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Still not convinced they can't cap claims per player?...

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3 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

You know that's not what I meant.

Cap claims in the original version of them, so everyone gets to own land.  Use the build radius on important resource nodes, discoveries and spawn points for treasure maps.   Problem solved.  Everyone gets to own land, nobody get to pillar spam someone else.  Everyone is happy.  Simple.

Instead we get overlords who can tax you, destroy you and deny you entry.  You don't mind having one of those.  (Because you have your nice big base someplace else)

I need a better definition of original claim. To me the original claims lasted like 2 hours before they were claimable and took 30 minutes to declaim or something crazy so you always had to have somebody on to maintain your flags. That is neither here nor there. I made this post originally on reddit for how I would change it. I called it use it or lose it. COPY PASTA

Hello :D,

I am Lotus from Lotus :D. I am going to try to make a post that shows direction that I expected the game to have but was disappointed to find it didn't have. I bought this game and didn't know much about it except it was made by the company that made ark.

So the first day was just a laggy hell of falling through the waves and all kinds of just trash. As I sailed for 12ish hours looking for an area to claim as my own I had fantasies about what I would find on islands and wondered how the game would work. I was... disappointed :(.

Here is how I feel the game should work for a new player. You spawn in at the freeport. This area should be pretty safe because it's basically your tutorial zone so you learn that the printer cartridge on the right is actually your vitamins and how to replenish them. After about an hour of getting it figured out you make your first boat and sail away. Yay sailing. (I hate sailing BTW :D) now you come to your next zone... the lawless region... which should basically be a staging point to find your first actual claim area (not somewhere you live forever). So you go and encounter some lower level hostile mobs. Start to encounter the elements. Make your first box (Yay box bases) and sail away. You sail and encounter an area you can drop your claim flag at (Yay land).

So now you have a patch of land to call your own. The way you maintain this land should be simple you do things on the grid. So if you are out farming trees or whatever your claim should start to gain time towards it's upkeep because you are doing things on that grid. Actions if farming or building would increase the amount of time as long as it is done on that grid. Lets say you farm up about 48 hours worth of time on your claim but you also decide you want a bigger settlement because now your buddy Bob wants to play with you and he joins your tribe. So you go and drop your second claim flag instead of having 1 flag with 48 hours you now have 2 flags with 24 hours because the time your grid has banked now gets divided by 2 and ticks down for 2 flags. This means you now need to do more work to maintain those flags. This is ok you have 2 people and bob is pretty active so you get to 72 hours in no time.

Then bob goes and decides he wants to have the metal node and gems and drops 6 more flags. So now you have 8 claims at 18 hours but you need to do 8x the farm to maintain them as opposed to just the 1 flag. So you go and farm like hell for the night and go to bed with 24 hours on each flag.

You wake up go to work and come back home with 10 hours on each flag. So you and Bob put up a tax bank and get your 20% tax on those gems and metal. So you and Bob farm like hell again and end up with 16 hours on each flag. This is a problem because you guys are behind where you were yesterday but you have work and need to go to sleep.

So next day you get on with 2 hours left on each flag. You now realize that you can't keep those claims for the gems and metal because trying to farm that much time to maintain upkeep is too much for your 2 man crew. So you kick down to 3 flags and go to bed with 24 hours again.

Your neighbors decide they want to go further from the freeport because they hear it is better farming there but it is also harder. You are sad because you like them but wonder what the bigger challenges yield in terms of reward. Over the next few days their claims run out of time and flip deleting everything they had on the land but it is now claimable for the next player to come through and work on their journey. You and Bob farm up and build your first schooner. You picked up some NPC's from a freeport and sailed to the next tile up from yours. You land in an area drop a claim and continue your journey.

This new land is harder and has more aggressive creatures that are higher level. The weather is also not as friendly so you have to start wearing clothing :D. You find your old neighbors and they arn't doing too well. You and your neighbor work together and it becomes easier.

After a few days of working side by side with your neighbor and talking with them you realize they are interested in going to the next area like you and Bob and merge. This merge makes it so this area is much easier and maintaining the claims is simpler when you have more hands working on it.

You go to the next area and it is challenging but as a group of 8 it is much easier. The resources come at higher density but the monsters are also much stronger. Each time you guys leave a base behind you either have to go back to it and maintain the timer or let it go.

 

So that story ended up taking a lot longer but it was to give you a feel for how I believe the game should work and not just spit out the mechanics (Which is basically what I am going to do here).

 

So the Freeports should be easy to survive but you can't build. (middle of the map)

The lawless zones should make you chilly or warm but not extreme waves. Some hostiles for you to fight but mostly neutral mobs. Your buildings desolve after a few days and that keeps the zone fresh. They should also drop basic resources like freeports. (generic great value fiber etc) (1 over from freeport)

The claim zones should have tiers based on how far from the freeport you are. The monster levels increase the farther you get and the climate becomes more extreme with hot and cold and the heat/cold waves you get. The resources should also increase in density and variety . (2-3 different metals an island in the hard zone with level 60ish mobs that can't be tamed, more alphas, etc)

The world should not connect North to South. (Or East to West because of how a sphere actually would work) North should be cold, South should be hot. The Polar/Volcanic region should be really hard to live in so trying to farm there regularly would make it so you don't claim as much land there because the upkeep would be too much.

Also the idea is to prevent players from taking from players, neglect kills their flags.

Just how I think it should work because the amount of griefing that will happen will kill this game imo.

 

End Copy Pasta!

(I feel more people read reddit than this forum XD)

~Lotus

 

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if they implement it as it sounds then i think it will be an improvement to current and loads better then proposed. Sure the big guys might get a couple of Islands out of it, but realistically no matter the system implemented they would wind up with it anyway: thats the advantage of having more people. I am sorta looking forward to it as what they have said would make overlaps a thing of the past and really if we get our home island I'll be happy and then i can build some outposts on owned friendly islands with a little shop and have a more secured version then i do already. I just hope they put members of a company based on active members. Too easy to get people in long enough to join then bounce.

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22 minutes ago, Lotus said:

COPY PASTA

 

So that story ended up taking a lot longer but it was to give you a feel for how I believe the game should work and not just spit out the mechanics (Which is basically what I am going to do here).

End Copy Pasta!

(I feel more people read reddit than this forum XD)

~Lotus

 

Well, I read your whole story and I liked almost all of your ideas.

When I said "original claims", I guess I was talking about the most recent ones, minus the bugs.  You set a claim, you get to keep it with a 21 day timer.  If you don't show up within 21 days, we assume you are gone and someone else can take your claim.   I'd prefer that the claim just disappear after 21 days rather than having to be challenged.

I don't like all the upkeep stuff.  If you're an active player, you get a claim.  You get to keep it as long as you're active.  Simple, no huge sets of rules and limits and possible downsides to counteract.  It's like Oprah.  You get a claim and you get a claim and you get a claim.

I enjoyed the COPY PASTA, because I like pasta.  Especially pasta alla vongole.

Damn, now I really want pasta alla vongole.  

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3 hours ago, Winter Thorne said:

 I imagine there will be some very nice landlords in the game, as well as some complete bastards, and some who are just too busy or lazy to do the job right.  For most of the rest of us it's going to be luck of the draw, and some of us are going to get griefed just as hard as we used to back in the days of lawless....only now it'll be approved behavior.

Your words say it all. To expand on them if I may?

Who the hell is going to work to be anyone's "nice" landlord? Actual nice landlords are rare among the count of millions. Even then anyone that is a "nice" landlord will undoubtedly have some catch up their sleeve. Nice for a price.

I predict landlord player/team will either have personal schedules or, have a schedule forged around other players. The easy (negative) solutions of "nasty" landlord(s) become rapidly appealing. A matter of when, not if, this claim idea spark more conflict.

They could have limited claims per player as well, limit the number of players per company. Either way, good luck to all on the race to be someone else's... worker. (As to not offend the weak with "negative" vocabulary.)

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Well,  I feel like the new changes are worse then everything being lawless, at least in that system I had a chance to own my own my place and people couldn't take it from me.  This new system once again will allow a small number of people to own the land (as there is not near enough islands for the bulk of the PVE community) and from what I can tell there no way to take the islands in PVE beside the owner lapsing on their upkeep. So anyone who is unlucky enough to not get an island in the island rush on day one will be forced to be a serf. This is what drove people away and isn't this why they planned to change the system. Renting land was already in the game and it wasn't popular for the same reason it won't' be popular in this system. If you want people to rent land then you have to put in some kind of protection system for the renter. I just don't get why they won't try the old claim system with a limit per person or company? This new system does not address the core issues that people want their own land to build on and some protection from other griefing them on PVE.

Edited by TheSeer
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11 minutes ago, TheSeer said:

Well,  I feel like the new changes are worse then everything being lawless, at least in that system I had a chance to own my own my place and people couldn't take it from me.  This new system once again will allow a small number of people to own the land (as there is not near enough islands for the bulk of the PVE community) and from what I can tell there no way to take the islands in PVE beside the owner lapsing on their upkeep. So anyone who is unlucky enough to not get an island in the island rush on day one will be forced to be a serf. This is what drove people away and isn't this why they planned to change the system. Renting land was already in the game and it wasn't popular for the same reason it won't' be popular in this system. If you want people to rent land then you have to put in some kind of protection system for the renter. I just don't get why they won't try the old claim system with a limit per person or company? This new system does not address the core issues that people want their own land to build on and some protection from other griefing them on PVE.

Ever wonder why real life renting has laws? lol

This game has two big issue with a landlord system.

1. Player maturity/morality.

2. Resources and regions. (Resources to include play time availability)

In early game to patch 18.x I settled in E2. When the crew and I sailed down to the southern zones, we became salty with the ease at which players had it. We began to hate the game solely because of the disparity from difficulty.

Now players are going to have to race for decent land. Yeah, that won't be a shit show. Not at all. I foresee server crashings in Grape Shots future. Wait, what am I saying? It's already at that state.

I don't know any player that will want to be a landlord with extra game conditions. I certainly am not looking to be someones landlord in E2. Neither am I interested in managing a company for a video game. Been there, done that. Better things to do.

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I'm thoroughly confused by this change in direction.  The fundamental problem with PvE claims was that if you weren't there on day 1, you either had to settle for a permanent base in lawless or you had to sail around for literally weeks looking for a sliver of land you could claim away from someone.  With this revised claim system claiming an entire island at a time, it is basically assured that fewer than 500 companies will own any land at all since solo players can take an entire small island and large companies can potentially claim multiple islands.  Everyone else who logs in more than 6 hours after the patch will be at the mercy of someone else as to whether they can build anything or not.  I can't reconcile this design with the statement in the Captain's Log that " One aspect of the design is the fact we want players to always have an option to build, otherwise, the game cannot be truly experienced in its current state."  How does putting all the land under the control of a small % of the player base achieve that goal?

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March 20th (or thereafter) will be the proof of the pudding... but.. complete island ownership PER PLAYER seems a little absurd.. I could understand if your company could own an island, i really don't like the thought that a land baron like myself could own and maintain multiple islands even if it took considerable effort.. MAYBE a single island. 

This update is certain to cause me a lot of hours of gaming the land system if I remain in PvE.

 

That said... 

Currently (excluding the truly tiny islands) there are 150 Grids with 409 claimable islands including the polar/tundra regions.

101 Grids if you remove Polar & uninhabitable tundra (grids A-01, 2, 14 & 15). (333 claimable islands which are habitable)

82 Grids if you exclude the whole tundra/polar. (285 claimable islands which are habitable)

Assuming that the 200 new islands all make it into claimable areas and are all habitable that brings the total claimable per server to 485 to share between supposedly 40,000 players which would equate to 82 players per island!!!! (yes I know we're not at this point and unlikely to ever reach there but surely we should be developing the game with this in mind?) For now we'll scale it down to the 150 player cap per grid, that's 12,300 players sharing 485 islands or a little over 25 players per island averaged out, those grids with only one island don't forget will need to potentially accommodate 150 players.

TL:DR: The bottom line of my rant is: There is no way that 1 player should be able to own an island, it should be a company of 5+ required to "own" an island. 

 

The above is without even considering islands which lack the now NECESSARY resource of pure metal nodes.

 

The breakdown of islands excluding current lawless/freeport:

Polar - A-01 = 32 | Tundra - A-02 - 28 | Tundra - A-03 - 25 | A-04 - 29 | A-05 - 31 | A-06 - 25 | A-07 - 21 | A-08 - 16 | A-09 - 22 | A-010 -32 | A-011 - 36 | A-012 - 25 | Tundra - A-013 - 23 | Tundra - A-014 - 27 | Polar - A-015 - 37

 

 

Edited by MisterMyztik
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20 minutes ago, Bandit439 said:

I'm thoroughly confused by this change in direction.  The fundamental problem with PvE claims was that if you weren't there on day 1, you either had to settle for a permanent base in lawless or you had to sail around for literally weeks looking for a sliver of land you could claim away from someone.  With this revised claim system claiming an entire island at a time, it is basically assured that fewer than 500 companies will own any land at all since solo players can take an entire small island and large companies can potentially claim multiple islands.  Everyone else who logs in more than 6 hours after the patch will be at the mercy of someone else as to whether they can build anything or not.  I can't reconcile this design with the statement in the Captain's Log that " One aspect of the design is the fact we want players to always have an option to build, otherwise, the game cannot be truly experienced in its current state."  How does putting all the land under the control of a small % of the player base achieve that goal?

I agree with you and that is why I will say the lawless system is better than this new system because at least it would have given more people a chance at land ownership. It would also take a little longer for people to claim all the land even with the issue of the spamming foundation issue.  Now in a few hours, everything will be claimed if not in minutes lol since people can now spawn in different regions. They could have also fixed this problem by just limiting the number of upkeep boxes a person could put down.  I just wish they would use the current claim system but put a limit on the number of flags per company. I think the only logical reason why they are refusing to do this as it is the most request solution is because they can't work out the overlapping bugs within the claim system.  Honestly, why are they even bother wiping the servers? This new system will benefit even fewer people,  so what the point? People who left because of the bad claim system will just leave again and renting is terrible because there is no protection. I think this will just force more people to leave or go unofficial on PVE.  We already had grids with only 1 to five people playing on them most nights. 

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My theory, they just tossing shit out there to see if the torches get extinguished and we put down the pitch forks. At best, they have a general idea where they can go, and are feeling us out to see how we'd like the plan to be refined.

At best, at this rate, I doubt we see anything until mid April as far as a firm patch. Frankly, I'm losing interest. The whole wishy washy vibe coming from the dev team is starting to leave me almost as nauseous as some of the ideas coming out of their camp.. 

Just settle on a system, iron out the details and go forward. The community is fairly divided on alot of the issues, at some point they just gotta rip off the band-aid

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3 hours ago, TheSeer said:

 People who left because of the bad claim system will just leave again and renting is terrible because there is no protection. I think this will just force more people to leave or go unofficial on PVE.

I think more people will leave because of an even worse claiming system. Renting for a lot of people is not an option...we do not want to live under someone else's rule (that's a pirate thing isn't it?). And I for one wouldn't go unofficial because the maps are too small. I would just stop playing....unfortunately.

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4 hours ago, MisterMyztik said:

March 20th (or thereafter) will be the proof of the pudding... but.. complete island ownership PER PLAYER seems a little absurd.. I could understand if your company could own an island, i really don't like the thought that a land baron like myself could own and maintain multiple islands even if it took considerable effort.. MAYBE a single island. 

This update is certain to cause me a lot of hours of gaming the land system if I remain in PvE.

 

That said... 

Currently (excluding the truly tiny islands) there are 150 Grids with 409 claimable islands including the polar/tundra regions.

101 Grids if you remove Polar & uninhabitable tundra (grids A-01, 2, 14 & 15). (333 claimable islands which are habitable)

82 Grids if you exclude the whole tundra/polar. (285 claimable islands which are habitable)

Assuming that the 200 new islands all make it into claimable areas and are all habitable that brings the total claimable per server to 485 to share between supposedly 40,000 players which would equate to 82 players per island!!!! (yes I know we're not at this point and unlikely to ever reach there but surely we should be developing the game with this in mind?) For now we'll scale it down to the 150 player cap per grid, that's 12,300 players sharing 485 islands or a little over 25 players per island averaged out, those grids with only one island don't forget will need to potentially accommodate 150 players.

TL:DR: The bottom line of my rant is: There is no way that 1 player should be able to own an island, it should be a company of 5+ required to "own" an island. 

 

The above is without even considering islands which lack the now NECESSARY resource of pure metal nodes.

 

The breakdown of islands excluding current lawless/freeport:

Polar - A-01 = 32 | Tundra - A-02 - 28 | Tundra - A-03 - 25 | A-04 - 29 | A-05 - 31 | A-06 - 25 | A-07 - 21 | A-08 - 16 | A-09 - 22 | A-010 -32 | A-011 - 36 | A-012 - 25 | Tundra - A-013 - 23 | Tundra - A-014 - 27 | Polar - A-015 - 37

 

 

From what I read the islands will have a tier value, the higher the tier the more it will cost to claim it which mean you need more people to be in the company to claim it. They will also have an upkeep cost which will make it so if you try to pad with fake members you will lose your claim because the upkeep will become to much to maintain.

 

~Lotus

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4 hours ago, TheSeer said:

I agree with you and that is why I will say the lawless system is better than this new system because at least it would have given more people a chance at land ownership. It would also take a little longer for people to claim all the land even with the issue of the spamming foundation issue.  Now in a few hours, everything will be claimed if not in minutes lol since people can now spawn in different regions. They could have also fixed this problem by just limiting the number of upkeep boxes a person could put down.  I just wish they would use the current claim system but put a limit on the number of flags per company. I think the only logical reason why they are refusing to do this as it is the most request solution is because they can't work out the overlapping bugs within the claim system.  Honestly, why are they even bother wiping the servers? This new system will benefit even fewer people,  so what the point? People who left because of the bad claim system will just leave again and renting is terrible because there is no protection. I think this will just force more people to leave or go unofficial on PVE.  We already had grids with only 1 to five people playing on them most nights.  

We had a bunch of people stop playing because we ran out of content. We first pulled Kraken at the end of January and would have killed on the 23rd if it wasn't bugged for 2 weeks. We killed it 15-20 the month after waiting for the Feb update. Feb update was delayed which created a void for a lot of people. This caused a rather large chunk of the PvE players to stop playing because we ran out of content.

~Lotus

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