Could all this have been avoided?

[Realist 504]

6 hours ago, microphobe said:

Two factions doesn't really seem like enough for me, I would be looking at something like 10 factions with designated land areas that shift as people conquer different areas. Two factions leads to such narrow conflict options like Horde vs Alliance, it was too black and white. With 10 factions then some can be openly hostile, some allied and some neutral depending on things like how much trade was done between each group or how much combat each week.

Have some reason to trade at least, make it that some of each type of resource is set in the designated areas, if company "A" wants softwood you have to either trade with faction "B" or sneak into their territory and harvest it.

The player markets are doing away with trade. And the player markets were actually a very good idea. Totally automated so you don’t have to meet up with anybody and you don’t have to worry about getting double crossed. The other kind of trade just won’t happen. Not with the distance that needs to be traveled and the time people need to wait for that travel. They want their mats fast and automation is the way to do it. It just won’t happen here

3 hours ago, Percieval said:

This is false information. This game was never intended as a ‘ARK DLC’ because that would’ve been impossible to make because of the dino’s overload. You can’t have massive bases full with kibble farms and dino’s, and have the greatness of ATLAS’ map. That’s what the statement was by Wildcard I’m just repeating it. But let’s get the whole ‘ARK DLC’ out of the way. 

Ah ok, when you said the greatness part I was like “that sounds like Jeremy, not Percieval”

[Back Stabbath 150]

Omg factions? really? Horrible ideas imo..

When the game heads in that direction its really in big trouble .

Also player markets remove ship travel, which removes ships on the seas . Which removes pvp. And this is good how?

What is the point of being a Pirate again? how do you pirate if you cant actually pirate because the merchandise is magically teleported through the air? Or am I missing something?

Whats happening to the game now?  WOW

smaller MAP??

wtf are guys on about?

Pretty sure Realist is trollin yall btw.

 

Edited March 20, 2019 by Back Stabbath

[Percieval 1,067]

I can see I stepped on some people’s toes. Let’s not forget that I’m just repeating their statement and it is pretty viable as to why they did it.  And even if it was true, they would come to the same conclusion so all you guys are doing is moan for the sake of moaning. 

 

@Realist don’t play stupid  

Edited March 20, 2019 by Percieval

[Sneakydude 143]

17 hours ago, microphobe said:

Two factions doesn't really seem like enough for me, I would be looking at something like 10 factions with designated land areas that shift as people conquer different areas. Two factions leads to such narrow conflict options like Horde vs Alliance, it was too black and white. With 10 factions then some can be openly hostile, some allied and some neutral depending on things like how much trade was done between each group or how much combat each week.

Have some reason to trade at least, make it that some of each type of resource is set in the designated areas, if company "A" wants softwood you have to either trade with faction "B" or sneak into their territory and harvest it.

This is also do able too, spanish fleet, english, etc.. so many other options. Lots of adjustments but without splitting up the servers even move.

We are already down to 1900 players and most are on un official keeping those numbers going.

[Sneakydude 143]

10 hours ago, Back Stabbath said:

Omg factions? really? Horrible ideas imo..

When the game heads in that direction its really in big trouble .

Also player markets remove ship travel, which removes ships on the seas . Which removes pvp. And this is good how?

What is the point of being a Pirate again? how do you pirate if you cant actually pirate because the merchandise is magically teleported through the air? Or am I missing something?

Whats happening to the game now?  WOW

smaller MAP??

wtf are guys on about?

Pretty sure Realist is trollin yall btw.

 

Actually having a mature conversation about different ideas that could have been done, instead of splitting up the community.

Give us a different idea, to talk about and go from there... Unless you have nothing concrete?

Remember we are down to 1900 players and most on un official right now. We are losing so many over this whole shut down, wipe, redo etc.. the only thing your suggesting is your ok with these server changes? Your ok with the 1900 players still playing the game?

Because we sure are not ok with all of this... heck half of us are probably on the fence now about leaving it completely.

 

Shoot us something other then big dick know it all comments.

[Back Stabbath 150]

2 minutes ago, Sneakydude said:

Actually having a mature conversation about different ideas that could have been done, instead of splitting up the community.

Give us a different idea, to talk about and go from there... Unless you have nothing concrete?

Remember we are down to 1900 players and most on un official right now. We are losing so many over this whole shut down, wipe, redo etc.. the only thing your suggesting is your ok with these server changes? Your ok with the 1900 players still playing the game?

Because we sure are not ok with all of this... heck half of us are probably on the fence now about leaving it completely.

 

Shoot us something other then big dick know it all comments.

1. my dick is huge 

2. factions... bro.. if I wanna pvp with a bunch of people that don't know what they are doing  and desperately want safety in numbers ill join a giant mega zerg..wtf

This was marketed as an mmo sandbox. Why move away from it? Look at the successful sandboxes?  Ill be the first to admit..there are not many. But there is a hunger out there for one. A deep primal hunger. Look At Eve, Look at old school uo the classic sandboxes. Give the players the tools and they will create the content.

You can add factions. LATER. As an option. as additional opt in content sure. That would be cool.That is a good idea. 

Reduce map size? 

So rather than have a game that might take a year to complete. have a game that every person can complete in a month super easy. This is where we are now?

I say if we could increase the map size 1000 fold wtf.  Dude wtf. why not have island and zone clusters that I have never seen before  that I haven't explored months from now?

You want people to play a game make territory control mean something.  Give them something to fight for. 

Zone specific resource allocation , limit fast travel for gods sake.(also limits zergs ability to defend mass areas simultaneously)

Get people sailing out in the world createv pvp hotspots.

I have tons..i can go all day man.

Ive only been pc gaming since PCs were invented.

 

 

 

[DocHolliday 366]

11 hours ago, Back Stabbath said:

Omg factions? really? Horrible ideas imo..

When the game heads in that direction its really in big trouble .

Also player markets remove ship travel, which removes ships on the seas . Which removes pvp. And this is good how?

What is the point of being a Pirate again? how do you pirate if you cant actually pirate because the merchandise is magically teleported through the air? Or am I missing something?

Whats happening to the game now?  WOW

smaller MAP??

wtf are guys on about?

Pretty sure Realist is trollin yall btw.

 

Maybe I don't know how the market works.  I thought you have to go to the market with said materials or finished product and therefor are exposed to the dangers of the high seas.  Maybe its ignots that people have trouble getting access to.  Maybe its a Legendary Large Cannon that does 190% damage.  Whatever.  This market is in a freeport, correct?  Put the materials up for sale at this time.

Next someone has to travel there.  Purchase said materials and then travel out of the freeport with the materials or the final product these materials were needed for.  Materials and/or finished products are on the high seas exposed to pirates.  Unless someone has a ship sitting in a harbor meant to look pretty and not do much of anything. 

Edited March 20, 2019 by DocHolliday

[Back Stabbath 150]

Not sure either as far as markets go.Maybe you are right.that wouldnt be so bad.

I thought they were referring to some kind of market in every island.

One thing they should look into is a pvp timer. So you cant unflag just by crossing a server line to Freeport when engaged in pvp, or by entering your island border during non raid times if you are already engaged.

 

[microphobe 72]

12 minutes ago, Back Stabbath said:

2. factions... bro.. if I wanna pvp with a bunch of people that don't know what they are doing  and desperately want safety in numbers ill join a giant mega zerg..wtf

This was marketed as an mmo sandbox. Why move away from it? Look at the successful sandboxes?  Ill be the first to admit..there are not many. But there is a hunger out there for one. A deep primal hunger. Look At Eve, Look at old school uo the classic sandboxes. Give the players the tools and they will create the content.

You can add factions. LATER. As an option. as additional opt in content sure. That would be cool.That is a good idea. 

You want people to play a game make territory control mean something.  Give them something to fight for. 

Zone specific resource allocation , limit fast travel for gods sake.(also limits zergs ability to defend mass areas simultaneously)

Get people sailing out in the world createv pvp hotspots.

 

 

I'm only going to address part of your post, you phallus and it's size is your own business.

Factions don't force someone to join, this is where I see the real pirates living. On the fringe of the empires, a small crew of competent fighters who make hit and run attacks in small fast ships. Take what you can and run before the xxxx navy arrives. Make sure you use bar shot to take out the sail not sink them because the navy may be there before you can dive down and salvage anything and then it would all be for naught.

About territory control I 100% agree and have said the same thing many times. Without resources tied to specific zones and factions, trade and travel will not happen like they should. If I can get everything I need for 90% of what I do in the surrounding 8 tiles of the map, I wont need to go anywhere very often.

The ever unpopular fast travel discussion. I am against this because primarily it makes no sense to be able to blip across the map in a survival game, wheres the survival if you teleport. Tie the respawn to the closest bed only. No choice about where you respawn.
I get that some people can't play long enough in a single sitting to travel across the map but that's is where the "all the time" pvp falls in a heap in this sort of game. If a casual player can't be safe when they log out then casuals wont play and that kills a huge number of the player base. It is a problem and one that will continue to kill off players until it is fixed.
Ships are too easily sunk while people are sleeping, the simplest solution to this is that they become immune to damage for 24 hours after anchoring 10 minutes after anchoring. So 10 minutes after you drop anchor you are PvP safe for 24 hours, if you log in and raise/lower the anchor, another 24 hours. It would allow people to travel without the huge risk of logging out, something that seriously inhibits travel in the pvp server.

[Back Stabbath 150]

Thing is I really think they already unintentionally solved this. With the 300 percent when anchored thing you can pretty much survive on a boat in a freeport overnight.Pretty sure a schooner can last 36 hours.

 

Edited March 20, 2019 by Back Stabbath

[microphobe 72]

9 minutes ago, Back Stabbath said:

Not sure either as far as markets go.Maybe you are right.that wouldnt be so bad.

I thought they were referring to some kind of market in every island.

One thing they should look into is a pvp timer. So you cant unflag just by crossing a server line to Freeport when engaged in pvp, or by entering your island border during non raid times if you are already engaged.

 

There are two markets, the market in the free port and the market on an island.

Free port markets are for people who don't want randoms coming ashore/sailing into their harbour and walking around their town because of aggressive defences and/or don't want the risk of losing their shop in a pvp attack, they will be juicy targets filled with gold and resources.

Island markets can be placed anywhere on the island for people to walk up to and purchase things.

Both types need to be stocked by the player meaning that someone will actually have to move the resources over to them and collect the gold from them at some point making the free ports useful because they cannot be destroyed, but also likely to be pvp hotspots in the surrounding tiles as most ships going in and out will be carrying booty.

 

They said there would be a pvp timer for dropping anchor in your safe harbour so that you couldn't just run away from pvp. I would provide a source but it's in the first video I think and I cbf watching that again.

[Back Stabbath 150]

They do a company check of 10 npc's per freeport. Do a company check of one or 2 boats per freeport...let em dock a boat per freeport for 24 hours.

makes it an hots pot for trade.

makes freeport surrounding areas a hotspot for pvp. Its a win win.

And get rid of the tames being abused in Freeports.

Edited March 20, 2019 by Back Stabbath

[microphobe 72]

3 minutes ago, Back Stabbath said:

Thing is I really think they already unintentionally solved this. With the 300 percent when anchored thing you can pretty much survive on a boat in a freeport overnight.Pretty sure a schooner can last 36 hours.

 

But hopping from free port to free port isn't really the way to go, KOS is about the worst thing that ever happens with these game because it absolutely destroys the game play, sinking a ship should be hard, like really hard, nobody did this outside of war because a sunken ship is gone, can't loot something at the bottom of the ocean. Pirates didn't burn ships, they didn't sink ships, most ships just furled sails at the first cannon shot and let them take what they wanted because death is a bad thing.
Being able to respawn on a bed as soon as you are killed is an awful mechanic.

Imagine you had to sail back out to a ship in order to sail it back if you died while on board. Bet your bum people would be looking after their health, food, water and vitamins then instead of just shooting each other in the head each time they are thirsty.
What about a 10 minutes respawn on ships on a bed?
What if people were laying in wait on the ship you are about to plunder, if they shoot me as I board, they will have enough time to go in and break my bed and steal my ship long before I could ever get back to it. Make death mean something, not just have it a way to fill your stomach.

[Back Stabbath 150]

Its pretty hard to sink a boat that doesn't want to be sunk if its aware.

That's a pvp game.  Also when theres pirates ther is anti pirates.

thats what its all about.

risk/reward/adrenaline/fun/excitement etc

isnmt that why we play pvp sandbox

 

[Sneakydude 143]

17 hours ago, Back Stabbath said:

1. my dick is huge 

2. factions... bro.. if I wanna pvp with a bunch of people that don't know what they are doing  and desperately want safety in numbers ill join a giant mega zerg..wtf

This was marketed as an mmo sandbox. Why move away from it? Look at the successful sandboxes?  Ill be the first to admit..there are not many. But there is a hunger out there for one. A deep primal hunger. Look At Eve, Look at old school uo the classic sandboxes. Give the players the tools and they will create the content.

You can add factions. LATER. As an option. as additional opt in content sure. That would be cool.That is a good idea. 

Reduce map size? 

So rather than have a game that might take a year to complete. have a game that every person can complete in a month super easy. This is where we are now?

I say if we could increase the map size 1000 fold wtf.  Dude wtf. why not have island and zone clusters that I have never seen before  that I haven't explored months from now?

You want people to play a game make territory control mean something.  Give them something to fight for. 

Zone specific resource allocation , limit fast travel for gods sake.(also limits zergs ability to defend mass areas simultaneously)

Get people sailing out in the world createv pvp hotspots.

I have tons..i can go all day man.

Ive only been pc gaming since PCs were invented.

 

 

 

So your my age close to 50 then?

as for #1 it would be flabby, and not getting used much and probably into Viagra by now =D

 

Edited March 21, 2019 by Sneakydude

[Martyn 246]

On 3/19/2019 at 7:32 PM, Sneakydude said:

If the devs just re balanced the current system? and fixed the flag system. Putting some hardcore caps on alliances being greater then 5-10. Restricting player join bases of 1000 to maybe 250 cap size? Finding a way to handle fast spawning in on ships to over balance the servers. Meaning you can only have 50 raiding people in one zone at a time. (nothing saying you cant just raid multi zones at the same time) Servers go red and lock out others.

Fixing the exploits first, and the massive bugs and cheats in the game and most of all adding proper ddos protections instead of spending 1000 hrs coding a new system to split the current player base into 4 now...

1 unofficial, the rest 3 different modes of game play.

It will take the loads off of 50 man and under sizes but it will never fix the mega tribes of 1000 players all fighting it out on hardcore mode. The worst problem is you have allowed NA combined with EU and Asia, what more can you ask for problems? "Sheeps will follow its master when it comes to the term Mega Tribe"

Otherwise this is un necessary delays.

They could do that.  The issue with the flags is that they can be placed right outside an area that's already owned.  Allowing people to steal land.  On pvp you can just kill every etc but on pve it is a real issue. Should have made it so flags cover an area and couldn't be placed within say 150m of a boundary of someone elses lands. That way owned land could never be stolen.  Flags could be based on how many of your tribe are within an area, the more people the quicker it switched sides.  Like a standard capture the flag game.

The weight exploits should just never have been in the game.  It was obvious from the start people would use those exploits, same with repair hammer damaging players etc.  Common to see youtubers doing it, mostly in self defence, but still. As for cap sizes.. meh, they're kinda immaterial imo, you could have a Website with 50,000 players logged into it, playing 500 different games.  In atlas you might have 2,000 playing it, spread over 30 different zones.  In different companies.  As they learn where their fellows are, the congregate, but might not join into the same company, ie not merge, just ally, play alongside each other.  Spy for each other etc. Before you know it, all 2,000 are spread in the 20 zones around you.  All in different companies, but all playing for the same team.  There's no way really of combating that level of interaction, outside of severely limiting zone populations, which would require more zones, more servers, more hardware, cost etc.   On the one hand 40k people playing on the same server sounds amazing.. but it really isn't.

[Sneakydude 143]

14 minutes ago, Martyn said:

They could do that.  The issue with the flags is that they can be placed right outside an area that's already owned.  Allowing people to steal land.  On pvp you can just kill every etc but on pve it is a real issue. Should have made it so flags cover an area and couldn't be placed within say 150m of a boundary of someone elses lands. That way owned land could never be stolen.  Flags could be based on how many of your tribe are within an area, the more people the quicker it switched sides.  Like a standard capture the flag game.

The weight exploits should just never have been in the game.  It was obvious from the start people would use those exploits, same with repair hammer damaging players etc.  Common to see youtubers doing it, mostly in self defence, but still. As for cap sizes.. meh, they're kinda immaterial imo, you could have a Website with 50,000 players logged into it, playing 500 different games.  In atlas you might have 2,000 playing it, spread over 30 different zones.  In different companies.  As they learn where their fellows are, the congregate, but might not join into the same company, ie not merge, just ally, play alongside each other.  Spy for each other etc. Before you know it, all 2,000 are spread in the 20 zones around you.  All in different companies, but all playing for the same team.  There's no way really of combating that level of interaction, outside of severely limiting zone populations, which would require more zones, more servers, more hardware, cost etc.   On the one hand 40k people playing on the same server sounds amazing.. but it really isn't.

Personally i enjoyed the original system, however the way it should have been done is you place a flag in enemy territory and you have to defend that attack, and it should be a 2-8 hour limit attack flag on the island, to place a flag would require a company size of 10 or more, and placed by the company owner or something. You should not be able to place flags in the ocean, and you should not be able to claim land and delete structures. Those structures stay until you completely own the existing main flag on the island that is guarded by your keep etc... There was so much they could have done...

but none of those was to ban the mega tribes, allies exploits or cheats.... none of it was done. DDOS protections, nothing... duping was rampart etc.. and its no wonder why people left at the start, plus the hacker reports killed the flow of players, but the flag system and the cheating still exist on official to this day....

but

we are getting subs.

[Martyn 246]

The flags on water I don't mind so much, as they protected the shipyards and also shorelines from being stolen, but mostly, they could be used to build in places like shallow water and they could carry artwork to represent a company.  A literal flag.  I made a union jack, almost exact replica, on the pve servers I won't be able to use it as flags are being removed which I think is a shame.

It's actually pretty typical of wildcard/grapeshot, to just remove stuff instead of trying to fix it.   The flyer nerf in Ark was done because flyers were getting inside buildings, due to lag caused by overcrowding textures from dinos and buildings.  Many objects locally = lag.. and you could exploit that to get inside buildings.  But rather than fix the problem, which they could have done by reducing the texture sizes, optimising, reducing build physical sizes, reducing object sizes, numbers of dinos.. or any combination.  They just removed custom flyer speed.  Which essentially turned pve grinding into an extremely slow game.

But they already have our money.. so what can we do about it eh.  They literally do their own thing, until they realise noones playing.  Then they might offer some small concessions. But otherwise I think it's typical of their devs to just delete stuff they can't or won't fix.  Happens in other games as well.

[Martyn 246]

21 hours ago, Sneakydude said:

So your my age close to 50 then?

as for #1 it would be flabby, and not getting used much and probably into Viagra by now =D

 

Actually, you'll be surprised to learn that after 50, it get used more.  And we don't need viagra.. that's for stressed out kids.  (20-40s)

I've also been playing since before pc's existed..

[Bullet Force 151]

2 minutes ago, Martyn said:

The flags on water I don't mind so much, as they protected the shipyards and also shorelines from being stolen, but mostly, they could be used to build in places like shallow water and they could carry artwork to represent a company.  A literal flag.  I made a union jack, almost exact replica, on the pve servers I won't be able to use it as flags are being removed which I think is a shame.

It's actually pretty typical of wildcard/grapeshot, to just remove stuff instead of trying to fix it.   The flyer nerf in Ark was done because flyers were getting inside buildings, due to lag caused by overcrowding textures from dinos and buildings.  Many objects locally = lag.. and you could exploit that to get inside buildings.  But rather than fix the problem, which they could have done by reducing the texture sizes, optimising, reducing build physical sizes, reducing object sizes, numbers of dinos.. or any combination.  They just removed custom flyer speed.  Which essentially turned pve grinding into an extremely slow game.

But they already have our money.. so what can we do about it eh.  They literally do their own thing, until they realise noones playing.  Then they might offer some small concessions. But otherwise I think it's typical of their devs to just delete stuff they can't or won't fix.  Happens in other games as well.

Lol really one of these classic flyer mod people. I never expected to see your kind on here. When a Pteradon one hits a boss creature most folks agreed that was extremely  OP but hey I guess some people just can't let go off their OP items. Easy mode for life.

[Martyn 246]

7 minutes ago, Bullet Force said:

Lol really one of these classic flyer mod people. I never expected to see your kind on here. When a Pteradon one hits a boss creature most folks agreed that was extremely  OP but hey I guess some people just can't let go off their OP items. Easy mode for life.

Never really used them.  Except to skip across a map to pick something up or sometimes to get back to my corpsebag.  The barrel roll is just a balance issue.  No reason to nerf all flyers because of it.  It was nerfed because people where using the speed exploit to steal from buildings.

[Bullet Force 151]

12 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Never really used them.  Except to skip across a map to pick something up or sometimes to get back to my corpsebag.  The barrel roll is just a balance issue.  No reason to nerf all flyers because of it.  It was nerfed because people where using the speed exploit to steal from buildings.

No it was nerfed because it very obviously broken. When you have over 100 different dinosaurs in the game and yet players choose to use less then 10 as a dev you know you have a serious balance problem at hand. Lets face it before the nerf no one hardly used land dinos for moving around the map and even after the nerf it only slightly improved.

A similar situation has appeared in Atlas with regards to rafts and sloop vs schooners, brigs and galleons. There is no point to using them currently.

Edited March 22, 2019 by Bullet Force

[Luxfere 90]

This is the point of EA aka Beta testing to find the balance of all things and adjust even to rework world etc 

[Sneakydude 143]

5 hours ago, Luxfere said:

This is the point of EA aka Beta testing to find the balance of all things and adjust even to rework world etc 

But in the mean time we still have to deal with this,

which should have been dealt with long ago... instead its easy for them.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

I like the idea of two factions.  But don't name one the Pirates and one some other name.  Why?  Because the Pirates would get all of the aggressive PvP players.  Think about it.  So give them two fictional names.  This is NOT a pirate game.  It is a game with sailing ships where you can pirate, if you choose.  There IS a difference.  A subtle one perhaps, but a difference none the less.

What you do is create two sides of the map that are identical in ways that matter...resources, etc..and the grids that border with the enemy, are contested, and thus able to be raided.  If you capture the enemy's grid, this moves the front lines.  Any grid that borders the enemy is contested, and able to be raided.  Companies would create home bases near the front line grids, but not in them.  The bases in the contested grids would be what you use for fortifications, during the fighting.  Bases to operate from as you fight.  When the player imbalance becomes too exaggerated, raiding is disabled.  Until such time, balancing would be handled through spawn timers.