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It would be a good step in the right direction. Before the patch it also used to be easier to get head shots on animals too, but that has changed, and I understand why. That was a reasonable change. I get that they want to make this game feel like your surviving, but it feels like its too much. I get that this is their game, and they have a vision for what they want it to be, but sometimes the dev's may need to make adjustments the players have been loudly asking for.

So it's been almost a month since the one of the major patches adjusted firearm weapon damage universally (why they didn't just make an extra stat on the character or armor sets regarding bullet resistance, I have no idea), and public opinion is largely negative to this change. The dev's mentioned that they wouldn't return the damage values because of PvP, but have mentioned that there has been some backlash in regards to PvE and have thought of increasing bullet damage to animals. They also mentioned that every change they make can't be recklessly implemented but this is exactly what it feels like they did. No one complained about the weapon damage being too high. If the weapons damage is too high, then perhaps making them less accurate would have been a better solution. Either way, I think it's time that the damage values against animals, and enemy NPC's be adjusted back to their original values. It was perfect. You could defend yourself! The weapons had impact which made them feel powerful and fun, but not too powerful as to feel unstoppable, and it felt like you had control of your surroundings because of it. All predators are too aggressive and have too much HP to warrant defending yourself with firearms now. If there was one major adjustment I would like to see them "recklessly" change, is this. Add in the additional animal damage. Make us feel like we can defend ourselves again.

I'm not... entirely sure what happened, so here goes. I've had my Schooner sunk so I am rebuilding it. I built the frame and placed a couple planks and decks. I run out to gather materials, run back and upon activating the shipyard, it suck my ship. The only difference is I was in the water. Has anyone else had this happen to them?

Hey guys, just wanted to say I appreciate the hard work you are pouring into this game. I had to take a break because it was frustrating to deal with the myriad of issues, but don't get me wrong, I understand that this is EA, and you are still working out the kinks. In any case, here are my questions: 1. Will there be more graphical and client side optimization as to improve client side performance? When I am not on the high seas, my frames dip to about 30-40 and I am running this on a GTX 1080 ti. 2. Predator aggression is a huge point of contention. There have been much feedback as how aggression should work. An example of how strange this aggression is, is this: A ship of the Damned - a corsair of supernatural origin armed with canons, swivel turrets, and crewed by unnatural figures - will fire at range when you get relatively close to the ship. So close that you could reasonably think you might ram it. And a Wolf/Lion - a land based predator with a blood thirst that rivals Thor - will attack any player on sight, in what appears to be the exact same radius as a Ship of the Damned, except you are on foot and much slower then your ship. Relatively, with running speed and the distance to the animal, it is farther away. Have you considered changing/rebalancing this mechanic of aggressive creatures, and if so how do you plan to tackle it? 3. The UI and inventory is disorienting. I don't mean the look of it (Which is also not pleasant on the eyes), I mean the entire structure of it. The menu/inventory UI takes too much attention away from the game, as if it were another game itself. You need to enter into your inventory to access the Atlas, the points of discovery, your skill tree, or your tameable groups. It feels unintuitive, clunky, and out of place with the rest of the game. The skill tree looks like it is trying to resemble the talent tree from more traditional MMO's but is presented with a form of linear progression with multiple skill routes that resembles a Research or Tech tree from a 4X game, like Civilization, and it is extremely confusing to navigate. On top of that, the crafting portion is mixed in with the inventory menu, making it feel cluttered, and search bars that aren't intelligent enough to remove player attention after they have finished searching for an item. I feel a better UI would be to have each iteration given it's own navigable window or menu to open up. With a corresponding button press you could view your wares, identify your location and view discoveries, and allocate your skill points. Remove the crafting portion from the inventory, and give it it's own location, clean it up and make it so that everything you can craft is clear and concise. My question is, do you have any intentions of improving the UI for the players, or is this something we should accept as is? 4. When it comes to land claiming, there is almost no available land left to claim outside of the Tundra, which is harsh to live on, and difficult to sustain. Right now, the people who have had a head start in the game have claimed most affordable land, which leaves new players out in the proverbial dust. Are there any changes coming to the Land Claiming system that will allow more players to have land of their own?

I've been having a lot of problems since the Firearms nerf. I noticed headshots weren't removed, but tightened. Coupled with the lower damage from Flintlock Pistols, it is a real struggle to deal with predators that aggro you from a large distance. When I'm done fighting one pack, rather then have time to gather my wits and take a breather, there is always the threat of a Predator, in this case a Lion, being just around the corner. There needs to be some kind of aggression re-balance. What I don't get is why seemingly minor things like firearm damage needed to be changed, even from a PvP perspective, but hyper aggressive predators stay the same. I would argue that fine tuning the PvE experience should be priority over PvP because you then can build off of a stable base for combat and combat mechanics. What are your guys thoughts?

How do buildings prevent resource respawn in claimed territory? I don't know the mechanic.

One would assume, then, that there would be more powerful enemies that we have yet to encounter to warrant a stronger pistol.

So, I logged in after the v10 patch, and gave it a go, when I realized that pistols now no longer perform headshots, and deal half the damage hey normally did. Nowhere in the patch notes or highlights did the mention a global decrease is Flintlock or Firearm, or Pistol damage. I find that they would take away a key survival factor very dishearting. Never was this mentioned before or discussed, and suddenly, it was a balance change that was warranted? Why the stealth change? Why even consider that this was necessary? Was the pistols damage equal to something else? If so, why not buff the other things damage? I greatly relied on the pistols damage, and approved of it because of it's incredibly long reload speeds. It provided a good balance between damage and consistency. You miss the shot, you need to adjust your strategy. Now, I need to craft, carry, and rearm myself with more pistols to equal survivability. I do not understand this change, and I do not approve. I understand the developers have been under a lot of stress from all of the feedback, but it's feedback necessary to the games longevity. What I would like to know is, why was there no transparency about this change and what was the reasoning behind it?

I can rejoin, and play the game without issue. The problem is my ship doesn't enter into the Grid of K12 anymore. It sits on the edge, so when I die, I can't respawn in my bed because it tries to query my bed in a different zone, which doesn't exist. I can sail the boat just fine, I can even fast travel with the boat, just fine. I just can't use the bed on it anymore.

My main issues are: 1. Server stability/performance - When you need to account for the actions of you or the monsters you are fighting up to 1-4 seconds, the servers aren't working as they should be. What really rustles my jimmies is that they boasted about being able to have up to 40,000 players at a time, even going so far as to creating Hurricanes (A way to scatter all 40,000 from the area to prevent server issues), but at the moment, the servers can't handle more then 50 players per grid server. Plus it shoehorns players into playing a specific way. I can't use melee combat in this lag effectively and must resort to ranged weaponry most of the time. I should be able to dodge and weave as the game allows, but the timings are impossible to hit because of the server issues. 2. Consistent crashing - As I write this post, I logged into Atlas, and Alt-Tab'd. I was inside a house I built, not moving and no fire active. It crashed. They are so sever that there is, what feels like, a 50% chance that when I zone from one grid to another, I will crash. One of these crashes has lead to my game being glitched, without any solution of any kind. I can no longer use the bed on my ship. It thinks its in a different zone, and when I respawn, it will not allow me to choose my ship. I must respawn at a freeport, and effectively start all over again. 3. Exploration - I get it. This game is meant to be played with people. It's why ships take so many resources to build, why gathered materials weigh so much, why ships/soldiers of the damned ambush you, why reloading firearms takes so long, why all of your tools have low durability. I get it, but when one of the built in game mechanics is about discovery of new locations, then there needs to be a limit of some kind. I can't step foot on an island without the predators from each corner of the map are some how alerted to my presence. The amount of damage they can deal per attack, and how quickly they dish it out feels unfair. If you are using a sword and shield, you don't even have time to lower your guard to attack. If I were to equate this Fighting game mechanics, it would be that there is too many block stun frames, too many hit recovery frames, and too much startup frames. Even if I am somehow lucky enough to survive an encounter with any one of the extremely hyper aggressive predators, there is a likely chance they there is another one already charging at me.

So this only started today (Jan. 7 2019). It happened once when I zoned from J12 to K12, and the game crashed. The game has been crashing a lot lately. Undeterred, I logged back in and continued sailing. However, I noticed that the ship was outside of the grid line. Some time later, I died and tried to spawn on my bed on the boat. However, when I do this, the screen attempts to load it as if it were in that zone, it then goes green, and asks if I want to spawn at my bed, as if I never had made a selection. To make matters worse, when I quickly made out with another raft from Freeport, it does the same thing, only from a different grid position. I am not unable to spawn in any of my beds on any of my ships. Is this something I can fix, or do I need to wait for a fix, and sail my raft in every time?

I just wish that was a logical progression of some kind when it comes to exploring the seas. The zone I am referring to is only two squares away from a freeport, and there is no meaningful way to tell other then through Guessing and checking. I guess I am venting after all, which isn't what I want to do.

That's good to know. Seeing that spike in difficulty though, I'm not sure how anyone could visit places like that. I was being killed in anywhere from 1 to 3 hits. At least K12 had a reasonable difficulty curve when it came to over coming snakes and tigers, and the like. Sure, they are predators and are extremely aggressive, but they don't hone onto my position from such a great distance like the Crocs did. I feel like if the Desert Biome is supposed to be as difficult as other people are saying, the wildlife needs to be readjusted in some way.

Thanks for the information Wildbill. Yes, it was a Desert island. Knowing that Desert islands are supposed to be really dangerous is good to know, in fact, having some kind of clarification of any kind would have been great. The sheer amount of wildlife on the island was staggering. I couldn't see an empty patch of land that didn't have wildlife. Now this begs the next question, how do I know what to explore, and what to avoid? Having a pair of crocs spawn camp me into oblivion is not an ideal pass-time. Now I'm thinking of setting up a raft with a bed closer to home, just for emergencies, but that sounds like a really bad band-aid for this problem.

Rinse and repeat doesn't make for fun exploration. If all I am doing is making death runs, and not being able to enjoy myself with the difficulty of survival, then what's the point?