ThunderGod97

What a joke.

Q&A summed up "we're working on things and some things are a long way off"

"Right now the team is focusing on getting a solid base of fun coming from the existing game with a larger number of players playing."

The problem with this...is you may not have a large number of players playing when you get done with whatever you are working on. While you're fixing fixing fixing improving improving improving your community is imploding imploding imploding.

There are some serious issues introduced recently that have yet to be fixed.

The last question, you could have easily said "let's put a band-aide (pick a solution from the many suggestions in your forums) on this issue that has been haunting the game forever (This has literally been in SINCE LAUNCH and commented on by the community SINCE LAUNCH) and work on a longer term fix for a more sustainable system for the future."....but no, it was another non-answer putting it a long way off, just like the rest of the answers you gave in this Q&A. It was an easy opportunity for a win that you wasted.

I joked on twitter when I hit 1234 hours played...said I should retire. Due to stressful issues that started happening with the server I was primary admin for...I stepped down from being the admin, let others take over, and haven't played since, my hours count remains at that number. It has been almost a month since I played at all. This post does nothing to make me want to continue to pay any attention to this game.

Bolas are bugged. You bola a tame and it goes down, and then proceeds to follow you around while still in the downed state. Usually happens on the second bola.

22 hours ago, Strixx said:

There is no connect option anywhere? How do you expect people to join your server?

 

This should be fixed soon, he knows about it. Thanks for pointing that out.

edit: Now fixed.

I'm one of Doublee's admins and the primary map maker for the server. We retired the 5x8 map and upgraded to a 7x7 just after Xbox Crossplay went live. We were hoping to let them join us, but since no unofficial servers can run xbox servers but nitrado, we're doing mods instead. As of this post we have 7 quality of life type mods.

-We have one of the more unique maps in Atlas due to heavy use of island clusters.

-Biome transitions are logical  (Equatorial<>Tropical<>Temperate/Desert<>Tundra<>Polar). Sub-biomes (Western/Central/Eastern) are also laid out logically.

-Rewards in powerstone zones are a bit higher than on official (better risk/reward factor)

-We also have Easyport zones as some of our home servers if you want an easier start to playing on the server (in addition to standard unmodified Freeport zones).

-Both types of zones have the SotD difficulty, Flotsam quality, and Shipwreck quality modified appropriately (official doesn't modify shipwreck quality at all).

-Of course we have all 9 powerstones and essences for your end game needs.

-We have a PVP zone for those who love the PVE but want to battle it out on occasion (located in E4).

-We recently added cross-server and discord chat to the server so you can chat across zone boundaries and with people in discord as you play. This changes the game a bunch for an unofficial server. It no longer feels like you're playing alone or just with your crew when you can talk with everyone else playing on the server cluster and discord.

Live Map, Resource Map, and Composite map (important info the other two don't cover) are all available in the #atlas-info channel in discord.

When you have had your fill of Atlas, he runs other servers for other games as well. He's very open to hosting servers for new games and mods that come out, which is one of the reasons I'm still playing on his servers.

9 hours ago, Blackorin said:

I'm so Tired of getting FUCKED Over by this damn game makers. This is the third time I have to restart after building my lvl/Tames/Ect.. up. Stop fucking the players over. You should have found a way to stop screwing over the people that have been loyal to your game. You could have at least given us our levels back.

You sound like someone who should wait until the game is actually launched....in other words, after development is over. They are still developing features, tweaking, and optimizing...wipes will happen. If you don't like that....wait for launch.

2 minutes ago, Nevets said:

AN ADDITIONAL NA PvE network. NA PvE will then have 2 servers on different start dates.

• Colonies: EU and NA Networks
• PVE: EU Network
• Empires: NA Network

Do you see NA PVE anywhere in that?

It's an additional network (additional to the 4 networks they already have, which will not include NA PVE) that will be based in NA. Not 2 networks for NA PVE. They are skipping NA PVE because they forgot about the need for an additional server network.

You've had weeks to realize that you would need both NA and EU for both PVE and PVP...plus Empires. Why the delay on NA PVE? Because it was literally the last thing you thought about because you don't give a crap about PVE. Let me guess, as you were putting together this post you realized you wouldn't have enough servers for all the modes you are implementing. Spectacular forethought there...

I joined the server back after the 3x3 map launched and quickly grew to love the server and how it's run. As someone who occasionally runs servers for a small streamer, this is how I would want to run my own servers. I got involved and helped develop the new 5x8 map. The map has all islands currently in the official map and has some unique island clusters to make things a bit more interesting. Plenty of room for people to join and a good ruleset to keep things in check, and awesome admins to enforce the rules when needed! The community is top notch, and people are always willing to help out. Join Us!

V19 - ETA: LATE FEBRUARY

New Features and Content
- New Structure: Bookshelf. Store and sort your high-quality maps and blueprints.

edit: LOL OK not late February....sometime in March

This is specifically for the official PVE servers.

The land conquest is a PVP mechanic. It works great in PVP. The competition between companies is great...for PVP.

In PVE it results in everyone taking every bit of land they can get and:

-hoarding it for themselves so they can tax anyone using "their" land even if they have no structures on that land. And for bragging rights as the largest land owners.

-renting/selling it off to players not fortunate enough to find land to claim

-griefing other players to make them quit the game to give up their land.

Unlimited land claims do not belong in PVE gameplay. There needs to be some limits on them in PVE gameplay. If you want to leave in Unlimited land claims then there needs to be a significant upkeep cost to owning more than X number of claims per person (I will not define the number here, I will leave that to the devs). If you want to keep the leader boards, make it actually an accomplishment to claim and maintain claims over that much land...not just what you happen to find or steal from others.

This has made the new player experience completely shit on PVE servers.

To get any land you are forced to:

1. join a company with whatever rules it has. Not everyone wants to join a company.

2. rent land from land owners where you have no control over their ability to lock you out of your ability to build your structure. And that usually comes with living under a taxed area on top of the price you pay to rent.

3. buy land from land owners for whatever price they think is appropriate.

4. Hope to find someone willing to give you land. My efforts have run across two groups promising to do this so far....both ended up not giving me land.

5. steal land from players who might not log in every day. And to do this you have to find land to steal...so you have to endlessly search each and every island hoping to find something to take from someone else. And to do this you have to deal with the bugs involved with land claiming currently...which means sometimes you have absolutely no idea how long you have to wait to declaim it.

6. live in lawless and deal with the bullshit foundation and pillar spam and people demolishing everything you worked for if you happen to not log in every 4 days.

This is not a PVE game...this is a neutered PVP game....you just can't kill people directly.

Fix this. Give us a proper PVE game with mechanics that don't pit us against each other.

Also, a legitimate (not third party) single player option would solve this problem for a lot of PVE players.

And yes, I know about unofficial servers. I am helping build a new map for an unofficial server. The existence of Unofficial servers does not excuse the devs from creating a proper PVE game for the people on the official servers.

1 minute ago, MeatSammich said:

I'll admit there's a possibility that some of them are people looking for land, but,  3 dinghys, 4 of 7 rafts without beds, 2 of 5 sloops without beds, and 2 schooners from the people who owned the land over a month (and 3 owners ago) probably don't fall into that category. 

2 of the other sloops that still have beds, are ones that were claimed by other people, but have the bug where the ship is owned by one company, but everything on them is owned by the original company, so they're not moving anytime soon.

Yeah there are definitely some issues with boat ownership like that. I'll give you that.

5 hours ago, Brantley Driftwood said:

Can there not be a claim timer implemented on these things? Well at least one that works. I don't want to take the ship for nothing, I just want to be able to claim and demolish to get them out of the way. I don't even need to get the resources from them. I understand in PvP you can claim them by using a claim flag but it is different in PvE.... We need to be able to do something to get rid of them and 3 weeks is too long for them to go poof! If people aren't playing for 3 weeks then they probably aren't that serious.

LOL They have a system for clearing them...but that's not good enough for you.

You ever think that maybe all those "abandoned" boats are people looking for land to claim...and they are working several different boats in hope of finding land to claim. I know I'm in that group. I'm actively playing but have no land of my own because I have not found land to claim yet. I have 5 sloops scattered about the map that probably appear to be abandoned...but they aren't. I just occasionally check them...sometimes sail them around looking at claims to try to find something.

If they fix the claim spamming I would imagine the number of "abandoned" boats will dramatically decrease.

Prepare for the flood of cance...I mean landlords. People who actually give up land to those looking for their first plots are very few and far between. Good luck in your search though.

On 2/9/2019 at 10:39 AM, redfisher said:

its funny all these posts about land. I go out everyday and find land. takes time but i find land. I write down times on other land and check it every other day. Getting land takes time. stop expecting stuff just to be handed to you cause you play pve. Put some work in like the rest of us have. hell you can even come talk to some of us and maybe rent some land to get a footing started. everyone who has rented land from us have either become an allies or merged in cause they like our play style. 

I do that. As a solo player you really don't have much hope of finding land to claim. As a big company with many people to look at flags it's very easy to find land to claim. More eyes more opportunity to find it. The fact that as one of the top 10 companies you are STILL looking for more land, is idiotic. The focus on the pve gameplay needs to be changed away from land conquest. The new player experience is absolute shit. It's either join a company that has land, rent from a company that has land, build on land someone let's you build on (where they retain complete control and can lock you out of doing anything with your stuff if you upset them), or fight foundation spam in lawless. The realistic chance of a new player finding land is next to zero. I know, I did the searching. I did the waiting. What did I end up with after the waiting? Bugged timers...negative land claim counts...no idea when the claim will expire. Companies with "1 land claim" yet they own an entire island due to sea claims. Look at my bug report in the bug reports forum if you want to see all the issues I have found.

I have no interest in joining some huge corporation, hell I don't want to have anything more than my solo corp. I just want to find some land and have fun building my buildings and ships. This game offers very little chance of that without someone else lording over you and taking shit from you just because they found the land first. Land claims need to be limited. The tax system is fine...the land claim system is not....not by a long shot.

The tax system, as implemented, is fine...it's just that people can claim so much land they don't use that the tax system is being misused by pretty much everyone using it. Taxing land you actively use, is fine, because people harvesting takes away from the resources you are actively harvesting. Taxing land you do not use is the problem and should be done away with...but that comes down to revamping the claim system.

It's no surprise that foundation spam is out of control...hell land claims are out of control, of course foundation spam would be just as bad. Honestly, the land claim system is no better than the foundation spam system, in fact, it's worse because you can actually rent out plots of land. All the control is in the landlords...and it's absolute shit the way they have implemented it. For PVP it may be fine, but for PVE it is shit.

I have a small plot of land in lawless. I found my chunk and kept an eye out for demoable stuff. I expanded only where I planned to expand to. Now that I have some claims elsewhere I've contracted what I have claimed in lawless. I have plans to eventually disappear completely from lawless, but have to work on moving what resources I have there to my land claim. The moment any space pops up there are a couple of pieces of cancer on the island I'm on that foundation spam the hell out of the area...even though it's no where near where they are building. They claim just to claim and prevent others from claiming. Completely eliminating the land that is supposed to be for those who can't find any claimable land. The new user experience in this game is absolute shit.

Grapeshot and Instinct...just shaking my head. You can do better than these two shit systems.

I play on both official and unofficial. I'm helping build a new larger map for an unofficial server I play on. I still play on official because of the promise of exploration it holds...it just can't really be matched by any unofficial. I play on official hoping that some day they will get off their asses and actually implement a system that reigns in the bullshit land claim and foundation spam.

I have only lost one ramshackle sloop to a SotD that caught me off guard. I had just launched the ship so I hadn't had the opportunity to level up the weight on the ship, so I was slower than normal. I've certainly been shot at and chased by them and taken quite a bit of damage, but I always managed to outrun them. Keeping your ship fast is the best way to ensure you can get away.

I've spent most of my time in sloops, and as long as you keep them under the weight handle, they can get away.  Being able to out run them is best if you can't fight them. If you aren't confident in your ability to destroy them, build for speed. I have refined the design of my sloop to lower weight and maintain the utility I have built in. As I have been searching for land to claim I have 5 sloops currently out in various, so I've had a lot of opportunity to refine the design.

Powerstone island zones are the worst for SotD...but I've seen some normal zones spawn quite a few...up to 10 in view at once. I wouldn't mind them lowering the spawn rate in normal zones.

10 minutes ago, Vaenix said:

This was definitely an accidental one.  We were all trying to kill an alpha cobra and the guy on the raft freaked when it hopped on his raft.  He hit full sail and it rammed up under the mesh somehow.  So while yeah against the rules that one was not an intentional thing.

Ah ok. Yeah definitely something that can accidentally happen, as with most bugs they just happen. It's only an exploit if you repeat it with the intent to use it to your advantage.

16 minutes ago, Vaenix said:

The only time I've seen that was near the launch and it was a raft stuck under a shore(still no fucking clue how it happened). 

Is that even still slightly in the water? Looks like it could be up on a partial cliff.

That raft under the shore is a common exploit to hide a bed. It's called undermeshing and in PVP is commonly used in order to prevent people from destroying the beds of defenders. Entirely against the rules and if the devs find it, they will remove it. I've seen it used in some places in PVE too though. It was definitely more common before you could place beds on land in lawless.

I have no idea how to do that, just know it happens.

@Tsub I could use a flag or two, so long as it has sea access. And don't mind building on a cliff. Have sailed by some of your land looking for flags to capture. Currently have a sloop in I12 I think.

What would really be nice is if we could arrange to match up people looking to get rid of land and people looking to get their first land. Don't want to see it go to waste by someone just snapping up some land to put renters on it. Until Grapeshot gets their act together and actually fixes the claim system (including the bugs in it), we kind of need to tackle this problem as a community.

26 minutes ago, Henrique said:

Hello guys.
I'm playing with my wife for 60 hours on NA PVE server but we did not find any free spaces. We are very discouraged by this and thinking of choosing another game. We do not like Lawless Islands.
Does anyone have any idea how to get an available location? One or two flags would be perfect for us.

Thank you

Unfortunately, greedy people don't share, and the non-greedy people are very few and far between. Either you sail forever hoping to find that little space you can steal from someone who isn't playing the game anymore, or you accept the first week overlords who snapped up all the land and tax everyone and rent the land out.  It's a pretty crappy system if you didn't grab land in that first week.

In all my searching, I found one place I could plant a flag, but there was a wolf still alive that I could see, so I knew that person had been active somewhat recently. I've found one person that was willing to give a couple claims to those looking for their first land, but with the dynamic expiration time update came some bad bugs, and they told me they don't want to risk letting go of land for fear of compromising the land they want to keep.

I also live in lawless and have been searching for land for the better part of two weeks. I have about 500 hours in the game so far, but that's also pretty evenly split between a stint in a large company on NA-PVP, NA-PVE, and an unofficial server I'm helping building a new map on. Unofficial is an option, but it is pretty easy mode most of the time and you need to make sure it has active admins that enforce the rules and aren't prone to abuse.

1 hour ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

Yup something not right there, but the question is which timer actually works, as in, is it actually claimable after the 3 day timer that shows, or the 20 day timer. If it's the 3 day timer that's fine, they just need to fix the issue of the other time displaying incorrectly.

However, the thing that doesn't sit right with me, besides the conflicting timers is that the number of land claims on the picture shows -3 instead of 3. That could be causing the issue.

yeah something like "if invalid number then expiration = max expiration"

Sea Claims need to count...entire islands are claimed by nothing but sea claims. I've seen several times just today companies with a ton of sea claims encircling their island, with a single land claim on the island and the flags only register 1 land claim so they get 20 hours on the expiration timer. That exploit needs to be patched out. The land claims need to reflect any claims which touch land...and I would say any that are near land (within 50 m) since those can be used to secure docks and shipyards just off land, and a land claim in this game is pretty damn useless without somewhere to build your ships.

5 minutes ago, TheSeer said:

I want to know this too. I went back and look at some of the claims and realize there is a difference. This may explain the confusion we're seeing in the forums where some people are saying people only have a few days with lots of claims but others are saying but everyone including those with 80+ have 20-days. The question is will players be able to claim the land when the timer expires or is the system bugged, thus everyone has 20-days.

This was my confusion. I was looking at the upkeep timer, then noticed the expiration timer. Upkeep seems to always be at like 20 days, whereas the expiration is at the values based on the number of flags. Since the upkeep timer was the thing that said I couldn't plant a flag, I assumed that's what the patch notes were referring to when talking about inactivity timer.

22 minutes ago, UDO said:

my neigbor has 6 day timer , so all these players who claim to see 80+ flags with 20 days timers is imo rubbish ,

Would you like screenshots of all the companies I see with 50+ flags and 20+ inactivity timers? I can post an imgur album if you like. I haven't seen anything less than 19 days since the patch hit.

So as someone trying to claim land, ANY land...I've been wondering, what's the difference between the Upkeep timer and the PVE Expiration timer?

Don't they serve the same purpose? Problem is, the times are vastly different on a lot of flags...so what is the difference?

Not a single flag I have checked has had less than 19 days since the patch. This includes flags for companies that have 50+ flags. One had 175 flags, and still had a 20 day inactivity timer on it.  One of the flags I was watching during the 2 day inactivity timer period now has a 20 day inactivity timer after the patch with 60+ flags. The idea was good....but execution needs work. I'm still stuck with zero flags and have been searching consistently for the past week.