It's getting really hard to keep playing this game.

[Richard Normous 1]

It's getting really hard to keep playing this game. I've been at it for two weeks now. It was hard starting out, getting my raft built, getting off the starting island and finding someplace to make a claim and start building, that was before the changes were made to Ships of the Damned. I remade my character several times in all different areas of the map. Almost every time I ended up getting mauled by crocs as soon as I reached land, or my raft was destroyed, or my bed or some other stupid thing happened. I stuck at it, determined to get somewhere. I finally found some relatively safe land, and made a claim. I built up my house, stockpiled resources, built a sloop, better gear and weapons etc. It was fun for a time, until I get off of work one day and log in to find my land had been stolen, my house was destroyed along with all of the resources and gear I had stashed in it, and somehow I'd been killed while I was offline and everything I had on my character was gone to. I was pissed but still determined to press on. I then made the mistake of leaving the company i created for myself that I was the sole member of, unknowingly losing both my sloop and my raft in the process. With no way to build a new vessel, i had to return to the freeport and start over. Now I've sailed out from the Freeport three times seeking land to start over and each time I've been waylaid by Ships of the Damned and destroyed, losing everything I had over and over again, and the hours I put in to rebuilding. It's depressing, and games shouldn't be depressing. 

 

It shouldn't be so difficult for new players, and players having to start over from scratch to get started and make their claim in the world.

That's my take on the game so far.

Thanks for the 2x havesting baseline though, that makes it at least a little more bearable.

[FoxVex 1]

I think we'll all get to the point where we'll quit unless something is done about it. The game is starting to become ship rebuilding simulator than a pirate game. I'm sick of having to worry about where I parked my ship and even if it's a decent spot it'll get found and destroyed. I'm sure nobody likes refarming the resources for a large ship multiple times a week which is the reality of small companies. Unless something is done then i'll probably be quitting until it's fixed.

[Realist 504]

25 minutes ago, Richard Normous said:

It's getting really hard to keep playing this game. I've been at it for two weeks now. It was hard starting out, getting my raft built, getting off the starting island and finding someplace to make a claim and start building, that was before the changes were made to Ships of the Damned. I remade my character several times in all different areas of the map. Almost every time I ended up getting mauled by crocs as soon as I reached land, or my raft was destroyed, or my bed or some other stupid thing happened. I stuck at it, determined to get somewhere. I finally found some relatively safe land, and made a claim. I built up my house, stockpiled resources, built a sloop, better gear and weapons etc. It was fun for a time, until I get off of work one day and log in to find my land had been stolen, my house was destroyed along with all of the resources and gear I had stashed in it, and somehow I'd been killed while I was offline and everything I had on my character was gone to. I was pissed but still determined to press on. I then made the mistake of leaving the company i created for myself that I was the sole member of, unknowingly losing both my sloop and my raft in the process. With no way to build a new vessel, i had to return to the freeport and start over. Now I've sailed out from the Freeport three times seeking land to start over and each time I've been waylaid by Ships of the Damned and destroyed, losing everything I had over and over again, and the hours I put in to rebuilding. It's depressing, and games shouldn't be depressing. 

 

It shouldn't be so difficult for new players, and players having to start over from scratch to get started and make their claim in the world.

That's my take on the game so far.

Thanks for the 2x havesting baseline though, that makes it at least a little more bearable.

Yeah, this won’t be a long lasting game. At least in ark you can have dinos. Sea of thieves didn’t slow their momentum because of lack of content.

it slowed because even though a pirate game sounds cool, it isn’t going to last either way. Combine that with wildcard and yeah that just makes it even worse.

the hardcore ark players will always go back to ark. The casual players that love pirate games will go back to sea of thieves  or skull and cross bones. I think that is the name anyways.

either way, wildcard was stupid if they thought that they could combine “mmo” with “survival”. They have already taken most survival aspects out. 

We all have to remember in the first place, this is wildcard. The smart will know what that means, the others will deny it

[Pappy Green 71]

Once the bigs and griefers get board and quit, the lands will open up and the looting of the abandoned will become the adventure for the littles and solos.

[Linea 80]

exactly, you cant mix a standard mmo with an survival game.

look at final fantasy having millions of players playing happy together, pve, pvp, raids (killing stuff and people every few seconds). it does work because you can kill others but you cant harm them, they dont loose anything so you can have constant fighting and killing. but if you have a survival game where you loose everything and it takes alot of time to start over again you cant simply have non stop fighting and killing.

you can of course make your own kind of game, like a survival game with a big world and many players and it works fine but putting mmo stuff there that doesnt fit the game breaks it.

what can be done?

first - less creatures, less damned, less players -> the world needs to be bigger (more land) so you dont meet your doom too soon.

second - community managment, the current system does not punish violent acts and rewards them especially when the victim is offline which is unrealistic and thus creates a disfunctional community where unfriendly players flourish while friendly players leave and decline in numbers which generates an environment out of balance where you cant play anymore at all.
there are plentyfull options here some are:
1. flag criminals with karma points: if you play as a pirate you also have to live as a pirate, excluded from save areas and civil regions, spawning and living in pirate regions where the ships of the damned roam while marine ships are roaming lawful areas.
2. bounty: you earn a bounty on your head with bad deeds and if captured will be taken into prison until it wears of or executed, if killed the bounty will not be removed so you cant just get rid of it with dying. if you got the gold you can buy your freedom but you need to be a very successful pirate to buy yourself out of everything.
3. some protection, more karmapoints if the victim is lower level or offline etc.
4. hardcore server with permadeath, that would actually discourage from reckless acts as you cant simply respawn.

if its harder to be a pirate there will be more prey and greater rewards to be earned if successful.

 

[hands solo 14]

Ill be honest - ive not lost my ship since the creation of my one sloop. Still going strong - anchor  and mend each day. I have had my house broken into a couple of times which has only happened since I created water reservoirs piped into my house (they see the pipes). After the first time I decided to take the taps off the reservoirs, so they go to the trouble of hitting down 10,000 hit points  of a wall to find that they cant access the water anyway (that's if its not animals which it might be). My little joke. Now im lvl 32 ive pretty much cracked the survival aspect to the game - wolves are easy to kill once you get them in the water and there are no crocs. Snakes are a two shot kill with my pike. Yeh the survival game is pretty easy really it has been since about lvl 20, now im trying to get an extra load of game hours but its difficult for a solo to having anything to do after you've conquered the survival aspect. There is no trade - cant really take on the npc pirate ships with the crew system as is, and treasure retrieval is too risky with the rising dead so I hear. There is always a will and a way some soloers would say and I would tend to agree, seeing those machine gun type things and the ability to outrun the undead makes me think treasure hunting could be possible but its the will bit that is waining.

Ive had my moneys worth though - say 1000 hrs for 20 quid - its kept me out of the pub and a football match would cost £70. Its a good survival game but at this time there isn't much else, without trade you cant even focus on making money, npc combat is risky to say the least and is more luck based on how many ghosties spawn against you, having seen a solo player schooner doing two of three ghosties before being sunk, it was the third one that killed him. Im sure the game will get there eventually but as with all 'early releases' (crowd funding with another name) it will take a bit of time. Once it is sorted and smooth running and everyones happy it will be 9 dollars a month to play or free to play with buy goods from the store. By the time everyone is happy though they will probably have ruined the survival game in itself by making it so easy a muppet could do it. Theres hope for many of you yet.

J

Edited January 6, 2019 by hands solo

[hands solo 14]

The lawless guide to land claim … 

 

A - set out of freeport grid … 

B - enter lawless.... 

C - find an island land and avoid predators where possible. 

D - look for a space to put down a thatch foundation and place a bed on it. 

 

There your new lawless land claimed... if you dont log in for four days or more then your house will be demolishable by anyone that happens to want your space. As for any shipyard - each construction had a different count down timer some more than others. All however after their time period is up are demolishable. So you cant see any space check the structures to see if they are demolishable - if they are then clickety click and that space is now yours...!

Lawless usually means LACK OF MUPPETS...! 

Edited January 6, 2019 by hands solo

[rodarin 17]

so many people claiming hundreds of hours in this game already is hilarious or even into the 1000s.

 

Game has been live since what the 22nd? Whats that 15 or 16 days (not counting all the down time servers have had. So the most time anyone can have in this game if they never logged out (which some dont just to AFK level) would be around 384 hours. I dont think the servers have been online for more than 350 of that. But whatever....

 

Also unless they changed it you cant spawn on a bed in a lawless territory because you cant claim land in lawless territory. You can build all you want it just decays faster in unclaimed land. You can spawn on a bed on a ship in lawless though. But again they could have changed this as theyre making the game as easy mode as they can trying to keep people interested.

 

But you can see it now fewer and fewer people even with the big streamers. The thrill of playing with 'celebrities' wore off quick. I imagine some RP and private servers are still holding on to players if they still have enough people to make it interesting. But official servers meh.

 

Its funny watching the whole 'sandbox' fantasy crash and burn. Everyone whines and complains about 'themepark' but in those games at least you have some sort of content. In these types of games the only content is what you can make up. And in most cases whats forced upon you. When learning skills and crafting ships is 80% of the game and they have dumbed that down (and getting dumber tomorrow if the patch is on time) then content becomes nonexistent. These developers dream that people will play the game the way they envision it. Which is never the case. This idea of grand at sea battles between two or more fleets is a fantasy. It has and always will be soft target PvP which is generally offline players or people with extremely low numbers. Which might seem fun but isnt really and gets boring really fast. Then what is there to do? With no competition and owning 25% of the map and having more resources and ships than you have people to use them.

 

Unless they have 'seasons' like some other MMOs do then this game has little to no chance of being anything but a flash in the pan which has already almost burnt out.

Edited January 6, 2019 by rodarin