LoneXS

To be honest they did NA players a massive favour in that you'll have a much better understanding on how colonies work and owning islands in general. What went live from the PTR was barely comparable to the current server and they are still changing things.

Soon as the NA server comes up you'll know how many points each island is before hand, how many people you'll need to claim it and the gold cost. You also get the chance to explore all the new islands on EU to see if anything stands out as a potential new home to try grab as well.

However the one massive downside I can think of is that it'll be a ghost town. EU PVE is barely populated now, that initial rush is over and people are already getting bored. Imagine what it will be like when they split the PVE community...

I came across your village not too long ago and it looked pretty awesome, took 3 hours to get out of the grid with all the rubber banding but was impressed by the community in M3. Lawless is once again showing to be the best place to be part of a community.

Shame that this isn't likely to get looked at any time soon as the Devs don't frequent this board unless forced at gun point. Better of hitting up the discord raising the issue there.

4 hours ago, merlin66676 said:

cool, idea. did you have any SoTD issues ever?

 

Initially but only when one was kited into the main compound but the user who did it got banned. Much like official SOTD, they are only dangerous to unanchored ships and its not possible to agro them via melee anymore so your completely safe. Cyclones on the other hand were a bloody nuisance. You'd have to sit in a house and wait it out which doesn't sound bad but seemed like there was 2 - 3 cyclones every hour.

Wish I'd taken a screen shot, looked really good though it did take a long time to render in.

4 hours ago, Cantore said:

I've got an idea to build a base in the middle (yes, I'm that crazy) of the ocean. I want to do this for a few reasons:

1. It's something of a trophy to build a base in the ocean.
2. So I can securely dock my ships right next to my house.
3. So I won't despawn any land resources
4. So I won't ever get caught up in any land disputes
5. So I won't have to worry about wolves, lions, or snakes.

But, I've got an issue... the game currently needs 3 changes for me to be able to build in the middle of the ocean.

1. I need LONG pillars so as to NOT lag the server with 1000s of small ones. I'm talking 4 wall heights each. That means you could probably get away with making a small, medium, large, and XLarge pillar variants for people like me.
2. I need to be able to anchor in deep water. This can be achieved if I make a subfloor for the anchor to rest on, OR this could be achieved BETTER by making a tie-down point that you can place on your dock that acts as a docking point in deep water. (Basically, once in proximity to a tie-down point, you get an option on  your ship to "Anchor to Dock".
3. I need to be able to snap a shipyard to stone pillars or stone floors so that I can build ships out there.

So, what say ye devs? Can ye be makin an ol' pirate builder merry with but these few small changes?

 

The concept has been tried on an unofficial server I've been playing on, would include a screenshot but it was wiped a couple days ago. Think Waterworld with pirate ships scattered around the edges. It wasn't exactly in the ocean but far enough out to appear that way but shallow enough to anchor boats. Whole thing was bloody amazing apart from sleepers/animals constantly sinking through the ceilings. At one point they lost 3 elephants that fell through the world after sinking past 3 ceilings.

Other than that it worked pretty well, just a shame it was built by filthy RP'ers (joking)

But the OP has 3 bloody good ideas, instead we're getting more cosmetics and poor mans Atlantis.

1 hour ago, Percieval said:

This is false information. This game was never intended as a ‘ARK DLC’ because that would’ve been impossible to make because of the dino’s overload. You can’t have massive bases full with kibble farms and dino’s, and have the greatness of ATLAS’ map. That’s what the statement was by Wildcard I’m just repeating it. But let’s get the whole ‘ARK DLC’ out of the way. 

You'd have to be pretty gullible to believe that statement from Wildcard, there was plenty  of evidence to show that Atlas was more than likely a planned DLC for Ark. But being a relatively shrewd company, they made the right decision in making it a standalone game instead.

How they managed to screw up so much after that is a mystery to everyone, its Ark Beta all over again. And make no mistake it will always be content > bug fixes.

47 minutes ago, Lotus said:

This guy knows what's up.

I'm not entirely sure why you think he know 'whats up' I mean sweet Jebus how old is that expression?

No one really knows whats up until we get a PTR

Also your assumption that people will enter a grid and ask to build on an island is woefully naive. 90% of players will likely find an island, drop their anchor and build. Thats the whole reason people got upset about losing claims in the first place. And yes the Island owner can prevent it within in 12 hours but why would you when that person will be providing tax. Its basically the same system we have now in that whole islands will be controlled by 10% of the community but instead of having to manage several flags, they just have to manage one per island. And yes there will be upkeep.

Thank you for explaining how claims work, that always confused me... /sarcasm off

My first claim had a sleeper on it camped out in a 4 x 4 hut- was still learning about claims at this stage but Mistermyztik was really helpful in breaking down mechanics. I spent 9 hours over 2 days manually entering pin codes into his door while watching Netflix to try get access to him. Finally got in and spent a day trying to figure out how to get something into house to kill this one lone sleeper. Elephant AOE ftw. Got up at 3am and got it done much to the upset of the alpha company that wanted his land to completely own the whole island.

Two weeks later I came across 5 claims clustered on base that was up soon. It was going to be contested by just NPCs they had on their boats. So I waited out the timers - 6 days from when I found it. I had to spend two hours jumping from various angles from a rock with a wing suit onto their boats to claim all their NPC crew members. 8 crew members later and 3 x 4 hour timers for their main flags I own their entire base. It had 110k gold, tonnes of resources and BP's.

All within in the rules though you could argue a little unethical.

1 minute ago, Lotus said:

What about the game does appeal to you then?

 

The new system removes a lot of griefing potential IMO. It will improve the game more than it hurts it which means it's a good thing.

Being a pirate? I know shocking right, in a pirate game of all things...

I came over from Ark to join some friends and then found out they had all given up out of boredom. Then I was about to migrate to NA and join some cool guys there but there was always the chance my old buddies would return so stuck it out on EU.

So focused on getting land and amassing wealth. Turns out that's all kinds of fun. You have to do some pretty shady stuff to get land and goodies from other players, you know be a pirate in a pirate game... And I'm not gonna lie, that feeling of getting my own land after 2 weeks of hard work... Best feeling I've had in this game. 

The new system kinda renders a big part of that obsolete. I have no plans on living under someones thumb.

7 hours ago, MisterMyztik said:

A good example of what can/will go wrong with the system.

I hope the upkeep means you are never able to sail again

Lol tbh I barely had to sail much previously, only really travelled round to help people or spend a day doing maps. 

I'd be lieing if I said I would be happy if the upkeep costs are really cheap. If I'm able to get a large island and I can maintain the upkeep it'll show how flawed this system is.

The big question what will you do? you had grabbing claims down to an art form

1 hour ago, Kummba said:

He said he will not sail again when it will not work out for him!

AND you hope that a sandbox (whatever) MMO will become an upkeep simulator? How far you have to stretch to justify such a system?

Your probably right I'll fail but outside of trying this, there's not much that appeals to me as a solo player. And before you say 'this is a MMO, join a company or GTFO out' feel free too suck my nuts.

Also MisterMyztik isn't justifying the new system, hes just point out the biggest issue I'm likely to encounter if its even possible. Upkeep is the biggest downside.

14 minutes ago, MrMagoo said:

I left the game early on because of the claim system, I will do the same again if it turns out how people are describing with landords turfing you out.

I stuck round but will likely leave as well assuming they go ahead with these changes. 

Plan is to play semi solo so I'll have too abuse the new system by getting bunch of NA/EU pvp friends to join my company come wipe day so I can get a bunch of these 'points'. Then claim a decent size island in a nice grid. If that fails, back to Ark I guess. Possibly check back in a few months to see if the Devs finally came to their sense or allowed the game vanish into obscurity.

Game was at 40k+ players in December, its roughly 3k now? Be interesting to see how many players come back and stick with it....

I don't know whats more shocking, the fact they felt it was good idea to announce a wipe almost a month prior to it being planned or the lack of a PTS at this late stage. Maybe they should have thrown in 2 hat cosmetics to keep people playing

I think @Jatheish needs to take a back seat and get someone a little bit more passionate in charge. This game barely has any players left, they're adding more content which is completely pointless, ignoring suggestion being made by the few people that have stuck it out. And too top it off they acting as if everything is going great...

Maybe they should just close the forums, they're pretty pointless at this stage with the almost complete lack of Dev interaction. Force everyone to join the official discord channel or follow their twitter account instead. Assuming there's anyone left in 6 months time.

@Lotus Winter Thorne nailed most of it but theres some other stuff to consider about upkeep and island claims. I made a tonne of resources on a patch of land about 30 x 30 foundations with 10% tax. Enough to create a massive castle and not have to farm resources from that point forward. I hate to imagine what the alpha company had banked with the rest of the island so that upkeep they mentioned would have to be insane to be even considered an issue.

Also what happens when a claim isn't looked after and it gets a new landlord that doesn't like the tenants, can he troll them off? delete their bases eventually?

@mandrik I get it, support the Devs ect. In an ideal world we would all have a great big competition on who can get their tongue furthers up Grapeshots backside, every choice the developer makes is perfect and you'd get a free bottle of single malt with every purchase of a loaf of bread at your locale supermarket. Unfortunately I stopped doing drugs a long time ago so I'm a bit more cynical these days.

But to emphasize the reason I'm having trouble with everything you listed from the captains logs..

THEY JUST NEEDED TO CAP CLAIMS PER PLAYER. 

That one very simply thing would have made Atlas 100% better the moment they introduced claims. It would make the land issue we've encountered now infinitely better. But they didn't and haven't. 

Yes keeping claims is good but a point system per island... your chances of getting land have gotten worse. The only way it would improve is if less people play and contest that land.

43 minutes ago, UDO said:

its not one island per player is an island to the ones who get there quickest , and hope they let others settle on them 

I kinda want to apologise, I typed with the intention of trying to sound sarcastic. I pictured them discussing this in a Grapeshot brain storming session while snorting coke of an unpaid interm 'hey why don't we make it like PVP so every player will get an island!' Jat calls out, every one applauds.. ect

Of course they completely over looking the fact that theres not nearly enough Islands to go round, less that 1% of players (rough guess) want a landlord and finally who wants to own a settlement you have to perpetually watch over to make sure some asshat hasn't put small taming box on some valuable resources - 12 hour destruction timer before your stuck with it.

I get it they are trying something different with the point system but I'm already picturing ways round this. I know roughly 10 players that can't be bothered to play Atlas atm so guess I could put a call out to meet me on reset day to join my company and get me those points for a nice size island. And even they it'll be a crap shoot if I can reach something nice before some other group. And assuming I don't, what incentive is there to stick around? move back to lawless? bite the bullet and find a nice landlord?

So we had the big march up date, they intended to gut PVE claims and or all intents an purposes make it a cluster F**K of crap. I thought too myself with enough feedback we could get them to take another route.

Our persistence paid off they took all of our feedback and somehow came to a different conclusion...and made it worse.

All they had to do was cap claims per player but here we are. One island per player. Lost for words.

Ohwell PoE synthesis league starting today I guess.

10 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

They're doing it on pvp.

 

Yup but they are limiting it to one per island instead of player/company. From a thematic standpoint I kinda see what they are trying to do in PVP but it seems such a drastic change where as adding cap seems so much simpler.

Just now, Harryplopper said:

They didnt so they could add the leaderboard in. Its not a issue on the coding side.

I did wonder that as well but I kinda settled on the leader boards coming after the claim flags in terms on development. Again I'm likely to be completely wrong I'm just struggling with some of the actions of Grapeshot up to this point. Part of me wants to believe there is more to it than being a little shortsighted I guess.

Just out of curiosity and this might be a tin foil hat thing entirely but can they actually limit claims? 

Since the stream and with the massive lack of feedback from the Devs I've started to wonder why they didn't limit claims right from the get go. Its been kinda bugging me and at first I kinda settled on it being an over site and it just might be, but could there be more to it that we're just not being made aware of.

Is it out of the realm of possibility that limiting claims per player/company just isn't something that can be coded in a short period of time with breaking things?

Gonna have to start making appearances on the official discord if thats where most of the QA stuff is happening I guess...

1 hour ago, Archsenex said:

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

I think that was more down to a dwindling player count than anything. Smaller communities tend to cooperate better, you get familiar with the usual suspects I guess.

And I agree, things just need to be tweaked here and there. The system works its just needs to be balanced to a point where everyone can enjoy it.

3 hours ago, CazzT said:

Hey, if you're able to gather the resources necessary to keep an entire island's foundation spam repaired, go for it.  If you keep that up for months on end, kudos.  Meanwhile....the rest of us will be enjoying doing something other than Foundation Upkeep Simulator.

You do realise that task is a lot easier than it sounds. You can create a Galleon with tames in about a day, if you put those resources in a repair box instead I wonder how long they'd keep a 200+ foundations repaired.

Assuming they don't add a huge cost to maintaining foundations ect but that would be a different problem entirely.

8 hours ago, Abysian said:

They responded.
 

 

Yup they are listening... on twitter.

The forums are just for the vocal minority.

16 minutes ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

I am chilled dude. Your post said nothing about character wipe. You're just another person complaining about something that won't be changing and throwing someone under the bus like so many other kids are doing.

Clearly someone without a sense of humour

Wow brings back fond memories of lawless except my base was sat in the middle of a cluster of 5 taming boxes. I did eventually take them all down but a new ones would pop up constantly despite the fact we had a public one.

Tbh part of me really wants the game to succeed and I see claim flags being very important for that to happen, the other side wants to a see another stream with Jat saying in his monotone voice 'we've listened to the community and we're going ahead with removing claims in PVE'

I'll get to play a real pirate and just go round griefing large companies all day long with pillars and foundation. Its not as if I can get banned for it, wonder how much gold someone would pay to have another company harassed for a few weeks?...  

Your pretty much right, you can't please everyone and with this being EA we should all expect a few wipes through its life cycle until it reaches live status. Atlas in the way its designed its very unique and just changing a few small things will lead to all sorts of problems without one.

Thankfully I didn't invest to much time into discoveries/powerstones ect but I can appreciate people getting a little upset with losing their character progress when that was something they focused on. I would say I hope people don't get so invested this time round but its a little counter productive with this being an EA.

I think the main reason we lost so many people is the lack of content and with a lot of the player base being old Ark vets, they were expecting a very similar experience. You then come into Atlas, get a bit of land, hit 50+, done a few power stones or possibly the Kraken and you've got nothing left to do. You can do PVP but if your like me with very erratic gaming times its almost impossible to get established.

I've said this in a few threads, I just don't want to see this end up being Ark 2.0 with all the pillar/foundation spam. Claims flags are a revelation and with the right tweeks I think they can give people the satisfaction and security to enjoy their experience a whole lot more.

7 hours ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

I'm wondering how many of you that are whining about the wipe have even watched the live stream, read the patch notes, or will even partake in the public testing on the designated servers when they go live? 

Yeah I guess by todays standards on video games-im considered old. I've gamed for the last 20+ years. I can just imagine how you guys woulda handled the earlier MMO's when it took you 8-10 hours of camping a solitary mob to get one update. You died repeatedly. Had to run back to areas that took some time to get to.

I'm honestly looking forward to the changes. Yeah no claim flags on PVE. But before I start bitching about that i'm gonna give it a chance to see how it plays out. You guys are assuming the worst without even seeing it in the game context. For all you know the repair structure might be the size of a claim flag that will give a no build radius without the ugly red circles that cover the map.

Sorry but there was a shit ton of problems that needed to be fixed-

• Grandfathered in flags that weren't claimable at all.
• Abandoned Ships that probably wouldn't be able to take any new decay settings since the flags didn't go through with all the changes. 
• Claim timers to long or to short.
• People losing bases due to claim flag screw ups/overlapping. 
• Ocean flags taxing sotd kills.
• Balancing Multivitamins-easier to die then eat food.
• Fountain of Youth issues 
• Treasure maps going to tax banks
• Not enough sea area to build a shipyard.
• Not enough land due to people needing to have 100's of flags.
• No one wanted to pay rent to live on other peoples land-they chose to live on lawless instead.
• People hated the tax rates.
• Lag from 100's of abandoned ships/shipyards
• Crewmembers contesting claims so they were essentially uncontestable since things go into stasis if you don't log in. You can't tell me that after 4 days of trying to take a flag that the crewmembers on a ship still have food-when no one has logged into that area for over 24 days.

That's just a few of the things I can think of offhand at the moment.

Wah fucking Wah that your big base will get wiped. {Hey I farmed 30k organic paste, the stone and the metal to make my base) Cry me another fucking river.

Or the wall of behemoth gates will be gone. I honestly hope they up the cost on the behemoth gates. 

Yeah i'm sure some Asians will foundation bomb areas. But hey they wanna take the time to upkeep each and every foundation they drop. More power to them. Eventually they'll get bored or the new latest and greatest game will come out.

I have better things to do with my time and other grids to sail to.

The majority of you people whining that you'll quit with a wipe. Please do just that.

But I'm guessing you'll be back as soon as the patch goes live. The attention seeking behavior is getting kinda old. 

If you don't like official changes. Go to a private server. Hell they are bringing out a small map for you to play on. You can run your own personal Atlas map on your own comp and set it so its so freaking easy you'll burn the game out in a few days. 

Honestly i'm looking forward to the population increase. Most grids I sail to only have 1-2 active people on them anymore with the exception of lawless servers.

I've had land, lost land, had ships, lost ships, had tames, watched tames die. Put over 900 hours in this game to date. I've been through the good, the bad and the ugly.

Welcome to the real world. Shit Happens.

I don't like my real life neighbors. I have a choice. Move or suck it up and deal with it.  Sometimes my bank account gets overdrawn, my car breaks down, the weather is bad and I can't drive. You don't see me slashing my wrists every time shit goes sour. 

Aww you paid $30 for a game that wipes the map. Grow up and put your big girl panties on or move along. Plenty of other games you can play. 

So you spent a whole 300-400 hours building your base with the real world crap going on. If your microwave breaks after the warranty expires-you go buy a new one. Same shit applies here.

No matter what changes they make. A portion of the population will never be happy with them. 

/end rant

Where to start... your old bravo. Not entirely sure how thats even relevant but I guess everyone needs a medal for something. I remember skipping homework to waste hours on my dads Amiga 500 so guess that makes me an entitled kid by your standards right?

Played plenty of MMO's going right back to Ultima Online but again not sure how thats relevant either.

You basically created an entire thread which could be summed up in 1 sentence 'I don't like being taxed and theres some other stuff' but heck lets break it down:

• Grandfathered in flags that weren't claimable at all.

Wipe will fix this

• Abandoned Ships that probably wouldn't be able to take any new decay settings since the flags didn't go through with all the changes. 

Again guess work at best and an entirely different issue that would be fixed with a wipe

• Claim timers to long or to short.

Irrelevant to claims being removed, this something can be tweeked.

• People losing bases due to claim flag screw ups/overlapping. 

The main culprit being Sea claims that we have all wanted removed since they were added

• Balancing Multivitamins-easier to die then eat food.

Again it has been raised a bunch of times and theres not been any movement by the devs

• Fountain of Youth issues 

Sucked at the start, still sucks now but infinitely easier to complete with the recent changes and there are no longer any downsides to not doing it

• Not enough sea area to build a shipyard.

Never heard that complaint before...

• Not enough land due to people needing to have 100's of flags.

The second biggest issue in Atlas and easily fixed with a cap on flags

• No one wanted to pay rent to live on other peoples land-they chose to live on lawless instead.

See above, can easily be fixed with a cap. I agree no one wants to rent but I also don't want people building on my door step unless its friends. I own 6 claims so I have that choice

• Lag from 100's of abandoned ships/shipyards

Easily fixed with decay timers but still not part of the main issue everyone is having and its not going to get better with claims being removed

• Crewmembers contesting claims so they were essentially uncontestable since things go into stasis if you don't log in. You can't tell me that after 4 days of trying to take a flag that the crewmembers on a ship still have food-when no one has logged into that area for over 24 days.

I assume you mean NPC's? thats a Grapeshot decision and confusing one at best. Still not sure how thats relevant as you can work round this, I just spent an hour claiming the entire crew of a ship from a company whos timers were up. Now I'm free to pop on netflix and grind out their claims.

You'll notice I missed out the Tax bit as you make it out to be the biggest issue since Trump became president, its really not. You don't like tax, fair enough go farm lawless or better yet get a hauling brig/galleon and scout lawless islands for abandoned bases. Couple weeks ago I destroyed a base with enough resources to warrant 3 round trips to get it all home. Tax much like real life can be avoided.

The MOST important thing is you felt the need to create an entire thread to rant about people ranting?

Must be an old age thing I guess

9 minutes ago, MrMagoo said:

We actually lived on the freeport I believe when there was no damage to buildings and the times of shipyards everywhere. We went out to look for flags at the time and saw a sea of red on every island you come across, not a good look and wasn't a good system.

Why they allowed people to spam flags everywhere I will never know but I for one am glad they are gone. They system has changed to add some sort of upkeep on buildings, I like that idea, it isn't just like lawless decaying.

I know you're angry losing flags but the people such as yourself will have to ask yourself, do I want to still play? If the answer is no then leave the game like I did and come back to it later or continue to play the new system and see how it turns out, there is no in-between.

I'm sorry but arrogance of that statement is mind numbing. We stuck around because it was hard and because we want it to be better. To say 'if you don't like it leave' is the dumbest statement I've read in a while. 

Heck you didn't even make it past freeport in a group I assume judging by the way you describe it? Where as I managed to get my own patch after a month of scouting and smart play. Solo. And that would have only been easier if they had capped claims at the start.

I'm not sure why your under the assumption that 99% of the people that have left put it down to land. Off the 12 or so people I know that played Atlas and ended up going back to Ark, not one left because of land. Different circles I assume.