Winter Thorne

Fixed that for ya

If he turns out to be right that they wipe the servers for it, it would make Grapeshot look pretty dumb. Just consider this - he's stated that the current players aren't players but testers and have no right to any consideration at all, while at the same time, stating that console players are very special and deserve the right to a completely clean server with no existing characters or claims on it. I'm not sure how the same head can manage to hold both those thoughts at the same time.

Everybody's talking about wipes lately because of the impending console release, the changed islands on the ptr, and the strange idea that server wipes would bring a crowd of people back to the game. Wipes without some amazing new features for the players do a lot of harm to the existing player base that's left. Maybe it's exciting starting all over again....the first couple times. After that it becomes an enormous chore of just replacing everything you've lost until you get back to where you were before the wipe and can do something new. If there is another complete server wipe without some great benefit and new feature coming, there will be another huge drop in players. We know this because we can look back to the last wipe and see the ghost towns that were left as soon as it was announced, and the continued drop in the numbers. And no, we are not "testers" who should expect no consideration at all. We are customers who have paid for the game, who understand that while bad things can happen in EA, we expect the company in charge to care about whether we're enjoying it. And really, there are very few reasons to conduct a complete server wipe. Players want to preserve their bases, their tames, their character levels and skills, and any rare inventory they might have. You can wipe landscape without wiping characters, and vice versa. You can wipe skills but leave the skillpoints intact. You can even preserve and restore possessions or claims or anything else you want to do. People assume that every landscape change demands a complete wipe. It doesn't. They could change every island in the game and still preserve the character data. They could set aside one unchanging zone for "refugees" and allow everyone to load up a galleon with whatever they want to save and park there while the change happens. Something similar was done before when new islands were added. The message went out to clear out of those areas ahead of time and people did. If they are only changing 10 islands in the game, they could give those island owners plenty of notice, allow them to get all their important stuff out of the way, and reset the claim for them after the change. They still have to rebuild, but it's much less painful to do that if the char data, the claim, and some possessions are retained. It's even less painful if there are good neighbors pitching in with mats to help. (And that's the sort of thing that builds community in games) NPC islands are a landscape change and don't demand a full server wipe in their own right. Any of the above can be done to bring in NPC islands. People also assume that crossplay would demand a wipe. That's pretty silly. The advent of crossplay is nothing more than an influx of new players. An influx of new players doesn't demand a wipe. Presumably that's going to happen over the entire lifespan of the game. Is it going to get wiped every time there's a Steam sale? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any single change significant enough to require an entire server wipe of the landscape, the character data, and all the possessions, except server mergers.

Realist is just trolling and showing so much projection he ought to open a movie theater.

A bit more explanation of the map layout changes, please. What does it look like? What's the purpose of it?

You've probably already tried a steam verification and repair?

That's a good point, but I'm not sure whether the main driving force behind this is to reduce stored data or to respond to player complaints about spam and old player garbage. If it were my server, I'd be looking for ways to reduce stored data just as a good practice measure. It's never good to have a lot of junk around, you need a good cleanup algorithm, and now is the time to get that started. Having said that, I've been spam lagged and the server is lightly loaded, so you have to wonder how a fully loaded server will behave, and how well people's pcs will be able to respond with higher loads. In the end, you've got to come up with some reasonable way for people to be able to play the game, so it's a balance. Anything less than 2 weeks just isn't enough. Anything more than 4 weeks is probably going to cause problems. There's a sweet spot in there somewhere. Funny how people's perceptions work for this issue, too. In the beginning with a large avid group of players, there were a whole bunch of people that couldn't conceive of an active player being away for more than a day. You'd hear stuff like, "If you can't log in in 4 days you shouldn't be here." It's the same way that people propose ideas for the game, as it is right now, without thinking how that might work on a fully loaded server. I'm guessing that at some points, when there's an enormous amount of pressure on the dev team, they might fall prey to that too - just looking at what's there now, and how to fix a problem that has everyone up in arms.

There's no need for all these comments on this topic. There's a code of conduct for the game and for the communications networks. If anyone would like to know what the standards are, they're here: https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/code-of-conduct/ If someone is violating the code of conduct, report it. If you don't get a satisfactory response, yell about that if you like. If Grapeshot is not enforcing their code of conduct, make a stink about that. All that is perfectly ok. But it's useless to debate here over what kind of conduct there should be, because it's already spelled out. A parent should read the code of conduct before letting their kid play a game, however after reading this one, many parents might decide this game is ok for their kids. A lot of what some of you are deeming acceptable conduct isn't acceptable according to Grapeshot.

If you played pvp, I can see how your friends might worry about getting overrun by established companies. But for pve? Tell your friends to come on in, the water's fine. There's plenty of tension, setbacks, adventures, and progress. The only thing there isn't is plenty of players. If your'e a new player that's to your benefit. You can find land, and a fairly welcoming group of established players to start out with. The only other thing that I think will bring large numbers of players to the game (or back to the game) is a real "mega" release. New game mechanics, deeper skill trees with bigger impacts, a fix to the small remaining number of bugs annoying enough to make someone QQ - like disappearing ships and structures. If they kicked up the skill trees and added a whole structure to enable people to group together and accomplish some things as a town, that would be big.

I'm guessing you're talking about pvp. Even so, if the game is a success, the final whistle won't be for years yet. During that time, people will come in, play out their entire adventure and then leave for other games. Companies will rise then fall, rise again, etc. Do your friends always expect to be the first one into a game? It seems so weird to be in early EA and people are thinking it's too late to get into the game. And it's not even the first whistle. It's the pre-game warmup.

When my friends and I go out to dinner, we think the restaurant should clear away all the existing diners as we come in, because we like things to be nice and clean. For some strange reason, they keep refusing to do that. On pve, there is either enough room for all the players or not. If there's not enough room, the only way wiping makes more room is by getting a lot of players to quit. Doesn't seem like a great goal to me, getting players to quit to make more room for other players. Wiping the server doesn't magically let it hold more players than it already would hold. You've spent weeks crowing about how far down the server numbers are. Now all of a sudden your crystal ball says there are too many players to accommodate new sales. I think your crystal ball has a crack in it. The only ones who will know real numbers are Grapeshot. If I were them I'd judge it by presales and then decide whether to open up a new server (crossplay or not) for the incoming players. Either everyone will fit on the existing servers or they will need another server. No amount of wiping changes that equation.

The right amount of players=fun, and we're well under that amount now. And that is true for PvE as well as PvP. However - The idea that wiping servers brings more players is very strange. The last time the servers got wiped nearly everyone quit. I can see that there might be an argument for it on pvp servers, since it's hard to start our as a n00b in pvp when everyone else is fully loaded to smack you down as soon as you join. The land claim dynamic is different there as well. On pve servers, a wipe only drives away the players that are left there. Then as new players come in, they see a ghost town, and they don't stick around either. The pve servers should be able to support thousands more people than they have today. There's no reason new players can't just join them and start.

You should specify whether you're talking about pvp or pve servers. I have no idea why anyone would think wiping the pve servers would produce growth in player numbers. Most of the players left would leave, and the wipe doesn't produce any real advantage for new incoming players, since the servers are already so empty, they can easily come in and start playing.

That may be the funniest thing I've read this week. Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Yes it. I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

Also, YES it. (Did you used to do that? "Not it" "Yes it" "Not it!" "Yes it!"?) If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve.

I wasn't sure what they meant about the NPC encampments, whether every island would have them and part of claiming an island was clearing them out, or if this would be something just on some islands that couldn't be claimed until you defeated them. I suppose I was thinking of the latter, since the other way seems rife for griefing. As far as wiping individual islands, I'm sure that some players would look at it like "He got something I didn't get". On the other hand, it could be looked at like "I get to keep my character, this other spot has been given to replace my claim, and I've got 4 ship's resource boxes full of everything I need to put it all back (which the devs could do easily if they're smart). Seems like biting off your nose to spite your face to insist you get wiped rather than moved. If the devs are interested in retaining players it's the choice between pissing off 50 players vs 2000 players...seems worthwhile to consider it.

The NPC encampments may or may not require a wipe. Depends on how they do them. They've added islands with no wipe before. It's also possible to make changes to the game while preserving part or most of it. You could wipe the landscape and preserve the player data, for example. If they wanted to grab 5 islands out of the map and do something with them, they could wipe 5 islands. There are a lot of ways to go about it without wiping 100% of the game. I agree, but I think people *might* put up with another wipe if it meant something great was coming. NPC settlements may or may not be enough for that. A cat, a sub, a giant crab..none of those things would be enough, I think.

Aaaaand...now we're back to talking about ME instead of the points I've raised. I talk about game demographics, player profiles and how they are influenced by game design, and your response is to make it personal to me and imply that I'm just stating some unusual personal preferences. That I'm unfamiliar with the MMO environment, and should just "give things a try". This attitude comes up repeatedly that MMOs by definition, are toxic places and you shouldn't enter them unless you're willing to put up with that. It's crap, of course, and nearly all developers agree because they write codes of conduct, even when they never intend to enforce them. Here's my final comment and then I'm done - You have an idea for a specific game design which may appeal to some player segments, but not all of them. You are completely in love with your idea to the point where it cannot be allowed to have any modifications , and it MUST include the entire playerbase, even the unwilling players. And although it could easily be tried with just the subsection of players it might appeal to, you insist that everyone should be made to do this. You attempt a hard sell of your idea on the forums by responding in great length to every objection, repeatedly posting your original lengthy design, and taking every opportunity to point out that **a DEV!** has responded to your post. There are a good number of players who will quit after another wipe if that wipe is not being done to bring them something wonderful. This idea does not bring anything wonderful for a large subset of pve players. Draw your own conclusions here.

It's because age is the easiest example and the one most people can relate to. It boggles my mind that you think I'm saying something bad about various age groups when I'm only pointing out the differences in them. As a rule groups of 20 year old guys don't go to the park to hang out with the little kids and play on the seesaws. They like different things. They speak in different ways. It doesn't mean they don't LIKE little kids, or that little kids don't like them. It means they behave differently as far as their leisure time goes. Same with 20 year olds and 50 year olds. No senior citizens group is going to go hang at the neighborhood pool at the times it's full of screaming kiddies. It's just not fun for them. We are talking about how different groups of people want to spend their leisure time. It's obvious that age plays a huge role in that. I could talk about diferences in how women and men like to spend their leisure time, but that involves more nuance, and when the big obvious points aren't being understood, I don't want to try that. Here's the important part - all those people play online games. Women, and young people and old people and gay people and brown people and people from different countries ALL play online games. YIKES, CAPTAIN See? Again, my mind is boggled that you think that's a weird thing to say. I'm going to use age as an example again, but I'll add in gender and location, so maybe it's not such a big deal. I know how groups of 16-20 year old guys (just for an example) talk, and some of the types of places they might hang out when they are on their own hanging out together. (Same thing goes for girls...remember, it's just an example). (And let me say here once, not ALL of them, but ENOUGH for the example). They may use bad language, they may talk badly about women, they may use homophobic or racial slurs whether they really mean them or not. They may be too loud and too physical. They may break things. Everybody knows they do this, and if they are on their own and not bothering anybody else, it's just considered part of growing up. When they are in school or at work, or at the family reunion, or at a restaurant for dinner, they don't behave this way! Because now, you're mixing ages and backgrounds and locations, and (most) people know that is not how you behave in those situations. The problem arises when there are groups of people who assume everyone playing the game is just like them, and they're hanging out with their gang and can behave like that. PvE attracts an older crowd, because of the nature of older people's lives and the interruptions and limited playing time they have. Pve also attracts more women players than pvp. I'm not sure what is so surprising to you about that. But here's something that may surprise you - I designed a game very similar to the one you're proposing with a friend who has been running private servers for games on his own server farm for over 20 years. I like that game idea very much. But I don't like it in this context. That idea only works one of two ways - in a niche market where your entire player base IS one gang and can all relate to each other on the same level, OR where you have a very robust GM presence such that someone steps in immediately to stop anyone going around being an ass. We had three rules on our servers - no cheating. Immediate ban, you're gone. Watch your language, and DBAD. Violate those and you get a *zotz* from a GM and dying had penalties there. Repeat it enough times and you're gone. Atlas has neither of those things. It has a nudge toward the niche market in that it's separated pve and pvp, which tends to separate types of players as well. But, as you point out, not entirely. Pvp has some good apples, and pve has some bad ones. But it helps just a small bit. It's also interesting to point out that Grapeshot agrees about these kinds of behavior and has written a code of conduct for that, but have already stated they have no intention of enforcing it in the game in any useful way, so we're on our own. Compounding this problem is the advent of voice chat where any idiot anywhere at any time can broadcast completely rotten shit into our livingrooms for the benefit of our friends and family as well. So this is where I'm coming from when you make the suggestion that pve players give up the little bit of separation that's helping them and get thrown into the pot with the pvp players, give up half the map including the spots that get loaded with goodies to make them more enticing, turn off general chat, turn off voice chat, and just kind of close their eyes and pretend it's not happening. Grapeshot will do nothing about any violations of the code and nothing that helps about any griefing or anything else. The proposition is lose/lose for us. We get nothing we want. There are other games out there. Any pve player who hasn't secretly been longing for a chance to play pvp will leave. So , I hope someone is listening...Jat's choice and Grapeshot's choice is clear...if you merge all the servers into one big server along these lines, you're going to lose a large number of players just from the wipe. After that, you'd better put a few 24x7 GMs with some muscle in there, or you'll immediately lose any pve players you have left because you've given them nothing they want, and you're not going to make those numbers up with new purchasers eager to play a combined pve/pvp server with no active GMs. And then you'll get to review everyone's scenarios for getting the servers filled up all over again. As I said. I like the idea. Hell, I WROTE the idea years ago, but not in this environment and not with this game.

I'll give this one last try after which I'll just have to give up if you can't manage to stop deliberately misunderstanding everything I say. When you post your comments here, you are trying to make a case to everyone else who is reading the forums. I'm one of those people, so I get to respond to it. That's how the forums work. No, you don't get it. I like young people just fine, and If I weren't interested in the social aspects of the game I'd be playing single player. I currently play in a zone with a good group of people, all the islands allied, all fun to hang out with and interesting in chat. When you mix ages and backggrounds in crowds, people are expected to behave differently. Lots of people "get" this. Some don't. It's much easier to run into the ones who don't on the pvp servers. I read your suggestions. I also read the very first post of this thread which thinks it's a great idea to just squash all the existing servers onto one server, and I object to that. Is there anything about your idea that can't be implemented by doing it on one pvp server? I didn't see anything at all preventing that. That's what I recommended you try for if you're going to try to sell this idea to the devs. You'll get a lot less pushback from pve players who want no part of it , for one thing, and for another, it would get a real test before it's inflicted on an already diminished playerbase. If you choose to do this, you might want to discuss that in the pvp forums just to make that clear. If you'd like to respond to this, please respond to the actual points I've made rather than attempting to paint me as someone who hates young people, is not interested in social aspects of MMOs or whatever other personal remarks you'd like to toss out about a person you know nothing about. If you continue to talk about ME rather than my ideas, I'm done, because

I didn't know you'd joined Grapeshot. Congratulations on your new job.

If you're used to getting into a game late where everyone else has already taken all the claimable land, established bases , and on pvp are ready to attack you, then good. This should be a cakewalk for you, because it's MUCH better than what most of us started out with. You've given no reason to wipe pve. And yet you've not explained how, given your complaint, any player would ever choose to buy the game and start playing on a pvp server after release. If that's your scenario on how this will work...no new pvp players ever..then there's no game to argue about. It's toast. Shake your head all you like. What change? Your grand entrance is not a "change". This is simply adding new players to the official servers, something that theoretically will happen over and over again. Seems like a big deal to you, maybe, because you finally get to play, but to the rest of us..it's just more players joining. Are you expecting that any time there's some event that causes a number of players to buy the game everybody is going to get wiped so all the new guys can have everything all clean? Are you expecting that the small number of remaining players, having stuck it out through all the issues, the griefing, and the earlier wipe are going to be happy to lose everything and continue to stick around because of al the wonderfulness that Realist and the xbox crew will bring to the game? I hope they give you your own server, or I hope you enjoy joining ours, because if they wipe our server just so you don't have to look at our stuff....you'll be getting your own server.

If you'e used to getting into a game late where everyone else has already taken all the claimable land, established bases , and on pvp are ready to attack you, then good. This should be a cakewalk for you, because it's MUCH better than what most of us started out with. You've given no reason to wipe pve. And yet you've not explained how, given your complaint, any player would ever choose to buy the game and start playing on a pvp server after release. If that's your scenario on how this will work...no new pvp players ever..then there's no game to argue about. It's toast. Shake your head all you like. What change? Your grand entrance is not a "change". This is simply adding new players to the official servers, something that theoretically will happen over and over again. Seems like a big deal to you, maybe, because you finally get to play, but to the rest of us..it's just more players joining. Are you expecting that any time there's some event that causes a number of players to buy the game everybody is going to get wiped so all the new guys can have everything all clean? Are you expecting that the small number of remaining players, having already put up with a numb

More deliberate misunderstanding, more strawmen, more personal insults. You are not making a good case for your idea. I guess you don't agree that different age groups of people enjoy different things, and that the insanely hilarious joke of a 4 year old, ("Poopyhead! poopyhead!") will remain funny to you even into your old age, where you will trot it out at retirement dinners to entertain the guests. Don't worry, if they dont' like it you can fall back on your excuse that it's perfectly possible for 70 year olds to yell poopyhead too, and that you heard Anderson doing it just last week back at the home. (disclaimer: Nowhere should this be construed that it is a good idea to ban toddlers from yelling "Poopyhead!" at each other since it suits their age group and they find it funny, but rather an idea that it's just not very comfortable for those two groups to spend excessive time in each others' company.) Here's an idea for you. GS has already fiddled with various versions of pvp, so here's a great way to test your idea. Convince them to turn one of the existing pvp servers into pvp/pve and see how it affects the player numbers, and what kinds of complaints start coming out of that arrangement. If it works and attracts all kinds of new players to the game, great, I'd be happy about that. If it doesn't , then you've not lost the few thousand players left playing who would all quit as the final straw. Or convince them to allow character exports to the pvp servers (which is no different at all than allowing people to cross a zone line from a pve zone to a pvp zone) But there's no reason to push the idea as some kind of global change when you can see there's so much opposition to it. And there's really no reason to go around slamming pve players who play pve precisely because they want to stay away from pvp.