technical suggestion Regarding: Server or Progression Wipes

[darkmeadow 7]

For most players Server Wiping is a deviding toppic with some wanting a wipe to have a fresh start and other wanting to keep Spheres of influence and bases like they are.

I don't really lean on any side of it  and have some suggestions for a compromise, in beeing able to make changes to maps, characters and ships, to existing Server while largely maintaining Speres of influence / balance of power:

 

Rolling Server Wipes:

Instead of Wiping the whole network completely i would suggest having rolling wipes only affecting those grids wich are actually affected by changes with one to two weeks warning that the grid will wipe Through:

• special "magic storms" occuring in this sector (maybe with its frequency and strength increasing the closer it gets to the wipe)
• border walls to the sector having a diffent collor (maybe a darker purple-ish hue) to indicate this part of the map is "unstable"
• (optionally) Welcome message when you log into the server
• through forum posts and twitter announcing the changes.

This can let us players keep our characters an everything we hold dear, given It is not your base and you have the cargo capacity to carry it, while you can make changes to The Map.
It could even be applied if you want to get rid of all buildings where you make a staggered wipe within one or two weeks.

 

End Of The World:

To give some sort of reason for player characters beeing able to "survive" the Map Wipe i would suggest having a end of the world event where large ammount of army of the damned and or stronger variations are attacking players and player structures in waves over the course of 20 to 30 minutes, and Ships of the Damned have increased spawn rates and more Hit Points so the impose a bigger chalange for people coming into the server.

 idea of it beeing a big battle where the players ultimatively loose but may be able to sneak away with some sort of special loot (or even temporary bonuses for harvesting), while risking the ships they decide to take into the server

 

End of an Era:

Similar to the Map wipe this will be a Event to induce a lore friendly way of wiping all existing characters (be it for balance reasons or changes on cosmetic limitations for characters)

The event can betriggered for:

• Wiping Character Models while keeping progression
• wiping Character Progression while keeping Visuals
• Wiping both.

Once The Event has Started Characters Ages in a much faster rate giving them only one or two weeks to finish their business on this era.

The fountain of Youth will not set the characters age back to 20, but will ensure the characters Rebirth depending on the type of wipe:

• Visual Wipe: the player can recreate the character with all skills/stats he invested
• Progression Wipe: The Caracter will respawn at level 1 with the same apearance, but gets a xp bonus for a few Days for beeing able to survive the old Era and to incentivice to keep playing through wipes
• Complete Wipe: The Player has to make a new character but also gets the xp bonus for a few days.

Dark Age of Sails:

Last but not least would be the event for wiping all ships.

The event can be triggered to make big changes on ship tiers.

This could be a massive Naval battle across all servers over the course of one or two days where massive ammounts of Ship of the damned maybe including Flagships of the damned occur and more actively hunt playerships. while dealing more damage to ships, or even encorporate the rapid fireing SoDs

Players could get some special loot (cosmetic ship upgrades, or magical infused items etc) when they are able to sink Flagships, or with a significant lower chance normal ships (based on its tier)

after the Naval battle Army of the damned spawn arround each ship, board it and set big explosives that destroy the ship to let the remaining ships sink to the bottom of the sea or harbor ground.

After this Event i would suggest a 2 times or 3 times resource event to get people up and running again.

Edit:

As addition also give the options for those wipes to Private servers to give them a easier way to maintain the servers including the option for having server seasons (for roleplayservers or hardcore pvp comunities)

if anyone has thoughts about it  or additional suggestion about this topic feel free to post it^^

 

Edited January 20, 2019 by darkmeadow

[microphobe 72]

bases ships etc can be rebuilt easily and while a painful thing to have gone losing a character is far worse. Particularly when there is no reason for it, arbitrarily deleting someone's character is about the best way to make sure they will stop playing the game.

[R4GN4R 34]

51 minutes ago, microphobe said:

bases ships etc can be rebuilt easily and while a painful thing to have gone losing a character is far worse. Particularly when there is no reason for it, arbitrarily deleting someone's character is about the best way to make sure they will stop playing the game.

You realise, that "The game" isn't even full release yet... So now that you know, you should also know that at full release, it is kind of expected to have a wipe...

Welcome to Alphas... Oh hold on, you could literally wake up and everything could already be wiped, servers broken, backups corrupted, uncorrectable bugs, or your PC could even catch on fire!....

 

[Art3mis 2]

36 minutes ago, R4GN4R said:

You realise, that "The game" isn't even full release yet... So now that you know, you should also know that at full release, it is kind of expected to have a wipe...

Welcome to Alphas... Oh hold on, you could literally wake up and everything could already be wiped, servers broken, backups corrupted, uncorrectable bugs, or your PC could even catch on fire!....

 

kind of an extream way to respond to him.

while I would say that yeah, you would lose progress, claimed land, character development into certain trees. 
I would Agree that they might eventually do some form of reset or wipe but I would feel inclined to ask for something to say that my time worth playing was worth the adventure.

[microphobe 72]

9 hours ago, R4GN4R said:

You realise, that "The game" isn't even full release yet... So now that you know, you should also know that at full release, it is kind of expected to have a wipe...

Welcome to Alphas... Oh hold on, you could literally wake up and everything could already be wiped, servers broken, backups corrupted, uncorrectable bugs, or your PC could even catch on fire!....

 

didn't happen for ark, unlikely it would happen for atlas, they may wipe the islands but they won't likely erase the characters. They will probably open a new server or two if the population is high enough at launch.

Yes I am aware this is an alpha, yes I know other are glitches, crashes and rollbacks. Even major changes to what characters can do, they can wipe whole skill trees out of the game. These things do happen due to or by accident. However in most games the players will tolerate the loss of things like gear or boats etc. Because those are "things", you will lament your lost armour that you had dyed or the ship you had for a long time. But losing the actual character will often sever the players attachment to the game as their "sunk cost" tether is gone.

This is why they will usually do everything they can to preserve a character.

[darkmeadow 7]

On 1/21/2019 at 2:06 PM, microphobe said:

didn't happen for ark, unlikely it would happen for atlas, they may wipe the islands but they won't likely erase the characters. They will probably open a new server or two if the population is high enough at launch.

Yes I am aware this is an alpha, yes I know other are glitches, crashes and rollbacks. Even major changes to what characters can do, they can wipe whole skill trees out of the game. These things do happen due to or by accident. However in most games the players will tolerate the loss of things like gear or boats etc. Because those are "things", you will lament your lost armour that you had dyed or the ship you had for a long time. But losing the actual character will often sever the players attachment to the game as their "sunk cost" tether is gone.

This is why they will usually do everything they can to preserve a character.

It kinda did happen for Ark, where Servers went to legacy server not connected to the same hub as newer ones meaning you could only play on legacy server.

besides ark has a completely different Server structure, while ark had lots of the same servers atlas is more like one big server where data persists between servers and you can not make some server legacy and some new.

And i don't want a wipe of my character either, i just suggest if they want to wipe the characters they should make a Event out of it and reward the players fulfilling the event with faster lvling

Edited January 22, 2019 by darkmeadow

[microphobe 72]

4 hours ago, darkmeadow said:

It kinda did happen for Ark, where Servers went to legacy server not connected to the same hub as newer ones meaning you could only play on legacy server.

besides ark has a completely different Server structure, while ark had lots of the same servers atlas is more like one big server where data persists between servers and you can not make some server legacy and some new.

And i don't want a wipe of my character either, i just suggest if they want to wipe the characters they should make a Event out of it and reward the players fulfilling the event with faster lvling

Agreed but the only real justification for a deliberate character wipe is game launch to level the field for the new players or some significant change to the way that the game handles character data and migration would be an issue due to the number of sleepers and the time it takes.

I agree with the compensating players part with faster levelling but honestly as a group we can get someone from lvl 10 to 40 in a day of treasure hunts so levelling isn't that much of an issue in this game at least until you get to the 50+.