What is the policy regarding sinking other players ships in PVE by over weighing and over crewing them ?

[Overfiend Longbottoms 0]

As the Title suggests , I am interested to find out What is Grapeshots' policy regarding sinking other players ships in PVE by over weighing and over crewing them ? 

Seems a bit broken , What do you guys think ? Some feedback from a dev would be helpful here , Thanks 

Edited January 11, 2019 by Overfiend Longbottoms

[Realist 504]

6 minutes ago, Overfiend Longbottoms said:

As the Title suggests , I am interested to find out What is Grapeshots' policy regarding sinking other players ships in PVE by over weighing and over crewing them ? 

Seems a bit broken , What do you guys think ? Some feedback from a dev would be helpful here , Thanks 

For the time being there is no policy. In about a month or so they might start enforcing it

[Coggage 239]

As Realist says... nothing.  Nada. Zip.   They MIGHT do something about it, but simply making boats too heavy to move rather than taking damage is too basic a move for them to do, so it seems.  I doubt they'll try anything more complicated.

[Scorpionshawn 134]

Dont bother gripping about it because it seems everyone who complains here no one cares.... how does that make you feel?

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

This is what Jat had to say in his musings posted yesterday:

PvE Exploits

Not going to share what the exploits are, that would be unwise…although I suppose for those of you who weren’t aware, you might be with my post. 

Just wanted to say we are well aware of what’s happening and are exploring ways to deal with it. The obvious solutions won’t quite work due to some backend stuff, however, we are actively looking into a more delicate and effective solution. In the meantime, quit being jerks and griefing each other, otherwise, I might have to set Amberenix (our Game Master) on ya! 

I think that covers most of what I wanted to discuss about v10. I realise that doesn’t cover everything, but then we could literally be here for days on end and right now it’s 8 a.m and I’d like to get some rest soon haha. We had some hotfixes and patches go out today following the release, mostly just to resolve things that had been overlooked/missed in the update and some exploit fixing… as well as deal with the menacing rapid-firing Ship of the Damned that we introduced ourselves. 

 

whether that applies to the thread topic is open to interpretation, but if it doesn't, I'd be more than a little surprised.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

1 hour ago, Scorpionshawn said:

Dont bother gripping about it because it seems everyone who complains here no one cares.... how does that make you feel?

I don't know. I complained about your font color and you changed it. That makes my eyeballs feel better.

 

Kidding aside, thanks btw. Normally I don't like to ask for things that might crimp someone's individual style, but it was pretty hard to read your posts, and I think you've got something to contribute, so being able to comfortably is nice.

Edited January 11, 2019 by boomervoncannon

[Percieval 1,067]

9 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

This is what Jat had to say in his musings posted yesterday:

PvE Exploits

Not going to share what the exploits are, that would be unwise…although I suppose for those of you who weren’t aware, you might be with my post. 

Just wanted to say we are well aware of what’s happening and are exploring ways to deal with it. The obvious solutions won’t quite work due to some backend stuff, however, we are actively looking into a more delicate and effective solution. In the meantime, quit being jerks and griefing each other, otherwise, I might have to set Amberenix (our Game Master) on ya! 

I think that covers most of what I wanted to discuss about v10. I realise that doesn’t cover everything, but then we could literally be here for days on end and right now it’s 8 a.m and I’d like to get some rest soon haha. We had some hotfixes and patches go out today following the release, mostly just to resolve things that had been overlooked/missed in the update and some exploit fixing… as well as deal with the menacing rapid-firing Ship of the Damned that we introduced ourselves. 

 

whether that applies to the thread topic is open to interpretation, but if it doesn't, I'd be more than a little surprised.

Ye. Bit stupid he doesn’t just say it, now PvE players still don’t know. 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

1 minute ago, Percieval said:

Ye. Bit stupid he doesn’t just say it, now PvE players still don’t know. 

know what?

 

 

 

*ducks*

[MaxPower 126]

Jat's jovial nature in that post seems to indicate this isn't a big deal as far as the devs are concerned. Sure, there is a vague threat that the games single GM might do something if you get caught doing this but its a pretty hollow response to a game breaking bug to be honest. 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

3 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Jat's jovial nature in that post seems to indicate this isn't a big deal as far as the devs are concerned. Sure, there is a vague threat that the games single GM might do something if you get caught doing this but its a pretty hollow response to a game breaking bug to be honest. 

Yeah the way he stated that came across a bit tone deaf. As I've said before, Wildshot™ is being penny wise and pound foolish by not having a PR professional on staff whose primary job it is to communicate with the playerbase. Jat as a developer should never be in the position of having to weigh things like how his tone will come across to a diverse playerbase, that's a PR person's job, because they're trained in it. I'm trained in sales and if you ask me to write code, we're @#$%ed.

[Asanna 86]

The issue is keeping things without hindering the gameplay for either sides.

Look at the weapons debuff that took place, pve is having a hard time with the reduction against Wild animals and such. It was meant to help in PVP but backfired in PVE.

It's not that big of a deal to them because most people dont parade around how it's done so it remains semi-controlled. Theres also about 4 ways I currently know of and have seen be done that would have to be fixed. And an easy fix for those things makes no feasible sense for game play.

[MaxPower 126]

2 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Yeah the way he stated that came across a bit tone deaf. As I've said before, Wildshot™ is being penny wise and pound foolish by not having a PR professional on staff whose primary job it is to communicate with the playerbase. Jat as a developer should never be in the position of having to weigh things like how his tone will come across to a diverse playerbase, that's a PR person's job, because they're trained in it. I'm trained in sales and if you ask me to write code, we're @#$%ed.

Yeah I'd agree with that. Jat's doing his best but such a poor response to an exploit and design fault that has cost a lot of people significant amounts of time isn't a good look. People play PVE specifically so they don't have to deal with losing their stuff to other players and an exploit that allows exactly that should be a very serious matter for the dev team. 

[MaxPower 126]

Just now, Asanna said:

The issue is keeping things without hindering the gameplay for either sides.

Look at the weapons debuff that took place, pve is having a hard time with the reduction against Wild animals and such. It was meant to help in PVP but backfired in PVE.

It's not that big of a deal to them because most people dont parade around how it's done so it remains semi-controlled. Theres also about 4 ways I currently know of and have seen be done that would have to be fixed. And an easy fix for those things makes no feasible sense for game play.

Sorry but that's nonsense on so many levels. One, it IS a widespread issue in PVE... a lot of people just don't realize that when their ship mysteriously vanishes at night that it was because some asshole sank it on them. And even if it was a more limited problem, its still a HUGE exploit that cuts against the very idea of a PVE server. Something like that should be a high priority fix. 

Also, the fix is pretty easy. First of all, the main way this is happening is through an exploit (which I won't explain) that has existed since Ark which lets players carry unlimited weight. To make matters worse, for some inexplicable reason, a character is still able to walk/swim no matter how much weight they are carrying... even if its 100,000 pounds. Just fixing that exploit and preventing people from moving at all when over their weight limit like in Ark would make this a lot harder. There would still be other ways to do it, but they'd require more people and take more time. 

The real solution is, at least for now, prevent ships from sinking due to being over weight in PVE. Instead, just make it so ships can't move if overweight. Combined with people not being able to carry unlimited weight this would solve most of the problem and there would be no negative impact on gameplay from either. 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

14 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Yeah I'd agree with that. Jat's doing his best but such a poor response to an exploit and design fault that has cost a lot of people significant amounts of time isn't a good look. People play PVE specifically so they don't have to deal with losing their stuff to other players and an exploit that allows exactly that should be a very serious matter for the dev team. 

Just to tack on to what I said about a PR person...I'd bet dollars to donuts you could have paid a pretty good PR professionals salary for a year with all the revenue you could have saved in the form of having fewer refunds if you'd just communicated with your playerbase better during that launch. Remember how many people said their biggest frustration was the lack/quality of communication?

[Asanna 86]

10 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Sorry but that's nonsense on so many levels. One, it IS a widespread issue in PVE... a lot of people just don't realize that when their ship mysteriously vanishes at night that it was because some asshole sank it on them. And even if it was a more limited problem, its still a HUGE exploit that cuts against the very idea of a PVE server. Something like that should be a high priority fix. 

Also, the fix is pretty easy. First of all, the main way this is happening is through an exploit (which I won't explain) that has existed since Ark which lets players carry unlimited weight. To make matters worse, for some inexplicable reason, a character is still able to walk/swim no matter how much weight they are carrying... even if its 100,000 pounds. Just fixing that exploit and preventing people from moving at all when over their weight limit like in Ark would make this a lot harder. There would still be other ways to do it, but they'd require more people and take more time. 

The real solution is, at least for now, prevent ships from sinking due to being over weight in PVE. Instead, just make it so ships can't move if overweight. Combined with people not being able to carry unlimited weight this would solve most of the problem and there would be no negative impact on gameplay from either. 

I agree I never said it wasnt an issue nor underplayed it I'm speaking from how the devs might see it. They dont care , but if it carries over to PVP then it becomes and complain fest from PVPers they cant plunder. I apologised if my post didnt explain well enough what I meant, figured it was easily understandable. 

There are many fixes (dont let dead bodies have items transferred into them, dont let people walk over weighted, etc dont wanna go into details for those people looking for griefing.)

But the current issue known is every change made in one setting carries over into the other setting. Its been there since day one. Something changed in PVE alters PVP and vice versa. And since more people are on that PVP kick they dont really care how negatively it effects PVE when changes are made.

Edited January 11, 2019 by Asanna

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

34 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Jat's jovial nature in that post seems to indicate this isn't a big deal as far as the devs are concerned. Sure, there is a vague threat that the games single GM might do something if you get caught doing this but its a pretty hollow response to a game breaking bug to be honest. 

I just thought about something else. This game has peak concurrency right now of more than 50k. 

They apparently have a single GM.

One.

Uno.

And the only developer who speaks directly to the playerbase seems to think that's okay enough to mention publicly without embarrassment.

GrapeCard™ is not some fledgling indie studio getting by on a shoestring. They've had over 3 years of Ark being in Steam's Top 20 the whole time building up a nice pile of cash. Being so cheap you only have a single GM for over 50k players at once is something you should be embarrassed about imo.

[Coggage 239]

Having played Ark I knew the first few weeks/months would be a shitfest of bugs, so planned accordingly.  I have a nice functional base on Lawless, and until they fix the Claim System and the ship weight exploit I am not building ANY ships.  I have a shipyard ready for my first proper Sloop but it isn't worth building one or going for a bigger Shipyard until things are fixed satisfactorily.

[MaxPower 126]

6 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Just to tack on to what I said about a PR person...I'd bet dollars to donuts you could have paid a pretty good PR professionals salary for a year with all the revenue you could have saved in the form of having fewer refunds if you'd just communicated with your playerbase better during that launch. Remember how many people said their biggest frustration was the lack/quality of communication?

Oh absolutely. I've made this comparison before but I remember when Star Wars Galaxies launched. The game launched a year early, was broken at every level, you couldn't log in the first day and several major features were cut to make the launch date. It makes Atlas's launch look like smooth sailing and that was a production release... not an Early Access release. Yet the community management and dev teams were so amazing. They were so open and honest with the players that while people weren't happy, they gave the team the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't until most of the original dev and CM teams were gone that things took a noes dive. Why was that? Because communication dried up and the devs sprung massive changes to the game on the community with two weeks notice... and refused to listen when literally everyone said they didn't like the new direction. The game died that day. PR matters. 

2 minutes ago, Asanna said:

I agree I never said it wasnt an issue nor underplayed it I'm speaking from how the devs might see it. They dont care , but if it carries over to PVP then it becomes and complain fest from PVPers they cant plunder. I apologised if my post didnt explain well enough what I meant, figured it was easily understandable. 

There are many fixes (dont let dead bodies have items transferred into them, dont let people walk over weighted, etc dont wanna go into details for those people looking for griefing.)

But the current issue known is every change made in one setting carries over into the other setting. Its been there since day one. Something changed in PVE alters PVP and vice versa. And since more people are on that PVP kick they dont really care how negatively it effects PVE when changes are made.

Yeah I see what you're saying and sorry if my post was a little harsh. This is just an issue I find very frustrating since I actively want to be playing Atlas but refuse to until I can launch a ship and not have it sunk by another player in PVE. I don't have unlimited time to keep harvesting resources to replace ships. 

I would disagree that PVP is where more people are playing. The server counter that was posted yesterday seems to indicate that the PVE servers are far more populated. 

[Asanna 86]

1 minute ago, boomervoncannon said:

I just thought about something else. This game has peak concurrency right now of more than 50k. 

They apparently have a single GM.

One.

Uno.

And the only developer who speaks directly to the playerbase seems to think that's okay enough to mention publicly without embarrassment.

GrapeCard™ is not some fledgling indie studio getting by on a shoestring. They've had over 3 years of Ark being in Steam's Top 20 the whole time building up a nice pile of cash. Being so cheap you only have a single GM for over 50k players at once is something you should be embarrassed about imo.

I highly doubt there's only one GM, that seems ridiculous even for them. Probably just the big guy on the totem with underlings.  But who knows, they've always had issues with that.

But I can promise you they at least don't do like they need to testing wise. Otherwise things would be added to their to-do list in a much more timely manner instead of users having to bombard social media to get a response. 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

2 minutes ago, Asanna said:

I highly doubt there's only one GM, that seems ridiculous even for them. Probably just the big guy on the totem with underlings.  But who knows, they've always had issues with that.

But I can promise you they at least don't do like they need to testing wise. Otherwise things would be added to their to-do list in a much more timely manner instead of users having to bombard social media to get a response. 

okay maybe I read too much into that bit.  But even if I did, that just underscores that someone more versed in communication skills ought to be handling this and not a poor developer who's got plenty to do otherwise. 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

5 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Oh absolutely. I've made this comparison before but I remember when Star Wars Galaxies launched. The game launched a year early, was broken at every level, you couldn't log in the first day and several major features were cut to make the launch date. It makes Atlas's launch look like smooth sailing and that was a production release... not an Early Access release. Yet the community management and dev teams were so amazing. They were so open and honest with the players that while people weren't happy, they gave the team the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't until most of the original dev and CM teams were gone that things took a noes dive. Why was that? Because communication dried up and the devs sprung massive changes to the game on the community with two weeks notice... and refused to listen when literally everyone said they didn't like the new direction. The game died that day. PR matters. 

Yeah I see what you're saying and sorry if my post was a little harsh. This is just an issue I find very frustrating since I actively want to be playing Atlas but refuse to until I can launch a ship and not have it sunk by another player in PVE. I don't have unlimited time to keep harvesting resources to replace ships. 

I would disagree that PVP is where more people are playing. The server counter that was posted yesterday seems to indicate that the PVE servers are far more populated. 

I can't count how many times I've seen Pvpers in various games act like, claim, imply, and make demands based on the idea that pvp is the majority of the players when all available evidence says otherwise.

[Asanna 86]

3 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

okay maybe I read too much into that bit.  But even if I did, that just underscores that someone more versed in communication skills ought to be handling this and not a poor developer who's got plenty to do otherwise. 

150% agree, but then this is where I personally got this game with minimal expectations... WC has always been bad about their community managers and such giving proper info. It's always the back end coders, server editors, and developers who have to speak out either first or if ever they get the chance. With so much on their plates already they shouldnt have to side track the 15 minutes it takes to post to every outlet and update everyone.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

12 minutes ago, Coggage said:

Having played Ark I knew the first few weeks/months would be a shitfest of bugs, so planned accordingly.  I have a nice functional base on Lawless, and until they fix the Claim System and the ship weight exploit I am not building ANY ships.  I have a shipyard ready for my first proper Sloop but it isn't worth building one or going for a bigger Shipyard until things are fixed satisfactorily.

Eh... personally I'd say sloops aren't much of an investment wise. I'd consider it worthwhile to build one even if you lose it because of the value of exploring. But that's up to you.

[Case of the Scurvy 72]

From a dev on steam forums, on this very subject today.

 

Jesse rapczak

Griefing is not encouraged on PvE, of course. And we are well aware of this issue, it will be addressed!

[MaxPower 126]

28 minutes ago, Asanna said:

But I can promise you they at least don't do like they need to testing wise. Otherwise things would be added to their to-do list in a much more timely manner instead of users having to bombard social media to get a response. 

Honestly, my biggest suggestion to the dev team? Set up a small 2x2 or 3x3 test server. Make it public and deploy all builds there for at least a few hours before pushing them into the live servers. Clearly with some of the issues we've seen their in-house testing system isn't working very good and the patches need to be tested in a more real-world environment. 

This is big IMO because you're deploying patches to live servers where people have a LOT of time invested. Mistakes can be very costly and really anger your player base. The relatively small cost of a test server would seem a worthwhile investment to me. 

21 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

I can't count how many times I've seen Pvpers in various games act like, claim, imply, and make demands based on the idea that pvp is the majority of the players when all available evidence says otherwise.

Its certainly fair to argue that Atlas was designed as a PVP game, same as Ark. However, at least on official, that's not where most people are playing it would seem.  

Edited January 11, 2019 by MaxPower