They didn't remove claims from pve

[Winter Thorne 696]

They just changed them.

Instead of a flag you get a repair box now.  They removed the timer and now you get charged upkeep instead.  The upkeep is also a kind of timer, because if the box holds enough mats for 90 days, that's how long your timer is.

They didn't limit them either.  So if you can collect a ton of mats, you can own so much of everything that nobody else will be able to find resources or move their ships around.  If you can't collect a ton of mats, too bad for you.  You get a tiny spot squeezed in between two megas who have already blocked all the resources anyway.

So in the great debate about what should be done to fix claims in pve, they chose upkeep over limits.  That's really what has happened.  And they claim to have done this to help small companies.  They've covered up the mistake temporarily by making all the islands available for this new "claiming" system, and adding 1 more island per zone, and that will appease some of the people.  But it won't be long till the big companies (and the very motivated smaller ones) grab all that up too.  Then we'll need another fix for claims again, with probably another wipe to go along with it.

I stand by my earlier postings that upkeep not only doesn't achieve that goal it makes things worse, because you haven't stopped the land grabbers, and now the smaller guys have to compete with them on upkeep as well!

All they really had to do was limit the number.

[MeatSammich 214]

From the livestream: Jat: "As for PVE status, the rules are going to be a bit different. So, we are not going to be using claim flags in PvE. We're just making it free-buildable on any island except home servers, golden age ruins, and um, lawless islands are pretty much remaining the same. PvE specific, there won't be any claim flags, all structures are going to naturally decay on PvE..." Then goes to talk about the repair structure being put in place to stop people from foundation/pillar spamming.

There's nothing in there about the repair structure having a no-build radius, like a claim flag does. Free-buildable. Sounds like the only limitation will be the normal no-build distance from someone else's buildings.

If a griefer puts down new pillars/foundations every day or three, or whatever the decay timer is, then upkeep doesn't matter: the only people paying the upkeep will be people who want to keep their buildings, To prevent someone from putting down stuff to block resources you will have to put down your own stuff to block them from putting down things, which will A: have a damn good chance of blocking the resources you're trying to protect, B: cost upkeep to the person who is trying to protect things for everyone, and 3: (because apparantly C followed by a colon can only be some stupid emojii) make us end up with islands covered in pillars and foundations, and have everyone paying an artificially high upkeep.

I played Ark over 3000 hours, I served hopped through a couple dozen servers that were nothing but pillar spam up and down every shorelline, before I found one that wasn't. There, you could move inland and try to carve out a spot for youself. Here, blocking the shoreline is blocking the majority of the game, and is easier to do, because of how much smaller each individual island is.

 

Edited March 1, 2019 by MeatSammich

[Garrik 6]

I for one want ownership of a piece of land.   This system they are changing too is just asking for abuse.

 

[José Gaspar 58]

I expect lots of abuse early on, but soon the abusers will realize they are spending more time upkeeping the pillar/floor spam they will give up.    Many lawless islands are near empty of found spam. as people realized he advertised when the missed the four day upkeep by 5 minutes and found the bed was no longer there to recall.

I personally wipe any foundation spammer I find with expired timer, I start with the main base.

Edited March 1, 2019 by José Gaspar

[LoneXS 31]

My take away from what Jat said was that they would remove claim flags eventually. I would guess this is a first stage of sorts assuming this is coming from the test server?

If they apply a radius to the repair box then that just adds to the stupidity. Its not going to stop griefing and to assume otherwise is just mind numbling dumb, if I want to grief someone with pillars or foundations I'll happily just replace them as they expire. I can bang out 200+ pillars in an hour with a few tames or just feed a few repair boxes I guess. And yes it will cut down on the clutter as stuff with naturally expire but you can also do that with claims. The land I snagged had several busted taming traps on it, took all of 5 mins to clean it up and get stuff spawning back in.

But yeah I think you pretty much nailed it, instead of trying to limit these mega companies they are simply slapping on an upkeep instead. 

I guess if they put these changes in place I can give up on being a nice player trying to eek out a living for myself solo and spend 100% of my time trolling mega companies, its not as if I'll ever get banned for it.

[Winter Thorne 696]

59 minutes ago, MeatSammich said:

 

There's nothing in there about the repair structure having a no-build radius, like a claim flag does. Free-buildable. Sounds like the only limitation will be the normal no-build distance from someone else's buildings.

 

It's worse than I thought then.  And you know my OP was not meant to say, "Yay, we didn't really lose claims".

SMH

 

[Winter Thorne 696]

35 minutes ago, José Gaspar said:

I expect lots of abuse early on, but soon the abusers will realize they are spending more time upkeeping the pillar/floor spam they will give up.    Many lawless islands are near empty of found spam. as people realized he advertised when the missed the four day upkeep by 5 minutes and found the bed was no longer there to recall.

I personally wipe any foundation spammer I find with expired timer, I start with the main base.

They don't all do it just for shits and giggles you know.   They do it to annoy everyone else off the island, or because they want to be able to choose their own neighbors, or because if they don't somebody else will and it'll be even worse.  Some of them do it in self defense to keep somebody else from walling them in.  And if that's where their base is, it's no big deal to run around every few days and replace the stuff.

[kampfer91 58]

From my POV , you force to grind even more just to keep your base intact , and more grinding does not equal good , it is more than annoying .

What they could have done is 1 flag per person , and the size of the area affect by flag reduce depend on how many people in your company , that way one can have a safe home without having to worry about people place a pillar near them when offline and no one can hog the entire island for themselves .

[Littlelucifer 22]

They could have done 1 flag and still fix the problems but they want the fast and easy way, but we could save character data and not lose our charactr @jatesh and the  devs should look into that wipe but allow us to dl our character like we did in ark.