I feel like there is a giant inbalance between the lawless and island capturing sides of Atlas

[Decado 12]

Straight up let me say – you’ll likely disagree with me instantly and that’s absolutely fine but I want to say my piece anyway. I find this topic really tricky to put into words that match my thoughts on it, but I’ll try regardless.

And before I say anything – yes, it’s lawless, but I find that answer to be a cop-out.

To start – since Atlas went into early access, I’ve played solo, in small companies of only several members, and been part of a very large company. I’ve lived in lawless and on islands owned by a larger company, and rented from a company and enjoyed relative safety.

My be all or end all preference for Atlas – or where I like to live and play essentially, is in lawless. But I feel there is a giant inbalance between the lawless side of the game and captured islands and that is essentially what I want to write about today. I’m not seeking anything here other than to provide my 2cents on the topic as I find one of the best parts of the game to be the most frustrating and eventually unplayable due to this issue.

Living in lawless is bloody dangerous and that’s why I love it. Similar to Rust, I like to live with the constant threat of danger – where anytime I step outside my base door there might be someone waiting for me there. Or I might be building, or farming, or anything and at any time can be attacked. I need this threat of danger to sustain my interest, and it’s why I could never play PVE.

Over time I’ve noticed that little communities pop up in the different lawless zones. They’re not as bad as people make out – where you’ll see familiar faces in the chat who talk, trade and most importantly, often help each other when someone is causing trouble or raiding coastlines. I’ve made some completely random good friends in these zones – one of the best being a guy who was raiding me every time I was offline, who I’d in turn raid when I logged on (and he was off) and vice versa. This went back and forth until we were finally on together, had a chat and a laugh and formed a really tight ingame friendship. We started to even assist each other when raided.

But the problem with raiding as always – 90% of the time the bigger raids come from players living outside of lawless, and this is where the problem lies.

Players in lawless often attack each other. While I mention the above communities forming and the like, it is still very much lawless. There’s regular fighting on the beaches, raiding of bases, destroying of ships and the like, but at a much smaller scale than the larger company conflicts in the held island world.

But what happens regularly is these conflicts aren’t won or lost by lawless vs lawless players, they’re well equipped players on well equipped ships sailing in from adjoining or nearby island grids and wiping the lawless players clean – only to disappear again to wherever they came from. I know this as I’ve done it myself – I’ve been a bastard at times and resolved an issue in lawless by bringing across a ship heavy with cannons from the safe island it was anchored at. A safe island that would never be found as I was renting on it.

While I admit to this and it is admittedly somewhat shameful, I am forced to rent on an island if I want to partake in Atlas’s ship side of the game because quite frankly, it is impossible to keep a ship alive overnight in lawless. Any bases near the water get pulverised by visitors from grids that are often safe at the time they’re raiding. Any ships meet a similar fate – where walled harbours are possible, they’re also particularly easy to penetrate with a proper warship.

While there are medium to very large companies who do spend a lot of their time raiding other held islands, there is a vast number of players who choose to raid in lawless for the precise reason I mentioned above – they can do so without repercussion. In a lot of cases they won’t even loot, just happy to sink someones ship and bail to the safety of wherever the hell they came from.

Now the alternative is to simply not live in lawless. If I want ships to have a chance at being not sunk, I rely on there being a raid timer that offers safety for at least part of the day. But then at the same time, I’m living in a base that’s likewise safe and feels suddenly and very much to me like a PVE experience. As I said above, I just can’t do PVE, it is just not for me.

I love lawless but find it is a land of empty docks and ruined bases. The whole ‘its lawless’ throwaway line just doesn’t cut it for me. Lawless is a fantastic playground for new players, solos and smaller companies but it’s not these people who are the danger but those sailing in from other grids. To me there’s a sizeable balancing issue there and IMO it’s ruining one of the best parts of Atlas – the lawless grids.

I don’t know what the solution is, but in a perfect world (for me) – those living in lawless would be contending with people in lawless, and those living on islands where half their day is safe, should instead be raiding other islands and not able to wreak unchecked havoc in lawless.

It would be a different story if there was an actual means of keeping ships alive in Lawless overnight and those visiting from other grids had some actual challenge waiting for them. I’d much rather see ships anchored about the islands rather than just wrecks, in progress builds or empty harbours.

Thanks for reading and again, no issues at all if you disagree.

[lordkhan4444 113]

totally agree with you I have been playing from day 1 and have lived everywhere in this game. by far lawless is the most fun. but every so often megas come in and crush all of us while we sleep. would love to see a change here. I think just giving lawless a single claim flag so they can have 15 hour safe timers  would not hurt the game at all but help it a lot. I see people all the time that leave lawless to go to claim land only to come back a few days later and say it sucks I prefer lawless.

[Sleepinator2000 87]

I think the imbalance you are referring to is from the one-sided nature of safety timer versus no safety timer. I get that you like to live in fear, which is all well and good when you are actively in game, but a whole different story when it comes to offlining. Two thoughts there:

1. Perhaps the devs could introduce an arbitrary, unchangeable peace timer for Lawless islands, and have them all be different, but with more of them focused around the peak player times. Part of selecting an island in the first place would be considering what times are best for you to defend your stuff, versus offlining. This would have the bonus effect of getting players with similar playtimes/timezones/locations to join together geographically, and make a tighter community of each island.
2. Perhaps instead of the above, attacks against structures and anchored boats could somehow be mitigated or prevented from players while their home island is invulnerable to attack. I assume this would require a player to select a "home" island to base their character from, and couldn't just be changed on a whim for companies who own multiple islands. Not as strong an idea as #1 above, but at least there is quid-pro-quo of vulnerability when island owners descend from their ivory towers.

[DannyUK 308]

I've never played PvP because I think its more for large companies which I don't like, I like to own my own things and feel what I'm working for is myself and not someone sitting at the top of a big company.

This is another reason to scrap companies and go with factions where everyone can watch each others backs but not tied into large company.

I play PvE and its fun, you still have dangers from animals but yes you won't have danger from other players. I really hope they go down a faction route and maybe have PvE and PvP on 1 server splitting the big map for this.

[Decado 12]

12 hours ago, DannyUK said:

I've never played PvP because I think its more for large companies which I don't like, I like to own my own things and feel what I'm working for is myself and not someone sitting at the top of a big company.

This is another reason to scrap companies and go with factions where everyone can watch each others backs but not tied into large company.

I play PvE and its fun, you still have dangers from animals but yes you won't have danger from other players. I really hope they go down a faction route and maybe have PvE and PvP on 1 server splitting the big map for this.

You could do something like this with the Freeport aspect of the game - if they expanded upon it. I have zero issues with people playing PVE - but my personal preference is I prefer the danger. But it's not just that, I also like to raid and fight and steal - you know, all the good piratey things. What i do resent though is when that kind of game is basically shat on from people who aren't living in that kind of environment. It's like playing a game like Rust - a vicious dog eat dog environment, but having a portion of the playerbase living in zones where their bases are safe, so they can selectively choose what they're willing to risk losing when they venture out on a raid - as opposed to always having everything at risk, if that makes sense.

In Atlas - that's exactly how things play out. Yes islands can be at risk too, but far less so than Lawless. Lawless is a game unto itself, and for many people it's the preferred way to play, BUT - and the real point of my bringing this up - the reason it's so bad isnt from other lawless folks, it's from people coming in from other grids, other safe island grids and cleaning house. If these people were in adjoining lawless grids, it would be a completely different story. People tend to be more cautious raiding when their own assets are vulnerable, but this whole lawless vs non-lawless aspect of the game, to me at least, there's a huge inbalance there.

 

 

[Humble 0]

While I think the Offline raids are cancerous as always you should not have all the benefits of owning a isle with none of the negatives. You wouldn't have to pay upkeep for the isle or risk declaiming flags or war declarations. Lawless could use some love but I entirely disagree about any 100% safe peace timers for lawless.

As for making attackers tagged to their peace timer that is even worse as only those who are NA could attack NA players and the Asian/Russian/Euro/Other players wouldn't be able to raid or attack those outside their time zones at all. Which is a major part of the politics and wars in the PvP servers. Please don't castrate the PvP Server wars.

At most I could potentially argue a "Peace Phase Timer" that instead of making your stuff invulnerable like claimed isles does. Instead as an example it increases resistance or straight health by say 100%. So 10,000 health stone pieces have 20k Health when your peace timers are active. Or increased resistances for half incoming damage done.

Nonetheless if you don't fight for and defend a claimable isle I don't believe you should have 100% safety. It's a lawless zone and you can always fight for an isle or join a smaller alliance / trade to gain possession of an isle.

Take this post with a grain of salt.

 

I personally always thought lawless was for newer players to get their bearings before joining the rest of the game. Otherwise they'd have no safe place to learn/develop as most would immediately burn the randoms off their claimed isles ASAP. The island claim system is how the game is suppose to be.

The system isn't meant to be pvp balanced cause you weren't suppose to permanently live there afaik. It's a literal stop gap area for new groups/new people coming into the game. Otherwise they'd be stuck in freeport until they joined a crew/alliance who owned an isle.

 

 

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by Humble
Mistakes were made

[Mr. Rogers 1]

I know the devs mentioned this awhile ago but how about merging the pve side and pvp side of things.  I play PvE as I play solo and I don't have time to babysit buildings and ships in pvp.   My solution is have the PvE map with the full benefits of safety but then make 10% of the grids full player PvP.  That way players can build bigger and better ships then sail into a pvp zone to duke it out with other players. 

[eeeceee 116]

13 hours ago, Mr. Rogers said:

I know the devs mentioned this awhile ago but how about merging the pve side and pvp side of things.  I play PvE as I play solo and I don't have time to babysit buildings and ships in pvp.   My solution is have the PvE map with the full benefits of safety but then make 10% of the grids full player PvP.  That way players can build bigger and better ships then sail into a pvp zone to duke it out with other players. 

Then go back to your carebear realm..... what is the point of pvp at this stage? What is this sea of thieves game hmmmm

edit: lol full player pvp 10%

Edited December 20, 2019 by eeeceee

[Mr. Rogers 1]

15 hours ago, eeeceee said:

Then go back to your carebear realm..... what is the point of pvp at this stage? What is this sea of thieves game hmmmm

edit: lol full player pvp 10%

 

You can still have your pvp server, I'm talking about creation of a new server with mixed pvp/pve.  The point is to try to create a more balanced pvp experience, not wait until a timer then offline another player and their base but travel into a zone where at any point you can be attacked ship sunk or maybe claimed by another company.  This also gives players the chance to build a stronger/ more durable ship and not have those locked behind large companies that play 24/7.  

To me this game is a pirate ship game, but creating a game that you are forced to play every day for 7-8hrs to make sure you don't lose your progress doesn't appeal to a lot of people.  Steam active users has around 6k daily players split between private, official pve and official pvp.  down from 50k 1 year ago.

I've played 24/7 capture point pvp for the last 8 years, not full loot like atlas but in every game the same topic comes up and that's coverage.  You had to have a team for US West coast, US east coast, EU, Asia and Pacific.  Didn't need to be a lot of people but for EU thru Pacific if you have 10-15 people you could give the start of US prime time a huge advantage. 

 

If you want to hold discussion offer solutions and counter points. the original post talks about the danger of base building when it can be destroyed at any time, but at the same time you cant keep a ship since its destroyed every night.  My solution was a mix map, place to build ships in safety and a place to fight.  10% pvp zone is just a number can be 50/50 40/60 or anything.  Could make a circular map pve on the outer 4 zones with H8 replaced with an island with all resources on it and no safe timer ( aka king of the hill company that holds it the longest per month get a shout out from the devs in a post or something)  As you move closer to the center safe timers get shorter etc. spice things up

 

[Vegeta7Senpai 2]

On 12/17/2019 at 8:53 PM, Decado said:

Straight up let me say – you’ll likely disagree with me instantly and that’s absolutely fine but I want to say my piece anyway. I find this topic really tricky to put into words that match my thoughts on it, but I’ll try regardless.

And before I say anything – yes, it’s lawless, but I find that answer to be a cop-out.

To start – since Atlas went into early access, I’ve played solo, in small companies of only several members, and been part of a very large company. I’ve lived in lawless and on islands owned by a larger company, and rented from a company and enjoyed relative safety.

My be all or end all preference for Atlas – or where I like to live and play essentially, is in lawless. But I feel there is a giant inbalance between the lawless side of the game and captured islands and that is essentially what I want to write about today. I’m not seeking anything here other than to provide my 2cents on the topic as I find one of the best parts of the game to be the most frustrating and eventually unplayable due to this issue.

Living in lawless is bloody dangerous and that’s why I love it. Similar to Rust, I like to live with the constant threat of danger – where anytime I step outside my base door there might be someone waiting for me there. Or I might be building, or farming, or anything and at any time can be attacked. I need this threat of danger to sustain my interest, and it’s why I could never play PVE.

Over time I’ve noticed that little communities pop up in the different lawless zones. They’re not as bad as people make out – where you’ll see familiar faces in the chat who talk, trade and most importantly, often help each other when someone is causing trouble or raiding coastlines. I’ve made some completely random good friends in these zones – one of the best being a guy who was raiding me every time I was offline, who I’d in turn raid when I logged on (and he was off) and vice versa. This went back and forth until we were finally on together, had a chat and a laugh and formed a really tight ingame friendship. We started to even assist each other when raided.

But the problem with raiding as always – 90% of the time the bigger raids come from players living outside of lawless, and this is where the problem lies.

Players in lawless often attack each other. While I mention the above communities forming and the like, it is still very much lawless. There’s regular fighting on the beaches, raiding of bases, destroying of ships and the like, but at a much smaller scale than the larger company conflicts in the held island world.

But what happens regularly is these conflicts aren’t won or lost by lawless vs lawless players, they’re well equipped players on well equipped ships sailing in from adjoining or nearby island grids and wiping the lawless players clean – only to disappear again to wherever they came from. I know this as I’ve done it myself – I’ve been a bastard at times and resolved an issue in lawless by bringing across a ship heavy with cannons from the safe island it was anchored at. A safe island that would never be found as I was renting on it.

While I admit to this and it is admittedly somewhat shameful, I am forced to rent on an island if I want to partake in Atlas’s ship side of the game because quite frankly, it is impossible to keep a ship alive overnight in lawless. Any bases near the water get pulverised by visitors from grids that are often safe at the time they’re raiding. Any ships meet a similar fate – where walled harbours are possible, they’re also particularly easy to penetrate with a proper warship.

While there are medium to very large companies who do spend a lot of their time raiding other held islands, there is a vast number of players who choose to raid in lawless for the precise reason I mentioned above – they can do so without repercussion. In a lot of cases they won’t even loot, just happy to sink someones ship and bail to the safety of wherever the hell they came from.

Now the alternative is to simply not live in lawless. If I want ships to have a chance at being not sunk, I rely on there being a raid timer that offers safety for at least part of the day. But then at the same time, I’m living in a base that’s likewise safe and feels suddenly and very much to me like a PVE experience. As I said above, I just can’t do PVE, it is just not for me.

I love lawless but find it is a land of empty docks and ruined bases. The whole ‘its lawless’ throwaway line just doesn’t cut it for me. Lawless is a fantastic playground for new players, solos and smaller companies but it’s not these people who are the danger but those sailing in from other grids. To me there’s a sizeable balancing issue there and IMO it’s ruining one of the best parts of Atlas – the lawless grids.

I don’t know what the solution is, but in a perfect world (for me) – those living in lawless would be contending with people in lawless, and those living on islands where half their day is safe, should instead be raiding other islands and not able to wreak unchecked havoc in lawless.

It would be a different story if there was an actual means of keeping ships alive in Lawless overnight and those visiting from other grids had some actual challenge waiting for them. I’d much rather see ships anchored about the islands rather than just wrecks, in progress builds or empty harbours.

Thanks for reading and again, no issues at all if you disagree.

Wish there were more islands to claim on pve