Winter Thorne

I'd rather participate in real threads started by people who actually play the game, There's plenty of those to post comments in. Quit trying to make yourself a celebrity on the forums where you must start every thread and everyone has to respond to you. Especially when you don't even play. Find someplace else to go be "famous".

Had some refugees from pvp come through tonight, a guy and his girlfriend, wondering if there was any land to claim. I told them to wait a few days and start looking when flags expire.

You made a post in general forum about something which might be right for pvp but not for pve. When someone mentions the impact to pve, you yell at them for talking about pve. I recommend you post the idea in the pvp forums, and you reply that the ideas is for "official servers" (pvp and pve). I don't think you even understand that there are official pve servers because you uselessly point out there are more players on "official servers", which makes no sense at all. If you want to make the suggestion that it's for all the servers, then pve people get to talk about how it affects pve. If you don't like that, then go post it in the pvp forum. "Hard core" is a meaningless term. I don't think Grapeshot has ever used that in advertising the game. Even so, you could just as well say it's meant to be a hard core game, why do players get to resurrect after they die? Because nobody would play if they couldn't, that's why. There's no point in restricting travel on the pve servers, and even with fast travel, it usually only gets you part way to where you need to go, then you sail the rest. It's not a big deal on pve, and there's no reason to restrict it there. Pvp is a different story.

That depends on the imagination of the dev team, I'd guess. I don't think there should be just one end goal in a sandbox game anyway, and it sure shouldn't be to go kill X, or own the most circles on the map, which are both pretty shallow. It seems like the devs are also promoting some other aspects with their showcases of really well-built claims and flag designs. Jat said they had some sort of plan for towns and cities. I'm hoping there's enough structure behind that to make some serious pve competition in trading, politics, diplomacy, etc. (None of which have anything to do with claim flags in their current state) I'm in wait-and-see mode. On a small scale, they've surprised me already with some little things like the written notes in today's patch. I've been wishing for something like that for a while, for all of us who play in loosely connected small groups & solo. Nobody has asked for them with all the bigger stuff happening, but someone thought of it and here they are. Somebody is thinking about creative things, so fingers crossed for the future.

And yet, here you are.

Your suggestions might be fine for pvp servers, they don't work for pve servers. And if you're talking about "official servers", why are you yelling at some guy for talking about the PVE type? It's an "official server" too. Do you not understand there are two kinds of official servers and the game is played very differently on them?

Because with claim limits, everyone's entitled to X number of claims and they get to use them however they want. Making them pay gold for it doesn't make them use it if they have a good reason not to. It's more a "I'm going to make this so annoying for you that you quit" mechanic, and I'm guessing that's not what the game really needs right now. The problem is, it'll also make active players like me quit too. Remember how much everyone complained when they started the FOY because it was "just one more damn thing I need to do before I can do the things I want to do"? Getting gold to pay for claims is like that for some of us. I have around 100 gold total right now. I've not spent any on anything, so I guess that's how much I've gotten since day 1 (minus a bit of loss when the SOTD sunk my boat). I think between the inactive claim timers and a claim limit, that may fix the problem. It's worth waiting to see how things look after the timers, and then after a limit, and seeing if more needs to be done. No need to hit it with a sledgehammer all at once and make people crazy (crazier) again.

We are all very proud of you, here at The Institution.

If there's a claim limit, that handles it. Everybody who pays for the game gets X number of flags. If they keep playing and visiting their claim they get to keep the flags. If they quit the flags expire. Why should we care if they use it? Sometimes it's better if they don't! (More resources...looks nicer with less crowding)

I don't agree with all of those but it's an interesting list. What is the upkeep needed for if you have all the other rules? What problem does it fix?

Something else to think about - you don't need more land per person the more people you have in the company. You need less! A base for 1 person needs to be big enough to have all the workstations, probably a taming pen, an animal shelter, shipyards, dock space, gardens, etc. A base for 10 people doesn't need 10 times as much because they are sharing all the big things that take up room. Lots of the small group and solo people are not really playing alone. They make friends in their regions and play more as loose groups. The game should be taking advantage of that by making the alliance system better. If you could give individual permissions on locks/buildings/animals, etc to an ally, then these people could share space as well, and they wouldn't each need as much space. Improvements to the alliance system would help with claim space as well.

The other thing is to think of it in terms of what problem you're trying to solve. The problem is that some players grabbed up too much land and now others can't get a claim. The solutions are: 1. Put an expiration on claims and make the timer shorter for large numbers of claims - this was a decent response to the problem. It should free up any claims held by inactive players, without hurting the active ones, and we haven't seen what the results will be yet. It will help partially. 2. Limit the number of claims - This just needs to be done. There's no way there can be an unlimited number of claims per person. Assuming the game stays alive, they'll run out of room eventually anyway and have to put more land in, but it'll happen much faster with unlimited claims. 3. Make claims cost something, either gold or mats - This won't take the place of limiting the number of claims. Huge companies would have no problem with it, and people who play a lot and can get gold easily also won't have a problem. The only people who will lose claims from this are the smalls/solos/casuals, and those are the ones they are trying to help with the changes. So if this is done, it would have to be in addition to the first 2 fixes. Doing all 3 would be a mistake, because you may not need to do #3. Numbers 1 and 2 would probably fix the problem. When you add in #3, you've just made another unnecessary hoop for players to jump through. If you have a player who wants to come in, do some building, some trading, sail around gathering mats and stuff, they've already got plenty of other things they have to do that aren't anything to do with that. They have to manage their food and vitamins and temperature, maybe every so often they have to run off and do a useless FOY, they've got to work around all the bugs at this stage of the game, and they have to spend a lot of time trying to keep safe from griefers. (Although that's better than it was). Now finally, after all that, they get to do what they want. If you add a needless gold payment to claims, now they also have to drop what they want to do and go out and get gold. People keep saying how easy that is. They probably use tames for it or have groups that get together for it. If you don't, it's not at all easy. I'm pretty sure everyone suggesting this thinks if it happens there won't be a restriction on claims. That's not true, because a gold cost won't fix the problem for the people they're trying to help. Does anyone really want this if claims are also restricted...just as some kind of great game feature they think we ought to have?

You're not repeating yourself. This is the first time you admitted that it's not a game problem. It's just that you want your neighbor's property. And that's pretty hard to imagine...every 3 weeks for 5 years. I mean, if you don't actually know the guy, you have no idea what he's doing with that spot, but ok, let's imagine that. If he paid for the game like you did, and got his spot fairly, as I assume you did, the fact that you want his spot is not a problem the game needs to solve. He gets to have his spot the same as you do, even though he doesn't do anything with it, and you really really want it. Every player gets to have his spot if he cares enough about it to log in every X days to keep it, because they each paid for the game just like you did. The fact that you covet your neighbor's property isn't a game problem, and certainly not a gamebreaking problem to the point where they need to ruin the game for those of us who don't enjoy having to do a gold rush just to keep the damn claims. Now I'll repeat myself. A number of people here have told you that is IS a problem for them to come up with rent every week for a claim. But you don't listen. You just keep saying it's not a problem.. If I have to come up with gold every week I'll probably have to quit. If I decide I don't want to quit, I'll have to take up taming, which I wasn't all that keen about, (And I'll have to drop a skill line I wanted to do that) in order to be able to do treasure maps, to get gold. That means that instead of being able to build the nice little New England coastal place I was working on, I'll have to ruin it with a bigass barn with gigantic freaking gates, and then when I'm all done building that mess, I have to go tame some animals all so I can go get gold, which I didn't want to do in the first place. And I don't get to do any of the stuff I want because I'm busy running around doing all this useless crap. Just because you want your neighbor's property. Nope.

You don't listen very well, do you? Let's try again. You feel that there's a problem in the game with "freeloaders" and to fix the problem you want people to pay a cost for claims. What is a "freeloader" and what problem are they creating in the game that needs to be fixed by having a cost for claims?

What the hell is a "freeloader"? If it's someone who took a claim that doesn't play anymore, the claim will expire. If it's someone who took a claim and still plays, how can they be a freeloader? They have as much right to a claim as you do, you both having paid your way into the game.

It doesn't fix anything, and there's no point in forcing solos and new players to have to do that. Q: What problem are you trying to solve? A: New people, solos and small companies have a hard time getting claims because other people grabbed too many. So you limit claims and put a timer on them to get rid of people who have moved or quit. This frees up claims for other people to take. Q: Now what problem are you trying to solve? A: ??? There are 2 problems. I don't agree gold is easy to get. It's not necessary for fixing claims. There's no reason to make people do weekly gold runs just to keep their claims when they'd maybe like to do something else instead.

What do you mean by doing nothing?

Yet according to Jat, tames were never supposed to be a big part of this game. For that reason, and because they're so freaking buggy people on my island can barely keep them alive and unstuck, I'm not working with them much. It sounds like it's not gold that's borderline broken, but the whole system of requiring something that's not supposed to be a big part of the game, which is also buggy as hell. Either bears are going to be the most important weapon in the game and they need to fix all that animal crap right away, or they've scaled the encounters badly for anyone not using them. But in the end, this thread is about the claim system. So far there have been threads about how we have to kill fast travel to fix claims, use taming to fix claims, add pvp to the pve servers to fix claims... how much farther off track can it get? The problem with claims (on pve) is that too many claims are held by too few people, and too many claims are held by people who no longer play, and that claims overlap and the flag timers might be buggy. They can fix claims by fixing claims. It doesn't need to be a spaghetti mess involving all the other systems to fix it.

You realize you posted in the General Forum, right? Might want to edit your OP and say you're talking about pvp, or delete it and repost in the pvp forum. They really are two different games.

No cost for claims, please. Just limit the number. Not everybody is out there making 100 gold per day. If that was the case, I'd have to quit. I couldn't do it.

You assume a lot of strange things. I'm not satisfied with claims the way they are now. I only have one claim, and I only got that one recently. I lived in Lawless until a couple weeks ago. More than you, I do put myself in other people's positions. The number of claims per person needs to be restricted, then you'll be able to find a claim. If you add gold cost to claims, it will make some people unhappy. People keep suggesting all kinds of crazy stuff to fix the claim problem, like making them cost a lot or doing away with fast travel. There are ways to fix the claim problem without making anyone unhappy. (Except the people who expected to grab 50 claims and keep them) Any fix that annoys people when you don't need to annoy people would be pretty stupid.

I can "pve", (whatever that is), and it's not only base building for me. I spend a lot of time first thing every day killing the big pile of cobras that accumulate overnight. My buildings are stone. They eat the storage chests and really, anything else around that's not 100% stone. I put up a sign saying "No Snakes Allowed" and they ate the sign. To me, "pve" is whatever I want it to be that day - gathering mats on 2x, sailing around looking for stuff I don't have, goofing around with the neighbors, getting new skills and figuring out how they work. Every hour or so I get interrupted by RL and go afk. Gold hasn't been worth anything in the game so far, so I've not focused on it. So obviously "pve" is not the same for me as it is for you. Not everybody plays the game the same way.

I'm glad you've pushed back the update, and really happy about the test server. Please don't put upkeep cost on claims. That won't help smaller companies and solos. Please keep the existing timer so people can take vacations, etc. Restricting the number of claims is good. Please keep in mind the size of an area needed by a solo or small company. Many of your buildings and work stations are unnecessarily large. Taming pens have to be large. Some area has to be reserved to let stuff spawn. Some area of the sea has to be reserved to prevent people blocking your harbor. Most important - when you restrict the number of claims, give everyone a long warning on it, and let them release the claims they don't want, so that they can keep what's important to them or heads will explode. I'm looking forward to claims being sorted out. The number of huge empty claims is making a lot of zones very dead, with no chatter, no community to them at all. It'll be good to see some more activity happening in them.

It would be a big deal for me. I've never had 500g all in my pocket at one time since I started. But then I don't have a warship with guns for SOTD and nearly every treasure map I've tried to do has been bugged or above my solo capabilities. Getting 500g every week to keep one claim would mean I'd have to stop building my base, repairing ridiculous nightly damage from alpha snakes, or sailing around looking for mats. There are only so many hours in a day.

I think it'll be ok. They say their intention is to help solos and small companies for one thing, and sure they may not design it right for that on the first go round, BUT..the news that they're going to have a new test server to try things out first and give feedback is great. So when the test server goes up, I know I'll be all over that like white on rice, and then back in here to tell them what's wrong with it. They've already set the timers, and that should cover vacations. My main concern is making a claim cost. I have a really hard time getting gold, and all the mats I can gather are going into building a base, so hopefully they'll realize solos can't manage all that upkeep. I expect they'll set a claim limit, but it'll be a big one, probably. We'll see.