LinkesAuge

they should just get rid off 2x times "events" and make it 2x ALL the time. The game is grindy enough even with two times but the current system kinda forces you to do a lot of farming at the weekend when thats the best time for the "fun" stuff.

ya, its a bad joke and noone can tell me this doesn't use a lot of dev resources which are obviously not spent on the MMO part.

ya why not make it an option on the resource box on a ship?

Sure, you can but then he respawns and hardly lost anything. There is also the issue that currently carbines become near useless when in bigger fights due to extreme lag (down to not even being able to reload the weapon) and making the cheap "run with blackjack at enemy" strategy even better. But like I said my main concern isn't even "balance" (you could find the right values/costs for that although it will always be a brittle balance due to all the factors involved, especially regarding tames), it's that it simply doesn't feel good/rewarding and is kind of nonsensical on top. Imo the whole land PvP needs a total redesign. From the way guns are handled/used to the role tames play (and with "play" I mean totally dominate it). As long as that's not the case other issues will continue to crop up because there is just no solid foundation (which is why for example explosive barrels, grenades etc go through so many changes).

Problem is there is a huge discrepancy between the involved "costs". A naked with a blackjack isn't a huge commitment. Besides that that whole system isn't really fun or interesting for anyone. I would like to see tames nerfed and make people on foot (or as real mounted soldiers, not this swivel bs) a lot stronger but "use blackjack as counter to tames" is just as stupid as tames themselves. It's fighting cancer with cholera.

Even if you are stopped just for a short time (30-60 seconds) that gives the enemy enough time to box you in and make it impossible to escape. I do like the general idea of it but it really is easy to see how wrong it can go or how it might be "abused". I also have little trust in Grapeshot getting the balance right or preventing things like inaccessible spots.

I think we aren't that far off in our opinions but I refuse the notion that Grapeshot is in this case the victim of impatient gamers. We are also not talking about the normal delays which happen in Software development (I'm one btw so I can emphasize with it even if I "only" do it in a corporation environment). This whole thing has a history and that can't be ignored and a lot of the issues people have could be managed by proper communication, something Grapeshot constantly fails at. The thing is they have simply no credit left they can use. The game is already a huge mess in several areas, infested by cheaters/hackers and now has to suffer a wipe (that did catch a lot of people offguard because it was again never properly communicated/prepared for) while the "big patch" has been delays several times and even changing directions (the devide between empire/colonies wasn't part of the original "plan"). I think people who even bother to post about this game anymore were patient enough because the numbers clearly show that 90% of the initial user base didn't have that patience. I certainly condemn any post that is all about personal attacks or is only filled with name calling but let's not lump together all the people (and I think that's the majority) who are simply tired/annoyed of Grapeshot's whole approach (and they aren't dangling dates for no reason infront of us, they do it to keep people around, it's not some innocent accident).

You didn't pay your parents to drive you. If I take a taxi and ask "how much longer" you can be sure I expect a reasonable answer. It's always kind of sad when "gamers" infantilize themselves. So no Grapeshot doesn't "owe" anyone anything, just like no customer support on hotlines owes you anything but if you want to keep your customers/make them happy there is a way to do it and another one which certainly won't achieve it. If they didn't want people constantly asking them (and expecting an answer) about it then maybe don't sell a game in EA? They take money for a product and even an EA game doesn't mean you as developer get an out of jail card on everything (although more and more devs as well as players seem to think so).

Do you understand the nature of cooperation? Or easier question, do you understand that 2 > 1. As long as that is true there will always be an incentive to gravitate towards bigger groups, no matter the "rules" as long as you want to simulate a "world" in an MMO and not have some kind of static experience. The game won't suddenly be more enjoyable in the absence of "Megas" because that hole will be filled by other kinds of cooperation where the bigger (stronger) dominate the smaller (weaker). That's why I talked about creating certain incentives through game mechanics but you keep going on about company sizes which are only a result, not the source of the problems. PS: Just as disclaimer, I'm not part of a "mega" (I was in Eve-Online so I understand that side too) but thinking getting rid of them will fix anything is preposterous, especially with much bigger problems around (like the rampant cheating, duping and hacking).

All this talk about "Megas" is anyways stupid. It's not like there is even a clear line or definition where one company becomes "Mega". Like what is a company going to do if it grows and becomes a so called "mega"? Leave everything on the Colony server behind and go to Empires? Same question in regards to the other case. What happens if you lose members/split up and become a smaller company? What are you going to do on the Empire Server? Leave it and start over on Colonies? And what exactly is preventing "SuperMega" companies? A so called "mega" might face the same problems as smaller/mid sized companies have on the current server in regards to bigger companies/alliances. There is just no solution to politics in a MMO that is directed by its players. What would be needed is proper incentives for certain actions through game mechanics we currently lack but trying to seperate "small" and "big" companies is a fools errant and will need to nowhere (it's at best a short term fix).

Most small groups also want the new claim flag system and ORP. I wouldn't care if they just decided to make that "hardcore" PvP server if that's where all the toxic people of this game want to go (might make it even more enjoyable for the rest) but it certainly is not a question of big or small, it's about having proper systems implemented in the game and Empire doesn't have it.

Empires isn't "designed for megas". No big company wants the old claim flag system and big companies ALSO want some offline raiding protection because having none isn't fun for them either. Empires is created for some fictional "hardcore" group that doesn't really exist or just in a very tiny number.

Why do people worrying about big groups always fail to understand that their "solutions" affect the smaller groups just as much? Your idea will make any PvP for smaller groups even harder and you are pretty much trying to "cure" the patient by killing him. The only thing you are doing is to make attacking (and PvP) SO annoying that people simply don't want to play the game anymore. It's also always kind of ironic when reading a sentence like "Multiple skilled companies working together in coms can defeat zergs easily while in coms together. Allied or not". If you have "multiple skilled companies working together" you are a "zerg" yourself and I will never understand why people think that working together in a MMO is bad. Numbers are always important in any conflict and you will never be able to limit that while maintaining a proper MMO _world_. What we need are proper ingame incentives and mechanics for war/conflict between bigger groups and having smaller ones around you can live with but you don't get that with simplistic rules like yours.

Sry but I call bs on that. If you were in any "mega", no matter which side you were in, you had pretty much the other half of the server as possible target and no side had the whole top10 list. If you then only attacked smaller groups you have noone but yourself (or your own company) to blame.

It's the same risk as being part of a company or any player organisation in a MMO. In the end it all comes down to trust at some point. This also would be no different under any other system. It might make it harder for the "owner" but let's be realistic here, small groups will always be at the mercy of bigger ones and if it's too hard for island owners to remove people then the pendulum swings the other way and bigger groups ask themselves why they should even bother keeping smaller groups around (that's what happened in the old claim flag system, the potential trouble wasn't worth it to keep smaller groups around).

If anything the percentage of people actually reporting/complaining about cheating/hacking is low. It's that widespread of a problem and often so obvious it really needs no discussion. I have been myself affected by this and a report of me (us) even lead to a certain fix in a later patch but there are so many exploits/hacks that it is hardly worth a mention. If you honestly believe that cheating in this game isn't a huge problem and extremely widespread then you either should count yourself luckily that is hasn't happened to you (I myself dealt daily with aimbots for like 3 weeks) or you are just naive/blind to whats going on.

All those so called "options" still lead to a very limited viable set of designs and those designs have negative gameplay effects and are a major part why you see less and less (major) ship battles. So let's not pretend it would be just in the name of "realism", it's in the name of actual fun game mechanics and there is a reason why this game choose the period of piracy because in RL it did offer some nice tactical choices in combat which should be reflected in the game but aren't due to the current (lack of) rules. Sometimes less freedom can actually lead to better gameplay because too much freedom makes it very hard to balance any game and it's especially hard to prevent unfun game mechanics.

Before I present my suggestion let me give you an overview of what the game currently lacks: 1) Incentives to be out on the sea 2) A deeper economy / trade system 3) Resource gathering/generation without having to grind for it My suggestion to address these issues (it's not a magic fix that will resolve them completely) is to give people (islands/companies) the ability to establish trade posts. How would they function? Every island can support X amount of trade posts with a limit of trade posts per company (to give further incentives to smaller/outside companies to life on your island and having them around). The trade posts would be structures you need to built (on the coast) and have the ability to be upgraded (which could have all kinds of effects: bigger/better/more trade ships, further range of trade ships, bigger rewards/resource generation and so on). Any trade post on an island could be "linked" on a 1:1 basis with another island's trade post (ID based system which allows "invites" for such links or just be openly listed, both "owners" of the trade outposts need to accept it). Once the link has been established a timer will start which if not disrupted then "produces" NPC generated and manned (trade) ships. What will those ships do? In short: generate resources for both islands (or companies) involved (island owner could also get a trade tax). You'd be able to pick one (maybe more depending on trade post upgrades or other factors) of the available resources (from the destination island) for trade. There would be no additional farming (grind) required and you wouldn't need to put in any resources, the trade route would simply continue to generate a certain number of the resource you picked and store it in your trade post as long as your trade route/ships are "uninterrupted". The generated NPC trade ships would follow the trade route and be raidable by other players/companies. To incentive boarding and not just the destruction (pure griefing) of trade ships you could implement a system in which NPC ships that get boarded provide "loot" as reward to the pirates while the trade ship stays alive . The trade ship owner simply wouldn't get resources as "punishment" for not being able to protect his trade ship. Additionally one could think about having to pay a certain amount of gold to get that trade ship back into your own service. That gold could be part of any potential loot as reward for pirates. One important note: Any "loot" collected by pirates would go directly to some base structure. I think one of the biggest problems preventing loot based piracy is the fact that storing loot is counter productive for any attempt at PvP. You could also think about having a daily gold payment to your NPC trade ships as requirement for those trade routes. Gold that would be "lost" to you in any case but gets stored in the NPC trade ships which could be part of any loot pirates could get. To board a ship as pirate you would first need to bring down the trade ship to a certain fraction of its HP (maybe with sail HP as main factor) which would automatically slow down/stop the trade ship and initiate a "raiding window". To make trade ships vs (player) pirates not totally one sided and create some opportunities for PvP I think it should be possible for the owner (company) to spawn in on trade ships in case someone wants to board them (you would get a notification any time a trade ship of yours is attacked). This needs of course some kind of mechanic not to be abused. One approach could be that the trade ship only allows a certain number of "spawns" per time/raid windows and also a max amount of "deaths" for both defenders and attackers based on ship/crew size of those involved. If a defender gets enough "kills" and/or protects the ship for a certain amount of time the boarding attempt will have failed and give the trade ship a certain time in which it's protected from further attacks (again to prevent abuse). If as pirate you decide to just sink a trade ship that's also an option (maybe it could even be part of the war dec system) but there would be no "loot" as reward, it would be purely to target the economy of a (hostile) company. This is my general idea and I'm sure there are some holes left or different approaches you could take (there are a million other things you could do on top of it when it comes to trade) but I'm convinced that this game needs more content based around naval action and that players will never fill the void as "targets" for all the potential pirates out there. People certainly do make trade runs or haul stuff but it's too few people doing it and only leads to one sided situations which aren't rewarding for anyone. That's why we need an economic incentive to be out at sea, either to defend our own economic interests or simply to gain yourself by pirating actual trade routes. I feel like this game needs to get away from mindless grinding for all parts of the game. I totally think you need to motivate people to put in some "work" so things "matter" if you lose them but why isn't the "work" the more fun stuff or at least closely related to it? Give people the opportunity to generate an income through other means as long as they are willing to put in some effort and protect it.

"normal people without job, family, friends or any empathy"

I'm an european who plays on NA and don't have more or less lag than any NA player (afaik both NA and EU servers are stationed in Europe/Germany). Besides that we already have all the Chinese (Asians) on NA so it really doesn't matter anyways. I would actually welcome such a merge, it'd increase the player numbers back to a decent level and shake up the alliance landscape.

If you are a rentner there will alyways be a certain amount of trust required, how is that different to things within a company? A company owner (or even admin) also can screw up everyone at any time (and it does happen sometimes). That's not something you can manage with game mechanics, its where the players come in. The important thing is to have incentives to keep people around and be on good terms with them. To me it seems a lot of ark players should maybe just be less toxic? How about that as a "fix". PS: If you need to raid your own settlers for resources then you should rly check your priorities.

But that's the whole problem? That's how you devalue ships. If everyone is single handedly able to captain a ship it will ofc lead to ship spam and that each individual ship counts for less. It also really doesn't require any cooperation or team effort (especially not with how ship battles currently work), we don't even have freakin boarding in a pirate game due to it. I wouldn't mind if small and/or non-combat ships could be sailed by an individual but its a huge problem for the PvP side of things and the whole balance. To this day I don't even understand why the AI gets to do the fun part (shooting cannons and thus at least being involved in the action and SEE something) while players are required to do the most boring part (repairing which doesn't offer more than a minigame that's made worse by any lag and where you don't have any idea what is going on outside or get to enjoy the carnage). Why not at least have it as requirement that for every X amount of cannons you need a seperate player to control them. That would even aliviate some of the issues with cannon spam on ships. That is ofc just one example of what could be done, there are certainly other ways to do it but what needs to be done is to get people more involved in handling a ship, there need to be more (usefull) roles on a ship (like why don't Lookouts have a role, you could give them the ability to "mark" targets that give a buff or a bonus to speed for people on the sails etc).

Why would you want this? This only means someone has to sacrifice his account to do nothing than being able to build a specific ship. Big Companies won't have a problem to deal with that (and as usual alt accounts are the answer to stupid skill requirements) and the only thing it does is that people are forced into even more (useless) skills. The "dedication" should be the time and knowledge you invest to farm/plan/secure/supply your ship. The "real" problem isn't that ships are too easy to build, it's that they are too easy to run as SINGLE person. A Galleon should be extremely powerfull but only if you have sufficient (human) crew. The AI is in my opinion a huge problem because it is far too effective on ships. There should be huge advantages to having human players as crew but in reality it's the opposite except for repair (and even there 1-2 people are enough in most cases). This game doesn't need more hoops to jump through in regards to ship building (especially not more grinding), it needs better roles and more involved gameplay for ship crew outside the ship captain. If an actual human crew comes important (and their skills!) then it would help a lot in making sailing (and pvp) more interesting (atm just one person -the captain- gets an interesting job out of a single ship, that needs to change). So before making ship building even harder maybe we should first think about making it first more interesting to be on a ship because the game is atm actually dominated by land and not sea battles.

But it is designed in a way that you can lose these things within actual minutes. This creates a huge imbalance between grind and reward and if the rates were really fine we wouldn't get these bonus weekends (just as there is a reason why 2x is the standard). Having the bonus weekend as new standard would still very far away from handing anything out for free, especially considering the current state of the game. If anything the grind is still massive even with 4x.

People should be able to do everything. Locking features behind skills achieves nothing. It should be about mastering the game not arbitrary restrictions. That's actually one of the few things I didn't like about Eve-online. The skill system just meant people had to create alt-accounts (or play for so long that they still could do everything, it just meant an enormous advantage compared to new players that wasn't based on player skill). The same is (will be) true in atlas, you aren't stopping anyone from doing everything, you are just adding additional steps which add nothing to the actual gaming experience. I don't mind some specialisation but this shouldn't be the focus in a MMO. It should be about what you CHOOSE to do at any point in time, not what the game allows you to do. I shouldn't have to pick between being able to sail a ship and crafting stone walls for example. The "skill" should be whether or not you are actually a good builder/captain ingame but locking things behind skills only means people get to see less of the game or just have to circumvent it completely (there is a reason why the ability to reskill for 250g was just added, it's pretty much an admission that the skill system is extremely flawed). Unlocking new skills will always be just a short time gratification. It's the wrong thing to focus on, add more depth and possibilities to your gameplay, that's how you ensure that not everyone can be everything because it actually requires player mastery/knowledge.