Winter Thorne

Because everything's not a "base". Sometimes you have a guy dropping a bed on an island so his company can all fast travel to get the DP, and they'll be sure to render the thing enough to keep it around. Many of them become unwanted spam.

Larger companies should be incentivized to hold larger islands, but right now that isn't the case. The biggest islands just aren't worth the trouble. If they offered More diverse resources (say the 100+ point islands had 2 or even 3 variants of resources), allowed a higher tax rate (30, 40%), had a higher chance of maps spawning, or better map quality (to give more passive gold generation), really anything. But right now, holding 2 smaller islands, to get resource variety, drastically outweighs the value of holding one bigger one. I've been saying for a long time that the game needs more carrots and fewer sticks, but in this case, I think I'm more in favor of the stick. It's simpler and it doesn't hand yet another reward to bigger companies. Why not just give everyone enough points for an island that's appropriate for their company size, and then limit them to that size or larger? Just don't let big companies claim a bunch of small islands. It has the added benefit of showing clearly how big each type of population is in the game and would help for adding islands that are the right size and not just randomly distributed.

Thnaks to Jat and whoever else participated in rolling this back. To fix the problem in a better way, it might halp to figure out what problem we're trying to solve. Abandoned structures can be removed with decay, so we're obviously talking about structures someone is using. It's hard for players to claim some of the existing islands because, while not already claimed, some of these islands are already built up with other people's bases, outposts, and whatnot. On the other hand, there are some players who have been unable to claim an island due to company size , cost, lack of appropriately sized islands, who have taken the time to settle and build on other land. It would be unfair on a pve server for someone to come along and wipe out months of their work, just because they can. Maybe we can make a distinction between the case where it's someone's main settlement and people are active there, and random structures, like a bed someone just uses for their company to fast travel and gain DP, or a storage box or taming pen someone put up to temporarily gather mats or tames? It seems like a difference in destroying a place that people "live" vs. destroying something they built far away as a convenience to themselves. Maybe if there's a real working settlement happening on an unclaimed island, a number of people using it, taking up all the best building spots , a potential buyer should just pass it up and look for another? Maybe we should replace the raze mechanic with a Squatter's mechanic? More than X buildings of X size, and more than X consecutive days of (rendering) occupation, and nobody can remove your stuff?

Those two full stops are between your ears. Nobody cares about empty houses. There's a decay mechanic to take care of empty houses. There's another thing nobody cares about and that's your opinion of "casual players"...you know, those people who have families, jobs, lives...stuff like that. I don't recall this game being advertised as Mom's Basement Dwellers Only. Somebody spends 3 months building something great and interesting, and you think it's not a big deal to pack that up in a few hours and just do it all over again. Must be you've never built anything great or interesting. Or spent a day doing anything other than playing Atlas. It's an....interesting....perspective, Martyn. Or a trollish one.

I don't disagree with too many of your points, but I disagree with the way you interpret some of them. For pve, there is a point to owning land in a game like this . At the most basic, players need a place to keep their stuff, a home port to run their operations out of, build their ships, craft things, etc. You can either do that in a lawless way or an owned way. In social games "my land, don't build near me" is not as anti-social as the phrase sounds. It's also used for people to find other like-minded players and group themselves together in an area. For example, when I lived on lawless, there were a handful of really good people there - fun to talk to, helpful to other players, etc. There were some who were trying to grief everyone else, and there were some that were just selfish and annoying, who would do things like building a smithy and storage cabinet 2 feet away from what was clearly someone's base just because it was convenient for them to gather mats there. The group of us that got along well would have liked to find some land where we could all claim in the same area and play the game together, but at the time getting a claim was difficult to impossible. Lawless didn't work well for us, and all those other people quit. Claims would have worked well, but we couldn't get them. The other thing I'd point out is that different people play this game really differently. We've got one guy on the forums now who keeps bashing other people's builds as "Disney castles", and that probably goes along with the mentality that the game is all about maps, SOTD, kraken, and the faster you can get all the goodies, the better you are. But building is a "thing" in this game. There's an entire skill set built around it. The devs feature interesting builds and reward them. I like to build stuff and I spend a long time doing that. I like building authentic looking northern seaside villages. Everywhere I go, I see the buildings of the "race to the finish" guys and they're all gray and brown and they all look like maximum security prisons and mental institutions. So yes, don't build near me, because for me, this is a major part of the game and I don't want your behemoth-sized cement box sitting right where I'm trying to build a post office or a museum, or a base that looks like a real boathouse. I don't see anything wrong with that. It's why land ownership matters. So let people own a chunk of land. It lets them group friends they make in the game near them, and lets them have control over a small part of the environment. And if everybody gets the chance to own land, you don't need a bunch of silly rules about who can destroy other players' stuff. You do a timeout on things where the player hasn't logged in there in X days, and you let landowners give and remove permissions for their land. Everybody wins.

At this point they are just trying to fix the problems caused by the fixes to the previous problems, which happened by fixing the problem prior to that. None of this would be an issue if they had taken our suggestion of claims limited per person and company size. No need for upkeep, or tax, or decay on other people's structures on "your" land. No need for claim owners to have to wipe out other players' work. It's what happens when you start with a bad design point and then twist yourself into a pretzel refusing to acknowledge that and undo it. This problem is not fixable in its current state.

That might lead to an interesting situation where the devs consider putting a post in the water griefing, but do NOT consider destroying some other players entire base to be griefing (and even make a nice mechanic for people to do that) I can't imagine any dev group sitting around a conference table talking about this idea (or some of their previous ideas) and nobody raising his hand and saying, "Uh, guys...." Well, maybe there's one but they're not listening to him.

It's going to be far less than 10% because many of the people who stayed are staying for the potential of the game, which could be very great, and a chance to influence the design back to a better potential. (Which is seeming much less likely based on the types of decisions that are being made) There's a good percentage of people still playing the game who dislike a lot about it, but really like the original concept.

Players pushed you out by doing things the devs allowed and even encouraged and wrote code for them to do. So they added a way for you to return. I'm assuming that's more than the fact that there just aren't very many players left. What way was that then? The way to find an unclaimed island and wipe all the other players off it? Maybe the way to be a good island owner and police your island by using the log which tells you someone has "settled" on your island, meaning, they've picked a berry and left, or killed a pig or something? (Because who the hell knows what that message means anyway and isn't it fun looking for beds hidden in the weeds every day?) The way to do the most popular game activity, treasure maps, by sailing halfway around the world and finding that you can't do the map because it's locked behind gates or buried in the geography? Or maybe the way to grief some other player by spawning AOD inside their tame barn with a high level treasure map that someone was too lazy to assigned fixed spawn points to? (The tame barn holding tames that were not supposed to be "a thing", according to Jat, but inow are the only way to do maps?) I'll admit, it's a real thrill not knowing when your ships will disappear, so it's got that going for it. Do you have to render them? "Base" on them? (whatever that means.), lift and drop the anchors on them? Who knows, no man can say, and certainly nobody is telling us. The way to have structure decay to reduce spam (that won't reduce spam) that oops....removed your legitimate structures instead? The way to enjoy the new NPC village content? Oh, sorry...that's not on officials, but you can have a CAT (which at least is not as ugly as the 3 previous "not a thing...not a thing at all" tames inflicted on the servers in the big MEGA RELEASES. If there is some sort of "way" here, I'm having a hard time seeing it. Maybe it needs some signs and some flashing neon lights or something.

I've already given myself that hint. "What if the goal is to just get everyone off the official servers and onto the single player or single-multiplayer or hosted modes?" Makes sense from a money perspective. Why bother running a whole bunch of servers for a low population when you can just let them run their own servers, make their own rules, save money, eliminate 50% of the complaints, and for a bonus, they do all their own development work? Then I tell myself, nah, that's too cynical.

The Captain's logs and the occasional response in here show a complete disconnect with the players, as though there is no capability to put themselves into the players' shoes and imagine the game experience as it is today, especially on pve. When the new raze mechanic was added in, we received a response surprised that there was an issue with it. How can you add a sanctioned griefing mechanic to pve and be surprised that people are unhappy with it? In addition, there doesn't seem to be a lot of context being understood. If we list the changes that have happened since the wipe, there are very few on the plus side, especially for smaller pve groups on official, and a huge list of minuses, or changes that look great but are "not for you", like the new additions for singleplayer and hosted servers. If the trend continues, there won't be much reason to try to continue on with the game.

I already read that "What if it cost 2 million gold" comment. Well it doesn't. If pigs had wings they could fly. It costs an amount that many people are already sitting on , and wondering what they can do with it. You're really misreading the whole situation here. In many cases, here's what's happened, at least on NA pve: First there was a server wipe, and they took down the server and gave it to pvp. Many people quit. When they finalkly brought the server back, the big companies took all the small islands, leaving the small companies nowhere to claim, and leaving nearly all the big islands unclaimed Lawless was a spam fest, so the small companies became "settlers" on big islands that they didn't have the means to claim The people who are left are finally starting to get over the wipe, but now any other player can come along and just wipe them off the map. You thought people were mad about the first server wipe? Now they've got this, on top of the new incomprehensible "disappearing ship" decay mechanic and the new anti-spam, let's remove buildings untested mechanic. The biggest thing you are missing here is that while there's a valid game reason to get rid of inactive structures on pve, this a big change for two reasons: 1. It's not inactive structures. These are bases and structures that players are actively using. 2. It's not the game doing it with some sort of timing mechanism, it's other players being able to destroy stuff belonging to other active players. It's a fundamental shift in how pve is supposed to work, and the timing of this change, coming along with all the inactive structure and ship changes tells me the devs are in some sort of "cleanup" mode and can't even understand the difference between inactive decay and players destroying other players' things in pve.

One company in our alliance has stopped selling tames for gold because they have so much gold they don't know what to do with it. Now they will only accept high level BPs and mythos. You don't think people are running around with more gold than they know what to do with? 25k? pffffft.

It's good to see you posting again.

It doesn't take much imagination to realize that the way the servers look TODAY is not the way the servers should look at release. I'm assuming that the current low server population won't exist ad infinitum. If it does there will be no game, or at least no official servers. Before the mass exodus, you couldn't find a smaller island to claim. They were all taken nearly immediately. So, new guy brings 8 or 10 of his friends to all start playing the game. There are no small islands they can claim, and anywhere else they want to build (except lawless) may be subject to surprise wipes any time the island ownership changes hands. Will this group think that's a great idea and dive right in to start playing and building their bases? I doubt it.

That's some serious reading comprehension problem, Martyn.

Not in this system. If everyone had the opportunity to own land, then yes, landowners should have full control over what they own. But they didn't give everyone that opportunity. Instead, they've asked some of the players to just be content with being tenants and promised them they could "build anywhere". Now the "build anywhere" is a lie, and owners get full control, but you don't get to be an owner unless you were one of the first onto the server. Unfair. Uneven. Completely turns off anyone who might be considering starting the game.

If this was how island ownership always worked, then in the future if you anticipate the servers will be fully loaded again, how are new players ever supposed to find an island to claim? And what would be the reason for putting in the raze in the first place if you expect the tenants will just start paying the upkeep? If this is not how island ownership will always work (passing from landlord to tenant) then all the problems people have anticipated will happen. In addition, the idea that tenants will just start paying the upkeep into the flag is a bad one, even if they can manage to do that. The tenant would have all the costs of maintaining the island with none of the benefits of owning it. They can't use the materials deposited into the flag, or use it to pay their crews. They can't demolish unwanted structures within 24 hours. Can't name the island, etc. Even if it was always possible for them to pay for the flag, it's not a great idea. It looks like the only good use of this new mechanic is when someone wants to claim a previously claimed island that has abandoned tenant structures on it. But the game already takes care of that problem with the decay mechanic, so what's the point?

I know of a major release day where all the execs and investors had a few too many, logged into the (pve) game and started killing every player they saw using godlike powers.

Anyone who's ever worked any kind of customer service job or IT job with complaining customers could probably relate to that. Might make a good premise for a novel.

I don't know if your analogy is too deep or too shallow. It could be the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, the acceptance of transience and imperfection. Or it could be the result of game developer burnout where a group of devs who, over time, have come to hate game players have decided to make their ultimate feel-good game.

Hah. My crystal ball stil works. With today's patch, we'll be deploying a measure to help new settlement owners clear out existing structures on their island. A frustrating part of the game, after claiming an island from someone else, is dealing with the remains of their structures, whether that's a large base, or where that's multiple pillars and foundations littered around the island. With the latest patch, new settlement owners will now have a 12-hour window to activate a one-time razing of an island. This will destroy all structures on that island, including their own. It can only be used during peacetime, and will notify everyone on that specific grid, as well as log into any companies that had wiped structures on that island. So now we have disappearing ships, builds and tames, and players have been given the ability to wipe out other players settlements on pve. All that's needed now is a way to remove player XP and skills.

The raze is one of the worst ideas for this game I've heard in a long time. Recap of claims (PVE version) - Unlimited claims - nobody was happy because everyone wants to own land and some of the players hogged it all Claim changes to own an entire island. - Everyone still can't own land because now there's really not enough to go around, but an attempt at balance is made with the new "build anywhere" rules. Even though island ownership is "capped" by company size, the large companies surprise no one by leaving the big islands alone and grabbing up all the small ones. Smalls and solos have to content themselves with the "build anywhere" mechanic. A server wipe is conducted to make the change. So many people leave the game that the repercussions of this move aren't felt in full force. Claim Razing - "build anywhere" is thrown out the window and server wipes (minus player characters) are now enabled for the player base to inflict on each other. On the plus side, this may entice new players to the game when they realize they could claim an island as though it is pristine. Also, the player numbers are so low now, that given some warning of this mechanic, existing players could try to claim land in advance of being wiped. On the minus side -this may not entice new players to the game when they see that anything they build can be wiped out by another player at whim. There is no way this mechanic scales well to a fuly loaded server if many players join the game, as everyone will not be able to own land and the penalties for being a settler have become so severe that the option is even more unacceptable than on the previous iteration of claims design. Here's what's unclear - What problem is this new mechanic attempting to fix? Has anyone anticipated the effect of this "fix" on small companies and solos, especially on a fully loaded server. Has anyone anticipated the effect on brand new players joining a server that is half-loaded or fully loaded? Has anyone run the classic what-if scenarios for abuse of this new mechanic?

With a claim system designed on purpose to allow people to make each other unhappy, how else do you expand that except by giving each group more ways to make each other unhappy? Since you can't directly harm another player in pve, they're doing their damndest to include any passive-aggressive method possible for it. We've done the exercise before of making a list of all the ways landowners can grief settlers and settlers can grief landowners. This just adds another big item to the list. In the interests of balance, they should allow settlers to randomly destroy a landowner structure every 16th day or something.

My chapeau is perfect! And shiny.