MisterMyztik

I've been loathe to get involved in this but it seems to be gathering a lot of momentum so I wanted to put forward my 2c as likely one of the people on the PvE server most involved in all iterations of the claim systems. I am the one who has claimed or coordinated 90% of the land claims under control of the Darksea Dawgs. I did the majority of the work solo or switching back and forth between mine and my wife's computers. I've spent basically my entire time in Atlas official (until the 21 day update) placing claim flags, watching timers and thoroughly investigating the various systems Grapeshot had implemented. I believe that the lawless plans will be unfortunate and with the swell of community appearing to push for SOME kind of land claim system, I think that there was one system which came very close to working and with some tweaks will work. The first system which included the total flag count per company, this system scaled the DECLAIM timers from 15 minutes for inactive players and those with the most flags through to 4 hours for people with 1-15 flags. There were 2 major problems during this time; 1 - No limit to flags any person or company could place I personally own at least 150 flags on the Atlas PvE server, this is absurd. There should be a limit of 1-3 flags per grid or some limit of flags on the entire server PER PERSON and then some quantity of flags per company scaling up according to the company member count. The company flags should be placeable according to the company rank system, however the personal flags should need to be placed by the individual and not gifted to the company to spread influence. For example, I should only be able to place 3 flags in total, if our company wants to expand In order to contest a declaim timer and we have no "Company" flags left to place, we should need to have the company member attend the location we want to claim and personally put down their flag. 2 - ANYONE could contest a declaim timer (and force the timer to quickly scale back up to 4 hours) In order to contest a declaim timer you should need to be part of the company to who the claim belongs. Of course, ANYONE should be able to contest your flag during the 10 mins it is raising. In my opinion if those 2 items were fixed we would have had a very workable system, during that short period the land ownership was in a constant state of flux with the natural swings in activity of the players/companies. The 3 days inactivity grace time was enough to indicate whether the company was actually intending on playing or not and there was plenty of land becoming contestable for newer players to look to claim. Of course some companies who were inactive were able to maintain significant swathes of land by logging in every 2 days to refresh it and this was frustrating, but its the closest we've come to a workable system so far in my opinion. I'm not suggesting the flag system is better, but if If the decision is made to digress from the path Grapeshot have outlined in the livestream whereby all regions will effectively be lawless (bound to be a godawful ugly mess like in the ark servers) then I hope that you guys look toward this first system with the flag counts with some limits on total ownership. I personally feel there is enough space for up to 3 flags per person PER GRID and 3-5 flags per company per grid (with potential to scale up for the higher population companies). All that said, with the current plans for the servers our company will not be playing on the PvE server after the wipe, we're keen to give the PvP server a go with the push Grapeshot are making to create island communities, it looks like an excellent plan for PvP. But none of us can stomach the godawful pillar/gate spam which occurs in lawless.

Everyone is going to be put out with one day or another. Least we have a date?

Albion Online had an early access which cost a lot more to play than this and had regular wipes. The only difference here is Grapeshot didn't specifically spell out the expected path forward... which as a long term gamer I read to mean (rightly or wrongly) they didn't have one; this was an experiment and we were welcome to join them for the ride. That said, they indicated a 2 year development cycle for this early access and with bugs, dupes, exploits, rollbacks, gamebreaking patches and even "stolen admin passwords" to not expect wipes is naive at best. Furthermore, anyone still here at this point likely has more than 400 hours of gameplay, significant memorable moments, probably developed friendships perhaps even nemeses.. all for the bargain price of the cost of a 1.5 hour cinema trip... The scene in Gladiator comes to mind... "Are you not entertained?!"

At least they've indicated the path forward WILL include wipes.. If we make it through this period with any kind of population left, they need to not announce a wipe this far ahead again unless it is a standard 2 months rotation or something similar

1. It sounded a lot like the island has to be completely clear of contestors in order to claim the island. That will take a significant amount of co-ordination and is very easily countered. (I am hoping that this is not how it will in fact work and there will be a "contest point" for the island control, this would also help you maintain control of the island by focusing your fortifications in one area) 2. You will need a bank built there in order to place a claim flag on the island. You cant just catch the wind to the first island you find and drop a flag. 3. Upkeep is intended to stop your scenario. Your upkeep costs will be too significant to maintain without assistance of inhabitants, or a significant population in your company all grinding towards the upkeep. Furthermore, increased variety of companies on the settlement will lower the upkeep cost of the flag so they are intending to encourage Governors to maintain and encourage a population to grow on their island.

They made it quite clear that this was the intent, that the island governors should be in full control of the island but if they are not working to encourage an active population of multiple smaller companies living together on the island with them then the island owners should be in a continual grind to simply supply the upkeep. They gave a lot of oxygen to this mechanic in the VOD, I'd encourage you (everyone) to review it. TL;DR version - Increased Variety of inhabitants (# of different companies) = Decreased upkeep requirements

I don't see it being much less than 9 hours.. that actually seems like a small window for PvP in a persistent world populated by a 24 hour international community. Small groups need to negotiate with and live under the protection of island owners.

How to build a questionnaire to obtain the results you hope to see

oO never heard of an mmo for under $60

And why should it be? Honestly, its clear they want early access testers, personally i think it was a mistake to not schedule regular wipes and increase the rates until we're closer to a live release build. A la Albion.

Did I really hear rightly at 49:00 in the stream VOD that in order to claim an island you will have to ensure there is no one on an entire island regardless of whether they are interested in claiming the island or just looking to build? "To claim an island it's still the same thing, you will need to clear off all the active bodies from it" Please tell me I've mistaken this?

Griefing? Long bow youve drawn there

I don't disagree with much of what you've said here.. except... 500 people is more than are playing the PvE official atlas at most other than peak times. Generally though, wipe and limited PERSONAL claims combined with a couple additional company claims will definitely be required to fix the current mess. Lawless can be beautiful, don't stress about the land, worry about what you're building on it Make it amazing and it will be "yours" regardless.

Crew from ANYONE stop a land from being claimed. We're in a claim war with someone currently and both sides have had NPC manned ship parked up beside each other to stop the other from claiming the lands for about 18 days.

True enough, I never understood the idea of walls on PvE... I make a point to take them over and take them down generally

The patch was quite clear. Sleeping people no longer contest. NPCs still do. Park your boat in the overlap of 3 claims and a sea claim and you can prevent anyone else contesting those 4 claims indefinitely, as long as you keep the npcs fed and paid.

The leaderboards are truly secondary to this problem. I didn't push lands for our company so that we would make the top 10, that was incidental. The land ownership of itself is of significant benefit in tax terms. The next iteration of the system will be interesting to check but most of the "fixes" they've pushed out so far for this have made the system worse for new players. Closest we got to something fair was the 4 hour contest timers for 1-15 flags scaling down to 30 mins for the top 10. The current system looks to be 100% broken. Even the top 10 have 21 day timers (the number shown at the top of the screen) even though their flags show 3-4 days "upkeep". I camped a key position for the last 18 days, the flag itself had its timer expire over 16 days ago.

I personally am only hoping for a wipe, I have no reason to believe that there will be one, other than the fact that the game started out in very much a broken state and the people who have the most land/progress currently are those who were able to take advantage of the broken aspects. There was significant duping, the land system has been through 3-5 terrible iterations and in its current state any new players who do not have land, basically never will obtain land... The structure crafting changes have made it so that those who came first and built quickest have terrific looking buildings and those who started the process late have hodge-podge thatch mixed with stone everywhere... Furthermore, it would make sense to "release" an MMO on a clean slate, not with pre-existing ghost towns and all the land already claimed. Again, just opinion.

Hi Friend, Welcome to Atlas, sorry my reply is late! I am not sure what the XYZ Axis arrows are for at this stage, you can only snap to the pre-set snap points you cant drag/reposition, it is a grid based snapping system, you cant even seem to alter the height of the floor/foundation you are looking to place as you can in other games... I am assuming that the XYZ axis arrows are for future iterations of the build (not currently of any use).

I getcha man not trying to be an ass 5 min warning would be nice, 15 with the huge distances makes sense... Personally, with how inaccurate they have been with the pre-announcements and the fact that we're alpha testing i think they're better off not providing a warning.. but I also believe that "stuff" is too expensive (in terms of time to grind) for this stage of alpha testing too...

They were 100% on time with this one.... Warned us about it 1 hour before hand. They cant win for losing.

Thats the problem, we're straddling a divide here, are we players or are we testers? If we're testers we need more tools.. If we're players we need more support.

A half released game where we are treated like alpha testers in terms of support is only going to burn out the population. The claim system needs work of course, I've spent over 250 hours personally contesting/claiming land. I personally have no dramas with wipes particularly in early access. The problem I'm running into at this point is that I (and the majority of my company who have wound back some incredibly huge active hours down to less than a dozen per week) DONT want to grind as hard as this grind is to construct when its clear that the game is not in a release state and will 100% require wiping at some point.. They are nowhere near the "balancing" stage of this game's development.

Can we also please get a usable chat system? The sheer toxicity in many grids is disgusting to the point where you have to turn off the chat box, and therefore cannot communicate in game with company mates let alone other broader community members. An Ignore feature, chat channels etc would be very much appreciated.

Of course. But they're treating the game/playerbase like the game is released. The rates dont allow for experimentation, heck once you hit 60 you cant even experiment with your build anymore except for change it once a week maybe? The "permanent" nature of the game as it stands right now is troublesome if we are testers. I don't have answers I'm just basically confused as to what we are actually doing.