MeatSammich

Aye, back to Ark style, which is the same reason that the rest of my crew and I didn't leave the legacy server we were on, and jut quit instead. We tried to start about a week after the new servers launched, and the first 6 servers we each checked out were already pillared and foundationed to hell, decided that it wasn't worth it to combat that and start all over again. This iteration is going to fail too, the only question is if the devs will decide on another wipe in another couple months to fix what they're screwing up this time, or if they're just going to throw up their hands and say the hell with it, PvE is what it is. After PvE was literally less than a minute's talk in an hour+ devstream, and literally 3 lines in a 3000 word document, I think I already have the answer.

We understand the wipe is needed. Its not the wipe that is bothering most people. Its the fact that burning down the entire claim system and making the world lawless has a helluva lot more drawbacks than positives, and is going to necessitate another wipe to fix it down the road. This is what we want to avoid.

Grapeshot has already commented on how they don't have enough people to deal with issues AND work on this game. They've never responded to any requests to disappear abandoned ships that were blocking access/structures, and now you expect them to have the time to go delete pillars and foundations? Additionally, they've already committed to taking a hard line stance against exploiters and dupers in PvP. So that is going to be taking up a helluva chunk of the time that they DO have to address complaints.

The issue is that trying and failing will 100% necessitate another wipe. That's what people are trying to avoid as much as possible. The majority of the playerbase understands the reasoning for this wipe, but it still sucks to lose everything. What we don't want, is to go and build up again, fighting griefers all the way, just to be told 'Oh, you guys were right, this idea didn't work for the exact reasons you outlined hundreds of times when we told you about it...we're going to a different system, but to do it, we gotta wipe again." Wiping once because they underestimated (or overestimated) their playerbase and their own ability to combat griefing/dupeing/hacking is understandable. Completely ignoring the wishes of their playerbase, seeing the worst brought out in people, and having to wipe again because in their hubris they thought they knew better than the combined millions of hours of experience of their players is not.

The bank was one thing that people without land didn't like. Well, more so the tax rate. There should just be a flat 10% invisible tax for harvesting on someone elses land, but instead of it coming out of the harvester's yield, it should just be extra mats generated and sent to the bank. That way people aren't losing anything, and no one is pissed off about people stealing 'their' resources as they still get something out of the deal

People were happy with the idea of it. What they were unhappy with was that it was unlimited and a few companies could own 1/3 the map combined, or 2 man groups could own 100+ claims. We just wanted it limited, not completely burned to the ground. Its like offering someone a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but they complain because they're allergic to peanuts, and telling them "Well, i could make you just a jelly sandwich, but instead I'm just going to kick you in the balls."

Username and avatar check out because you have a very myopic view of things. The players who have been playing do know how it is going to turn out. We've played Ark and saw pillars as far as the eye can see, because people don't want anyone building right next to them, so they've blocked off areas almost half of an average Atlas island around themselves. And we've seen the same thing happen on lawless islands here. We've played Ark and had neighbors who though that our base was too big, so they pillared outside the base to make sure we couldn't expand. We've had people do the same thing here, with overlapping claim flags. We've played Ark, and watched people block off resources for their own use, which we've already seen in lawless, or worse, build directly on them to stop them from spawning for everyone. We saw the same thing happen in Lawless when they turned spawn blocking back on there. We've seen douchewaffles here already blocking off treasure map locations in their own claims, even though with taxes, they would get a cut of the treasure. Now, anyone can block them anywhere, and since they don't get a cut, they have no reason not to. We've been here since the beginning and saw Lawless turn into barren hellholes devoid of any resources but a couple trees and some fiber and berries when they turned on resource blocking on builds again, and it killed resource respawns so bad that they had to turn it off again...and that is before they reduced build distance, so it was the same build spread as the whole world is. We all agree that something had to be done about the lack of land, and companies having over 3000 claims. The top 10 on the leaderboard had over 9000 land claims combined. We wanted limited land claims. 50 claims max for companies over 100 people, 25 claims for companies 25-100 people and 10 claims for companies with less than 25 people would give everyone enough space to build. If you use those numbers, and just take the land from the top 10 companies, thats 8500 claims freed up, minimum - and I know that the majority of the top 10 didn't have over 100 players, so in reality, it would be a lot more. Add in all the 2-10 man companies that had 100+ claims, and there would be more than enough area give land to literally everyone who has played PVE, or is likely to play PVE in the future - not even counting the 200+ new islands worth of land coming.

With their track record of ignoring PvE, especially with this patch, do you honestly think that is true? We were literally 3 lines in a 3300 word count post. I'm guessing toward the thought process of "Well, PvE won't have claims anymore, so they won't have taxes, so there's no reason to put a player shop at their base, its just one more thing they'll have to pay upkeep on."

Honestly, parking in someone's shipyard is kinda a dick move. Always park where you're not blocking anything for anyone. Look on the bright side. in 3 weeks, anyone can block your ship anywhere its parked, even in front of your own base, and you get to wait for the decay to kill the blockade (assuming that they don't just replace the blocking objects before that)...or, even better, they can put pillars that you won't notice under your ships so when you raise anchor, it tears the guts out of the ship.

Renamed the thread in the interest of fairness due to the fact that both Jat and Dollie have popped into the thread. 3/4 -The vast majority of the people DESPISE the land claim changes on PvE. Being unable to protect the resources from griefers, being unable to protect yourself from griefers deciding that they don't want anyone building within a half islands worth of distance, ugly pillars and foundations everywhere, people griefing the hell out of ships and blocking harbors, plus blocking you from ever expanding your base by builkding as close as possible on either side of you - hell, they already did that with the claim overlaps as it was, and now EVERYWHERE is going to be like that? - A portion of the people hate the idea of the wipe, yeah, I know it's necessary due to land changes and because of the rampant dupeing going on, as well as to re-test the new settings. However, right now, a large portion of the apprehensions isn't just losing what they've worked for, its also fear that this means wipes on a semi-regular basis, so why bother doing everything, again - especially with the land system being so completely against what 95% of the players want, they are going to expect another wipe in a couple months to try again. -Playershops in settlements on PVP, but PVE just gets freeport vendors. Seriously? WTF? This idea has been floated multiple times on both here and reddit, and the general consensus was that PvE players liked it, but PvP players responses were 'Cool, but pointless, we don't trade and would just blow each others shops up anyway." -Abandoned ships still not getting mentioned as any solution found for them. Again, seriously? Yay! The wipe will take care of them, but what about all the ships from the people week 1 after the wipe, who decide to try it again, and realize that the new system is just Ark griefing all over again and quit after a week? (Yeah, the last two are somewhat minor compared to the first one, but, it is something that has time to be changed) I know that the devs enjoy the PvP side of things, and are in contact with a few of the megas over there, but there is another 50% (give or take) of people playing your game on PvE. Let me introduce you to them. (Say Hi, guys). We are the PvErs, we're generally the ones who prefer a low-key playstyle, without being griefed, and without being forced to worry about play schedules. That doesn't mean that we don't play the hell out of games that hold our interest, for 300, 500, 700, 1000 hours+ in 2 months...and recruit our friends/significant others to play those games with us. We build - you guys must love seeing our buildings, you post them on the community spotlight, but these changes, and the upkeep decay, are going to prevent that, because some douchecanoe can just block us from building that last wing of our 12th century japanese fishing port recreation, or our dock and pirate village, complete with shops that have signs, counters, everything but actual traders. We trade - Some of us joined the game to be pirates, and fight SotD all day (Thanks for the new types, btw). Some of us joined the game to be traders, wanting to travel the world for rare and exotic resources and tames, and bringing them back to our base that was designed and built to be a trading port, land to sell at a profit to our neighbors, or to be the one stop shop that sells high end goods to people from the surrounding areas...but we don't even get player shops on our lands, and with no claims, anyone can build a base anywhere, to get any resource, or just go to the closest freeport. We explore - Unfortunately, if you choose to be a builder, the upkeep costs are going to make you a farmer instead of an explorer. We socialize - We're on official because yes, we want the full map, but also because thats where the population is, or at least should be. But, if no one is coming by to trade, and if the overall population drops even lower due to the claim changes and people who get fed up with griefing, then there will be no one to socialize with. Grapeshot, the uproar on these boards isn't because we hate the game, we love it. We're also the ones who spend 300, 500, 1000+ hours playing on PvE. You guys have a dedicated, passionate playerbase that a lot of other devs would kill for. A player base that has been telling their friends about the game, but telling them to wait to get it, because it is so close to being so badass. A player base who wants you to listen to them, and what they've seen and wished for over their literally millions of hours of playtime over the last 2 months. You said a month or so ago, that you guys heard us. With all due respect, you may have heard, but you didn't listen. You HEARD the complaints over land claim, and decided to exercise the nuclear option and got rid of claims entirely, instead of actually LISTENING to people and finding a reasonable way to limit those claims. (even 10 per company with <25 members, 25 for companies of 25-100 members and 50 for companies with 100+ people would have more than enough land for people, and left a huge amount of open areas for new players - especially with the extra 200+ islands coming)

I was just going to post asking about this. I noticed that it was never mentioned at all. So, a month after launch, everyone is going to be complaining about the people who log on to PvE and got pissed off with the dumpster fire of Lawless for All, and quit after a week (again), leaving their ships littering everything...this time without people weight griefing to get rid of some of them. ...and THOSE ships will still be there on the following wipe, since you know that their little experiment is going to fail (like 95% of the PvE playerbase has been telling them for the past 30 hours or so), and require a revamp and need another wipe in 3 more months for their NEW NEW AND IMPROVED system, which, at the rate they insist on screwing over PvE any more, will consist of if you click on 'Join PvE server' will somehow manage to bork your hard drive and impregnate your cat.

Yeah, PVP whose builds get decimated weekly gets all the cool toys and PvE, whose community actually (mostly) enjoys playing together and focuses mostly on trading and building lasting stuff gets...upkeep, structure decay, build anywhere grief fest.

I like the theory behind it, ensuring that the raiders get -something-. A better solution to it would make decay on those dropped valuable items much longer. This would allow people to still have hidden stashes, since hiding valuables from raiders was a big part of defending from pirates and other raiders.

The PTR works well for checking the implementation of some changes, to make sure that they don't completely bork things. Unfortunately, the limited number of people that will use the PTR are the dedicated people who want to play the game and make it better. They aren't the same people who will grief the hell out of the live servers.

From the livestream: Jat: "As for PVE status, the rules are going to be a bit different. So, we are not going to be using claim flags in PvE. We're just making it free-buildable on any island except home servers, golden age ruins, and um, lawless islands are pretty much remaining the same. PvE specific, there won't be any claim flags, all structures are going to naturally decay on PvE..." Then goes to talk about the repair structure being put in place to stop people from foundation/pillar spamming. There's nothing in there about the repair structure having a no-build radius, like a claim flag does. Free-buildable. Sounds like the only limitation will be the normal no-build distance from someone else's buildings. If a griefer puts down new pillars/foundations every day or three, or whatever the decay timer is, then upkeep doesn't matter: the only people paying the upkeep will be people who want to keep their buildings, To prevent someone from putting down stuff to block resources you will have to put down your own stuff to block them from putting down things, which will A: have a damn good chance of blocking the resources you're trying to protect, B: cost upkeep to the person who is trying to protect things for everyone, and 3: (because apparantly C followed by a colon can only be some stupid emojii) make us end up with islands covered in pillars and foundations, and have everyone paying an artificially high upkeep. I played Ark over 3000 hours, I served hopped through a couple dozen servers that were nothing but pillar spam up and down every shorelline, before I found one that wasn't. There, you could move inland and try to carve out a spot for youself. Here, blocking the shoreline is blocking the majority of the game, and is easier to do, because of how much smaller each individual island is.

...congratulations, you just invented having a claim.

The issue is that either the upkeep either has to be so expensive to stop people from pillar/foundation spamining, that it will in turn make it so expensive to maintain your own structures, that you can't build intricate bases, else your upkeep will necessitate that an inordinate amount of farming, just to maintain a decent sized base. A 10x10 building, 2 stories tall, is 100 foundations, 100 ceilings, and 80 walls. 280 pieces. How many resources can be blocked, and how much griefing can be done with 280 foundations placed around an island? Even with decay, whats to stop someone from dropping a foundation on a metal spawn, or at the very edge of your base build zone, never putting upkeep in it, and just replacing it every few days or so as it decays? You get to pay upkeep., They are out the cost of a foundation. I realize that their is an issue with people overclaiming land now. Limiting claims would be a helluva lot better solution than this. if every company with <25 people got 10 claims, 25-100 people got 25 claims, and companies with 100+ got 50 claims, it would free up a ridiculous amount of land. To bring the maths into the discussion, there is now a company with over 3000 land claims. If they could only claim 50, that would leave 2950 more claims free. That would free up the maximum number of landclaims for 59 companies of 100+ people, or 118 companies of 25-100 people, or 295 companies of <25 people. With a max company size of 250, that would mean that up to 14,750 people would have land claims. ...and thats just the amount of land 1 top 10 company has. There are others with 2000+ land claims, there are multiple others with 1000+ land claims. All the way down to the 1 and 2 person companies that have 40-100 claims. When you couple that with 200+ claimable islands being added, there would be more than ample room for everyone playing the game today, and damn sure enough room for everyone who will continue playing after wipe. Hell, there would be enough land for everyone who has ever played on the PVE servers, with plenty of room to spare for new players. PVE players are generally low-key and chill people who just want to build and explore, socialize, tame, and trade, without being griefed. This patch takes away a good portion of that. Building will have to cost too much to maintain, and the griefers will kill the resources needed to do it. You won't have time to explore, because you'll be too busy farming to maintain the buildings you do have. Traders in freeports, only trading for gold, is a rant for another time. Socialization is out, due to the massively declined playerbase. So, we can tame and breed. Whee? Grapeshot, we're begging you. Don't go down this road. You have something that other developers would kill for - a devoted, passionate playerbase. A playerbase who has put in hundreds, to over 1000 hours, individually, into the game because they like the core of it. Yes, we asked for changes to make it easier for people to get land, but instead of minor changes, we're getting scorched earth and a griefers paradise.

Ayup. 100% clean slate.

Can we start a pool on how many days after launch before the first entire island on PVE is 100% enclosed in 1 company's behemoth gates?

Nope, PVP gets whole island claim flags. PVE gets whole world lawless griefing. Now with 200+ more islands to be foundation spammed. Enjoy.

Based on their track record of finding the worst possible answer to everything, their answer to foundation spamming will be to A: increase the no-build radius to larger than existing claims, also increasing the resource blocking to about the same range, while doing nothing about foundations that griefers have already layed down as close as possible to your buildings and every resource spot on the map (then instituing a fix that deletes every foundation in the game and requires a rollback, then never mentioning it again) While also B: increasing the cost to for each foundation to double what it was before and also requires a dragon scale from a drake (which drops 3 upon killing it) for every foundation, including thatch.

Just limit the claims to 10 per any company, 20 for a company over 25 members, and 50 for companies with 100+ members. More than enough land for anyone, and seeing as how there is a company with 3000 land claims, that would be land for 59 other companies of 100+ people, or 148 companies with 25 people, or 299 companies with less than 25 people. Thats up to 5000 to 10000 more people having land.. And thats just 1 company being divested of its land. Other companies in the top 10 have ~2000 flags of 1000 flags. Between freeing up claims with that, and 200 new islands, there would be more than enough land to claim for everyone playing now, and damn sure more than enough land for everyone playing after the wipe. Hell, that would be enough room for everyone who's ever played on PVE to have claims, with room to spare for new players.

I've never seen a company as tone deaf as Grapeshot. You literally have hundreds of suggestions on the forums and reddit - some good, some bad, some feasible, some impossible...and this is what you give us? You guys manage to do literally the exact opposite of what the majority of your player base wants, damn near every time. People LIKED the claim system due to it stopping the griefing that was so prevalent in Ark. What they didn't like was that a couple companies could take over the whole map and not leave any room for anyone. Instead of limiting PVE claims to a reasonable number, like you are in PVP, even 10-20 per company, you get rid of the PVE claim system entirely, and leave everyone open to foundation/pillar spam griefing, resource blocking, ship blocking, etc - with the added kick in the teeth that its not Ark - if there are douchebags who pillar/foundation the most desirable areas to stop anyone from having them, you can't just find another server with a lower assclown ration. You're even adding over 200 new islands for people to pillar and spam to unusableness. You have a pissed off playerbase, with a lot of time on their hands. Do you really think that a portion of them aren't going to make life as miserable as possible for anyone who attempts to keep playing? If you would re-think this to something like limit claims to 10 per company, 20 per company with at least 25 members, and 50 per company with 50+ members, as well as opening the 200 new islands, and even open lawless to be claimable, that would open more than enough land for anyone currently playing, and anyone who wants to play in the future. People didn't want to be tenants because they had 0 protections against landlords pulling their build rights, which killed that dead in the water. Instead of fixing it so that people had a reason to be tenants, with basic protections, it turned into 'Nope, burn it all down..." People wanted to be able to trade easily and efficiently, for all kinds of goods, taking all kinds of payments. They wanted reasons to go visit other people's lands, they wanted to give people a reason to visit their land, and reasons to go to far off lands, acquire goods, and easily re-sell them to their neighbors for profit. Nope, you get vendors in freeport, for gold only. People didn't want the wipe, due to discovery points, etc. Bases, resources, blueprints, etc...yeah, they suck to get and rebuild. Instead of just a land and item wipe, Nope, clean slate. - this isn't as bad as the others, but, still going to cost more players than just the land/item wipe would have. This has been a consistent theme, all the way back to the ship weight griefing. People wanted their ships to be safe when they logged off, and suggested that if the ship was at anchor, it wouldn't take overweight damage. Nope, we get magic fly traps. Yeah, I know, these are all PVE concerns, because thats mainly where I play, but I know that the PVP side is just as pissed about having to pencil wars in their date book, among other things. The people who compared the games trajectory to No Mans Sky, or Rust, saying that "Oh, Grapeshot said they're listening to the players now. They're going to turn it around.", aren't doing that so much any more. I'm kinda scared to see what the Steam review are going to look like going forward. When we asked you to listen to the players, we didn't mean to listen to what we were saying, and decide to implement the opposite, or the most half-ass way of what we were asking for.

I've never seen a company as tone deaf as Grapeshot. You literally have hundreds of suggestions on the forums and reddit - some good, some bad, some feasible, some impossible...and this is what you give us? You guys manage to do literally the exact opposite of what the majority of your player base wants, damn near every time. People LIKED the claim system due to it stopping the griefing that was so prevalent in Ark. What they didn't like was that a couple companies could take over the whole map and not leave any room for anyone. Instead of limiting PVE claims to a reasonable number, like you are in PVP, even 10-20 per company, you get rid of the PVE claim system entirely, and leave everyone open to foundation/pillar spam griefing, resource blocking, ship blocking, etc - with the added kick in the teeth that its not Ark - if there are douchebags who pillar/foundation the most desirable areas to stop anyone from having them, you can't just find another server with a lower assclown ration. You're even adding over 200 new islands for people to pillar and spam to unusableness. You have a pissed off playerbase, with a lot of time on their hands. Do you really think that a portion of them aren't going to make life as miserable as possible for anyone who attempts to keep playing? If you would re-think this to something like limit claims to 10 per company, 20 per company with at least 25 members, and 50 per company with 50+ members, as well as opening the 200 new islands, and even open lawless to be claimable, that would open more than enough land for anyone currently playing, and anyone who wants to play in the future. People didn't want to be tenants because they had 0 protections against landlords pulling their build rights, which killed that dead in the water. Instead of fixing it so that people had a reason to be tenants, with basic protections, it turned into 'Nope, burn it all down..." People wanted to be able to trade easily and efficiently, for all kinds of goods, taking all kinds of payments. They wanted reasons to go visit other people's lands, they wanted to give people a reason to visit their land, and reasons to go to far off lands, acquire goods, and easily re-sell them to their neighbors for profit. Nope, you get vendors in freeport, for gold only. People didn't want the wipe, due to discovery points, etc. Bases, resources, blueprints, etc...yeah, they suck to get and rebuild. Instead of just a land and item wipe, Nope, clean slate. - this isn't as bad as the others, but, still going to cost more players than just the land/item wipe would have. This has been a consistent theme, all the way back to the ship weight griefing. People wanted their ships to be safe when they logged off, and suggested that if the ship was at anchor, it wouldn't take overweight damage. Nope, we get magic fly traps. Yeah, I know, these are all PVE concerns, because thats mainly where I play, but I know that the PVP side is just as pissed about having to pencil wars in their date book, among other things. The people who compared the games trajectory to No Mans Sky, or Rust, saying that "Oh, Grapeshot said they're listening to the players now. They're going to turn it around.", aren't doing that so much any more. I'm kinda scared to see what the Steam review are going to look like going forward. When we asked you to listen to the players, we didn't mean to listen to what we were saying, and decide to implement the opposite, or the most half-ass way of what we were asking for.

I've never seen a company as tone deaf as Grapeshot. You literally have hundreds of suggestions on the forums and reddit - some good, some bad, some feasible, some impossible...and this is what you give us? You guys manage to do literally the exact opposite of what the majority of your player base wants, damn near every time. People LIKED the claim system due to it stopping the griefing that was so prevalent in Ark. What they didn't like was that a couple companies could take over the whole map and not leave any room for anyone. Instead of limiting PVE claims to a reasonable number, like you are in PVP, even 10-20 per company, you get rid of the PVE claim system entirely, and leave everyone open to foundation/pillar spam griefing, resource blocking, ship blocking, etc - with the added kick in the teeth that its not Ark - if there are douchebags who pillar/foundation the most desirable areas to stop anyone from having them, you can't just find another server with a lower assclown ration. You're even adding over 200 new islands for people to pillar and spam to unusableness. You have a pissed off playerbase, with a lot of time on their hands. Do you really think that a portion of them aren't going to make life as miserable as possible for anyone who attempts to keep playing? If you would re-think this to something like limit claims to 10 per company, 20 per company with at least 25 members, and 50 per company with 50+ members, as well as opening the 200 new islands, and even open lawless to be claimable, that would open more than enough land for anyone currently playing, and anyone who wants to play in the future. People didn't want to be tenants because they had 0 protections against landlords pulling their build rights, which killed that dead in the water. Instead of fixing it so that people had a reason to be tenants, with basic protections, it turned into 'Nope, burn it all down..." People wanted to be able to trade easily and efficiently, for all kinds of goods, taking all kinds of payments. They wanted reasons to go visit other people's lands, they wanted to give people a reason to visit their land, and reasons to go to far off lands, acquire goods, and easily re-sell them to their neighbors for profit. Nope, you get vendors in freeport, for gold only. People didn't want the wipe, due to discovery points, etc. Bases, resources, blueprints, etc...yeah, they suck to get and rebuild. Instead of just a land and item wipe, Nope, clean slate. - this isn't as bad as the others, but, still going to cost more players than just the land/item wipe would have. This has been a consistent theme, all the way back to the ship weight griefing. People wanted their ships to be safe when they logged off, and suggested that if the ship was at anchor, it wouldn't take overweight damage. Nope, we get magic fly traps. Yeah, I know, these are all PVE concerns, because thats mainly where I play, but I know that the PVP side is just as pissed about having to pencil wars in their date book, among other things. The people who compared the games trajectory to No Mans Sky, or Rust, saying that "Oh, Grapeshot said they're listening to the players now. They're going to turn it around.", aren't doing that so much any more. I'm kinda scared to see what the Steam review are going to look like going forward. When we asked you to listen to the players, we didn't mean to listen to what we were saying, and decide to implement the opposite, or the most half-ass way of what we were asking for.