Patch V15: The good, the questionable and the bad

[Doje 6]

My company and I have been discussing the recently released patch notes for the upcoming V15 update. I'm not going to be the first, nor the last post discussing this update, but there are a few things that I feel that should be addressed time and time again until appropriate measures are taken by the developers.

I want to preface this thread by saying that the previous released patches gave us players the idea that you are actually listening to what we are saying. Sadly, the most recently released patch notes took that feeling and threw it straight out of the window. Some of the proposed changes are so out of line with what is needed, that I feel genuinely demotivated to keep playing on the official servers. Regardless, I will start off with the changes that I think are good. Some of you might disagree and I do welcome all feedback, even if it is not in line with that I state here below.

The good

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- New "Fountain of Youth" quest will appear for characters aged 90 years and higher. The "Fountain of Youth" (currently represented as a magical particle effect) appears in a single Golden Age Ruins across the ATLAS, near the Power Stone Container. Every 50 in-gamedays, it teleports to another Golden Age Ruins, on a cycle. If you find the Fountain, and activate it, your character will be set back to age 20, and if you do this when you were aged over 90 years, you'll gain a significant permanent statistics boost (you can do this multiple times to gain further boosts, each time when you're at least 90 years old).
- Characters over age 90 get an old age debuff that slightly reduces stats (shown in char panel)

In my opinion not a bad idea, gives player an incentive to go to the power stone islands (again) to get themselves a permanent stat boost. The debuff kind of forces you to do so, which to me makes sense.

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- Fixed an erroneous feat cooldown time calculation, now all the feat cooldowns are what was originally intended.
- New "Fountain of Youth" quest will appear for characters aged 90 years and higher. The "Fountain of Youth" (currently represented as a magical particle effect) appears in a single Golden Age Ruins across the ATLAS, near the Power Stone Container. Every 50 in-gamedays, it teleports to another Golden Age Ruins, on a cycle. If you find the Fountain, and activate it, your character will be set back to age 20, and if you do this when you were aged over 90 years, you'll gain a significant permanent statistics boost (you can do this multiple times to gain further boosts, each time when you're at least 90 years old).
- Characters over age 90 get an old age debuff that slightly reduces stats (shown in char panel)
- Fixed an erroneous feat cooldown time calculation, now all the feat cooldowns are what was originally intended.
- Fixed the bug that was preventing recruiting new Crew in Freeports
- Reduced the total time for unclaiming enemy claimflags, the max is now 4 hours, with 15 minutes when at 100 flags.
- Vultures no longer target low-health wild creature
- Fixed land creatures AI's not getting aggro properly if attacked from a a ship
- Stop Allies being able to Capture other Allied teritories
- Fixed rapid unclaiming, now if your contested flag is unclaimed it will unclaim at the same rate that it took to claim!
- Improved door ticking performance
- Added cheat DestroyAllNonSaddlePlayerStructures
- Shark and Jellyfish targeting/neighbor ranges reduced 30%
- Diving suit adds 90 fortitude now and lasts for 2 hours at surface and about 30 minutes at deepest depths
- Fixed NPC Merchant ship showing as overweight when players carried a lot of weight aboard.
- Fixed Merchant ship showing as Raft with company ID 0 when looking at it.
- Fixed Company ID O showing on none player owned structures on maps (water spouts, etc.)
- Fixed Pillars being build-able on PVE islands.
- Fixed Fog event not appearing for players using low settings.
- Fixed Chicken hurt SFX.
- Added new Large Cannon SFX.
- Fixed Parrot hurt SFX.
- Fixed players not getting aggro when attacking whislt based on a ship.
- Fixed Monkey hurt SFX.
- Fixed a bug causing Map Markers to draw at incorrect locations on the map UI.
- Fixed skill description error, "mythical" changed to "legendary."
- Fixed flotsam items spoiling when reeled in with grappling hook.
- Fixed client crash when transitioning with sextant buff.
- Fixed a Song not referencing the correct song buff.
- Fixed a bug making it so that the Raft could be repaired for free.
- Reduced Kraken health by 60%.
- Reduced Kraken Minion AoD Ships ship Health 50%.
- Reduced Kraken damage by 50%.
- Reduced Wild Dragon damage by 40%
- Reduced Wild Dragon health be 40%
- Reduced Wild Dragon targeting range by 66%.
- Fixed Dragon not returning to its spawn area.
- Increased Dragon end aggro grace period from 6 second to 9 as it has a tighter aggro range now.
- Fixed Lucky Loader feat ability to not be used whilst prone (as you cannot reload prone.)
- Fixed Cloth Gloves clipping into hands in FPV.
- Fixed Dreadlocks not shrinking correctly with hats.
- Fixed LtOrderSeat collision bug.
- Improved death collision to human corpses.
- Fixed female emotes playing male voices.
- Fixed female player characters using male sleep SFX.
- Added ability to place top hat on certain creatures.
- Fixed Gorgon "Remove Snake" text.
- Corrected Repair box inventory name to read "Ship Resources Box."
- Fixed treasure guards despawning instantly on stasis.
- Fixed Monkeys dropping human poop.
- Fixed Client Crash when rendering ocean harvestables.
- Fixed Cow death harvest component giving the same amount of prime as a Bulls.
- Reduced trample damage for all applicable creatures.
- Updated Pig force poop ability to scale with creature level, to incentivise taming higher levels. (45 secs at lvl 1 and 15 secs at lvl 130).
- Reduced Lion grab weight threshold. Prevents unrealistic grabbing of Wolves and Horses.
- Fixed newly tamed creatures being hungry despite being fed during taming.
- Increased Dolphin follow ship range by 33%, and reduced interval by 20%.
- Fixed Bola'ed HUD to better indicate where to feed creature during taming.
- Removed "Giant" prefix from creatures' descriptive name that use it.
- Changed "Giant Snake" descriptive name to "Cobra".
- Fixed incorrect sounds being used by Lion and Tiger animations.
- Fixed incorrect Bear attack ranges to prevent stopping movement for claw attack, which often missed and allowed players to gain distance when being chased.
- Reduced attack and AI ranges for Cave Bear, based on its smaller size.
- Fixed incorrect item weights for cloth, hide and plate armor. They are now heavier.
- Added folder paths for wooden gateways and gates so you no longer see them instantly when opening the Smithy inventory.
- Prevented some creatures from not being able to be tamed if they are clipped too far into terrain or structures.
- Improved Waking Tame Feeding sockets on Cow and Razortooth.
- Improved bola socket on Crow
- Updated Vulture AI controller to aim lower when targeting corpses.
- Fixed various creature spawn issues.
- Fixed players being able to bola certain alpha creatures (now you cannot.)
- Updated Dolphin to prevent health bars appearing when they follow players.
- Improved torpor animations of Razortooth and Ostrich.
- Increased Ostrich melee swing socket radius to more consistently land attacks. Updated Ostrich IK to prevent leg distortion when running down slopes.
- Reduced max wander height on flyers.
- Improved server list efficiency for a better experience.
- Fixed Greek Fire SFX.
- Fixed player on fire SFX.
- Fixed inability to repair door frames in certain constructions.
- Added some additional server configs.

Bonus: Most of V16's changes look good, but that is still far off so my opinion might change once we get more details of the patch's content.

I kept these changes in my post, as I wanted to portray that there is a sizeable amount of changes that we do appreciate. Not everything is terrible as the recent set of posts might say, but more on that later. The ones above are changes that I feel are good and make sense. I don't see the need to add on much reasoning to it. If you feel otherwise, please do state what you feel should be different and why.

A few honourable mentions:

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- Ocean creatures can no longer be Alpha.

This is a great change. This was asked for by the playerbase and you delivered, so thank you. Please do consider looking into alpha land creatures next, as those are still an issue for your players.

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- Reduced Wolf spawn frequency
- Reduced Wolf natural targeting range
- Reduced Wolf notify neighbor range.
- Reduced Wolf hp and damage

Yes. THANK YOU.

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- Territory map will now display allies as teal-colored

A small, yet very valuable QoL change. Great stuff.

The questionable

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- Defeating the Kraken now gives you a unique passive skill which permanently and automatically reduces all of your Feat cooldowns by 33%!
- Summoning the Kraken now only require the first 8 powerstones (Ghostship powerstone is no longer necessary)

Honestly this sounds good, but I do feel that some players might have issues with this. Doesn't this make the ghostship powerstone absolutely irrelevant? Unless you give ghost ships another use, I'd say there's not much incentive left to actively search for them.

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- Reduced default gold from treasure maps by 50% (as originally intended) and added a new server scaling value for treasure gold. Though, the Official 2x weekend puts the gold back to pre-patch values.

I can see why, but I'm sure some players always have issues with nerfs to income. Personally I haven't used gold as much so this doesn't effect me as much, but I am interested in what others have to say about it.

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- +50% tame damage resistance

I think we need more context on this one. Tame damage resistance to what? Is this tamed creatures getting a buff in terms of the damage they take, or is this players taking less damage from enemy tamed creatures?

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- Crop plots are now prevented from being placed on ships and are destroyed if they were on ships.

To be honest I can see why, plots aren't meant to be on boats, but it was an awesome feature. I'll always remember my farm boat.
 

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- Added Streamer stealth mode option.

Good change, but I see this repeated in the V16 patch notes, so when exactly do we get it? Next patch or late February?
 

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- Increased Flame Arrow durability cost to 4 durability consumed per shot.
- Reduced Flame Arrow max percentage damage by 25% (4% health per second to 3% health.)
- Reduced Flame Arrow max damage per second from 10 to 5.
- Reduced Flame Arrow damage to mythical creatures by 75%.

Fire arrows are overpowered as they stand, and they still will be after this patch. What we needed is a buff to GUNS and Melee weapons. PVP-wise there still needs to be a nerf to fire arrows, as the damage the flames on the ground do still wrecks everyone regardless of their armor. PVE-wise fire arrows are good and they didn't need an extra nerf. Please consider our feedback when we keep on telling you that the PVP-meta is currently absolutely disgusting, as naked players carrying fire arrows dominate anyone else. PVE-wise we NEED more ways of dealing with the enormous amount of predators and alpha creatures on our islands.
 

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- Fixed Giant snake lock on and player ability to damage it using melee attacks.

What exactly does this mean? Can we no longer damage Giant snakes/Cobras with melee attacks? What's the point of that?

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- Reduced Greek Fire range by 40%.

Personally I don't really use these, so I'm not sure if this was called for. Maybe others can chip in and share their thoughts on this one?

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- Fixed ability of players to feed through walls of taming pens and not get attacked.

I get that the game isn't supposed to be revolving about taming creatures, but in the current state of the game it kinda is. I'm okay with making it harder to tame pets, as long as this doesn't fuck up their range. I don't want to get hit from taming pens while not standing near them at all.

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- Prevents multi use feeding from the root, putting themselves in harm's way.

I need some clarification on this one. What does this entail, exactly?

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- Significant server improvements over the coming weeks, where we'll be doubling performance increment by increment.

Sounds great on paper, but doubling performance every time is not how it works out ever, so please don't exaggerate this so much, lol.

 

The bad

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- Removed Elephant having weight reduction for Wood.

You've seen the reaction this change has brought on your forum and Subreddit. I don't need to add much to this. This is a terrible, terrible, terrible change.
Gathering in this game already is tedious. Sailing across multiple grids to find and tame an elephant in order to make the gathering less tedious, is tedious as well.

Not a single player on any of your 4 official servers would have ever told you that the process of gathering resources is too easy. Because it isn't.
I don't usually speak for everyone, but I do think the majority of the playerbase can back me up here when I say that this nerf is so uncalled for that you should be ashamed for actually proposing it. The elephant does not need a nerf, it needs to either stay the same or even be buffed in terms of gathering, as its base carry weight already is way too low. It's gathering speed is low as well.

Same goes for the rhinos. A bloody rhino can't carry a couple stack of rocks, so you need a second transporting mount to carry a couple of stones back to your base if you don't want to go back and forth 100+ times with your rhino.

Please revoke this change at once, and LISTEN to the actual feedback your players have given you in terms of what needs to be changed concerning the tamed animals. This change is making an already tedious process even worse and will hurt you in the end too, as players lose interest in playing on the official servers.

This is so bad I actually had to write this entire book to vent my frustrations with this development team right now.

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No mention of the hacking / Black Butterfly incident during your livestream, nor any written notes.

Jat, Dollie, we love you, but you NEED to address the situation. You can not shove this one under the rug and say you are dealing with stuff but need more evidence. There's a stockpile of evidence coming from multiple parties that are in no way related to eachother. People have seen in-game names, steam names on streams of multiple popular streamers, who are in different zones. This was not just one person who managed to get into an administrator account. Even if you can't ban the players in question due to some higher up stuff leaving you with your hands tied, you NEED TO TALK TO YOUR COMMUNITY ABOUT THE SITUATION AND SPECIFICALLY ADDRESS IT. I can't stress this enough. By not mentioning it you are only fueling the talks of you being forced to leave this company untouched because you are owned by Snail Games or what not. Please change the direction of this conversation and make an official statement on it. Even if you can't ban the company in question, please just address your community in an official way. This is your number 1 priority. Not a single other topic has ever had so much traction since release so you can not just ignore it.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Adfax 157]

How you can suggest forcing people to repeatedly seek out a fountain just to keep their character is beyond me. It is the worst thing about V5.

People just want to get on playing the game, they don't want to have to worry about stuff like that.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Adfax

[Doje 6]

4 minutes ago, Adfax said:

How you can suggest forcing people to repeatedly seek out a fountain just to keep their character is beyond me. It is the worst thing about V5.

People just want to get on playing the game, they don't want to have to worry about stuff like that.

I don't specifically mind that, since it's only once in like 3-4 weeks. If it was every few days it'd get old really quick, but I don't mind seeking out the fountain every few weeks for a permanent stat boost.

[Adfax 157]

7 minutes ago, Doje said:

I don't specifically mind that, since it's only once in like 3-4 weeks. If it was every few days it'd get old really quick, but I don't mind seeking out the fountain every few weeks for a permanent stat boost.

The reason it is so frustrating is because it attempts to lock people in the game with the threat of killing off their character, unless they make the journey.

[Hodo 147]

16 minutes ago, Adfax said:

The reason it is so frustrating is because it attempts to lock people in the game with the threat of killing off their character, unless they make the journey.

They havent said anyone is going to die of old age yet.  Just be handicapped.  Which means I will have a reason to actually go to a power stone island.   I havent wanted to go yet.   

[Faicorf 46]

I am pleased that other people are using the forums to vent their frustration about the lack of interest in player feedback and how the devs are acting extremely poor in general, but I feel the need to warn you, such topics so far do not grab the attention of the devs, even when worded politely, calmly and very well constructed as yours is, I applaud you for this.

I just want to stress your final point even more.

PLEASE GRAPESHOT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ACTUALLY START LISTENING TO OUR FEEDBACK REGARDING IN GAME ISSUES, BECAUSE IT IS BLATANTLY APPARENT YOU DO NEXT TO NO TESTING/NO TESTING AT ALL ON YOUR FEATURES IN GAME. INSTEAD OF CONTINUING TO ADD TO YOUR MASSIVE LIST OF FEATURE CREEP, TAKE OUR FEEDBACK ON BOARD. HALT THE PRODUCTION OF NEW FEATURES THAT WILL NOT WORK AS INTENDED, AND FOCUS ON FIXING THE MAJOR GAME BREAKING BUGS THAT HAVE BEEN BROUGHT TO YOUR ATTENTION COUNTLESS TIMES NOW.

 

THE FACT YOU OUTRIGHT IGNORED US IN YOUR DEV STREAM, HAD THE AUDACITY TO CALL IT A LIVE Q+A, THEN EVEN WENT AS FAR AS TO ADMIT YOU ARE READING TWITCH CHAT UPON THE MENTION OF AGING AND ITS NOT PRE-RECORDED (OUT RIGHT ADMITTING YOU WERE JUST CHOOSING TO IGNORE OUR QUESTIONS REGARDING THE CURRENT CHEATING ISSUE). WE WERE NOT EXPECTING ANY KIND OF IMMEDIATE ACTION TO BE TAKEN WITHOUT THOROUGH INVESTIGATION. HOWEVER, WE DO EXPECT YOU TO AT LEAST GIVE US A RESPONSE WHEN 80% OF THE TWITCH CHAT WAS DEMANDING ANSWERS.

 

THROUGHOUT ALL OF THE DISREGARDED FEEDBACK AND BLATANT IGNORING OF YOUR COMMUNITY, WE DO NOT JUST FEEL ANGRY, WE FEEL DOWN RIGHT INSULTED! YOU HAVE ALREADY PROVEN WHAT YOU THINK WOULD WORK OR BE COOL TO HAVE FAILS EVERY!, SINGLE!, TIME!. 

SO FOR ONCE, IN YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE AS A COMPANY STOP IGNORING FEEDBACK AND DOING WHAT YOU FEEL IS BEST IN YOUR EXTREMELY LIMITED NUMBER OF EYES AND LISTEN TO THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY TRYING TO PLAY YOUR GAME AND MAKE IT BETTER INSTEAD OF FIGHTING THEM TO STROKE YOUR OWN EGOS.

 

THERE ARE SOME MANY OF US THAT WANT THIS GAME TO BE THE GREATEST MMO THERE IS (I AM ONE OF THEM) BUT WE ARE SICK TO DEATH OF HAVING TO FIGHT YOU DEVELOPERS AND YOUR P**S POOR DECISIONS BASED ON NOTHING BUT YOUR OWN FLAWED MINDSET

 

TLDR: STOP FIGHTING US AND START LISTENING, OR ACCEPT THE FACT YOUR GAME WILL NOT SURVIVE PAST A YEAR, NOT BECAUSE OF THE GAME IS BAD, BUT BECAUSE OF YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS YOU PLAYER BASE.

[some_auzzie 1]

FAICORF Just like ark :) was a good game, devs never LESSENED, look how well thats doing now.  all they did was slowly push there players away.  look at the steam charts lol

 

[Zarine 8]

This patch has put the nail in the coffin, for me. I have been playing less and less, after losing multiple ships/rafts to Ships of the Damned when crossing server lines, and once this patch hits I'm completely done playing. The age system is idiotic to begin with. Seeing as I'm a solo player, I won't be getting near the Fountain of Youth, so my attributes will be lowered as a punishment for playing by myself. The elephant nerf is stupid, making the only tamable worth anything the cow, because of the milk.

[robertr1fx 2]

The entire Atlas game has from the beginning just been a punish soloplayers

 

[MaxPower 126]

Perhaps I missed it but I don't see anything in there about solving the PvE sinking issue or fixing people getting stuck to other players ships as a result of their previous attempted "fix" for the issue. I'd say that's bad... really bad. 

Edit: Also, consider me in the camp that thinks the aging mechanic is pure garbage. No idea what the devs are thinking with that one... there is nothing fun about it. 

Edited January 19, 2019 by MaxPower

[Scorpionshawn 134]

7 minutes ago, robertr1fx said:

The entire Atlas game has from the beginning just been a punish soloplayers

 

Its a EPIC fail! Most people that start a game are solo and this is survival not fort night battle royal!

[some_auzzie 1]

there are alot of friendly crews that will let you join. like the crew im in

 

[Skuf_McGruff 7]

Literally just created an account to tell them RIP to their player base with the completely idiotic removal of the elephant wood weight reduction. 

Grapeshot, YOU ARE ALREADY LOSING PLAYERS BECAUSE OF THE GRIND! DON'T MAKE IT EVEN MORE OF A GRIND YOU DENSE ****S!

[pope_kd 36]

30 minutes ago, Zarine said:

This patch has put the nail in the coffin, for me. I have been playing less and less, after losing multiple ships/rafts to Ships of the Damned when crossing server lines, and once this patch hits I'm completely done playing. The age system is idiotic to begin with. Seeing as I'm a solo player, I won't be getting near the Fountain of Youth, so my attributes will be lowered as a punishment for playing by myself. The elephant nerf is stupid, making the only tamable worth anything the cow, because of the milk.

The elephant thing is the game-breaking one for me, too many changes in the direction of making things more tedious and less fun for fake longevity, retroactively makings time investments like taming useless, etc. 

The FoY thing is only interesting because of the "permanent stats buff" you get for doing it over 90, a bit like a Prestige system. Depending on how severe the "stat debuff" is for being 90+, it could be either an interesting gameplay mechanic or a total fucking annoyance. 

[Evir 38]

The elephant nerf was being used by some people to carry a ton of extra wood for repairs on galleons, they would have an elephant inside the ship next to the resource box, then transfer wood as needed. It allowed you to carry significantly more repair mats and you could delete one of the back decks and completely enclose the elephant inside of a structure to protect it.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Evir

[pope_kd 36]

20 minutes ago, Evir said:

The elephant nerf was being used by some people to carry a ton of extra wood for repairs on galleons, they would have an elephant inside the ship next to the resource box, then transfer wood as needed. It allowed you to carry significantly more repair mats and you could delete one of the back decks and completely enclose the elephant inside of a structure to protect it.

Who cares? Clever use of gameplay mechanics doesn't mean "let's make the grind for wood 400% worse than it currently is and fuck over everyone who traded for/sailed for and tamed and returned/etc an elephant." Smarter fixes for this would've been:
 

• Diminishing returns on repairs within a certain timeframe to the same plank/part
• Increasing cooldown on repairs within a certain timeframe to the same plank/part

Not making the entire grind to GET the ship in the first place significantly worse and making grinding materials for bases/gates/etc even more obnoxious than it already is. 

[Darkintellect 11]

THE BAD

Not listed in the Patch Notes.

Foundations now only give off a 4 foundation radius no build aura from other players. 

[LaiTash 156]

The bad: greatly increased the weight of tools, armors, and weapons while AT THE SAME TIME giving us that old age debuff. Like the naked meta wasn't cancerous enough already.

[Yomaz 10]

The Bad: Taming now is almost imopossible im not sure if they just coded it wrong but the angels of being able to feed it were greatly affected. I know they didn't want people to tame through a wall but feeding it from angles and through doorways is a solid mechanic but you can't do this now. I personally think stop nerfing things that make your janky game fun. They said it would probably be 2 years till full release well swing your nerf hammer then let us pay you to alpha test your game at least have fun doing it. We need to beable to kill animals quickly if we grind up the mats and skills for guns animals should not have to be lead to traps or use glitchy mechanics to kill you increase the difficulty because that is your vision of the game ours is we like it we are having fun but INCREASE OUR QUALITY OF LIFE

[MaxPower 126]

5 hours ago, Darkintellect said:

THE BAD

Not listed in the Patch Notes.

Foundations now only give off a 4 foundation radius no build aura from other players. 

Eh quite frankly I hope that change screwed some of the foundation spammers a bit. 

[LaiTash 156]

7 hours ago, Hodo said:

They havent said anyone is going to die of old age yet.  Just be handicapped.  Which means I will have a reason to actually go to a power stone island.   I havent wanted to go yet.   

Well the fountain thingy didn't make me *want* to go there. It's nothing there but lag fest, naked corpse runs, and probably having to deal with some dick heads from mega tribes (like we didn't have enough of them on our island). No interesting and challenging content or anything like that, just a zombie survival game where you are the zombie.

It's just that i'm forced to go there now, no matter if i want to or not. 

Edited January 20, 2019 by LaiTash

[Darkintellect 11]

4 hours ago, MaxPower said:

Eh quite frankly I hope that change screwed some of the foundation spammers a bit. 

It screwed everyone, even those who wish to build because the spammers can just box them in and greif them.