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UncleMike

I wish there was good news for PVE

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2 hours ago, Lotus said:

 

This person goes and explains to me well Atlas is supposed to be an MMORPG with few real MMORPG features at this point what if they are making the changes in preparation for features that haven't been announced yet?

Well, that's a point that has actually come up in some of the discussions here.  I don't think there are any MMO features they can add that make players, especially new players, not want a piece of land to own.  The only thing I can see them doing that would change the dynamic enough is to turn the islands into towns and bring in a system of villagers who have a say in the town government.  People would be happier to have a plot of land in a town and contribute to the town upkeep, rent a shop, etc.  That would make the landlords unhappy, knowing they don't own it anymore and can get voted out.   Maybe wouldn't appease all the people who just want a piece of land somewhere, but it would probably make enough people happy to fix things.

But that's a big structural endeavor for this dev team.  (And most dev teams these days)  They prefer to "add MMO" by throwing in a dungeon or repeatable quests.  They throw doodads at the game rather than building complicated structural things.  I think at most, they might program in some type of invasions hoping everyone on an island would band together and become a group in order to fight them.  But if I'm a small group/solo having to be a tenant with a restrictive or bad landlord, that wouldn't do a thing to fix that problem.

In a game like this, having a base that you own and control is fundamental.  There are whole skill lines based around being able to build things.  You can't expand on top of a structure that doesn't provide that and expect to overcome that problem.

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I’m thinking that if we really want to get a good idea of how the new system will work, we need four companies to work together in the same grid.

Two companies each own one island. One company tries to be a good landlord, the other tries to be a bad landlord.

The other two companies build on both islands. One company tries to be a good settler in both, the other tries to be a bad settler (briefer) on both islands.

Reality will be a lot more middle-ground than this, but at least you get to test the system at the extremes.

Any volunteers to join in this experiment?

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29 minutes ago, Salty Del said:

I’m thinking that if we really want to get a good idea of how the new system will work, we need four companies to work together in the same grid.

 

I'm thinking that if the PTR has a smaller map, anything bad that happens will be blamed on the smaller map.  "It'll be ok on live, with more room.  Give it a try and see."

If it has the standard map, it's likely nobody will even see another player.  Everybody gets their own island.  The only discussions will be about the upkeep level.

If we set up a situation like you suggested, the response will be that it was a setup.  Companies tried to be bad landlords as part of a setup so it doesn't count.

I just don't see any way that the claim design gets a shakeout on the PTR, unless a huge number of players come back and log into it.

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54 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

Well, that's a point that has actually come up in some of the discussions here.  I don't think there are any MMO features they can add that make players, especially new players, not want a piece of land to own.  The only thing I can see them doing that would change the dynamic enough is to turn the islands into towns and bring in a system of villagers who have a say in the town government.  People would be happier to have a plot of land in a town and contribute to the town upkeep, rent a shop, etc.  That would make the landlords unhappy, knowing they don't own it anymore and can get voted out.   Maybe wouldn't appease all the people who just want a piece of land somewhere, but it would probably make enough people happy to fix things.

But that's a big structural endeavor for this dev team.  (And most dev teams these days)  They prefer to "add MMO" by throwing in a dungeon or repeatable quests.  They throw doodads at the game rather than building complicated structural things.  I think at most, they might program in some type of invasions hoping everyone on an island would band together and become a group in order to fight them.  But if I'm a small group/solo having to be a tenant with a restrictive or bad landlord, that wouldn't do a thing to fix that problem.

In a game like this, having a base that you own and control is fundamental.  There are whole skill lines based around being able to build things.  You can't expand on top of a structure that doesn't provide that and expect to overcome that problem.

I started thinking of all kinds of crazy things that would make the game be like this is a specific type of island. Things I came up with were simple some were like that's crazy but it could work.

Theory 1 Island invasions. What if there was an item that we could put into something that triggered an invasion of something stupid strong. (Like the drop pods in extinction). The amount of griefing that could happen from that would be stupid. They could use the OLR protection but then we could just have one person build walls and log out so we have invulnerable walls to hide behind. So they make it so the creatures do damage to online and offline stuff well not it's the SotD grief all over again. This theory doesn't seem super possible but it could be. The amount of work it would take to make this not trash would be epic.

Theory 2 Player made cities. So if a tribe puts a massive city up and this thing has all kinds of things in it then right next to it another tribe builds another massive city and the server lags like hell because of it. You would have to limit it to 1 city per island but how would you decide who gets the city? The tribe that owns the island gets to build the city.

Theory 3 Island levels. What if they are going to make it so you can dump resources into the island to level it up. What would be the point of this? I thought of some things that the island level would effect maybe the grid would have higher level SotD in bigger packs. Maybe higher level cap on animals.

Theory 4 Biome changing. What if they make an item that can change the biome of the island. I would be madder than hell if I made my perfect tropical paradise with a tiki bar and everything. I wake up the next day and it's polar with a penguin making that horrible penguin sound.

Theory 5  Island naming. I believe the idea was confirmed somewhere that you can rename islands. I just can't remember where.

Theory 6 Factions. What if they make it so taxes go towards a war effort type thing like in WoW and after a certain faction pays enough taxes something happens. Like a warfront type event on lawless which is why they didn't want people to live on lawless and why lawless is programmed the way it is. Only it becomes how it is on WoW where it's like a Battleground. (This is something I could get a real MMO feel from) It would be a PvP experience because Faction A is pushing out Faction B and you can go participate in the fighting. After the fight though it goes back to PvE on the lawless it just has a factions guys on it and this would be tied to dailies or something.

I don't know though it could be all kinds of things. The point is we don't know Grapeshot's reasons. We were just focusing on what we thought would be best for the current game not the game they are building.

~Lotus

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22 minutes ago, Lotus said:

I started thinking of all kinds of crazy things that would make the game be like this is a specific type of island. Things I came up with were simple some were like that's crazy but it could work.

Theory 1 Island invasions. What if there was an item that we could put into something that triggered an invasion of something stupid strong. (Like the drop pods in extinction). The amount of griefing that could happen from that would be stupid. They could use the OLR protection but then we could just have one person build walls and log out so we have invulnerable walls to hide behind. So they make it so the creatures do damage to online and offline stuff well not it's the SotD grief all over again. This theory doesn't seem super possible but it could be. The amount of work it would take to make this not trash would be epic.

Theory 2 Player made cities. So if a tribe puts a massive city up and this thing has all kinds of things in it then right next to it another tribe builds another massive city and the server lags like hell because of it. You would have to limit it to 1 city per island but how would you decide who gets the city? The tribe that owns the island gets to build the city.

Theory 3 Island levels. What if they are going to make it so you can dump resources into the island to level it up. What would be the point of this? I thought of some things that the island level would effect maybe the grid would have higher level SotD in bigger packs. Maybe higher level cap on animals.

Theory 4 Biome changing. What if they make an item that can change the biome of the island. I would be madder than hell if I made my perfect tropical paradise with a tiki bar and everything. I wake up the next day and it's polar with a penguin making that horrible penguin sound.

Theory 5  Island naming. I believe the idea was confirmed somewhere that you can rename islands. I just can't remember where.

Theory 6 Factions. What if they make it so taxes go towards a war effort type thing like in WoW and after a certain faction pays enough taxes something happens. Like a warfront type event on lawless which is why they didn't want people to live on lawless and why lawless is programmed the way it is. Only it becomes how it is on WoW where it's like a Battleground. (This is something I could get a real MMO feel from) It would be a PvP experience because Faction A is pushing out Faction B and you can go participate in the fighting. After the fight though it goes back to PvE on the lawless it just has a factions guys on it and this would be tied to dailies or something.

I don't know though it could be all kinds of things. The point is we don't know Grapeshot's reasons. We were just focusing on what we thought would be best for the current game not the game they are building.

~Lotus

Well the subject was the land claims situation.  The problem is that people want a claim and they can't have one.

None of those theories have anything to do with that. 

It's fun kicking around game design ideas, but there's not much point in having long discussions about stuff like - What if they made a random island just blow up every day? Flotsam everywhere.  

What's the point of it?

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1 hour ago, Winter Thorne said:

If it has the standard map, it's likely nobody will even see another player.  Everybody gets their own island.  The only discussions will be about the upkeep level.

If we set up a situation like you suggested, the response will be that it was a setup.  Companies tried to be bad landlords as part of a setup so it doesn't count.

I seem to recall them mentioning that the PTR will be a smaller grid, not a full set of servers.

I don’t believe that setting up a scenario like what I had mentioned would be an accurate simulation of what would really happen. It’s more a test of best case and worst case scenarios, finding faults with the system and ways that both island owners and settlers can be griefed, either by the island owner or a settler.

To me, that’s the most useful reason to have the PTR, instead of just putting it out on the live servers. They’re only up for a week, so why wait for these situations to happen organically?

Edited by Salty Del
Typos. Maybe autocorrect, probably me.
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30 minutes ago, Salty Del said:

I seem to recall them mentioning that the PTR will be a smaller grid, not a full set of servers.

I don’t believe that setting up a scenario like what I had mentioned would be an accurate simulation of what would really happen. It’s more a test of best case and worst case scenarios, finding faults with the system and ways that both island owners and settlers can be griefed, either by the island owner or a settler.

To me, that’s the most useful reason to have the PTR, instead of just putting it out on the live servers. They’re only up for a week, so why wait for these situations to happen organically?

That's a good point.  I suppose you could argue that if something is possible to do, someone WILL do it.  Although we've already heard the counter argument to that -  with incentives to behave well (landlords need tenants to pay tax and keep costs down), why should anyone behave badly?

The test sounds fun anyway.  Can I volunteer to be a chaos factor that just goes around doing what I please?  It would be a real stretch for me, but I'd try hard.  :classic_rolleyes:

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Absolutely! Do you want to be the bad owner or the bad settler? We’ll need at least a few people for each company.

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Just now, Salty Del said:

Absolutely! Do you want to be the bad owner or the bad settler? We’ll need at least a few people for each company.

Neither.  I want to be the person who comes in and starts setting up post offices everywhere.

Atlas Mail - Let's Go Postal TM

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40 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

Neither.  I want to be the person who comes in and starts setting up post offices everywhere.

Atlas Mail - Let's Go Postal TM

😁

Edited by Rising
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On 3/19/2019 at 8:13 AM, UncleMike said:

I call myself "We" because if you read my original post, it is me and my company, I'm not speaking for anyone else. You sound less important by not reading. You should try reading.

For context, my original post said "We (my company) had all but decided to go. "

Also could you please define "Intelegent discusion"

BUBBALOOEY THINK HE NO HAVE FRIENDS SO HE THINK YOU NO HAVE ANY EITHER SO NO WORRY HE BEING MEAN.

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12 hours ago, BUBBALOOEY said:

BUBBALOOEY THINK HE NO HAVE FRIENDS SO HE THINK YOU NO HAVE ANY EITHER SO NO WORRY HE BEING MEAN.

Why are you spamming the forums with all capitals?

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8 hours ago, MrMagoo said:

Why are you spamming the forums with all capitals?

Because he knows you can’t see and are hard of hearing.

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10 hours ago, MrMagoo said:

Why are you spamming the forums with all capitals?

BUBBALOOEY IS NOT SPAMMING, I SAY WHAT I SAY CAUSE I CARE. SPAM MEAN NO MEANING JUST SPAM SPAM SPAM. THIS WAY I TALK, I A PIRATE SCHOOL NO GOOD. ATLAS PVE NEED MORE ATTENTION ALWAYS GETTING NO INFORMATION.

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6 hours ago, BUBBALOOEY said:

BUBBALOOEY IS NOT SPAMMING, I SAY WHAT I SAY CAUSE I CARE. SPAM MEAN NO MEANING JUST SPAM SPAM SPAM. THIS WAY I TALK, I A PIRATE SCHOOL NO GOOD. ATLAS PVE NEED MORE ATTENTION ALWAYS GETTING NO INFORMATION.

stop typing in caps doesnt make your replys any more important and they are written in a childish way , even google translate woudl do a better a better job 

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3 hours ago, UDO said:

stop typing in caps doesnt make your replys any more important and they are written in a childish way , even google translate woudl do a better a better job 

BUBBALOOEY CAN TYPE HOW EVER HE LIKE. WHY YOU TYPE ALL LITTLE LETTERS LIKE SCARED BABY. MAYBE I NO HAVE ARMS AND NEED MACHINE MAN TO COMMUNICATE YOU NO NO. I NO CARE FOR ATTENTION JUST THIS ME SO IS OK. 

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1 hour ago, BUBBALOOEY said:

BUBBALOOEY CAN TYPE HOW EVER HE LIKE. WHY YOU TYPE ALL LITTLE LETTERS LIKE SCARED BABY. MAYBE I NO HAVE ARMS AND NEED MACHINE MAN TO COMMUNICATE YOU NO NO. I NO CARE FOR ATTENTION JUST THIS ME SO IS OK. 

Well maybe you need to read the rules of the forum, I will highlight them for you.

 

Posting:
When creating a post, make sure that it’s in in the correct category. Your topic may be moved without warning by a First Mate if it is placed in the wrong category. Avoid duplicate topics where applicable. Refrain from shrieking and squawking like a parrot in all caps and using extremely large fonts in your posts. Limit your topic post tags to a maximum of 10 total tags. Failure to do so may result in yer copping an edit from a First Mate. 

If you would like your topic removed, please report the topic and let a First Mate know in the description. If you are requesting a server advertisement post to be removed, please await the removal before posting a new topic to avoid receiving a warning for having duplicate advertisements.

4. You are not allowed alternate forum accounts.

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On 3/19/2019 at 10:23 AM, Zadira said:

You are also speaking for me and my whole crew, UncleMike.  I didn't think to write on discord but I did write here on this forum.  I am wondering if they read this forum since they have so much to read on discord.  Maybe they don't have time to read everything that was written here.

I really did think they would listen to what we were saying. When you have a majority of people who are stating a like or dislike of something, you would think they would take notice. 

Of what I saw here, the majority of the people do not like what they are planning for pve.  The pve building system is broken in Ark and they are going to be doing pretty much the same with the Atlas building system. When you keep doing the same thing over and over and keep getting the same bad result, doesn't that signify insanity? 

I guess we will wait and see but I am having a hard time figuring out how any of this is going to work out for the best.

Honestly THEIR forums should be their go to..Otherwise what purpose does it really serve...

2 hours ago, BUBBALOOEY said:

BUBBALOOEY CAN TYPE HOW EVER HE LIKE. WHY YOU TYPE ALL LITTLE LETTERS LIKE SCARED BABY. MAYBE I NO HAVE ARMS AND NEED MACHINE MAN TO COMMUNICATE YOU NO NO. I NO CARE FOR ATTENTION JUST THIS ME SO IS OK. 

What's with the third person?  Stop it.. lol

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I've only seen one active moderator on these forums who seems to be fair. I don't think the forums is that active to be moderated heavily although the downside to that is you get people who want to spam or cry over the game while it is quite.

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On 3/20/2019 at 1:59 AM, MajorAvatar said:

Maybe we have to admit the thing, that no one seems to want to give voice to: Atlas is not very interesting for PVE, it is really more of a PVP game. Maybe with 'colonies' platform, there will be eventually a nice mix mode, with PVE and PVP areas. I do not foresee enough endgame environment content continuously generated, to make PVE interesting in the long run. The most important endgame elements are PvP focussed and the end goal is to be a pirate that steals from other players.

So long as they add new quests every few months, PvE will remain interesting. I do get what you're saying. Its going to be up to the devs to care about PvE though, and THAT is the entire problem; they don't seem to. 

I mean, if I were designing the PvE side of this game, this is what I'd do:

- limit claim flags to 1 flag per 5 players in a company, with a hard cap at 25 flags. This would leave more than enough land for everyone.

- Add new quests every few months, with one or two requiring more than one company to undertake, just to give companies a reason to seek out parties and work together. These would be events you have to seek out or search for, not something that spawns in randomly as an immediate threat.

- reinstate alliances, but limit them to 3 per company, so mega tribes can't grow into 'governing asshats'.

- Set up gathering areas with mini hunts and declare one or two islands as 'pirating zones', so some players could go be the pirates they want to be without including companies who don't wish to participate.

- create different 'world' events or 'region' events that would require a co-op effort to neutralize or destroy, and they would spawn in randomly, giving an equal amount of loot to whomever participated in the event on a company-scale (vs individual).

I'm sure I could come up with more ways.... this was just off the top of my head. What Grapeshot needs is to hire a new sub-team of people who do nothing but deal with and work for the PvE side of Atlas. I just wish they would actually do this. I know they are all PvP oriented, but by being so focused on one play-style, they are blowing off the other and shooting themselves in the foot in the process. 

I could also see making armies of the damned (2-10 npcs in a gang) roam resource-rich areas like wild animals do, as something you'd have to defeat to be able to reach the resources you want to mine. Not all resources. and not in every area. Just in a few of them. 

There ARE ways to make PvE a very cool play style. And this is all something that PvP could do as well, and since the threat of war/being wiped/being attacked is always present, would add to the whole 'experience' of Atlas. 

On 3/20/2019 at 3:30 AM, Lotus said:

I was talking to somebody about the land claims situation. Person is familiar with Atlas but a much bigger Ark player. The conversation was basically this.

I was playing 16 hours a day every day for like 2 months. I had 1k hours when the wipe was announced. So I am talking to this person about the claims. I was explaining how at this point claims worked that people would basically need to quit for a month to get land and would only have to log in then out to keep it for another month. The upkeep they had was not working to make getting>keeping>losing land cycles in check for PvE. So they needed a harsher upkeep applied to owning land.

So they were going to make the islands all lawless and put this repair machine in to keep your buildings from decaying to death. The problem I saw with this was they would have people blocking resources to kick other players off the island cause they can't repair if they can't get resources.

They decided to change it though which I was thankful for was putting 1 tribe as owner of an island then they have to basically feed the flag based on island size. Which I think is great. Just take freebuild off and make it so the owner has to allow tribes to build. Then the people that don't want to or don't have the ability to feed a flag every 3-5 or whatever days can just build on somebody else's land and they pay taxes to help the land owner. Win/Win

I then started talking about how some people want it to be 1-3 claims per person which would be fair if they added an upkeep cost like owning the island. The only problem is if 1-2 people wanted to they could screw all the tribes on an island by using their claims to block resources. If somebody wants to build on top of the only metal mountain on an island you can't really have a dev say no you need to play how it benefits the other players. So it would lead to problems. So I think the devs see it was the whole island for a tribe is better for the players regardless of big or small tribes.

This person goes and explains to me well Atlas is supposed to be an MMORPG with few real MMORPG features at this point what if they are making the changes in preparation for features that haven't been announced yet?

And at that point my jaw just kinda dropped and I was like damn it might not have anything to do with what people want but what they are designing. So I just kinda sat there humbled. 😕

 

~Lotus

This is a nice thought. Honestly. If this were the case, a bit of an explanation from the Devs is needed at this point, because it would assuage a lot of people's apprehension with this new system they are putting in place. I mean, they aren't saying anything else. They aren't giving us even a HINT of what they plan for the future, nor anything to indicate they even actually CARE about PvE play-style. 

*edit*  The way the Devs are behaving with this game, the lack of explanation of why they are choosing what they are, or their future plans, the lack of attention they give to PvE.... its making them look like very lazy coders. Its like they don't want to have to write the code necessary to make this game what it could actually be: a true MMO with enough of the RPG in it to keep even PvE people busy all the time and not just provide what becomes a monotonous environment over time. 

Edited by Sansa Phoenix
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Since we've paid already, might as well see exactly what they have planned and draw conclusions then.  Regardless of how bad people think it will be, I'll wait and see, it's not like I'm loosing much more than I already have.

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40 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Since we've paid already, might as well see exactly what they have planned and draw conclusions then.  Regardless of how bad people think it will be, I'll wait and see, it's not like I'm loosing much more than I already have.

There's quite a few people coming back to the game I hear, now they have allowed everyone to build on islands people are giving it another go rather than before where you couldn't find land. There is so much they could do to improve the game, I'm having fun with it at the moment anyway.

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