies are made up like this.  Or they get their parent's, friends, neighbours to make accounts to join them.. essentially the same thing a company with 2-3 active players and 30 inactive ones.. You could have started a week ago and be owning islands now. 

It doesn't take much imagination to realize that the way the servers look TODAY is not the way the servers should look at release.  I'm assuming that the current low server population won't exist ad infinitum.  If it does there will be no game, or at least no official servers.  Before the mass exodus, you couldn't find a smaller island to claim.  They were all taken nearly immediately.

So, new guy brings 8 or 10 of his friends to all start playing the game.  There are no small islands they can claim, and anywhere else they want to build (except lawless) may be subject to surprise wipes any time the island ownership changes hands.  Will this group think that's a great idea and dive right in to start playing and building their bases?  I doubt it.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yet.. we did that exactly.  Which is why some of us, still do play.  We prove you wrong.  If you want to live in fear of what someone might do.. stay indoors.  Don't go outside, anything could happen.

As pointed out many an occasion, this is an EA.. what the game looked like last week, last month, on release.. doesn't matter.

What it looks like tomorrow does.  I play for tomorrow and what it might bring, not for today or yesterday.

And.. if you don't play.. why are you even commenting in our forums?

Edited by Martyn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
34 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

It doesn't take much imagination to realize that the way the servers look TODAY is not the way the servers should look at release.  I'm assuming that the current low server population won't exist ad infinitum.  If it does there will be no game, or at least no official servers.  Before the mass exodus, you couldn't find a smaller island to claim.  They were all taken nearly immediately.

So, new guy brings 8 or 10 of his friends to all start playing the game.  There are no small islands they can claim, and anywhere else they want to build (except lawless) may be subject to surprise wipes any time the island ownership changes hands.  Will this group think that's a great idea and dive right in to start playing and building their bases?  I doubt it.

Nah, unfortunately you will not see an increase in players after release. This isn’t me dumping on the game mind you. I am saying regardless or how awesome or horrible the game is it actually wont make a difference. Even ark with 12 million total copies sold didn’t see a noticeable increase and was basically a non existent increase at release.

EA is a lot different than back in the day. EA is just an excuse now. The game has already been released and the people that wanted it already bought it. It is true when people say the words “everyone that is going to buy is has bought it”.

one thing that is possible is that they could make the game good and bring the players back that already bought the game but nobody else is buying it. The main reason for this is because this is a niche game. Even more so than ark since now it is an mmo as well as a survival game. Add in pirates and that makes a pretty specific target group.

i hope this game becomes awesome as well since I will be spending a lot of time playing it, soon hopefully. But to think that regardless of what they do they could even reach 1/3 of arks numbers is naive at best. Not calling you naive personally, that is just a generalization of people that think that.

and no, playing the game doesn’t help you with this.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, wandelaar said:

PvE Scenario 6:

A tennant, works full-time and has kids, plays a few hours a day, but not every day ... logs on on Tuesday after playing in the weekend, only to feed the animals and notices the message stating he has 7 hours left until the new landowner can raze.
He didn't have a big game session planned this evening. And he will need hours to pack-up, build elsewhere and then move. It hardly matters how much time he has, as he has to start early the next morning. What real (fun) options does he have?

Buy a game that doesn't limit your playtime. By golly gosh.. was that so hard to think of?

And what of the rights of the land owner? Oh.. yeh.. they get none.. they're paying the gold, they're grinding that gold, playing for hours, days, weeks, months... but they get no rights, the guy who pays nothing.  Plays only a few hours a week.. he get's all the rules..

As spock says.. needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.. so hard luck buddy.. majority wins.. that's called democracy in action.

 

Edited by Martyn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Buy a game that doesn't limit your playtime. By golly gosh.. was that so hard to think of?

And what of the rights of the land owner? Oh.. yeh.. they get none.. they're paying the gold, they're grinding that gold, but they get no rights, the guy who pays nothing.  Plays only a few hours a week.. he get's all the rules..

 

The landowner can choose which island that is available for purchase he or she wants to buy. As has already been stated by another poster, if the mere sight or presence of anyone else on your island offends you so much, both private servers and single player mode exist so that you can have all the islands you want. It doesn't even require you buying a different game. Stop pretending landowners are so screwed over in this game just because some people point out how a thing that is a convenience for them is disastrous for their tenants. You are trying to play the victim card for the party that already has the stronger hand. 

Absolutely nothing and no one forces any prospective landowner to buy any particular island. Saying "you have to buy the island as is, you can't just automatically evict everyone at your whim once you buy it." is completely fair because the prospective owner has every chance to inspect the island, investigate his prospective tenants and what they are like prior to purchase to factor such information into their buying decision. In the real world this is called due diligence, and anyone prospective landlord who doesn't do it before buying is a fool.

Also stop saying the tenants pay nothing. They generate taxes. Whether the taxes are subtracted from their resources (pvp) or not (pve) is irrelevant to the point at hand. They are supporting the landlord with resources, so this notion that they contribute nothing is just flat wrong, and you keep bringing it up when it is factually incorrect.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well these Grapeshot/Wildcard devs never did anything else for small companies but locking them out from content, restricting their gameplay and setting them into a disadvantage vs mega companies. This is just the next mega patch... only with benefit to mega companies. Now with the possibility to LOLstomp all players on an island for just 12.000.

PAY TO WIPE

Not surprised.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, Winter Thorne said:

If this was how island ownership always worked, then in the future if you anticipate the servers will be fully loaded again, how are new players ever supposed to find an island to claim?  And what would be the reason for putting in the raze in the first place if you expect the tenants will just start paying the upkeep?

If this is not how island ownership will always work (passing from landlord to tenant) then all the problems people have anticipated will happen.

In addition,  the idea that tenants will just start paying the upkeep into the flag is a bad one, even if they can manage to do that.  The tenant would have all the costs of maintaining the island with none of the benefits of owning it.  They can't use the materials deposited into the flag, or use it to pay their crews.  They can't demolish unwanted structures within 24 hours.  Can't name the island, etc.  Even if it was always possible for them to pay for the flag, it's not a great idea.

 

It looks like the only good use of this new mechanic is when someone wants to claim a previously claimed island that has abandoned tenant structures on it.  But the game already takes care of that problem with the decay mechanic, so what's the point?

You have to look at this from the prospective of the game devs not really understanding anything except for what goes on with the large pvp tribes.  

Look at the colony system.  It was set up from day one that solo players and small groups, or groups of casual players of any size would be paying to maintain the large PvP company island.  You know, the people who have a limited amount of time to play the game would be supported the large groups who literally have dozens of drones who do nothing but gather and grind for hours on end each day.  It's the devs only kind of giving the non-large PvP companies something to do while mostly trying to free up the large pvp companies from having to do anything but fight for control of the map and go do boss fights.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 7/13/2019 at 5:17 PM, Dollie said:

Hmm that's a good point. It's something I'll discuss with the team. 

This is exactly how little devs think when implementing stuff.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 hours ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

So why is it always the players that instantly know it is a bad thing when they read something in the patch notes or captain's log? You don't even have to play the game to know giving the ability to wipe islands in PvE is absolutely wrong.

Imma hazzard a guess.

Because people we call devs are just bunch of under paid, under qualified dudes who couldn't be bothered to think or care about the product they work on beyond what's demanded of them. Their only concern are their families' well being and securing the job they cling to by doing exactly what their employers tell them. Those employers are currently celebrating how many copies of Atlas they sold and are investigating how to produce DLCs for us to buy or yet another Ark rip off. Atlas happened to have a great concept that was utterly wasted by  this mentality. The amount of actual shits given here are near nought.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Talono said:

Well these Grapeshot/Wildcard devs never did anything else for small companies but locking them out from content, restricting their gameplay and setting them into a disadvantage vs mega companies. This is just the next mega patch... only with benefit to mega companies. Now with the possibility to LOLstomp all players on an island for just 12.000.

PAY TO WIPE

Not surprised.

Ye, PvP in an MMO won´t be balanced around solo players, sorry to tell you. I find it pretty amusing you only have 2 categories, solo players and megas. Nothing between these two. Patch is either for solo players or for mega companies. How the heck is this change connected to megacompanies if a group of 2-3 players can easily farm 20-30g gold per 1 weekend gold run which means they can claim and wipe the island just like bigger tribes? 

There is a single player mode afterall. 

Edited by Willard

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

How anyone is claiming this new nuke option is not PvP is beyond me.

Island owner (Player) presses big red button..... all structures of other Players are demolished, tames at risk of being killed, everything that was sitting on foundations destroyed and gone.

How did that happen? PLAYER committed and act to demolish everything other PLAYERS have done. How anyone can claim that is NOT PvP is ludicrous.

People also saying you have 48 hours to pack up and move... are you seriously deluded?

A) There is no 48hr notification beyond the fact that a new owner has taken the island.

B) There is no certainty whether the new owner will or will not nuke the island after 48 hours.

C) Anyone destroying their stuff to move would be foolish if the new owner doesn't use the nuke.

D) The devs assured us before that after the initial 24 hours of placing structures that land owners will not be able to demolish structures.... now they give them a NUKE.

 

Let's put it this way....

Thursday evening after a hard day at work I come home and i'm playing Atlas.

Knowing that i'm going to be away for the weekend Friday evening to Sunday evening, I make sure i've got food and gold etc for tames and NPCs before logging off Thursday night.

Friday AM - new owner takes island.

Friday - work all day, go away in the evening.

Saturday - Away.

Sunday - Away

Sunday PM - return home, log on to Atlas to find base NUKED and tames half dead.

 

How is that at all acceptable on PvE when a Player carries out the action of nuking an island in a PvE environment?

How many times do we have to explain to people how this is not acceptable in PvE.

All we have here in this topic is some dude that plays PvE 16 hours a day, 6 days a week and uses that play time as the 'base level' for how others should play or they don't have a right to comment.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Obviously someone or someone's on the design team isn't gonna be happy until this is just a massive pirate war game.It won't be long before there will be a pvp element thrown into pve for those that want it,If you look at the blackwood update,great we get more to do,but isn't it just another type of pvp but with an npc substitute?what happened to the exploration side to the game?Explore for war?Find lots of interesting places and annihilate them all?There are plenty of good war games out there,why just make another one?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

i want to point out that we are already only talking how to defend against the obvious abuse of the raze mechanic.

but i dont see it beeing used as it was intended either, neither on pvp or pve. you have to wait 48h, you need to pay a lot of gold and you loose your buildings as well. no one will use it to raze an island they intend to live on and build their first base. and definitely no one will use the raze to get rid of a foundation or pillar droppen on their doorstep.
i see this mainly used by big companies that already have a main base and dont know what to do with all the gold they get to raze large areas around their island void of players or just move around the map razing island in an area and moving to the next after 48 hours.

anyway this change will make more players quit but it will not bring more players to the game. the bad just outweights the good by far.
 

maybe it would be a good idea to limit the raze option to a one time raze in a small area around the new claimflag, so you free up the space for your own base but not raze every player on the island.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

While I agree that not everyone is gonna want to spend gold on the raze,After playing mmo's both pve and pvp since they were almost created I can tell you from bitter experience that some big bored companies are gonna love the idea and use it to annoy the hell outa other players,human nature is always the same.What bothers me more is the direction this game is turning when it comes to pve.If you do get everything destroyed you're gonna want revenge somehow right?So will a game mechanic  come in to offer you that chance?After all they would only be giving people something they will be asking for.If and it might not happen,but if it does,what then will pve really be?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The funny side of this, is people who don't play.. think people who do, will grind out 25k just to grief someone... seriously..

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One of the biggest disconnects I see is that landowners feel that tenants don't contribute much of anything to the island itself. Which, with the current gold upkeep cost is pretty much true.  Lets face the fact that a lot of us aren't landowners because we don't want to have to worry about the gold grind.

If the cost was changed to X amount of each of the 3 basic resources per day, then the tax on harvesting would actually be a useful contribution to the island's upkeep, and more settlers would equal less time grinding for resources to pay the upkeep cost for the owner.

If the dev team is completely married to the idea of wanting to give the landowners the ability to raze the island, what about giving each tenant company a  small number of sub-claim flags - 3-5 or so on each island - that are about the side of the original claim flags, and can be placed on the island, with similar rules to building now, with the landlord having the ability to quash the claim within 24 hours of it being placed, to prevent people from blocking resources and doing other stupidity, and the landowner sould still demo structures within the claim for 24 hrs, etc...but if the island gets razed, only the objects outside claim flags get poofed?

That way, you get the landowner having the joy and power of island ownership, while the tenants get some measure of protection.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, Martyn said:

The funny side of this, is people who don't play.. think people who do, will grind out 25k just to grief someone... seriously..

There's a lot of people with a lot of gold in PvE just waiting to be wasted on stuff. Anyone can be almost certain that there are people in this community that WILL spend 25k to grief people. They won't need to grind it out as they already have it.

And stop with the "people who don't play". I play the game, pretty much 99% of the people in this thread play. Your arrogance over the fact you play 16 hours a day 6 days a week while the rest of us have full time employment and can't play 6 days in a row is disgusting.

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This should never have been the option at these prices - won't comment on PvP but PvE should have been a bunch more expensive or should have been that price per company to erase or a better option would have been a list of structure collections with check boxes - would not have been a very long list - that could be selected for destruction. By structure collection I mean structure with the same components ignoring layout so for example a floor plus a pillar plus a ceiling would be a single entry in the list regardless of what order they were placed / built and how many there were of them. Ideally the list would show how many of each collection there were and the number of pieces in the collection. This would quickly show the spam collections (high count of collections with low component count) vs base buildings (low / single count of collection with high component count). Take this list and assign a price to each collection (low component count = low cost, high component count = high cost, perhaps base it on one component = 1 gold) with a total showing at the top for what it's gonna cost. Remember the price is for a collection regardless of how many copies of that collection there are - 500 single foundation spams cost 1 gold to cleanup all, not 1 x 500. Typical cleanup would cost less than 100 gold with this scheme and island would be cleaned up without nuking it and without pissing everyone off.

If you put a limit on the number of components in a collection this could always be an option for settlement owners - so "that" guy that keeps refreshing his single pillar spam's all over the island can be dealt with forever even if he keeps coming back and doing it again. My guess is they will simply stop doing it in the first place since they will know how easy and cheap it is cleanup.

This is just too easy to abuse - probably only a few people will ever use it and those are the one's that won't for warn the reasonable people on the island and that's just gonna leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. I can tell you I would never have started playing this game had I known this was gonna be an option, was one of the first things I asked when my friends told me about it and wanted me to play too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
25 minutes ago, Martyn said:

The funny side of this, is people who don't play.. think people who do, will grind out 25k just to grief someone... seriously..

Oh they will believe me. Lack of content in the game right now only makes way for this to happen.

I mean large companies who have reached all there is to do in the game will hit a brick wall moment and have all this gold sitting in the box thinking why am Ii doing this? Nothing to spend it on and sitting there doing nothing.

I have around 50k in the box, it might not sound alot but I play on my own and have amassed that through maps, I got 12k in 1 day before on double gold. Ii could have had alot more reaching to 100k or more if I wanted, it's not hard to get gold in this game if you're advanced enough.

We are not saying all companies will do this but some will use it for the fun of it and watch everything go in the blink of an eye, it will happen and the bad outweighs the good with this mechanic of raze.

They have not thought through with this idea, just threw it in there. They need to reconsider this option or only keep it in PvP. It seems more people hate it than want it but as next week comes it will be to late, we'll see how many people lose their stuff and be up in arms over it but by then the damage is done and they've left the game.

Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...