Leaderboard

That right there is Season 2. Now let's talk about the Season 2. Can we talk about Season 2, please, Rick? I've been dying to talk about Season 2 with you all day. OK? "PTR", this name keeps coming up over and over again. Every day PTR is getting thrown at me. PTR! PTR! I look in the official forums, Reddit, and Discord, and this whole game is PTR PTR! So I say to myself, "I gotta figure out this PTR mess with season 2! I gotta go to the Grapeshot offices and see when this goddamn thing is even releasing. Otherwise they are gonna keep delaying and we will never get it." So I go up to Grapeshots office and what do I find out, Rick? What, do, I, find, out?! There is no PTR. Season 2 does not exist, okay? So I decide, "Oh shit, buddy, I gotta dig a little deeper." There's no PTR? You gotta be kidding me! I got menu screens full of PTR! All right. So I start marching my way down to Jat from the Grapeshot team and knock on his door and I say, "Jat! Jat! I gotta talk to you about PTR." And when I open the door what do I find? There's not a single goddamn desk in that office! There. Is. No. Jat from the Grapeshot team. Rick, half the developers for this game have been made up! This game is a goddamn ghosttown

Everyone needs to learn, I've just learnt how to put someone on the ignor list.

As the title suggests I am going to outline why Mega Companies (and tribes in the case of Ark) are good for the game. Myself I am what would be considered as a small 'bob tribe'. I have played ark since its released and now Atlas since its release on PVP official servers. I have always been either solo or playing with a small group of 4-5 friends, so this post will be from the view of a small tribe/company pvp player. Mega Companies/Tribes have been a large part of the game for a very long time, ever since games of this style has been created much to the love or despair of many different players. They do however have a very important role to play in the creation of the complete fun experience of Atlas and Ark Survival Evolved for many reasons. 1. Mega Companies and tribes create an incredible political side to the game enabling security and trade for your small company. One challenging yet fun aspect of these games is the politics within the games. As large mega companies grow and take claim to vast areas of the map, they create large empires that often war with each other. As a small company/tribe within the world that gives you the opportunity to get involved in global politics and wars. On your own your strength and power is limited to whatever you are able to do in your small group. With such a vastly large world such as with Atlas there is only so far you can reach and so much you can do to survive on your own. Even if mega tribes were non-existent there will always be groups out there that will seek you out and destroy you even if it's just to be a troll. Allying yourself within the empire of a mega-company gives you security as they will often protect you. Being within the mega-companies empire it also enables a much strong ability to trade. The mega-company has access to far more resources then you ever will, and even if you don't trade with them directly, having other small groups within the empire gives you easier access for trading resources you otherwise might struggle to get. Being part of the same 'empire' will make the other small tribes around you view you automatically as friendly, and an ally and more willing to trade you those valuable resources that would be otherwise hard to get due to travel time or having to fight hostile groups that control those resources. 2. Mega Companies force you to improve in pvp. A critical part of all video games is of course to improve your own ability to play them. If you do not improve you will lose and in a game like Atlas losing means being destroyed. There are many different types of mega companies out there. Some that are more friendly and will keep the peace with you if you do not provoke them, or even protect you from trolls and other mega companies that might seek to conquer your territory. There are of course highly aggressive mega companies that will destroy you without even pausing. These highly aggressive companies are critical to keeping a pvp environment competitive. If all mega companies were all roses and chocolates you would settle within territory under their protection and just let them defend you. You will never improve at the game and eventually, someone will wipe you. An aggressive mega on the map keeps you always on edge as any ship could be the one to end your existence on the map. Sure you can argue even if it was all small groups its the same but a small group only has as much resource and manpower as you do making the fight more even and easier to win. A mega-company however its game over. You see an unknown ship, shoot it, and you have 10 galleons on top of you and wiping your base in no time. You cannot win against such massive power, or can you? If you learn from getting wiped and improve at the game a small team can cause a lot of damage even against a mega. Anytime I get wiped I don't mope and cry about the mega-company and how unfair it is. I get even. Rebuild and be better. Learn how to rebuild stronger, learn how to fight better. Nothing is better than going up against that hyper-aggressive mega and have them waste more resources, more time only to have them lose more than you even had to start with. Hey, you may get wiped again but the satisfaction to know they lost half a fleet to wipe out 5 guys with 2 ships is worth having to rebuild again. A powerful lion with a thorn in its paw cannot hunt nearly as well, and will eventually die of starvation. Become the thorn that killed the lion, or just quit and play PVE noob. 3. Mega Companies keep the game alive. In any game there will be trolls, and there will be some players that are just simply much stronger at the game than everyone else and trust me I've played many games that have suffered this very problem. As sad as it is some players just simply will never 'get good' enough to beat the trolls, or beat the few elite players, and will eventually just quit altogether. What can they do? if they can't get better at the game, and the game just isn't fun anymore why play? I don't blame them. However, if you can team up and become a bigger meaner beast then the trolls or elite players they are less of a problem now aren't they? Having the ability to form a mega-company in itself keeps the game alive. Let's look at it this way, and yes I am Canadian, but imagine the elite player or troll being a large aggressive Moose. That Moose will go around and thrash around wrecking everything in its path just because it can and nothing else can contest it. Only another moose can but there are only so many other moose, and soon enough you will only have a small group of moose out there. However to take down a moose you have a pack of wolves. Alone or in a small group they are not very strong and will never beat that Moose but with a large pack they will eat that Moose for lunch. If you cannot form that large pack however because the game forbids it then the wolves will just all die off. Being able to become that larger pack to take down the strong threat keeps players in the game. If there's no way to be able to group up to take down the trolls or elite players the game will soon enough be only a few trolls and a small core of elite players. Mega-Companies ensure that doesn't happen by keeping those players in check and keeping the player counts high. 4. "But Mega Companies just kill all small companies" - no you are just dumb... Many people will argue that mega companies just kill small companies. They wipe all us small companies and force us to join them or quit. Well no I'm sorry you are retarded. As I stated before there are two types of mega-companies. highly aggressive and more friendly ones. If you find yourself getting wiped and told "join us or die" well I'm sorry to say you are living in an area of the highly aggressive company. Just pack up and settle elsewhere, OR get better at the game and become that thorn that I mentioned earlier. Most mega-companies don't give two shits about the little guy that is not allied with them or living under their protection. Every mega-companies main focus is that other mega-company. They pose the greatest threat to each other and the entire goal for them is to wipe each other out. They spend vastly more time and resources fighting one another then they do anywhere else. out of every 4 mega-companies only 1 usually has that 'join us or die' mentality and honestly joining them is going to be worse than just relocating anyway. 9 times out of 10 the company with the 'join us or die' mentality is full of toxic people with retarded leadership. If you have the motivation and skill to fight back and stay within their territory then do so and make their life hell, or if your more of a pve player who wants to casually play pvp go settle in a more friendly mega-company territory. Oh, but you don't want to 'submit' yourself to the mega-company? well then band together with other like-minded players and form your own mega-company as clearly a small company is not the place for you. Either that or go play PVE because PVP is not the place for you. Summary: At the end of the day, mega-companies are what keeps these games alive and create more complex and fun dynamics within these games. PVP environments are meant to be competitive where players fight over players. PVP = Player VS Player remember! Mega-companies keep the game competitive and really drive the pvp in the game. You have to either learn to get better at the game to stay competitive, form your own mega-company, or learn to play a more political game to ensure your survival. They keep the trolls and elite players from killing the game, and really make the game into what it was designed to be. If you don't like it then go play PVE or play a different game because this game is clearly not the right type of game for you.

Why do all the requests to merge pve and pvp have designs that pve people clearly wouldn't want? Hey, why don't you be a community with us, and we can attack your bases and you have to defend them? Well, because that's pvp and it's not how we like to play. Hey, why don't you all merge with us and you can have 8 squares of the map, and we'll put all the good resources over in pvp? Your salesmanship needs work. Here's an idea - why don't YOU merge with us. First you'll have to clean up your rotten environment, including group chat, character and company names referring to private body parts, griefing, childish name-calling, and all the rest of it. We'll give you 16 squares of the map to pvp on, and that's where you have to have your claims, but all the bosses and the good loot and resources will be in pve. And the skill system will change so that you can either do pvp or crafting but not both. Any takers?

That first statement is kind of absurd, since you have already written in detail on how you offline raid and anonymously grief people because you don't want face them head on. While it might be true "hardcore PvP players do not give a damn if the base is occupied or not", you are clearly not a hardcore pvper by your own definition.

The only thing that drive me away from this game is the exploiters, if i get wiped by a zerg i atleast get some PvP. If i have to start over, ofc it sucks, but its part of the game, just because i loose a CSGO or PUBG game dosent mean i quit the game.

You shouldnt worry about what these lame ass trolls are saying. Atlas is a great game it needs reworked with the flag system and your doing it dont worry the trolls who say there quiting will come back there just trying to get there way. All of you devs have created something grand and its only going to get better.I saw how they reacted when the game was coming out who knows maybe the trolls wont come back and youll just get better gamers to play atlas.At the end of the day atlas is amazing and will always be a amazing game just like ark. And to all you lame ass trolls you can be offended all you want ill never check this message im sending for replies dont care what trollie kids have to say bye have a beautifull time.

Once again, proving he's not a hardcore PvP player. Hardcore PvP players don't like games that reward numbers or time investment. Hardcore PvP players like games that reward skill, and skill alone. You, are not hardcore. You are the very type that I stated, are not good at PvP games, so you hide in games like this, using numbers and time, to have an advantage against better players. Without those advantages, you would be exposed. You know it, and we know it.

It appears that the Megas are going to try to circumvent the rules by splitting into smaller companies, and joining Colonies as Allies. I said it before, Meta gamers destroy your games. So you will need to change how Alliances are done. 2 to 50 members per company. Alliance = 50 members max. In other words, a 50 member company can't form an Alliance. Two 40 member companies cannot form an Alliance. A 40 member company, and a 10 member can form an alliance. You will need to police the game, to make sure that the Megas are not circumventing the rules, and forming unofficial alliances.

OK, so I started on Official, went to unofficial PvP, came back a couple of times to Official, and yesterday returned again. Huge difference between the two. Even around very large bases on the most recent unofficial, I did not experience any significant lag, or stutters. However, every time I return to official, I get huge lag and stutters, even around smaller bases than those on the last unofficial. However, there just a whole lot more bases, equaling more total structures on the island. In ARK, I noticed that the combination of very large bases, and a lot of tames, would cause similar stutters. So this is my question. Would larger structure pieces help reduce this stuttering/lag? In ark we had large walls, and XL walls. 4 walls, and 12 walls high respectively. This was good, but should have been taken further. Where were the 2x2 walls? The 3x3 walls. The 4x4 and 5x5 walls? And what about similar sizes of foundations, ceilings, and roofs? What about stairs that are like the inside corner, and outside corner roofs, which I love BTW...thanks for those. How about small (1), medium (3), large (5) and XL (12) pillars? Why not allow similar sizes for elevator tracks? For PvE, how about some larger, and more varied window sizes, and designs? People build ports, so why not give us various sizes of piers, and when we place them, they place at just the right height for the ships you want to put against them. So you could have large main pier sections, and then smaller piers that come off that, with heights for the different ships. Allow ships to tie up to the pier, instead of anchoring. Same game mechanics, just different art and animations. In the future, if a great animator is hired, the crew onboard could be used to tie the ship to the docks. I would think this would be tail end of the Dev cycle, as this kind of animation is not easy, or cheap, I would assume. On the subject of gates, why not some Portcullis gates, like in the Castles, Keeps and Fortifications mod for ARK? Allow curved walls for private servers, but not official. They cause lag. Not bad on a private server, but official has more than enough structure lag as it is. I would hope that in the future, we also get new textures for wood, and stone structures. Bridge structures would be great also.

Yeah I think introducing options like this tied to a structure limit for companies would be great! I hate running into gates trying to render in or invisible cannons taking shots at your ship. Also would go further in making the game a competitive atmosphere and give reason to craft blueprint base peices! Good suggestion.

Why would you do it if you can’t make everyone happy on 4 servers already?

I do not think there is a way to create one server for all that would actually entice both sides, without being extremely exploitable, no. I have seen questions and suggestions about this, quite a lot of them in fact, but most of them are drawn up by pvpers who design a system that I as a carebear would not be interested in. I'm sure if I drew up a system it wouldn't really appeal to them either. The rare few suggestions that attempt to legitimately appeal to both would end up tremendously exploitable, like this one. Just reading your post I can see dozens of ways pvpers would use that pve protection to exploit the pvp intentions of the game, and vice versa, too.

IMAO they should turn this system from "it's necessary to live" to "you use it for buffs". Like you eat anything you want for fulfill your stomach. And balanced food provide you this equilibrium buff.

While I agree that bigger pieces (at least 3x3) would be greatly appreciated by everyone here, myself included, and most of us will use them tastefully, you have to admit that it would remove a significant difficulty barrier to psychopath builders who will just be making their Death Star bases 3x as big. There needs to be some kind of limit based on vertices, texture memory, attach points, or all 3. I have been to bases that simple math says are using more than a million pieces. If they could blot out the sun, they would. That is mental illness-level of dedication. We need to help ourselves with logical limits.

as a 3 year ark server owner admin... only ever announce a wipe 2-3 days ahead tops. or I found it better to just say. " stuff is broke. gotta wipe it....sorry" a few people will stomp off in a huff but MOST will only get a little grumpy then get back to rebuilding better than the last base or getting a better base spot and whatnot. whenever I made the mistake of announcing wipe too early...the servers became ghost towns. EVERY TIME

as I stated in my post i've always played in small companies however I have friends who do enjoy and play in mega. Never have I ever heard or seen a mega whom wanted to control the entire game. Doing so ruins the entire fun of the game for a mega. Megas form to deal with trolls, elite players, and other megas. If the mega has the entire map there will no longer be any point to even play. Even if they were to try the sheer size of the game is too massive for any mega to control. Up until now even the biggest mega tribes with 500+ players are struggling to control more than 4-5 grids. in many cases a mega will have many casual players so while their total roster is 500 players, there will generally only be 50-100 players active at a time. Even now the megas with the most grids are struggling to maintain control and have other mega and small companies alike causing their ability to control what they have to be a full-time task and in most cases are failing. When I hear a fellow small company or solo player complain and cry making wild claims like this simply tells me that they are a garbage pvp player that wants to cry because they refuse to develop strategies or adapt how they want to play the game despite the reality of what the game is. Learn the game your playing and improve or just go play something else.

Mini games and Vitamins need to be removed.

Put coins in 0 then go up to them and press E to recruit. You need to feed them, either on body or in a larder, and resource chests with gold or on them.

If you want freedom i suggest you set up your own server where you have the freedom to what ever you want. I don't even understand why i have to point this out but if the vocal minority wants colonies and everyone else wants empire then surely the empire server will be fine no?

Thanks for the date confirmation Jat- Looking forward to test everything. Keep up the solid work, and ignore the doomsayers. (no i'm not a fanboi before anyone pokes me in the eye with the nobbly stick, I happen to like Atlas, and think the wipe and changes are very much the way to do). Let my public lynching commence!

Offline raiding is really an exaggerated issue. Most players do not purposely raid someone because they are offline, it just so happens that then they are sailing around in their ship and they sight some base that looks easy. Most players are going to want to raid it regardless if someone is home or not. It's fair enough, no wants to sit around waiting for the owner to come back that is boring. The part with this new mode that many players have an issue with is this "window" feature. You can't give the player base a new server, class it as "PVP" and then only allow for PVP for one third of the day ie the majority of time its PVE. That is absolutely not a PVP server. What is even worse is that even if the owner is home and you can see him running around his base, you still can't attack them. Its gone from this flimsy "offline raiding" excuse to full blown protectionist, safe space, can't even raid when the owners are online quasi PVE mode. No matter how some folks try and spin it this mode is about having less PVP and more PVE on "PVP" servers. That is the bottom line.

I've survived several mortar shots that would have otherwise ripped out my steering wheel and masts due to armor in particular top armor. Armor makes a significant difference in PVP if placed correctly.

Thanks again for another successful run! Too bad it was so glitchy on the first one. Was anybody else noticing that the electricity sometimes affected you when the tentacles emerged, despite the tentacle nearest you not being electrified?

Uh what, there were like 8 games on free weekend this weekend, in addition to two very big new releases, in addition to some very good games getting major updates That was just this weekend, and doesn't include recent stuff like the big div2 launch, or the big KF2 event coming next week Atlas has a steep uphill battle convincing players to come back to choosing Atlas over the absolute smorgasbord available right now, don't get it twisted

Lol, I am a "casual Player" and if you think its "farming to death" to build a ship your crazy. Does it take more than 30 minutes to make a Brig? Sure, But ffs if you think a sloop or even a Schooner is somehow a farming nightmare..... Well my little snowflake.. Please melt somewhere and stfu.. Because its only a few hours work to build a Schooner. Sure its a bit to make a pretty one with bells and whistles. But God if you have problems with needing a day to build a ship then go play WOW or something with instant gratification and leave Survival to people with patience.

Welcome to wildcard..aka grapeshot.. aka snail games. They post what they want, when they want. That said.. you could also watch twitter for jats tweets, he tweets out something almost every day. So not exactly a blanket of silence. You need to pull your head out of the sand to see it.

We found a group that's willing to fight us, first we fought a legendary large cannon ship, that only had 5 cannons I think, was a tough fight, they maneuvered out of our barrage multiple times, and those cannons were hitting us but we won that fight, then we fought a brig that was all primitive with 18-20 larges, the waves kept making us miss, and they landed some good barrages on our cannons, once we were down to two cannons left we rammed them and tried to flame swivel, but they still had cannons and sunk us. Was awesome to say the least. So I never took a screenshot to post, sorry. It was a brig with all 18 larges on one side, and just flame swivel everywhere else. We lost to a brig that had 8 larges on each side and 4 on the back I think. Were going to design new brigs, I'm going to attempt a one shot brig that's only ship cannons, instead of larges next.

I like the idea of bigger structure pieces. If we take a 3x3 piece for example and just add their hitpoints there is still the incentive to build them because it would take 9 times longer to pierce a hole into your base. It would be a bigger hole of course. But time might be more valuable than the size of a hole. So i guess it would work perfectly well in the current context of the game. Your base doesn't get "stronger" by hitpoints but it gets harder to raid.

As one of the people who actually eat to balance vitamins, sometimes it's difficult to see the levels against some backgrounds and in some lighting conditions. The inventory/character screen is cluttered as it is, but maybe a toggle to turn on a duplicate set of bars in the character view area or something? Or maybe just make the background for the vitamin bars black so the colors show up better.

This NEVER happens anywhere on my client. I have had some wonky things happen but the ships never go above or underwater like that on my computer. And yes the amount of things it takes to make a pier is crazy.

Or Megas are why the game is now so low population. In reality it is because you have two competing play styles and neither of them is "right". It is just over-entitled people who think they can declare that some play style is correct and another is incorrect that is troubling, but that is just human nature.

Reading these comments, I am now fully aware why so many of the hardcore PvPers that I know, won't come to play this. First and foremost, offline raiding does not make you hardcore. Being in the Mega that attacks a small company, does not make you hardcore. Purposely joining a small company to fight on the underdog's side...that's hardcore. Some of these kids just don't know what hardcore is. Second, hardcore PvPers don't play games that force you to whack trees and stones for days, to be able to build a ship to go out and fight with. They don't play games that reward time invested, over skill, and this game does exactly that due to the BPs, and grinding. This game is going to suffer what EVE suffered, and had to create some fixes for. People will not want to join the game when the launch happens. Not unless there is a pre-launch wipe. So expect legacy server, and new server, so that they don't have to anger anyone with a wipe. But that just delays things. People will join, make a ship, hit the enemy ship, do little damage, and get panels stripped by the first hit from the enemy. Then they will leave. Word will spread that you can't compete as a new company, so new companies won't come. I've seen it before in games like this. Every game like this suffers after a short while, because the players demand to be rewarded for their time and effort, but then this means new companies can't compete. Within 3 to 6 months, the Megas will be running Mythical ships, meaning one or two good Brigantine can hold off an entire fleet of Vanilla ships that a new company makes. EVE had to address the issue, and appears to have done so, but growth was still stymied. And then there is WWIIOL: Battleground Europe, where after a short period of playing, you have access to all the best weapons. It's still going after 18 years. Why? Because it is well balanced. It's the nature of the beast. I have said it before, and will say it again, Meta gamers kill games. They never learned as kids that games must have balance in order to thrive. I learned as a kid that it worked best when we divided into even teams...evenly skilled. Kids today don't understand the concept, so they instead, try to divide into a team with the best players, so they can roll the other teams. The problem comes when the other teams get the message that they will be rolled, and so they go find something else to do. So who do the guys who grouped into the best team play against? Nobody. While I was in the Navy, me and my best friend were very good at pool. Together, we could beat any two of our friends. So while out with friends, or at a party, we would instead have others pair up with us, and we would play against each other. This was more fun for everyone, including those who just spectated. It was also more fun for us. This game doesn't even have hardcore PvP. It has bears, and unrealistic ship builds that shouldn't even float. This only proves that those here who claimed that the Megas didn't bother with the small companies, are full of crap. The truth is, they are afraid to be exposed for what they are. They fear having to go up against other Megas. It proves that they are not hardcore.

You are wise!

Yeah people that suck at actual pvp games go play pvp survival games so they can team up against a solo

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

I do not mind the wipes per se but I do not like being forced into a landowner or tenant situation. If I want that situation, I am better off going back to nullsec EvE. Until that changes, if ever, I am not returning.

Look it is more made up numbers by Mr. Hardcore! You lie about me in another thread, you lie about the new system, now you lie about how many hypothetical people might have purchased this game or not. You have no idea what their sales would or wouldn't be. In yet another thread you brag about back stabbing allies in game. I would remind you to keep your promise and leave with your company and your "thousands" of supporters, but lets face it, your not being truthful about that either. Because if you were you wouldn't be here posting. You would be gone playing that other game.

Go play Ark bro. Pvempty buildings there all day long. Pretend its pvp sandbox mmo if ya want. Tell yourself and your clanmates your good and skilled and stuff. "Scout it out" - you lol , find out when they are offline. SUCH tactics. I'm sure when they were developing the game they were saying to themselves..."hey we have to figure out a way to only keep the PVP wannabes from ARK, all those millions of pvpers who prefer to actually engage in player vs player combat are just an after thought" I mean why would they want a huge success when they could just make a shitty Ark mod with boats and a larger map. The population was goin up like crazy amirite?

Offline raiding is not PvP, its just what people who actually want to evade PvP do like you, mr. hardcore.

Just you and your zerg keep you word on the whole quiting thing. Game will be fine man. Ever think maybe they have eyes on the millions of mmo players and not the couple thousand Ark players? I mean Most pvpers dont consider Ark a pvp game. It's a pvo/pve game at best. You seem to be under the delusion it's a pvp sandbox.

"strategic initiatives", I like that. Since you're speaking in generalities, allow me to extrapolate... Basically, the strategy you're talking about involves smaller companies offline destroying the bases and sinking the ships of companies that they otherwise couldn't fight directly. Does that roughly sum up your point? If so, I respond with the following thought: OFFLINE RAIDING IS NOT PVP! It's the gaming equivalent of keying someone's car. It's not "a tactic"; it's what happens in the absence of tactics. And suggesting that it's a tactic employed by small companies to combat larger ones is completely disingenuous - large alliances forming bogus shell companies for offline raiding (in order to avoid retaliation) is the standard procedure. Offline raiding is the cancer of every persistent world game with PvP and destructible property, and defending it in any form is utterly ridiculous.

Thanks for all your thoughts and suggestions, Pathfinders! (Especially those of you on PvE who wanted claim limits or upkeep!) You've been very brave little pirates getting through all that spam and griefing with nothing to call your own but that fierce new pirate hat we gave you, so as a reward, here's a 2x to keep you happy until our Great April Update! In this update, we will be removing ships from the pve servers, and replacing them with tricycles. You all seem to be very busy running around doing nothing but collecting thatch and building huge gates, and this should help you get around the island easier. And remember, Pathfinders, we are always looking for your feedback! You might raise attention to some other element game you're actually enjoying so that we can "adjust that design" too. And I almost forgot, we made you a mitten. It's a pirate mitten! I'll be wearing a real one at the next livestream, so be sure to tune in.