Ban Tier

... we have a new lead designer. Was waiting for this decision since their first livestream and horrible balancing changes. Now lets hope that the new guy understands, there are a lot more casual players out there than hardcore players. And that there are better ways to motivate veterans to play the game than making them more or less unbeatable for newbies due to incredible high stats and gear. I would for sure return to the game if it would be possible to keep up with progress of hardcore gamers with a more senseful ammount of playing time. Just one example: the current war-time equals a full workday. Ppl who had already a rl working day, who have friends and family barely can affort another working day just for pixels. There must be better and mor fun ways for holding and capturing islands. Nevertheless, good luck to the new guy.

+1 especially for balancing fights. I stopped playing after 1100+ hours, because some ppl/ships have insane resistances. Max specialisation + max equipp should be capped to max 150% compared to base skills (base skill is i.e. blue equipp and equally distributed points).

Short Feedback here: Yesterday we tried to claim an enemy Islands in our grid. First attack was quite ok, we were just running out of time due to the fact, the the claim timer runs backwards when the claim is interrupted. But the enemy had still beds on the Island and gear. So fair enough. The fight of the second Island became weird, because the enemy has build a high tower on their heightest mountain on the first Island and can now fly with gliders between the Islands without needing to use a boat. So despite the fact, that we could remove their beds on the second Island, were in control of the seas, they could come and set back the claim for more than 3 hours. We achieved 100+ kills with less than 10 losses, looted tons of mats but due to the flying mechanics, we were not able to claim the Island. I am not sure, if gliders are intended to fly between Islands. But if we want to play a naval game, it should not be possible to bypass this aspect of the game. So I would suggest to nerve gliders drastically so that they can only be used to fly for a very short duration (10-15 seconds). If you need to jump of a high point, you can first free fall before you open the gilder, so no problem. Other options would be to change the claim mechanics, i.e. the claim will only start to be interrupted if an enemy player entered the circle and stayed in the area for x minutes. Even better would be a system, where numbers count. The claim will be interrupted if the enemy scores lets say 100 points. Each enemy in the circle "earns" 10 points per minute. So 1 player needs to stay fpr 10 minutes in the area or 10 players for one minute. Personally I would prefer just the nerve of the gliders because it has less impact on the existing defenses. But due to the fact, that the fight over land ownership is my personal motivation for PvP, I am also open for carefully changing the claim system, so that we get real fights over Islands AND over the seas arround it (as our first claim in the morning) and less suicide actions.

Well I am not sure, if you understood the mechanics. A settlement owner can only demolish your structures within the first 24h. And if the landlord is interested in taxes and good settlers, why should he do that within the first 24h ? Thereafter in a dispute he must raid your base in the same way, any base can be raided outside peacetime. You should ask your future landlord, if you get the permission to place defensive canons. If he agrees, all is fine. If he denies, well I would look for a better place. The landlord can temporarily change the setttings regarding placement of canons, so he can also kind of control, how much defenses he will allow. I think this system is not bad balanced, you just need to play it right. So if you play the system right, at least you should be able to defend your stuff. Just find the right landlord and place to settle.

@Willard : you did not fully understand my post. We do ok with the 9 hours window, but as you pointed out, it IS a LOT of time. My point is that if Grapeshot wants to sell more copies of their game and fill up the servers, they need to continue to improve the experience for casual gamer, who do NOT want to invest so much time. And one point is to make the life of raiders as hard as possible. You need to have skills to kill a base in 4 hours, but that is what I call "ambitious PvP". Making the life for the attacker easier is the wrong direction. The dramatic drop of playernumbers and the fail of the empire server proofed this. So I hope, Grapeshot continues this direction.

This is a perfect analysis, why the Game still has so little population and so many negative reviews. The devs simply forget, that ppl might have a RL family and friends, RL jobs to earn the money the need to buy the game and future DLCs. My personal impression is, that there are two groups within Grapeshot itself fighting over the direction which the game should take. One group dreams of mega companies and mega fights ala EvE-Online. The tryout of the Empire-Server, denying an influence map for colonies from the beginning, nervs to game mechanics in the favour of larger clans (whale payout nerv) etc. I can only hope, that the more sensible group of devs, listening to smaller and medium clan players, will win this internal struggle. The colonies system revived your playerbase to a certain ammount. Continue to improve the mechanics in the favour of small to medium clans and you will not only see that your playerbase recovers, it will make the game also more interesting for new players to buy. We are a small company and barely can cover the 9h windows due to my ppl having a live. A window of 6-7 hours would make a attack of up to 5-6 hours (one hour claim timer) possible. And I call this still a long battle. A shorter window of 4-5 hours would even allow casual players, to enjoy PvE content or recover after an attack, so that the PvP can continue.

When a ship slighty touches an obstacle, it jumps like crazy and when unlucky - like me - you hit the ground much faster as your actual speed was resulting in breaking planks and sinking the ship. This bug was fixed and returned as many other bugs. Really disappointing @Grapeshot

Same bug here, ressource distribution seems to be bugged. Gras bushes yield tons of garlic in M14, no resin at all and iron nodes give tons of silver which is useless without gems. And last not least, no Resin at all. Absolutely not sure, if this is intentional because the combination is useless.

Maybe the OP should reread how the game was announced on steam: Piracy is just one aspect among many others. But ppl continue to call the game a "hardcore" survival game just to justify their griefing. So it is very good that Grapeshot tries to shift the game from a griefers-haven to a more settlement and civilization-building game, which is influenced by piracy.

Well puckles will work during non-raid times as far as I understood the system. Players and structures are only protected within the radius of the settlement, which is not covering the whole island if I understood their post right. So you can build puckles and PvP outside of this radius, you just can not build offensive structures during non-raid times on that island.

Lol this is a joke excuse for offline-raiders. You really think that offline-raiders will stop at a certain point just to finish off the enemy during online times ?

This is nonesense. Either you grant a protection or not. How would you try to balance your cost ? And why should everything be raidable at any time ? If you really want to take stuff from other people try to get it, when THEY are ready to defend it. YOU want to take something, so YOU have to to pay the cost of being online, when your opponent is.

Well just to correct your vision, outside the settlement radius on an island, ppl can still PvP all the time. And other companies are allowed to build defensive structures (swivel) all the time. So yes, the owner can try to demolish unwanted structures, but you have a slight chance to defend. So not that bad, but still not the best solution.

You mean PvP should only be for ppl without a RL job and RL friends/family ?

Is this a 9 hours window per day ? So playing ATLAS equals a fulltime job ? Are you serious ?