MeatSammich

It does seem a design flaw that you can overload the server with a zerg that either stops any defenders from coming in, or starts kicking people at random. Limiting clan size would do nothing to fix that, tho. It would have the same effect if it was 150 people from the same company attacking, or 5 allied groups of 30 people each, or 6 unofficially allied groups of 25 coming in. This last would be slightly harder without the blue alliance names to know your target, but not exactly difficult to all paint your ships the same color, or run the same color lanterns for night attacks.

I think Jean's suggestions are spot on. For all the graphical optimizations that has been done, abandoned ships are one of the biggest framerate killers. As an addition, I would implement something with Golden Age ruins having a straight freeport-style decay timer, else if it fell under the 72 hr rule, people could just fast travel back and forth to reset it. But, please, for the love of all that is floaty and wood, can we get the ability to anchor in deeper waters? Possibly just being able to anchor within x distance from the shoreline, regardless of depth. Anything bigger than a schooner can't be anchored on most of my claim, because of it going from 3' deep to the abyss at a 80 degree slope.

I could be way off base, but I don't think that NPCs will reset the claim timers in Lawless. At least on claims, they just count as contesting claims, and don't do anything to pause or reset the timers. Additionally, NPCs have a claim timer of their own, like tames, so it would be kinda weird to have a timer being reset by something with its own claim timer, because that would then would reset its own claim timer. Unfortunately, I think that the only thing that resets any of the timers is a company member zoning in. Can you recruit a trusted neighbor on the island, if only for a few days, to reset for you in the meantime?

I know that Nokomon in D9 has mineral oil

Or, better yet, leave a small box at the top of the screen, with either a countdown, or the estimated patch time. I've missed the patch warning too many times due to being afk for a minute or two, or logging in after the warning.

One of the things that I love about my grid is that we have a couple people on a bit of the time, who can translate Mandarin and are happy to relay messages between those of us who can't read it, and the small Chinese company that lives there. Even among english speaking people passing through, theres not a lot of conversation. If we're around, theres a few of us that respond to hails in general chat - its usually pretty quiet. The majority of the time I could set up a bot to respond with "Next grid south" for people asking about bears, "2 grids north" for people asking for salt, and "SW island beaches, mostly on the N side" to people asking about crystal. You usually get a 'Thanks' and thats it. If I'm traveling, especially if I'm crossing a full sector in crappy wind, I'd much rather have people to talk to and entertain myself on the journey, than just treat it like a single player game and only use the global chat as a travel guide. The thing with voice/local chat that bugs me is how tiny the range is, and the fact that most people ask you something in voice chat as they're sprinting through, and by the time you respond, they're out of range. Its like damn, man, stop a second and let me respond, probably gonna make finding those metal nodes you asked about a lot easier.

Logically, its gonna be harder to 'offline' a megatribe with 4-500 people spread across a dozen time zones, that it would be to offline a small tribe of friends who all live near each other and work together. If my tribe is 4 people that I work with. We all work the same hours, sleep more or less the same time, dictated by work schedule There's a good 12-16 hours any given day that no one from my tribe would be on. Pretty easy got get offlined. A megatribe with say 100 active people, usually has members from NA, Europe/Australia, and maybe a couple members from Asia. There's a pretty good chance that at least 10 of those members are online at any given time, and can respond to attacks relatively quickly - once they get a notification that they're under attack. Add in the fact that most megas are aligned with 3-4 other megas, and your 'stealth attack' is gonna get responded to with 30-40 people. I don't think the little guy is gonna win so well in that scenario. You -might- be able to get there, firebomb a few ships, and popcorn a few boxes, but I wouldn't say that it is going to really set much of anything back.

It really sounds like you'd rather play more on a PVP server, albeit one with limited PVP, ie: private server. I play PVE so I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. Hopefully they add more PVE content in the future, as in attackable NPC merchant ships, etc, but, we'll see. I would even be down with a couple free for all non-buildable PVP sectors within the PVE map. I'm personally happy playing it as a trading/socialization/exploration simulator, for now.

So, a theory on what is happening. Few years back in Ark, there was an issue where tames would randomly fall into/through the mesh and drown. If you caught them when they were only partway through, you could pull them out, but once they went all the way through, it was solid, so they were screwed. I'm guessing they implemented a system where if they were sinking through the mesh, or in some cases a structure, the game would go into a loop, popping them up higher and higher til they were out of the mesh. Something is screwy with the detection side, though, and the 'standing on solid surface' detection never kicks in, or detects correctly in some cases, so the game keeps popping them up higher and higher, until, I assume, they hit the ceiling.

Ah, okay, that would make more sense. Right around 8pm in the UK.

For all servers combined, or NA? Seems weird for NA, seeing as how the majority of adults would be at work, and most <20 year olds would be at school/college across the US/Canada at that time.

A good portion of the griefers are people who are bored with the game, but just play because they have nothing better to do. They show how pissed off they are by making other people more miserable while playing, than they are. If they're not having fun while playing, then no one gets to have fun, damn it! They essentially see how far they can go, and how many people they screw with, before, and if, they do get banned. Once they're banned, they move on to something else, and it doesn't bother them because, in their mind, 'the game sucked anyway'

Aye, which means at this point that they need to fix the base game, and get back a good portion of players that left back - players who will then recruit friends. Plus, if they can turn it around, positive articles will attract more players. Use No Mans Sky for an example. They tanked at launch as hard as it was possible to tank, but through changing and adding gameplay, rebuilt their following into a pretty solid base, which helped repair their reputation, and people took notice, and more people bought copies. As is, a subscription would in no way work. It would kill 90% of the current playerbase, and with the remaining 10%, you think people are losing their minds over bugs now? The reaction to similar issues when you're paying say $10 a month, would make the forums now look like a fart in a tornado. My guess is that they had enough investors off the back of Ark to ensure startup and 2 years of operating capital, so they wouldn't have to worry about DLC, etc, and that if they turn it around and pull off the next big game, everyone is happy. Can they do it? All we can do is wait and see, voice our opinion on things, and hope that they take the game to where at least a majority of people who are playing are happy with it.

Ark has been rolling along pretty well for what, 4 years now without subscriptions, or as of the last I played, microtransactions. Although, once the game is further along in development, I wouldn't be averse to their being some cosmetics - and only cosmetics - in a cash shop, especially if they were building related. I'd pay $5 to $10 for more wall textures, some aged wood textures, etc. Being able to build with the same stone texture that the bank has would rock, as well as being able to make a ships with an aged, half rotted look to them.

The issue with this, is that it pretty much eliminates small/solo tribes from being able to do it the correct way. Its not like a raid in WoW, where you just get better gear, it removes a debuff that is annoying at best, and detrimental to gameplay at worst. If you're not in a group of people large enough to do it, your choices are run and die a couple dozen times or more, and hope you get in before it moves, hope that there are a bigger tribe there to clear the stuff, or just say the hell with it and deal with stat loss. If there was no debuff, and it just gave you a buff, then that would be fine. But the fact that there is a debuff is what screws it up and becomes basically forced content, and if you don't have a big enough group, then oh well, you get to try to do it the frustrating way.

So, apparently the overhand 2h mace swing still deals torpor damage, just not health damage, on PVE? Yeah, I'm guessing that's unintended. If anyone else was on, on my island, I'd test it. Will have to try later. While its smart to build defenses against the SotD luring, it is still griefing, and their have been reports of at least a few bans regarding it. At least you got some good clear shots of their names. I'd go through the video and screencap every shot that shows their names, and submit a ticket about it.

My problem with the warning, is it would be nice if it kept a counter, or a warning on screen. If you log in after the warning, or get up for 2 minutes to hit the bathroom or grab a drink, or even tab over to check something in another window, while the warning pops up, you have no idea that its gonna happen.

I've seen it mentioned everywhere from July to 'by the end of the year' was Jat's answer last time he was asked, if I remember correctly. Granted, a big part of that depends on how much the team is changing direction to respond to the players' issues with the game so far, and how long it takes to get stuff on the right track. I'm guessing a timeline isn't really set in stone, because the last thing they need is another user base bitching at them for every thing and pulling them in a dozen different directions. Ark was still in EA on both platforms. As far as I remember, it came out of EA on both platforms simultaneously. The biggest difference was that the xbox was almost always 1-2 patches behind, due to having to pass xbox certifications, which made it more efficient to test a patch on PC because you didn't have to re-cert every little change if the patch ended up breaking something there.

Why is it that PVP players have the need to talk shit about the PVE players and blame mechanics that no one likes on them? There have been just as many nerfs that were because of PVP mechanics. I'm relatively sure that PVE players didn't ask for flame arrows to get nerfed to uselessness against alphas, didn't ask for guns to get nerfed to the point of requiring a minimum of 2 blunderbuss shots to kill any animal bigger than a chicken, we didn't ask for stone walls cost more, and be weaker so I didn't have to spend as much mats shooting cannonballs at an empty fortress to crack it open and feast on the goo inside, didn't ask for tames to be nerfed because it was too hard to kill them when people used them to attack us. I can't think of any PVE players that said "Hey, you know what we need? Some stupid quest to drive a boat to a random sector, and spawn on a bed when this magic glowy bit is there, then lag our way into a cave and click on a thing after dying to everything outside a couple (dozen times)...its a mechanic thats damn near universally hated. Don't you put that evil on us, Ricky Bobby. Who cares if PVE just wants to build and socialize and trade? It rarely effects the PVP side - it happens a helluva lot more in reverse, although I will give GSG credit for starting to try to make PVE or PVP specific changes. The majority of the complaints of people on both sides are the same, with the exception of realistically 1 thing each. PVP - Offline Raiding/Getting Eaten by Megas. PVE - Lack of claimable land. Neither of those PVE/PVP specific issues really effects the other. PVE doesn't have to worry about offline raiding (except for people abusing game mechanics) and PVP doesn't worry about land, because you can just take it. Worry about suggesting solutions, or even just voicing your opinion about the mechanic instead of blaming each others sides. It adds nothing, and further divides what is already a pretty divided community.

Alternately, it could trigger them all to come out of hibernation and gravity effect them again. Its rainin' tames, hallelujah!

If the treasure maps are guarded by skeleton knights who say Ni, I may actually do some.

Novus Inceptio had/has a cool way of implementing the age mechanic. As gain levels, you age, at a certain age, you die, but are reborn, with a generational buff to stats and skills. One of the stupidest things is the passage of time aging you. It has nothing to do with your character, level, playtime, anything. I hit 100 years old around day 750 of the server being up, tried to play framerate frogger, and said the hell with it...and that was with me starting a week after launch. Its now day 1547, and there are characters who have run the fountain multiple times? In 1500 days, or about 4 years in game time? Ageing needs to be slowed down to at least half of where it is, currently, otherwise the FOY is just an annoying as hell chore to to every 3 weeks or so - not an accomplishment.

There is a lot of work to do. GSG has acknowledged that things are kinda screwed right now, and they need to change. I would like to see the changes happen more quickly, but at least they have acknowledged it. Can they pull it off? All we can do is wait and see. Constant posts of "The numbers keep dropping!!" aren't helping anything or fostering any kind of discussion. The players know its broke, GSG knows its broke. You're not shouting some unseen truth that is going to make people say "Oh, wait, this game sucks" The people who like it, are going to like it until some change happens that they don't like. The people who hate it are going to hate it, until some change happens they like. Wildbill is right, if they make the needed changes to pull the people back in, in the next few weeks, it will theoretically bottom out at 7-10k hardcores, and hopefully start climbing again as they make changes. Not even counting new sales, the people who bought at launch or shortly after put more time in than the refund limit, and a good portion of them will come back after a few patches that fix some of the most glaring issues. Theres always going to be a bottom limit of the hardcore people playing, if only for a bit here and there, so using the graph as absolutes is pointless. You can't just say "50k at launch, 25k a month later, 14k 3 weeks later. Wow, if we continue this rate, by the third week of march, there will be...uh... roughly negative 21000 people playing." It was 40 degrees at 6pm...it was 30 degrees at 9pm...it's now midnight and 20 degrees. By my calculations, we should experience the heat death of the universe around 3pm next Tuesday...

Are they actively aggroing on the the ships on their own, or are they firing at a griefer who aggroed them and is is hiding behind the ship?

Its just a cross-promotion that Grapeshot Games has going on with the new Dumbo movie coming out. Next stage is we get to play while completely hammered and seeing pink elephants, with racist crows yelling at us the whole time.