Archsenex

You want to know the biggest thing that changed between 1999 and now? People stopped holding companies responsible and started holding customers responsible. Apple and Disney would be proud.

Also, the wipe is NOT happening because of changes in "the code." They outright said that. If the code was changing in a way that required a wipe, then all private servers would have to wipe. Everybody gets the same code. The game engine, the map data, and the structure and character data (what we are calling progression) are all completely independent. They are not the same thing at all and wildcard, when making the original engine, was actually quite smart in keeping them separate. You can change the map without wiping the progression data. I know because you can do it on private servers. They've also done it on the official servers multiple times. Every time they changed lawless into a home server, that's a map change. Same to undo that. Change spawn rate on whales? Map change. They change the map all the time. You can even add entirely new islands without a problem, the game just knows to load that island on next bootup. They've announced already that the primary reason for this wipe was their overly lax view on exploiters and cheaters, and they've included a vague promise to "do better" despite the fact that we got that vague promise 6 weeks ago that theyd do better when they added battleye.

People keep sharing the generic steam early access banner. Thats for every EA game. The devs are required to fill out further information about what EA means for them. This is where they list things specific to THIS EA, and outline the details for their potential customers. That block is where every other EA I have ever seen that had wipes put that they will have wipes so you can see it before you buy. It is on the developer to put all the information in the Steam questionnaire, that's why they have a questionnaire. Grapeshot did not fill out their information completely. Assuming wipes are implied in THIS EA is just that, an assumption, with as much validity as any other assumption people make about text that is not there. What grapeshot DID say is that we can expect an unparalleled mmo experience from day one. This was technically true, In that I have never had an mmo experience where they wiped without it being on the schedule and listed in the EA banner. That is technically unparalleled, I suppose. PS I was excited to play the game I the state it was in when I bought it, in that they had not announced wipes. It is no longer in that state

I have an idea. It's a crazy idea but hear me out.... Launch a new server. Let me spend $20 a month, and I get a whole grid entirely to myself. It's mine and I'm the only one who can build there. And then 224 OTHER players can do the same. Sometimes, subscriptions have a purpose. Yes, this is mostly sarcastic... but only mostly.

Somebody has been watching a bit too much Home Imrpovement. "Now, we're Atlasing with MORE POWER"

It can also be a dwindling arse-hole count. there are LOTS of new games coming out every day to go be annoying in.

I've never understood why decay rates weren't tied to contiguous attachment

Lawless servers were stabilizing. Every day I saw fewer with hostile spam and more where people were working together. The fixes needed are modest, not massive

Probably one of the weirdest things I've seen is a community that thought a game system was less broken then the devs did. Players were hoping for another iteration of tweaks and modest changes like either flag limits or upkeep on flags Devs scrapped the whole shebang to start over

Make auto repair only work on contiguous structures and isolated structures decay faster. A single pillar or foundation is 10 minutes. Enough for a trap is a day (same with a resource block hut). A full base then yeah let it last a long time. Dick moves are a lot less attractive when you have to literally spend every moment to keep only 20 or 30 pillars up

Go the Expensive Chat route, every character you type is a penny. Would at least raise revenue to pay mods.

Phantom islands happen on officials all the time, it has nothing to do with the map data. That has to do with a memory error where the game won't unload the entire map when you change grids. So unrelated to any of this. As for stuff built on them, yeah, that sticks around if you move the island. Hence why they shouldn't move anything, there's tons of empty water to put new islands into. And if all they're doing is shifting them around just for the sake of shuffling them, it's not really changing much.

You can add islands on the map tool. There's a LOT of spare space on the current map, without needing to move a thing. Some private servers have 9 islands in a grid and they don't feel as crowded as one might think. You'd only need to move something if there isn't space in that grid, but given the size variety among islands, and their tendency to already put them in patterns that leaves big empty spacese, adding islands to each map would not be difficult.

Honestly, I've been wondering where the moderators are on a lot of these threads. Many of the posts are just insulting other posters etc. and they seem to continue to happen.

Same servers... with updates. The updates don't require a wipe

For Sooth! Pray thee this generation dost not hardship know. Why, whenst their age were I, struggles were true. This, Electricity generation, having conveniences of Ether Lamps and Horseless conveyance has rendered unto a firmness of feebility!

I mean, think about it: Scenario A: We value your time. We did not arrive at this decision lightly. Please accept our condolences Scenario B: We value your time.... about one hat's worth. That's the value of your time.

Some part of me thinks people would be less upset if there WASN'T a hat.

I'm hoping the squads will actually address this, in that a "squad" of 1-2 schooners of the damned are what schooners can fight. If the "squad" has a brigantine and 3 schooners, your schooner should pass by, and leave that to a brig or gally. And I assume we can all aggree that it's ok if they never make Sloops able to keep taking them out, because that was silly and fun but should go. My hope is that the squads will make it so that if your schooner with only rear cannons tries to kill a brigantine SOTD, the schooner SOTD will kill you before you finish it because they're as fast as you.

The number 1 reason devs don't "listen to us" There's a lot of "us" and "us" are very noisy and say different things. It's kinda like how Congress can never do anything without almost 50% of people being outraged.

The question isn't entirely valid, because few of the changes require a wipe, at least in terms of under-the-hood. They could switch claims to the new system (which is what will happen on unofficial servers). Rather than moving any islands, they could just drop in new ones. There's massive amounts of free space to add new islands without needing to erase the old ones. We're currently right now considering moving to an unofficial server because it will allow us to take future changes without a wipe. If they need to cycle the eastern tundra, then nuke JUST those grids, and warn everybody, so they can move their stuff in the 3 weeks until the patch, rather than just erasing the entire map. The engine would support a phased change just fine. The only compelling reason for a wipe is the Balance shift for PVP, and that's more because they didn't respond to exploiters and cheaters than a technical item. Many of those exploits are still there. they've promised to combat them more this time, but... they promised that before when battleeye got added in too. So at least on PVE, if they just added new islands rather than moving the existing ones, there's just no reason for a wipe.

I see this more as them getting one type of enemy right, then they can make more. The sotd are way too exploitable right now. They need to fix them and then they can eventually add more types, or the only difference will be "when you attack a merchant the guns go on the front of your ship" rather than the current design of putting them on the back for sotd.

Lawless - Only costs you logging in. It only lasts 4 days but as long as you log in every 4 days, you will never lose anything. You have to touch your stuff, but that's it Standard - Costs you resources, but presumably will last longer than 4 days (if it doesn't then god help me I will need to slap somebody for not thinking it through). You don't have to log in as often, but you have to do more work when you do. That's really the main difference, with the system they outlined, for PVE. Lawless is low effort but you gotta log in a lot, Standard is more effort but you can take longer breaks. Presumably your structures just take constant HP damage, like 5% per day (which would give you a 20 day timeout and is a sensible number), and have to be repaired using resources similar to a ship's resource box crew auto repair. So the resources are "whatever would be needed to repair what you built." Build in Thatch as much as possible.

Ark allowed us to go to entirely new servers without losing all our progress because they included a mechanism for it. You could upload your character, and your tames, in order to prepare for a transfer. They could add that to Atlas, and allow us to upload our Tames and our Characters at a freeport. It's not the Territory itself that I'm upset at losing, it's the Discovery point count (not even the discoveries themselves. Give me the points and reset the explores, I don't care about that) and the Tames we spent a lot of time getting to start breeding. Rebuilding our base won't be that bad, heck, the building is somewhat fun and we can improve our designs. Re-gathering those resources will suck, but it won't be that bad. But spending several hundred hours looking for breeders, and several hundred hours unlocking all those explore points, to be told "do it again".... that sucks.

It's the same keys, U and J. You just have to have the swivels selected in your command group.