DocHolliday

I would agree with that if they made sound decisions.  Sure there will be screwups along the way.  Always happens.  I just hope the roll the change back and explain why the decision was made to do this.

I was giving this team the benefit of the doubt, but I am starting to rethink that.  They can garner a lot of good will by admitting this was a misstep and correct it.  

If they want to keep it they need a damn good reason for it.  This change was not announced beforehand which leads me to believe they knew it was going to be an unpopular move.  Their PR is utter crap from the looks of it.  

@jatheish should respond and the longer we go without a response we should keep pestering him.  This problem is NOT going away.

Lets make cannon balls use fiber and thatch only.  

Spent the last 4 nights making a garage and am about 50% done...……...now I won't be able to finish it anytime in the next month or two.  

I am looking at this from a macro perspective.  Not just this particular game and developer.  This game isn't as simple as most.  I don't know of many persistent MMO's as massive as this one.  Its a monumental undertaking and judging by the issues and player responses I understand why most companies won't touch this genre.  Dare to be different and get beaten into a pulp in the process. 

I'm torn.  While some of the issues do seem like obvious ones I look at what they are trying to do.  What so few have tried to do and even fewer have succeeded doing and give them some slack.

Ask me about this in 6 months or a years time.  Maybe I change my mind.   

EDIT:  After the last couple of responses I can tell there is a ton of angst here.  Sounds like a lot of you are Ark players and bring a lot of bias into the development of this game.  I've been around a lot of early development for games over the years.  Been gaming since the 80's, I know some developers who worked on AAA titles, but this is the first time I jumped on a Steam EA because I know what an alpha looks like and plays like.  If you bought this expecting to have a fun and fulfilling experience you bought it for the wrong damn reasons.  I bought it because I wanted to support a very ambitious project. 

9 minutes ago, Jean Lafitte said:

Right, but here's where you have to question that logic. They don't want you hanging around freeports but now, they're going to put in trading with the purpose of bringing you TO a freeport.  So which is it, do they or don't they want us in freeports?  Is that insane decay rate going to continue when trading goes live?  If so, it might be pointless to even trade as it would cost you more in resources to repair than you'd make via trading.

Good point.  I guess we shall see how this plays out.

Yeah exploiting dev accounts using the password "God" is only a slap on the wrist.

On the flip side people need to understand they are paying to do something that people usually get paid for.  From a business standpoint its a brilliant flip.  Why pay someone to test when they are willing to pay you.

The developers cannot account for every angle.  Games like this are highly complex and it would take time to uncover all the exploits.  How big of a team would be needed to find them all and help close the gaps compared to the thousands of people playing this game?  We cover more ground, report more bugs and exploit more game mechanics than any QA team could and we do it while paying them.

I'd really like to know how big of a team this developer has.  From all the complaints I have seen I feel people are expecting way to much from an alpha.  Many game mechanics have not been added yet.  As time goes on new ones will be added and people will exploit those as well.  Expect more complaints in the forums and attacks on the developers.  

After seeing this game for a month and I was interfacing with the public I would not want to do an EA.  Why?  I wouldn't want to deal with all the asshats in here.  Keep it behind closed doors and there is less stress to deal with.   

I think the issue here is this is EA (Alpha release years from release) and people are looking at it as a polished game.  They expect it to run smooth, play balanced and go overboard when it isn't. 

Like it or not we are the QA.  I'm sure they do some in-house, but the time it takes to do this properly can be quite time consuming and it slows the release of new patches, content, etc.  From what I can tell the company working on this game does not have a large team and a limited budget.  This is not a AAA title.  This is not run by Chris Roberts and a huge kick starter budget.  It is what it is and I like it.

I love the fact we are getting updates fast and furious.  We get to see the inner workings of a game under development.  All the tweaks, balances, screw ups, and fixes.  I've always thought this is how it was done (most keep it in house because consumers SUCK) prior to game releases or public betas, but never was apart of it until now.  Yeah it can be frustrating at times, but when it is I just remind myself where this game is at in its life cycle.  The game we see now will most likely be quite different a few years from now. 

Keep making suggestions to balance issues.  Bug reports.  Exploits.  Going on tirades about broken gameplay elements at this stage just appears childish to me.

Maybe SoTD are more aggressive by you guys.  I rarely have to turn to avoid them.  Their aggro range is so damn small and they are so slow that my ships easily get away......unless we're bored/leveling ships.  However, if increasing the render range on SoTD would not tax the servers much I wouldn't be against it.

^^^^^ What he said.

Wolfs in my opinion were fine before.  I do agree their spawn rates and aggro range was ridiculous, but they are not hard to kill.  I was attacked by them on the regular.  Use the terrain and their behaviors to defeat them.  A single shot to the head kills them so I really did not have a huge issue with them unless it was multiple wolfs pinning me against something with no escape. 

Oh and if a wolf was in view range.  It was sniped.  Keep them away from your farming areas by regularly killing them. 

The issue is there are many games that put in protections.  They add rules. They limit game play.  They remove freedom and choice of the player so when a game like this comes along many hardcore players like me will defend people's abilities to do whatever they want when they want to the bitter end. 

The game is new.  People are figuring it out.  New features will be added in the future.  Players and the companies they join will slowly find their identity.  They will develop reputations and will be more known as time goes on.  Some companies will gank everyone.  Some will only attack specific companies they consider threats.  Some will offer their services for hire to protect other companies.  Some will offer services for farming, trade, taming, etc.  If you can dream it up you can try it out. 

The political and social aspect of this game is a huuuuuuuuuge part of what draws many people here.  We drive the game and the content within.  Ultimately the stories, the myths and legends will all be player based. 

I will admit I'd like to see some changes made for Freeports to make it easier for newbies to join the game and get equipped, make contacts and join Companies.  Sometime similar to Eve would be nice.  High sec area for the carebears, traders and newbies.  Rest of the world is whatever we make it.

This is why server performance has been and is being looked at so heavily by the dev team.  This game cannot reach its true potential without these issues being resolved.  IMO that needs to be the highest priority the entire time this game is in EA.  Its ok to have secondary concerns and priorities as new content needs to be added.  Client updates for performance and other assorted changes need to be made.  Overall though this game does not fulfill its promises unless the servers are rock solid and expanded upon. 

My guess is they need to increase performance of their services as much as possible and then run an audit of their server fleet to determine its weaknesses and correct as needed whether thats through config changes and/or capacity increases.  For this game to run the way it should you cannot do one without the other. 

I don't get the people saying nobody fights and its all off lining crap.  Sure we get hit while offline some nights, but most of our fights are active battles.  We're raided every evening during our prime time and it makes for some real fun nights.  We also go on the offensive and do some heavy damage when we bring out the big guns.

This is the first game in probably 10 years that I am falling hard for.  Why?  Its a PvP MMO that has no rules (for the most part) like Eve and my other all time favorite Shadowbane.  The devs do not dictate what happens in game.  We do.  We generate the content.  We control our own fate. 

I try to eat food, but I hate spending time on it.  Suicide lets me concentrate on the aspects of the game I enjoy.

Considering how bad this game was day 1 until now they have made huge improvements.  Biggest ones being server stability.  They have a ways to go, but these changes do not happen over night.  I honestly have no clue how big their team is so its hard to determine how much can be fixed, modified, added during the course of a week.  So far I am happy with the progress.  Lots been made in a relatively short period of time and I enjoy the rapid fire updates.  Shows me they are actively working day and night to improve the game's infrastructure and client.

P.S.  If Wildcard ever reads this I would LOVE to see a flowchart and/or pictures of the server/network infrastructure that runs this game.  Spent  5 years in a data center and now am an engineer for a huge company.  Enterprise class systems turn me on.

AFAIK to completely destroy a ship being built you need to destroy the shipyard.  I lost a brig to this.

Protection once launched?  Find a quiet place to put it or build automated defenses (re:NPC's), walls and ceiling tiles that can project it. 

I'd be content it being removed from the game.  I see no point in it existing. 

I've experienced the build bug a couple times.  Most items can be built, but a few just do not work.  Fix was to commit suicide. 

Yeah NPC's have built in auto-aim......human players not so much.  We will get better as a player base gains experience, but I would not mind seeing the NPC crews be less effective on the guns. 

They gain levels like the rest of us, correct?  I wonder if they have random rolls built in to them for aiming and the higher the level the better the odds.  Start them low so only crews that survive for a long period of time will be as effective as a highly skilled human crew. 

How about if the owner of a ship is online any ship he owns is vulnerable?  Ship stays vulnerable for 1 hour after logout.  Just tossing a number out as you need to prevent people from abusing that. 

Omg 4 ships inbound.....logoff!

People play at different times and sometimes might miss a few days straight.  Would be nice knowing you have a lot better chance to find your ship floating instead of at the bottom of the sea. 

Say you night time raid someone and most players are offline....only the people who are playing or have been recently will have vulnerable ships.  Odds are they are nearby so they have a chance to defend.  The rest are invulnerable so there is still risk, but not as risky as it is now.  If you try targeting a protected ship it will be like a Freeport zone. 

As it stands now I have lost 7 ships while sleeping or going out to dinner.  Its making doing anything but playing that game risky and stressful at times.  Not very healthy for your player base. 

3 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

  Then they act surprised when the hate rises to epic levels over things like, not having a single mechanism to prevent your ship from being sunk while you sleep.

I am torn on this one.  I love lost 2 Brigs and 5 sloops to this.  Go to bed, wake up and my ships are sunk.  I have only lost 2 ships while online and I was not even on it when it happened.  How do you put in protections without changing the entire landscape of the game?

Possible this happens and server does not know how to handle it.  Attempts same operations over and over again.  Enough players and NPC creatures do this might cause CPU to spike on server creating these symptoms. 

If you have painted your sails lets see what you got going on.  Crazier the better!  Lets fill the seas with decked out ships.

This is a placeholder to remind me to post a pic of my sails artwork later.  Currently at work.