Winter Thorne

Game developers used to have to get financial backing to develop a game through to release. The backers would need them to prove their idea was good and thought through completely, that it was marketable, they had the skills to do the work, and that they were reasonably controlled by business, marketing, and project plans. In other words, they had to prove they were grownups who knew their business. Now, any group of wild-eyed goobers can get together, decide something's a cool idea, scratch out a few graphics , and throw the whole thing up as a crowd funded EA. And people pay them money without knowing if they are 3 guys hitting the bong in the garage, or some unknown genius about to produce the new greatest thing. If there are no finance guys willing to plop down some cash based on a real assessment, you're taking your chances just as much as playing roulette in Vegas. Doesn't mean you can't complain if you don't like it, just the same as those finance guys could. But it does mean there's no standard and not even a guarantee you haven't just bought a pig in a poke.

What if that happened again on the next island you tried? And the one after that? Would you still just want a few tweaks? I'd want to toss that system in the trash, maybe even after the first time.

None of that requires an owner. We had a lot of that happening, among equals sharing an island with claims.

That wasn't the only problem we had with the old pve. Most of the people I knew on lawless were there because they couldn't find a claim. That wasn't even the only problem in lawless. At my location, people weren't trying to take a massive part for themselves, they were just trying to be nasty to other players and grief them by blocking their ships, spamming around them or building over key resources. People wanted a claim, they didn't want to just build on some other random person's claim. Why do you think island owners are begging people to come live there? Nobody wants to do that. It's also wrong to say after 24 hours no one can do shit to you. They can destroy each thing you build 24 hours after you build it. I don't think there are many people who build everything in one day and then just never change it. Every single time you spend the time to gather mats at 1x, and spend all day trying to put up a dock or an animal barn, or anything at all, that's another 24 hours the landlord can decide to wreck your stuff. Even after you have everything built, the landlord or one of the other tenants can build right up next to you or block your ships or or otherwise wreck your spot. Nobody wants it. Nobody wants to be at the mercy of some unknown player on a pve server. Everybody just wants a claim.

I think they needed 2 kinds of pve servers a lot more than they needed 2 kinds of pvp servers. That system isn't very good for small companies and solos, and there are a lot of us that still just want claims without having to own and police a whole island and pay a big gold cost. We just want a non-griefed place to get set up so we can go be pirates or whatever else we want to do.

Lotus! I wondered where you'd been. No way I'm going to colonies on EU Pve. I especially don't want to play the role of "Here's what it's like to start the game months after everyone else and find all the claims gone and the place spammed all to hell." I keep wondering when people will stop evaluating the system like everyone starts at zero hour and consider what it will be like for new players. Colonies does seem a nice deal for megas. The only problem is that the claim changes were supposed to help small companies and solos.

Oh, was he talking about me?

Most of the ones you know, maybe. Most of the ones I know are waiting for NA pve because they didn't want to play for 2 weeks and reroll again. If they can put up a separate pvp server to test a game mode that everyone told them they wouldn't play, they can certainly put up a NA pve server. In fact, they should put up a NA pve server in the game mode everyone told them they wanted to play and give that the same testing consideration they gave pvp.

Yes, because if you see that your players prefer to live on lawless, you should punish them severely for that! Bad players! Bad! No! Stop having fun in ways that we didn't mean for you to have fun. This is OUR sandbox, not yours.

No way, José! Let them just put back the old system with claim limits. I don't want to get griefed on lawless the way I did back in the beginning, and the pillar and foundation spam was terrible.

No thanks. All it would take to get the pvp crowd back there is a big group of pve people moving to the server. Nothing pvp loves more than people who don't like to fight and are unprepared to do so.

If they do, they need to wipe it and start over, preferably with a different claim system.

That only encourages massive builds. What's the purpose of having signs or putting 1 water reservoir on a foundation piece if it's just going to disappear? Or a guy just starting out that throws down 4 foundations for a bed and a smithy? Will that even last overnight while he's sleeping? You know what fixes spam? Claims, limited per person/company.

If I am an island owner, here's how I look at the suggestions - many of the small islands only have 1 or 2 good spots to build. People grab those first, even if they don't want to claim the island. That's a mistake, because whoever is paying the upkeep is going to feel they should have at least 1 of those spots. I know I would. Nobody is going to come along later and claim that island if they can't destroy some of that stuff. And if you don't want a landlord, you just build over the resources, and then nobody would ever want to claim that island. I don't know,, it looks like we are just coming up with more and more complicated systems to do something that could be a lot simpler - everyone gets to claim land with limits based on company size. With the old claim system with claims caps in place, I would go looking for land like this - 1. Do I like this biome? 2. Is there land available here? 3. If there anything awful right next to me? (Giant stone boxes, companies with racist or otherwise nasty names, etc) 4. How are the resources? And then I'd claim the land. With this new system, I'd still do all that, and then I'd have to worry about the landlord if there was one. Will he destroy my stuff? Will he let other people build stuff 2 tiles away from mine? Will HE build stuff 2 tiles away from mine? Is he going to let bunches of objectionable companies build on the island? (Sorry, but I am just not up for spending my free time hanging out with "Sexy Grandpa", or "N**erbomb"... names I have really seen in the game) If the land is not claimed, then I have to check to see if anybody else has already done any of those things, because I can't destroy their stuff if the timer's already gone off. And if I do destroy their stuff, then I get to be the mean landlord for destroying their stuff. Then assuming I jump all those hurdles, and claim land, there are the rules - you can't destroy anyone's stuff if the first thing they built was more than 12 hours ago, unless they are doing "excessive building", then you can destroy their stuff (just the excessive stuff?), and they can have a deed flag, and you can't destroy anything inside the deed. Or I do all those things and become a settler. I can build , but I have to wait 12 hours to see if I can stay, and then I can stay, but I can't expand "excessively", and I have to worry about what the landlord thinks and what he's going to do and who he's going to let build around me. It gets way too complicated. When do I just get to have a piece of land that I can control, and go out sailing and have some adventures? Why do I have to be a landlord at the mercy of some tenant, or a tenant at the mercy of some landlord when I just want to be a pirate?

Some interesting ideas there. I didn't understand the first part though. For example, say the server opens up, there's a land rush, and by the time some guy claims an island there are 4 other people on it who have been there 3-4 hours each. What happens? He doesn't get the destroy window against those 4?

Right now, it's an island. Previously it was a little more space than needed to put the stuff used to do crafting, taming, shipbuilding, etc. Previously, you owned that space and people couldn't destroy your stuff in pve. Now you get whatever some other player decides you can have, and they can destroy your stuff. As the eye doctor says, "Better? or worse?"

A small base as a start/return point IS a claim. (Assuming people mean a small base that other players can't screw around with)

I had wondered why they didn't do 2 flavors of pve, one with the improved original claims (limited flags and no ocean claims), and the other with this new island settlement system. Let people vote with their feet, and they could see what the player feedback really is, instead of collecting opinions from 3 random tweets, and 6 guys who live on discord, and spending 2 months making their dreams become reality. also - nothing will ever work "with admin action" except on the private servers. In-game CS ain't what it used to be.

If it hasn't changed, cobras will warp right through stone foundations, and sometimes even stone foundations placed 2 thick. I don't think your fence is gonna keep them out, even if you find a way to build it.

You didn't, in the ptr. However, if it's in the inventory, you can withdraw it from the inventory before you demolish the flag.

This may explain it - From Dollie "Think of it as a merged PvE network (because it has to be hosted somewhere) with a potential bonus merged one coming in the future shrug" (From an earlier thread I posted) If NA pve is only a potential bonus server, why start with it? Would have been nice if someone had told us we were supposed to be merging though.

I tried launching it with the ptr selected...just gave me the live servers to choose from.

I don't think there are any ptrs up. The player tracker shows a NA pve, but I think it's just got the name wrong.

The difference between playing pvp vs. pve is even bigger than the difference between the claims systems. Pve people don't like pvp.