MeatSammich

Couple things I can think of: People benefitted from duped items on PvE, it just wasn't discovered as much there because you couldn't kill people or loot their bases to find it. If you gained XP using a duped weapon, or killed the kraken on ships with duped planks/cannons, you'd have an unfair advantage. Powerstone keys not being lost on death, it was much easier to run at the start, because you didn't have to get the key off your corpse, and they didn't expire after 2 hours. People lost discovery points for doing stuff randomly, and that permanantly gimped their character. Hopefully the bugs that caused that are addressed. Discovery points being changed/added could be another reason.

God help me, but I tried to read through that and I saw 1 bug...that players/tames fall through ships when its moving. Were there any others there? I feel like I'm doing one of those word search puzzle things.

To be fair, in a perfect world, thats where most of the suggestions should go. Unfortunately the suggestion/bug report forums are a hot mess, and a royal pain in the ass to find anything on. Requiring votes to get a topic on the front page doesn't exactly facilitate getting a topic viewed to foster discussion among the playerbase, when the topic isn't easily visible in the first place.

Thank you to the both of you for popping in and letting us know that you are listening. Changed the thread title in the interest of fairness to the community team.

Yeah, the lack of 'community manager' interaction on their own forums, which, in my experience has been comparatively sane in terms of some of the issues and changes proposed, with some of the best suggestions, has bothered a few of us for a while now. Thanks again for all the info on the map editing also. Cleared up a few misconceptions I had.

You're never going to make everyone happy. The problem is that the solutions they implement are never the solutions that really any portion of the playerbase are asking for. See my post upthread for a few examples. Its like having a tree near your house that the branches keep growing and rubbing on the house. Your wife wants the tree cut down and a smaller-growing one planted instead. You want to cut the tree down and just be done with it. Your kids just want you to keep paying to have it trimmed, because their treehouse is there. So you hire a tree surgeon to come up with a solution, and he decides to just burn your house down instead.

I know that Jat replies a bit on reddit, but the subreddit there is hugely dominated by PvPers, and anything PvE related is pretty much ignored or downvoted to hell. If we didn't get Captain's Logs and Patch Notes posted here, I'd wonder if they even realized that they had official forums. As is, now I just wonder if they realize that there are sub-forums, especially the one for PvE.

The flag vanishing when the timer/decay hits 0 is one of the best ideas that has been proposed. PvE has never needed a declaim timer, the chances of someone not logging on in the timer period needed for it to go claimable, and then logging on at the last second to block the declaim, is pretty slim. As far as more flags = more decay/lower timer, eh. Personally don't think it would be needed. The issue everyone had with flags is that there wasn't land for everyone. If they instituted a reasonable claim limit (see the math breakdown upthread), it wouldn't matter if a small company's 10 flags last longer than a big company's 50 flags. Everyone would have already been able to claim out their max limit, with enough land left over for new arrivals, so they're not going to be stalking decaying flags because they have no land, or because they want to add it to their empire to rise up the leaderboards. A 15 day with no login timer, similar to Ark, would be sufficient to allow enough turnover of land, as well as allowing people time to have a life outside the game, allowing for 2 week vacations for solos, etc.

That question was more for my future knowledge, if I ever decide to set up a small private cluster and play with the map editor, not asking/expecting the devs to do it. It would shrink the amount of land available too much to be of any use on officials.

I (most likely mistakenly after your explanation) took the "general updates to our current biomes" in the written part of the log, under the World Redesign to mean that they were changing the islands. Wishful thinking, I guess. I bow to your knowledge and experience. Since you know what the hell you're talking about with the way the maps are laid out, is it possible to lower the current islands about 3-6 feet deeper in the sea, or raise the sea level the same amount? Because with how you described the islands being plopped onto the seafloor, thats the only thing that makes sense from a design standpoint, with how most islands either have 30 yards of water too shallow for a ship, or instant drop offs to the very bottom just off shore, or straights between island parts that are too shallow for even a raft, but still have a couple inches of water on them. Its like they designed the island shapes with nice sloping seafloors, but when they plopped them in the sea there wasn't enough land above the surface, so they just lowered the sea level a bit, so that like 30' of that seafloor is now more of the beach.

Depending on the decay timer, they won't even have to upkeep them, it will be easier to just put new ones up next to the old one before it decays completely. 100 pillars or 50 thatch foundations (depending on if they're trying to prevent building, or also block spawns) don't take very long to farm the mats for and place, and would make half of an average island pretty miserable. Even 4 pillars, placed around your new neighbors started build, as close as possible to whatever he's already put down will stop any further building outward. How long does it take to farm materials for 4 pillars? Ark taught me that if there is a chance for some people to be assholes, there is small, but VERY active percentage of people who will take it, even to the detriment of themselves. You now have a group of players who are extremely upset, and literally have nothing to lose. They've already paid for the game. They no longer like the game, but will instead take that time that they played it to make sure the people still trying to play can't like it either. They may only keep it up for a couple weeks, but, how long is someone going to put up with someone else griefing them before they quit?

I don't like losing my progress either, but I understand why its needed. Dupers caused a good chunk of it, there were just too many items out there, changing hands too many times, to track every single thing and delete them. For example, Company A got a mythic ship plank blueprint, duped the blueprint and sold one to Company B. Company B has made 18 ships using that mythic blueprint, but never duped a plank, they farmed for every piece of wood, metal, etc. However, they (unknowingly) profited off of a duped item. What would you do? People gained unfair advantages using exploits, leveling faster than should have been possible, and also using the aforementioned duped items to gain achievements, etc. If someone gives you a god-tier mythic carbine that someone duped, and you use that to go kill alphas to level your character, should you be punished for benefiting from duping? What about if you got credit for killing the kraken on your ally's ship that was made from duped planks? Where is the line drawn? People were having a bunch of issues (hopefully fixed) with losing discovery points, powerstone points, kraken kills, etc. There are new biomes coming, plus some islands are changing - this can't be done while things are built on them. raising or lowering land, shipyards no longer in water, etc. Maybe my experience with beta testing since the days when the companies would send you the disks to install for each iteration, because everyone was restricted to dial-up, and nothing you did in beta mattered because live launch was always a clean start, has colored my expectations. I accept wipes as part of Alpha/Beta/EA, as long as they're to correct underlying, fundamental issues.

Why would you want to get rid of a PTR? Public Test Realms are generally servers which nothing carries over into the live servers. They're used to test things to make sure code doesn't bork, and to make sure that changes they're thinking of making on the live servers perform, and the players perform with them, as they expect people to. If everything works like they expect it to, that game code gets moved to live servers, not the maps, not the characters, etc. Its a good way to catch any glaring issues that may have gotten overlooked in the design, as well as over (or under) estimating your players, before it affects a live server, and requires rollbacks or wipes. Plus usually, if they're testing something related to end game content, when you create a character it will auto-create at max level, possibly with a selection of tools available so you can get straight to testing what they're trying to test, instead of spending the time levelling. PTRs usually get wiped after each specific test period, no carryover, nothing permanent.

Well, if they are listening, flags will stay with reasonable claim limits, Remember, the idea is to go into it with enough land freed up for everyone from the start, to have plenty of leftover for new players. (see the math post upthread for the breakdown on numbers and what it could accomplish) Reasonable upkeep would be fine, but I think a hard 15 day timer, regardless of number of claims you have, would be adequate, because if there is more than enough land already available, and people can't claim beyond their hard claim limit, it won't be an issue. When a timer runs down, there won't be 4 people who have no land, and 3 of the neighbors, and 2 of the big companies fighting for it. They'll already have land, and more than likely have hit their claim limits. Thanks for the clarification on that!

When I ran a private Ark server and the redwood biome released, it didn't update the map automatically. The rest of the update happened, it got all the tree platforms and stuff to go along with it, but didn't get the change to the map until I loaded the new map in seperately. I'll admit that I don't know how unofficials work, for Atlas, haven't attempted to run one as of yet. I was under the impression that it was the same as Ark, where once you had the map running on your server, it wouldn't update your copy of the map, but the official server could always be running a different version of that map. Which, now that I think about it makes sense, because else if your server was running the same grids that are the ones that will be changed in eastern tundra, and it changed when the update to official changed it, you would have to wipe.

We shall see if they're actually reading through player feedback and listening to what it is the playerbase likes about the current system, what is wrong with the current system, and what is wrong with the system they proposed. Not just hearing that people are upset and making snap decisions taking the easiest way out, this time. Yup, wipe was needed 100%, not just for claims, but to get rid of stuff that was gained through exploiting and duping. Plus, if they heard the complaints about the islands, and change up the shorelines a bit, to make them more ship friendly, they'd have to wipe due to structures already in place, plus, the new biomes they talked about. Honestly, bed fast travel would be a non-issue once if claim limits are set. It mattered when 10 man companies could fast travel around the map to hold 1000 claims, not as much when a 10 man company would have 10 claims (for example). Additionally, if claims would be set to just insta-declaim after 15 days of inactivity, there wouldnt be any claim stealing, instead of the inane wait to declaim....now wait to claim...system we have now.

No, but the people who are on the forums are some of the most invested players, with the most time in the game. Part of the problem with the polls is that pretty much every one of them is set up with the questions tying the wipe and flag claim system together, you can't agree with the wipe, but disagree with lawless for all, the way people have worded the questions. We know you didn't like the claim system, because you couldn't find any land. How are you going to feel when you find a choice spot in tropical, start building a base, get a couple foundations laid down, and someone comes along and pillars all 4 side as close as possible to your base so your planned 10x10 house, with detached animal pen and separate garden is now limited to a 6x6 area total because you can't build any closer to their pillars? You forgot to mention that after the first week or two, there will be abandoned ships everywhere, since they still haven't mentioned anything about a fix for them.

Here's the thing, I broke down the math on a couple other threads. if it was set to 10 flags for a company of less than 25 people, 25 flags for a company of 25-100, and 50 flags for a company of 100+, there would be more than enough land for everyone. You may say that seems like too much land, but, look at the numbers. Right now, the top 10 companies combined have between 8 and 9000 land claims. If you go with the conservative estimate of 8000 flags between them, and even if you assume they are all over 100 player companies..and they're not, not by a longshot, changing to the above numbers would free up 7500 claims. Thats just the top 10 companies. Let that sink in. 7500 claims freed up, from only 10 companies lands. Now, look at the other 75% of the map that the top 10 companies didn't own, and count all the groups under 25 members that have claimed 20, or 40, or 100+ claims, that would now only get 10. Thats a huge amount more freed up. Take out the sea-claim bullshit - thats some more land free'd up - and now people would have to use 1 or 2 of their claims to claim a little bit of water for themselves, their dock, port, etc. A conservative estimate of the number of claims that would be freed up overall, would be in the 15000 range. That is land for 1500 companies with <25 members. or 600 companies with 25-100 people, or 300 companies with 100+ people. if you figure an average company size of 10 people, that's 15,000 more people that would have land, that didn't have it before. (remember, these are just the claims divested from people who had more than the limit, not the people who already had land) Now, on top of that, you add in the fact that there are going to be 200+ new islands added? Literally 25% more land available than there is now. Now, on top of that, set a straight 15 day since last login to that grid timer, and when the countdown hits 0, the land becomes claimable instantly - none of the declaiming garbage. Timer hits 0 and all your red circles are gone, Poof. There will be more than enough room for everyone who has ever played on PvE, twice over. If that ever fills, and stays filled, then there will be more than enough players for them to justify opening another server cluster.

I still think the claim upkeep changes and sub-claim flags are great ideas. I floated a similar idea a couple weeks ago, as part of essentially a 'forced renting' where people would be forced to have a percentage of their claims set as buildable by anyone, with the percentage going higher the more claims you had (ie: 50% over 25 claims rentable, 60% over 50 claims, 70% over 100 claims, 80% over 500 claims and 90% over 1000 claims). Once the first person built on that land, the sub-claim setup you have would kick in. As far as the tax rate, the easier thing, and to stop the complaining, i would have made a flat, invisible tax, that didn't cost the harvester anything. 15% of the amount of mats you harvest from someone elses claim would be generated extra, and sent to the land owners bank. Everyone gets something, and no one is penalized.

Fair enough. Fixed.

The issue is that it seem like they HEAR the complaints, but they don't actually LISTEN to the reasoning behind them, or any solutions of possible fixes. It is really starting to feel like they have, at best, a complete apathy toward PvE, if not an intense dislike, due to the history of half-assed fixes that get put in for problems that only effect PvE, while PvP gets fully fleshed out implementations. The land claim issue had a large number of people complaining that they couldn't find land for claims, but, instead of limiting claims like the majority of the people asked for, they just said "No claims for anyone, and everything decays" and washed their hands of it. The weight griefing of ships is another example. People complained about others sinking their ships by being on them while overweight. Instead of not counting non-company people as crew and not taking weight damage while at anchor or any other fixes, they turned the ships into fly-traps for anyone who crossed the boundary of one, due to the levitation effect. Abandoned ships is another. Instead of just putting in a slow decay on ships while at anchor, they made one attempt at deleting ships that hadn't been set foot on in 3 weeks, which borked and deleted half the ships on the server and required a rollback...and haven't tried, or even mentioned anything about it since - even including this patch. Notice a trend? All PvE-centric issues. I'm sure there are others, those are just the first few that come to mind. Now look at PvP: PvP complained about companies owning too much land, they got claim limits, they got settlements (with playershops, wtf??), they got a fully fleshed out feudal lord and renter system, and getting to name their own islands. PvP complained about offline raiding, they got a system of setting vulnerability windows, and scheduled wars with purchased tokens in otder to fix it. Pretty much every combat related change, (fire arrow nerfed to uselessness, for example) and every material cost change (stone getting made more expensive, for example) has been done to placate PvP players, without any though of how it will affect PvE. Its easy to see why a large portion of the PvE playerbase feels marginalized and ignored, even though we make up right around 40% of the playerbase.

Aye, agreed, I should have phrased that part better in the original post. As much as it hurts everyone to lose 300+ hours. This wipe was 100% necessary to change land, as well as get rid of all the exploited gains that people had gotten. Duping wasn't only a problem on PvP, it was just a whole lot more visible there. I just wish that I could have more faith in the dev team to do what's right for players on PvE, instead of just the heavy PvP focus that we're seeing once again. Seeing the depth of changes that the PvP servers are getting, and the PvE servers basically get, "Here, no more claims. Now shut the hell up about lack of land already." doesn't seem to bode well for the 50% or so of the playerbase who plays PvE.

Yup, done (more than) my share of Alpha/Beta/EAs, and fully expect wipes to remove gains through exploits, glitches, duping, or if there are huge overarching map changes. Its more the principle behind it, that because the free-for-all grief fest that is claim removals is more than likely going to fail and will necessitate another solution...which will come with another wipe. A wipe that could be avoided if they'd bother to listen to their player base in the first place.

Here's the thing, I broke down the math on a couple other threads. if it was set to 10 flags for a company of less than 25 people, 25 flags for a company of 25-100, and 50 flags for a company of 100+, there would be more than enough land for everyone. You may say that seems like too much land, but, look at the numbers. Right now, the top 10 companies combined have between 8 and 9000 land claims. If you go with the conservative estimate of 8000 flags between them, and even if you assume they are all over 100 player companies..and they're not, not by a longshot, changing to the above numbers would free up 7500 claims. Thats just the top 10 companies. Let that sink it. 7500 claims freed up, from only 10 companies lands. Now, count all the groups under 25 members that have claimed 20, or 40, or 100+ claims, that would now only get 10. Thats a huge amount more freed up. Take out the sea-claim bullshit - thats some more land free'd up - and now people would have to use 1 or 2 of their claims to claim a little bit of water for themselves, their dock, port, etc. A conservative estimate of the number of claims that would be freed up overall, would be in the 15000 range. That is land for 1500 companies with <25 members. Now, on top of that, you add in the fact that there are going to be 200+ new islands added? Literally 25% more land available than there is now. Now, on top of that, set a straight 15 day since last login to that grid timer, and when the countdown hits 0, the land becomes claimable instantly - none of the declaiming garbage. Timer hits 0 and all your red circles are gone, Poof. There will be more than enough room for everyone who has ever played on PvE, twice over. If that ever fills, and stays filled, then there will be more than enough players for them to justify opening another server cluster.

Spawns need to block somewhat Trees and rocks in the house constantly in the house suck. My favorite was when a huge rock respawned blocking my doorway and completely covering my smithy...that all my tools were on for safekeeping.