Winter Thorne

We've already put up with a shipload of issues to provide them feedback. They ignored the feedback and served up another shipload of issues. Now we're supposed to go again and try to play through an even bigger shit ton of issues to give them the same feedback we gave them last time so they can ignore it again. They have the feedback. They don't need to torture the player base to get the feedback again.

There's no need to guess about it. They're just turning all the islands into lawless. We know what lawless looks like now. Why would anyone expect it to be any different? They've said what their solution is - upkeep. They think that putting upkeep on buildings will prevent people from doing that, which is a little crazy.e If it's a huge upkeep, the megas will just load up the resource boxes and not bat an eye. If it's a small upkeep, the megas will just load up the resource boxes and not bat an eye. So we've gone from people complaining about having to live on lawless to making everyone live on lawless....with upkeep. We have the Captain's Log describing it. What more details are you expecting? Well, sorta. I was thinking about that this morning. They have jumped in with some changes when people complained enough, like for weight griefing. The changes weren't always very good, but you had to give them credit for at least listening. However: We keep hearing them say they're looking for feedback, looking for feedback, looking for feedback. We have fought through all the bugs and the griefing, and the network problems, and everything else, and the pve community has given them a TON of feedback on claims, and the vast majority of people wanted either claims limits or upkeep or both. All the major discussions about claims on pve have been about whether there should be limits or upkeep. So they took our feedback and tossed it in the trash. Now we're expected to get through a server wipe, this new system with the inevitable spamming and griefing, all the new bugs that will be introduced, and (for the small companies) watch everyone else skip off to play new content we'll never get to do, and all because they want our feedback, want our feedback... They already have our feedback. The next feedback they're going to get is likely watching the door hit masses of pve players in the ass on their way out. Who is going to keep fighting through a bunch of crap every time to give them the same feedback when they pay no attention to it?

You're joking, right?

Somebody in another thread pointed out that either they make it so restrictive that small companies and solos can't manage to do it, or they make it easy enough that there's spam everywhere. That's probably true. I think big companies will spam anyway, because it's not like you have to run there every day and repair. You just put a ton of stuff in the box and it stays repaired. Either way, the bottom line is that for pve, they're saying now you have to live in Lawless AND you have to pay for it! I think they just didn't want to bother with the work of making a sensible claim system for pve. It's a really half-assed "fix" and along with the wipe and gating the new content behind the kraken, there's not one good thing in the plan for pve at all.

Yep. It's not a choice of going to pvp, the choice is whether to put up with that and keep playing. I think I'm gonna have a look around for something better to play, unless they come back today and declare it all an early April Fool's joke.

I'm a casual player and a grownup. I have stuff to do. I don't get to just sit and play for X hours/day without getting interrupted. I don't like toxic environments. None of that goes well with pvp.

You don't need to "welcome me aboard". I've only had a claim (one claim) for a couple weeks. Other than that I was living on Lawless the whole time. It sucked. Sure, you don't need to have a flag to build. You can build and then other people will run up and put up giant walls 3 squares away from you so you're living in a box. Then they can build shipyards that completely block you in, spam foundations all around you and then block off all the resources. It makes the atmosphere there so great, because not only are you living in a shithole, everyone hates everyone else for doing that stuff so all you hear in general chat all day long is "*^^%*(&^^&^". It was lovely. Lots of fighting to see there...something you claim you don't want in pve. I don't know what your idea of "fighting" is, but the only way to fight over claims in pve was to just hang around watching a timer. That's boring, but it's not fighting. You think things are going to decay because you need a bank with mats to keep them? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. All we needed was a claim limit so more people could get land, and people could build nice bases without interference. Everyone was complaining because they had to live on lawless, so the devs say "Ok, we'll fix it. Now you can ALL live on lawless." Maybe you're happy living in nasty ugly griefer land. Or maybe you're just happy that everybody gets to do it now and not just the unfortunates.

Or the stuff will just spawn right through the structures like it does now. I figured even GS wouldn't be dumb enough to stop resource spawns near buildings on lawless, but I could be wrong.

Where did you get the idea I wanted to scrap over flags on pve? No I don't want to scrap over flags. I think anybody who pays money for the game ought to get a flag to put down somewhere. I don't think we all ought to be forced to live like rats in the town dump, which is pretty much what lawless is.

That's why I wait for the Captain's Log to find out what's really happening. People hear all kinds of stuff in the livestream, and the devs start talking off the cuff and get confusing. Read the Captain's Log. It says no claims on pve. Anyone can build anywhere. What they've done is forced everyone to Lawless and added upkeep to it. It's a terrible move.

I don't know what you guys are drinking, Jat, but I'll have a double. I can't comment on the pvp changes. Well, I could if I sat and thought it through carefully, but why bother? Nobody else seems to be doing that. The pve changes are insane. They're especially nutty as you claim you're tying to help small companies, solos, casuals, etc. In order of importance: Claims - Everybody seems to be freaking most about the wipe, but seriously, that's not the worst thing happening here. The wipe is hard to take, but if a player came back to something really great, most would get over that. You know all those nice pictures that show up in the contest you have, where people have built beautiful unique bases? Kiss that shit goodbye, because you'll never see it again. **You'd think one of you guys could just take a few minutes and pop into a few locations in lawless and have a look around. Most of them are ugly as hell, people are fighting with each other for every inch of space, putting down posts and foundations and bigass ugly thatch walls. They are throwing up temporary crap everywhere and walling off each other's resources , ships and access routes. Resources spawn right through anything built there.** Pve players are unhappy if they can't find a claim and are forced to live in Lawless, so your response is to do away with claims and make everybody live in Lawless. Brilliant. Can't wait to see all your new promo shots of players living in what looks like the town dump. That's your vision for pve? That's how a great game looks to you? Come on, that's amateur hour. It's obvious you gave up on the pve servers when you did that. Just put up a big ol' billboard that says, "Here's what's left over from our real sandbox. You can use it if you want. Oh, the cat's been in there, but don't mind that." All you had to do was limit claims. That with the extra islands would have given everyone a shot at a nice base. Dumbest ...move....ever. New content - The video looks very nice. Too bad the smalls/solos/casuals will never get to see it. Seriously, wtf are you guys thinking? You want to help that group and the only attractive thing about this update gets locked behind the kraken? Server wipe - I won't comment on whether you needed to do a full server wipe, just wipe the map and claims or how that could have worked, but you know server wipes piss off a lot of people. So disregarding the pvp changes, let's recap what this announcement means to pve players: There's going to be a server wipe and you will lose all your progress and accomplishments. But don't worry. When you come back, it'll be wonderful because 1. You'll have to live on lawless with no building restrictions (Edit): And your new crappy spot will decay and you'll have to pay upkeep for that dump. 2. There will be great new content which many of you will never see That's some fabulous sell job there, guys. It would take some real geniuses on Madison Ave. a good number of 4 martini lunches to come up with something that brilliant. Congratulations.

Why wait when you know everything you're doing will get wiped, if you care that much about it? What's the point?

Nah. I'm slow I can find plenty of trouble to get into in 2 or even 3 weeks. Hell, I haven't even used a glider suit yet. What about claims? What are they going to do with them?

I'm not going to do anything ambitious either. I'm just going to do crazy stuff and fun stuff...and crazy fun stuff. There's still a good bit of this game I haven't explored yet. I think I'll do that and go into the clean server with better ideas.

Someone is saying all the new content is locked behind the kraken. Is that true?

Thanks for posting that. I can't watch the livestream. Hoping you'll post the other highlights in this thread too. So it's a server wipe and not a claim wipe?

Calm down, honey. Nobody is attacking you personally. There's no need for teenage peenie references. The problem with claims is that a 2 man company can have 200 of them or 400 of them or 800 of them. That's a problem even if it makes you very very happy to do that. You keep saying "there are claims out there". But that's not the point. The point is to do with overall game design, and ongoing management of claims. Not what's out there right now because of a huge post-launch dropoff followed by a 21 day timer. That timer is going to free up a whole bunch of claims most of which will be immediately grabbed by neighboring claims, and now we are right back to square one. Without claim limits, the only new land becoming available will be 21 days after somebody decides to quit. So the devs face a great decision on that. They can either encourage players to quit so new players can try to find some land (before someone like you makes it his 423rd claim), or they can try to make sure that there's enough land to go around. If their goal is to get 25 new players a week into the game, 25 older players have to quit to make room for them. You seem to accept it as given that all land has to be "stolen" (which is weird for pve), but I don't. I think there should always be land that just is not claimed yet. I don't think part of the pve game should fighting other players for land, especially for new players and especially against someone who probably is already sitting right next door to it watching the flag count down. That's another part of the problem, especially on pve. Many players don't have "a long night". Instead they have kids and jobs and chores to do and families to be with. There are @ 423 islands with claimable land. After the dust settles from booting all the quitters, let's say you have 10 people /day leaving the game split over 423 islands. (And 10 people a day is a very high estimate) That's a needle in a haystack finding a claim that's expiring within, say 2 days. Add to that that you need to find nobody else sitting there to grab it, and that the timer has to expire at a time you can actually be around to contest it. These kinds of players are not going to be happy searching for a week, finally finding a claim that's going to expire in 2 days, 6 hours and 35 minutes, when at that time it's going to be 2AM and they have to be to work at 8, and by the time they get home someone else will have grabbed it up. It's too much to expect people to put up with when they're starting out in a new game, and it gets boring as hell. People want to get into their set-up phase and get going.

It's a good question but it might be moot by tomorrow. For someone to contest your flag, you have to have been away from the claim for 21 days. That's a long time for someone who's still playing the game. I agree they shouldn't just be able to pop back when they get a warning. But right now they can. If they put limits on claims, this won't be as much of an issue. People will have claims they care about for some reason, and they won't be away from them for 21 days anyway, so nobody will be claiming the territory. As far as fast travel on pve, I'll say as a more casual player fast travel is necessary for people like to actually do any sailing and traveling! If you need to go 8 grids away for something, and there's no fast travel, it would take me 4 days or so to do that. If I can fast travel to 3 grids away (and plan my time carefully to keep spouse and pet aggro at bay for a few hours) I can do it in a day. But it may take me an entire day of playing time to get there. If you play with a lot of interruptions both planned and unplanned, sailing is hard to do. There's not always an island nearby to stop at and you can't just jump up and run off for 10 mins. if you need to. Fast travel doesn't eliminate traveling for me, it just breaks the map up into manageable pieces so I can get where I need to go.

No wonder you don't understand the problem. You ARE the problem. A 2 man crew doesn't need 120 claims. How many claims on the pve servers do you think right now today are unclaimed? 10 days after the first 21 day timers go off, getting rid of all the deadwood, how many claims do you think will be unclaimed on the pve servers? How about 15 days after, or 20? Under the current system, there will never be any unclaimed land on the pve servers. Ever. But your 2 man crew will have 400 claims. You call people lazy. How intellectually lazy and challenged do you have to be to imagine what a new player, entering the game in May is going to find when they set out on a great adventure in search of land? Don't be ridiculous.

Disclaimer: I'm talking about pve here. Sure, there's not as much trouble as there used to be in finding them. But there's still trouble. I've read maybe 5 or 6 posts from people who have found claims on the forums, but I've read at least that number of people saying claims were becoming available near them, and they were going to grab them up, and then make some land available. You can't blame people for doing that. Nobody wants bad neighbors. But that's what's happening now. Claims are becoming freed up and are being grabbed by the people who are already there. Those people have an advantage in being nearby, and they know where the good land is and where the good resources are. Some of them are also using this to "trade up", and sure, they'll leave a bit of land for someone else, but it'll be small and resource-poor and likely covered in snake spawn. That's understandable as well, but not encouraging for new players. And many of these players are holding over 20 claims per person. They don't need to. People need to understand that what they personally experience is not the same as what other people experience, whether that's claims, or SOTD or animal glitches, or client crashes. They need to stop coming in here and saying, "You're not seeing that because I'm not seeing that." So I don't agree that the new 21 day limit fixed the entire problem, but if it makes you happy, change the problem description to this: If the game is popular, there will not be enough land for everyone to have unlimited amounts of claims on pve, and this will be a particular problem for solos and small groups.

When I was sailing everywhere on a raft, I had a hard time at islands because you can get permanently stuck in shipyards, and the raft turning radius is awful, especially if the wind is with you. If I had a situation where I had to leave and thought it might be a problem, I'd stick a sign on the raft apologizing and saying when I'd be back for it.

I was really worried about this game the first few days of EA in pve. Seemed like everybody in the game and on the forums was really juvenile and toxic. The people who talk about player numbers dropping off make me laugh because I don't see any of those people around anymore. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I would have been embarrassed to recruit any friends or family to play this, but now, depending on today's livestream, I can if I want. Hopefully we will get new players and they'll be good ones. I've had so many people helping me with stuff and being social in a good way, it's ridiculous. (Thanks especially to Daemon, Boomervoncannon, Jean, and Lin)

Fixing the graphics glitch is probably time consuming, and they do have other priorities. But really, in the interim, all they need to do is take them out of the game until they're fixed. Not time consuming. Not a big deal.

Anybody who makes forceful and rude design suggestions without even taking into account the massively different gameplay on pvp vs. pve should just be immediately ignored. If you really knew anything about game design, you'd be able to comment on them both. Even if you'd rather not comment on the one you don't play, you could at least include information about which server your suggestion is for and why it's needed there. lf you want bonus points, start out by describing what problem you're trying to fix, what your solution is, and what the expected results should be. Then people can discuss it. Like this: The problem is that the claim system isn't working right, and on pve servers, too many first runners grabbed up too many claims, now new people, especially small companies and solos can't find one. Solution - have a gold cost for claims Result - profit?? (Edited to add a snark tag for the example, as it's drawn from the underpants gnomes, meaning gold cost has no relation to the problem and would actually make it worse)

A server wipe and a claim wipe are two different things. You don't have to do a server wipe to fix claims. You don't really even have to do a claim wipe to put a limitation on claims.