Ankhwearer

15 hours ago, Ariad said:

I am not sure the game designer in charge of PvE but they are either incompetent or ignored in prioritizing issues.

Fireplaces, smithy's not being lockable?

Boats sinkable via dropping items on a boat by random griefer?

Probably a few dozen other tricks.

No reporting ability to moderate griefers in game?

 

I respect that WC wants to play to the alpha tribes in PvP in Ark. I hoped that Atlas had paid attention to lessons learned and would react in Atlas. So far, not planning on any DLC for this game. Too much time lost with no recourse in game due to the lack of anti-griefer tools.

Some of these are mitigatable on your part. Fires and smithies can be indoors.

Boats sinking by weight is a design flaw, sure. But obviously intended for limiting transport.

And those are the only two issues you were able to identify. Seems like not enough justification to me to say the game is "balanced" for griefers, like this was intentional.

And everyone agrees that the claim system is bugged, not that challenging claims shouldn't exist to get rid of abandoned construction or empty landgrabs.

No sure how you would report griefers using these exploits when you usually don't know who they are.

That would be a bug then, not game design.

2 hours ago, Lonster said:

That's provably wrong. There are companies that are taking over entire servers and now with the claim bug they're spamming even more to steal what they don't already have. These companies will never stop taking land just so they rule the island or server if the claims aren't limited. I'm sitting in my hut unable to explore or build because if I leave on my sloop, I get blocked by ghost ships while also having to port back to my claim to stop the next lemming trying to drop a flag on a claim I was just running around today.  I don't care how big a company is, they don't get an entire server to themselves nor are they entitled to grief players that dare to find a spot before they did. These are people that can't hack actual PvP so they find ways to ruin the game for others rather than play PvE. 

i assume you are only challenging my last sentence.

They can't defend against decay. This landgrab isn't sustainable. But yes, it's still going on. I didn't say it has stopped yet. Just reduced in number.

And the world map doesn't support your narrative. Most islands are still contested, not one company owned.

The rest of your post is off topic. I agree that the claim challenge system is currently broken. And that the rest you mention suck. But we were discussing the number of claims you should be able to make and whether a company of 40 should have the same number of claims as a solo.

All players were respec'ed. Just re add your level bumps, increase your skills again.

They changed skill costs, so they needed to have us all do that over again with existing characters.

But there was no "wipe".

When you die, choose the bottom right option "change home region".

Note: you're dead, so no gear transfer.

I don't agree. That's too few claims. Why should a ten person company be restricted to the same number of claims as a solo player? And that is definitely not enough claims for a 40 person company spread across three islands.

Only the land rush needs to be fixed, the first 5-7 days in a server. The ability to contest claims in abandoned land takes care of the rest, if players can be patient through the three day wait. Spamming claims died down naturally once an actual base gets started on.

Which is why I said "good !uck". Not every temperate resource is in every grid.

6 minutes ago, vispera said:

the way i see it is if everyone builds a base and has a shipyard wont be much of a pirate game all the land will be covered in houses and beach with shipyards they didnt think this through what kind of pirate digs treasure next to a house or better yet 20 i dont have a claim so i know how everyone feels but they need to figure out a way to keep some of the islands untouched 

That's why half of the map is Lawless, where you can't make a claim. Building works, but decays pretty fast.

Good observations.

May I again request you answer a question? 

So Bambi, if a successful contested claim took all of the buildings, how should that work? How long a decay, what process to stop the challenge? 

Yeah, it's tough for solos. But that's only the decay for Lawless zines, which apparently are intended to have permanent inhabitants.

You ask "why should I ever build (in lawless( and the dev implies answer is that you are supposed to claim land elsewhere and build there. As game g o rd into week two, we'll see how decay of claims works, if they can fix bugs in that system.

I was pretty clear that I was describing how ARK worked for anyone reading this thread, including you, in the hope that those who hadn't could start there. Surely that was helpful for someone, if not you.

Obviously no one knew 100% how to do this when you asked. So we collaborated with speculation.

And now you want to punish those interested in this thread because our speculation was wrong? Disappointing.

The spamming of claims are all hitting the end of their claim timers. You should be able to find a spot in a day or two.

Me? My system is to just not die. Haven't left my Lawless island, have a nice base that can't be stolen as long as I login in every four days. No bed, but spawning on the other side of the island is barely a handicap. Those few times I die.

So Bambi, if a successful contested claim took all of the buildings, how should that work? How long a decay, what process to stop the challenge? 

Because a flag and a single floor shouldn't lock a plot of land forever. Or should an entire castle that was abandoned. Neither should a challenged claim have a perpetual unusable dry dock if the buildings aren't oassed, but challenge is allowed.

And your anger seems predicated on the idea that these results were 100 intended by the devs, rather than being a mistake.

For me the hope is that they will learn from this land rush they apparently didn't expect. What MMO gets 50k users on day one?!

Claim spamming by the first players in rafts is pretty harmful, and not possible in an established world. But day one nothing is established. And I know we're all impatient, but decay timers are only just expiring. You are being pretty impatient, unwilling to see if one or two more days resolved the problems with existing systems.

But I do expect the next land rush, whenever that is in the future, to be run differently.

My base area, former an open air catfish pond, became lightly wooded amidst heavy forest. That happen right after the server upgrade to 7.3. A massive change.

Resources still a problem for you today? My house is practically overgrown!

It was pointed out the two c!aims might be better, with an intent of one inland for your base, one coastal for your shipyard and harbor.

Yeah, that sucks. Who wants to spend all day following the griefer to return the grief? Not me.

I agree with some of your objections. 

But you are posting on the PVE forum though, so your concern about someone taking your stuff seems misplaced. Sure, demolishing. But that takes days of decay, four on a Lawless server, more for claimed territory.

Yes, it is possible to currently contest a claim, far before that decay happens. And then to get ownership of all of the construction and stockpile in that claim. Most view that as a bug, because that sure doesn't seem like PVE to us. Is that what you are concerned about?

-----------

As for the land claim problem, the initial land rush was badly managed and should be a lesson for future wipes, which are inevitably coming someday. But I worry that we are complaining too soon, since the decay of those is intended to take days. The game is less than a week old right now. That decay hasn't had time to do it's job erasing the land rush.

But yes, better to not let this occur in the future. Multiple ways the devs could do this at server wipe, I'm happy to see them attempt any of them during the next land rush.

Did you post this in the Bug Reports forum?

If you have not played ARK yet, they I would recommend starting with their tutorial, on their Wiki. Likely the process is 75% the same, maybe more.

Breeding on ARK Survival Evolved Wiki

The really short description:

• Put a male and female into a pen (optional, but really the only smart choice)
• Set them both to Wander in behavior options
• Watch their "love meters"
• Wait for message saying that the female is pregnant (some species may drop eggs. Not horses, last I checked)
• Keep her fed through gestation. Pregnant mammals eat twice what they normally do and any starvation will end the pregnancy.
• Claim the baby, keep it fed, wait for it to mature.

But again, why does a limit of ONE claim need the other fix, the enhanced expiration you also recommended?

My position is that they need to fix land claim during the first three days a server is fresh. After that, inactivity or failure to respond to a claim challenge (likely due to distance from your final base) take care of this. And it still might! Again, we are just barely seeing the start of decay timers hitting their end. 

You don't really know yet if this problem is resolved by the existing systems. Not enough time has passed.

On 12/26/2018 at 4:39 AM, Tiberius_theron said:

Claims need to be limited to 1 per character, with a maintenance cost. In addition after so many hours if the clay. Isn't built on, it should expire. We've spent 14 hours now sailing, and found no claimable islands.

players are claiming everything they come across, and it's then never used. 

 

I would also recommend adding another PvP and PvE server cluster to each region worldwide. No need to pack in so many players.

This is two fixes.

Do you really need both?

If the problem is that the land rush at the start of the server left hundreds of unused land claims, won't that be fixing itself in just another day or two when those claims expire? Yes, there is a lesson for Grapeshot to learn from that land rush we all suffered, changing the system for the first few days of a server's fresh state. But I don't think that the land claim system is really that broken when a three day expire timer is going to wipe those same hundreds of claims.

FYI, Wheat is found in Temperate climates. C10 is tropics, but close to C11, which is temperate.

Good luck!

I recommend an edit.

On most islands, there is no need to punch trees and rocks. You can pick up loose stones on the beach to get your stone, you can harvest from saplings (thin trees, about 10 feet/3m tall; normally surrounding the taller trees).

Punching is suboptimal and since you'll need to heal, much slower than just gathering the individual resources with the 'e' key.

7 hours ago, LSG said:

So I have the vitamin skills max level so they don't deplete as fast, but I feel like that is a mistake to do so. Because I am running into issues when I am out harvesting using a lot of stamina and regenerating which lowers my hunger. My vitamins stay full and my hunger is empty so I have no idea what I can eat to fill it without overfilling on vitamins and dying. 

I feel like either way I am screwed, I either just die of hunger and respawn which is kind a lame doing over and over again. Or eat to survive but getting debuffs of having to many of 1 type of vitamin. There needs to be a food type that doesn't give a vitamin source at all to counter this issue. The cooking tree I am 2/3 done and most of the food I could make only provides 2 of the 4 but the ingredients are way too much to be realistically worth trying to do.

Has anyone run into these issues, has anyone found work arounds or has tips? At this point I personally think this vitamin system is ruining my experience and its too tedious and maybe should be removed personally. 

One thing you have missed about the hunger and the vitamin system is that this drives the use of the Cooking skill to create rounded meals that are very filling.

And Farming is needed to get all of the items needed for a good recipe created in one place.

And Farmers will need to trade for seeds from distant lands with visiting explorers.

And such trade really can't safely occur with out Company bases, which we are barely starting to make right now.

---------

You are missing the greater economy that is hoped for in the mid game to drive Company interaction, because its very need is driven by a food system that is hard to survive at the early stages of the game, in my opinion.

Your suggestion is trying to erase interdependancy between characters, specialists in specific skill trees.

2 hours ago, Robert Tyburne said:

If some of the forum topics and global chat in game, as well as my own experience over the past 10-15 hours, there are a number of features that are in need of balancing or need more thought put towards them. These are my thoughts on a few topics.

 

Food & Vitamin Systems:

Both of these are probably the biggest obstacles for players to overcome. Both starting out and attempting to survive out beyond the starting Freeports.

Hunger - The amount of food that the avatar needs to consume in order to not starve is tuned to high, and the Freeports would easily see all flora & fauna easily wiped out if it weren't for the high spawn rates. High spawn rate can stay since these are supposed to be where players start and are going to see high rates of harvesting. A player should not need to consume entire fields of berries or consume entire pigs just to survive for a day. Food should fill faster, with hunger not falling nearly as fast as it does. Cold weather further exacerbates this (burning more calories to stay warm), further punishing the player for not carrying around several stacks of food.

Vitamins - This particular system has seemingly been nothing but frustration for players, based again on what the various communication channels have to say. It started with a great idea, to push the player towards eating a balanced diet. Vitamin deficiency issues however, like hunger, are far too harsh. The reverse of vitamin overdose is also true. I mentioned this in a previous thread, but the vitamin system minigame would serve better as a way of providing bonuses to the player instead of being yet another way to kill the player.

One thing you have missed about the hunger and the vitamin system is that this drives the use of the Cooking skill to create rounded meals that are very filling.

And Farming is needed to get all of the items needed for a good recipe created in one place.

And Farmers will need to trade for seeds from distant lands with visiting explorers.

And such trade really can't safely occur with out Company bases, which we are barely starting to make right now.

---------

You are missing the greater economy that is hoped for in the mid game to drive Company interaction, because its very need is driven by a food system that is hard to survive at the early stages of the game, in my opinion.

Your suggestion is trying to erase interdependancy between characters, specialists in specific skill trees.