MaxPower

I seriously doubt there is any plan to ever make Lawless claimable. Not only would that piss off a LOT of people who have already setup bases there, it doesn't make much sense. New players need an area to setup and get established before they head out into the world to try and compete for claims. Lawless provides that pretty well the way it is. If it were claimable, it'd be nearly impossible for new players to get a start. 

Did you try logging out and back in? I was stuck in my boat and this is how I fixed it. 

If that doesn't work, have one of your company kill you. I'd imagine you're sticking out of the boat somewhere.... 

58 minutes ago, Wizzy said:

This is not about stopping fixes, it's about managing updates in a non haphazard way 

I've created game and some for Activision and managed many releases, this group is like amateur hour 

I luv the game and the old ark but they need a good Chief information 

I seriously doubt that to be honest. A game developer would understand two simple concepts here:  

1. You're talking about private servers. While the devs can't ignore private servers, they can't be their primary focus. Getting fixes out as fast as possible to players on official servers should (and is) their top priority. 

2. The game is in early access and at least two years from full release. A true game dev would understand that and appreciate that a set patch schedule right now would be very hard to maintain. There are going to be bugs and issues that need to be addressed immediately. Most of the patches we've seen since launch for example have been critical bug and stability fixes that SHOULD be released as soon as they're ready. You don't hold back such fixes a week just so private servers don't have to update. That's nonsense. 

My advise? If you don't want a lot of patches don't play an early access title that just came out. 

Unfortunately they do but its not THAT much more expensive than buying a new crew every day (if idle they cost about 1g per hour and a half)... and you save the trip. Just throw some gold in a ship resource box to keep them paid and you'll be set. 

As far as I know those are the only ways. What exactly are you finding troubling about the "overnight thing"?

Awesome. I'm probably not going to play tonight but I'll definitely get it tomorrow. 

The big island really does blow. It has very few usable resources, which is surprising given its size. 

Wait, we have a discord? 

lol I recognize the company name. I live on the north side of the big island (forget what its called) in that zone and seen you trading gems before in the chat. 

Heh you live in K12 on NA PVE don't you... ?

First of all, can we lose the idea that there is some sort of "skill" involved with sailing in this game? There isn't some super secret skill you possess that makes you a badass pirate or anything because you can sail into the wind. It takes all of 5 minutes to figure out... 

Not to mention, you'll still move 70% slower going strait into the wind... which is significant given the distance between islands. So no, people aren't going to just point strait into the wind no matter what since it'll still take much longer to reach your destination.  

There are legit things to complain about with the game but your reaction to this seems overly dramatic. 

Just now, Jaite said:

I hate to say it but good game play is not sitting at your desk twiddling with your thumbs. 

Completely agree. Sailing around is a lot of fun at first but after a while its just a boring means to an end. Allowing us to get to our destinations faster isn't a bad thing at all. 

Not to mention that ships beyond a raft aren't impacted by sailing into the wind all that much if you know how to sail. The people really punished by sailing into the winds are new players on a raft.... so giving them a little break is also a good move. 
 

Just now, Bisbois said:

NPC ships would be awesome but they would still need to be easily distinguished from player-built ships. Personally I dislike the SOTD look; it takes away from my pirate immersion.

Well Atlas is a fantasy game with things like magic and dragons (and skeletons and ghost ships). If you want a pure pirate simulator, this is never going to be it. 

As for the SotD they're a necessary evil right now. Until there are other NPC ships out there, the oceans need some sort of dangers for us to fight/avoid... otherwise sailing is pretty boring, at least on PVE. Once/if other NPC ships are introduced, which I certainly hope the devs plan to do,  the SotD can be relegated to a rarer and more limited role. 

9 minutes ago, Dorf said:

It doesnt show it well but it was right before the small gate doors.

Have you tried removing the railings and placing the ramp/stairs first? Other than that I can't think of any reason it wouldn't snap based on that picture. 

You can also try hitting Q, which cycles the available snap points. 

1 minute ago, Dorf said:

I must have been doing it wrong.  I'll try again.   I'm familiar with the t function but it wasnt working for me when I tried earlier.  It might be the landscape causing issues.

Yeah its possible something funky is blocking the placement. Stairs and ramps definitely snap to floors. 

As the OP was talking about, there is some serious strangeness with what causes placement block and what doesn't. Not really surprise, the exact same was also true in Ark. 

3 minutes ago, Dorf said:

I tried a roof. It wouldnt snap to my floor.  So I snapped it to a railing and removed the railing and poof it broke. 

Hit T when you have the roof placement active and change it to a ramp. I just check, the ramp will snap to floors but the roof itself doesn't. 

3 minutes ago, Dorf said:

I cant wait till modding takes off.  It's like they went back in time 4 years.  I just started building, significantly, today and I'm missing basic things like ramps.

EA is the real stuggle! 

There are ramps... and stairs! To get a ramp press T while placing a roof. You can cycle different types for most of the building blocks. 

12 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

I've played both MMORPG's and sandbox games including 4k hours in Ark and extensive experience with Eve. I'm fully aware of the differences between MMO and MMORPG, as well as the difference between sandbox and theme park, but I thought I remembered interviews prior to release with Jeremy and Jess where they referred to questing as part of the game's content beyond just the one main quest with the compass. It's possible I am misremembering what they said would be included, that's part of why I made the thread asking.

Well as Phant0m quoted, the store page alludes to quest, sub-quests and rewards. So yeah, you're correct to wonder if they're in the game yet... especially since the Steam Early Access description says everything in the features second listed on the store page is in the game. On this feature that seems to be a bit of a stretch.   

1 hour ago, wakko151 said:

 They don't have a group of 50 guys who are all working together. 

If the game is going to require you to have a group of 50 working together to enjoy it, including the PVE game, its not going to last long. Don't underestimate just how many people don't want to be a slave to some guild/clan/tribe/company leader they don't know and not everyone (in fact, most people) don't have 50 friends to play with. Even Ark, as grindy as it was, didn't force you to play with large groups to enjoy it. Sure, official PVP was pointless without a decent sized tribe but PVE was still enjoyable solo or in a small group. If that wasn't the case, Ark wouldn't have been as popular as it was/is. 

This is honestly one of the biggest issues with the game right now. If they want to let animals aggro you while you're online and in your house.... whatever, fine. At least I can do something about it. Its complete BS however that I have to worry about a damn snake ripping my wood house apart while I'm offline.  

The devs could solve SO many problems in the game right now with a single change: Offline raid/damage protection.... but I'd settle for animals not attacking my damn house while I'm not online.  

21 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

3. I don't think people understand what I am after here.  OK, so you make it to a lawless area, and build your ship, but you can't get back online for a week, and you need to get out onto the high seas and stake your claim.  But you can't do that if you ship was destroyed before you can get back online.  Or, maybe your base, and port were destroyed, and now you no longer have a claim, but your day is done, and you need time before you can find another claim.  Thus, this could be an option reserved only for those who do not have a claim...a port area on a claimable island, where you can park your ship, and enjoy the same protections as noted in 1.  Once you have a claim, you can no longer park at a freeport, safely.

I see what you're saying and I don't disagree with the why, I'm just not sure this is a workable solution. Honestly, this (and #1) could be solved by simply having offline raid protection. You wouldn't need a safe port to park your ship if the damn thing couldn't be sunk while you're offline.  
 

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4. That would be OK if you didn't have to waste so many points spec'd into what you don't need.  They need to separate many of these things.  For instance, why do I need to craft item to use them, and yes, that's the way they have it set up.  Why do I have to spec into beast mastery to ride.  Why do I have to spec into tools, then firearms, and then into artillery crafting, to get to what I actually need, the skills to shoot a cannon well.  This is why their system fails.  But problem solved.  I play on an unofficial that boosts the points such that when you are fully leveled, you will have all of the skills...all of them, or extremely close to it.  That works for me.  Besides, you see, I love a challenge.  If I am shooting my cannons at the other guy, I want to win because I am just better at shooting, not because I spec'd into that, and he didn't have the points to spec into the skills that allow him to shoot on my level.   But that's the type of player I am.  When I played WWIIOL, I always chose the side with the worst tanks, and still finished in the top 15, every single campaign.

Yeah. As you mention, the one really odd thing about the skill system is that while it seems to be set up to encourage player interaction (you can't learn to craft everything thus need to get stuff you can't from other players), it's also sort of counter intuitive in that while I can buy a pistol from someone if I don't have the Firearm tree.... it doesn't do me much good unless I learn skills inside the firearm tree, which will teach me how to craft the pistol. That doesn't make sense. 

I play WW2OL myself back in the day but I also played a ton of Star Wars Galaxies. Galaxies had issues but one thing they did REALLY well was the economy. I'm not sure I've ever seen an in-game economy function quite as well and they did it similar to how the ATLAS devs are trying: You had one character per server and could only learn a limited amount of skills. However, when you learned a combat skill you didn't also learn how to make the weapons used for that skill. After all, I don't need to know how my pistol is made in order to use it. It made sense and, for all its faults, Galaxies had a thriving economy. Combat focused characters wouldn't ever touch crafting skills and would instead go off and buy their weapons from crafting focused characters that rarely touched combat skills. That's how you drive a player economy and if that's going to be the objective here, the current skills need a huge re-write. If that's NOT the objective by the way, than why the hell is the tree so restrictive? 

That's a bit of a side track tirade but I do agree with what you're saying about skills in general. In a game like this I want to win battles because I'm better, not because I choose smarter when unlocking skills. Seems like the current system was a "We need to do something, anything, different than Ark....." sort of move that was  thrown together at the last minute. It doesn't make much sense and it feels out of place.  

3 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

A good suggestion would be to put all of the Megas on the same server.  Make the other server(s) for smaller Companies, and limit their size.  I do know I will stop buying these kinds of games if they only cater to large streamers.

Another thing would be for gamers themselves to wake up and stop playing the role of slave just to be involved with the streamer.  You are in effect, agreeing to be the house boy for some low level celebrity.  I would think that most men would have enough pride in themselves than to allow themselves to be a slave.

Absolutely agree. If the devs have such a hard on for trying to force everyone into large companies, than have separate servers for those of us that don't want to be slaves. Have a server(s) with a company cap of 20-30 people, so solo and small group players aren't at such a disadvantage.

As to the OP's suggestions:

1. You seem to be suggesting this as some sort of offline protection. If that's the case, there are better ways to deal with ships being blown up while the entire company is offline. The problem with such a buff is that, while it might protect your ship when you're offline... it'll also give you a huge advantage against out of towners in your home region, which will itself be exploited significantly. Players would just hang near their island and kill anyone that comes near as those other players would stand no chance. Sorry but this is one that has no chance unless its a relatively small buff and only in your claim. 

2. A reputation system would be cool but the penalties would have to be extreme to have an impact on larger companies.

3. There are a lot of issues with this one. The freeports are suppose to be starter regions, not safe zones for established players. You'd have so many ships clogging up the ports if established players could hide their relatively free... which would make the regions unplayable. 

4. I agree that you should be able to unlock more than you currently can but 90% might be a bit much. I'd be happy with being able to unlock 50-60% of the tree.

5. I very much would like to see something similar to this and it ties in with #7. The problem is that ships take so damn long to build and you can easily lose them on the first trip out. Its sort of fun and novel at first... but it'll be REALLY annoying if it happens a lot, which it could. Even with 2.5x harvesting it took a buddy and me a couple days to build a Schooner. It would have been quicker if we didn't have to search for gems to make alloy, but it still would have taken several hours. If this damn thing gets sunk by a SotD the minute we take it out of port, I'll be pretty pissed.

So honestly, I think its one or the other. Either offer some way to at least partially recover a sunken ship or make ships a bit easier to build to loses aren't the end of the world (again, this is more a solo/small group issues so I'm sure the devs don't care). One idea would be to have an NPC salvager in the ports that can "salvage" your ship for you at the cost of a certain amount of gold. You'll get it back damaged and without any of your items that were in it, but the basic ship will be there. Seems a reasonable solution to me and in PVP it would give an incentive to not have your ship captured.... which could add a new element. 

6. Honestly, this ones a no brainer and the reason why I'm not currently playing PVP (and why I never played Ark PVP much). Don't mind getting my ass kicked or having my ship sunk by another player, that's part of the game. However, I don't want it happening while I'm sleeping or at work. That's just BS.

8. This one I disagree with, at least in PVE. There needs to be MORE NPC enemies to battle on the open ocean.... not less. The one way they can be made rarer however is by adding regular NPC ships.... which I very much hope is on the agenda.

9. This one actually boggles my mind. It seems the devs really want trade to be a central aspect of the game (which is why the skill tree is the way it is)… but they don't have any actual mechanics in place for it. Not even a basic player to player swap system. It'd seem such features should have been high priority. 

10. Seems perfectly reasonable. 

There is certainly a lot more grey in the PVE than you usually see... 

15 hours ago, DattoSSS said:

Tigers and wolves run faster than me 

Honestly, its be pretty stupid if they didn't.... 

The rest of your feedback is pretty fair but this particular one is fitting an annoying pattern I've noticed: People complaining about ANYTHING that can kill them. Look, this is a survival game... there are going to be dangers in the world and you shouldn't be able to outrun or overpower everything. 

1. While its a starter zone, its not a safe zone. Learning that dying has consequences is important to new players so I don't agree with this suggestion. 

2. That's not going to happen. The whole points of starter zones is to give new players someone to get started... its not to give people a place to hide their ships. If ships didn't decay quickly in freeports the region would be overrun with ships and would become unplayable. 

3. What do you want sorted out exactly? There are a lot of reasons to not like the current system but simply saying "It sucks, fix it" isn't meaningful feedback. 

4. There seems to be issues where certain creates spawn in huge swarms, which I hope they fix. Although don't expect the islands to ever be safe because they won't be. 

5. Completely agree. You shouldn't be able to loot other players or their storage/workstations in PVE. 

43 minutes ago, Underwrought said:

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with the EA tag quit bringing it up like it means ANYTHING.  Because it doesnt.  EA doest prevent them from lowering the decay rate in freeports to prevent losing a damn ship youve spent hours upon hours creating in 8 fucking hours.  Being EA isnt stopping them from lowering damned ships spawn rates further or removing all together for now.  Quit making excuses for a shit company. 

But see that's just it... it DOES have a lot to do with it being an in-dev game. Its not about defending the devs, its just reality. 

Perhaps you're too young to have played many in-dev games but there is a pretty simple rule that us older guys know: Do not invest time in an alpha/beta/early access game if you're not prepared to deal with huge glitches and risk losing all your progress. The simple fact is that during development, things are going to go horribly wrong. Its inevitable and if you lack the ability to understand or deal with such issues, don't play the game until its finished. 

I lost a couple ships that I spend a lot of hours on too but you don't see me whining about it. Why? Because I knew full well that since the game is still in an alpha state there was a high likelihood that really bad things could happen.... because they always do. I didn't even spend any time creating my character since I expected it to get erased by accident or for the servers to get wiped. That's the reality of development and people need to understand what they are playing. 

I'd also point out that there are good reasons why the decay rate in freeports is so high. Its so you can't hide there as a higher level... they're suppose to be starter zones, not safe spaces for you to hide your ship.