MisterMyztik

And their land push started AFTER the first wave of first come first serve (ie. no 10 min flag timers at all, started with 6 hour despawn timers and 8min interruptions)

As to my personal opinion on how many will come back post wipe, I think we'll see most of the 50k concurrent we had at launch.. Then we'll drop off to ~30 and work our way up from there. Plenty of potential, but as dollie said, its a long pipeline so...

The point truly is moot at this stage. We have whole island claims coming. We as the player base dont know how they will work or even the vision of how they want them to work. What we can be fairly certain of is; if we want pve to not be 100% lawless, this is grapeshots only solution on the table. All we can do from here is test, break, report and suggest. We need to help make it work.

Assuming they just want to see how quickly we can break things before the re-release... we don't need to relive the first week again.

4-5 days prior to the PTR release on what has been a 30 day + development push? Unlikely. I think we're pretty much set in stone at this stage that it will be some flavour of one claim per island with the settlement situation. How the islands are taken/managed/maintained will be the things to be influenced at this point.

That doesn't seem like it has ever been the intent.

Community Managers were pretty active today on Discord.. I would really like to see another channel in discord/forums which records CM/Dev messages to discord/forums... a la dev tracker threads on other MMO/Gaming forums... Anyhow, some tidbits from the discord, sorry just threw it together quickly whilst waiting for my conan and mods to update -------------------------------- (Community Question) Charr Today at 2:06 PM yeah the timeline wasn't ideal, but there were arguments for announcing it earlier, and for later. ultimately they chose the route of transparency and although it might suck for the time being, i think it was the right choice if they announced it 2 weeks later, would it really have made that much of a difference? (Community Manager Answer) Dollie Today at 2:07 PM Hmm, we discussed this internally at length. We had two options: full transparency regarding the wipe + time for fill players in on the plans so we could get feedback whilst being aware numbers would drop in the interim vs waiting until the last minute to drop the news of the wipe in order to keep player count up. The second option may have been smart business-wise in the very short term... … but it felt scummy and also would have removed the time frame for player feedback on the significant changes (Community Question) NUMBERS DONT LIE Today at 2:03 PM @Dollie Does the thousands of players lost per month not concern you guys? I mean I get it - you already cashed in on us all, but like we're doing to like 4-5,000 people (Community Manager Answer) Dollie Today at 2:09 PM @NUMBERS DONT LIE nah, we're not too concerned about numbers at the moment, we have a long developmental pipeline ahead of us and this is just the beginning. Also, there are elements that may not be fully known by players at present. (Community Question) DJ DeB Today at 2:10 PM it just sucks we werent given anything to do in game for 20 or more days (Community Manager Answer) Dollie Today at 2:11 PM I understand that it feels like forever. I'm hyped to get back into it too. (Community Question) DJ DeB Today at 2:11 PM @Dollie is PTR for sure the 20th? (Community Manager Answer) Dollie Today at 2:12 PM We'll have info on the PTR in the next Cap's Log @DJ DeB (Community Question) DJ DeB Today at 2:12 PM im not bad mouthing the devs, this game is fricken awesome. best time ive had playing a game in a while. just not having an incentive to play for 20 days just takes that fun away (Community Manager Answer) Dollie Today at 2:14 PM I don't mind the negativity that comes in at times, usually when people complain it's because they care anyway, time to get back to it, take it easy guys --------------- (Community Manager Comment) The PTR will be out prior to the wipe and is planned for approx the week of the 20th. The wipe is not planned for the 20th. Community question will the test have everything that will be included with the new patch the new map etc? (Community Manager Answer) Dollie Yes, including Eastern Tundra and additional islands. We will be hosting multiple smaller clusters for the PTR. @lucifer Community question @Dollie If the PTR is week of the 20th, and captains log is the 21st (technically), should we expect it after? (Community Manager Answer) We plan to have the Cap's log out earlier in the week, yes ------------------ (Community Question) Baragnar Bronzebeard Today at 5:22 PM Open letter to @Dollie @Jat and everyone else at Grapeshot. I love your game, i absolutely love it. Its my new Ark, but please, if the coding for the wipe and the new map has been done, even if there are other things thats not yet quite completed, but not necessary for the wipe to be implemented, im willing to wait longer for that, im pretty sure thats the opinion for most. Just drop the wipe patch, please! I sailed yesterday though several servers, and i was the only one there, the world is dead, save for a few containing the remnants of mega companies still battling each other with skeleton crews. I want to see the game ressurected again, i know its coming, but the wait is unbearable! All my friends have just about quit playing, migrating to other survival type games. Please! Drop the wipe patch, let the world start anew! (Community Manager Answer) Jat Today at 5:25 PM I appreciate your enthusiasm @Baragnar Bronzebeard and we're pretty keen to get it out as soon as possible to y'all too, but the reason it's not available now is simply because it isn't ready yet, not because we're holding it for some arbitrary reason. Once it's good to go and passed our internal checks, it'll enter the PTR phase and from there make it's way onto the live network.

A good example of what can/will go wrong with the system. I hope the upkeep means you are never able to sail again

Develop relationships..... this is an MMO relationships, good or bad should define your experience.

This is a vision. One thing players in a sandbox need to recognise is they need to be part of the creative process. Its on us to use the tools provided by the devs to create something (community/construction/economy). Yes, we need better tools in order to do this.. but don't demand that it be constructed for you, that is not a sandbox. I share your vision/hope. Can we get the PTR now please? .... I'm extremely concerned this game will not wake up from an extended stasis like this. These numbers are not a good sight.

No. But my comment was actually meant to illustrate that it literally does not matter what that voice is. If the devs don't have a distinct direction they want to proceed they will spin in circles if they listen to the voices. The gaming community is pretty damned diverse (possibly a better term here is DIVERGENT). Whether it be 40,000 players, 10,000 players or 10,000,000 players.. if they pick a direction and proceed with slight tests and adjustments based on feedback, they will find a playerbase. If they flip and flop like they are, they will generally just end up pissing off everyone.

An MMO is not the same as a sandbox base for servers and modders to make work how they see fit. An MMO requires a lead developer with a desired path/vision for the game and the ability to assess feedback from the community as it compares to the overall vision. An MMO cannot flip and flop at every breath of hot air which comes out of this side or that of the community.

With the idea of upkeep to maintain your land claim, I dont see a way that they can remove taxation. If you don't like what the landlord is doing with your taxes, move.

I too am addicted in this manner.... Conan is not scratching my itch... There are a lot of competing noises right now; Apex Legends, Anthem, PoE new league started this weekend, Satisfactory looks like a good filler if you got an alpha key. But honestly I just want to play atlas haha.

March 20th (or thereafter) will be the proof of the pudding... but.. complete island ownership PER PLAYER seems a little absurd.. I could understand if your company could own an island, i really don't like the thought that a land baron like myself could own and maintain multiple islands even if it took considerable effort.. MAYBE a single island. This update is certain to cause me a lot of hours of gaming the land system if I remain in PvE. That said... Currently (excluding the truly tiny islands) there are 150 Grids with 409 claimable islands including the polar/tundra regions. 101 Grids if you remove Polar & uninhabitable tundra (grids A-01, 2, 14 & 15). (333 claimable islands which are habitable) 82 Grids if you exclude the whole tundra/polar. (285 claimable islands which are habitable) Assuming that the 200 new islands all make it into claimable areas and are all habitable that brings the total claimable per server to 485 to share between supposedly 40,000 players which would equate to 82 players per island!!!! (yes I know we're not at this point and unlikely to ever reach there but surely we should be developing the game with this in mind?) For now we'll scale it down to the 150 player cap per grid, that's 12,300 players sharing 485 islands or a little over 25 players per island averaged out, those grids with only one island don't forget will need to potentially accommodate 150 players. TL:DR: The bottom line of my rant is: There is no way that 1 player should be able to own an island, it should be a company of 5+ required to "own" an island. The above is without even considering islands which lack the now NECESSARY resource of pure metal nodes. The breakdown of islands excluding current lawless/freeport: Polar - A-01 = 32 | Tundra - A-02 - 28 | Tundra - A-03 - 25 | A-04 - 29 | A-05 - 31 | A-06 - 25 | A-07 - 21 | A-08 - 16 | A-09 - 22 | A-010 -32 | A-011 - 36 | A-012 - 25 | Tundra - A-013 - 23 | Tundra - A-014 - 27 | Polar - A-015 - 37

One week before changes this large will not be long enough to test... Is it a test realm or does the T stand for teaser? Some immense changes coming i really hope to see the test realm up ... now effectively. So many people will be logging onto it in order to make their plans for the re-release date. Im fairly concerned that it will collapse for at least the first 2 days under the crushing weight.

Absurd that boats last 8 hours but tames which you can store almost as much on are indefinite.

Cant post, busy taking lands.

How I would do it if I were in charge of one of the top 10.... Figure out how many of my company are going to be taking the first 2-3 days off from work or dont have those commitments. Who will be the scouts, how many are they, what are their abilities like at a) sailing, b) fighting, c) grinding. Assign grind groups (who just stay in the freeport grinding out ramshackle sloops/tools and farm resources until we establish a foothold somewhere). When the PTR releases, Identify 1 SMALL island with appropriate resources per person not in the grind group for colonisation/capture. Identify the closest Freeport to our islands. Identify a spot to collect Gems from on the way to each island. Rinse and repeat 3 and 5 for a secondary island choice. Assign one person to sail to each island and scout it out. On release day our groups will start at the appropriate freeport, grinders will remain there, scouts will sail off to grab the gems then continue on to our identified islands. When the scouts arrive and identify the island as appropriate the grinders fast travel to the bed on the ship and start working their tails off. Scout circles the island continually grabbing the messages in bottles and consolidating treasure locations (has the added benefit of being able to identify potential interlopers). Beds Beds Beds (so that our other members can travel in when the time comes) Guns n Ammo. Bank down, claim down. Keep the ammo coming. Grinders remain on the islands, fighters travel between as required and work on obtaining gold/crew between. Profit.

I dont often quote a full post but this one is well and truly on the money. Excellent post.

All valid points The game is clearly being developed for PvP and many aspects will not work for both with just small tweaks.

You know you can war right? We were looking to build towards the point where we could war other willing companies but things grew pretty stagnant within the game at a super massive pace... The changes as they were being implemented to the claim systems made it quite clear that we were headed for a wipe since the 21 day change and most of our company player base stopped at the point where that started to get more and more clear, particularly on the back of the changes to stone, the effort to build something up only to destroy it or have it wiped was not worth the time investment for casual players. Will be interesting to see what happens when the wipe rolls out, would be nice to see some zones on the official PvE server be faction controlled or some such but as its a sandbox game this really should be up to the players.

I think you'll find most of what they have done was based on feedback... it was just based on the feedback of the most vocal group at each time (generally NOT the people enjoying an aspect of the game). Each iteration will have its detractors and its fans. Generally the fans keep playing, and the detractors make their way to the forums to complain. Unfortunately if grapeshot don't have a lead developer with a clear path in mind they will twist and turn all over the place by "listening to the players".

Have you not played the game? Sorry friend I can understand the frustration but anyone still here since the Dec 23 availability of the game has a not insignificant amount of hours of entertainment they have extracted from the game. That said, I too feel devoid of desire to play at the moment until the wipe has occurred, the announcement was way too far out. It has however allowed the community to offer significant feedback on the new planned direction, get involved there, make your suggestions, explain your position and be constructive.

I think people should stop making biased polls Dont add "flavour" to your choice of answers and people might look at your polls more seriously