Top Company incentivizes the wrong kind of competition.

[Bowtie 34]

By using land ownership as the criteria for Top Companies in Atlas, you have given good reason for companies to hog as much land as possible, which is in direct opposition to helping new companies and new players find a place to have fun.

You should reward players being beneficent and generous to others. It doesn't matter that this is a "pirate" game; pirates are bad people and the entire premise is harmful to people by encouraging them to treat each other poorly or to become victims of evil actions.

That is, if you, Grapeshot want more players in your game, you're gonna have to balance Good and Evil to maximize population, or face the fact that your game will be super-niche. 

The larger a participating population becomes, the more important it becomes to promote and  enforce good morals, ethics, and civilization in order to support the longevity of said population.

 

Right now, the Top Companies are those whom are the most evil, and their behavior is harmful to a the concept of a larger variety of players playing this game for extended periods of time and enjoying it, and spreading the word of the fun they are having.

[Rats 30]

Spot on and the main reason for the death of the game. The leader board should of been based on whoever has plundered the most loot and ships.

Dev's ruined the game from the start with that stupid land claim system, the whole map should be lawless so the mega's have to at least fight for it and defend it not just run around spamming flag's 24/7. Most ridiculous game concept I've ever seen. What made them think solo players and small groups would want to become slaves or pay tax to mega's ?.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

4 hours ago, Bowtie said:

By using land ownership as the criteria for Top Companies in Atlas, you have given good reason for companies to hog as much land as possible, which is in direct opposition to helping new companies and new players find a place to have fun.

You should reward players being beneficent and generous to others. It doesn't matter that this is a "pirate" game; pirates are bad people and the entire premise is harmful to people by encouraging them to treat each other poorly or to become victims of evil actions.

That is, if you, Grapeshot want more players in your game, you're gonna have to balance Good and Evil to maximize population, or face the fact that your game will be super-niche. 

The larger a participating population becomes, the more important it becomes to promote and  enforce good morals, ethics, and civilization in order to support the longevity of said population.

 

Right now, the Top Companies are those whom are the most evil, and their behavior is harmful to a the concept of a larger variety of players playing this game for extended periods of time and enjoying it, and spreading the word of the fun they are having.

I agree with pretty much all of this except one thing. I'm not sure I agree that the Top Companies recognition incentive is the only or even the main reason that large companies are acquiring as much land as possible. I think control of resources is at least as much a factor if not moreso. If Top Companies ranking were removed from the game entirely tommorrow, large clans would likely go right on trying to get their hands on every bit they could. Frankly this is what most players are doing regardless of company size. 

Having said that, human beings are enormously responsive to incentives and ego is no small factor in online gaming. So even if it isn't the main factor, I certainly don't think it's pushing the game in a direction that is encouraging of long term stability for the reasons you've already outlined clearly. Good job btw. There was a recent thread suggesting that the titles of these leader boards should be changed to most land held or some such, because saying most land held equals Top is unfair.  I don't think GrapeCard is likely to remove these leaderboards entirely, but a name change might be useful and perhaps additional metrics added so land control isn't viewed as the only thing that matters.

One other small thing I disagree with. Unless you have had direct personal interaction with all of the companies on the leaderboard on which you can judge their behavior as evil, saying all the top companies are evil is likely unfair generalization. Some may very well be just large groups of well organized gamers who are acheivement oriented. I don't know either way, I just dislike making generalizations about groups of people I don't have any evidence about.

Edited February 15, 2019 by boomervoncannon

[Bullet Force 151]

Actually most of the claims of large companies are pointless see claims. Our company has hundreds out there in the ocean.