Misha

I agree with you and others who said it would be slightly more bearable if you could buy a sub from someone who killed the kraken. That would make it a viable commodity and you could do other activities to afford a sub, if the kraken stays as a 'large group activity'.

While I don't like game wipes on principle, it's not too surprising to see in an early access game such as this. And I like the general direction of where these changes are going (nice new tundra biome, btw!) What I'm not a fan of is removing the claim system from PVE. Why is this? Looks messy. You don't have your own 'zone' for just your buildings; people are going to come in with a different style (walls of just gates? no thanks!), or worse, spam foundations and pillars everywhere to mess up respawning and you have no way to easily remove these abandoned tracks of land. And random shipyards placed nilly willy. Open to trolling. Along with the afformentioned 'bits and bobs' put everywhere, it's easier for people to try and block off areas of the island with walls/gates to physically control the resources in a zone. While you could do it now with claims, all it takes is the resource spam and you got it. Less ownership to be good stewards of the land There are a few ways that would be neat to try and fix it rather than just skipping the revamped claim system all together. Allow PVE companies to claim islands, but all that let's them do is set the tax rate and maybe do some zoning on the island (such as setting rules that single items placed without a home will decay quickly, or they can indicate structures they would like to get demo'd or something. Maybe a demo by committee? XD) Try a different claim system, where companies can mark an island as a home island. Companies only get 1 home island, so while you share that with other people, you get less decay time or something. Or all home island companies can contribute to the tax bank for some kind of benefit (demo'ing non-home company stuff if it does not abide by the construction rules, or something) Just... just allow singletons to be more easily demo'd anyway. I'm sure there are some other solutions that would make PVE folks be able to carve out a bit of land to live on without feeling like Strangers are going to come ruin all their cool stuff, but still allows for new players to find a place to build. Saying that you own an island still sounds fun, even if you're not PVPing. --- I'm also not a fan of the submarines being tied to large company end-game material. It looks like a lot of cool stuff you'd never be able to see unless you join up with a big company. I'd think it'd be easier to gatekeep submarines/crabs to materials/levels/slightly more solo end-game activities, and maybe do cool cosmetic unlocks for people who fight krakens (in addition to the physical rewards that krakens could drop. Like if a kraken just pops out a submarine per ship involved in the fight or something, that's pretty cool).

The concept of Fountain of Youth I can dig. Your character gets old, and you want to be young again. Especially since you get a debuff if you don't and a stat increase if you do. Motivation. You have to go find it - cool. This game has a big sailing/exploring component, that fits the bill for pretty much all players. But then you have to go to an island in a fairly narrow time window (given the distance it takes to sail places), that's filled to the brim with creatures that will kill you in one hit? Surrounded by abandoned sloops and rafts because I guess your character has learned in all their years that you have to do countless suicide runs to become young again? Yuck. I'm posting this because a couple of us in our company of 5 set out to find the FoY in our sloop. It took nearly 4 hours to get there (due to a location moving away unexpectedly), only to end with us unable to even reach the fountain due to countless Fire Elementals, Gorgons, Lions, Scorpions, etc filling the land, swimming out to sea to get us, and even crossing over multiple abandoned sloops to attack our ship and destroy 3 out of our 4 beds. Half the time we couldn't spawn from dying because a creature was on our ship attacking our loading in bodies. Not fun at all, and a disheartening way to log off from an evening of sailing. Is the idea that you should be able to take on this endless spawn island? Is the idea you're supposed to attempt to sneak past them? As far as I can tell, neither of those really work, as most strategies I've seen or heard about just involve zerging the island with another people that the monsters are too distracted to get you, which doesn't work if you're aging off cycle from a main group of people. What I think currently works: The concept of needing to find a fountain of youth to get young again (due to stat incentives) Traveling to find a fountain of youth Having some sort of 'test' or 'challenge' in order to obtain the fountain of youth What I think currently does not work: An island entirely full of monsters who can one-hit you (probably even if you have gear) The current timing of island movement (seems a little too short still) This implies that I would like the current test or challenge at the end (i.e. a ton of monsters) to change, or to be decoupled from the power stone thing (that's what is also on that island, right? I'm just interested in the FoY tbh haha). Here are some suggestions on different challenges that would happen on 'normal' non-monster filled islands: Have the FoY challenge be more like a treasure map. Go to a location on that island (or on a different island) to face a select group of creatures that appear when you show up. Then claim their treasure (has a mcguffin) to turn into the FoY. Could scale the difficulty depending on how many times you've youth'd, up to a higher limit. Instead of fighting monsters, you just have to find keys on the same island or different islands. Number of keys could increase depending on how many times you've youth'd, again. Have one big monster guarding the FoY. You can try to sneak past (there's a lit route, or something), kill it to get treasure, or YOLO your way to try and get to the fountain. Seems more reasonable than 'island full' of monsters. So those are my thoughts, but what do you all think would make this mechanic more fun?

I agree with OP on cyclones. They definitely should be a little more rare - not every time it rains! And its homing mechanics are too strong for the sheer number of them that show up suddenly directly in front of you. I too have had our home island in sight, only too get hosed by cyclones whipping me back who knows how long. Some tuning of this feature will make it feel much cooler to try and navigate around, rather than throwing up your hands and letting the winds take you wherever because it's impossible to deal with.