Winter Thorne

I expect they'll move some of the sliders back after a while.  Right now, this is a game of The Haves and The Have Nots.    For the people who couldn't connect, couldn't stay connected, couldn't progress due to bugs and griefers, couldn't claim any land before it was all grabbed up, and had their raft and all possessions eaten by giant snakes every time they could make a few hours progress,  or had their claims griefed  by massive companies abusing bugs, this is probably giving them the help they need to not rage quit the game at this point.

If everything had gone just fine and dandy, I'd agree with most of your points,

10 hours ago, RyuujinZERO said:

Sad part is, when they fix the claims, it'll lock-in all those stolen claims and reward the exploiters, people with overlapping claims, being taxed for living in their own claim or having lost entire buildings will never get them back.

It should never been allowed to go on this long. When we arrived on our island there was 5 or 6 different companies living on our corner of the island. Now it's just 3, soon to be 2, a particularly aggressive Taiwanese company having systematically driven people out through overlapping claims and general hostility; and yet there's no recourse for it in PvE, because it should never have happened if things were working properly.

Yeah, after reading the patch notes, it looks like there's nothing there to roll back all the garbage that happened with claims up till now.  Many people never were able to claim anything, and I'm one of them.  The longer the game runs without doing something about it, the less likely they will, too.  It would be hard to let everybody adjust to all these changes, wait 3 more weeks, then take away claims to fix it.

So now, because of all the bugs , server issues, and griefing, if I ever do get any land, I get to be some kind of automatic serf, paying taxes to somebody who went out fast and just grabbed everything.    It's a pretty dumb move.  How do you expect to keep on selling a game to new customers when this is all they can look forward to?

18 minutes ago, Loni said:

good news! Ready for more news about it and how it is gonna or not gonna affect already claimed land by one person. Will people lose all their flags except the first ones or...? This still wont help anyone that is still in need of land

You misunderstood me.  The tweet just says they're looking at pve claims.  All the priority wishlist stuff is mine. 

Just now, killahsin said:

i appreciate his tweets but this company was fed millions of dollars, hire customer service staff. 3 people. 3 freaking people to disperse information on the forums, why is that to much to ask? Apparently with the enxt gen game development companies it is. Why not just give us freaking access to slack and save even more money so he doesnt have to waste his apparently super valuable time or company resources and not post anywhere. 

Well, yeah..the communications are pretty stupid.  They've opened up so many avenues of communication, nobody knows where to go to find things.  And if you've got official forums, that seems like the one place you ought to put announcements.  Tweeting, discords and the rest ought to be used just for fun stuff and idle chat.  I don't even like having to use discord for a company, although most of them require it.

But the news about the pve claims is good at least.

Jatheish just tweeted about it.

That's good news!

My priority list:

1.  Step one -  fix the bugs

2.  Step 2, reduce # of claims per person

3.  Step 3 -  increase the timer.

5 minutes ago, Malfunktion said:

Yes you ate toxic too. If you stick up for racists you are one yourself 

Where do people get the idea this is acceptable anywhere?  Seriously, try this in any meatspace at all and you'd get banned, thrown out, maybe arrested.  But some idiots think it's ok because......computer, or something.

Makes me nostalgic for the old games, where some server god would just ZOTZ you on the spot for being such an ass.

5 minutes ago, Bolognapwny said:

This isnt the game for you, they make 100's of titles for people like you... let us have our title please.

 

Please quote the design spec you're reading from that says only mega groups are allowed...no solos or smaller groups.    Or are you a dev in disguise?  You don't have any more say in what this game is than the rest of us if you haven't got something like that, so put up or shut up.

6 hours ago, Nari said:

Benefit to the payer? None really, but it provides incentive to control and contest territory. I imagine the economy is going to end up a much bigger part of PvE than PvP down the line. Taxation and territory are assets. But I'm not really going to defend the notion that it should or must be a part of PvE. Just pointing out that it is a mechanic that is much more than a tax. Claims/BP Mats/Diplomacy are just some reasons to keep taxes.

According to the game description (sales literature), you're supposed to be able to build towns and cities here.  I have no clue what the commerce system is supposed to be like, but if you have to travel to shops to buy things, stands to reason you have some bigger regional spots (towns , cities) with a lot of shops in them.  I'd pay taxes to be able to have a shop in a big town, and be able to have a small permanent house nearby to work from.

That's how a good game would be designed, so god knows what we'll get here.

3 hours ago, Bolognapwny said:

Well hate to break it to you weebs that wanna role-play on official pvp servers.... this game is not going to be designed for your solo can't interact with other another human deficiencies, and it shouldn't be.  You can of course take your lil lawless zone sloop and sail the high seas for 5 minutes all you want... They literally make private servers for you kids... stop crapping up the forums for solo crap.

/signed the thousands of us that can communicate and participate with others.

Who wouldn't want to spend their leisure time hanging out with 500 guys just exactly like Chuckles, here?  (Or worse)  Gee..what an attractive prospect.  I know when I get some (rare) time to do stuff I want, the first thing I always do is run and find a bunch of belligerent, unintelligent, humorless, arrogant little boys to spend time with.  Because that's what FUN is all about, dammit.

You damned solos and small groups better hurry up and join the Megas, because I said so, and you dumbasses don't even know how much fun you're missing.  Hell, we already have 35 guys in our Mega named on some variation of p3nis, and 2 dozen trying to see how many times they can work n***r into their names.  It's a riot!  And hey, if you're female, hurry up, so we can harass you all effing day...voice chat mandatory.   You kids, you weebs, you anti-social freaks need to STFU and just associate with us.  

Hilarious.

Another guy who thinks his 25 bucks entitles him to say what the game is and is not and who can play and who cannot.

Everybody is waiting for some direction and some "vision" from the devs, but they're too busy fixing network and server issues.    So many players ready to breach the gap to tell everyone what to do.  Such leadership!  So much winning.

Cracks me up.

I don't think anybody denies that servers and network should be the first priority.  The problem is that there have been a number of other fixes going on, and a few communications about upcoming things, and none of them are the major problems people are seeing.  Claiming, griefing in pve, etc.  For a dev to come into the forums in this context and answer something about tarot is ridiculous.  They need to say something about the major issues, even if it's just "We're aware, we'll update you on what we'll do about them", and half the upset people would be happy.

Some people who have gone off the rails will never be happy, and aren't worth worrying about.

12 minutes ago, peter said:

the game states "MATURE CONTENT".... so yes if its just chat or voice or imaginary game mechanics you have to able to deal with it or not play a "MATURE CONTENT" game... what is not ok is that you can be restricted of playing the game for more than an hour! you have "MATURE CONTENT" all over the internet... get over it

and i know of firends experience restaurant with the chef doing kinda "MATURE CONTENT".. its his restaurant and you can choose to go there or not


the bigger issue is when you start censoring crap, where is the line? what can be censored and what can not be censored? its a very difficult topic... and i prefer open internet with BS that i can just ignore over being censored just for my opinion!

Your arguments are not at all logical.

Re. censoring and where the line is -  The owner sets the line.  Not you.  You don't get to define "Mature Content".  The owner defines it like this for the forums in the section Articles of Agreement - 

Official Forum Articles of Agreement

All sailors, swashbucklers, and landlubbers are invited to join the forums and participate in discussions (notwithstanding any VAC bans on Steam you may have). Though fair thee warned, you’ll need to abide by the following rules;

1. Respect all members of the community. Any behaviour that involves racism, discrimination, or personalized harassment (outlined further below under ‘Warnings’) will not be tolerated. You will quickly find yourself thrown overboard. 

It would be very odd if they cared about this in the forums but not in the game, so we are waiting to see what they plan to do about this kind of crap.  So, considering you don't own the company, telling everybody else what the rules are and to "get over it" is pretty silly, especially considering the owner has already defined some rules.

24 minutes ago, peter said:

You might be a bit too SJW here..  it's true that a mechanic that potentially locks you out of the game for many days is very bad... But it's still open internet and if people want sex slaves or behave in other ways bad it's their own thing... It's just a game! But not being able to play a game you payed for without restart because an asshole locks you up and force feeds you is not ok

What the hell are you talking about?  Nobody's talking about consenting people having sex in a game.  Nobody cares about that, as long as we don't have to be involved in it.   We're talking about people trying to play a game where random strangers can lock them up and force them to have sex to escape, or where random idiots can surround you shouting racist or otherwise nasty shit that gets broadcast over voice into your house.

"Only a game" is a lame excuse for bringing in real-world issues and making it your main purpose just to harass and annoy other players.    There is no other leisure concept besides online gaming where people argue that it's perfectly fine to ruin everyone else's time like this.  A restaurant?  You'd get thrown out.  A basketball court?  You'd get beat up or arrested.  There's nothing special about online gaming that should make this ok.

In the end it's not up to any of us anyway.  If some game developer wants to make a game that is full of hate and rape and racism and the equivalent of a bunch of toddlers running around at a nice party yelling "poopy pants!" over and over, you know what?  They can make that game, in the same way that you could CHOOSE to open a restaurant where the customers are allowed to come in and piss in the corners.   But they need to own it, not go around pretending they've made some great mainstream online game for everyone to buy and play.  So  Grapeshit needs to either step up and do something about this, or they need to be made to own it, and all the baggage that goes along with that.  (Reduced player base, bad press, etc.)  And they'd need to stop pretending they care about stuff like that by making up some polite rules, but only for the forums.

It's bizarre that they even have a special section in the forums with all the rules you have to follow to not get kicked out, but in the actual game it's 1000x worse than this and nobody at all policing that.  They care more about the stupid forum than they do the game.  They've even got a mod going around in here carefully moving misplaced threads into the right sections for things like crew recruitment, but people in the game trying to hold sex slaves and making character names with as many iterations of the word n**er as they can fit into it....crickets.  Nada.  This kind of shit was bad enough 10 years ago, but now with voice chat it comes right into the damn living room., and it's creepy as hell.   I play with the sound off, but still, you can't avoid the morons.

8 minutes ago, Percieval said:

Woohoo! 

Hope your friend is low too. 

Good luck.

Also, don't know if you get the option logging in to choose a different home server, but would that get you out of it?

Here's what you do.  Get all the screenshots, names, chat, everything else.    Make one more post to the devs to prove you asked them to fix it, then take all that stuff you collected and start sending it to every news outlet you can think of, and all the social media you use.  Forget the gaming sites, they're toxic anyway.  Write it up like -  Here's this new popular game made by Grapeshot and available through Steam (send it to steam support too), and they are promoting this garbage.  They'll either take action or it'll ruin them.  There's enough people down on online gaming anyway, and when they see this shit they'll go ballistic.  Tell Grapeshot and Steam what you are going to do next if they don't fix it.

Don't know if you're US or not, but if it were me, I'd send it to all the local news outlets as well as every congressman who hates games, all the facebook groups I belong to, especially the political action groups, and all the prominent game bloggers who have a brain and aren't bros.

Make it more painful for them NOT to fix it than it would be to fix it.

2 hours ago, CaliDazze said:

 

Edit: just realized you made a female character so you were basically asking for this to happen..haha

Ummm, no.  Think again, Sparky.

I have a raft stuck in rocks that's actually a graphics glitch.  (Like being stuck in a wild pig when you're fighting the pig, if you've ever had that happen).  Can't access the sails to raise or lower them, because the anchor is down and will only raise for about 6 seconds and then lower again.

I'm hoping the next server restart shakes it free.  If not, it's a goner.

5 hours ago, Hodo said:

Sorry but you built a Sloop, a 3 man ship, for yourself.. when you should stick to a Raft.   Unless you are hiring NPC crew... which again requires gold coins which means you probably arent doing it alone.  

 

21 minutes ago, Hodo said:

Solo players are supported you just have to play within your means.  Don't go trying building a Galleon because you have 20 hours a day to do it, and expect to sail it.  Just build a Sloop and use that.  Learn to hire NPC crew... which means learn to get gold coins... you may be rafting it for a while. 

 

 

 

Build a sloop.  Don't build a sloop.  I get better advice from a magic 8 ball.

The devs have totally borked the game design, that's the problem.  They got so excited about their game, they figured everyone would quit everything else they do and just play Atlas.  You get just about enough time to sleep before you gotta get back in and rescue your ship from decay.  You don't show up at your claim every 3 days and it's gone.  (IF you can get a claim, and weren't some poor slob with a life or a bad connection problem on day 1)   So quit your jobs, drop out of school, tell your family to take a hike, cause ARK  is not a game, it's a CALLING.  And yer gonna work work work at it until you drop, or need a shower, whichever comes first.

11 minutes ago, Bleurgh said:

Sadly this is probably exactly as they want it to be. The ultimate 'pirate' experience. If you are a mega douche, you win. 

We've had boats sunk, claims nicked, we have just given up for now.

Shame because the whole pirate ark thing really appealed to us, but ironically the pirate part is a little too realistic with the constant griefing

If this is what they think, they're crazy.  Using a broken game mechanic is not "being a pirate".    It's being an ass.

The mechanic is either broken or so poorly designed my cat could have done better.  If you can't retaliate against another player, you shouldn't have a mechanic (broken or otherwise) that lets you sink someone's ship.  In PvE, the competition against other players needs to be economic and social, not physical.

I agree.  Some of the issues (performance and bugs) fall under EA, some are just incomprehensible design decisions.

I don't have any problem with them working through things like server and network tuning, but things like obvious overspawns and the bizarre rules for claiming, especially on PvE aren't EA type issues.  Some of those even continue to be made.  They DID make a change to claims -  now you can still hold as many as you want, but there's a 3 hour timer.  Sheesh,   bad decision with the number you can claim AND a bad decision on the timer.  They deserve all the rants they can get about that.

Some people are justified in yelling about some of the EA issues too though.  When your server has been down for 8 hours and some dev posts, "Ok, the maintenance is done, all the servers are back up!", people have to get their attention somehow.

3 minutes ago, Coggage said:

Stick a claim down - if someone hasn't been active for 3 days they lose their claim to you.  You have nothing to lose by trying.  I noticed that the INSANE creature spawns on the island I have a claim on are gone.  I killed the only 3 Crocs I saw - lvl 6 was the highest - because they were a nuisance more than a threat.  I had ample time to Gather stuff, I even lay down and dug for water twice and wasn't attacked by anything.  From getting 6 to 10 bits of Fiber to make arrows I was able to leisurely take every patch I saw.

Up to now I was running to my raft and storing things in locked boxes in a desperate attempt to survive and scrape a handful of resources, but - by the gods! - I will actually be able to start building now.  I was past all hope yesterday and was ready to sail off and try my luck elsewhere, knowing it would be as bad everywhere else...

Apparently the 3 day limit is bugged.  People are reporting claims gone after logging out overnight or even for 4 hours.  Feels too mean to take advantage of that against someone going through all the same crap we are.

2 hours ago, Dasenthal said:

If you absolutely want to be a solo player AND have a base/ territory. You should probably play on PvE once they get things figured out over there.

 

If you want to have territory and pvp, you probably shouldn't be a solo player.

Finally,  if you want to play pvp and be a solo player you probably won't get to claim territory. (This isn't to say you can't build in lawless zones).

Other than going to an unofficial server I don't think you can get all 3.

For my part, I WAS talking about the pve server.    The way things work right now, there's not much chance of it working for solo/small crews.  You say "once they get it figured out",  but this is us helping them figure it out, if you know what I mean.  The devs don't seem aware that claiming and being able to destroy other player's stuff is a problem in the pve server.  At least they haven't said so, and seem to be saying the opposite.  They haven't even acknowledged the problems in any way that makes sense.

They really need to come out and post how they want this to work on the pve servers,  so people can decide if they want to play the game and how they want to play it. 

36 minutes ago, Flint Hullcrusher said:

i am so amazed when i read these threads of the anger from people that just don’t get the fact that a testing phase means the game is more than likely not going to work correctly at first.

That’s the whole point people. Yes you paid a discounted rate to enter the game early but you are forgetting your purpose.

Your purpose at this stage is to help the developers fine tune the game and get it ready for release, not to whine and cry about everything you feel you should be entitled to do. omg, grow up people and remember your role.

keep up the great work devs i have no doubt you will make this game a smashing success!

Uh, Flint, unless I've got the wrong guy, you're the one I was looking for on NA PVE to tell him he set no pin codes on his storage chests.   If that's not you, then NM.  If that is you, and you continue to lecture and scold the people who are unfortunate and utterly frustrated, then kiss your stuff goodbye.

Also, be aware that all the threads here aren't just people who don't understand testing phases.  For some people the game is an unplayable exercise in frustration.  To have a Dev post in the forums about how wonderful it is all the land is being claimed, and look!  here's a top hat for you to get better treasure,...honestly..it's like poking those people with a pointy stick.  Here's everything you can't have, most of which will be gone by the time the game works for you, isn't it great?   You'd be seeing a lot fewer upset people if the Devs showed the least little bit of understanding what the player experience is like for many people right now.