MeatSammich

That's why having the shops in freeport is kinda dumb. You should be able to have the shops at your claim. It would give more of a feeling of having actual towns if you could have a retail district, with NPCs both buying and selling, as well as being able to name your price either in gold, or other resources. Bartering for resources you don't have on your island would be much more useful than only selling for gold.

When you talk about the gold taxes, the more people having to pay large upkeep, the more people will be farming, the more taxes they're going to get, and the more incentive they have to set their taxes at max rate, so it all washes out and does nothing to take away from the big companies, just hurts the mid-smaller tiers, again. As a solo who enjoys the building, socializing, exploring, and trading aspects a helluva lot more than chasing treasure maps. If I wanted to spend my time just chasing treasure maps, I'd go back and play Sea of Thieves. I'd rather see them implement a flag cap scaling on number of people in the company (and I've been against a flag cap since day one), than institute a cripplingly high upkeep that forces me to do something I don't enjoy, just to keep my handful of claims. I'd fall under the 1000g/week tier based on your scale. My total gold that I've gotten in 250+ hours is 1348, because treasure maps aren't enjoyable to me. Now, if they put in something like NPC merchant ships that you could sink and rob to get a comparable amount of gold to a treasure map, (and reduce the weight of the damn gold in the first place), that could be more enjoyable.

On the last livestream, they said that they were looking into a gold cost for upkeep on claims. Not the solution I'd look for - anything that forces you to play more than you want, just to farm to keep your stuff, is going to drive away a large portion of the playerbase. Once it forces you to log in and play, even if you don't want to, doing things you don't want to, or have other things going on that limit your game time, its not a game, its a job. I already have one of those - and I don't get fired for calling in sick with the flu for a week, why should I lose everything that I do in my free time if something happens to stop me from playing for a short while. (within reason). Hell, I had friends that got hit with the CenturyLink internet outage for a week last month. If they would have had less than 7 days of upkeep banked, they would have lost everything, through no fault of their own. Thats the kind of thing that drives away a playerbase, except for a few thousand hardcores.

You guys are brainstorming the cost way too high, in my opinion, and will cripple smaller companies, while doing nothing to stop larger companies that have 200+ people from just grabbing all this extra land that would theoretically free up, because they have the extra people to run treasure maps 24/7 It should start out at 1 gold per flag, going up 1 gold per flag every 5 flags. First flag should always be free. Up to 5 flags should be 1 gold per flag, per day. With the freebie for 1 flag, that would be only to 4g/day - doable by grabbing flotsam (which would be rarer, since people would be grabbing every one they see), or a common map every couple days. 5-10 flags = 2g per flag, per day (18g/day) 10-15 flags = 3g per flag per day (42g/day) I get that those numbers seem low, but for the smaller groups, it is doable, without spending literally every minute farming gold. When you start getting up to the bigger claims - ie, 50 flags, that would be 10g/flag per day, minus the 1st flag free, that would be 450g/day 100 flag = 20g/flag/day, so 1980 gold per day 200 = 40g/flag/day or 7960g/day ...and so on It would still have the effect of getting rid of the people who don't play, and getting larger landowners to shed land to get down into a bracket that they can afford. The drawback to a system like this, is it is going to completely kill any trade, especially the planned playershops, or even cosmetic purchases for gold, since everyone will be hoarding it for upkeep. Playershops need to be able to set prices in different commodities, not just gold, else they'll be DOA with the upkeep charge change.

The other weird thing is the anchor drops off the rear of the ship, but the anchor activation is based off the front. If I back into the water near my base, I have the hull scrape bottom, and still can't anchor. If I rotate in place, and face the island, the anchor drops fine, even though its then over a damn near 90 degree dropoff to the depths.

All that would need to be done to even it out, is decently increase the damage done by players to tames. Since PVE players cant damage other peoples tames, it wouldn't affect any of the vs wild/alpha buffs they got, and keep their usability as harvesters, and the PVP players could be happy 1 or 2 shotting each others animals.

Lighting diffusion should happen with about double the distance through fog. As is, you can barely see the lighthouses from less than a claim away in the fog, and pretty much not at all during the daytime. Buoys are in the same need of having the lighting need to be increased, as well as the lights set to come on when the weather is foggy, even if its daytime. Its not much of a warning for shallows/rocks if the light fades out completely across the distance of a large shipyard.

Naw, was around E11. I swerved to avoid a raft parked offshore, and next thing I know I'm up past the sandline in the trees. Was my first raft, too, and hadn't learned to build a bed on it yet. Back to freeport for me. At least Udo has a nice anti-drinking-and-sailing poster. "So's I stopped in a freeport tavern, met a few friends and thats where things get hazy. I woke up the next morning, wondering whose pants I was wearing, and where this monkey came from. Who would name a monkey The Proctologist anyway? Now, to find out where I docked me ship..."

I'm....impressed...? Yeah, thats a new one for me, and I thought I've managed to screw up driving a ship every possible way. I did the wedge a raft about 40 feet into a shoreline thing the first week, too. Well, people are always wanting to build their base and live on their ship. Now you can, and not have to worry about sinking.

So, whats up with that unharvestable brush on near the tops of mountains, at least on tropical. Whenever I'm within range of it, there's always a bunch of it exploding and raining down off the mountain. It explodes and flies off in chunks like rock does when someone harvests it, but afaik, that brush isn't harvestable, and theres no one anywhere near it.

Is anyone else having the sound issue when they first log in to the game, that the music that plays, (not the theme on the menu, the music that almost sounds like they Daybreak music) is stuttery and choppy? Both mine and my gf's, on totally different setups, do this weird play a second, stop a second, play a second, etc thing for about 30 seconds, while the gamesounds are fine. Its just that login soundclip that stutters.

There's something funky going on with harvesting. Over the weekend, I'd get 80-180 wood per tree, now, its 20-60. If I pick up stones, it still gives the 2 stones, but hitting anything seems to yield a good bit less than half of what it was. The same thing happened last week after the x2 ended.

The majority of the people around me are running the 30% tax, so a good amount of people still harvest it. My problem is that my tropical island is like 50 foot wide beaches, with a mountain in the middle. Out of my 9 claims, 5 are land, 4 overlapping water, and theres a total of 20ish trees, combined, so the limiting factor is respawn time. If lower the tax, it lowers the yield a good amount. If I don't have any tax, the neighbors take all the trees, and I don't get to build at all, unless I wait for respawn. Now, stone, I can harvest all day, but no matter how hard I try, I can't build a galleon out of rocks.

You say you can build a galleon every 2 days with a 5% tax. That sounds like you have a huge amount of claims. With 9 claims at 15%, if I get 1k wood, thatch and fiber, and 300 metal, its a good day. Smaller claim number landowners have the ability to be more involved with the people running around on their claims. When you own 100+ claims, you can't be expected to be everywhere. I can see all 9 of my claims from my base, and tend to go over and see if they need anything, when I see people on them. Everyone plays the game differently. Some people want to hold as much land as possible. Some people want to have a claim or two, sit on their porch and yell at others to get off their lawn, some people want to be social and help others. Thats the cool thing about sandbox style. You can play how you want to. Your milage may vary based on what you choose to do.

Speaking as someone who has 9 claims that have a total of 20 trees, 2 metal nodes, a decent chunk of stone, and the usual fiber, berries, and veggies, the taxation system works for me. One dude can clear every resource off my land in about a half hour. A good chunk of tropical has a severe shortage of trees, and nothing sucks more than logging on and seeing all your resources gone. With a 15% tax rate, it doesnt cripple the person harvesting, but I at least get a little bit back, instead of logging on and having to either wait for resource respawn, or go to another area entirely to collect basic resources. You say people who have the land do nothing for others. That might be true of the huge landowners, but people who own 10 or so claims around their base are keeping the predators dead, trapping and killing alphas, and making sure that no one is building on the resources so that they're there for themselves and others. Without taxes, they get nothing for any of that, just get to have their limited resources stolen. What I'd really like to see is a variable tax rate that could be set for each company - neighbor is an ass, set their rate to 30%. Good neighbors, set it to 0% for them. As is, I basically give tax refunds to the neighbors that help me out, and toss them the resources that they get taxed. People who want claims to go away should look at the mess that the lawless islands have become. Add a normal respawn blockage distance to it, and the majority of the islands would be barren wastelands. It worked (to an extent) for Ark because there was a lot more land, comparatively, and multiple servers. Here, 10 foundations, or worse, shipyards, strategically placed, can both claim, and block resource spawns for 30-50% of an island.

Some corrections to my last post. The top 10 company that was showing 46 flags, is now showing 111 claims, not sure if flag count updated, or they placed a huge amount in the last day. It now shows a 4 day timer for them. It is still strange because if you try to place a flag, it shows 20 days, 15 hrs remaining, on every flag, regardless of what their flag shows.

What are you asking for? A guide on how to reclaim territory? Not really a guide, just wait for the timer to run down. A guide to the flag count per flag timer? I haven't seen anything that shows a breakdown. With 9 flags, I have a 19 day, 15 hour and 1 minute claim timer. The odd part is that a top 10 company with 46 flags is also the same claim timer. I think what was mentioned before, that 200 flags would give you the 3 day timer, but I have no confirmation of that, and seems kinda strange if 9 to 46 flags are all 19 days, 15 hours. One other strange thing, is that when you look at the flag, it says 1 thing, but then you try to place a flag, it says that the timer is about a day longer than the flag. Maybe some of the other top companies, like Darksea Dawgs can chime in and let us know how many flags they have and what the timers show, to get a gauge of the timer breakdown.

I don't want to be That Guy, but it was a 48 hour timer on claims for the last 3 days. I saw at least a dozen claims change hands just on my fairly active island since Wednesday, including a top 10 company losing 3-4. Unless you're sailing around, actively looking for places, you'll never find them. Try going farther than 1 zone over from lawless, hit every island, check every claim. There is land to be had, but you have to look, not just sail near an island and look for a magic unclaimed circle, with 4 of every type of resource, and angels singing while wenches pour rum down your throat. With more claims lowering the timer, some of the companies will also be looking to shed some of their extra claims. Again, they're probably not going to be the choicest areas, but, they'll be somewhere to build a base and a shipyard, and get you a foothold. My first claim was the most barren spot you've ever seen. It had 4 trees, a rock, and some berries and fiber. I was able to expand out from there... Sail to an island, look for the less choice spots, and ask the owners about getting them. A surprising amount of people are willing to give you the barren spots to build, because they know you'll have to harvest on their taxed land, and they're losing nothing of value. Don't just sail into a zone and ask, 'Any land available?' because that way, the answer, if you get one is pretty much a guaranteed 'Nope, all claimed'.

Did this get pulled from the v18 patch? I don't see it in the notes anymore, but still waiting for the update to finish to get in game and see if it affected anything.

Weird, because for the last 3 days, its been 48 hr declaim for everyone, no matter the number of flags. Our island saw a good amount of flag turnover over since Wednesday, and the timers consistently reset to 48 hours every time someone was on. People who hadn't been on for 48 hrs before Wednesdays patch lost everything as soon as the patch happened, with a few who had been on 36 hrs before losing it all on Wednesday night. If the claim still had an active timer, the owner must have been on sometime recently, if only for a few minutes.

Sounds like it is working as intended, mostly. If you hadn't logged in for 5 days, your stuff would have been claimable. It was 72 hrs of inactivity before it was up for grabs, but the patch 3(?) days ago that changed it from showing negative timer also changed the inactivity timer and now it is currently it is 48 hrs of inactivity before your stuff is claimable, which, is theoretically supposed to be going to 2 weeks. A patch 2ish nights ago also changed it so that sleepers no longer contested claims, and killed off any bodies that hadn't logged in for 3 weeks. It sounds like the company that grabbed your stuff - about 2 hours before you logged on - and they hadn't been on in those 8 hours in between your logons. TL:DR - Current claim timer is 48 hrs of inactivity and sleepers do NOT contest claims, but NPC crew still do.

Think they might need a bit of a looking at. First off, they glitch through everything, doors, windows, walls, can hit through a 2 wide stone foundation to hit wood interior floors. My favorite part of them is that you can aggro one on the far side of an island, scrape off their aggro onto a random elephant, sprint all the way back to your base, make some stuff on the smithy, cook a bit of food, and 2 minutes later, theres a knock...er, hiss...at the door. Hey, remember me? They're like the damn terminator.

If you don't like using tames to harvest, then don't? They're there for people who do enjoy that aspect. Half the time, I don't bother pulling the tames out of the barn, because most things aren't a big enough difference to be worth the time and risk. Its not like ark, where unless you were on a rex, you'd be food in minutes, or unless you had a flyer, resources would take forever to get to. The difference between an elephant and an axe is nowhere near what the difference between a high level mammoth and an axe was. Horses, etc could definitely use more utility, though. Hitchable wagons, or even basic harvesting implements. Most islands aren't really big enough that the extra speed makes or breaks using them. Same place as ostriches. I'd like to see the tames have more utility, better harvesting rates, etc, as well as crew being able to be set to harvest. Anything to help the grind, and keep you building, or sailing, and exploring more.

Going by my flags, which are a sets of 4 continuous claims, a set of 5 continuous and 1 off to the side, it shows I have 8 claims. However, 2 of the flags is from before the claim system update a couple weeks ago - v14 or so, and never seemed to count toward my claims. I think only flags planted since v14 (ish) are counting toward the number of claims, but every new flag counts as 1 claim.

Not exactly a pressing issue, but, there are a few items that when you examine them, have one description, but, give something that doesn't make sense. On tropical, there are spiky yucca-looking clusters of plants that when examined, the description is Straw (Straw) and give hemp. We already have the generic fern-like plants, and the actual hemp plants that give hemp, so it actually giving straw would be kinda cool. Also, pure cobalt nodes examine as Stone (Pure Copper) and give cobalt.