Some people love building boats, some building towns with shops, some like taming, some like sailing and fighting. Deciding HOW people are going to play will have the devs playing this game by themselves.
If the purpose is to have people be at sea, then you devs have done everything in your power to keep us ported:
1) You have cloudy skies that threaten rain with cyclones that do more overall ship damage than a full-on fleet fight. So, you PORT to avoid all that damage until you figure out whether 7 cyclones are going to literally follow you around a grid until you port. OR you PORT and twiddle your thumbs for the duration of a storm.
2) Living at sea requires us to carry enough ammo, supplies for repairs, and enough food and gigantic tables that the only size that can handle all that is the SLOWEST ship in the fleet (the Brig) or force everyone to build server-clogging galleons.
3) In order to have an awesome ship, you have to PORT, have a base to store the ingredients until it is complete and to build. To avoid spending the rest of your life with an axe and pick, you have to make tames to make that go faster so you can build your awesome ship to live on. Now you have tames that must be stored and protected and fed, and presto, you are landlocked and PORTED. Fast travel to feed is the only thing that saves the day, but you are naked, so whatever.
4) You made everything so heavy that "sailing" is more like watching dolphins passing you and laughing. You solved this with an awesome cargo box that you cannot even access unless you are PORTED.
5) Only you can repair your ship at sea, so if you are not keen to spend all your time after fights or storms or rocks making repairs to hundreds of single pieces, you must PORT.
6) If you lose your ship and everything you so lovingly built, you must have a place to rebuild. That requires a base that stores all duplicates of your goodies, blueprints, farming for cooking, clothes, weapons, etc.... again, you must PORT.
7) Scavenging wrecks overload boats, gold to pay crew overload a boat, supplies overload boats. So unless you are willing to dump all this (WTF), you spend all your time calculating how to keep the weight under 50% of the capacity to keep a decent knot.
8} Going around massive builds, avoiding squabbling neighbors, avoiding aggressive builds to block content, all double or triple your time on land and not in a good way.
9) Placing Treasure Maps in ridiculous locations, like inaccessible mountain tops, under rocks, squeezed ledges, in bases make it under a 50% shot that you can ever get access to it. And forget getting the good ones alone without a tame to help or drag some NPCs behind you getting stuck in everything from a bush to a turtle. It increases ported time.
BONUS: The re-vamped island ownership did not work out as you planned, I think. Instead of a big company claiming big islands, they claimed all the little ones and they left the big ones free for folks that cannot even claim them. How about the large companies only being allowed to claim the large islands and leave the little ones to the little tribes?
Thank you for addressing some of these issues, but taking away things that people like doing instead of limiting the things like over-active cyclones or weight and speed issue is a mistake. Make all things possible and all will come and play THEIR game. Totally get this is a work in progress, Beta and there are growing pains, just please remember:
LAST and I think most important: NO one wants to spend ANY time playing and building and farming to have a wipe looming over them like a Black Plague. Most I have talked to say they will wait until these devs get their ship together, then come and play.
You're having some valid points, and I can't say you're wrong in what you're trying to express.
HOWEVER, if you look at the roadmap, they are trying to reduce the time spent with tames and time spent at land, and increase the time spent at sea. This means, of course, that some mechanics MUST change, otherwise they'll end up exactly with what you have described already (need tames for resources, thus need base, ...), but I dont think/hope thats the idea. And note that the roadmap does not suggest cutting down land gameplay to zero, its still at around 1/5.
In general I like the idea that the gameplay gets more focused on time spent on sea, because this is what this game is about. Its NOT ark. Its not about taming a plethora of dinosours, breed them and afterwards tame more. Its a pirate game, you're supposed to be at sea most of the time, with your ship, crew & loaded guns. Yes IT IS based on ark (technically, like the game engine), but this does not mean that it should have the same gameplay.
ATLAS Roadmap
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You're having some valid points, and I can't say you're wrong in what you're trying to express.
HOWEVER, if you look at the roadmap, they are trying to reduce the time spent with tames and time spent at land, and increase the time spent at sea. This means, of course, that some mechanics MUST change, otherwise they'll end up exactly with what you have described already (need tames for resources, thus need base, ...), but I dont think/hope thats the idea. And note that the roadmap does not suggest cutting down land gameplay to zero, its still at around 1/5.
In general I like the idea that the gameplay gets more focused on time spent on sea, because this is what this game is about. Its NOT ark. Its not about taming a plethora of dinosours, breed them and afterwards tame more. Its a pirate game, you're supposed to be at sea most of the time, with your ship, crew & loaded guns. Yes IT IS based on ark (technically, like the game engine), but this does not mean that it should have the same gameplay.