Winter Thorne

I think it's actually a stealth wipe. Think about it..first boats are given some undefinable disappearing algorithm, which doesn't even seem to hold to the timeframe that was stated. Now we have buildings, which clearly consist of pieces that aren't sure what they're snapped to to begin with. (Every time you destroy one tile of a building, random other tiles disappear) These tiles are all going to be given decay based on a faulty algorithm implemented not according to spec. But you get to keep your character, so that's something. until the skills and xp decay, where if you haven't used a skill in x+y(46.2^3) it disappears, along with the xp needed for that skill level.

Given all the confusing things happening and the lack of specifics on how this is supposed to happen, is anyone worried about them starting structure decay now?

You can't fix the problem by just looking at it from the perspective of whether the landowners would do something, and you can't leave something as critical to the game as being able to build a base up to the whims of the other players. You have to look at the perspective of the player looking for a place to settle as well. Assume at some point there are fully loaded servers again. What would those look like? Would there be any claimable islands? Probably not and definitely not any small ones. So say there's an influx of players to that server - 600 people join. What's their perspective? They never get to own land. They have to go from island to island waiting until some other player tells them they can build. It's not attractive to new players and it's not very fair. Everyone should get to own a piece of land to build on by virtue of having paid for the game just like everyone else. As an interesting exercise, think of it this way - what if only the first 1000 players got to do taming, and all the rest could only do it if one of those players gave them permission?

We built ramps on our island to all the mountain tops. Doesn't mean there's a static spawn there. Stuff can spawn anywhere on the top, (and sometimes halfway down the sides where you can't even get to them), and the difference between one end of it and the other could mean thinking you're building in a safe spot and building on top of a spawn. The guy's been there a week and you expect him to know all the spawn points? "I can't get what I want" doesn't always equal someone being a douche.

This thread isn't about that. Context is everything. Read the comments before jumping in with authority. Again, read the comments upthread. "Move the pen" is not always an option. Understand the context - AOD spawning inside a tame pen. A riderless buffless tame is going to get killed by a respawning 90+ warrior. The correct soution is - don't be a douche and spawn aod inside someone's building. You have no way of knowing if they purposely blocked the spawn (and it's against their own interests to do that), so you dont' know if THEY are being an asshat, but if you spawn the AOD, it's clear that you are.

That's not always true. I live on a small island. I tried to keep all the spawn points clear. I spent days going around to neighboring islands picking up maps, hoping to get ones for my island so I could find out where the spawn points were. I started putting down wooden signs on them all saying Spawn Point so no one would build there. After a while, I found that AOD spawn on nearly every building spot on the island (and many on non-buildable spots as well). I still don't even know where all the spawn points are. The whole island seems like it could spawn AOD. We can't do anything about that except give up the island and we're not giving up the island. If someone comes here to do a map and the spawn is right inside a locked building, they're not getting the treasure anyway, so spawning those AOD is nothing more than some little child kicking his legs and screaming and having a fit. And on pve it's griefing. Sure , purposely blocking spawns and discovery points is also griefing. But you can't assume it's ALWAYS griefing unless you know the spawns and DP are designed well, are clear to the players, and always make sense. Come on you guys, you KNOW everything in this game is not designed well and some of it makes no sense. If you have a map you can't do because the spawn point is inside a mountain, or under the ground, or in a building, you get to choose whether to assume another player is being a jerk or whether it's just one more screwup in the game. What you choose and how you behave is up to you, and no amount of "real people who know I'm a lovely person" has anything to do with that.

The vitamin/food system was never explained very well, so I think there are a lot of people who don't understand how it works. The slow restore over time doesn't help that. Some of it just works badly. You should be able to restore your vitamins without overeating. It helps now to have the ice/preservative bags to keep food longer, but it would help more to have a way to put food in shops without having it spoil. Spoil times ought to be a lot longer on inventory-held prepared food as well. I'd really like to see cooking expanded and become more important too, but Id rather not achieve that through punishments for not eating cooked food, like death penalties, and stronger debuffs. That's been a common failing in this game so far - to encourage some game aspect not by rewarding for it, but by punishing players for not using it.

What kind of server/kind of island are you guys talking about? "Build everywhere" came in with the mega update to claims quite a while ago.

If they screwed around with the pvp servers, I would be totally fine with that. But leave the official pve servers alone. Tons of us don't want pvp, which is why we don't play on pvp. So many posts in this thread all talking about how adding pve to pvp would improve pvp. Looks like this idea is coming from all the pvp players. Nobody talking about how adding pvp to pve would improve pve...because it won't. If you pvp players want pve, get it added to your own server. We already lost NA pve once so you guys could have multiple flavors of pvp.

This is a bad start to a thread that's supposed to get the community working together on improvements. The original post rambles and the ideas are not coherent. The OP doesn't seem to realize there is both a pvp and a pve aspect to the game. Worst of all, there's a brand new thread for this which starts off in a much better way. Copying someone else's thread just to gain attention is not good form.

According to Jat, tames are not supposed to be big in this game. It shouldn't be "crippling yourself" to not use them. There are a whole bunch of weapons and tactics that we should be able to use in pve, except they keep yanking them out for pvp reasons.

The game needs depth. There's no richness to it. I agree with the comments above - professions, economy, government systems. (The key word being "systems) So far, the "mega" updates just add one more of what we've already got. One more tame, one more island, one more boss to kill. But they don't add anything new to the game. When you think about it, it's all re-skins. Re-skin an island, re-skin an animal, re-skin a boss, re-skin some armor or a sail. The only real fundamental change so far has been in claim systems. That wasn't a great move and there are still unresolved issues from it. NA Pve is so empty that running across another player is a major event. That's what happens when you start with a bad claim system, make a bad change to it, and then shut the server down for a while to put focus on pvp instead. Is releasing a "mega" single player version supposed to help that? The only chance to get new people interested in the game is with big expansions of crafting and professions, government and diplomacy, town and city building systems (which don't stem from companies), and the addition of new things rather than re-skinned content.

There are very few ideas in this thread that I like. Looks like people have fallen in with Grapeshot's idea of controlling the game by punishing the players - more upkeep and really complicated short timers on anything you build. The floggings will continue until everyone is happy. If there was a sensible (PVE) claim system we wouldn't need ANY upkeep at all, or silly build rules about how much each block is worth. Everybody gets a piece of land by virtue of paying for the game, the same way everybody gets that "family compass" thing. Companies get bigger pieces of land according to their size. People can give other people permission to build on their land, although they don't have to do that. Timers are set for things to expire keeping in mind that people have lives and jobs and kids and emergencies and vacations. Problem solved. As for combining pvp and pve? Not if you don't want to lose half the player base immediately.

Oh..You mean EBF. The E stands for East. I was worried about island upkeep, because I am apparently the world's slowing moving game player and hadn't even done maps yet. There are 2 people in our company and we make the upkeep easily. You won't have a problem with it. You probably wouldn't bat an eye over it even on a large island once you get established. I was making half our upkeep in the first couple weeks from flotsam on a raft. Edited once more with an invitation: If you and your friends are entertaining, reasonably intelligent, and decent to be around, come on out to A3 on NA Pve. We have a good crowd there, mostly allianced, who help each other out and do stuff together. There's a big island with your name on it.

I am so unenthusiastic about the next "mega" update. Single player? meh. Seahorses? another tame. It just doesn't seem very mega. Government systems would be nice. More ships and better things to do with them. Better components for building things, especially if they're scaled to humans rather than a T Rex. I feel the tames are being tossed out a bit like fluff. Same with offering skins all the time. But it's old fluff. I like fluff as much as the next person, but let's have some new kinds of it. Paints that work. Fabric components for building. Plants that can be placed. Or rather than armor skins let's have some new , master crafted armor that actually looks good. I'm wearing the ugliest fur coat I've ever seen in my life right now. Discoveries would be more exciting if there was actually something there to discover. Something funny, something worth some gold, something unique...not just a text roll with "A good way to sneak" written on it. Hell, even geocaching prizes would be an improvement. The ability to attach one item to a note would enable a worldwide enterprise - Atlas Mail - Let's go Postal (tm). How about being able to build a dock where you can actually dock a ship? (And not have it look like a cement runway. I can provide real pictures of docks if needed) Fixes to ongoing annoying bugs. How about making the landlord destroy window a week like it should have been? Can't wait to see people coming back from vacations and losing it over their island being turned into bed city. And yes, ships. More ships, real ships, better ships and better sailing.

That's possible. The claim system has its good and bad points, but it's not all lawless pillar spam. Player levels are down enough that you and your friends could claim a fairly large island, although I have no idea what BFE is.

But we've had people do that and not received the settler message from it. We have friendly neighbors to the south who come over all the time and they never become settlers. It has to be something more than that.

Someone in game was saying that it was triggered by any contribution to the tax bank. I saw the settler message and the person was there gathering mats....didn't build anything. But you don't see the message from someone just doing a map, even though the gold goes into the tax bank, so who knows? There's a person who has a base on our island, and you'd think they'd count that as a permanent settler, but we still get occasional messages that he has become a settler, and the count goes up and down with no relation to when he's actually there,

The company log shows messages about settlers, but it beats the heck out of me what triggers them. It's not that they built something, it's not that they've stepped foot on the island. Anyone know what's triggering these? I have a feeling they could be a lot more helpful than they currently are, and prevent us running all over the place looking for beds and pillars.

Yes..pitiful attempt at a joke while not fully caffeinated.

How on earth do you figure something like that out? a.? Weird. Still. I really like my billboard. Rather not even have an a. in it.

Set up a large billboard, painted it with an image, and 12345678 appears on it. The only way to get rid of this is by replacing it with your own message first, and saving that, then setting text again to a blank message. This will correct it temporarily, but every 15 or 20 minutes the sign will revert and show 12345678 pasted over the image again.

If you have long rendering times, you can get into a whole lot of trouble sailing very fast.

That's good to know. Better safe than sorry when there's a change though.

Remember to check the ship's wheel. If it's unlocked someone may be able to raise the anchor to overweight the ship.