Raine

2 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

Take a quick peek at the map and you'll see you kinda just said "if there are any exceptions, it was half the map"

Theres a LOT of desert, tundra, and polar

I also said "IF".  We also saw tundra and desert with active populations as well.  But of the ones with a bit less activity, I'd have to say those were tundra/desert.  That might mean the devs could encourage better participation if the desert/tundra areas were changed up a bit.  Or some might be changed from desert/tundra to more attractive environments.

In concept development, I think Grapeshot devs figured the playerbase would all spawn in to Freeports, radiate from there to Lawless where they could develop their resources and build ships to explore and claim their own properties on claimable islands, leaving Lawless to the next generation of playerbase.

In theory, it could work.  In practice, it didn't.

Lawless rules gave rise to as many problems as claimable islands.  Why have Lawless areas at all?  With a preset claiming grid, you could make claimable islands work better than they do now and decrease the foundation and pillar spam as well as the griefing it allowed.  

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

Claim land didnt have spam true,  but the vast majority of it lacked life at all.   Most of it was totally unused wilderness with 1 or 2 people per server.

That was not our experience.  Of the claim islands we visited, there were hearty populations of active players.  If there were any exceptions, it was the tundra/polar and desert areas.  Those areas are predictably less attractive to people so I wasn't surprised.  But no, there were always far more than 1 or 2 players on most claimable islands.

Reskinning is part of  their island-making process from what I understand.  They have a basic inventory of island shapes and they can add separate mineral and flora features on top of it, as well as rock, pillar and ledge features to customize each.  I don't see why they couldn't add a standard hexagonal shape to claim areas, but I'm not a programmer so I can't say how difficult it might be.   No doubt it involves a lot of complicated maths but I suspect those formulae have already been developed for GIS applications.

What if the devs reskinned the PvE islands with a honeycomb pattern of claimable spots, visible only when you activated your claim flag?  There would be no awkward holes or overlaps, the size of the claims would be immediately visible with the claim flag activation, the number of claims easily countable for determining island's points/status.  Hard cap the number of claims per Company or per player using a reasonable metric.  The islands aren't flat, so there will be some visual distortion of the honeycomb pattern.  Something like this: 

1 hour ago, travis843 said:

But if i start out at lvl 1 again this game is over for me.

But Travis, you get a hat.  What's not to like? </sarcasm>

So back to Archsenex's suggestion of limiting each player to a total of five ships.  Can we prevent that from being gamed?  Do all the ships belong to the player or to the company?  Company governance would cover that.  If to the Company, then 5 ships per player wouldn't work well.  Recruit heavily, retain a large Company roster even if 80% of your players abandoned the game, keep their ships all over your island claims by doing bed hopping rounds every 3 - 4 days.  It's also a good way to keep large amounts of claims, since you don't have to correlate those to any kind of an active player base.  

Alright, I'll go with awkward phraseology then.  So one only needs to enter the render range of ship in order to refresh its timer.   No different from the original dynamic on the claim flags on either PvE or PvP.

2 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

The server automatically puts stuff that no player is near into Stasis, which unloads it from processing.  "Stasis Distance" is a very common unit of measurement, if you know the unit.  To refresh your lawless stuff, you also have to get within "stasis distance"

Hmm.  In general I knew this already.  But why then did Jat explicitly  state the player or company was required to enter the stasis number on any particular ship, if its value is already a known default? 

Fast travel should be the only option.  Why enter some kind of render distance?  Seems unnecessary.  Or am I missing something?

1 minute ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

All that means is you need to go in to render distance for the boat to appear and its decay timer will be refreshed.

Ah...so, if your base is on the opposite side of the island from your ship, all you have to do is input some kind of distance measurement from your base to the other side of the island and you're golden?  Somehow, that seems sketchy to me.

On 3/7/2019 at 7:59 AM, Dollie said:

The boat decay system will be enabled. This means that there will be a tagging system attached to boats which will cause them to self destruct after multiple weeks of inactivity on PvE, Golden Age Ruin, and Freeport servers. To tag a boat, the owner of that boat (single player or company) will just need to enter its stasis/render distance.

↑ That's what's in the newest Captain's Log re ship demo timers.  I'm partly cloudy on how the above bit in yellow is supposed to work.  We'll probably have to wait for a more detailed explanation from Jat.

You may be right about the 0.01%, but it's all unproven conjecture either way.

There may or may not be plenty of coast on which to rebuild; it depends on how the land rush goes, how many people are actively playing, how bases and related structures are built, and most of all, the decay timers on existing ships.  As you've experienced, in the present iteration there are far too many rafts and ships of all sizes which are sailed to landfall and then abandoned forever, whether their original owners continued to play or not.  I really hope those are given an expiry date for non-use.

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

And no, you wouldn't be going directly from Ramshakle to Galleon.  Build a schooner in between.  A schooner can hold an entire Galleon prefab. Or find a lawless island that isn't the living embodiment of hell.  I am curious how you found ones that were so bad, the entire time we played we never came across a lawless that was as bad as the barren hellscapes you described, and if we have we would have sailed to another island before bothering to set up shop.

You might need to replace a galleon or brig which was destroyed, so without a base a ramshackle sloop (unleveled for weight) might have to hold all parts for the galleon and its superstructure as well as the upgraded (and mat-heavy?) upgraded shipyard.  Perhaps it will be possible.  We don't know til the devs reveal more of their shipyard revamp.

As for the hellscapes, those are real.  The most barren one I described was quite pristine when we first built on it at the Break of Atlas's Dawn.  Months later, it has become a wasteland barren of all life except inert foundations, pillars and broken structures.  That's what will happen globally on PvE over time if all servers become Lawless.  Still not convinced lawless is a better choice.

Regarding the 4-hour demolishable shipyard, we've used our existing shipyards multiple times to build replacement ships for those which were destroyed.  They're also not a bad place to dock your ship, because at least then you might be able to dock fairly close to your small lawless base to offload other mats or animals you've acquired elsewhere.  It seems reasonable to me.  On a strictly Lawless server, you might have to dock on the other side of your island, far from your base (which could be in a very hostile environment with many apex predator spawns).  Sure, it's a survival game, so some is to be expected.  But I think it enhances gameplay if you can dock with some relief that you are finally in a safe zone close to "home" and might actually be able to get your hard-won valuables back to base in order to use them.

4 hours ago, Seren Du said:

 

 

3 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

You're on lawless.  you can drop a single foundation and a ship's resource box on the land before you ever even bother to deploy your shipyard.  then you can take your week to find a couple hours to gather mats.

Or, you can just use a ramshackle sloop, they're starter ships and can easily hold a smithy and the weight for your first schooner.

as for clipping, I'm curious then, as I have accidentally driven through multiple docks and piers when I wasn't paying attention

On Lawless, you might be able to drop a foundation and a resource box to collect your week's worth of mats, not a bad idea.  I'm not a ship builder, but I don't think all the mat requirements are revealed at the start, so you can't be sure you have what you need to achieve your next ship within a 4-hour demolishable shipyard timeframe.  Of course, you could rely on Wiki IF the mats are posted, but then you have to cross your fingers that whoever posted them was correct, and that the devs haven't switched it up in the meantime.

Ramshackle sloops aren't a terrible idea, but will they hold the mats required for a brig or a galleon PLUS the corresponding shipyard if that's what you decide you're building?  I suspect not, but I haven't done the math.

As for pillaring the ships in, the pillars were topped with rambling stone platforms and we tested whether the collision on them had been removed from the game.  I can confirm that at least on PvE, it has not.  Collision on pillars and platforms placed in the water is still a thing.  It still allows malicious gameplay on a PvE server.

1 minute ago, Archsenex said:

Also, didn't they turn off clipping of ships and pillars?  You can drive through them.

 

I'll agree on shipyards though.  They should have a 4 hour non-refreshable demolish timer.  Pre-build your ship, build it, deploy, and get out.  Move the new upgraded ship to be an upgraded skeleton blueprint rather than an upgraded shipyard blueprint

No, they did NOT turn off clipping of ships and pillars on PvE.  We had this happen to us only this past week.

Problem with pre-building your ship is that it may take you time to gather the mats over several days or a week or so, depending on how much time you can devote to it from your real life demands.  And if you don't have a base or another ship, where do you put the mats?  In  the meantime, someone has seen your shipyard and they don't like you or they're trollish and they decide to pillar it in, before you even start building.  If your shipyard has a 4-hour non-refreshable timer then again, you can't even put your mats in a Ship's Resource Box on the shipyard whilst you go collect yet more...this would be incredibly difficult for a solo player or small Company to achieve at 1x normal rates.

9 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

 

Lawless on PVE was in the process of stabilizing out.  Of the lawless Islands i went to, few of them were even significantly populated.

We must not have been close to one another.  Of the PvE Lawless I'm familiar with, one was so heavily spammed with pillars, buildings and foundations that only seagulls spawned there anymore, and that was because they flew in off the ocean.  Others were people maliciously pillaring around one anothers' small bases, and in other cases viciously pillaring in ships in harbors or ships in shipyards.  That's a problem that needs correction, because people are NOT going to police themselves.

Edit to say: Been there, done that, and got the bloody handcuffs to prove it.

5 minutes ago, vaylain said:

 

Quit screwing this IP up and just remove the claim system as you do not know what you guys are doing! Please, just convert all of the islands Lawless, except the Freeports of course and let the player community police ourselves.

The devs probably don't play, but we don't know that for sure.  They may have undercover dedicated testers for all we know.  I've seen the claim system bantered back and forth on one of the kernel mods for Atlas, but nothing was ever resolved on it.  

Personally, I believe some kind of claim system could enhance gameplay, but right now it's in Gordian Knot stage.  Ockham's Razor is the best way to slice that knot.  But global Lawless?  Nah...might as well dump the idea of PvE entirely because otherwise what we'd have is PvP on one hand and PvPvE on the other.  No true PvE server.  L story S: not a fan for global Lawless.

1 hour ago, WildWyvern20 said:

All I got from this is that we're getting the PTR on March 20th, not the wipe. lmao, WC stop setting release dates, you can never keep 'em.

In this case, I'm glad Grapeshot is flexible.  Maybe it shows they're listening to player feedback.

25 minutes ago, Seren Du said:

25 minutes ago, Seren Du said:

... set the claims to the size of the company but dont let entire islands be claimed. Have a hard limit for huge companies. Let them decide do i waste all my flags in one sector or do i spread them out.

Add some dynamics to it, put claims in the hands of the players but have a limit to how far they can go.

 

 

 

I agree.  Don't let entire islands be claimed, unless they are infinitesimally small.  However, all a company has to do to game the system is massively recruit new players - the ones who won't be able to have a claim because after all, they're just solo or small groups.  It doesn't matter if these players quit the game and Grapeshot kills them off after 4 weeks of inactivity (per Patch Note v.16.33), they're still on the company roster.  So you could end up with a 3-5 active-player Company owning a whole island with all their tenants paying their taxes for upkeep.  That would be feel like a very poor gaming dynamic to me.

4 hours ago, Skyroguen said:

if they quit playing then even though they have no body and are waiting at the re-spawn screen they are still a part of the company and thus the company keeps the flag. the problem comes when the player quits the company. the company would need to give up a flag. of course if the  player is required to place the flag and thus owns the flag then when he quits the company that flag leaves as well. the player now has a small chunk of land that the company no longer has.

So really, all a company needs to do to get massive island points is to keep recruiting members.  If those members stop playing, and the company is reduced to a handful of active players, it really doesn't matter.  They still get to keep their points and their claims so long as none of their defunct players logs in and leaves the company.  Somehow, I think that can be easily gamed.

2 hours ago, Seren Du said:

New players won't have any incentive. They won't ever be able to have their own land unless there is a dead man's shoes system. Even then the longevity it's going to suck.

 

You have a point.  The claim system as stated above is in its third revamp, and still has major faults.  Constructive suggestions are being made.  I like that, but I don't see anything yet that will give PvE players a sense of ownership and incentive to continue developing their gameplay with better and better structures like stables/better and larger shipyards/better buildings and an enhanced sense of community.

@Jatheish If you're basing claimability on anything as fluid as number of players in a Company, how do you plan to handle it when members of that Company leave it or just quit playing the game?  It's possible a mass exodus from a Company would drastically reduce its "island points" and then what?  Is the Settlement then defunct?  Does it go to the next tenant with the highest number of Company players?  What if they don't want the hassle of dealing with the settlors, but just want to live there in peace?

On 3/6/2019 at 10:05 AM, UDO said:

 

 

flag claims have to be limited per company depending on member numbers

 

 

Ah, but the number of players in a company is fluid.  They come and go.  For the sake of discussion, say we allow one claim per person in a company.  When that person quits the company or is booted, does the Company lose a claim flag at random?  Grapeshot kills off characters who don't log in within what, three weeks?  So what if your brother decides to quit playing, gets erased by Grapeshot and you're faced with giving up the claim that you placed your shipyard/stables/base on?

I thought about alts being a possible issue too, but decided it's not really a problem because they bought legit copies of the game - they're entitled.

On 3/5/2019 at 2:23 PM, Winter Thorne said:

  But that implies a group of equals, each owning land, voting for who's going to administer the next higher level of cooperation for a town or city, and there's some recourse if it turns out badly.     I'd be against even a town group being able to vote someone off the island, because I can see a situation where the group has a friend they'd like to get a claim there and gang up against an outsider to get rid of him for that...

... And if it's a real griefer or toxic player issue, they already have rules about that and should take some action, although it may take a huge player outcry to get them to do that.  I guess we both know full well the toxic ones will be out there.  I just don't think having an elite class of ruling landowners based on who could grab the land first fixes that.

 

 

That's not the only issue.  You've seen nationalities pitted against nationalities.  If I were Chinese and named my ships with box-box-box, would I be given a fair shake or would I be lynched by a Euro-American coalition and run off the island?  You don't even have to be a toxic player to get booted, you just need to be a different nationality.