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I don't know where the best place to have discussions for this to explain what I feel is the best way to keep as many players as possible happy. I will use my stream as a faster way to talk to people as I write this massive suggestion thread. I am going to cover what I feel are the current problems of this game as well as what I feel could be done better. I will constantly be updating it.

 

Currently the "hot topic" is claims which I will talk about the directions the game could take and what I feel would be best. I also will talk about things I feel are just poorly designed.

 

Claims:

Currently the PvE is in a lawless vs claim flag state. They have pros and cons I will talk about each system and how I believe it will play out.

Current System: This system was good on paper but in execution is awful. Some people could not get land, some could not hold it, some people have more land then they should.

The solution they came up was switch to lawless. This idea is terrible in my opinion. The amount of griefing that will take place will make the game unplayable. I have seen galleys with gates under them in lawless. I have heard of people that box in tames while people are farming. I've seen resources walled off. It's just going to be terrible. One person could literally grief a whole tribe. If you stop your boat somewhere for the night you could wake up with a box around it. The argument is the box will decay the solution to griefing it would be to repair the box then. If somebody doesn't like you they just wall your base in. It's so many possible kinds of grief you would need to watch out for the game would just be unplayable. (look at official on Ark)

-->Idea Make a PvE server for lawless and for claimable (by server I mean NA-PvE-Lawless and a NA-PvE-Claims). Everybody wins... Kinda. I personally don't like the idea of lawless but some people want it so let them have it.

// 3/14 update Claims per person: The idea of limiting the amount of claims a person can have has come up but it opens to a type of grief some of the bigger tribes used to kick out smaller ones. They would claim around them then make a box preventing the person from using their claim. The point was to they make you not want to be around the island and you quit or leave then they get your land. It was dirty and I would prefer people don't have to deal with this. It's why I lean towards 1 company in control of 1 island.

--> Solution: The announcement on the last captains log was that they are going to use the PvP system of 1 flag per island. The size of the island your tribe can claim is based on the size of your tribe. (Bigger tribe = bigger islands) This made some people angry. I believe with no changes to how the flags work this would be a huge headache. With balance changes I think this is going to be the system that defines Atlas as a game. The problems I have seen are-

 

-Anybody can build anywhere

--> The island owner's job is to keep it clean. When the changes to the claim flag came out a lot of people came to F11 and built taming pens all over the place without us knowing. Some of them are still there undemolishable. The lawless griefing will happen if the owner can't say who can and can't build on the island. If somebody allowed to build on the island decides to grief their neighbor then the owner needs the ability to fix it. (Basically the owner is an unpaid GM for the game it's a kind of civil service for this dying game). Some people hate the idea of taxes.

 

-Taxes

// 3/14 update- So if we claim the land and it has metal on it and we notice that other people keep taking the metal on our claim our solution is put a wall up and keep others out so we can get the metal on our land. The tax bank is to deter people from keeping others out of their resources because they are losing out on potential resources. // (Note I frown on walling people out types of behavior)

--> This is a touchy subject for a lot of people. People don't want to pay taxes to their overlords. When the tax bank first came out you could set it to whatever and it would not effect the person harvesting. So 10% taxes would make 110% item the harvester got 100% and the bank would make 10%, at 30% it would make 130% item and give the bank 30% while giving the harvester 100%. I guess they fixed it at some point. This is an MMO and should be played with a bunch of people so lets turn this problem into a solution that makes the game better. The way I would do this is going to get mathematical but all in all I feel it will make the game better.

--> Lets make the "Tax rate" not change what happens when people harvest on the island it just makes the bonus and they get 100% of what they farm. So the "mega" tribe goes and puts their "Claim tickets" into their bank so they can claim an island. Each claim ticket is worth .5% tax. So an island that takes 20 tickets will have a tax base of 10%. Another tribe approaches them and would like to build their base on this island but they are not big enough to have actually taken the island (tax tribe). The mega tribe is like no problem they set it so the tax tribe can build. The tax tribe then can put their claim tickets into the tax bank (they have to put at least 1 in). Lets say they put in 10 tickets the bonus for the mega on everybody that harvests on the island goes up to 15%. This is the mutualism. This is the meat that is going to make this beautiful for everybody. So far it helps the tax tribe a little and the mega quite a bit. The tax tribe gets to put down a resource chest on land that can be flagged as the "Primary chest" this chest will get what they give to the mega. So that tribe that put 10 tickets in gets a 5% bonus from what the mega farms on the island. They help each other out. So the mega can get a tax rate of something super high lets raise the cap to like 50% (That is 100 people living on the island) The tax tribe max 25% (Don't want 2 megas to just share a huge island and abuse the farm bonus). Perks for all.

-Random boats

--> Logging in and there's a random boat parked in our harbor just blocking everything has got to be one of the most annoying things ever. This is a big advantage can come from a tribe that claims the island. A safe spot for people to anchor is something that is important in the game but people being able to anchor anywhere is also a problem cause you can grief with it. I think the lighthouse should be the solution. I people should not be allowed to anchor on a claimed island except around where a lighthouse is placed. I think the lighthouse should act as a parking meter though charging an increasing gold per hour. So lets say you are just parking for the night would be 50 gold. The time would increase it though so the longer you are there the more it becomes. So if you leave it there for 3 nights it's 500 gold in total. If you leave it there for a week it's 5k. This might seem steep but leaving your boat in somebodies area is rude IMO. This would create a problem for people trying to do maps. So I believe you should be able to anchor anywhere for a 2 hour window. After that time your ship would just unachor. The mechanic of the time flex would be based off of if you unanchor in an area it then takes that long for it to come off cooldown. This prevents you from just going out and coming back in real quick to reset cooldowns. So if you park for 8 hours at a lighthouse in 8 hours it will be back to 0 total.

-Instanced islands

The instanced island does 2 things. Basically it's the single player mode for the game. Trying to have a regular computer run this game without a server would be nuts because of the optimization issues. So to fix that people could have their own little island (it would actually be a medium island) with all the biomes and whatever they could just hermit to and build whatever crazy stuff they want with access to all the plants and tames and whatever. The only thing you wouldn't have would be boats the reason is because you would have a bed to teleport you to and from the island because it would be more like a solo/creative area for the game. The tutorial island is not intended to have any bearing on the outside world. Some people state they just want an area to build and don't want to play with others this is the area that they can do that on. This also will free up some land. This area would also replace the tutorial zone (freeport). I really like the freeport but it makes the game too easy IMO. (500k fiber/hour solo) etc. What I would want them to do would be change the freeport so only the NPC town part is not buildable then lawless area for the rest of the island. The lawless area would give the generic resources and have the damage decay of 100% damage over 3 days so people didn't use it as a primary base location. People learn to play on the personal island then adventure out of the freeport to lawless and build their first boat. This is what the lawless zones original intentions were so now people launch from freeports. (new players atleast) This will make it so the grids that are currently marked as lawless will become obsolete. So they can make them claimable. This leads to a huge amount of claimable islands. The idea is to make it so theirs more land than needed. I personally want the land to be held by your desire to log on and farm to keep the bank filled.

-Finding claimable land

//Changed 3/16 If the island is not claimed its name will be Blue if it is Claimed with no space it will be red, if it is claimed but has spots you can on build it will be yellow. What does spots you can build on mean? I tossed the idea around in my head about if I could change the game how would I limit where people can build. I talked to Winter Thorne and he mentioned putting an app in to the lighthouse. This set off a lightbulb.

So a Mega tribe comes in and claims the island but wants tenants. As the tribe that controls the island the owner can drop a flag. They can go up to the flag and set a number on it this number determines how many tickets it will cost. They can also write in a note that says this is the rules for living on the island. This new flag now shows up on the map and basically says ROOM FOR RENT! Which will clean up spam and stuff on the forum. You can also put a note on it that describes resources around it how to get to them etc. So a player/tribe that is looking for an area because they don't want the responsibility of owning an island can go there and be like yes or no. If they want it they can click the flag and hit they are interested. This will put a message in the owner tribe's chat that says "Player is interested in area X/Y" the flag on the island symbol will also change color for the tribe. They come over talk to the person if needed and then they transfer the flag to them. This will transfer ownership of the land in the flag to the tenant. The owner tribe can no longer build in that area. The buildings they had in that area decay and delete in 4 days. So the tenant has complete control over that area. This fixes the i'm afraid the land owner will come delete my stuff.

A new problem could arise that the tenant is toxic or stops playing or whatever. The tribe owner from the owner tribe can come over and remove the flag. If that happens it will go into a demo mode and 4 days later the land will go back to the island owner and deletes anything there (so they can't do it to steal it). This gives the tenant tribe time to get their stuff out. An exploit could be to wall off the flag so the owner can't click it. This is fixed by just needing the owner to drop another flag in the circle of the tenant flag, instead of dropping a new flag it just deletes the current one. The land also can't be claimed while the tenant's stuff is still there.

Another rule for flags will be no overlap. This makes it so people get some space when they get space.

Some people might not like the idea of having people put claim tickets into the flag. This does 2 things it would do synergy with that tax bonus idea and it also prevents a solo player from having a base on every single island. Which if the land owner doesn't mind they can set the flag to a different setting. Freebuild! which basically turns the area into lawless with no decay.

//Added 3/16

--Reworked island resources

A possible problem with a tribe claiming a whole island is the big tribes take all the small islands and the smaller tribes have nothing. I personally would not like this because this means I now have to maintain more tames and banks and then sail all over the place. I do see how it could be used by bigger tribes as a way to have the spread of resources needed for the blueprints controlled inside the tribe. I posted this in another thread but I believe the resources should be changed the higher the tier of island. The biggest islands should have 4-5 different wood/thatch/fiber/metal/stone/flint they should also have gems/crystal/honey/sap/salt/coal and they should be able to grow any crop and breed any animal. This will make the bigger islands way more lucrative than a bunch of little islands. Looking at high end progression I want to have the resource spread for blueprints and the best tames possible. This might seem extreme I see why people would be afraid of the big tribes taking smaller islands. If there's a small, a medium, and a large island with the same exact resources and next grid over is a little island that has a resource I can't get in the current grid then I am going to be using 2 islands anyway so it becomes an efficiency especially if I already have tickets put into another island somewhere else and now it becomes 2 smalls with the resources I need vs another medium/large that offers the same as a small. Another thing this would fix is that small tropical paradise with the waterfalls in the multiple tiers (B6/7 has one I think) could have a really neat base on it. It also has massive amounts of oil on it so I could see it being claimed just for the use of the like 20+ oil spawns it has (Like 200-500 a node). This could be turned into a favoritism for megas which I could see being argued either way.  The way I look at it is that big island the mega has will be even nicer for the tenants to have with a resource spread. By having the tenant tribes put tickets in for the claims they have on these bigger islands that have more resources you are also going to free up more space for solo/smaller tribes that want to do their own thing. The people congregating will also help strengthen the community (it's an MMO). The complaint could be taxes which I strongly recommend you turn into a bonus not a tax. The only problem I could see would be people congregating on certain grids and then nobody in most of the map. However it will free up a ton of land doing that which will make a lot of space for growth.

 

 

""" I copy pasted this from what I would do as a designer for changes to tames

As a designer I would scrap how animals are at this point. Currently this game is turning into an Ark expansion. I would decide to stop living in Ark's shadow. Currently I've done all PvE material so my day consists of riding around on a level 70 bear with elephants behind me harvesting X resource with hopes of actually needing blue print weapons to complete the next PvE tier. Currently riding is basically a requirement for things to do effectively either everything else needs to be brought up or beastmastery needs to be brought down.

I would change the tree to crew. It would allow you to get animals but the animals would have something they bring to the table and not be rideable. The shoulder mount thing would be fine but cruising around on (current meta tame) is basically Ark. So I now have a blank slate and need to make it so I can get tames. I would want it to be a  low chance from mate boosted animals when you harvest their bodies or a high chance from an alpha. Could also put a vendor in the game that sells the babies. So now my players have a baby X. This whole temperature thing currently is silly and the way to fix it going to require a lot of resources from my company (grapeshot) so the cost would be too great to keep this. The concept is cool but the creation and implementation creates a poor user interaction with it so I would scrap it. The concept of feeding animals something special is a good one so I could fill up a bear with honey and it would mature faster or just use berries cause they are easy but longer time until they are grown.

So now I have a way for players to get tames so I now need to make them useful. This would be the bottom tiers of the crew tree.  Different animals would have a function that fall into combat or utility. For this I would think of how I envision an amazing creature of the type.

  • Bear- Combat- Taunt enemies around the player acting as a tank.
  • Chicken- Utility- When on wander produces eggs
  • Cow- Utility- Produces milk (more on wander)
  • Bull- Utility- when on wander fertilizes nearby crops
  • Crow- Shoulder- When you die acts as a bed.
  • Razortooth- Combat- nerfs alphas.
  • Shieldhorn- Combat- Produces a shield that deflects projectiles. (Currently elementals have little counter play)
  • Elephant- Utility- When on wander collects wood.
  • Giant Pig- Utility- When on wander finds buried items.
  • Giraffe- Utility- When on wander gathers thatch.
  • Horse- Utility- Rideable, pulls carriage and cargo which helps tranports large amounts of people or heavy amounts of resources great distances (we need something that makes unloading a galley not horrible)
  • Lion- Combat- grabs smaller creatures.
  • Monkey- Shoulder- barehanded becomes climbing picks at a much higher stam use rate.
  • Ostrich- Utility- Harvests seeds when on wander.
  • Parrot- Shoulder- Makes musical instruments easier to play and buffs the buff radius.
  • Penguin- shoulder- fortitude buff.
  • Rabbit- Shoulder- When on shoulder provides a movement speed.
  • Rhino- Utility- When on wander gathers stone.
  • Seagull- Shoulder- When on shoulder reduces/removes fog debuff
  • Sheep- Utility- When on wander gathers fiber
  • Tiger- Combat- reduces movement speed of enemies.
  • Vulture- Utility- When on shoulder decreases vitamin depletion.
  • Wolf- Combat- has a howl that increases damage.
  • Turtle- Make tameable- Shoulder- Increase swimspeed, decreases oxygen use, and reduces deep diving debuff.
  • Rattlesnake- Utility- When on wander produces venom, venom is used for anti-venom which reduces torpidity.

So now that I have all these super cool animals I need to transport them and the current bug is they fall off (scavenging tames in the ocean is super lucrative I know a guy that got a Razortooth) I would make it so boats have a animal attachment that is basically a cage and when you send the animal to it the animal gets turned into more of an item that is placed inside the cage instead of being on the boat (no more lost at sea tames yay). We now need somewhere to put all these wandering tames. I would make it so tames on wander don't leave your territory. I would also make it so you can apply a filter on the map to see where certain tames are.

Now for the meaty part of the new tree. I would make it so NPC's you get from SotD have a type of suffix like Bob. Bob would be a builder. You would need points in crew to hire Bob and then you can put him on a smithy. If you have skills in construction you would be able to make things like stone at a reduced cost. The points in crew would only be to get Bob, the points in construction would make it so you can get the discounted building from Bob. This would make Bob your righthand man when it comes to construction of things. You would still need the recipe to make it though. So getting NPC's and keeping them alive would have benefits beyond "I need guys on my sails" which you would want to keep around because sailor NPC's would make your sails better.

This would lead into reworks of the other skill trees, I would make farming capable of making the large crop plots grow fiber,thatch, and wood that the NPC's can harvest at a drastically reduced rate. The rate they harvest can be modified by giving them higher end tools.

Artillery tree would also get access to alchemists that can be put on a mortar and pestle that will make it so you can stack unlimited resources inside it and queue up organic paste for more than 220 at a time... it would also make it faster to give the QoL that is missing from the chemistry station.

I could keep talking about how I would change it but the TL:DR is make animals more companion rather than a requirement but still have meaning. Make NPC's more than a parasite when you arn't sailing. As a designer I would change a lot of things but for creatures this is what I would do.

""" End copy paste for tames changes

(Some of that is out dated but you get the idea)

So lets take the changes for the game so far you get land and have tames and make the NPCs do work you could build a city have traders and basically you build a functioning city that other players come in and interact with. (Which would be so cool 😄 imo) Here is where stuff gets crazy though. this goes under new content.

--Player Cities In PvE Getting Invaded--

// 3/14 Updated and added more

So you have a city that is making money. This would attract pirates in the real world and I believe it would attract them in the game too. (It would in PVP) so they decide to come loot and plunder. This is where it gets rough to program (GOOD LUCK GRAPESHOT!) Only the highest tier islands would be targeted to have this though. The tax bank can only be dropped at a predetermined location and the tax bank determines where the city can be built. Once you have put enough resources into the tax banks. An NPC pirate invasion would trigger. The tax bank would get an item that you can place that starts a 30 minute countdown. The pirate boats would come and start a big invasion. You would have to fight your way from the town center towards the pirate boat then board it to fight and kill the captain. The Pirate faction would send waves at your beacon and try to bombard it. This would also make it so PvE players could use things like puckles, swivels, and my favorite MORTARS! If the pirate faction kills the beacon you lose, the bank loses everything in it and taxes can't be collected for a few days. Killing the captain will win the event for the players. When you win everybody gets discovery points and maybe a special type of vendor for the city. (Like a crew vendor that sells crew? 😄) This would build on my idea that the player cities should actually become the centers for trade instead of freeports. This would also play into another idea I have.

 

-New pirate faction

The PvPers will attack and sink your stuff to steal it but in PvE we don't have things like that.You just run from SotD and kinda afk for an hour to go do maps. We use a speed schooner or brig with no cannons. Lets change this. With the addition of NPC wrecks I want to see something else. An NPC pirate that has an aggro range based on the amount of resources you are carrying. It will be a fast boat that attacks with cannons and bar shot. (Which is what happens in PvP) The NPC pirates will come onto your boat and try to kill your guys. You could sink their boat and get some gold/ammo/resources/guns/BP's/Maps? I would make it so in order to get masterwork/legendary maps you can only get them from high end pirate ships instead of I want to do maps lets see how lucky I am running around on this bear.

 

--Int as a stat

I went full int once... It was awful. I try things just to get a feel for what they do. I want the best items I can get for my crew. Somebody else bit the bullet and went super high int so we can get that extra 5% bonus. The idea that somebody gets to just craft is stupid in my opinion. I think this stat could be removed from players and baked into NPC's that can craft (Bob the builder). The level of the NPC would determine his rolls on the stuff he makes. This would make it so you want to get your NPC's leveled up as high as possible. Also with crafting I would have the station interact with the bank/resource chest so I don't need to move thousands of pounds of materials around to try and make things.

 

(New content will now go here) 😄

 

~Lotus

 

//Update Log

3/14 Clarity on instanced island. + Claims per person + Tax bank | Responded to Awakatanka + Winter Thorne + Daemon Cross + trqfreak350 + Eldred

3/16 I talked to Winter Thorne in another thread and came up with ideas. Finding land + Reworked islands idea.

Edited by Lotus
Keeping it updated
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I see some good things in your post and see somethings I see also in Conan, the invade looks like the purge in Conan. I liked that part but I played on pvpve. Do not think the hardcore pve would like it.

In Conan  when I did not see foundation/pillars. There system prevent it somehow. I tryed it but after 1 hour it was gone. Tryed a couple of connected foundations and after a day they where gone.  Looks like the use a system how more you connected how longer the decay. This system could work in map wide lawless if it is tweaked right.

The instanced island for beginning players don't know if it works.  Instanced dungeon that should be a thing for pve like the fountain of youth. Should have been in game from day 1. But in PvP a instance dungeon is less interesting. I liked the risk in DAoC where all 3 realms where fighting for the dungeon.  And that is also the major problem of this game, like ark it was made for hardcore PvP and most parts will not work for pve.

I like taming but the gathering in this game should be done by the npc's,  but the danger you have on a tame you do not have with a npc. Our they raise the rates so you as player can gather the things without tames. And you still have the danger of the wild. But tames are also trading possibilities.  I'm devided about that. Like it but at the same moment it looks like that we play a ark mod.

If you could anchor in a bit deeper water then you see less ships in your harbor.  Our the builder on that part of island can anchor in shallow water and visitors only in deeper. 

But a plus for your post to give them new ideas

 

Edited by awakatanka

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The scope is too big to address all at once so I'm just looking at the claims part (and any other idea that really needs claims to be a certain way to work).  Before that, though..the pve invasion stuff at the end is great, and there are other things that could be added to flesh that out and make it more programmable as well.

 

But..claims:

Definitely agree with you on the history of what has happened with claims and what went wrong each time.  I think you give up too easily on this idea though:

Quote

-->Idea Make a PvE server that is lawless and a PvE server that has claims per person. Everybody wins... Kinda. I personally don't like the idea of lawless but some people want it so let them have it.

I think many of the people who said they wanted "lawless" don't really care about having lawless.  There were a lot of different claim designs floating around at the time, and some of those people said that in reaction to whatever idea the devs or other players were coming up with that moment.  I think if the situation was calmer and you simply asked them if they would like to have claims per person,  they would overwhelmingly say yes.  I don't think we need 2 different servers.    If there were a significant minority that really did like lawless better than having a claim, here's what I'd do.  Put in a claims per person system.  Leave just a few of the lawless islands around if people want them.  Take the other lawless and make them no-build islands for resources (and keep them in my back pocket for expansion if the playerbase started growing and I needed more claims.  That would help me transition to the point where I was ready to expand the server or open a new server). 

 

Tax rate solution -  I'm wondering if taxes also work as a deterrent for people coming in and strip mining someone's claim.  Or if that's even an issue.  Just a thought.  The solution would keep people from being pissed off about taxes.  I think they wouldn't have gotten pissed off in the first place if just a select few (claim owners) weren't the only ones that could collect them.  When everyone gets to do it, what's to complain about?  In any case, it needs to get "fixed" so that people quit being pissed off about it because it needs to come back later.  (For some of those other ideas you have that I want to add to)

Instanced Islands -  I'm not sure I understand this idea.  It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with claims so I'm not sure why it's needed.  Unless the final claims design prevented everyone from having one, and these instanced islands were meant to be some sort of consolation prize.  Are there people who just really don't want to interact?  Maybe the rumored single player mod is what they need.

Derelict boats - The lighthouse thing is interesting.  Maybe let the people set their own prices.  If they're trying to be big traders they might not want to charge.  If they expect any deliveries from Atlas Mail (We're Going Postal!)TM they better not try charging the postal boat to park.  :classic_biggrin:

 

More later......

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1 hour ago, Winter Thorne said:

The scope is too big to address all at once so I'm just looking at the claims part (and any other idea that really needs claims to be a certain way to work).  Before that, though..the pve invasion stuff at the end is great, and there are other things that could be added to flesh that out and make it more programmable as well.

 

But..claims:

Definitely agree with you on the history of what has happened with claims and what went wrong each time.  I think you give up too easily on this idea though:

I think many of the people who said they wanted "lawless" don't really care about having lawless.  There were a lot of different claim designs floating around at the time, and some of those people said that in reaction to whatever idea the devs or other players were coming up with that moment.  I think if the situation was calmer and you simply asked them if they would like to have claims per person,  they would overwhelmingly say yes.  I don't think we need 2 different servers.    If there were a significant minority that really did like lawless better than having a claim, here's what I'd do.  Put in a claims per person system.  Leave just a few of the lawless islands around if people want them.  Take the other lawless and make them no-build islands for resources (and keep them in my back pocket for expansion if the playerbase started growing and I needed more claims.  That would help me transition to the point where I was ready to expand the server or open a new server). 

 

Tax rate solution -  I'm wondering if taxes also work as a deterrent for people coming in and strip mining someone's claim.  Or if that's even an issue.  Just a thought.  The solution would keep people from being pissed off about taxes.  I think they wouldn't have gotten pissed off in the first place if just a select few (claim owners) weren't the only ones that could collect them.  When everyone gets to do it, what's to complain about?  In any case, it needs to get "fixed" so that people quit being pissed off about it because it needs to come back later.  (For some of those other ideas you have that I want to add to)

Instanced Islands -  I'm not sure I understand this idea.  It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with claims so I'm not sure why it's needed.  Unless the final claims design prevented everyone from having one, and these instanced islands were meant to be some sort of consolation prize.  Are there people who just really don't want to interact?  Maybe the rumored single player mod is what they need.

Derelict boats - The lighthouse thing is interesting.  Maybe let the people set their own prices.  If they're trying to be big traders they might not want to charge.  If they expect any deliveries from Atlas Mail (We're Going Postal!)TM they better not try charging the postal boat to park.  :classic_biggrin:

 

More later......

I'll update my fear of claims per person basically smaller tribes can get muscled out by bigger tribes. (I've heard it happen a few times, they anchor boats so you can't access water build walls so you can't farm and basically just force you out). I will make it clearer on the post. (Gonna make a changelog/patchnotes thing for it) 😄

The instanced island does 2 things. Basically it's the single player mode for the game. Trying to have a regular computer run this game without a server would be nuts because of the optimization issues. So to fix that people could have their own little island (it would actually be a medium island) with all the biomes and whatever they could just hermit to and build whatever crazy stuff they want with access to all the plants and tames and whatever. The only thing you wouldn't have would be boats the reason is because you would have a bed to teleport you too and from the island because it would be more like a solo/creative area for the game. This area would also replace the tutorial zone (freeport). I really like the freeport but it makes the game too easy IMO. (500k fiber/hour solo) etc. What I would want them to do would be change the freeport so only the NPC town part is not buildable. Then take the lawless concept and add it to the rest of the island. People learn to play on the personal island then adventure out of the freeport to lawless and build their first boat. This is what the lawless zones original intentions were so now people launch from freeports. (new players atleast) This will make it so the areas that are currently marked as lawless will become obsolete. So they can make them claimable. This leads to a huge amount of claimable islands. The idea is to make it so theirs more land than needed. I personally want the land to be held by your desire to log on and farm to keep the bank filled. The only exception would be the invasions which I didn't clarify enough that only the highest tier have to worry about getting attacked so the people that don't want to have this happen don't settle on those islands.

 

~Lotus

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I’ll hit the highlights, 

claim system- most people would be fine with limited claims per account. Leave lawless maps in for new players starting out to give them a place to build ships and begin searching for land. Make lawless decay faster  to dissuade people from settling, change the atlas map to show availability of land in each region instead of showing land that was claimed. New players would be able to go straight there and begin enjoying the game, the later you start in the game the less choices you have. You have a 10 day grace period of being inactive at that time your lands are unclaimed automatically via game mechanics, the code is already there, this keeps people from having to search for claims about to expire, once the claim expires it shows up on the map as available. Ships in the game, you will need to visually see ( render) each of your ships per day, shouldn’t be hard via bed fast travel, any ships you do not visit within 24 hours starts to decay, again a 10 day timer, this keeps ships from hanging around if a player has left the game. Land becomes available and ships sink, rot or disappear. No idea myself because ships that were left 2 months ago are still in the game.

instances : if your going to implement instances then it needs to be a full operational base, just like your own region just smaller, you can store tames, ships, mats, npc’s or whatever else you may want and when your ready to participate in treasure maps or quest then you sail out of your instance just like traveling through a region. Your instance is located just like a region is, which direction you sail out of it determines where you re-enter the world of Atlas. 

Lighthouse parking safe zones- I’m against the idea, ships would become blocked in and left with plenty of gold to cover a cost. Just another way to grieve people, simple solution I think would work is makes ships that are anchored remain moveable as in I can push a anchored ship out of the way to pass and the anchored ship returns to position afterwards. This is not something that has a reach to where you could push a anchored ship half way around a island but perhaps half the length of a ship to allow it to turn and move to the side. ( remember me pushing your ship around Winter?) same idea.

taxes - Do away with taxes and instead increase the respawn rate, that way once you take a resources it comes back relatively quick for the next person, other games have this feature already, that stops the need for taxing people. 

Resource blocking - make all primary resources available on each island equally.  This should solve resources from being blocked due to availability, resources that are designed to grow in certain biomes will continue to grow in those biomes but a alternative resources will also grow in biomes where said resource can’t grow.  If you need honey for taming bears you no longer need to travel to where bees can survive, you now use sap that can be found in colder climates with equal perks.

All this sounds great right but your wondering where the team comes in. There will still be tames based on biomes, there should be group events with rewards that start periodically across the map, similar to the way the FOY was, it’s in a area for so long then the event ends, after some time it starts again. This happens in various areas across the atlas map so everyone can participate. These can be sea or land battles but can not be done solo.

 

 

Edited by Daemon Cross

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9 hours ago, Daemon Cross said:

 

Resource blocking - make all primary resources available on each island equally.  This should solve resources from being blocked due to availability, resources that are designed to grow in certain biomes will continue to grow in those biomes but a alternative resources will also grow in biomes where said resource can’t grow.  If you need honey for taming bears you no longer need to travel to where bees can survive, you now use sap that can be found in colder climates with equal perks.

 

This would effectively remove traveling from the game, you can tame a bear with berries, but if you want a perfect tame on a high level bear you need to have the proper resource. I mean I set up in tropical I had access to honey. Maybe they should add bears to that so I dont have to travel. Doesnt make sense. Why make this game even easier to forget about, the reason I kept coming back was to explore, day in day out. Remove that aspect and you have Ark.

Most of the OP I disagree with, I think the system was fine, but needed to be detuned, either hard capping claims by the size of a company with breakpoints on claims, or hard capping at 1 per steam account. Implementing GM's into this game would go a long ways to getting trolls and pushy larger companies on Pve under control.

Edited by trqfreak350

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I'll admit I haven't read the whole post yet, but one thing is certain: removing claims entirely is not the solution. Yet again today I've ran into clans that completely walled off entire sections of islands with foundations on lawless islands, which basically is the same issues as the islands where everything's already claimed using flags. They don't even use that space, they spam thatch foundations until nothing is useable in it anymore.

Fewer, smaller claims per person would be a good start.

905ea73e14.jpg

Edited by Eldred

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8 hours ago, trqfreak350 said:

This would effectively remove traveling from the game, you can tame a bear with berries, but if you want a perfect tame on a high level bear you need to have the proper resource. I mean I set up in tropical I had access to honey. Maybe they should add bears to that so I dont have to travel. Doesnt make sense. Why make this game even easier to forget about, the reason I kept coming back was to explore, day in day out. Remove that aspect and you have Ark.

Most of the OP I disagree with, I think the system was fine, but needed to be detuned, either hard capping claims by the size of a company with breakpoints on claims, or hard capping at 1 per steam account. Implementing GM's into this game would go a long ways to getting trolls and pushy larger companies on Pve under control.

 No it wouldn’t remove traveling from the game, it would simplify some aspects of the game and hopefully solve some of the griefing issues that are in the game. The game was never meant to be a grind fest, once you got your ships built you were supposed to be doing game content, treasure maps, power stones, trade routes, there is more items in the game besides, the basic resources and if you wanted specific tames then you would have to travel to certain biomes. 

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On 3/13/2019 at 10:36 AM, awakatanka said:

I see some good things in your post and see somethings I see also in Conan, the invade looks like the purge in Conan. I liked that part but I played on pvpve. Do not think the hardcore pve would like it.

In Conan  when I did not see foundation/pillars. There system prevent it somehow. I tryed it but after 1 hour it was gone. Tryed a couple of connected foundations and after a day they where gone.  Looks like the use a system how more you connected how longer the decay. This system could work in map wide lawless if it is tweaked right.

The instanced island for beginning players don't know if it works.  Instanced dungeon that should be a thing for pve like the fountain of youth. Should have been in game from day 1. But in PvP a instance dungeon is less interesting. I liked the risk in DAoC where all 3 realms where fighting for the dungeon.  And that is also the major problem of this game, like ark it was made for hardcore PvP and most parts will not work for pve.

I like taming but the gathering in this game should be done by the npc's,  but the danger you have on a tame you do not have with a npc. Our they raise the rates so you as player can gather the things without tames. And you still have the danger of the wild. But tames are also trading possibilities.  I'm devided about that. Like it but at the same moment it looks like that we play a ark mod.

If you could anchor in a bit deeper water then you see less ships in your harbor.  Our the builder on that part of island can anchor in shallow water and visitors only in deeper. 

But a plus for your post to give them new ideas

 

Conan was upkeep based on the size of the primary structure it connected like a circulatory system the main part of the base being the heart that fed upkeep to the rest of the base so if you had islands of your base they would die.

The instanced island is just to free up space to have more grids be claimable. I want powerstone/dungeon/kraken/ghostship to be instanced but without the allies thing I don't know how to do that.

I like the idea of the deeper water anchor thing. Long term parking further away. A way people grief is they park a bunch of boats in your harbor to try and force you out of an area. The lighthouse makes it so you have a specific area people can park for an extended period of time if they have to but make it so you won't want to. Our base is rather large and takes 1-2 minutes to render in so I don't want to have to render more boats near our base if possible because crashing into a boat you can't see is a horrible feeling.

~Lotus

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2 hours ago, Daemon Cross said:

 No it wouldn’t remove traveling from the game, it would simplify some aspects of the game and hopefully solve some of the griefing issues that are in the game. The game was never meant to be a grind fest, once you got your ships built you were supposed to be doing game content, treasure maps, power stones, trade routes, there is more items in the game besides, the basic resources and if you wanted specific tames then you would have to travel to certain biomes. 

This game is nothing but a grindfest, not in a bad way, but it is, what it is. You can tame all animals with multiple items, so I'm still not understanding why you'd want the equivalent of resources in multiple biomes, that's the point of the trading and sailing to get those items that you dont have on your home islands. Once you do the powerstones and kraken, what are you left with? Traveling around to get resources to tame animals, or build higher quality bps.

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On 3/13/2019 at 1:36 PM, Winter Thorne said:

The scope is too big to address all at once so I'm just looking at the claims part (and any other idea that really needs claims to be a certain way to work).  Before that, though..the pve invasion stuff at the end is great, and there are other things that could be added to flesh that out and make it more programmable as well.

 

But..claims:

Definitely agree with you on the history of what has happened with claims and what went wrong each time.  I think you give up too easily on this idea though:

I think many of the people who said they wanted "lawless" don't really care about having lawless.  There were a lot of different claim designs floating around at the time, and some of those people said that in reaction to whatever idea the devs or other players were coming up with that moment.  I think if the situation was calmer and you simply asked them if they would like to have claims per person,  they would overwhelmingly say yes.  I don't think we need 2 different servers.    If there were a significant minority that really did like lawless better than having a claim, here's what I'd do.  Put in a claims per person system.  Leave just a few of the lawless islands around if people want them.  Take the other lawless and make them no-build islands for resources (and keep them in my back pocket for expansion if the playerbase started growing and I needed more claims.  That would help me transition to the point where I was ready to expand the server or open a new server). 

 

Tax rate solution -  I'm wondering if taxes also work as a deterrent for people coming in and strip mining someone's claim.  Or if that's even an issue.  Just a thought.  The solution would keep people from being pissed off about taxes.  I think they wouldn't have gotten pissed off in the first place if just a select few (claim owners) weren't the only ones that could collect them.  When everyone gets to do it, what's to complain about?  In any case, it needs to get "fixed" so that people quit being pissed off about it because it needs to come back later.  (For some of those other ideas you have that I want to add to)

Instanced Islands -  I'm not sure I understand this idea.  It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with claims so I'm not sure why it's needed.  Unless the final claims design prevented everyone from having one, and these instanced islands were meant to be some sort of consolation prize.  Are there people who just really don't want to interact?  Maybe the rumored single player mod is what they need.

Derelict boats - The lighthouse thing is interesting.  Maybe let the people set their own prices.  If they're trying to be big traders they might not want to charge.  If they expect any deliveries from Atlas Mail (We're Going Postal!)TM they better not try charging the postal boat to park.  :classic_biggrin:

 

More later......

I agree the lighthouse should have a changeable rate (free parking like monopoly :D)

The original thing in ark was to block resources off so I get 100% of the resources when they are up, the tax bank says well you don't have to be online and build that wall you can get up to 30%. This makes it so other people have access to it and with the BP's they need variety. People get upset because the people with the claims then tax them but that tax prevents greedy tribes from just blocking you out. So sharing is caring. 😄

Instanced islands I updated this.

~Lotus

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20 hours ago, Daemon Cross said:

I’ll hit the highlights, 

claim system- most people would be fine with limited claims per account. Leave lawless maps in for new players starting out to give them a place to build ships and begin searching for land. Make lawless decay faster  to dissuade people from settling, change the atlas map to show availability of land in each region instead of showing land that was claimed. New players would be able to go straight there and begin enjoying the game, the later you start in the game the less choices you have. You have a 10 day grace period of being inactive at that time your lands are unclaimed automatically via game mechanics, the code is already there, this keeps people from having to search for claims about to expire, once the claim expires it shows up on the map as available. Ships in the game, you will need to visually see ( render) each of your ships per day, shouldn’t be hard via bed fast travel, any ships you do not visit within 24 hours starts to decay, again a 10 day timer, this keeps ships from hanging around if a player has left the game. Land becomes available and ships sink, rot or disappear. No idea myself because ships that were left 2 months ago are still in the game.

instances : if your going to implement instances then it needs to be a full operational base, just like your own region just smaller, you can store tames, ships, mats, npc’s or whatever else you may want and when your ready to participate in treasure maps or quest then you sail out of your instance just like traveling through a region. Your instance is located just like a region is, which direction you sail out of it determines where you re-enter the world of Atlas. 

Lighthouse parking safe zones- I’m against the idea, ships would become blocked in and left with plenty of gold to cover a cost. Just another way to grieve people, simple solution I think would work is makes ships that are anchored remain moveable as in I can push a anchored ship out of the way to pass and the anchored ship returns to position afterwards. This is not something that has a reach to where you could push a anchored ship half way around a island but perhaps half the length of a ship to allow it to turn and move to the side. ( remember me pushing your ship around Winter?) same idea.

taxes - Do away with taxes and instead increase the respawn rate, that way once you take a resources it comes back relatively quick for the next person, other games have this feature already, that stops the need for taxing people. 

Resource blocking - make all primary resources available on each island equally.  This should solve resources from being blocked due to availability, resources that are designed to grow in certain biomes will continue to grow in those biomes but a alternative resources will also grow in biomes where said resource can’t grow.  If you need honey for taming bears you no longer need to travel to where bees can survive, you now use sap that can be found in colder climates with equal perks.

All this sounds great right but your wondering where the team comes in. There will still be tames based on biomes, there should be group events with rewards that start periodically across the map, similar to the way the FOY was, it’s in a area for so long then the event ends, after some time it starts again. This happens in various areas across the atlas map so everyone can participate. These can be sea or land battles but can not be done solo.

 

 

Claims yeah I believe that lawless should be a stepping stone not a final destination. The lighthouse is to prevent griefing using boats to barricade people. If they only have to render once every 24 hours I can fast travel to my raft that renders in 100 rafts I anchored in your harbor that makes your boats useless cause I'm a scumbag 😄 (it's been done more than I like and lack of GM's makes it hard to stop before the player just quits).

Instances I thought about saying I believe the personal island should be next to your instanced tribe island but then it just becomes a private server and not really an MMO. The other problem is if I don't like the tribe I can just park all the boats next to my instanced island and you won't get the warnings of a boat has sank and you can't bring the boats back because it's on my instanced island. Insiding would become lucrative and even though the GM can ban the person they generally won't give you your stuff back. This is why I believe it should exist but not have any bearing on the actual game outside of being a place for somebody to have a house.

If a ship can be moved by another player it can be sunk real quick by another player.

Taxes prevent walling of resources. (I just updated this on the OP)

Resource blocking. We have a few classifications of resources. Great value (This is the crap a freeport drops the Walmart brand of resources), Exotic (not native to the biome we live), Rare Exotic (when you go to a commodity vendor they charge you more and don't give you a Gold + 1:1 it's a Gold + 10:8 or something. Which if I want to be selfish I can wall it off then charge people for it extra that want to trade. Yeah I will trade you iridium 2:3 for your cobalt you deliver. (what are you gonna do at that point it's the fastest way to get the resource in terms of farm per hour.)

For events I want them to put fun events in like things that everybody would be like oh crap in 1 hour this grid will have this happen.

 

~Lotus

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11 hours ago, trqfreak350 said:

This would effectively remove traveling from the game, you can tame a bear with berries, but if you want a perfect tame on a high level bear you need to have the proper resource. I mean I set up in tropical I had access to honey. Maybe they should add bears to that so I dont have to travel. Doesnt make sense. Why make this game even easier to forget about, the reason I kept coming back was to explore, day in day out. Remove that aspect and you have Ark.

Most of the OP I disagree with, I think the system was fine, but needed to be detuned, either hard capping claims by the size of a company with breakpoints on claims, or hard capping at 1 per steam account. Implementing GM's into this game would go a long ways to getting trolls and pushy larger companies on Pve under control.

The reason I lean away from 1 claim per person is if a bigger tribe wants your area they can surround you with their claims then wall you in until you leave. GM's would be nice but that requires money from grapeshot and this game is not making money. So they are trying to slide that role onto the bigger tribes which we have already been doing for months on F11. I wonder if we are the poster child for this new system they are rolling out. 🤔 #EGO! The claim the whole island thing is based on limiting claims per company you need so many members to claim certain islands and so that limits the number of claims but also makes it so you won't have people bullied out of somewhere they have lived for months. (Well less likely atleast)

 

~Lotus

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4 hours ago, Eldred said:

I'll admit I haven't read the whole post yet, but one thing is certain: removing claims entirely is not the solution. Yet again today I've ran into clans that completely walled off entire sections of islands with foundations on lawless islands, which basically is the same issues as the islands where everything's already claimed using flags. They don't even use that space, they spam thatch foundations until nothing is useable in it anymore.

Fewer, smaller claims per person would be a good start.

905ea73e14.jpg

Limiting it runs into problems. If a big tribe can only claim 1 island then they can't take extra space it's not possible for them but trying to figure out how much space a certain tribe needs is kinda hard. 1 flag per person can be used to kick smaller people out. lawless foundation spam happens. 1 claim per island is limiting but also amazing. It basically gives a limit but also a safety of control.

 

~Lotus

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45 minutes ago, trqfreak350 said:

This game is nothing but a grindfest, not in a bad way, but it is, what it is. You can tame all animals with multiple items, so I'm still not understanding why you'd want the equivalent of resources in multiple biomes, that's the point of the trading and sailing to get those items that you dont have on your home islands. Once you do the powerstones and kraken, what are you left with? Traveling around to get resources to tame animals, or build higher quality bps.

This "big patch" is going to have dailies, atleast 1 dungeon, 8 more powerstones, and a kraken level 2 (like ark had for higher level bosses). For us this game was dying about 2 weeks before the wipe was announced we were working on materials for highest BP possible for the polar dungeon but with hundreds of thousands of each resource banked we had nothing to do besides breeding but that was still awful at this point. We went to PvP but after the wipe was announced that died too.

~Lotus

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We are on two different levels, you keep referring to we and I’m pretty much a solo player, where you all zoomed through the game and was basically bored before the wipe I had never even got the 1st powerstone, the ship idea I had came from using a canoe in waters with heavy debris, as the canoe moved through it, it just retook it’s form as I passed.

   Even if you had 100 rafts that were anchored as long as they would shift out of my way as I came in contact with them then I would be able to pass through them.  As long as I wasn’t full sail then I shouldn’t take damage but if I was to open the sails up then it would be considered ramming speed and I would take damage.

 You already stated that you had so many rare mats of various types that you were preparing for harder content, my idea on the resources was there for basic building, it wasn’t a idea for BP’s which requires three or more different types of the same materials. Yes that would still require traveling.

the instance is there for you to build a base,  your ships and a storage area that can’t be griefed, just like a guild hall in some games that is instance based, I think WoW had that system, I know ESO does for the housing.  Again there is no game content in the little instance you own so in order to gather resources or acquire tames you would still have to travel but there would be no way to grief someone at their base unless they invited you into the instance.

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19 minutes ago, Daemon Cross said:

We are on two different levels, you keep referring to we and I’m pretty much a solo player, where you all zoomed through the game and was basically bored before the wipe I had never even got the 1st powerstone, the ship idea I had came from using a canoe in waters with heavy debris, as the canoe moved through it, it just retook it’s form as I passed.

   Even if you had 100 rafts that were anchored as long as they would shift out of my way as I came in contact with them then I would be able to pass through them.  As long as I wasn’t full sail then I shouldn’t take damage but if I was to open the sails up then it would be considered ramming speed and I would take damage.

 You already stated that you had so many rare mats of various types that you were preparing for harder content, my idea on the resources was there for basic building, it wasn’t a idea for BP’s which requires three or more different types of the same materials. Yes that would still require traveling.

the instance is there for you to build a base,  your ships and a storage area that can’t be griefed, just like a guild hall in some games that is instance based, I think WoW had that system, I know ESO does for the housing.  Again there is no game content in the little instance you own so in order to gather resources or acquire tames you would still have to travel but there would be no way to grief someone at their base unless they invited you into the instance.

We see the game from different perspectives.

I can only imagine what it is like to be a solo player. When I look at things I look at how can somebody use this to hurt my tribe. When a boat is moveable it is really easy to sink very quickly. The reason I want to stay away from personal instance island is people could join then take boats, tames, and all kinds of stuff to their personal island sink them and take all the stuff. Once it's there nobody can recover it. I am trying to avoid those situations. My idea was based on WoW's garrison for your own little area but then people could just build there and not interact which is not the direction I believe an MMO should go. I do however want people to have something that they can call their own. In Lotus I just let people have their own area they could do whatever in and then have a general tribe use area.

~Lotus

 

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8 hours ago, Lotus said:

The reason I lean away from 1 claim per person is if a bigger tribe wants your area they can surround you with their claims then wall you in until you leave. GM's would be nice but that requires money from grapeshot and this game is not making money. So they are trying to slide that role onto the bigger tribes which we have already been doing for months on F11. I wonder if we are the poster child for this new system they are rolling out. 🤔 #EGO! The claim the whole island thing is based on limiting claims per company you need so many members to claim certain islands and so that limits the number of claims but also makes it so you won't have people bullied out of somewhere they have lived for months. (Well less likely atleast)

 

~Lotus

The walling in can still be done by the landlord. If he decides that he do not want you on the island after x period he can not demolish you but he just build big gates around you till you leave. 

And you have to search new island and hoping there is a spot and some more friendly landlord.  System is not friendly for solo small companies.

I still think 1 claim per player and a max on a tribe will work much better than this system. And taxes was a bandage for old claim system. Did not work then and will not work now. why still hold on to this bandage..?

Edited by awakatanka

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10 minutes ago, awakatanka said:

The walling in can still be done by the landlord. If he decides that he do not want you on the island after x period he can not demolish you but he just build big gates around you till you leave. 

And you have to search new island and hoping there is a spot and some more friendly landlord.  System is not friendly for solo small companies.

I still think 1 claim per player and a max on a tribe will work much better than this system. And taxes was a bandage for old claim system. Did not work then and will not work now. why still hold on to this bandage..?

This is why I want the upkeep to be kinda harsh. 500k wood, thatch, and fiber with 50k metal and 10k sap, crystal, gems a week would be fair for a big island imo. So you have people wanting to trade and people wanting to have as much as possible for the taxes. The other thing I want changed though is no taxes just bonus I put it in the article how I would change it to make it more of a working together thing. If they put that change in the game I would say double the previous numbers. For medium islands half that and for small islands a quarter.

Taxes are a PvP thing. If they did not have Taxes you would have no reason to let anybody near any of your stuff. Sink them take their stuff.  On PvE it will help with upkeep.

I want things put in place that will pull the groups together and build a sense of community. The removal of alliances from PvE is going to be a huge headache.

~Lotus

28 minutes ago, awakatanka said:

The walling in can still be done by the landlord. If he decides that he do not want you on the island after x period he can not demolish you but he just build big gates around you till you leave. 

And you have to search new island and hoping there is a spot and some more friendly landlord.  System is not friendly for solo small companies.

I still think 1 claim per player and a max on a tribe will work much better than this system. And taxes was a bandage for old claim system. Did not work then and will not work now. why still hold on to this bandage..?

Also if you ever encounter somebody that does toxic things to their tenants let me know, videos and screenshots if possible. I will blacklist them from anything my group runs aswell as our allies (we can have allies without alliances 😄 )

~Lotus

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On 3/13/2019 at 11:37 PM, Daemon Cross said:

 change the atlas map to show availability of land in each region instead of showing land that was claimed.

 

Why didn't I think of that?

Why didn't everybody think of that?  :classic_laugh:

When I remember all the "land is available" "no it's not" wars....

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On 3/12/2019 at 11:36 PM, Lotus said:

// 3/14 update Claims per person: The idea of limiting the amount of claims a person can have has come up but it opens to a type of grief some of the bigger tribes used to kick out smaller ones. They would claim around them then make a box preventing the person from using their claim. The point was to they make you not want to be around the island and you quit or leave then they get your land. It was dirty and I would prefer people don't have to deal with this. It's why I lean towards 1 company in control of 1 island. 

TbH, that is a case for a GM to just ban the whole tribe from (at least) official PVE. Was it reported or not, sorted or not?

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11 hours ago, Lotus said:

The reason I lean away from 1 claim per person is if a bigger tribe wants your area they can surround you with their claims then wall you in until you leave. GM's would be nice but that requires money from grapeshot and this game is not making money. So they are trying to slide that role onto the bigger tribes which we have already been doing for months on F11. I wonder if we are the poster child for this new system they are rolling out. 🤔 #EGO! The claim the whole island thing is based on limiting claims per company you need so many members to claim certain islands and so that limits the number of claims but also makes it so you won't have people bullied out of somewhere they have lived for months. (Well less likely atleast)

 

~Lotus

But with your idea, the bigger tribes just farm immense amounts of mats and claim it all anyway.    If you have X claims per person with caps, at some point that bigger tribe will get capped, and not be everywhere taking everything or blocking everything.  People in the shadow of a big tribe will move to spots where the other companies are smaller or solo.  You adjust the cap level to make that happen.

Re. instances -  I wouldn't want them too playable.  Sailing all over the map without any answers to "Hello" is kind of sad.  Might be nice having a place where you can go figure out how something is supposed to work without having to take chances on your "real" boat or base.  You could even do things there like temp. respec to try things.  But...it's not really anything to do with the claiming system, so for me it goes on a list to look at later.

As for a lot of the rest of it,  I like the event and invasion ideas, but the reason I'm not jumping into that yet is because I'm looking at this like basic building blocks , and then structures that go on top of those and connect...kind of like legos.  I think the basic stuff needs to be done and working...new player experience, starting progression, claims, skill trees, etc.  Once you've got that all in and working, you want to add content, community, contention and cooperation and you move on to things like trading systems, events, invasions, bigger organization structures that overlay the simple player-->company one..things like craft guilds, towns, alliances.  Each of those needs to have mechanics behind it to make it "playable".    Look how the invasion idea can change based on a simple solid base vs. a base plus the addition of towns and traderoutes.  Right now, there is no mechanism in the game for  15 small groups who claim an island to work together to repel it.  If they are a town, though, they may work together to raise their economy and their town level, allowing them to make town defenses against something like that, install an early warning system, hire NPC guards..all kinds of stuff.  So the more of these systems you lock in on top of the basic one, the better the experience is and the more the players work together,  But you have to get that first basic things done...bring players in..give them a good start and somewhere to settle and make a base...then all these other things can happen.

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10 hours ago, Kummba said:

TbH, that is a case for a GM to just ban the whole tribe from (at least) official PVE. Was it reported or not, sorted or not?

The tribe to my knowledge suffered no consequences. The player I think ended up joining another tribe or quitting.

What will a GM do at that point though? Tell the bigger tribe they need to not block people from things then they have to tell everybody that and they can't. There was a post about hackers. They don't fly around invulnerable anymore cause they get banned too quick they have to stay in that area where you don't know for sure. What the tribe did is unethical but it's in an area where a GM can't just say you are breaking the rules cause technically they didn't. It's just a bad situation created by the dynamic of this game which is something I am looking at preventing.

 

10 hours ago, Winter Thorne said:

But with your idea, the bigger tribes just farm immense amounts of mats and claim it all anyway.    If you have X claims per person with caps, at some point that bigger tribe will get capped, and not be everywhere taking everything or blocking everything.  People in the shadow of a big tribe will move to spots where the other companies are smaller or solo.  You adjust the cap level to make that happen.

Re. instances -  I wouldn't want them too playable.  Sailing all over the map without any answers to "Hello" is kind of sad.  Might be nice having a place where you can go figure out how something is supposed to work without having to take chances on your "real" boat or base.  You could even do things there like temp. respec to try things.  But...it's not really anything to do with the claiming system, so for me it goes on a list to look at later.

As for a lot of the rest of it,  I like the event and invasion ideas, but the reason I'm not jumping into that yet is because I'm looking at this like basic building blocks , and then structures that go on top of those and connect...kind of like legos.  I think the basic stuff needs to be done and working...new player experience, starting progression, claims, skill trees, etc.  Once you've got that all in and working, you want to add content, community, contention and cooperation and you move on to things like trading systems, events, invasions, bigger organization structures that overlay the simple player-->company one..things like craft guilds, towns, alliances.  Each of those needs to have mechanics behind it to make it "playable".    Look how the invasion idea can change based on a simple solid base vs. a base plus the addition of towns and traderoutes.  Right now, there is no mechanism in the game for  15 small groups who claim an island to work together to repel it.  If they are a town, though, they may work together to raise their economy and their town level, allowing them to make town defenses against something like that, install an early warning system, hire NPC guards..all kinds of stuff.  So the more of these systems you lock in on top of the basic one, the better the experience is and the more the players work together,  But you have to get that first basic things done...bring players in..give them a good start and somewhere to settle and make a base...then all these other things can happen.

 

The bigger tribes can't get too big for their britches. I am going to lean for this system cause it's fair for all I'm gonna fabricate some tribe examples to show the way I see it.

Tribe A will be the greedy large tribe that only has 100 members pads to 200 claims 2x more land then they should have.

Tribe B will be the cheap large tribe that has 100 members but takes 1/2 the land they should.

Tribe C will do it how it should be 100 members and the correct amount of land.

Week 1

Tribe A has all the land woohoo. They look for tenants to help with upkeep spend a large chunk of time farming like hell.

Tribe B has their land and they made upkeep for the next 2 weeks. They look for tenants but don't have good land for them. Begins progression PvE.

Tribe C has their land farms their upkeep for the week and gets some tenants.

Week 2

Tribe A farming upkeep to keep their flag and looks for tenants.

Tribe B Works on progression which takes all their farming because they don't have the land to sustain good progression. (At this point they can get more islands but won't have a cluster it will be spread and kinda random)

Tribe C will have their upkeep under control and go into progression (Should bring tenants imo 😄)

Week 3

Tribe A looking have some tenants still farming like hell does a little progression then back to farming. Drama over farming all day vs doing content.

Tribe B upkeep is good no tenants. They get more land but it is like 4 grids away so it's time consuming to operate out of both bases.

Tribe C Upkeep is good the tenants are happy (some even join the tribe they do everything together anyway). Moves to #1 for progression.

Week 4

Tribe A more drama and starts to split. Upkeep is bad which makes more stress.

Tribe B Can take some of the members from Tribe A but has fallen behind on progression. They would need more land so they spread further.

Tribe C Takes some of the members from Tribe A. Can take more land but doesn't need to they are established and completed all the current content. Some players go to PvP which creates a space for the Tribe A refugees. 😄

Week 5

Tribe A starts to lose land and more members.

Tribe B clears all current content cause they are good but will never be as good as Tribe C 😛

Tribe C Doing good and the core remains strong. Preparing for next tier of content.

Week 6 WIPE!!!

Tribe A Dead

Tribe B Merged into Tribe C

Tribe C 250 members! 😄 Takes 250 members worth of land.

 

You get the vision

 

For instances the point is to just have a spot so people have a "personal base" but it has 0 effect over the actual server in terms of resources or advantages.

 

For building blocks yeah the game needs to get it's basics down. One of the reasons I am also leaning on endgame content is because the game was also losing people from lack of content.

 

~Lotus

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First off, amazing job at the time spent on this. I'm still absorbing.

I just want to say one thing. Do you guys remember one of their main campaigns consisted of them bragging about how there were no instances. It was one fluid world to travel. Every server was linked together etc etc etc. I wonder if they have realized how difficult it has turned out to be.

Edited by Eve BlackVeil
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