microphobe

no argument with that, this system is about the worst they could have come up with imo. There were several systems proposed that seemed better to me. -Having an island cut into pre-designated sections that each requires a claim flag (or points total whatever they implement) that would allow much more land to be owned by smaller groups. -Having a limit to the number of flags to 1-5 per person making a total number for a company equal to the number of members. Probably the most popular two but apparently much to difficult for GS to program.

People don't want the claim system removed. That has already been established. Having a poll like this is redundant. If you want to be useful or find useful information have a more detailed poll that builds upon data that we already have. Polls questions such as "Would you like individual flags with limited numbers?" tend to do better.

Nope just people that don't read forums. He wants to put his large company on the small company server and thinks its not fair that he can't. Basically he's saying I want to play in the under 8's division even though I'm 15 because it's not fair that I can't.

Well technically they don't, there will be islands out there that are unclaimed and will function like lawless just because they are not worth claiming as settlements. You don't have to plant a flag to build, only if you want to collect tax. I suspect that there will be tons of islands that are unclaimed a couple weeks after the update because people wont want to farm that much gold to hold an island.

They did say that it would take them about 6ish months + before they would bring these in and that these would be the way to pay for server costs. I have no issue with skins that add no stats etc and think they are a great way to contribute to a company. Unfortunately to make the store will take programmers away and would rely on good will from the players that they are in short supply on right now. Any sales now would be viewed as a "cash grab", they would also need to make sure that these were a bind to account item given that they wipe servers. Personally I would NEVER buy anything that wasn't bound to an account in this sort of game because of this fact. I could buy something and there be a glitch that wipes everything and I lose that item, what would be the point? They will bring this in later when the good will is back and people are once again more invested in the game, everything is still up in the air at the moment as to whether people will keep playing or not so they really need to work on that before they work on trinkets.

I would prefer to see island upkeep paid in the form of a "resource bundle". We are paying to own an island, therefore we must be paying someone. This is a good place to add factions, you pay whichever is the dominant person in that area, they will take gold or resource bundles. Resource bundles should be an item that requires large amounts of resources to make, some of each type but variable, so you can make one that is primarily wood, one that is mostly metal, fibre etc. Each should have a set value that can be sold at the free port vendor for the tokens (this is to encourage travel because movement makes pvp instead of hiding in a base), these token are taken back to the island and used to pay upkeep on the island. If you have a ton of fibre but no metal in your island then you just make 5 mostly fibre bundles, if you have metal then you can make 1 mostly metal bundle that is worth the same amount as 5 fibre bundles (balance in game). This means that everything to hold an island is available on the island and can be farmed on the island or you can just buy the tokens at the free port if you have heaps of gold. Pirates need juicy targets and making people move cargo around is a good way of providing that real world PvP that they want in the game. Taxes are then able to pay for upkeep rather than just building stuff. Transport and escort becomes a thing which is good, there is more to lose than just a ship in an encounter with a sotd convoy because you might be on the way there or back with your weeks worth of tokens so losing them has real consequence where as now with a bear and an elephant I can farm a brig in a day so who cares if you lose it.

This I think is much of the essence of the issue, most of what they are doing "seems" to be heading away from ship to ship pvp action and more towards ship V port or bear cart V port etc. There isn't much in this whole new patch that really shines saying this is a "ship" game. Its more into this is a grindy building game that favours the people who will try to blow up what you have built. Large long range cannons that swivel, like they had in the real world at that time would really put a stop to the pointless Pv offline base, Literally these cannons are what they used to stop ships from attacking ports. Carts limited to horses = much of the issues solved, they have even established that horses are skittish creatures in game, give them a courage stat that when they skittishness overwhelms their courage they flee like thy do when wild. That would stop people taming sacrificial horses to use as cannon carts, instead they would have to level them specifically with the courage stat or they would break and flee in combat. There are many ways around the problems of the current system but it requires the devs to want to get around it.

Easy, arrange storage with other companies around the ATLAS, I agree to allow you to have a warehouse on our island if you allow us one on yours. Diplomacy is wonderful and would build strong ties between the smaller companies

+.1% gather rates for fiber

The variation in ships is likely always going to be cost. The type of buffs you are talking about are likely to be either skills in the captaining tree or the tarot tree when it comes. There are certain sight bonus' that can be gained from climbing the rigging and using a telescope, the higher the rigging the better the bonus, bigger ship, bigger rigging, better view. Personally I tend to use things like sloops for high risk smuggling operations through enemy seas which don't attract the SOTD as much. schooners for exploring, brigs for cargo etc.

I think the easiest way of dealing with the griefers from spamming islands or having issues with bad tenants is to have a "forbid company building" option. The landowner goes up to a structure from that company and selects "Forbid Building" on a pinwheel. That company can no longer build on the island. I think this will be much more useful on PvE but it certainly has merit on a PvP server as well to cut down the workload of landowners who will be drowned in pillaring if they somehow "offend" someone. If someone drops company and builds then it would block that one person.

I know but this PTR deployment is more about stability of the new system not about balance etc, very few bugs will be discovered during the PTR because people aren't going to have the time to find them, really one week is pathetic in terms of stability testing but honestly this is early access and much of the instability is to be expected particularly with such a shift as this patch. The primary servers are always going to be the testing for the balance/tweaks etc, till release anyway.

nobody knows!!!111... Devs can change minds at any time.

They are testing a pvp server, just one of the two types of pvp server. Empires being the old system + new stuff doesn't really rate full scale pre-deployment testing, colonies being the most different because of the pvp window is the one that should be tested, what works on colonies will work on the pve server.

Didn't kill my drive to play the game, just made me switch to a private server.