Captain Jack Shadow

No. That's not enjoying the game.

You are cherry picking. Wealthy smaller schools, that were able to buy recruits and make a name for themselves, were able to compete with the big boys. Keep in mind that they also limit the number of recruits you can have now. Even still, Ohio University is never going to win a National Championship, while OSU has, and will. You are right, however, that because of the way they can recruit, college doesn't work as well, so use high school. Big schools have an advantage. Some schools have 1,000 to 2,000 in the senior class alone. That can often be more than the smaller schools have in all for grades levels in their high school. They have far more kids which gives them the likelihood of having more talented athletes. So they don't compete against the smaller schools. While it is not always true that they have more talented athletes, more often than not, they do. While in high school, I ran cross country for a slightly below average size school. The lower side of Div 3 out of 5 divisions. We entered an invitational meet in Dayton Ohio, every year. My Junior and Senior year, our division only had 4 teams, so we pulled out of our Division, and moved up to the Div 1 and 2, race. To give an example, we had 8 runners. 7 could enter the race. Cincinnati Princeton had more runners than we had on our football team. Most had to enter the open race to be able to run. Both years, we took first place, winning the meet handily. This is obviously an example of how occasionally the little guy wins, but it's not the norm. These types of stories make for good movies, and folk tales for a reason...they are rare. Like the little Indiana Basketball team that won against bigger schools, and was made into a movie Hoosiers. It wasn't one schooner. It was being double crossed by the Mega the day before that did the most damage. You can spin it how you want, but people who have small companies, mostly do not want to play in a server with the Megas. So they won't. It's why the player numbers are so low right now. You don't have to like that fact, but it is a fact.

We have talked about this. Just one more way the game is good for large companies, and not so much for small companies. We talked about the need to have a second ship with 2 people on it that hangs just a little away from the fight, and how the best plan would be for the ship that kills the SotD to be heavy on rear cannons, and kite the SotD away from a kill, so that the second ship can swoop in and gather up the loot, and NPCs if you want them. We also noted that if you are after as many crew as you can get, you either need to put a lot of points into crew for a schooner, or go with a stripped down Brig to collect them. But nobody logged in today. We had two crew mutiny, and we are going to lose the island. Can't keep up with the gold costs. Takes way too long to get anything down. Traveled through over 20 Tundra and Polar regions to find whales but didn't see a single spout. Maps give too little gold and are often in hard to reach areas. Flotsam and wrecks give too little gold. No way we can keep this up, so I think this is the end. I am going to update my Star Citizen game to 3.5 and go play that for now.

I don't like the view from the diving suit. Did they fix it? It is unrealisticly restrictive. I have had a real, old diving suit hard hat on, and I could see out of it just fine. Could even turn my head and see out of the side ports just fine. Anyway, I just spec into all of the water skills...speed, oxygen, and temperature. Then, I take everything off my body except a bow and arrows, and free dive it. Works just fine. BP bows make it easier, as bows seem to be a bit less effective against sharks. A good BP bow will make it much easier.

It drives people from the game. They seem to think that anything that smacks of fairly easy, means it's too easy and boring. By that reasoning, your building structures should bite you also, if you do not approach the building at just the right spot to place a new wall. Your Ship planks should break if you do not place them on the ship when the temperature is just right. Everyone likes to think they are a hardcore gamer, but the truth is, the majority are not. Games made for hardcore gamers will be niche games, unless they make allowances, or even different servers for the casual gamers. Want proof of this? I suggested that one reason Megas and smaller companies need separate servers, is because the rates need to be different for both. Smaller companies need rates that take into account that they won't have dedicated whalers, or treasure hunters. So what was one of the responses? An accurate response, by the way. If the rates are easier on the small company server, the megas will go there. Is this really news? The Megas don't want a server just for Megas. That is too hard core. Better to have the small companies to feed on. Vitamins were a hard core element to the food system. But what do people do? Stand in fires. The reality is that most people don't have more than a few hours per day, at most, to dedicate to this game. I don't understand why this is so lost on the Devs. Why is it so hard to come up with a breeding system that does not require you to be on all day long, and on multiple days? If we were to translate their mentality to building a ship, it would work like this. The materials would decay, and planks placed on a ship would decay, if no activity was done on the ship every three hours. The ship would need to be built in stages that took place at timed intervals, and if you missed an interval, your ship would suck. You would have to be online to build that ship for two days straight. Would anyone build ships? Not many. So why is it so hard to understand that with as important as tames are in this game, that it makes no sense to penalize people who have a life outside the game?

Once again, I have learned that the tames do better on the decks, than the ceilings. Have not had a bear glitch through a deck. Have not had a tame slide off the ship if on a deck. Try purpose building a ship for animal transport. Find any method that works for you that allows you to keep the animal on the deck, not a ceiling.

I think that actually has to do with the word getting out that Megas were going to Colonies. I think many people saw the writing on the wall, and so they stayed away.

Horse crap. Why does college athletics have separate leagues based on school size? By your reasoning, they should all be in one league, and the school with 1200 students should just suck it up and play with the big schools with 50,000 students, or be the bum on the side of the road begging for change. That's real life. Amateur baseball teams don't play against the pros, and men's softball teams don't play against the kids. Heavyweight fighters don't fight against Bantam weight fighters. There is an understanding that fairness is needed for competition to be exciting. In this case, it is selfishness by Megas that will ruin this game. That along with dumb decisions by the Devs. Like allowing name changes for Companies, such that a Mega can have some people leave the company, create a new company, put together the ships, and go off to raid. After the raid, they disband the company and everyone rejoins their original Company. You seem to think that every small tribe is just a half dozen players. We had about half a full company. Built by me selling the game to others in my large gaming community. If they had fun, in a true Colonies server with smaller companies, they would have helped recruit new people to the game. In time, I am sure I could have recruited enough to make at least two full companies with an Alliance, and if we grew much more than that, we would have headed off to the server meant for large companies. But it is what it is. A game trying to force small companies to bend the knee to Megas. Not surprising with all of the game breaking imbalance the game already has.

Because small to medium Companies need different rates. We need lower gold costs, and shorter vulnerability windows. We need more skill points, and more resources per hit on a node. We need faster taming and breeding, with breeding allowing us to imprint when we get back online. We don''t have enough people to imprint around the clock. We had about half of a full company at the start. A double cross by a Mega we allied with, and then a sinking of a schooner we then made, to try to get something going, reduced our numbers to about 1/4 of what we started with. So now we struggle to afford our island. We have no chance to set up a player shop. We can't afford NPCs to man defenses. I don't see us playing much longer. One good raid by a Mega posing as a small company, and we are likely gone. for good. Sad thing is this...I had been convincing people to buy the game. They did, so I was able to build up to about half company strength. I have an Organization of 1600+ in Star Citizen to try to recruit from, and an even larger alliance. That's where I recruited from. Was making some headway, despite the fact that ALL of them were reluctant, due to the bad reviews. Now, I have no chance. All interest has died. Nobody new is joining. So it will likely be that we find a new game to occupy us, while we wait for Star Citizen.

Yes, we are finding that the SotD, and the Flotsam, and Shipwrecks are giving mostly garbage BPs. Only rarely is is something we want. First of all, stop with the damn thatch BPs. Nobody wants those, except maybe on PvE. Who the hell is going to waste resources on a thatch BP? Maybe a fool. There are so many things that are BPs, that are useless. Stone picks and hatchets? No. Why even have them? It takes so long to get anything useful. Just one more thing that hurts the small companies, as we don't have people out there doing these things all day long.

Our island costs about 1248 gold per day. We are struggling to just keep that amount of gold. We tried to go whaling. Went through, I kid you not, over 20 Tundra and Polar grids and saw not one single spout. The only whale we saw was Moby Dick, who came after us, and we killed it. The amount of gold we got was disappointing. Took the wind right out of our sails, no pun intended. I believe it was 968 gold. I mean are you fucking kidding me? You know how long that trip took us? We only have 6 to 8 guys playing, and all of them were on that ship manning the helm and ballistas. All of them logged off, and we had two people left when Moby Dick attacked. So how the hell are we supposed to keep 1,000 gold for a player shop. It's mind numbingly infuriating.

The shop should cost NOTHING. It should be there to promote trade. We cannot afford one, so we can't trade. Boneheaded decision. One more reason to leave the game. One of my crew was excited to get one set up, and even made one. Then he learned that it would take something like 1,000 gold per day. Are you fucking kidding me? It shouldn't cost anything to run. Not one single gold piece. It should be nothing more than a mechanic to allow trade to happen. Period.

Horse crap. We selected an island before the launch. We landed there, and fought off one group for control of the island. It was the largest island in the grid, but everybody else were going after the smaller islands. By everybody else, I mean a Mega and one of their allies. The Mega was split into about 5 to 7 companies, all with the same name, and colors added to signify who they are. We took the island on the 2nd day, and reached out to them for peace. Talked in voice with one of their leaders, and peace was agreed upon. We were given a large list of friends and foes. 12 hours later, that Mega attacked and wiped us. We lost half the company, and 12 remained. We built a schooner on a lawless island, and had just launched it, and a Brigantine literally came into render, going full speed right at the schooner, and never turned. Just came right at it, and sunk it. Another half left. So now we are truly small company sized with about 8 active players. We are just about done with the game. We don't like Megas, and don't want to play in the same server as them. If we can't get that, we are likely not going to be here much longer. We are still trying to get a base built, and some ships built to kill SotD. Meanwhile, the Megas are getting into blueprint ships and cannons. We struggle just to get enough gold for our island upkeep. Rent on somebody esle's island. No thanks. I think we will be heading to play Life is Feudal with some of our friends. Maybe find a different game to play that is friendly to smaller groups.

The hell it does. We won't be playing much longer.

Breeding, like everything in this game, compared to ARK, is just wack. So you have crows on a desert island. How did they get there? They surely breed there. And they surely grow up from babies, just fine, right? In the zeal to create gameplay, they ruin the game. One reason so many people stop playing this game is because you lose EVERYTHING, when somebody decides to raid you. You work really hard to build something up, and in an instant, you can be set back to nothing. I have worked really hard to find some bears worth breeding. If they were on a boat that got sunk, I would quit the game. But that's just it...you have to take them someplace you can breed them. I can't breed them where I am. And it's not like I am in a big company. So I have to do this all on my own. So on top of the ridiculously long time it takes for the baby to grow up, I have to add in sailing times. Yay for me! -facepalm A lot of these ideas are just fine for PvE, but not PvP. It's just getting to be too much bother to do anything, with how easy it is for a small company to lose everything when playing against Megas disguised as several small companies. But their aren't even trying to hide it. Like X Company, X Company Gold, X Company Silver, X Company Red, X Company Blue, etc... I don't think we will be playing this much longer. I figure after the next time we get raided and or wiped by a Mega, we will be done for good. We are already down to 1/4 of what we started with at the start of this season.

I assume this can be an option in unofficial servers.

OK, so I took the two crows, 2 bears, a parrot, a bull and a cow, across several servers. All of them on the bottom deck of a ship. No other decks on the ship. All made it to the destination safely. So this will be my new method for traveling with tames.

I have learned that the animals seem to do best when placed on an actual deck, not ceilings. For some reason, ceilings are not as stable. I transported 2 bears, 2 crows, a parrot, a bull and a cow across several servers, and had no issues with them. All arrived safely at the destination.

My company hit the pavement running, and took the island we wanted. Problem was, we were in the same grid as a Mega. They took 4 of the 5 islands, and had the intention of taking the one we were on. After taking the island, we reached out to have a non-aggression agreement. In effect, to join their very large alliance, that is in fact, still a thing in Colonies. Had a voice meeting with one of their leaders, and was given a list of friends and enemies. 12 hours later they attacked and wiped us. Most of our people were not on line. We weren't at full company strength to begin with. Half the company quit. They want no part of Colonies with Megas involved. Since that time, half the company has quit again. The reason for them is simple. Cost is not equal to risk. You work very hard to get something, and can lose it all in an instant. Oh sure, it is fun to wipe somebody, but every wipe costs the community some members, because building back up is just not fun for most people. And when you do it later in the game, it is even harder. You are now just trying to get a base built, and a ship or two built, while the others are working on getting what they need for mythical. You have no chance against them. This game MUST go to factions, and has to get rid of the notion of losing everything. Building back up on ARK seemed like it was a lot easier, and yet still painful. Doing it in this game us just too much for a lot of people. Understand that most people are casual gamers, even if hardcore when playing. They are casual gamers because they don't have 50 to 80 hours per week to put into the game.

This is NOT an exploration game. You have the Wikis and other player made things that tell you where everything is. For it to be an exploration game, you would need procedurally generated resource nodes, that would spawn in different locations...not the same location, over and over. And, there would need to be procedurally generated loot that you could just happen across, similar to the ship wrecks at sea.

Works best if you set them to follow "lowest," in Behavior. Also, works best if you call them to you once one the ship. Having them follow you on, can cause problems when going up a ladder that has ceilings and walls between the ladder and where you want to put the animal. Best to call them to you, as they are off the side of the ship, and then quickly run to the spot where you want them. They will teleport onto the deck at the side of the ship, and walk to your spot. I have bad things happen when they come onto the ship at built up Quarterdecks and Fo'c'sles. Better to have them enter from the side of the ship. Then put them on passive...not passive flee.

I have to get two high level crows from one grid, to another grid that is several grids away. What are the odds they make it there without disappearing? I'm not very optimistic about my chances.

Eve is not Atlas, and while your game play in EVE MAY be limited to some extent, it's impossible as a solo in Atlas. Atlas is about production. You will be sailing slow in a vanilla ship, while the Megas are running ships way faster than yours, and they will strip panels in one shot. You WILL be sunk As a solo player, you can't exist because there is no high security space for you to exist. I have some friends, married couple, who want to play the game, and tried, but they can't because they only have weekends to play. Maybe 10 hours on a weekend. Game does not support that.

And that's the problem. The better an island, the more it should cost. Bigger is not necessarily better, and in fact, often is not. This game is seriously imbalanced, and has a long way to go before it will be ready for primetime. I have seen a lot of people quit already, this season. It's already a niche game because most people don't have 70 hours a week to put into the game each week. So they can't properly defend what they have built up. 50 people who play 2 to 3 hours a night will not be able to compete with a company who has many people putting in 8 plus hours a day. It takes a lot of time just to get anything done. So when somebody puts all that time and effort in, and then loses everything in just a couple of hours, they quit, and that is what I saw happen. It shrinks the community, and thus becomes a niche game. Some I know, left because the Megas came to Colonies. They are not coming back. Ever.

If you cannot feed, it should not be giving you a blue/red feed indication. It's broken. I think I will make a video, and show the gaming community how broken it is. Also, you can feed, and then enter the same spot, the same way, and same angle, and suddenly, out of nowhere, get hit. I have tamed elephants. I don't enjoy taming elephants. Gamers need correct information and feedback in a game. You don't play in a FPS, and have to guess if the crosshairs on your sniper rifle are actually accurate. Furthermore, every last task in a Survival game, PvP or PvE, does not have to be monumentally difficult for the game to be challenging and enjoyable. Just getting out there and finding a decent level Elephant, can be challenging. Getting it back home without losing it, or getting your ship sunk, can be challenging. Some of you act really absurd about this stuff. I mean, it's just a straight abomination that the berry bushes aren't pricking you for damage if you don't approach the bush just right before pressing E. In real life, people get injured on construction sites. The game is too easy because structures never fall on your head...you never break your hand or lose a finger in to process of building your building. Building is too easy and so Grapeshot is catering to the lowest denominator. smh