Do NOT underestimate how attached people will be to their ships! This is NOT ARK.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

1 hour ago, LaiTash said:

Most people (in large corps, but hey small corps isn't really a thing, not for long at least) aren't involved in any powerplay, intrigue, and politics. They are lucky to  be in a corp that lets it's low-ranked members even know about the future plans of the dude owning the guild. You are being told to gather fiber and you go and gather the stupid fiber hoping you'll be allowed to have some pvp fun in the future. If there's no pvp for a week long you quit. So large guilds basically have to randomly kill everyone on sight to keep slaves happy.

Which is why I found that the best game experience was on unofficial servers that had rules governing game play.  PvP was allowed, and even encouraged, but killing tames, especially passive tames, just to kill them, is discouraged.  Base wiping just to base wipe, is discouraged.  In most of those servers, if you pissed off enough people, they would ally, and wipe you.  Call it, PvP with a Gentleman's sense of fair play.  And it's not a bad thing, because you don't really want to run people off.  Empty servers are boring.

I left containers inside the base unlocked, so they realize they can save their C4, and I keep what they didn't take.  I mean, if they are in, they are in and they are taking what they want.  I saw no value in locking those containers.  It just means that even what they were willing to leave behind, is now going to be gone too, if they have to blow up the container or crafting station to get into it.

[Thana 6]

I love so many of these suggestions! Devs please look!

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

A good suggestion would be to put all of the Megas on the same server.  Make the other server(s) for smaller Companies, and limit their size.  I do know I will stop buying these kinds of games if they only cater to large streamers.

Another thing would be for gamers themselves to wake up and stop playing the role of slave just to be involved with the streamer.  You are in effect, agreeing to be the house boy for some low level celebrity.  I would think that most men would have enough pride in themselves than to allow themselves to be a slave.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

20 hours ago, Sulfurblade said:

1) Of course pirates want to sink ships.  Your version of a pirate may not want too but the chinese version of a pirate can you speak for them?  Or the steamer version of a pirate?  Or the hordes or 'Rust players and Dayz players pretending to be Pirates?  Of course there going to attempt to sink your ship.  If people will suicide ships to destroy mining barges in Eve you can be sure that many Pirates will sink your ship in Atlas!

2) Your Welcome

3) So Your initial safe harbor idea could work if its limited too ONE Flag ship a status a Guild / Company could give one of there ships and if its inside of there claim will be invulnerable but not its containers on the inside...  This is as far as I am willing to bend for you on this issue!

4) Star Wars Galaxies did the limited skills flawlessly they however gave you two characters so you weren't limited to being a crafter only etc...  I would like to see that here!  You need skill limitation to enhance the community's need to trade and barter!

5) I want the game to be challenging, resource gathering should be difficult building a galleon should be extremely difficult...  Like on the order of a capital ship in Eve difficult!

7) Rafts can carry plenty just level it up...  I frequently haul stuff from the safe zone to my home in the tundra like Fiber...

8  ) I think you dont realize why that SotD exists its the normal water borne PvE there is a Rare ship in game that makes you crap your pants the Ghost Ship these are two different things!!!

9) I am not playing this game for the PvP, and as it stands PvP on the water is not that big of an issue infact its nearly non existant the map is very large and pvp very easy to avoid if you have any knowledge of sailing...

10) Your welcome

 

1. We are talking about real Pirates.  Real Pirates did not prefer a fight, and modified their ships to be stealthier and faster.  They tipped their ships more often than the Royal Navy did...a lot more often.  Why?  Speed.  Speed is life.  They did these things so they could avoid a fight with the Government Navies.  And the whole point of raising the Jolly Roger...The Black, was to give the opposing ship the opportunity to cooperate.  This is true for all pirates.  They are after the cargo, not a fight.  How they act, however, is dependent upon how the governments, and companies they are raiding, act.  In Asia, it is possible they fought more, if the code their was a lifetime of dishonor for losing a ship to pirates.  I have not researched the pirates of that area of the world...just the Caribbean Pirates.   The point here, is that the game can reward and encourage this type of play, through that reputation system.  The one that even you agreed would be good.  The point here is that gamers do what works, and stop doing what does not work.  I have seen this time and again over decades of gaming.  I have seen a Devs hard work be made pointless, because the Dev team didn't take into account that, for instance, a turret on a bomber will not be used, if it can't destroy an enemy plane, and the enemy planes won't respect it if it is not a danger to them.

2. Your and You're   To help you since I like you. 

3. A PvP game is more fun when it's actually PvP.  Have you noticed that you can't just claim somebody's territory that has a building on it, with somebody sleeping inside?  You have to actually kill them.   That is at least a step in the right direction.  ORP should be a thing.  It can be set differently.  On most servers, it did not prohibit offline raids, but it did make it a whole lot more expensive.  The defensive turrets get a buff, and structures get a buff.  Once you log back on, that buff goes away.  The enemy is not unaware of the buff, and they are not unaware when it is deactivated.  If you prefer PvP, and not PvE disguised as PvP, you would be advised to bend a little further.

4. You do not need skill trees to enhance trading and bartering.  You need what's already in the game, along with more incentives to trade based on YOUR Island having what others need, but not having everything you need.  These skill trees do nothing but limit what you can do.  So I will only play on an unofficial server that boosts you skill points so that you aren't locked into a small area of the game, which means I have more fun.  I already see the handwriting on the wall...the official servers will be a mess of restricted gameplay, and toxicity.  Those who actually want to enjoy the game will avoid it.

5. People did not come here to play ARK.  They came for the ships.  If the Devs fail to understand this, it will end up being a niche game with  small community.  The more you keep people off those ships, the less inclined they will be to play it.  That would be like keeping people off T-Rexes, Gigas, Wyverns, and Quetzals.  People would have stopped playing.  Taming them was somewhat challenging, but not frustrating.  It didn't take you long to get them.   At least not on unofficial servers.   Making them take long on official simply punishes those who come to the game late.  The problem is thinking you can mix Single player game time progression with an MMORPG.  If you are going to do that, you better have some New Player Servers for people to level up on, before they go to the main arena.

7.  No, Rafts do not carry much.  Three people on a raft with their combined hauls equals that raft isn't going anywhere.  We always have to dump part of our loads on the ground.  Even with boosting the carry weight of the raft.  Even if we all use our own raft, this is the case.  But that's realistic.  You aren't going to carry much metal on a raft.  Then you add in that you go with the wind going from one spot on the island, to fighting the wind on the return trip.  And how will that help us, since our base is in the middle of a large island.  Still takes a lot of trips to get everything to the base, from our port area?  We thought about taming elephants, but pray tell, how do you get any animal onto a ship?  Elephants are not on our Island.  This game is a long way from Prime Time.

8.  The PvE ships should have been Pirate ships with something distinct about them that makes them recognizable.  In addition, for the Pirates in the crowd, there should be NPC Merchants to chase and sink, with them even giving up randomly if they take enough damage.  Those SotD should still be more rare than they are, as they are not something anyone is going to fight right now.  Have you seen the HP on them?  A red one was camped outside the bay that one of our Allies use to build ships.  It was level 30 with over 100,000 HP.  Most people couldn't even sink that with a well crewed Galleon.  It's like fighting a modern warship with your 17th Century Sailing ship.  It's a little bit stupid...or maybe a whole lot stupid.  When H.O.D. says they are OP, you know they are a lot OP.

9. I am OK with PvP on the water, so long as it makes sense, and if the water also contains NPC ships indistinct from the player ships, it will make it easier for normal players to get to and from without PvP, when they aren't interested in it.    The issue is really that your ship, when anchored near you Island, is a sitting duck with no ability to defend itself.  If you set up in a narrow bay, the opposing side will take cannons to shore, and set them up where your bow or stern are facing.  If the ship pivots on its anchor to bring the cannons to bear, the guys on your ship will open up with your ship's cannons.  But, the other issue is that if you get sunk on the sea, more often than you don't, people will stop using ships to transport anything.  You have agreed that trading and bartering will be good for the game.  To do that, you need to get to the destination and back, more often than not.  Much more often than not.  That's just a fact.

[MaxPower 126]

3 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

A good suggestion would be to put all of the Megas on the same server.  Make the other server(s) for smaller Companies, and limit their size.  I do know I will stop buying these kinds of games if they only cater to large streamers.

Another thing would be for gamers themselves to wake up and stop playing the role of slave just to be involved with the streamer.  You are in effect, agreeing to be the house boy for some low level celebrity.  I would think that most men would have enough pride in themselves than to allow themselves to be a slave.

Absolutely agree. If the devs have such a hard on for trying to force everyone into large companies, than have separate servers for those of us that don't want to be slaves. Have a server(s) with a company cap of 20-30 people, so solo and small group players aren't at such a disadvantage.

As to the OP's suggestions:

1. You seem to be suggesting this as some sort of offline protection. If that's the case, there are better ways to deal with ships being blown up while the entire company is offline. The problem with such a buff is that, while it might protect your ship when you're offline... it'll also give you a huge advantage against out of towners in your home region, which will itself be exploited significantly. Players would just hang near their island and kill anyone that comes near as those other players would stand no chance. Sorry but this is one that has no chance unless its a relatively small buff and only in your claim. 

2. A reputation system would be cool but the penalties would have to be extreme to have an impact on larger companies.

3. There are a lot of issues with this one. The freeports are suppose to be starter regions, not safe zones for established players. You'd have so many ships clogging up the ports if established players could hide their relatively free... which would make the regions unplayable. 

4. I agree that you should be able to unlock more than you currently can but 90% might be a bit much. I'd be happy with being able to unlock 50-60% of the tree.

5. I very much would like to see something similar to this and it ties in with #7. The problem is that ships take so damn long to build and you can easily lose them on the first trip out. Its sort of fun and novel at first... but it'll be REALLY annoying if it happens a lot, which it could. Even with 2.5x harvesting it took a buddy and me a couple days to build a Schooner. It would have been quicker if we didn't have to search for gems to make alloy, but it still would have taken several hours. If this damn thing gets sunk by a SotD the minute we take it out of port, I'll be pretty pissed.

So honestly, I think its one or the other. Either offer some way to at least partially recover a sunken ship or make ships a bit easier to build to loses aren't the end of the world (again, this is more a solo/small group issues so I'm sure the devs don't care). One idea would be to have an NPC salvager in the ports that can "salvage" your ship for you at the cost of a certain amount of gold. You'll get it back damaged and without any of your items that were in it, but the basic ship will be there. Seems a reasonable solution to me and in PVP it would give an incentive to not have your ship captured.... which could add a new element. 

6. Honestly, this ones a no brainer and the reason why I'm not currently playing PVP (and why I never played Ark PVP much). Don't mind getting my ass kicked or having my ship sunk by another player, that's part of the game. However, I don't want it happening while I'm sleeping or at work. That's just BS.

8. This one I disagree with, at least in PVE. There needs to be MORE NPC enemies to battle on the open ocean.... not less. The one way they can be made rarer however is by adding regular NPC ships.... which I very much hope is on the agenda.

9. This one actually boggles my mind. It seems the devs really want trade to be a central aspect of the game (which is why the skill tree is the way it is)… but they don't have any actual mechanics in place for it. Not even a basic player to player swap system. It'd seem such features should have been high priority. 

10. Seems perfectly reasonable. 

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

9 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Absolutely agree. If the devs have such a hard on for trying to force everyone into large companies, than have separate servers for those of us that don't want to be slaves. Have a server(s) with a company cap of 20-30 people, so solo and small group players aren't at such a disadvantage.

As to the OP's suggestions:

1. You seem to be suggesting this as some sort of offline protection. If that's the case, there are better ways to deal with ships being blown up while the entire company is offline. The problem with such a buff is that, while it might protect your ship when you're offline... it'll also give you a huge advantage against out of towners in your home region, which will itself be exploited significantly. Players would just hang near their island and kill anyone that comes near as those other players would stand no chance. Sorry but this is one that has no chance unless its a relatively small buff and only in your claim. 

2. A reputation system would be cool but the penalties would have to be extreme to have an impact on larger companies.

3. There are a lot of issues with this one. The freeports are suppose to be starter regions, not safe zones for established players. You'd have so many ships clogging up the ports if established players could hide their relatively free... which would make the regions unplayable. 

4. I agree that you should be able to unlock more than you currently can but 90% might be a bit much. I'd be happy with being able to unlock 50-60% of the tree.

5. I very much would like to see something similar to this and it ties in with #7. The problem is that ships take so damn long to build and you can easily lose them on the first trip out. Its sort of fun and novel at first... but it'll be REALLY annoying if it happens a lot, which it could. Even with 2.5x harvesting it took a buddy and me a couple days to build a Schooner. It would have been quicker if we didn't have to search for gems to make alloy, but it still would have taken several hours. If this damn thing gets sunk by a SotD the minute we take it out of port, I'll be pretty pissed.

So honestly, I think its one or the other. Either offer some way to at least partially recover a sunken ship or make ships a bit easier to build to loses aren't the end of the world (again, this is more a solo/small group issues so I'm sure the devs don't care). One idea would be to have an NPC salvager in the ports that can "salvage" your ship for you at the cost of a certain amount of gold. You'll get it back damaged and without any of your items that were in it, but the basic ship will be there. Seems a reasonable solution to me and in PVP it would give an incentive to not have your ship captured.... which could add a new element. 

6. Honestly, this ones a no brainer and the reason why I'm not currently playing PVP (and why I never played Ark PVP much). Don't mind getting my ass kicked or having my ship sunk by another player, that's part of the game. However, I don't want it happening while I'm sleeping or at work. That's just BS.

8. This one I disagree with, at least in PVE. There needs to be MORE NPC enemies to battle on the open ocean.... not less. The one way they can be made rarer however is by adding regular NPC ships.... which I very much hope is on the agenda.

9. This one actually boggles my mind. It seems the devs really want trade to be a central aspect of the game (which is why the skill tree is the way it is)… but they don't have any actual mechanics in place for it. Not even a basic player to player swap system. It'd seem such features should have been high priority. 

10. Seems perfectly reasonable. 

1. The idea is for it to only be where you have your port.  If this needs to be limited, so be it.  Each company should only have one port. 

2. Agree, and it should be tailored to do just that...keep megas from ruining the game for others.

3. I don't think people understand what I am after here.  OK, so you make it to a lawless area, and build your ship, but you can't get back online for a week, and you need to get out onto the high seas and stake your claim.  But you can't do that if you ship was destroyed before you can get back online.  Or, maybe your base, and port were destroyed, and now you no longer have a claim, but your day is done, and you need time before you can find another claim.  Thus, this could be an option reserved only for those who do not have a claim...a port area on a claimable island, where you can park your ship, and enjoy the same protections as noted in 1.  Once you have a claim, you can no longer park at a freeport, safely.

4. That would be OK if you didn't have to waste so many points spec'd into what you don't need.  They need to separate many of these things.  For instance, why do I need to craft item to use them, and yes, that's the way they have it set up.  Why do I have to spec into beast mastery to ride.  Why do I have to spec into tools, then firearms, and then into artillery crafting, to get to what I actually need, the skills to shoot a cannon well.  This is why their system fails.  But problem solved.  I play on an unofficial that boosts the points such that when you are fully leveled, you will have all of the skills...all of them, or extremely close to it.  That works for me.  Besides, you see, I love a challenge.  If I am shooting my cannons at the other guy, I want to win because I am just better at shooting, not because I spec'd into that, and he didn't have the points to spec into the skills that allow him to shoot on my level.   But that's the type of player I am.  When I played WWIIOL, I always chose the side with the worst tanks, and still finished in the top 15, every single campaign.

5. Anything is better than starting from scratch.  Yes, they are going to lose a lot of sales if people leave the game in droves, and tell friends to save their money.

6. Exactly.

8.  Yes, we need more NPC ships, even in PvP.  However, what we don't need are modern warships (and that's what SotD are), sinking any fool dumb enough not to run from them.  Yes, SotD are modern warships.  I'll take a guess on the reason for this is that the Devs can't figure out how to make an NPC sail a sailing ship correctly, so that you have a reasonable encounter with one.  Either way, these SotD are exactly like modern warships.  They shoot in any direction with hugely powerful guns, and they are not at the mercy of the wind.  They have no sails to catch on fire, or disable.  They are simply a mess.  If they announced that they were introducing normal pirate ships, and merchant ships in all of the categories we have, and that they would have a specific logo on the sails, or some other way to identify them, there would be a collective roar of approval from the player base.  Most of it anyway.

9. Exactly.  And also, I am not going to pay for somebody else's Elephants. We will tame our own.  I do not trust that I am getting his best line.  I fully expect them to run two lines...the ones with best stats, they keep, and the ones with lesser stats, they sell.  If they want me to buy animals from somebody else, I need to see all of his stats on all of his animals, so I can pay commensurate with what he is offering.  This is reasonable, because in the real world, you are going to employ an expert in such animals, who can tell you what quality is being offered, whether you should buy, and how much you should be paying for it.

Also, some price controls may be needed because some guy is going to ruin the game when he corners the market on something, and then decides that you have to pay 1000 times more than something's worth, just because he can.  Yeah sure, you can do something about it if he is a small operator who cornered the market on elephants, but what if he is part of a Mega?  Nah, you can't always model a game on the real world because the real world is much better at penalizing you, in some cases, and in other cases, the bad guy has no penalties, but I don't want that in a game.  I play games to get away from the real world.

[MaxPower 126]

21 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

3. I don't think people understand what I am after here.  OK, so you make it to a lawless area, and build your ship, but you can't get back online for a week, and you need to get out onto the high seas and stake your claim.  But you can't do that if you ship was destroyed before you can get back online.  Or, maybe your base, and port were destroyed, and now you no longer have a claim, but your day is done, and you need time before you can find another claim.  Thus, this could be an option reserved only for those who do not have a claim...a port area on a claimable island, where you can park your ship, and enjoy the same protections as noted in 1.  Once you have a claim, you can no longer park at a freeport, safely.

I see what you're saying and I don't disagree with the why, I'm just not sure this is a workable solution. Honestly, this (and #1) could be solved by simply having offline raid protection. You wouldn't need a safe port to park your ship if the damn thing couldn't be sunk while you're offline.  
 

Quote

4. That would be OK if you didn't have to waste so many points spec'd into what you don't need.  They need to separate many of these things.  For instance, why do I need to craft item to use them, and yes, that's the way they have it set up.  Why do I have to spec into beast mastery to ride.  Why do I have to spec into tools, then firearms, and then into artillery crafting, to get to what I actually need, the skills to shoot a cannon well.  This is why their system fails.  But problem solved.  I play on an unofficial that boosts the points such that when you are fully leveled, you will have all of the skills...all of them, or extremely close to it.  That works for me.  Besides, you see, I love a challenge.  If I am shooting my cannons at the other guy, I want to win because I am just better at shooting, not because I spec'd into that, and he didn't have the points to spec into the skills that allow him to shoot on my level.   But that's the type of player I am.  When I played WWIIOL, I always chose the side with the worst tanks, and still finished in the top 15, every single campaign.

Yeah. As you mention, the one really odd thing about the skill system is that while it seems to be set up to encourage player interaction (you can't learn to craft everything thus need to get stuff you can't from other players), it's also sort of counter intuitive in that while I can buy a pistol from someone if I don't have the Firearm tree.... it doesn't do me much good unless I learn skills inside the firearm tree, which will teach me how to craft the pistol. That doesn't make sense. 

I play WW2OL myself back in the day but I also played a ton of Star Wars Galaxies. Galaxies had issues but one thing they did REALLY well was the economy. I'm not sure I've ever seen an in-game economy function quite as well and they did it similar to how the ATLAS devs are trying: You had one character per server and could only learn a limited amount of skills. However, when you learned a combat skill you didn't also learn how to make the weapons used for that skill. After all, I don't need to know how my pistol is made in order to use it. It made sense and, for all its faults, Galaxies had a thriving economy. Combat focused characters wouldn't ever touch crafting skills and would instead go off and buy their weapons from crafting focused characters that rarely touched combat skills. That's how you drive a player economy and if that's going to be the objective here, the current skills need a huge re-write. If that's NOT the objective by the way, than why the hell is the tree so restrictive? 

That's a bit of a side track tirade but I do agree with what you're saying about skills in general. In a game like this I want to win battles because I'm better, not because I choose smarter when unlocking skills. Seems like the current system was a "We need to do something, anything, different than Ark....." sort of move that was  thrown together at the last minute. It doesn't make much sense and it feels out of place.  

[LaiTash 156]

2 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Also, some price controls may be needed

Price controls are bad for a mmo, especially if we want to see a lot of trading in Atlas. Cornering the market would be difficult in Atlas anyway, too many islands separated by vast distances with their own marketplaces.

[wakko151 36]

Here is a simple fix, defend your ship....

Have people on 24/7 in shifts.

Put up defenses to make it hard to attack your ship in the first place.

Don't be so attached to your ship. You make it to break it. Its end was in the plan all along.

[warhealer 25]

On 12/29/2018 at 8:45 PM, SoloHan88 said:

Offline raid protection is the best idea. I mean, I wouldn't hear 5 people hacking at my door with picks and just sleep thru it? Nobody wants to constantly gather materials to build ship after ship.

Offline raid protection makes no sense in this game. When a big group is playing the server is most likely full so you cant attack on day times.

With offline raid protection, you cant attack at night either.

 

So what ends up happening? 

You cant attack at daytime because big company's and alliances have most of their grids almost full off players.

And you can't attack at night because there is offline protection.

 

doesn't make sense at this stage of the game.. we have far bigger things to worry about.

 

 

[LaiTash 156]

A big group is likely to have players from multiple timezones so no, you can't attack them during day or night or whatever. It's small/medium groups who need offline protection.

 

40 minutes ago, wakko151 said:

Have people on 24/7 in shifts.

Maybe we should pay them in real cash too, because it looks like a job.

[Kyorin 44]

23 minutes ago, warhealer said:

Offline raid protection makes no sense in this game. When a big group is playing the server is most likely full so you cant attack on day times.

With offline raid protection, you cant attack at night either.

 

So what ends up happening? 

You cant attack at daytime because big company's and alliances have most of their grids almost full off players.

And you can't attack at night because there is offline protection.

 

doesn't make sense at this stage of the game.. we have far bigger things to worry about.

 

 

As an opposing viewpoint, most mega companies have enough people to have someone online all the time anyways.  So day or night you can't really raid.  Meanwhile smaller groups just get annihilated at will because they can't afford to live inside the game or have someone online 24-7.  

 

More importantly PvP is fun.  PvO is zero skill and boring af.  May as well be playing on a PvE server at that point.

 

And "the game's not supposed to be played in a small group or solo" is the entire point people are contending.  Why completely shut out and screw a large pool of potential players because you don't want to sink in the resources a real fight would require?  One or two mechanics and poof suddenly everyone has a place in the game.  Large companies would still have many other advantages and be more powerful regardless.

[LaiTash 156]

Maybe a freeport could protect your vessel for 24 hours with like 48 hours cooldown, so that you'll need to move your ship to another freeport after 24 hours. There could be a eve like (or more like elite:dangerous-like) docking mechanics in place so that your ship is hidden while docked and too many ships in a freeport won't cause lag.

[enrell 8]

We all have good ideas in this thread

If the DEVS want the easy way out, we already have the mods over in ARK. Can just hire the modders like how from what i heard, they hired the S+ modder for their building system

1 ) Robust economic ( supply/demand , general database with float pricing ) - modder Impulse's Capitalism mod

2) Storage systems, storing tames off-server, but able to recall anytime - modder Impulse's Dino Garage

3) Safe port zones, if need be, there are already a system in Capitalism mod where any tames / players in the trade zone would be 'invincible'.

Edited January 2, 2019 by enrell

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

4 hours ago, warhealer said:

Offline raid protection makes no sense in this game. When a big group is playing the server is most likely full so you cant attack on day times.

With offline raid protection, you cant attack at night either.

 

So what ends up happening? 

You cant attack at daytime because big company's and alliances have most of their grids almost full off players.

And you can't attack at night because there is offline protection.

 

doesn't make sense at this stage of the game.. we have far bigger things to worry about.

 

 

Well, at least you admit that this game is NOT about PvP.