Winter Thorne

This whole idea that the people with claims "worked hard" and others didn't, which is why they don't have a claim is ridiculous. It's just an attempt to rationalize why people who claimed all the land should keep it and nothing should be changed.

I'm not saying this is foolproof (Elrood), but I've been kicking around this idea for a while, so let's see if it can be patched back up after people are finished shooting holes in it. This is a pve idea. Pvp has an entirely different goal with claims. First, limit claims to 1 per person. Adjust the claim size so that works ok for most people. Make the island interiors unclaimable by individuals. Some people always want to be the biggest and the best, even in a pve game, so what if being the biggest and best requires that you actually give up some of your land? The devs have said there is some village/town/city/shop structure coming...so..let's say you want to have the first big city with lots of player run shops, commerce, etc. What do you have to do? Have some large number of people who have claimed land in one spot. Sign a charter for a village and build it up through the ranks to city, each time, the individual claims get smaller and a couple of "common claims" start to grow. By the time you're a city, individual claims are the size of a house and a small garden, and the common claims are where you put city shipyards, taming pens, farms shops, city buildings giving you administration over it all, fresh water fountain, town hall giving perks, etc. Now each person doesn't need a huge chunk of land with everybody having their own shipyard, farms, taming, etc. Maybe one of the common claims is meant to stay empty and reserve your resource spawns. City does not equal Company. You can have multiple companies in one city. Claims should expire if no one has actually been in them in 2 weeks...20 days..something like that, and cities have to have an occupancy rate, so people have to take those claims or the city crumbles. Cities have a number of shops, and the shops pay taxes to the city. The city can use that money to buy perks, benefits and cosmetic improvements. This means every time a group wants to advance in this way, they are shrinking their land base to gain that benefit, making more land available. It keeps big groups from splitting up and spreading all over the map, because you need the numbers all in one place to do it. (It would help if some of these islands were a little bigger, really) It keeps people from spamming claims and wrecking resource spawns. At some point, unless the game is a total flop, the servers will just run out of land altogether, and that would need to be addressed with either more islands or more servers, but that would be the case even if everything stayed as it is now.

No, there it is not. It's more like - there's enough room for 2k people to have reasonable claims, but now only 1k people have claims, so some improvement is needed. I think you're basing a lot of what's being said on your OWN claim, which actually sounds very nice and is not really the problem. I'm basing a lot of what I say on what other people are saying about claims, as well as my own experience with claims in this game and in others. A lot of this isn't personal to just me and what I want in this game, (except that there are some really good game systems that could be used to help this, that I think would be really fun to play). You are speaking very personally and I am not. I guess that doesn't help the conversation. I'm not talking about you and your group there. I meant dictators as in your reference to them earlier. You said that dev statement meant the game was always intended for some people to be serfs. I had a different interpretation. And again, this isn't about your group. Your territory sounds fine. There are many places where it doesn't work that way, and where one guy has grabbed up 10 claims or more, or a few guys have grabbed whole large islands. One player should not be able to have 10 claims in a game where there is not enough land to go around, and it can't be taken away by pvp. I don't think the claim system would ever be removed, and I disagree with anyone saying it should. As far as harshly restricting claims, the harshest you can go is 1 per person. I don't think that's unreasonable, especially if you add mechanisms for controlling blocks of land through towns, etc. Claim size should be set to what's reasonable for 1 person.

Well, this is somewhat off-topic, but I think it was a mistake to start off the claims systems the same way for pvp and pve, and that statement you're referring to about dictators, etc. I took to be more about companies being able to set laws for their lands, (especially on pvp), and not to mean that some special few would get to be dictators over all the other players because they couldn't have their own land. As far as "punishment", you've said you wouldn't lose anything at all if it became one claim per player, as for the rest, people have lost all kinds of hard-earned stuff due to bugs and griefing and game patches. Why should people who grabbed up a bunch of land be exempt? It's EA..we're not even sure there won't be a wipe. On a pvp server, getting land from other people is part of the game, and a sign of success. Massive land grabs are encouraged. On pve, massive claims hurt the game, and you can't compete for land in any in-game kind of way, like fighting for it. The claiming goals on pve ought to be making land available to as many people as possible, and coming up with ways for people to band together to improve land and compete economically and status-wise. The only reason for having a claim flag expire on pve is to free up claims where the player has left. They ought to be given simple 2 week flags, where if someone doesn't appear on their property in 2 weeks, time's up. Or maybe 20 days...something reasonable. It would also be nice if players got a claim deed that they could sell or trade to someone else. People like to move around sometimes. For the record, I wasn't considering one person being able to make a town. That would be the cooperative part of claiming. The Devs say they want towns and cities and player owned shops. I think a great way to do that would be to give all those things their own skill tree with requirements. Like, if you have 5 players in contiguous claims, you can all sign a charter, meet some requirements and you can create a village. Maybe a village will have certain upgrades those players can work for. With, say, 15 players, you can have a town, meet more requirements and have 1 town shop, and a town hall with improvements for gardens or harvesting. Every time this happens, players can lose all their individual docks, forges, looms, etc and have common ones they can all use, making more open space for them. Cities could be the really big ones, with lots of players, lots of perks, and lots of shops. I don't think anyone would mind paying taxes or rent for a shop in a big city, and they'd not be made to feel like a serf, with just renting land from someone who can grab all their stuff and kick them out. A system like that would create a lot of different desirable roles for pve players rather than the haves vs. the have nots of using the pvp system, and it would make a much more interesting game. (Which reminds me...we REALLY need to be able to sell ships. I don't know how many people I've heard say they just want to be a shipwright)

Decent people don't want to spend their leisure time surrounded by antisocial children yelling nasty things. It's as simple as that. If you think you'd get thrown out of a theater or restaurant for shouting something, then get prepared for people to be upset with you using it as your character name, naming your ship with it, or hearing you say it in chat. Luckily Grapeshot agrees and has a code of conduct saying that. Just because "it's a game", or "it's pirates", or "it's the internet" doesn't make it any different. There are all kinds of people here - young, old (some old enough to be your grandparents), women and girls, gay people, straight people, and people of many different colors. It doesn't take a SJW to expect that people have some basic manners in public. I bet even the people doing this don't behave that way in public. You're not in some frat house or little boys' club house where it's just you and your buddies. You're in public. Maybe your company enjoys being a bunch of antisocial snerts. If so, I bet nobody minds what you say in company chat among yourselves.

No it wasn't. Well, it may have been planned (badly), but here's the description: Stake your claim in this endless open world as you conquer territory, construct ships, search for buried treasure, assemble forts, plunder settlements and hire crew to join your powerful growing armada. The description said nothing about the first players staking a claim and the rest just having to rent a spot from them. Renting wasn't even a thing until a recent patch. And to be clear, nobody is hating on you we just don't like the claim system. You're not sympathetic though. If you have a look through the earliest forum entries you can see it wasn't people who delayed buying the game, and that many many people had all sorts of issues making it unplayable for them. You feel that since you did fine, everyone else must be lying or it was their fault. You feel that people are hating on you and want to punish you. They just want a claim. The same as you got. I feel that all the players in the game ought to have the same chance to have a small claim and build it up. You feel that it would be a punishment to you if claims were made available to those that had problems and new players starting out months from now. How on earth is that a punishment to you? The OP wasn't advocating for removal of claims. I don't like that idea either. I think we need to limit claims and maybe have a company cap for the really big companies. The OP was just sharing his views too, as are the rest of us. It's nice that you run a town. The rest of us would like the same opportunity to do that too, whether we started day one with no issues or bought the game 6 months out. It's hard not to use the word selfish when you get to do something in the game that many other people aren't getting the chance to do, and you're against any changes to let them play that bit of the game as it was advertised. (Even if it wouldn't hurt you one bit for them to get a chance to claim land) People like me? I'm neither rude nor vulgar, and I'm happy in Lawless for the moment. Although, we had been starting to get a pretty decent group of solos and small companies there for a while, and it would have been nice to be able to say, "Hey, let's all go look for some land together and start a town". And although there are vast amounts of empty land, it's all claimed, so there's no chance of that. It's not ending well..we have a griefer company there now, and some of the people have moved away, and chances are good the old gang won't meet back up again anywhere. I've seen some jerks in the game too. A lot of them at times. I'm sorry they keep you from discussing ideas for game mechanics sensibly. It's best just to ignore them or report them if they're breaking the code of conduct.

The claim system is just badly designed. People expect that because this is a game, not a real country in the real world. Did that even need pointing out? If you play Risk you conquer territory with little blocks. I don't know what country you live in, but my country does not conquer territory with little blocks!!!!1!!! From the point of view of Grapeshot, that's a terrible selling point for new players. From the point of view of anyone who had a week's worth of serious issues playing at the beginning, it's a fairly selfish remark. From the point of view of someone who did actually manage to claim land and then got hit with the claim bugs and got overlapped and/or had a wonky timer, and lost a claim multiple times, it looks like you don't understand the issues with claims. Any system that makes you rent a piece of land from some luckier person and then lets that person just kick you off it after you've built stuff for weeks is stupid. But there's no way to make the rental system unstupid. It's either going to be unfair to renters or landlords. Claim sizes need to be big enough to avoid cluttering, and players need to be restricted in the number of claims. Companies and alliances need to be able to band together to expand claims by some mechanism of leveling up villages/towns/cities as a group. You post looks like a classic case of "I got mine, screw you."

Luckily, it's not up to the forum posters to decide this. There's a code of conduct for the game now. Not saying that ship is in violation of it , but the rules are set. Behaviour, Chat, and Interaction With Others Interactions through text chat, voice chat, and signs or paintings must adhere to the rules below and you cannot use alternative spellings to circumvent restrictions. Ensure that you do not: Offend - this includes but is not limited to language which is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, obscene, hateful, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically or otherwise offensive. Post Personal Information - belonging to someone else in the game or any Official Platforms related to the game. Harass, Stalk, Threaten - such as sending repeated unsolicited or unwelcome messages to specific users/Companies. Disrupt the game - such as intentionally causing the chat screen to scroll faster than other users are able to read, or setting up macros with large amounts of text that, when used, have a disruptive effect on the normal flow of chat. Promote - do not send messages which are advertisements for inappropriate topics, including scamming, hacking, exploits or the sale of goods and services unless trading within the game for game specific resources Real-money trading (RMT) - items, creatures, or services must only be exchanged for other items, creatures, or services within the game. Trading for real-world currency (real money) is not an accepted form of trading.

I'd caution against hacking and cheating, even in retaliation. Customer service is never going to get involved in a he said/she said situation. If somebody documents you cheating well enough to prove it and opens a ticket, you'll just get banned. They just put up the ticket system, and just today did some anti-hacking changes. Give it a few days, report issues sensibly and see what happens. It's not like they've got a staff of 12 working round the clock handling all these complaints. If you can't stand losing big things, don't build big things yet, and you won't have to be upset over it. I've got a shack on lawless (pve) and a couple of rafts, and finding a decent number of things to do. I'm not going to try to claim land till they work that mess out, and I'm not building bigger boats until I know some nimrod can't sink them. This should all shake out in a couple of weeks one way or the other. Remain calm. None of this is the end of the world.

No, I understood. I'm using the word "trader" to mean someone who sails around gathering resources and/or trading the natives for them, and then bringing them back to his local area for the merchants. I think there are people who want to travel around making trades and acquiring goods, and people who want to set up a shop on their island. Those two things work pretty well together. In a game that's suppsed to have a lot of sea travel it would be a shame if anyone could buy anything from anyone over an auction interface. Also, If you have an auction house there's not any point in having player shops.

Jat said something about player shops..can't recall the exact quote atm, but it's in his blog post. I really don't want an auction house. Traders ought to travel to trade goods and people should be able to buy all the traded stuff at their local shops. (at least on pve)

Apparently you are. Just for the record...not a bro. No bro-ness was involved in the creation of this comment.

Strawman. We're not talking about the game rules. We're talking about the people who break the rules, because they can, temporarily, because there's a bug in the game. (And then go around acting like they're just "being a pirate") Good to see the devs have put a process in place for reporting these people and getting them banned while the code fixes get worked out. As for the rest of what you said, that may apply to the pvp server, but it doesn't on pve.

Have a look at the latest Captain's Log. Doesn't address everything on your list, but some of it.

You assume an awful lot about people you don't know. And there's that "air of authority again, complete with much "codesplaining". I like the latest Captain's log. Shows some good indications of the devs intentions and direction for the game, including a "process fix" for the griefing issues until the coding fixes can be arranged, and locked boxes for pve. If they keep this up, you might have to stop discouraging pve players from playing the game. Still not salty in the least. In fact, I get a pretty good chuckle out of some of this.

5 wheat seeds for 100 gold? If you're on NA pve, gimme your shopping list.

I've had some of my best adventures so far sailing 8 zones away to find salt and sap, including a surprise mid-air raft switch during a cyclone. Good times If you don't like to do that, you could try living nearby to a good shop and just buy your stuff.

Looks like they plan to add player run shops according to the new Captain's log!

Well done. Keep this up and you're all invited at wine o'clock to escape the whine o'clock.

I'd like to see player run shops as part of towns/cities, where you have to scale up your claims and your city officials to achieve it.

Check to make sure your tooltip button is turned on, and also try relogging and/or dying.

Also seeing this in Lawless zones on NA pve. No respawn of trees there at least.

They've also stopped respawing in lawless. Yesterday, they'd respawn even with the buildings there.

Not quite awake yet when I saw this thread, and I read it as: Nerf Flamingos and I thought, flamingoes! Where are the flamingos?

It will help quite a bit on pve. Thanks for adding it to the patch.