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The powers that be at Atlas really should play the game more than whatever amount that they do. The most active, loyal, and dedicated players so far in the 7 months since Atlas's launch have been repeatedly given the impression that those calling the shots do not play the game much if at all. I am not talking about design choices that split the community, those have their supporters and detractors. I am talking about design choices that leave any experienced player scratching their head wondering how anyone at Grapeshot ever thought *insert your favorite dumb idea here* was a good idea. Examples include, but are not limited to: -Insanely over the top rent prices for player shops that render them pointless. -Initial spawn rates of sotd's and hostile creatures that made play for the average player insanely difficult. -Storm frequency and damage out of all proportion to reality that made travel a perilous crapshoot which could cause players to lose tons of time and resources invested in ships and everything on them to be lost due to unavoidable storms which sprang up with little to no warning. -Unnecessarily complicated land claim and retention mechanics which practically invite griefing of other players. -Skill mechanics that require the ability to craft an item in order to be able to use it. In any game purporting to support ingame economy, this is unbelievably dumb. Despite the fact some of these things have been corrected (others over corrected), these and other design choices have left the playerbase wondering if those calling the shots at GrapeCard ever actually log in and play the game they're creating. If they don't, they should. If they do, perhaps they need to do so more often, or interact with other players more when they do. If they are actually doing both these things, we might all be screwed. Because honestly, even though the game has it's moments and is fun enough to win my time, there are more than one or two calls here that are "should have died on the brainstorming table" bad. Yes, the players in an Early Access game are here to provide feedback and input, but the needed level of input and feedback should start somewhere above, not at "fire is hot." I don't care who it is, but whoever is making the decisions that lead to these things really ought to spend more time in the game. Or at least stop making design choices so facepalm worthy as to give the impression they never do. This is not my first EA rodeo, but it is the first one to make me wonder if the people making it ever play it.

So I think it's time to share my summary of the game as it currently stands from my personal perspective. The TL;DR - The alpha has a long long way to go and I hope they have a direction in mind MMO or private server seagoing version of Ark. I have had some truly great moments playing this game, from sailing with a mate through the polars, overloaded with little wind narrowly avoiding whales and ships of the damned.. to the early PvE community Kraken events.. to a fantastic auction organised by the community... or simply spending time rping with mates (inevitably leading to bloodshed within the company). But I have spent far too much time playing this game and played well past the point where I felt like i was gaining anything from playing it. I feel like that is the biggest downfall of this game currently; the end point comes very quickly if you are not solo. Sure there is plenty to keep doing and definitely plenty of chores to keep you logging in but once you have the achievement of something there is zero reason to repeat it. Without loot there is no reason to kill anything so on your way to the hydra you park the fire and rock elementals and any Cyclops. You run straight through the powerstone cave naked, holding only the artifact key. You run straight through the polar dungeon trying not to aggro anything until you reach the end. Has anyone explored the powerstone islands without being naked? I would like to see the resources on the islands rebalanced entirely including moving the 5th and 6th resource type to only reside in the powerstons islands. Each powerstone island should have SOME of the 5th resources and ONE of the 6th to encourage exploration. I also think the 5th and 6th resources should not be available from the freeport. Each island should have pure metal nodes. If you don't want crystal and gems to be readily available put them as loot on army of the damned and add a cave to each island... or from treasure chests. We need loot for this to be sustainable and I say this as a crafter so it hurts a little bit... but there is absolutely no reason to do anything in this game more than once... that is terrible design. The kraken doesn't even give loot. Rather than spam us with blueprints from treasure chests meaning we never have to do treasure again or interact with another human once we have compiled our library.. why not make blueprints scarce and instead give loot (uncommon, journeyman, masterwork, legendary, mythical ITEMS). Breeding needs limitation too, 2 breeds per male, 1 per female for example. You need to allow people who love it to specialise in it and be rewarded for their huge efforts rather than sell a single stud and negate all the work they have put in to date. With all of that said I actually don't know that the devs really want to make an MMO and that is the crux of why I am stepping away. All of the changes of late appear to be leaning into making this a seagoing ark clone for small scale multiplayer gaming... I can get more compelling and certainly a million times more polished content through other sources.. 7 days to die, Conan, Rust, Ark. I stuck it out this long because I had a passion for the idea of a seagoing Survival MMO... but this ship is listing... Oh and of course the countless bugs and disappearing ships and structures combined with the above have made it nigh on impossible for me to want to keep going with this alpha. It's been real It's been fun Thanks for the memories. Cheers Myzt

Thanks for taking the time to type this up. It would be really easy to just walk away, but you are giving your feedback in a constructive manner and I really like your ideas. Here's hoping the game puts some of them into effect. Hope to see you back sometime.

A pinwheel to summon the kraken you want. Magic. An attachment for balistas to pick up flotsam. Or draftnets you can attach to side of your ships maybe. An armor that gives equal hyperthermal insulation that fur gives hypothermal. An accordion song that does harvesting. A stable you can put all your tames in like cryofridge in ark to reduce server load and animal maintenance. A skill in captaineering that adds ship speed and/or sail effective range. Sunken ship loot shoulf have alot more food and songs (atleast 3x) Animal tracker similar to arks gps tracker. Ofcourse this can't be electric but maybe a whistle/call device that has distance of the grid would be nice. Cannons that fire from gunports to not fire in parallel line but all focus on the point you aim at. For all treasure maps to be located near sea level and obtainable by atleast a crab since they nerfed swivels. Cargo rack speed debuff to be reduced by 50% to make it a viable option to carry your ships full capacity of racks without being a slow moving suicide boat. The ability to see atleast whats in player shops via the atlas homepage (not the price just what's in them) to see if it's viable to make the journey and to promote trade. In game company recruitment channel or menu like WoW. The ability for companies to ban players or companies from building and griefing their islands. For rhinos to gather metal from normal stones and get metal weight reduction (or a new tame that does this) Freeports to have hides and keratins at rescource vendor for a price. An option to board your ship from anywhere by use of pinwheel or keybind much the same as tames. A do not collect berries/herbs option for harvesting tames. (A giraffe in polar will get thousands in on head swing and 100 thatch) Water caves with loot like sunken ships. Reduce gorgons stun time significantly. Have specific rescource gains for less used tames (tiger for hides lion for meat wolf for keratins ect) The ability for crabs to pick up bears in pve. Revert the change to crabs ability to jump above 40% weight in pve since it has no relevent affect on gameplay there and was advertised as a weight moving tame in the first place. The ability to throw water skins at fire elementals to deal huge dmg (this would be funny as hell, cmon guys) That's all i can think of at this point in time.

Hey Hey. So as we all know the cargo crates are AmazeBalls!!! However here is my issue, or suggestion. Could we please get the ability to snap a ship cargo holder to a ceiling tile or floor. Myself I love the ability to "Release Cargo" from my boat that went to get the resources, to another boat I have on my land. "see attached" to Scoop up that container. so that I can easily run up and down a ramp to collect my goods, without the BS of having to, move my tame onto the boat, transfer the goods to my tame, now run my tame off the boat "Like thats easy, unless you have ramps" onto land and deposit my goods into my primary Ship Resource box, since that can hold the most. I think this would be a great QOL change, and hey. Clear up some memory, so players dont use ships, like i do.. When I drive my hauler, I think as a semi truck. I pull into harbor, Drop my load, and head right back out. since after the drop, i can destroy the holders on my ship, to get my max movement speed back, Because in my opinion, i rather rebuild my cargo holder, and get full speed for 1/2 the trip, To and From. Since ts cheap to make the cargo rack SunLight

I have seen this problem mentioned in other posts with no response.. Squeaky wheel time I reckon.... Playing SP/NDMP After a crash I/We loaded back in only to discover that all the treasure maps in our possession were broken. In the description they all say 0 Gold and if you hunt them down anyways there's nothing there. So, we tried to get new maps.... All the bottles failed to award a map... I thought maybe they suffered the "Wyvern Egg" decay issue from Ark so I collected ALL the bottles from around our home island.... waited for respawns.... opened many more bottles... no maps... Also, the SotD went from annoyingly over-populated to none at all. I would randomly stumble across a cluster of them jumbled together... Sometimes on top of each other... but, they wouldn't engage and couldn't be engaged. Pass right through them.. Then poof gone. This effectively neuters the game... SO, i reinstalled... this of course didn't remove my savegame/profiles and after i fired it back up. Problem persists. I archived my save and started a fresh game. Voila! All was well in the world! Pain in the ass, but ok... Until I crashed again crossing grids aaaaand it' back to mapless/damnedless broken. Archived the second go'round and started a fresh game without reinstalling. Voila pt. 2! worked again! I've reinstalled the previous 2 saves and switched between them and a fresh start save... Every time is the same. The fresh games work, but the archived do not. So, it's not a problem with the base game, but a local file. I can put up with bugs... I'm a 5K+ hour Ark veteran from Xbox and PC... My Favorite game... But, this is intolerable. Anyone out there got some info on this problem?

I have more than 1200 hours played in ATLAS , my experience is more on PVE servers. I wish the game had missions in Freeports to players. It would be very cool to see cities with NPCs that had functions for the players. I do not know if the final version will look like the trailer, but it's missing something like that for the players. Yesterday I went with my members to golden age island to face kill Hydra and cyclops. The fighting mechanics of these monsters are perfect, so the reward for the player is very bad. It has no incentive, these monsters are hard to kill and you spend resources that are not worth the effort. The game has improved a lot since the release, but still needs a lot of changes and we are here to try to make the developers, to hear us, to follow the best way. What do you think is missing in the game for you?

We've invited multiple people to play the game on our private server- and they quit after a couple of hours. The reason? Chain death due to extreme heatwaves of 143 Fahrenheit. This happens every time at mid-day and every single player dies. Even those who come to mentor new players with 40+ in fortitude die of heat stroke. Getting into water doesn't cool the player. Drinking doesn't cool the player. Shade doesn't cool the player. Cloth clothing doesn't insulate in extreme heat. High fortitude is seeming inconsequential. Wasted points. This is a game breaking mechanic on a temperate island. It deters people from playing by disrupting their game at regular intervals and for no reason within their control. Between vitamin management, hunger, hydration and aggressive wildlife, unreal temperatures should not be a game stopper. Several players we encouraged to join us have quit because the window of actually being able to do things like build, explore ect. is so small. Please reduce these unrealistic temperatures an make fortitude more effective. Thank you.

With having 1152 Hours played - Since Pre-Wipe. I think I can safely give my frustrations to the Dev's - I am a loyal player and will remain loyal. Atlas is a fantastic game, with plenty to be done, I play with my family of 3. We have obtained all the power stones, All the Trench Power Essences, we have killed the Kraken. Did the Ice Cave - Got him to 20% before running out of ammo. Here is my issue. So yesterday I came across a Masterwork Treasure Map for H6 and it was Bonus boosted. So yah gotta check it out right? I sail on over to H6 about 7 Grids East and 5 North. No worries I enjoy sailing. Put the crew on the wheel, and head on out. I get to H6. And I know its a golden age so I am expecting it to be difficult. Put having the treasure in between the Hydra, 2 Fire Elem, 2 Rock Elem. Is just damn impossible. It cannot be done. Alright no problem - Bummer RNG Map, didnt go to well in our favor. Pack up move on. Come Across another Masterwork Map for O6 so sweet, Im already in H6 let me sail 8 Grids East - Gotta head home anyway - I get to the map island start running around to look for it. Thanks for your eagle eye lv3 - And guess what, The Treasure map is located on the very top of a pillar - That cannot be accessed unless, i use climbing picks and the grab hook maybe!, I would need to respec into stam to make it to the top tho. Problem being that it is a level 22 quality map, You stand no chance in hell, killing the AoD's without your tame. And more importantly I know for a fact, 1, 2 or even 3 of them would be pushed off the side fall down to the bottom and yep - There goes that.. My frustration - Can't we get a team to work on the algorithms when generating maps, that the coordinates used are 100% accessible with mounts,. 7 hours sailing yesterday and nothing to show for it. Its a Rant, and I hope it can be looked into. With all that being said, I am not going anywhere. We enjoy the game very much. And almost ready to setup shop so other players can purchase goods, resources, ammo etc. etc. Trade hub so to speak. Like the Mall idea on other post's. Thank you

Devs, Someone TP over to Boom Teams main island in H10 (Rapenhead Atoll) and look at how these guys are YET AGAIN abusing an in game mechanic. They must have 20 large shipyards locked together each at 100,000 HP preventing any type of water attack. They dont even bother to build walls, or any other ACTUAL defense. I dont know why there isnt something put out that says any abuse related to exploiting the systems items or buildings with UNINTENDED purposes can result in item destruction ECT. THis goes with pillars as well. Just another example of companies abusing PVP to the point no one wants to play the game. Its pretty easy to see the companies abusing the game and those playing it correctly.

NPC Royal Naval Forces + Where as an upstanding member of the RNF+ I would receive notification of an impending attack (Land or Sea) and would be given the ability to transport to said location. Once there also given the ability to take control of an RNF ship (any position including captain) or land post (Fully geared) to help fend off the dastardly pirates. Upon victory you receive some sort of cool points or such .... upon defeat you drop your head in shame, if you still have it, and go back to what you were doing prior.

So you know how to build cannons and puckles with NPCs that have atleast as much range as their PC counterparts...? Great! Please let the Devs know about it, so they can finally implement it in the game... Then your wish will come true...

That idea i actually really like. Something akin to WoW "rested" mechanics where the longer you are offline the higher "rates" you have would be perfect solution, when capped at something reasonable. I don't have time nor will to crunch math right now, but something akin to 0.03 rate per hour increase and 0.2 decrease per hour, capping at x4 could maybe work out well. From my quick excel calculations, it would allow someone who pay 3 hours per day accumulate enough (after week or two of regular playing) to always start with x4. But someone who play 4 or more would actually use all accumulated time from day before. Plus longer breaks would actually allow to catch up a bit easier. Edit: Actually allowing x4 for constant 3h per day playtime is to much imho, so rate per hour increase should be probably lower. How low I'm not sure.

I never said that having 2x weekends was a particularly good solution to the problem. Anyway, if the rates were equally as high during periods where people with a job cannot play, the no-lifers would still be even further ahead of the rest. A feasible way to address this problem would be to implement diminishing returns, in such a way that each successive time period sunk into playing the game yields lesser and lesser results, until the difference between spending another hour of playing or not is so infinitesimally miniscule that it hardly makes any difference at all. This tipping point should ideally be reached after spending an amount of time at playing the game, which can realistically be reached by a vast majority of players, which i estimate to be at roughly 4h/day. If you insist on abusing your ability to spend quadruple the time on the game that other people can, you should not be surprised to see player numbers plummet until it is only the no-lifers left and the game eventually dies from mass player extinction. If there is a portion of players whom you do not provide equal opportunity at keeping up with everyone else, you are going to lose that portion of players eventually. Grapeshot has shown on multiple occasions their inability to avoid screwing over smaller companies and players who spend less time on the game. Don't further encourage them to keep up with this bullshit! Even the basic concept of grinding/levelling is detrimental to the idea of PvP, because the winner of a conflict is not determined by who is playing better, but by who has been playing/grinding more.

The only sure solution I can think off is to close restart game. We could also test going to main menu and loading back the game - should work as well. Unfortunately 3rd party programs will not be able to help because save folder is reserved for atlas application instance Not sure if whole time or only at "random" intervals, but either one possibility is creating a host of issues. So even if I wrote some simple program to 7zip save game folder it and copy it somewhere safe windows would prevent it from doing its job because atlas is often (if not constantly) using it while game is running.

The only thing I'm confused is why the hell they didn't ban you yet....

First time posting here so if I've failed any forum etiquette my apologies. Some back story as to why I'm suggesting this, skip if you're not interested. I'm from a small company on a PvP server, there is only a handful of us, say about 5/6 of us. In less than 2 weeks we've been raided 3 times. We're in pretty bad shape after two 6+ hour fights and one at the last 30 minutes of the fight in our harbour 1(us) vs 10(them) a couple days after a raid that almost cost us the island and our defences weren't fully repaired. We're pretty demoralised at this point as we're suspecting another attack this weekend that we're not prepared for and our members are drained of energy and have lost the will to fight. Onto the idea. Idea 1a: Make the cost of the island reflect it's combat timer, I'm not asking for an easy life, consider making 15 points islands only have a 4 hours combat timer scaling up to 122 point islands have 12 hours. Why do I think my idea would work: I believe it'll help smaller companies to own smaller islands and make them easier to defend, space is important when it comes to smaller islands, build too much you lose out on resources. Who & How would this benefit players: This would benefit smaller companies that only need a small amount of space but feel ready they can take an island for themselves and stick their flag in a sandcastle. This would also benefit companies going to fight larger companies as their attack window would be larger which a company with a larger player base should be able to support this. Can this be exploited, If so why and how would you combat it: Bigger companies could claim smaller islands to store their ship. As they would have longer protection time compared to other larger islands. Please Refer to Idea 2 for a remedy for this. Idea 1b: Consider splitting up the combat timers but only for islands that are 8 hours or more combat timers. Lets say a 57 point island has a 8 hour combat timer, the owner can split that up into 2 sets of 4 hours. A much larger island that costs 122 you could have 2 sets of 6 hour combat timers. Why do I think my idea would work: Larger companies have a much larger spread of players and times they play, so they are more capable of defending an island if it's going to be attacked. Smaller companies don't have that luxury, nor do they have the luxury of having players around that can fight off a larger force for an extended period of time. Who & How would this benefit players: This would help promote recruiting players of all time zones. Instead of companies cherry picking playing because it suits them best. Can this be exploited, if so why and how would you combat it: The only issue I foresee is if the attacking force sets up a FOB on an island during the rest period the owner of the island can just go down and demo their FOB, I'm not sure how to combat this issue. Idea 2: Set a ship protected limit based on the island points and ship types that are anchored. Just some random numbers, subject to change and open to suggestion. 0 points - Rafts and Sloops 2 points - Schooners 3 points - Brigatines 5 points - Galleons The first ships anchored gets the protected status of peace phase. Why do I think my idea would work: It'll hopefully stop harbour spam where people store 40-50 ships in a harbour and it's perfectly fine they are all protected. It'll make larger groups expand for more territory to house them all. Who & How would this benefit players: This would benefit everyone, larger companies won't have much interest in claiming smaller islands, also it'll remove using smaller islands as a staging point to attack a larger force using the peace phase to keep those ships safe. Can this be exploited, if so why and how would you combat it: I don't see an issue with idea being exploited but I'm open to criticism. The end goal here is to help smaller companies get established and grow so I'm open to ideas to make this happen.

Both is questionable. I am here to help too. Really, a single bed on a foundation? Enlight us how to get in contact please. THIS

But Yarr is right. Your "Sturmberg block this area because overfarmed" was dick move.

After the Pirate encampments are in and if they turn out to work real well. 1. New boss/dungeon. A Pirate one with the boss as the Captain. 2. Just more humanoids/Npc in general. Rather they have a function or not. Just makes the world seem more alive. Stick "Bob the retired" at one of the abandoned pre build shacks in the world. Maybe a random sketchy looking Npc, creeping around the ship wrecks with a fat loot pouch on his back.. little things like that, even if they do not have an actual function currently. Maybe in the future, Make it so Bob will exchange goods with you or Creeper guy "will give you a deal on a hat" 1 single hat cosmetic :P donno, just along those lines.. lol

more danger when out and about exploring islands , farming islands , with all the wildlife nerfs and spawn reductions its a regular snoooze fest doing anything , i can still remember the first days of atlas , settled in g4 , i spent a huge amount of time fighting and dying to wolfs , crocs , alpha cobras , etc , it was fun it was dangerous , the constant need to keep an eye out and be prepared to run , especially at the lower lvls when i was still using basic weapons and armours,those days need to come back , but there was a bit to much whining about the spawns so the devs kitty islanded the game ....

Vit amin system is easily navigated and has a great buff. You can easily leave your island to sail with just a water barrel and eat with flotsams. The claim system is also a great idea i think, you can have a place to call your own and get taxes while also being able to be found by just looking at the world map. I do however agree with the poster. There should be loot from boss mobs like kraken and hydras to add more repeatability to them. The game by no means is perfect but i do like that they aren't afraid to try new things and that for such a small team they are rather quickly developing content.

I agree on the Powerstone island Absolutly no one ever explore theses islands without being naked Nor kill Hydra, Golem or fire element without using exploits.. It's very sad Instead of being an actual difficult island (which is kinda already the case with very HL animals), it's only "who found the better exploit" to actually do something on the islands. If Hydra did really lower damage, you could actually see real battle against him. Instead of mass grenade or kite it to boat.

I feel you, and agree. 1300 hours in and ive had a fun time enduring the alpha with all its flaws and neglectful devs , mainly because of the people i was with more than the content.. or should i say, the lack there of. either they dont play their own game and have never played real MMo's... or someone needs to be fired and bring in some real MMO designers onto the team, in a lead role. though.. id wish you wouldn't give up hope just yet... its the true vets of the game like you and I, that will be putting forward the best suggestions ...even if the devs ignore them like fools that dont give a fuck about their game sometimes. i doesn't hurt to take some long breaks from the game to regain your sanity (like i currently am) or i release my rage at the devs unrelenting neglect on the forums and social media. but, i'm not giving up hope... not yet. consider it @MisterMyztik. Hope is a powerful thing, it may even turn this shitshow around with the year+ we have until atlas exits EA.

I can't believe with all the empty islands and uninhabited regions people still are fighting over land. F-ing Hilarious!

It was offending because you ask us that in our thread about project mega city, which had nothing to do with our thread, so it was more like you shiting in our thread. I dont care that much about you but as you spam the whole forum, i just wanted to show that you are just talking sensless shit, to feed your narcissism. You better should stream on twitch to get your needed attention. PS: Using your fake account of Taming and Shaming Gallery to agree with your own posts isnt working. It was a company with a bad reputation, which is not existing anymore for a good reason! #KARMA -CLOSED-

Yeah, god forbid someone who joined the game a little late actually wants to have a spot of land for themselves. News flash: not everyone wants to be a slave to the island owner who takes a share of their hard work and... oh yeah, can destroy all your stuff anytime they want. I pay a mortgage in real life, i'm sure as hell not going to pay one to you in a game.

This was originally turned off for performance reasons if I remember correctly. I've suggested before they allow us to toggle this option. Don't need it often, but when it comes to finding new Discovery Points it is quite handy. I agree 100% with the Op. Also the suggestion made for a blank map that draws itself when out and about is a very intriguing one. I like it a lot and it would add a bit more personality to the game.

wasnt it you yarr asking us the same in our city thread? Just by the way, most islands are empty, this game is nearly dead, but even if not some active companys like us, are just claimin areas for a reason 95% of every island is covered with shit. So dont ask companys which are keepin this game alive to give away theire areas, for inactive box building players which auto decay anyway. OUR FLEET IN YOUR FACE!!!

It differ from point of view From mine, as a dev, Sony is bad because they don't allow Early Access game/process. Their review are yeah longer than Microsoft one, and not very better imo I see microsoft as Android. Kinda fast process, developper friendly, cheap, cool And Sony as Aple Store. Very low process, cost a fucking lot and each year for nothing, dumb rules, push code for certification : answer no, repush the same code : answer ok everything is fine

Governements Law and Order Reputation Karma Factions Better Fishing Better Land Ownership Professions Realistic Sailing Profiles Gaff Sails, Top Gaff Sails, Lanteen Sails, Bow Sprints, Jibs, Spankers

The accessibility community has done a good job getting the major game publishers to recognize the value of including toggles, hotkeys, and controller actions to reduce the impact on repetitive motion disorders, much the same way that the epileptic seizure warnings are now commonplace. Unfortunately this is not a major game publisher. For anyone who is familiar with ARK, do they have a run toggle? If so the implementing engineer wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel, just copy some code and call it good. We KNOW they are good at that.

Tut mir leid das es so rüberkommt,ich wollte euren Beitrag pushen damit ihr schnellstmöglichst Hilfe erhaltet.

xD Oh Zottel , lächerlich oder? Mit sinnlosen Bemerkungen kann man seine Beiträge auch puschen.

So much bad information here. The OP says PVE so I will go over how it works. The claim process takes an hour. You find an island that is claimable. You have the points and the gold available. You drop your claim flag and wait. If you hit H you can see the circle that it is in. You need to stay in that circle while it counts down. The only way that someone else can claim that island before you now is if they contest the flag. They have to drop their own flag within the circle of your flag. Say you have 30 minutes left. Your timer will stop at 30 min, and theirs will stay at an hour. Now it is a standoff. The way you can lose is if they have a second person. A company can only place a single flag at a time, but that does not stop a 3rd company from claiming. So a common tactic is to have a person port to the island that you are contesting. Pick up enough gold to claim said island out of company/ship storage, leave company, form their own, drop a 3rd claim flag somewhere else on the island. You sit there watching the other guy, and his friends counter is timing down. Once they go below 30 minutes they now have you beat. Problem is, if you leave your first flag to run over to the second, the first one starts counting down. You can't win. Island is claimed by 2nd person that came over. He then just merges his temporary company into the original company and done. The whole "have a person contest flags" is NOT a thing anymore. This was changed after the EU PVE first wipe debut and people were blocking others who were trying to claim islands that had gathered the gold first as a blocking tactic while their crew was out gathering gold. So when NA debuted they had the one flag per company rule in place. They as usual just didn't account for the lengths people are willing to go to fuck the intent of a system.

Raze option isn't there anymore on PvE. It allows too much grief and cancer behavior Though, if everyone on your island is ok for a raze, then they can raze their buildings themself, so not a problem at all And if they aren't ok, well you won't raze peoples work if they don't want to, seems obvious

Some daily and weekly quest could be fun

Hang out on the forums for a while, there's an endless supply here.

I think the playerbase is friendly and social, for sure you have some toxic companys and they have a bad reputation, but overall friendly.