krazmuze

Option 3 do what every wargame has done for decades and use a hex grid that has no overlaps and easily follows natural features.

This premise is entirely flawed.   It presumes that the only reason pillars/foundation spam exists is to deprive others of resources?    How about all the other griefing uses for such spam?   Blocking someones build, blocking their harbor, blocking treasure maps,etc etc etc.....

So you still have to suffer all that and on top of that you have to sail to another island to get thatch?    Oh wait you cannot because someone walled in your harbor....

52 minutes ago, MrHeid said:

With the added islands I'm guessing there will be enough land for even solo players to get their own island.  Though you may have to look.  Hardly anyone plays anymore and there will be like a 1000 islands or something.  Might not be as bad as you think.  Doubt they will hardly have a 1000 regular people on the pve servers by then 

The entire point of them wiping the server for a new system is because people stopped playing.   The new system should not be judge based on those who remained playing.   The entire point for Grapeshot is to get a system in place with tens of thousand people playing on the map.

1 hour ago, CoopedUp said:

EXAMPLE: You limit the amount of flags to 1 per player...

EXAMPLE: You limit the amount of flags to the size of the company. ...

This is exactly why it WILL work, if a company cannot sustain their population then they deserve to lose their flags and free it up for other players.   

IRL this is called downsizing.    If you lose your big paycheck you move into a smaller apartment.

The system is not a failure because a shell corporation loses their holdings!  That is the entire point of having limits.   We already tried the shell corporation with their empty castles and empty islands preventing others from getting land, that is the very thing that got us into this mess.

New Tundra?   That should be easy just mix and match western and eastern tundra if you did not reserve blanks or have expansion grids available for it.  I highly doubt island swapping would work without wiping bases.

New Trenches?  That should hopefully fit alongside powerstone islands as a small underwater island feature.   Maybe alongside the grid where you have no islands, or maybe dual purpose central maw and put them there.    Biggest complaint is server is too small to have done the first end boss so why does it have to be 2nd end game?

ISO Blackwood?   Great they are restarting the ark style single server map modder program.  If you run all the various ark servers you will certainly want to run this.

Revamp of PVP/PVE with island claiming?    Our unofficial a few is a crew and few largest companies have a roster of a handful, with many people solo or couples.    The islands are too big for these crews - even if they have settings to lower the owner ship limits.    In general due to server limitations people have to share islands, and this has worked well with admins that enforce flag limits so that islands are shared.

But with the new patch they stated the old claim flags will be removed and you have to eventually replace them with island flags.    So I await the disaster where everyone starts complaining their base is decaying.  

So what are people going to do - adopt island claiming? 

Go lawless with 24d decay to match flag and keep admins busy with misbuilding behaviors from those that do not read the rules? 

Hope they keep old flag and add flag limits for admins to set?

Open up the official map that comes with the editor and copypaste how it was done in polar (mean whales) or tundra (gentle whales).

Sloops make great bases for personal exploration, no doubt about that.   With a medium speed sail and the wheel behind it they are easy to solo without crew.  In PVE only need to be faster than damned because they lack useful cannon space, which they are as long as you have wind and a light load.   The fore/aft shotgun sloop can be disregarded as the  new damned fleet makes that design obsolete, and PVP should be using the same fleet tactics against it. 

But I disagree that smaller means faster.   That is not true for sailboats, the longer it is the faster it goes, and the more speed sails you can have the faster it goes.

smaller meaning faster is only true for cars, where more horsepower can make less weight go faster.   But sails do not run on horsepower.

However I do agree it is the starter ship.   The raft was made useless with the 30% min speed and no rudder means it is just wasted as it will run aground.   The dinghy is useless as it has high stamina drain, you would never use it for sea travel it is only good for marine beaching.  A dinghy with a sail and some storage space would make a much better starter ship than a raft, and should replace the ramshackle sloop and raft.   The only purpose for starter ship should be GTFO to lawless, where you built a sloop as a mobile exploration base.

Duplication is 8x freeports, 4x in tundra, and usually 2-3x of most islands with some uniques.   The average is about 3x duplication. I know this because I created our unofficial with the intent of no duplicates - and we ended up with a 5x8 which is 1/6th the grids at doubled density and has 1/3rd the islands.   Much bigger than expected and the owner had to get more server to make it work.

Outside of freeports it is rare that the same island is used within the same grid, there might be a copy within the same region, and there might be another copy in the other hemisphere.  But what purpose does unique freeports have when the entire point of them is GTFO?  They would better off be instanced to handle the traffic. 

Tundra is scheduled to be fixed with the removal of west tundra used in the east tundra, using the similar variations that make east/west tropical/temperate look asian vs. western.

Just because the shoreline view of the map is the same does not mean it is a duplicate.    There are only 40 shoreline shapes in the game, but there is mostly certainly not 20x duplication causing you to get lost in copypaste.

The game adds sublevels to the islands that makes them look and play very different.  Equatorial have tiny swamp islands  surrounding them with no mountains, tropical has sandy beaches with inner mountains, temperate has tiny rocky beaches and bigger mountains.   Deserts have windswept rocks.    Tundra has pine trees and snow.   Many of them have variations with buildings and statues.   All of them have different flora and fauna, and climate along with the topographical variation in rocks and beaches.

They will be increasing from 2-3 island per isle to 3-4 islands per isle.   They are on record as saying this will be done with duplication and not new islands.   They are doing it for gameplay reasons (island owners) and not because there was a backlog of unfinished island art.   I would expect the average duplication to remain at 3x as that will be offset with the new Eastern Tundra (not really new it was clear that just missed the rushed Dec release since the sublevels for Tundra was already called Western)

use smaller grids with one island per square.

The game requires getting different variants of resources from different islands.   Resource islands do not fit the game mechanics.     

Claims worked at protecting resources because they could be put over the resource and marked as no build, without blocking the resource from spawning.

It is why people want claims back, they are the best solution if only the bad implementation was fixed (overlaps, claim stealing, unlimited, etc.)

This is a fantasy priate game not rhe real world, so why does #2 even apply

The solutions has already been proposed, small flag limit per player and reasonable flag limit for company.    You want an grid to yourself?   Then get recruiting and get lots of people in your company claiming up to the company limit.

PVE cannot be a conquest game because there is no fighting in PVE.  Even the attempts at fighting are labeled as griefing with risk you get banned and the exploits you used are patched out.  That is an advertised feature that only works in PVP.

Use a smaller grid and put one island in a grid.

Islands have their own climates and it must match the grids climate, otherwise you get nonsense temps.

Yep I give up no point in trying to see PVE official become a fun place to play.    Everybody was clear they want their own spot and willing to take limits to get that, nobody said they want their own island or a landlord.

Let our actions speak louder than words - do not start a new char on PVE official.

Now I just hope they give us tools on unofficials to work around this mess.   

This replaces foundation spam with sidewalk or tiny hut or fence spam.   It does not solve the problem.    Even more so with recent patches that made thatch structures very very cheap.   Greifers are very easily going to spend less than your base cost to maintain even if you made the replace the structures rather than just repair.  That is the fundamental problem - high cost is not a griefer deterrent.  

A repair structure with a large no build radius is actually less convenient in placement than a flag because you have to design your base around it - so why not just use the flag for claiming and fix its problems (no upkeep, no limits, overlaps, spammable at no cost).  Because that is exactly what a no build radius is - a claim.

2 hours ago, MindOfMadness said:

Would you mind defining what exactly "massive" means (to you) when talking about community outrage taking into account the literal "massive" reduction of the game population in general?

It was massive enough response on all platforms as well as those who said "that is it I am out" when the system changes were announced, as well as the clear market response that there was a massive reduction in game population with the original systems.

It was massive enough feedback that devs felt the need to speak up and say they are taking the feedback into consideration regarding flag claiming - which is very different than their prior redesign  of PVE is no flags.  They knew what they had was not working, and they clearly have heard that those of us that remain think their new plan was not going to work either.

So you can harp about semantics about what massive means, or you can hope they do not dump a massive change nobody wants because they did not really listen. 

Surely you do not mean to say the response was not massive enough and should be ignored?

In a skilled character based RPG - minigames do not make sense because the have nothing to do with the character and everything to do with the player. 

I am a skilled blacksmith but because I have a crappy wireless mouse with bad internet lag, I cannot hit and shape anything?   Yes this is not in the game atm but lets not go there.

If you want a FPS where player skill determines combat outcomes - then get rid of character skills entirely.  You simply cannot have it both ways.  Either it is a character skills RPG or it is a player skills FPS.

Although it is useful to have active systems to combat bots, there are ways to do it that do not require twitch reflexes.

hexes have long been used in mini wargames because they are much better at pathing along natural features than squares/rectangles.

I live on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by unuseable harbor with a narrow L shaped strip of resource land in front of the cliffs with a little bit of beach for a base.  I need multiple claims to be able to reach out to dock and shipyards.  The problem with the predefined grid is what if it stops right at the shoreline - you need multiple claims to cover a sea/land base.

4 hours ago, cloWandering said:

It almost sounds like they are surprised that we conclude global lawless when they said no more claim flags in PvE.  Maybe we jumped to conclusions, but I'm not sure what other conclusion we could have drawn from such a small amount of info at the time.

The conclusion of lawless everywhere is not jumping to conclusions - that is stated right here in the meager three bullets they spent on PVE.

PvE Network

• No claim flags
• Damage decay overtime added to all structures
• A new auto-repair structure which players will need to upkeep to prevent structures from being destroyed by decay.

No claim flags means like lawless

Damage decay overtime means like lawless

Only the auto-repair is new and not like lawless, as it is for grids outside lawless (per the VOD)

Their new restatements are only saying they are reconsidering their plans regarding (no) claiming; this is because of the massive outrage over the PVE plans. 

They could have the auto-repair structure also have a no-build radius and it would perform exactly like a flag with upkeep would (if it also does not block spawns)  They could even add their new improved wavy flag to it, with the drawing and painting import features they spent all that time on.   They could even delete the auto-repair structure and just use a flag that would fit better into your base design....

But it is proven circular flags just cause overlap gap problems, and it is well known that trolls do not care about expense.   So a hex grid that allows you to claim your nobuild area would be a better system and limits on these flags will stop the trolls more than time, materials or gold would.

They could have limits to how many you can have per player, company, islands grid.  However if the upkeep comes from the tax bank there needs to be a way to revolt and not pay taxes to kick out the island owner so that the slaves can win their freedom.  On PVP that is thru fighting physically, on PVE it could be done by fighting economically (stop paying taxes)

The devs have said they are autoclosing tickets as they are in favor of making exploits and griefing not possible in the game mechanics and they only use tickets to identify the trends.   So relying on admins to fix your problems, will only work on unofficials that actively ban those who do not follow the rules.

The repair cost for a base will always be higher than the repair cost for a pillar.     It only takes one pillar to ruin your ship, block your expansion, etc - and even if they cover the island in a grid of them - your base likely is a bigger structure and will have a higher repair cost.

And even if that tilts the other way and the repair cost of the trolling structures is somehow higher?  That is the price the trolls will pay as they milk your rage for your salty tears.

Contesting only works in PVP as it is one flag per island, go kill every last player on the island you win.  In PVE how will you kick the players off the island contesting your contesting?  It would only work if the players long ago quit and nobdy is left on the island (and all their NPC have mutiny), in which case flag decay is a more elegant solution.

There is a repair mechanism, call it a bank or machine, the point is it is centralized so there is no going to every object and repairing it.  

20 hours ago, Archsenex said:

Make auto repair only work on contiguous structures and isolated structures decay faster.   A single pillar or foundation is 10 minutes.   Enough for a trap is a day (same with a resource block hut).   A full base then yeah let it last a long time. 

So you are saying you prefer to be blocked in by sidewalks?

4 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

I've never understood why decay rates weren't tied to contiguous attachment

You would prefer the trolls build sidewalks that block you in instead of pillars?

try out the map editor I went from zero to watching reading tutorials to doing our unofficial map in only a few weeks time.  It is really clever way of allowing dynamic flexibility for custom servers by reusing island objects and their sub levels, giving things the appearance of being unique when they actually are not.  It allows easily making your own servers without needing to dive into devkit modding.

Does not matter how high or low the upkeep setting is, it is very likely any griefers foundations will always be less quantity of objects than your base.  Your base will always have higher upkeep than the griefers foundations, so the troll will always win the repair fight.

Of all the places this is the only one that has focused subforums that has long running feedback and back and forth on specific topics. 

 But they seem to do be doing reactionary design based on tweeter feed.

49 minutes ago, MeatSammich said:

That question was more for my future knowledge, if I ever decide to set up a small private cluster and play with the map editor,  not asking/expecting the devs to do it. It would  shrink the amount of land available too much to be of any use on officials.

Not a feature of the map editor, you would have to mod the islands (move their sea level) with the devkit.