255+ hours played, here are some ideas and fixes.

[Glex 3]

I play in a large guild, tons of boat pvp, tons of building/gathering.  Game is fun but not for the feint of hart, a lot of people like to just mess around, even if you have the most organized guild. I don't think it's possible to control everyone or even keep tabs on what they are doing. Also it is too easy for someone to mess with the guild, inside the guild. I wished sailing was more of the focal point to this game but really just stockpiling resources and making a super defended base might just be the best meta right now. We have great captains and crews, we sink tons of ships and also do offline raids but it doesn't seem to be worth it. The enemy just tosses all they're gear on the ground anyways if you take a large lead, leaving nothing to the victors. Server stability  makes sailing pretty unforgiving given the ghost ships can kill you if your sailing and DC. The game is in alpha, cool concept, but so much still needs fixed. Boat pvp meta is just players trying to swim into the front of the boat and plant Barrel bombs. So really it's not even worth while to go out and hit up someone. Motors are insane damage and are crippling Brigs in one shot. Chinese are selling Galleons for real cash. Small stone pillars have destroyed ships, even if it is our ally's pillar. driving into it instagibs your ship. Breeding is far too difficult and there is no way to see animal stats prior to full tame, Ark you could check animal stats as they were unconscious and get a nice breeding animal. Here it's just tame tame tame... This game needs too many quality of life fixes. 

However with a few more uplifting ideas: Add more animals for those who love taming for they're guild or tribe. Bring back animal bases. some swim tames, don't add flying tames. Make cooking more worthwhile for those who like to supply the guild with nice buffs. Make exploration more worthwhile, instead of blueprints add more gold, guns, buffs, skins. Add boat skins: Chinese, Viking, Nord. Add a player slave system. Chat tabs, big alliances just can't read chats. Map is unreadable in large alliances. Have ships shoot a huge grappling hook that fits inside the cannon to just anchor to other ships. Have players climb over/Un hitch anchor. Gold needs to have much more status instead of buying resources, There needs to be a gold leaderboard because player count and territory doesn't tell much. Add bounties for killing certain players. Neutral hubs, Animal trades. Deeper and more complex skill trees, max level can mostly fill all you need, also 3-4 skill trees are useless. (punching, shield, twohand) useless vs naked fire arrow. 

Atlas is in it's most important phase right now. 

[Tallios 24]

As far as you and your sinking tons of ships and offline raids.  Go screw yourself, I throw shit on the ground because a$$hats feel they get to take everything I've made/harvested.  *$&! you and that thought process.  If someone is willing to "play the game" and ask for a bribe.  I'd consider it, but people like the mentality you just ascribed will get nothing from me.  I don't know how many times people have tried to run up beside me and demand I open everything for their inspection.  NO.  You play the game, fire some shots, threaten to sink and ask for money for safe passage.  It's worth discussing.  The "Take everything, leave nothing mentality" does nothing more than make me want to grief you and your allies.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Tallios

[blindtale 7]

While a lot of that sounds good, I'd like to see the game as it stands now more playable for all modes.
As in, rather than having new content, fixing what's there before moving on would be great.
The Claim system especially is very broken, and needs some really close inspection to help weed out things like alt-sleepers that equate to manual bot-holding whole islands, animal & player to structure occlusion (animals alpha and otherwise, and players wall glitching to kill and destroy things inside a base/fort is one example. Spawning or just waking up in foundations, floors, ship decks and even inside craft stations is another.)

A separation of PVE and PVP settings for items like fire arrows, tames etc would be fantastic.. as what works to balance PVP does NOT work to keep balance in PVE at this time, and let's face it.. probably never will.

[TrevorJD 117]

As a carebear, I would love to love this game. It has so much potential to be an awesome game that I'll play for years. However, I was very disappointed to hear Jatheish say that it's "not a taming game". A parallel ruleset for PvE servers should be easy to implement. Yes, it would require additional work to balance things but it would keep the game open and fun for a non-trivial segment of the market.

[Glex 3]

On 1/17/2019 at 2:02 AM, Tallios said:

As far as you and your sinking tons of ships and offline raids.  Go screw yourself, I throw shit on the ground because a$$hats feel they get to take everything I've made/harvested.  *$&! you and that thought process.  If someone is willing to "play the game" and ask for a bribe.  I'd consider it, but people like the mentality you just ascribed will get nothing from me.  I don't know how many times people have tried to run up beside me and demand I open everything for their inspection.  NO.  You play the game, fire some shots, threaten to sink and ask for money for safe passage.  It's worth discussing.  The "Take everything, leave nothing mentality" does nothing more than make me want to grief you and your allies.

This is why we play the game, people like you, griefing is the golden light that shines on this game. This is a persistent world so you have to work your defences for all hours of the game. My crew made an ark server of 75 players shrink to 30 because we pirated and had an underwater base that just so happened to have an oxygen bubble in it. We griefed so hard and killed so many tames and creatures. Easily we killed over 50 dragons. This game is cruel, play something else, you decided to play a cruel game with real monsters. 

[vaylain 227]

1 hour ago, Glex said:

This is why we play the game, people like you, griefing is the golden light that shines on this game. This is a persistent world so you have to work your defences for all hours of the game. My crew made an ark server of 75 players shrink to 30 because we pirated and had an underwater base that just so happened to have an oxygen bubble in it. We griefed so hard and killed so many tames and creatures. Easily we killed over 50 dragons. This game is cruel, play something else, you decided to play a cruel game with real monsters. 

Nope, offline raiding and griefing is NOT PVP it is just being caustic and taking advantage of offline players. This has absolutely no value to a PVP game. Your wretched kind just serves to ruin the game and judging from your psychotic attitude, you enjoy ruining the nice things that others worked very hard to build or acquire. It is always caustic players like you that immediately turn to the usual rhetoric of "just quit and go play a PVE game". Many of us actually enjoy the intended PVP aspects of the game, so suggesting we quit to play PVE is unproductive and just being a troll. How about playing the game the way it was intended to be played, players versus player NOT player versus offline structures as people need to log off and sleep sometime?

[Hodo 147]

On 1/17/2019 at 5:02 AM, Tallios said:

As far as you and your sinking tons of ships and offline raids.  Go screw yourself, I throw shit on the ground because a$$hats feel they get to take everything I've made/harvested.  *$&! you and that thought process.  If someone is willing to "play the game" and ask for a bribe.  I'd consider it, but people like the mentality you just ascribed will get nothing from me.  I don't know how many times people have tried to run up beside me and demand I open everything for their inspection.  NO.  You play the game, fire some shots, threaten to sink and ask for money for safe passage.  It's worth discussing.  The "Take everything, leave nothing mentality" does nothing more than make me want to grief you and your allies.

He said he has done some offline raids.  I have too.  I am not a huge fan of them because they are a bit boring.  Most of the time I do those by myself or with a small group if no one else is around.   And people throwing things one the ground, I dont care if you do that.  If you throw it on the ground and I get it.. accomplished the same goal just less work on my part.  

 

I have asked people to heave to and prepare to be boarded.. and you know what response i get?   F-U and a shot from a bow and arrow... then they cry when their little ramshackle sloop is sunk.     And I only take what I want or need.  I rarely take everything.  The problem is 90%  of the time I need everything you have.

[microphobe 72]

1 hour ago, Hodo said:

He said he has done some offline raids.  I have too.  I am not a huge fan of them because they are a bit boring.  Most of the time I do those by myself or with a small group if no one else is around.   And people throwing things one the ground, I dont care if you do that.  If you throw it on the ground and I get it.. accomplished the same goal just less work on my part.  

 

I have asked people to heave to and prepare to be boarded.. and you know what response i get?   F-U and a shot from a bow and arrow... then they cry when their little ramshackle sloop is sunk.     And I only take what I want or need.  I rarely take everything.  The problem is 90%  of the time I need everything you have.

lets be honest though.  In the event that you stop for a pirate who can out pace you and allow them to take your cargo, in this game with it's toxic community, chances are you will have them take your cargo and then sink you anyway, just from closer distance.

Your best bet is to just dump cargo overboard so they either have to stop to pick it up allowing you to escape, or they get nothing when they finally catch up and sink you.

The people who play pvp on this game usually aren't playing for the role play experience of pirating a ship, they are playing to sink other peoples ships like its cod on boats.

[Tallios 24]

5 hours ago, microphobe said:

lets be honest though.  In the event that you stop for a pirate who can out pace you and allow them to take your cargo, in this game with it's toxic community, chances are you will have them take your cargo and then sink you anyway, just from closer distance.

Your best bet is to just dump cargo overboard so they either have to stop to pick it up allowing you to escape, or they get nothing when they finally catch up and sink you.

The people who play pvp on this game usually aren't playing for the role play experience of pirating a ship, they are playing to sink other peoples ships like its cod on boats.

Never stopped, but the throwing stuff overboard is a thought.