One reason Megas and Small to Medium Companies need separate servers.

[Realist 504]

1 hour ago, Willard said:

Wow, 7 people in 2 companies. Endgame content, in a PvP environment. Are you real? Are they sure they want to play on PvP server when they want to do PvE? 

The only thing that stands between them and endgame content is their desire to own their own island. Without this desire they can happily play as a settler on someone elses Settlement without being seen on map, without need to pay an upkeep and with protection of bigger company. 

There are ways, don't blame developers, blame yourself for not being able to adjust. 

 

Im sorry man but if someone wants to play on PvP and stops playing after his first schooner is sunk there is something wrong with the player, not with the system.

Tribe limit of 10? Fine, no problem. I will tell my second tribe in an alliance "hey guys, we are raiding island xy". That island will be under attack of 2 maximum sized tribes, good luck for 2-man tribe bobs with their nice bases without honeycombs directly on the beach where it can be destroyed by ship cannons. 

Later on the forums: Oh developers decrease the limit so I can do endgame pve and pvp all alone ...

If you Realist actually play the game you would see how extremely bad at playing people are. 70% players on PvP servers make their bases near the beaches or in the vale where you can destroy that with 1 cannon bears. No honeacombs, no bases on top of hills where you can't go with animald, nothing. And those are people who whinr on forums because of megatribes. 

We raid lawless with about 4 people. Pretty much everyone can be raided in like half an hour there. With 4 people, you don't need megazerg for it.

People are just extremely bad at playing the game and blame developers for not protecting them.

Yep. I came from ark so once I do start playing I will know what to do and very quickly.

all I am saying is don’t be surprised when everything changes again. Tried to warn the Megas but how well. They will figure it out at some point.

[DocHolliday 366]

If the devs listened to half the damn suggestions around here they would be so many rules in place we would need to submit a ticket to pull the trigger on our carbine.  These people also would hate most of the games I loved.  None of them catered to very small groups.  Small groups did exist and some did succeed however because they were good. 

 

These games are competitive.  You compete against others.  Sometimes you lose because they have more.  Sometimes you lose because they are simply better prepared and/or better players.  You can and will lose bases, ships and islands in this game.  I've experienced all that.  I watched 3 months of hard work get foundation wiped by a much much larger alliance.  We fought for 48 hours straight, but in the end we wore down and lost. 

 

These games parallel real life in some respects.  Competition being one of them and if  you refuse to play the game you're the bum on the side of the road begging for loose change.  You want it you have to take it.

Edited April 25, 2019 by DocHolliday

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

Horse crap.  Why does college athletics have separate leagues based on school size?  By your reasoning, they should all be in one league, and the school with 1200 students should just suck it up and play with the big schools with 50,000 students, or be the bum on the side of the road begging for change.  That's real life.  Amateur baseball teams don't play against the pros, and men's softball teams don't play against the kids.  Heavyweight fighters don't fight against Bantam weight fighters.  There is an understanding that fairness is needed for competition to be exciting.

In this case, it is selfishness by Megas that will ruin this game.  That along with dumb decisions by the Devs.  Like allowing name changes for Companies, such that a Mega can have some people leave the company, create a new company, put together the ships, and go off to raid.  After the raid, they disband the company and everyone rejoins their original Company.

 

You seem to think that every small tribe is just a half dozen players.  We had about half a full company.  Built by me selling the game to others in my large gaming community.  If they had fun, in a true Colonies server with smaller companies, they would have helped recruit new people to the game.  In time, I am sure I could have recruited enough to make at least two full companies with an Alliance, and if we grew much more than that, we would have headed off to the server meant for large companies.  But it is what it is.  A game trying to force small companies to bend the knee to Megas.  Not surprising with all of the game breaking imbalance the game already has.

[Willard 245]

7 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Horse crap.  Why does college athletics have separate leagues based on school size?  By your reasoning, they should all be in one league, and the school with 1200 students should just suck it up and play with the big schools with 50,000 students, or be the bum on the side of the road begging for change.  That's real life.  Amateur baseball teams don't play against the pros, and men's softball teams don't play against the kids.  Heavyweight fighters don't fight against Bantam weight fighters.  There is an understanding that fairness is needed for competition to be exciting.

In this case, it is selfishness by Megas that will ruin this game.  That along with dumb decisions by the Devs.  Like allowing name changes for Companies, such that a Mega can have some people leave the company, create a new company, put together the ships, and go off to raid.  After the raid, they disband the company and everyone rejoins their original Company.

 

You seem to think that every small tribe is just a half dozen players.  We had about half a full company.  Built by me selling the game to others in my large gaming community.  If they had fun, in a true Colonies server with smaller companies, they would have helped recruit new people to the game.  In time, I am sure I could have recruited enough to make at least two full companies with an Alliance, and if we grew much more than that, we would have headed off to the server meant for large companies.  But it is what it is.  A game trying to force small companies to bend the knee to Megas.  Not surprising with all of the game breaking imbalance the game already has.

You had half full company and those people left after sinking 1 schooner. What a players get some actual PvP players and stop blaming megas. We lost first day against a mega alliance after about 6 hours fighting. Noone left. We found an island (first like 3-4 days there were whole unclaimed sectors of claimable islands) and settled there. We are playing and enjoying the game doing naval battles againat those megas rn and its a blast (because they can't drive a boats properly:-)

If you have players who leave because they lose a battle over desired island or lose a schooner on a pvp server, get better players. Stop blaming megas for destroying you. These players what you had would leave anyway after first lost battle no matter if the opponent is mega or small sized tribe.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Willard

[IAmAnEasterEgg 25]

So currently what is happening to us is a Chinese mega tribe has attacked us.

but first they changed their name similar to ours except instead of an l they used an 1. They then got characters and changed the names copying our characters and attacked our allys. I have tracked them on battlemetrics.com and see alot of Thier players are coming from ark and rust just to gank us.  If someone wants good pvp and a challenge these guys are on F7 Thier company is gnn.  Last night due to the server restart our timer was pushed back an HR Aswell 

[Willard 245]

52 minutes ago, IAmAnEasterEgg said:

So currently what is happening to us is a Chinese mega tribe has attacked us.

but first they changed their name similar to ours except instead of an l they used an 1. They then got characters and changed the names copying our characters and attacked our allys. I have tracked them on battlemetrics.com and see alot of Thier players are coming from ark and rust just to gank us.  If someone wants good pvp and a challenge these guys are on F7 Thier company is gnn.  Last night due to the server restart our timer was pushed back an HR Aswell 

Seems to me its always Chinese who do things like this, changing names etc. Are u on EU or NA server?

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

On 4/25/2019 at 4:56 AM, BlackFlint said:

NO

YES

[IAmAnEasterEgg 25]

21 minutes ago, Willard said:

Seems to me its always Chinese who do things like this, changing names etc. Are u on EU or NA server?

Eu

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

10 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Horse crap.  Why does college athletics have separate leagues based on school size?  By your reasoning, they should all be in one league, and the school with 1200 students should just suck it up and play with the big schools with 50,000 students, or be the bum on the side of the road begging for change.  That's real life.  Amateur baseball teams don't play against the pros, and men's softball teams don't play against the kids.  Heavyweight fighters don't fight against Bantam weight fighters.  There is an understanding that fairness is needed for competition to be exciting.

In this case, it is selfishness by Megas that will ruin this game.  That along with dumb decisions by the Devs.  Like allowing name changes for Companies, such that a Mega can have some people leave the company, create a new company, put together the ships, and go off to raid.  After the raid, they disband the company and everyone rejoins their original Company.

 

You seem to think that every small tribe is just a half dozen players.  We had about half a full company.  Built by me selling the game to others in my large gaming community.  If they had fun, in a true Colonies server with smaller companies, they would have helped recruit new people to the game.  In time, I am sure I could have recruited enough to make at least two full companies with an Alliance, and if we grew much more than that, we would have headed off to the server meant for large companies.  But it is what it is.  A game trying to force small companies to bend the knee to Megas.  Not surprising with all of the game breaking imbalance the game already has.

College athletics does not have different leagues based on school size. It has conferences that were formed by the various member schools voluntarily and school size has nothing to do with it. Duke University is a perennially dominant national basketball powerhouse and its enrollment is far less than arch rival UNC or conference doormat Georgia Tech. The conference it belongs to, the Atlantic Coast Conference was originally formed based on geography but schools have been added to the point geography is a very limited factor ie Notre Dame now belongs to the Atlantic Coast Conference (motto of Indiana where Notre Dame is located: 4 billion years tidal wave free)

NCAA basketball draws on over 180 schools of vastly varying size, which are all eligble to play each other in both regular season and tournament play. Football is the same. Powerhouse programs routinely schedule 2 to 3 games per season against much weaker opponents dubbed cupcakes. The cupcake schools sports programs are far less prestigious but student enrollment at those schools may be more or less than the the powerhouses.

I know this is a side note, but the example you used doesn’t support your argument due to flawed assumptions about the example. The reality is that in college athletics the small schools DO suck it up and play the much larger schools, often whipping them soundly. This is because Zion Williamson wasn’t chosen at random out of the student body at Duke to play basketball for them but was heavily recruited as a highly sought after high school standout. Your argument may or may not be valid but the example you chose does not support it at all because college athletics does not work at all the way your post presents it.

Edited April 26, 2019 by boomervoncannon

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

6 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

College athletics does not have different leagues based on school size. It has conferences that were formed by the various member schools voluntarily and school size has nothing to do with it. Duke University is a perennially dominant national basketball powerhouse and its enrollment is far less than arch rival UNC or conference doormat Georgia Tech. The conference it belongs to, the Atlantic Coast Conference was originally formed based on geography but schools have been added to the point geography is a very limited factor ie Notre Dame now belongs to the Atlantic Coast Conference (motto of Indiana where Notre Dame is located: 4 billion years tidal wave free)

I know this is a side note, but the example you used doesn’t support your argument due to flawed assumptions about the example. The reality is that in college athletics the small schools DO suck it up and play the much larger schools, often whipping them soundly. This is because Zion Williamson wasn’t chosen at random out of the student body at Duke to play basketball for them but was heavily recruited as a highly sought after high school standout. Your argument may or may not be valid but the example you chose does not support it at all because college athletics does not work at all the way your post presents it.

You are cherry picking.  Wealthy smaller schools, that were able to buy recruits and make a name for themselves, were able to compete with the big boys.  Keep in mind that they also limit the number of recruits you can have now.  Even still, Ohio University is never going to win a National Championship, while OSU has, and will.  You are right, however, that because of the way they can recruit, college doesn't work as well, so use high school.  Big schools have an advantage.  Some schools have 1,000 to 2,000 in the senior class alone.  That can often be more than the smaller schools have in all for grades levels in their high school.  They have far more kids which gives them the likelihood of having more talented athletes.  So they don't compete against the smaller schools.  While it is not always true that they have more talented athletes, more often than not, they do.   While in high school, I ran cross country for a slightly below average size school.  The lower side of Div 3 out of 5 divisions.  We entered an invitational meet in Dayton Ohio, every year.  My Junior and Senior year, our division only had 4 teams, so we pulled out of our Division, and moved up to the Div 1 and 2, race.  To give an example, we had 8 runners.  7 could enter the race.  Cincinnati Princeton had more runners than we had on our football team.  Most had to enter the open race to be able to run.  Both years, we took first place, winning the meet handily.  This is obviously an example of how occasionally the little guy wins, but it's not the norm.  These types of stories make for good movies, and folk tales for a reason...they are rare.  Like the little Indiana Basketball team that won against bigger schools, and was made into a movie Hoosiers.

3 hours ago, Willard said:

You had half full company and those people left after sinking 1 schooner. What a players get some actual PvP players and stop blaming megas. We lost first day against a mega alliance after about 6 hours fighting. Noone left. We found an island (first like 3-4 days there were whole unclaimed sectors of claimable islands) and settled there. We are playing and enjoying the game doing naval battles againat those megas rn and its a blast (because they can't drive a boats properly:-)

If you have players who leave because they lose a battle over desired island or lose a schooner on a pvp server, get better players. Stop blaming megas for destroying you. These players what you had would leave anyway after first lost battle no matter if the opponent is mega or small sized tribe.

It wasn't one schooner.  It was being double crossed by the Mega the day before that did the most damage.

You can spin it how you want, but people who have small companies, mostly do not want to play in a server with the Megas.  So they won't.  It's why the player numbers are so low right now.  You don't have to like that fact, but it is a fact.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

Just now, Captain Jack Shadow said:

You are cherry picking.  Wealthy smaller schools, that were able to buy recruits and make a name for themselves, were able to compete with the big boys.  Keep in mind that they also limit the number of recruits you can have now.  Even still, Ohio University is never going to win a National Championship, while OSU has, and will.  You are right, however, that because of the way they can recruit, college doesn't work as well, so use high school.  Big schools have an advantage.  Some schools have 1,000 to 2,000 in the senior class alone.  That can often be more than the smaller schools have in all for grades levels in their high school.  They have far more kids which gives them the likelihood of having more talented athletes.  So they don't compete against the smaller schools.  While it is not always true that they have more talented athletes, more often than not, they do.   While in high school, I ran cross country for a slightly below average size school.  The lower side of Div 3 out of 5 divisions.  We entered an invitational meet in Dayton Ohio, every year.  My Junior and Senior year, our division only had 4 teams, so we pulled out of our Division, and moved up to the Div 1 and 2, race.  To give an example, we had 8 runners.  7 could enter the race.  Cincinnati Princeton had more runners than we had on our football team.  Most had to enter the open race to be able to run.  Both years, we took first place, winning the meet handily.  This is obviously an example of how occasionally the little guy wins, but it's not the norm.  These types of stories make for good movies, and folk tales for a reason...they are rare.  Like the little Indiana Basketball team that won against bigger schools, and was made into a movie Hoosiers.

I wasn’t cherry picking at all. College athletics are in no way divided competitively based on school size. Athletic scholarships make student enrollment irrelevant to competitiveness. Coaching staff reputation, recruiting ability, athletic program reputation and prestige and school prestige are factors that affect recruits choice of school far more than school size, largely irrelevant to their decision, and it is the competition for the most talented high school players that is the key factor in athletic success or failure at that level.

High school athletics would tend to be a much more valid example for the point you wish to make because it is divided based on student enrollment.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

9 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

I wasn’t cherry picking at all. College athletics are in no way divided competitively based on school size. Athletic scholarships make student enrollment irrelevant to competitiveness. Coaching staff reputation, recruiting ability, athletic program reputation and prestige and school prestige are factors that affect recruits choice of school far more than school size, largely irrelevant to their decision, and it is the competition for the most talented high school players that is the key factor in athletic success or failure at that level.

High school athletics would tend to be a much more valid example for the point you wish to make because it is divided based on student enrollment.

Quote

Divisions

Since 1973, the NCAA has organized its member schools into three divisions. Schools in Divisions I and Division II can offer scholarships to student-athletes, while Division III colleges cannot.

Divisions are determined by school size and budget, with larger schools competing in Divisions I and II and smaller schools in Division III. In NCAA football, Division I is broken down into two subdivisions: the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

https://www.campusexplorer.com/college-advice-tips/CC202B90/How-is-the-NCAA-Structured/

 

So like I said, it is mostly based on school size, but there are smaller schools, that have big budgets...wealthy schools...that do compete with the big boys.  Like I said, this was mostly accomplished because those wealthy schools were able to BUY the top athletes, back when that was a common practice.  Now, they are still able to do so because of their history of success.  It is becoming harder for them to do this, after what happened to SMU.  They can't buy the top players anymore.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Captain Jack Shadow

[Willard 245]

18 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

You are cherry picking.  Wealthy smaller schools, that were able to buy recruits and make a name for themselves, were able to compete with the big boys.  Keep in mind that they also limit the number of recruits you can have now.  Even still, Ohio University is never going to win a National Championship, while OSU has, and will.  You are right, however, that because of the way they can recruit, college doesn't work as well, so use high school.  Big schools have an advantage.  Some schools have 1,000 to 2,000 in the senior class alone.  That can often be more than the smaller schools have in all for grades levels in their high school.  They have far more kids which gives them the likelihood of having more talented athletes.  So they don't compete against the smaller schools.  While it is not always true that they have more talented athletes, more often than not, they do.   While in high school, I ran cross country for a slightly below average size school.  The lower side of Div 3 out of 5 divisions.  We entered an invitational meet in Dayton Ohio, every year.  My Junior and Senior year, our division only had 4 teams, so we pulled out of our Division, and moved up to the Div 1 and 2, race.  To give an example, we had 8 runners.  7 could enter the race.  Cincinnati Princeton had more runners than we had on our football team.  Most had to enter the open race to be able to run.  Both years, we took first place, winning the meet handily.  This is obviously an example of how occasionally the little guy wins, but it's not the norm.  These types of stories make for good movies, and folk tales for a reason...they are rare.  Like the little Indiana Basketball team that won against bigger schools, and was made into a movie Hoosiers.

It wasn't one schooner.  It was being double crossed by the Mega the day before that did the most damage.

You can spin it how you want, but people who have small companies, mostly do not want to play in a server with the Megas.  So they won't.  It's why the player numbers are so low right now.  You don't have to like that fact, but it is a fact.

Why don't they move away from mega? Map is large enough.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Willard

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

 

1 minute ago, Willard said:

Why don't they move away from mega? Map is large enough.

No it's not.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Captain Jack Shadow

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

24 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

https://www.campusexplorer.com/college-advice-tips/CC202B90/How-is-the-NCAA-Structured/

The distinction between divisions is far less about student enrollment than about level of school resources affecting the level of financial aid available for student athletes and therefore the level and quality of competition amongst those schools. Note this link to explanation of divisions:

https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-list-of-division-2-colleges-by-state

and in particular I will quote this paragraph from that page:

There are about 300 schools and thousands of students who participate in Division II sports. Division II schools offer athletic scholarships, but there is less athletic aid available in Division II than in Division I. The majority of athletes at Division II institutions are on partial athletic scholarships.

So again, the distinction that truly matters at the collegiate level is about scholarship athletes who represent the schools and who are recruited to do so, not about teams formed from the general student body. Yes Division II and FCS schools are generally smaller than Division I and FBS schools, but schools can and do move from one classification to the other as schools such as Marshall have demonstrated. This movement has far more to do with the athletic program at that school building prestige and resources over time that allow it to step up to a greater level of competition in a new division than about growth or change in the student enrollment. The distinction between the divisions has far more to do with the level of financial aid provided to student athletes at each division level than about student enrollment size. 

Example: Davidson College is Division I and the alma matter of NBA star Steph Curry.  Curry nearly lead Davidson to the Final Four, narrowly losing to eventual champion Kansas in the Elite Eight round. Davidson's enrollment is currently 1950 students. Johnson C Smith University, just 30 minutes from Davidson's campus is division II, per the linked page. It's enrollment is currently 1624 students. The level of competition is different not because of student body size, but because of school prestige, athletic program prestige and resources afforded each program, particularly financial aid for it's players.

As an analogy to Atlas this makes college athletics poor because scholarship athletes aren't pulled from student bodies at random but are specifically recruited and rewarded with financial aid to attend and play and they are the primary determining factor to athletic success, not student body size.

Edited April 26, 2019 by boomervoncannon

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

The point remains.  Ohio State, Florida, Texas, Florida State, USC, Oregon, Penn State, Oklahoma, Alabama, etc...they will almost always destroy any FCS, or Div II school that they play against.  Occasionally, lightning strikes, and the smaller school will win.  So Div II, Div III, and FCS have their own Championship system.  They are not required to compete with the larger schools.

Yes, there are games between FCS schools and the big boys.  This is not about actual competition.  This is about money, and only money.  The FCS schools will take a pay day that allows the Div 1 FBS school to have another home game, and a better chance at a winning record.  It's easier for Vanderbilt, Indiana, Ole Miss, Oregon State, etc..to continue to sell tickets, when they finish 6-6, or 7-5, than if you take away 3 or 4 of those cupcake wins, and replace them with losses against other FBS schools, they will have season after season of losing, and it becomes much harder to fill stadiums.  Also, a 6-6 record can qualify for a bowl game, which is another payday for the school.  Most FBS teams have 4 to 5 away games each year.  If they only played FBS schools, they would have between 6 to 7 away games.  When you consider that Ohio State brings in well over 5 million dollars in ticket sales per home game, and that they get even more for things like parking, and other sales at the game, you can see there is a huge incentive to pay a million to a small school to come and get beat up.  FYI, Ohio State has NEVER lost to another in-state university.  They are not the only large school to boast such a record.  Others, who have lost, don't lost very often to a smaller school.  There's a reason it was big news when Appy State beat Michigan.  It was totally unexpected.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

1 minute ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

The point remains.  Ohio State, Florida, Texas, Florida State, USC, Oregon, Penn State, Oklahoma, Alabama, etc...they will almost always destroy any FCS, or Div II school that they play against.  Occasionally, lightning strikes, and the smaller school will win.  So Div II, Div III, and FCS have their own Championship system.  They are not required to compete with the larger schools.

Yes, there are games between FCS schools and the big boys.  This is not about actual competition.  This is about money, and only money.  The FCS schools will take a pay day that allows the Div 1 FBS school to have another home game, and a better chance at a winning record.  It's easier for Vanderbilt, Indiana, Ole Miss, Oregon State, etc..to continue to sell tickets, when they finish 6-6, or 7-5, than if you take away 3 or 4 of those cupcake wins, and replace them with losses against other FBS schools, they will have season after season of losing, and it becomes much harder to fill stadiums.  Also, a 6-6 record can qualify for a bowl game, which is another payday for the school.  Most FBS teams have 4 to 5 away games each year.  If they only played FBS schools, they would have between 6 to 7 away games.  When you consider that Ohio State brings in well over 5 million dollars in ticket sales per home game, and that they get even more for things like parking, and other sales at the game, you can see there is a huge incentive to pay a million to a small school to come and get beat up.  FYI, Ohio State has NEVER lost to another in-state university.  They are not the only large school to boast such a record.  Others, who have lost, don't lost very often to a smaller school.  There's a reason it was big news when Appy State beat Michigan.  It was totally unexpected.

Okay but now we're talking about two different things: the validity of college athletics as an analogy to Atlas and how money affects competition in college athletics. If you want to talk about money affecting college athletics, you are preaching to the choir. If you want to talk about how the little guy still occasionally pulls off the upset, you should know you're talking to a 3rd generation App State grad who can tell you exactly where he was and what he was doing when Corey Lynch blocked Michigan's final field goal attempt (Screaming my head off and subsequently trying to call everyone I ever went to college with all at once and scream incoherently into the phone at them).

[znasser 81]

As stupid is to have servers for every group size, is to force them to compete for the same things, the same land and the same meta for everyone, be it a casual solo guy or a clan of 500.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

But the point is still valid.  Youngstown State has won Championships, even though there are many bigger schools in Ohio.  They did so because they did not have to compete against them.  They are in a different division than Ohio State, Ohio University, Kent State, Akron, Miami (OH), Toledo, Bowling Green, and Cincinnati.  The fact that they are in a different league (server) allows those players a chance to have an enjoyable season...a winning season...a Championship season.

The idea that everyone must be lumped into one server is absurd.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

3 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

But the point is still valid.  Youngstown State has won Championships, even though there are many bigger schools in Ohio.  They did so because they did not have to compete against them.  They are in a different division than Ohio State, Ohio University, Kent State, Akron, Miami (OH), Toledo, Bowling Green, and Cincinnati.  The fact that they are in a different league (server) allows those players a chance to have an enjoyable season...a winning season...a Championship season.

The idea that everyone must be lumped into one server is absurd.

I was only objecting to the notion that college athletics makes a good analogy to Atlas because scholarship athletes make student populations largely irrelevant, whereas in Atlas company size matters far more directly because highly skilled Atlas players aren't paid by their companies to sit in front of their computers all day and pvp. I was never objecting to your underlying argument, only the example as poor.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about whether everyone should be on the same server in Atlas. Since I tend not to pvp much in Atlas, it is a fight in which I don't have much of a dog. I will ask this: How would you propose to segregate servers by company size? It strikes me as a thing that seems difficult to enforce, given that megas can always use external means of cordination such as discord to work around arbitrary ingame company size limitations.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

12 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

I was only objecting to the notion that college athletics makes a good analogy to Atlas because scholarship athletes make student populations largely irrelevant, whereas in Atlas company size matters far more directly because highly skilled Atlas players aren't paid by their companies to sit in front of their computers all day and pvp. I was never objecting to your underlying argument, only the example as poor.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about whether everyone should be on the same server in Atlas. Since I tend not to pvp much in Atlas, it is a fight in which I don't have much of a dog. I will ask this: How would you propose to segregate servers by company size? It strikes me as a thing that seems difficult to enforce, given that megas can always use external means of cordination such as discord to work around arbitrary ingame company size limitations.

The Devs can develop tracking to see who is doing what.  When one company is doing a lot of farming, and giving it to another company, it is obvious that this is one company.  You make a rule that this is not allowed.  Do away with alliances.  No cooperation between Companies.  Anyone caught doing it, gets wiped.  2nd time is wipe and 30 day ban.  3rd time is perma ban.  I doubt it would ever come to that.  I don't think this would be hard.  Just let the data compile as to what is going where.  When it becomes obvious that one company is feeding another, consequences follow.  Cooperating on raids, and defenses, would also be against the rules.  You can't control the fact that they can share a common communications system, but you CAN make their cooperation in the game, against the rules.

Also, do away with the practice of changing company names, or creating shell companies to raid without consequences.

The only thing that should be allowed, is a non-aggression pact on an island, or in a grid. Maybe...but I would be fine with this even being against the rules.

 

Edited April 26, 2019 by Captain Jack Shadow

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

1 minute ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

The Devs can develop tracking to see who is doing what.  When one company is doing a lot of farming, and giving it to another company, it is obvious that this is one company.  You make a rule that this is not allowed.  Do away with alliances.  No cooperation between Companies.  Anyone caught doing it, gets wiped.  2nd time is wipe and 30 day ban.  3rd time is perma ban.  I doubt it would ever come to that.  I don't think this would be hard.  Just let the data compile as to what is going where.  When it becomes obvious that one company is feeding another, consequences follow.  Cooperating on raids, and defenses, would also be against the rules.  You can't control the fact that they can share a common communications system, but you CAN make their cooperation in the game, against the rules.

Also, do away with the practice of changing company names, or creating shell companies to raid without consequences.

The only thing that should be allowed, is a non-aggression pact on an island, or in a grid. Maybe...but I would be fine with this even being against the rules.

 

I think you will get a LOT of pushback from people not cool with the idea of eliminating alliances, and not just from megas wanting to keep their defacto mega intact. I also think forbidding of giving resources is extremely hard to enforce. So outright giving is forbidden, but what about trading a galleon's worth of resources for one stone? The devs cannot possibly personally monitor all transactions to ensure they aren't resource transfers and if you try to track that, how do you set the tracking perameters? It seems a can of worms. I'm not saying it's impossible, merely that it seems quite difficult and I think the idea would not be popular because of unintended consequences on legitimate trading.

[Captain Jack Shadow 488]

1 minute ago, boomervoncannon said:

I think you will get a LOT of pushback from people not cool with the idea of eliminating alliances, and not just from megas wanting to keep their defacto mega intact. I also think forbidding of giving resources is extremely hard to enforce. So outright giving is forbidden, but what about trading a galleon's worth of resources for one stone? The devs cannot possibly personally monitor all transactions to ensure they aren't resource transfers and if you try to track that, how do you set the tracking perameters? It seems a can of worms. I'm not saying it's impossible, merely that it seems quite difficult and I think the idea would not be popular because of unintended consequences on legitimate trading.

Actually, those who want a Colonies for small to medium tribes, often talk about just reducing the size and not allowing alliances.

And yes, they can say that they will track the transfer of goods, and that on this server, when it becomes obvious to them that two companies are operating together, they will wipe them.  It's simple enforcement.  They could also make all transfers take place through the trading booths, and thus cost a set amount.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

7 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Actually, those who want a Colonies for small to medium tribes, often talk about just reducing the size and not allowing alliances.

And yes, they can say that they will track the transfer of goods, and that on this server, when it becomes obvious to them that two companies are operating together, they will wipe them.  It's simple enforcement.  They could also make all transfers take place through the trading booths, and thus cost a set amount.

Well like I said, I don't particularly have a dog in the fight assuming you are talking of pvp servers, just beware the law of unintended consequences. I think limiting all transfers to trading booths would be wildly unpopular, but that's just my two dubloons.

[Keins Thallow 41]

One of the problems is that the devs started out designing a game for MINIMUM of 40 man companies.  But they promoted the game as something a few people could pick up together and enjoy.  As someone who prefers solo or 2-3 man tribes in ark, it took me a LONG TIME TO REALIZE THIS.  The "mega" update was supposed to make it more friendly to solo and small groups, but with the divide of the servers into colonies and empires may people just quit.  Now that neither server has a good population they are moving back toward making the game favorable to larger groups.   There needs to be a message when you log in reminding players that the larger the company they have the more content they will experience.   I'm in a small group with 3-4 active members, we have had a 65pt island since launch and spend most of our NON RAID time gathering gold and fortifying our island against attacks.  I think if we had just settled on someone else's island and paid the tax we would have experienced a lot more of what the game has to offer.  Seriously considering trying to get the other 3 small tribes on our grid to merge with us and consolidate to 1 island so we all have less work to upkeep and more time to play.