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boomervoncannon

A modest proposal regarding the land claim system

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2 minutes ago, Realist said:

If they do end up keeping claims(which they shouldn’t), but if they do what they need to do is make the larger company it’s want the larger islands. As it is I think gold upkeep for a claim is stupid as well so a good way to combat this would be to lower the gold up keep of every single island regardless of size by 90%. 

Yep, every single island dirt cheap. I am talking so even a solo player can go get the biggest island out there. Then you can start seeing the larger companies actually getting the larger island and the smaller companies could get the smaller islands that are currently occupied by the bigger companies.

you might say well that would make the upkeep system worthless? Well to me it already is worthless, but this way the 50 gold per 12 hours for the biggest islands in the game could still keep the people that like the up keep quite because the upkeep would still be there.

though I am sure we would still hear. “We are not paying enough upkeep, we want more chores” lol

The larger conpanies are not taking the large islands, not because of the cost but because multiple smaller islands have a greater range of recourses.

You would first need to either, encorage them to claim larger islands or discorage them from claiming smaller islands.

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10 minutes ago, Jack Shandy said:

The larger conpanies are not taking the large islands, not because of the cost but because multiple smaller islands have a greater range of recourses.

You would first need to either, encorage them to claim larger islands or discorage them from claiming smaller islands.

Perfect. I believe the largest islands should have every single resource on it maybe except for tundra on tropical and vice versa.

snaller islands have only a few different resources. I think that could get them packing real quick.

Edited by Realist

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54 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

What I mean is that what happens when the number of players grows to the point there is no land left to claim? The inherent problem is you’re suggesting doling out quantities of a thing which does not fluctuate to a thing that does. Unless player activity never fluctuates significantly, this approach would encounter structural problems at some point.

Assuming the game is that populated, they would have to add islands or a new server.  It's not a bad problem to have.

What's the alternative, also assuming the game is that populated?  Using your original example, not everyone gets to own land, people build wherever they can, and landowners complain to GMs that people are spamming their island, and people complain they have nowhere to build.  There is no scenario under which land, a finite resource, doesn't run out on a heavily populated server and produce a result of people having nowhere to build.

Meatsammich did some math back in the early days of claim discussions and found that really decent sized claims, limited by person and company would produce enough land for everyone 4 or 5 times over, back when the servers had a good number of regular players on them.

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20 minutes ago, Realist said:

Perfect. I believe the largest islands should have every single resource on it maybe except for tundra on tropical and vice versa.

snaller islands have only a few different resources. I think that could get them packing real quick.

Yup, and ruin the point of any trade, traveling, the game.

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25 minutes ago, Jack Shandy said:

Yup, and ruin the point of any trade, traveling, the game.

How much of that is going on anyways? Lol

They should worry about getting more people back in and then worry about all the other stuff

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32 minutes ago, Jack Shandy said:

Yup, and ruin the point of any trade, traveling, the game.

Yeah @Realist, this is one of those things where your lack of actual gameplay experience becomes a hindrance. One thing you may be unaware of, which is a key way Atlas is not like Ark, is the presence of mat categories rather than just mats. There isn't just wood for example, there are six different kinds of wood. in a given grid only one or possibly two of those types can be found, and in order to obtain all six of a mat category, one typically needs to travel over a fairly broad portion of the map, or trade with parties bringing them from other areas. 

This is important because the crafting doesn't just require more wood as you go up in quality, for each step up the ladder in crafting quality (green, blue, pink, yellow, aqua), an additional type of mat within the category is required, thus aqua or mythic quality requires all six kinds of wood, metal, fiber etc. This is a core way that the game's mechanics encourage travel and trade, and to the extent that any change makes the scope of travel to obtain a wider variety of mats less, it undermines this core mechanic.

5 minutes ago, Realist said:

How much of that is going on anyways? Lol

They should worry about getting more people back in and then worry about all the other stuff

Getting people back in won't help in the long run if you do so by undermining your core design concepts, and it's by no means clear that the kind of change you mentioned would automatically bring people in, while it's absolutely certain it would undermine the mechanic

Edited by boomervoncannon
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2 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Yeah @Realist, this is one of those things where your lack of actual gameplay experience becomes a hindrance. One thing you may be unaware of, which is a key way Atlas is not like Ark, is the presence of mat categories rather than just mats. There isn't just wood for example, there are six different kinds of wood. in a given grid only one or possibly two of those types can be found, and in order to obtain all six of a mat category, one typically needs to travel over a fairly broad portion of the map, or trade with parties bringing them from other areas. 

This is important because the crafting doesn't just require more wood as you go up in quality, for each step up the ladder in crafting quality (green, blue, pink, yellow, aqua), an additional type of mat within the category is required, thus aqua or mythic quality requires all six kinds of wood, metal, fiber etc. This is a core way that the game's mechanics encourage travel and trade, and to the extent that any change makes the scope of travel to obtain a wider variety of mats less, it undermines this core mechanic.

I completely realize that boomer and already knew a good portion of it.

i just didn’t care about it. They brought in the upkeep and know people aren’t using it right. Believe me I still stand by my getting rid of claims and gold upkeep but my suggestion was to get the bigger companies where they belong on the bigger islands and if we have to put extra types of mats over there to do it then oh well.

i really don’t think this game will be winning any awards for “best economy in a game” anytime soon so I don’t mind putting most of the resources on the big islands to incentivize people moving there

@Jack Shandy also said that the gold upkeep wasn’t the issue so that was the work around for that. I still think what I said about lower the upkeep(of it must stay) to at least a 90% cut in cost so the smaller companies could actually obtain them then that would be fine to.

bottom line is what there is now is not working. I am giving suggestions while others are saying it is fine. It surely is not fine because there is a reason the pop is so low. The ones that say it is fine are all that is left.

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35 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

Assuming the game is that populated, they would have to add islands or a new server.  It's not a bad problem to have.

What's the alternative, also assuming the game is that populated?  Using your original example, not everyone gets to own land, people build wherever they can, and landowners complain to GMs that people are spamming their island, and people complain they have nowhere to build.  There is no scenario under which land, a finite resource, doesn't run out on a heavily populated server and produce a result of people having nowhere to build.

Meatsammich did some math back in the early days of claim discussions and found that really decent sized claims, limited by person and company would produce enough land for everyone 4 or 5 times over, back when the servers had a good number of regular players on them.

Okay now I think I have a better grasp of it now that you pointed that out. It would essentially be the system the game started with, but with a key change: each player only gets one claim flag, right? Players in the same company could string their claims together, and you're proposing that each player or company in the case of combined claims, have complete control over structures within their claim. I can certainly see the appeal of the simplicity of that system, and given what Jat has already posted to the thread, I would think it would appeal to the developers too. 

Under such a system I think the key point of contention would become how long before a player absence results in lose of claim. That could become tricky in it's own right, but certainly seems a more straightforward problem that could be attcked with backend data mining by the devs. I think I'm with you now. It certainly sounds like an overall improvement.

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6 minutes ago, Realist said:

I completely realize that boomer and already knew a good portion of it.

i just didn’t care about it. They brought in the upkeep and know people aren’t using it right. Believe me I still stand by my getting rid of claims and gold upkeep but my suggestion was to get the bigger companies where they belong on the bigger islands and if we have to put extra types of mats over there to do it then oh well.

i really don’t think this game will be winning any awards for “best economy in a game” anytime soon so I don’t mind putting most of the resources on the big islands to incentivize people moving there

@Jack Shandy also said that the gold upkeep wasn’t the issue so that was the work around for that. I still think what I said about lower the upkeep(of it must stay) to at least a 90% cut in cost so the smaller companies could actually obtain them then that would be fine to.

bottom line is what there is now is not working. I am giving suggestions while others are saying it is fine. It surely is not fine because there is a reason the pop is so low. The ones that say it is fine are all that is left.

You may not care about it, but you're not yet playing. I've been playing since day one and this innovation is imo, one of the single best design aspects of Atlas. Saying "I don't think the game will win any awards for best economy" A) doesn't carry much weight imo coming from someone who both hasn't played a minute of it, and B) who has stated numerous times in the past that economy isn't an aspect of gaming he cares about. You're just dismissing the ramifications of the change because you personally are indifferent. Your comment is kind of like me saying "I don't give a crap if all buildings look like poo, they just exist to store stuff." when I know one of your favorite things to do ingame is build.

Come up with a different way to incentivize people living on large islands. Winter Thorne's simple notion seems like it would work just fine and wouldn't have the detrimental effect you don't care about but many playing do.

Edited by boomervoncannon
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4 minutes ago, Realist said:

I completely realize that boomer and already knew a good portion of it.

i just didn’t care about it. They brought in the upkeep and know people aren’t using it right. Believe me I still stand by my getting rid of claims and gold upkeep but my suggestion was to get the bigger companies where they belong on the bigger islands and if we have to put extra types of mats over there to do it then oh well.

i really don’t think this game will be winning any awards for “best economy in a game” anytime soon so I don’t mind putting most of the resources on the big islands to incentivize people moving there

@Jack Shandy also said that the gold upkeep wasn’t the issue so that was the work around for that. I still think what I said about lower the upkeep(of it must stay) to at least a 90% cut in cost so the smaller companies could actually obtain them then that would be fine to.

bottom line is what there is now is not working. I am giving suggestions while others are saying it is fine. It surely is not fine because there is a reason the pop is so low. The ones that say it is fine are all that is left.

There's no reason to do all that and no reason to offer rewards to big companies which will be seen, somewhat rightly as another slap to small companies.

The game design is supposed to encourage the types of behavior you want and discourage other types of behavior.

For most of the things the game wants to discourage, the new twists are fairly straighforward - rules to not allow overloading boats, proposed rules to allow landowners to raze an island, etc.  There's no reason to make this more complicated than it has to be, with encouragements and enticements that won't be universally followed.  They didn't want single players to claim large islands, so they limited their island points to prevent them doing that.  If you don't want large companies having small islands, then don't allow large companies to claim small islands.  No need to get so coy and fancy with dangling shiny objects at them.  

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2 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

You may not care about it, but you're not yet playing. I've been playing since day one and this innovation is imo, one of the single best design aspects of Atlas. Saying "I don't think the game will win any awards for best economy" A) doesn't carry much weight imo coming from someone who both hasn't played a minute of it, and B) who has stated numerous times in the past that economy isn't an aspect of gaming he cares about. You're just dismissing the ramifications of the change because you personally are indifferent. Your comment is kind of like me saying "I don't give a crap if all buildings look like poo, they just exist to store stuff." when I know one of your favorite things to do ingame is build.

Come up with a different way to incentivize people living on large islands. Winter Thorne's simple notion seems like it would work just fine and wouldn't have the detrimental effect you don't care about but many playing do.

Is already did. Make the big islands cheaper. He’ll make every single island the same cost regardless of size. It is that simple.

that way nobody has to change the “mats” or the “trade”.

the gold upkeep is stupid in the first place so the best fix is to get rid of the upkeep at the very least, let alone claims, but to simplify everything. 3 options

1. Get rid of claims

2. Keep claims but get rid of upkeep

3. Make all islands the same cost regardless of size

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3 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

There's no reason to do all that and no reason to offer rewards to big companies which will be seen, somewhat rightly as another slap to small companies.

The game design is supposed to encourage the types of behavior you want and discourage other types of behavior.

For most of the things the game wants to discourage, the new twists are fairly straighforward - rules to not allow overloading boats, proposed rules to allow landowners to raze an island, etc.  There's no reason to make this more complicated than it has to be, with encouragements and enticements that won't be universally followed.  They didn't want single players to claim large islands, so they limited their island points to prevent them doing that.  If you don't want large companies having small islands, then don't allow large companies to claim small islands.  No need to get so coy and fancy with dangling shiny objects at them.  

To be honest the devs are pretty stupid for making this system in the first place. “The devs don’t want solos to own big islands” who cares what they want.

they are a business selling a good. If they want people to buy the good they need to have a good that people want.

solos should definitely be able to own a large island very easily since nobody else wants it.

as I said in my most recent post 3 options. Any of which would be 500% better than what they thought of.

 1. Get rid of claims

2. Keep claims but get rid of upkeep 

3. Make all islands the same cost regardless of size 

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1 minute ago, Realist said:

Is already did. Make the big islands cheaper. He’ll make every single island the same cost regardless of size. It is that simple.

that way nobody has to change the “mats” or the “trade”.

the gold upkeep is stupid in the first place so the best fix is to get rid of the upkeep at the very least, let alone claims, but to simplify everything. 3 options

1. Get rid of claims

2. Keep claims but get rid of upkeep

3. Make all islands the same cost regardless of size

I think Thorne's idea is the best. Give all players a single claim. Whether it has a modest upkeep or not imo doesn't matter that much as long as there is a decay timer for the player to lose their claim when they go inactive. upkeep beyond that is just a sink, and there are other sinks in the game. Making all islands the same cost isn't the way to go, it's give each player the ability to claim a bit of land, be it on big islands or small, and then let them decide where they want that bit to be. The rest will tend to sort itself, I think.

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6 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

I think Thorne's idea is the best. Give all players a single claim. Whether it has a modest upkeep or not imo doesn't matter that much as long as there is a decay timer for the player to lose their claim when they go inactive. upkeep beyond that is just a sink, and there are other sinks in the game. Making all islands the same cost isn't the way to go, it's give each player the ability to claim a bit of land, be it on big islands or small, and then let them decide where they want that bit to be. The rest will tend to sort itself, I think.

I think the 1 player one flag is completely fine. I didn’t bring that up because people have been wanting that for a long time now and the devs have already turned a blind eye to that so I am thinking of other things. I do like that you don’t care about upkeep though. I see that as very pointless  and it doesn’t bring immersion but forced content.

the one good thing about the 1 flag for one player is they could finally do away with the stupid island points. I would love that. So yeah really mine and thorne’s pretty much go hand in hand.

if everyone has one flag there is no need for any areas to be more expensive than the other. If it was, that would just be idiotic 

Edited by Realist

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1 minute ago, Realist said:

I think the 1 player one flag is completely fine. I didn’t bring that up because people have been wanting that for a long time now and the devs have already turned a blind eye to that so I am thinking of other things. I do like that you don’t care about upkeep though. I see that as very pointless  and it doesn’t bring immersion but forced content.

the one good thing about the 1 flag for one player is they could finally do away with the stupid island points. I would love that. So yeah really mine and thorne’s pretty much go hand in hand.

if everyone has one flag there is no need for any areas to be more expensive than the other. It is was, that would just be idiotic 

It's entirely possible that this is the direction things will go in the end, and maybe (pure speculation) the devs have been thinking it all along, but if you are gonna tinker with different concepts or approaches, the time to do it is early in your EA phase when tinkering will impact the fewest players anyway. Other than that, I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a legit reason they wouldn't favor this approach, and I got nuthin.

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3 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

It's entirely possible that this is the direction things will go in the end, and maybe (pure speculation) the devs have been thinking it all along, but if you are gonna tinker with different concepts or approaches, the time to do it is early in your EA phase when tinkering will impact the fewest players anyway. Other than that, I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a legit reason they wouldn't favor this approach, and I got nuthin.

They are almost out of “early” EA so they need to hurry up and implement it.

the main reason for this being is that if they do the one person/one flag thing with zero to small upkeep....... it will require another wipe.

but don’t freak out though. A wipe is the only thing that raised numbers before and if they are actually implementing a system that would work, it would be worth losing the people that would leave because of the wipe. I believe they are the problem anyways.

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Just to chuck something into the mix:

On our island (we are tenants), all the rich resources of which there are many and a discovery point are all on tops of realy high mountains. These are all open and accessable due to many wide ramps and bridges making all of these rich resouces available not just for them but for everybody.

It's not just our island others have access ramps to DP's and resources that are not close to bases.

This is the beauty of the build anywhere mechanic.

Also tempory taming pens, ramps to get to map locations, I want to be able to build anywhere on the fly, as an aid to conquering the game.

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14 minutes ago, Jack Shandy said:

Just to chuck something into the mix:

On our island (we are tenants), all the rich resources of which there are many and a discovery point are all on tops of realy high mountains. These are all open and accessable due to many wide ramps and bridges making all of these rich resouces available not just for them but for everybody.

It's not just our island others have access ramps to DP's and resources that are not close to bases.

This is the beauty of the build anywhere mechanic.

Also tempory taming pens, ramps to get to map locations, I want to be able to build anywhere on the fly, as an aid to conquering the game.

Not saying you do it but building anywhere on the fly is where the spam and lag is coming from. Again not saying you are but a lot of people do.

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37 minutes ago, crazywildfire said:

Not saying you do it but building anywhere on the fly is where the spam and lag is coming from. Again not saying you are but a lot of people do.

Yep, and there's the rub, from helpful landlords and conscientious tamers / treasure hunters, to spammers and make it and leave it idiots.

How to have one and not the other?

 

May be both of the above systems could work together:

Everyone gets flags limited by company size, large enough to build good sized base.

Island claim available same as it is now.

build anywhere is still in, except it has a very short decay timer - guess 6h - except island owners where decay is tied to the island claim flag + a few days in case of mistakes.

 

How's that sound?

 

 

 

Edited by Jack Shandy

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Maybe I over read it or something but ok lets say one flag per person. You get 10 people in your group so you got 10 flags. What if 5 of them leave and don't come back? You lose everything in those area? I mean If then not much difference then someone that wipes you out. Sure you still have things and not 100% wiped out but still would feel and act like a wipe. Maybe I missed something reading some of these thoughts idk.

I'm just one person out of many that play and hopefully one day many more. But certain things get put in place that makes me not play public and play on private servers. 

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4 hours ago, Winter Thorne said:

Assuming the game is that populated, they would have to add islands or a new server.  It's not a bad problem to have.

A modular map sounds like adding new grids is an easy solution

Already with the megapatch additions there is too much copy paste density.  It increased the GB requirements of each grid - and forced them to bring all the servers down so they could hardware upgrade, and similar density makes unofficials less feasible.

So lets say the add new biomes and want to add them to the sides.   The problem with that is the map is an atlas torus - those that settled on the east or west borders did so because it gave access to east and west.   Those settled in polar tundra had access to north and south polar tundra.      You have destroyed their previous sailing routes to their resources.  Might as well just wipe so that people can pick out new places for new maps.

adding islands means adding GB to each server while adding grids means breaking the existing atlas and wiping it.       But more population justifies it?   That only works if you expect population to increase and not die off as the game meta keeps getting trolled by the devs.....there is no monthly subscription nor monetization (maybe planned) so if the OG starts leaving then they are not recommended the game to friends to join and that starts the death spiral of no new income.

 

Edited by krazmuze

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18 hours ago, Jatheish said:

We don't plan to run our games that have live service aspect with No GMs, but we aren't a large team so we do like to focus on implementation that can minimize the workload on our GMs, so they can focus on other things.

@Jatheish I'm betting there are more than a few of us who are willing to assist in this kind of area who don't even need to be paid. Send me a t-shirt and I'll happily assist the awesome group of GM's you already have. Heck, I'd even be willing to work under that guy Voodoo.  We have a normal player account and a limited admin account. Our admin account only has the ability to invis, fast travel, and noclip.  We could do the initial investigation and then if some action needs to be taken we can elevate the request to a GM who can take action. I've admin'd multiple games like this and the system works.

 

People will volunteer to work for something they love and will do a great job. I'm a high school volleyball coach on the side and I always have graduated/graduating girls who are willing to assist with youth camps, practice, open gyms, etc. 

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2 hours ago, Jack Shandy said:

Just to chuck something into the mix:

On our island (we are tenants), all the rich resources of which there are many and a discovery point are all on tops of realy high mountains. These are all open and accessable due to many wide ramps and bridges making all of these rich resouces available not just for them but for everybody.

It's not just our island others have access ramps to DP's and resources that are not close to bases.

This is the beauty of the build anywhere mechanic.

Also tempory taming pens, ramps to get to map locations, I want to be able to build anywhere on the fly, as an aid to conquering the game.

Yes, I have always said that build anywhere is always the best option and that claims are really just limiting freedom.

a true sandbox would be build anywhere. This is far from a sandbox 

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2 minutes ago, Realist said:

Yes, I have always said that build anywhere is always the best option and that claims are really just limiting freedom.

a true sandbox would be build anywhere. This is far from a sandbox 

By doing this you are creating even more spam that leads to even more lag. Sounds great on paper but the spam and lag is bad enough with the flags.

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2 hours ago, Jack Shandy said:

May be both of the above systems could work together:

Everyone gets flags limited by company size, large enough to build good sized base.

Island claim available same as it is now.

build anywhere is still in, except it has a very short decay timer - guess 6h - except island owners where decay is tied to the island claim flag + a few days in case of mistakes.

 

I'm not sure how you could have both systems in place at the same time.  If people are claiming islands, then how is someone supposed to do a flag claim?

"Build anywhere" is just a bad mechanic.  It's too griefer prone.  If you have a working claims system you don't need it.

 

1 hour ago, crazywildfire said:

Maybe I over read it or something but ok lets say one flag per person. You get 10 people in your group so you got 10 flags. What if 5 of them leave and don't come back? You lose everything in those area? I mean If then not much difference then someone that wipes you out. Sure you still have things and not 100% wiped out but still would feel and act like a wipe. Maybe I missed something reading some of these thoughts idk.

I'm just one person out of many that play and hopefully one day many more. But certain things get put in place that makes me not play public and play on private servers. 

As far as I know, this is something that isn't even worked out yet for the current claim mechanic.  It should be though, assuming players come back.  If there's a calculation that runs every month or every 2 months that checks the company size against the claim size, it could reduce or expand the claim size for each company and make that the current allowed size.  If the players know that's coming on the 1st of every month they get 48 hours or so to replant their flags, they can adjust accordingly.  If you're a smart company leader, you make sure all your important stuff is in a central location, and if you have to reduce, you preserve that.  It's nothing close to a wipe.  Not even close to the raze feature they were going to roll out.   You have control over your company, you can see what's happening with the size, you can control how your base is built, etc.

 

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