Raine

Not only are Ships of the Damned going invisible, and the ships steering being lost, but undamaged walls and foundations are going invisible. We had an interior wall disappear inexplicably. And right now a foundation has gone invisible. It must still be there because the walls attached to it still exist, but the foundation itself has done a Klingon cloaking stunt. Altogether, the above bugs are gamebreaking. This is serious stuff guys - waaay more important than claim flag dynamics, and far more fundamental.

With the drop of the latest patch, v. 23+, we are encountering invisible SotD. Sometimes you can see the cannons floating above the water. Sometimes not. We also lose ship controls randomly, but often with the opening of personal inventory or the map. You cannot steer the ship and you cannot control the direction of the sails, although you can still raise or lower them. In other words, steering is impossible. All that is left is "stop" by lowering the sails and "go" by raising them.

► We too have experienced invisible SotD, where all you can see is cannons floating above the water. We've also experienced: Complete loss of ship controls when opening inventory or map and sometimes when confronted by invisible SotD. Relogging will return ship's controls, but that is a game-breaker. Who wants to keep doing that, especially when surrounded by SotD? This last patch (v.23+) has broken the gameplay for many of us. Please fix ASAP!

As of Patch v.23, our bear went invisible whilst on land, after the server went down. Crew manning the sails went invisible, but still allow normal crewed function of the sails. So far. We did manage to find our bear after tripping over her scat. I'd hate to have to find my missing crewmembers that way since they don't seem to have that functionality.

Solo treasure maps all the time. Where there's a will, there's a way. And I also do FoY solo every single time. Done it about what....five, six times now? It's not a piece of cake, but it's a LOT better now than it was at first. No worries, mate. Solo is peachy keen, it just takes more smarts to .... uh.....git 'er dun.

Making games is about making money. It's in Grapeshot's best interests to make the game accessible to everyone so they can make the most money possible for their company. They have payrolls to meet, shareholders to pay, bosses to answer to. They are NOT going to limit their game to only large groups. If you are a group player and you like that kind of power, there's plenty of group stuff for you to do. If you're solo, you too can enjoy the game, Grapeshot will make sure of it. You may have to ally with others in order to achieve some aspects of the game, but that SHOULD be possible. As I said before, it really depends on whether the devs screw too much with the ability to make alliances. But in any case, Grapeshot will make the game as accessible as they can to everyone - put your money on that, because they sure will.

I think it really depends on whether alliances will be possible in PvE. I'm not sure about PvP, it's not my venue. I'm testing out alliance dynamics on a different server and they're good, but need some tweaking to make them more viable. But I'm not sure what the devs' intentions are for alliance capability.

They've been explicit about making the game playable for solo as well as group players. It is obvious that is their intent. So if it's not as solo-friendly as it could be, they will be amending it.

The best pirates were the ones who appropriated silver without firing a shot, from what I'm reading. I'm including stories of Howell Davis, Charles Vane, Henry Jennings, Calico Jack and Blackbeard amongst others. So battles were not de rigueur. You could be a great pirate without one. In fact, there really are such things as land pirates but they usually work for local and state governments and invoke eminent domain laws as their weapons of choice. Different battle arena, involves taking what is not rightfully yours. Piracy is piracy. Atlas seems to have melded the two arenas for their game. I guess it all depends on which kind of booty you want to grab.

Threepwood nails it. Any date the devs set must necessarily be tentative. That is logical if they intend to give us a chance to give them feedback from the PTR, and to give their own programmers a chance to dig into the mechanics of productive change. Also keep in mind that any change deployed on the PTR for testing might create further snarls which need a comb-through, so giving a hard deadline for the deployment of the massive patch would be disservice to the playerbase and themselves. Wish I could "Make It So" with the hard ETA but...

Meat, I'm gonna guess you're mostly a PvP player? Because the questions may be slightly different for your average PvE gamer.

That's an interesting interpretation, but not the only one. On PvE, the devs may be reaching for something similar to a core mod they used to develop the game. That mod encourages settlements, aka 'villages' or 'towns', and also a healthy economic/commerce structure. It's clear the devs want people to own shops and do business with each other, which is exactly what the core mod does. It allows people to 'claim' land without an official claiming system, but also to build right next to each other without fighting for territorial rights. In this mod, buildings can be individually owned, but with the narrowest of walkways, alleys or roads between them. There are Commons with community workplaces built so that new players can use workstations like smithys without needing to claim land to build their own. More successful players build apartments on the waterfront for those who are new, or who need to dock overnight to do business or taming. There are individually owned farms and breeding facilities as well. The feeling in that mod is far more community oriented than in the Atlas game. There are banks which function more like our real life banks, and taxes also a feature. The core mod features medieval buildings which are aesthetically more authentic than Atlas's are, but there's no fault in Atlas going with something more similar to Ark. I think that core mod gives Atlas some precedent for development of community cooperation and commerce without having a claiming system and without the desperation involved in a land rush. It also gives people the feeling of sovereignty over their own holdings, which is what I think our PvE playerbase is really reaching for. It has no problems with spamming foundations, pillaring or even passive aggressive PvPvE which is what's happening on Atlas PvE at the moment. That's not to say that it's perfect, it's still a WIP, but it has definitely made strides in directions I think would work well for our Atlas PvE playerbase. So my interpretation of what the devs may be reaching for is different from yours. But in the final analysis, we really don't know what Atlas devs have in mind - we're all just guessing.

This is exactly what was posted. They are considering a change, but the plan as it stands at the moment is a 12-hour window for landlord destruction on PvE. Period. After that, it's permanent. I tend to agree the devs need to balance that a little more on PvE Claim owners will be able to demolish structures (via the pinwheel) on their settlements temporarily as long as the structure has been placed within the last 12 hours. After the 12 hour period has passed, they will not be able to demolish the structures using the pinwheel, and must manually destroy it. Claim owners can do this outside of raid hours or warlike. This exists as an anti-griefing mechanism. On PvE servers, we may extend the time beyond 12 hours as players will not have the option to destroy via PVP.

I was surprised you could actually sell "goodwill" when you sold your business.

I get your points, believe me. But intangibles are actually valuable in America, and you can sell them, buy them, trade them or slap lawsuits on people over them. But I digress....carry on.

"Manually" destroy it means with cannons and mortars. I don't think you can do that on PvE. Only PvP. It is a complete wipe, characters and all. And the reason people are leaving in droves is because the moment the Devs announced the wipe, nothing mattered. Everything from that point on was pointless and a complete waste of time. Nah...I'm actuallly still having a great time!

I'm familiar with swamp coolers but not aware they were operative in-game on Official. I also endorse easier breeding/longer cooldown as a better dynamic.

That should not be necessary in my opinion. With the population/building/claiming issues we've all experienced, it makes the need to ferret out a separate breeding facility an exercise in futility as the game progresses. That's why the devs should come up with a prop equivalent to air conditioners in Ark, whether it's an animal or a device - doesn't matter. Otherwise they just invite more problems with bases and spaces. Ha, same! And fwiw, I think Archsenex is the solo guy in the trio here. Unless he says differently, that is.

Most of these births probably won't be egg hatches. I've heard the babies will still clip through the foundations and in some cases disappear completely, but that's nothing compared to the losses from biome issues and heat waves, etc. Also, like I said earlier, for crocs and cobras to be able to access tames and their babies THROUGH STONE WALLS is beyond ridiculous. That should never be possible.

Amen. Breeding in Ark was a fun process to me. I've never bothered with breeding here because of the aggravation I heard about it. I also wouldn't want to breed a special animal only to see it get stuck and die in a ship's hold, or get teleported into Purgatory and die for inexplicable reasons. Bad enough I have to destroy foundations to rescue animals due to render issues as well. All of those are wasted gameplay hours imo.

We were able to tame the larger animals successfully in pens, but not without a goodly share of dying. Our best pen was more of an accidental creation. it was positioned right next to a cliff with a funnel of strategically placed stone pillars at one side, and the pen so close to the cliff on the other side that you couldn't access the animal from that side. The cliffside prevented the animal from escaping the ramp on that side. We often walked past the trap only to discover wolves, lions, horses, pigs and giraffes which had accidentally wandered into the trap. Made taming very easy. But you can't do that everywhere.

Somewhere in these forums I saw a post about using wall signs/billboards to entrap an animal. Apparently you can do it anywhere on the run and it gives you freer access to the bola'd animal when it falls. I've never tried it. I also wouldn't like to see these signs left in place after the tame.

Having a hard time envisioning that. Do you have a screenshot perchance? Brilliant idea to have the storage atop the pen. Must've been quite high if you were trying to trap giraffes. That's true. But I don't think most people will have access to a Crab. I suspect argies and quetzes are easier to obtain in Ark than a Crab would be in Atlas, but time will tell.

Honestly, I find them very useful structures in certain highly-lethal conditions. We were in one Lawless area where the lion/tiger/spider/scorpion spawns were unbelievably overwhelming and it was the only way we could survive getting from our ship to our little base - taking refuge in the trap. Of course, that didn't help with the damned cobras. And while I think of it, in what universe can snakes strike and kill through stone walls? That is patently ridiculous!