RyuujinZERO

You sure ship claims work in PvE? We had a raft in front of our base, abandoned for 2 weeks, would never let us put a claim on it (We eventually sank it, it was clear the owner wasn't using it or coming back. But they really need a way of detecting and removing abandoned ships in PvE, because the sinking exploit isn't acceptable either since it can be used maliciously)

I'm pessimistic. The boat sinking by weight has been an issue since day 1, we first caught wind of people doing it just 2 or 3 days after launch. It's now over 3 weeks and still only now have we had a very minor acknowledgement from the devs that this is even an issue; and no attempts made to resolve it. The 'support tickets' are being used as a reason by the moderators to shut down most topics that try and report griefers and exploiters; but the cynic in me thinks that is more to do with burying bad press, than it is to actually resolve anything. If they were serious about this they'd have fixed the worst of the exploits weeks ago (It's really not that hard to make the code changes needed to prevent people doing it)

The people sinking boats this way typically load themselves up with thousands of units of metal (Which while it super encumbers them, doesn't immobilize them), then they grapple up onto the boat. Even in PvP it seems pretty unimmersive and gimmicky that a human being can carry enough metal to break a galleon in two, without also breaking all their bones.

Pretty sure there is no time limit. A sleeping person stays in the world until killed. Obviously if a guy goes offline for a week in PvP, someone will probably have razed his house, but in PvE if your house is secure, you and it should still be there when you return however much later, it's the major draw of PvE over PvP - long term persistence and security.

Grapeshot is basically 'that DM' who is hell bent on power tripping over their players, and if you somehow survive their sadistically over-tuned encounter, they just get angry and throw something else at you to try finish the job. "You SURVIVED the at sea ambush by 4 crocodiles? - Well NOW YOU HAVE SCURVY AND YOUR LEGS ARE BOWED OUT SIDEWAYS! - Also, there's an alpha wolf gnawing on the boat's hull, IN THE DEEP OCEAN!. It's a deep ocean alpha wolf! - Also your guns suddenly do 50% less damage because, I dunno, rust monsters in the hold. Also, there is now 7 tornadoes converging on the boat"

In ARK aquatics tended to grossly over-spawn too, but at least in ARK we had diving fins and the ability to increase our swim speed indefinitely which meant you could stay one step ahead of the endless hordes of predatory fish. It feels like the same issue exists here but we're stuck with fixed speed caps, all of which are below what is required to avoid getting murdered.

A sloop with a medium speed sail and a good wind behind it can outrun them, and a schooner can leave them for dust under all but becalmed conditions, especially with a large speed sail. Their aggro range is also way smaller than you'd expect on a sloop or schooner, so simply going around them is plenty to keep you safe. I would not recommend a handling sail, simply because if you DO aggro one (Which may be unavoidable at a zone boundary), you are going to have a lot of trouble escaping.

Your 200-man streamer-zerg company is supposed to swarm it with your max hand to hand and un-ending wave of naked bodies, duh.

That seems pretty unenforceable. Unless you catch the griefer in the act of sinking your ship, or they publicly admit to it, there is no way to verify who was responsible (And if you catch them red handed it's usually possible to disarm their attempt by grabbing the sinking-ballast off the floor and throwing it overboard)

Perhaps you can point out to me the bit where they say they're addressing it, because I don't see it there or in the previous patch notes, nor is it mentioned in the upcoming patch. All we've seen is one dev who said on Steam discussions that they discourage griefing, and are looking into it; which was posted almost a week ago now, between the 'looking into it' status, the fact it didn't make it into last major patch, and isn't lined up for next major patch should rightly instill people with concern they don't really care or take it seriously.

It probably means that a griefer came by and sank them. Right now a person can load their inventory up with a bkghjillion tonnes of metal, grapple up onto your boat, and sit there til it sinks. Then they strip it for salvage. So far the devs have made one offhand comment about how they 'don't encourage griefing' but have done nothing about it. You'd think 'People can single-handedly sink dozens of ships a night on the PvE server for fun and profit' would be emergency fix worthy. but it wasn't even addressed in this week's major patch, and it's been this way since day 1. Of course, if you were parked in a freeport that's something else; ships in freeports suffer rapid decay to discourage people treying to harbour in them overnight.

Flame arrows are also completely useless against creatures in water; you know, like crocs attacking your boat, which makes up at least half the fights I have to deal with living in a desert archipelago. The only real valid strategy against that is to climb the crows nest and snipe them from above with firearms.

I was hanging in there waiting for them to fix some incredibly broken stuff; like crocs attacking through walls and ship hulls, people sinking ships in PvE etc. and I managed to find strategies for handling crocs, wolves etc solo on foot without dying, so the game was at least 'playable' for me, even if often annoying. And yet apparently the most broken thing they felt they needed to fix with highest priority, was that some players were actually surviving against the wildlife solo. Honestly, Grapeshot feels like one of those sadistic DM's in a game of D&D who think it's their mission to kill all of their players expediently. And when they survive their incredibly unfair encounters, the DM gets angry and keeps upping the ante; throwing more mobs, more dangerous foes, less tools to defend themselves, no matter how absurd or immersion breaking. I'm done with this campaign and going to find a less abusive DM.

Get a ladder on your crows nest, maybe put your bed and a storage box with guns and ammo too if you have a medium sail. Crocs cant reach that high and you'll have a clear shot to kill them before you risk getting in the water. Crocs are dumb, and a problem for npc crewed Ships, but for solo players they are a non-issue if you prepared properly.

Have you actually tried contesting flags? A tonne, maybe even the majority of flags are just plonked down by people doing random land grabs who have no intention of using or securing that land, many arn't even playing anymore. My little 3 man-company is always flipping unused claims of land and feeling out new locations in NA PvE to see how we like them (and letting other people take the land if we decide to move on). Just a few days ago we gave up our old 5-claim plot in H10 to a friendly larger company who looked like they could make better use of it, and claimed an entire small desert biome island that nobody was using in another zone to be our new base. The island was 'claimed' when we got there, but there was no structures on it, no sleeping people to lock it down and nobody contested it when we started to flip them; nor have since come to object to our presence since then. There is land waiting to be flipped and used everywhere. You just need to stop treating the existing claims as some sort've permanent lockdown. They're just that a claim. But if the owners aren't using that land, and locking it down with a base, then it's actually very difficult to enforce that 'claim'

I've been thinking of giving this a try. Using large cannons, can you hit them from outside their own firing range? - Schooners are fast, so if that was the case I'm guessing it should be possible to match speed so they are stucking chasing, eating hits? Is that viable? How many large cannons would you recommend?

The simplest fix for the weight exploit without harming PvP interaction is simply to make it so that ANCHORED ships cannot be sunk by weight/over-crewing. Non-allied players can still get aboard. Over-encumbering or over-crewing a ship is still dangerous and cannot be exploited by the owner. Player inventory weight still matters for long distance travel. It's extremely difficult for someone to grief a moving ship at sea, far from land this way since they would have to travel out to you on a boat too. If someone boards you in transit near land, you're also close to a place to anchor safely; sinking doesn't happen instantly, it takes a while.

Seems to me you forgot the most glaring one of all... People shouldn't be able to sink other people's ships in PvE Above all else that seems like it should be a high priority, fixed in the next mini-update, critical emergency patch deal. But, it's been over a week since people discovered this bug and it's just getting more and more widely exploited.

1. Crocs (and predators in general) attacking through structures, predator AI in general for that matter is basically indistinguishable from a zombie game in terms of aggression, relentlessness and mindless behaviour. 2. Predator spawn rates Vs toughness in general; the game throws mobs at you like it's a conventional MMO, but the game plays like a survival sandbox, the two are incongruous with one another. 3. Weight exploit needs to be fixed ASAP, this is only going to get worse as word spreads.

Nope, which makes this discussion all the sillier.

Unfortunately Wildcard/Grapeshot is owned by Snail Games, a Chinese publisher. Letting Chinese streamers grief foreigners to the delight of their followers is fantastic for sales back in the motherland, while being an ARK-like game from Wildcard (or, Grapeshot) means it's in no danger of suffering weak sales in the West for it. Wildcard/Grapeshot themselves might well support the idea, but their publisher would never approve such a measure, it'd actually be counter productive for them.

People are using a range of exploits/hacks to clip through walls, brute force PIN codes, even suck items out of chests right through walls; your box smithy still wouldn't be safe. They can either try and fix every exploit that is giving people access to people's crafting stations - which could take months and is invalidated the moment the next exploit is found... ...or they could just put a PINless lock option on containers and crafting stations in PvE and immediately fix the problem next client update.

They already dropped it, but it fell down the back of the sofa, now they need to dig it out and pick off the lint before we can have it.

I did a C14 start run for funsies to prove it could be done <.< ...but, yeah, it's pretty inefficient on the whole. You have to waste so much time and resources standing next to multiple campfires to avoid freezing, keeping them stoked. It's not fun or practical. Strategy: Pray you didn't start during the night, run like hell to find wood/trees/fiber/stone. Make your first pick, rush making MULTIPLE campfires (If you're lucky, you might find some someone else made). Make some spears, kill something for hide, gather a bunch of wood, fiber and thatch. Buy a raft Die? (Optional) Make food if you can/must, but you're probably better off just ignoring a balanced diet and rushing a bed/storage so you can safely respawn without losing progress Die? (Probably) Sail for somewhere warmer... the Tundra isn't a place you can survive anyway. Die several more times from chilling sea winds before the raft hits to map border.

I want to see someone capture a Chinese streamer like this, then sit down and explain the Tienanmen Square massacre to them and their viewers; their channel would be gone so fast...