Tinschn

Pre-patch, the barrels and reservoirs filled up slowly - even in desert - when nobody was in render distance. As Crimsonredwolf said, I can confirm that now the barrels and reservoirs don't fill up anymore, but you have the option to drink and you don't increase the water level. So for me, it looks like a bug, as it had clearly worked before. But nevertheless, you can farm your crops. When you dig with the shovel for water and and don't fail on the minigame, you get 600 water - enough to fill 3 water reservoirs or one large crop plot. Once the crop plots are full with water, the plants hardly need water, so with a little bit of extra work, you theoretically can farm your crops, although the start will of course be annoying.

Can confirm that this happens on lawless.

We downloaded the patch with 10 mb/s , so that wasn't our problem at all. Spawned at the upper Western Temperature at a Freeport, built a Ramshackle Sloop, sailed through Golden Age ruins to gather gold and then looked there for an island. Then went to Upper Western Tropics, Equatorial, Lower Western Tropics and Temperate. We sailed way more over 10 grids in 9 hours, checking every small island, with no luck.

How fast should we able to react? We instantly started downloading the patch yesterday and as we finally could play, there were barely claimed islands. Many grids were still completely empty. Maybe we only had extremly bad luck with our sailing route, but I swear, every small island (15-35 points) on our way was already competitive right after the start.

Reading often prevents misunderstandings. I only react stupid to a stupid comment. No, it's not that easy, as you can't see it on the map when somebody already placed a flag, but don't own the island yet. And sailing around for hours just to see that the island is claimed when you finally arrived there - you need the gold, you can't just hop from island to island - is just disappointing. Yes, there are some small islands left in the polar zone, but you can't get there without fur clothing. And, my little naive friend - what they say and what they do are two different things. Keep that in mind.

It will be fun to see when the big islands will be claimed and your base wrecked because you had built on the wrong spot.

Some copy-pasting here: a) your new claiming system sucks, all we need was the existing claiming system with a limitation to the flags. b) there are again far too few small islands for solo players and small groups with 2-5 players. Yeah, they COULD group up, but you said the game will be more easy for solo and casual players. So I don't get that point. Big companies simply took the small islands because they can't afford big ones at the beginning. b) your new "quests" are again only for bigger companies c) if I'm crying long and loud enough and stomp my feet because I can't have my own island right now, will you wipe again? Would only be fair, ya know

Pre-patch, we managed to have at least half of an island with everything we need, because we simply were first on it. We were very social, had nice neighbors, let everyone built, but so many players cried about not having their own island, so they announced their stupid wipe. We left before the wipe and started yesterday again right after the patch, I think it was about 9 pm MEZ. We sailed the whole night and hardly could find unclaimed land anymore, and we realized that with the 12 hourly pays, it is simply not possible for 2-3 people (with jobs and a reallife) to pay the upkeep costs - at least at the beginning, where you want to get started and build your base and ships. Therefore many bigger companies claimed smaller island for the start, and I'm pretty sure even if they can afford the bigger ones, they won't give the smaller islands back. Some islands are again full with foundation and pillar spam. We stopped playing at 6 am MEZ, as we "lost" an island - it was declared as an unclaimed settlement, so we placed the flag, not knowing that it is not showing if someone already had placed one. I'm pretty sure they already destroyed everything we built. As we waisted so much time searching for an island, I'm pretty sure the best spots on lawless islands are already taken. So... a) your new claiming system sucks, all we need was the existing claiming system with a limitation to the flags. b) there are again far too few small islands for solo players and small groups with 3-5 players. Yeah, they COULD group up, but you said the game will be more easy for solo and casual players. So I don't get that point. b) your new "quests" are again only for bigger companies c) if I'm crying long and loud enough and stomp my feet because I can't have my own island right now, will you wipe again? Would only be fair, ya know You deserve those bad reviews on steam, as long as you don't start to listen what your players say. Yes, it is your game, but we - the players - are the one who pay you. It's all about the cash.

Epic

Hmm, I think I totally misunderstood something: So the patch should roll out on the 20th on the test servers - but the test servers are the live servers?

I don't really get your problem here. In my opinion it is intended that the settlement owner will take care that all people building on his island could live "normally" together. Yes, he has the power to destroy your building (and to stop pillar spamming and blocking, what is in fact positive), but on the other hand, he MUST be interested in having many people living happily together on his island, because he have to pay double upkeep (on for the claim flag, one for his base). If I have to pay taxes for the privilege to be more safe from some idiots, I'm okay with that. Of course there will be griefers, but I think it is a good - maybe not the right - step. The idea per se is not bad, but I think they will use those flags not only for blocking nodes, they also will block land around their own base. The number of no build flags had to be adjusted on the number of ressource spawns of every island to work correct.

As I already said, I think the settlement owner will be responsible for that. It seems that even in PVE the owner has 12 hours to remove buildings.

I'm sorry if my words have upset you. We are 2-6 people in our company and have not ever needed an alliance, so this point is not really important for me. But you hopefully will understand that there is a way to use the alliance system in a way that it was not meant to be used. So I personally don't have a better option, because I don't care much about this aspect, but as the devs are finally listening, you and others could give them better input regarding the alliance system. That was all I wanted to say with my previous post.

I think the idea behind this is that they can't figure out a way to stop that "pillarmaggedon" on ressource spawns and ruins. So at this point, they need someone to take care of that - an admin who is constantly removing those pillars is too much. So i assume the owner of the settlement will be the one who is responsible for that in the future. And the settlement owner can't forbid anyone to build on the settlement, so there will be enough space. My only concern is, that surely not all owners are nice and friendly persons. There will be some guys who want the whole island for themselves, and as ever, they will find a way.

Stay calm - they mentioned that they are looking into another option, and it seems that they finally consider our feedback. So there is a chance that they will come up with another idea, if enough people complain and come up with a better idea. I'm glad about most of the PVE changes. Thank you!

Oh wow, Mr. Brain himself has spoken So, will your evil masterplan also work, if person A build his base, go offline, person B comes, wants the land, build directly beside it and for example, will build some pillars on the seaside where A wanted to build a shipyard and connects the pillars via foundations to his base. For decoration, he will also build a wall on one side with a roof. A is fucked. It's simple as that. And if it will be possible to build directly beside your neighbor, it will cost B maybe 10 building parts. Remember, griefers are not here for building a nice base, taking care of their wonderful herb garden and petting their tames to sleep. They are griefers because they are griefing.

At this moment, you can't - but as the devs don't say anything specific what will happen to PVE because of the removal of claiming flags after the wipe and that everyone can build everywhere, we assume that there will be a "pillarmageddon" caused by griefers. For example, if they will use the blocking radius from the lawless island - that would be awful. We are looking for preventing solutions here.

I will tell you a little story about psychopaths, happened yesterday Until the wipe, I am only online to feed my animals - I can't let them starve to death - and to cuddle my penguins. So I went out to get some meat and berries, and then I saw a tamed tiger was fallen in our taming trap. We need the taming trap only for elephants, but we hate those stupid behemoth gates, so we only use doorways (two walls high) and ramps to get the elephant in the cage and after taming, we destroy some walls, get the elephant out and then make the trap ready for the next tame, because we need approximately one elephant per week because of alpha animals glitching through everything and killing our tames. So, of course, I don't wanted to be responsible for that guy losing his tiger (although he would be losing it anyway, but that would not have been my fault). I demolished the doorways and waited half an hour for the owner to come back - his ship was anchored right at the coast beside our own ships, so I assume he really want his tiger back. Then a snake got into the trap and almost killed the tiger - it was on passive - but that bugged the tiger out and in front of the trap. So I killed the snake and, because I had to go offline and couldn't wait any longer - built a little pen for the tiger called "Flauschi" with an unlocked gate. I left the owner a wooden sign that we are sorry that his tiger got stucked, but he will not loose it because of us and I send him my best wishes. I rode back to our base to log out, but then I remembered that I forgot to feed the crew on our ships. So I rode out again, gathered some more berries and got back to our ships. Whilst climbing the ladder, I saw a naked guy with a crocodile on his butt ran to the pen, opened the gate and lured the crocodile in. I was not fast enough. "Flauschi" was killed and the naked guy ran away. I felt so sorry. So - if griefers until now do their stupid thing, at this time, when it does not matter anymore to kill someones tames or to annoy others in any way, they don't have ANY advantage from it - then you really think we don't need a good protection against them? They won't disappear and always find a way. Imagine the low percentage that a story like this could happen: a naked guy will jump off his ship on a fully claimed island, run around aimless, find a trap with a tamed animal in it and with an unlocked gate - but it happened! And in my opinion, the only thing that will help would be a complete blocking radius around your base. Griefers would simply have no chance.

No players shops in PVE? What do they think we will be doing in this game in the future? Relaxing on our hammocks and get some sunlight? Oh wait, there are no hammocks ... Thumbs up for PVE player shops and hammocks!

I was thinking about the same solution, but as already said - in my opinion, it won't work. Griefers then will spam (fence) foundations and pillars snapped together, and it may even be easier for them to box your base fully in. I'm not a friend of receiving any restrictions in building. Building a pirate town including our main building, stables for around 20-30 tames, a garden and of course a pub will take some space, and when I want to build it that way (and as long as hostile creatures could glitch through anything), I will do that. It is simply one main reason why I play this game, and I would hate it if there would only be ugly small blocks all over the ATLAS. Imho implententing not-buildable areas like ressource spawns and ruins are the only way and an indispensable requirement that the gameplay will work without claim flags in PVE. I'm pretty sure Studio Wildcard had figured a way out on the normal "The Island"-Map in ARK - it was long ago I've played that map, but I think I remember some places where you couldn't build, although you could not see why in the first place. What do you think - maybe taking the new structures repair-box as a "claim flag" will work? After placing the box, it simply will block a certain radius for you, but you can place that box only once per company. The blocking radius will increase per 10 or 20 members or so. Placed structures without the box will decay in a certain amount of time - maybe two hours? -, regardless if it's thatch, wood or stone. This would make it even possible to built taming traps on other islands without worrying that your trap will decay whilst taming, but it would not last long enough that the guys who live on that island could be pissed about ugly traps everywhere.

I tried it out and it seems that the bug isn't resolved yet - it is still not possible to paint your animals. But for making templates, it seems to work if you paint the whole animal in one color, save the painting in ATLAS, convert it via the AtlasPNTConverter (can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=german&id=518906272) into a PNG and there you have our template ready for Photoshop, Gimp etc.

bump

You said it: I'm at this time not fully familiar with the mapmaking tool of ATLAS, but I think it would be possible to insert new islands without wiping the whole grid. Of course it is more difficult and takes longer, but that would be a nice move and a big excuse for all the ignorance we received for weeks. And please don't forget: The devs have time to design figureheads for the top companies and so complimented some guys for what? Pressing the E-button for more than 2 seconds and repeating it 499 times? Impressive. Luckily we get a hat -.-

The largest private server I found was 9x9, but how they mixed the PVP and PVE grids was not really my cup of tea, because the grids were so mixed that you really had to keep track constantly if the next grid is now PVP or PVE. I signed up to the forum on day 1, and since then, the forum was full of people who were complaining about the claiming system, not getting land and stopped playing. You can also check the reviews on steam, I think every second or third person was not able to get land. I get it, the claiming system at it's current stage is shit for new players. But why do "I" have to be punished for that? I don't do anything wrong. Even the claim flag where our base is, is set to allow building for everyone. We have 15-20% taxes on our island. It is okay if someone would build near me, but with the claim flag, I have the chance to get rid of griefers if they want to annoy me. And this "right" will be taken from me, even though I really try to be as nice as possible. As I said before, limitation to the claim flags in combination with 200+ new islands should be more than enough for new players. A wipe is not necessary and in combination with no claim flags will result in even more griefing. Maybe I wouldn't be so pissed if the devs would say anything more how the blocking radius of your base will be. For example, how will water pipes work? If you have fresh water on one side of the island, but live on the other, you maybe want to set some pipes. Will they go through the neighbors garden, or will they block building? Both cases will end up in a quarrel. Maybe if the dev would say "Hey, okay, we are very sorry to wipe the server, everyone who played since the beginning will start with a nice ship, only designed for this manner, not buildable and as a excuse" or something, than maybe I could arrange with that. But we will get a hat. A HAT! We will loose 25+ tames, 9 ships, all ressources, all buildings (I know, some of you will loose even more, but we are only a small company and which will make it maybe even harder to get back to our current stage), our whole progress - which means NOTHING to others in PVE - will be deleted, and we will get a hat. This is simply cheeky.

Even if they set every server to Home Servers - the lag will be real again Hope everything will work out for you.