Mike L

Yep, they'd have retained alot more players if they'd have started pve pretty much, then introduced forms of pvp as they could balance them. Like this Phase 1, ship combat and world pvp Phase 2, ship combat world pvp, and war flags Phase 3, add combat timers Phase 4, full time vaunerablility. Then they could always go back to whichever form the most players liked the best.

Well my goal here is to keep freedom to form groups as big as you want, bigger should still equal more power. However anyone should also be able to raid who they want to. I dont like ORP Specifically because it has lots of other exploits tied to orp specifically ,but we do need to find a way for offline raiding to not be the most popular raiding, we need to find a way people can play this game without being scared all there stuff gets raided without logging on for at least 9 hours every single day. I'd prefer that offline raiding almost never happens ,besides when the defender just wont log on for days and has had war notifications. So while I think you should have to war in order to completely wipe something, i also know from gameplay that 25000 gold isn't that hard to obtain. Even a solo player could do so in a week or two. If war works the way I want to restructure it, then big companies would still be limited by the amount of islands you own as youd only be able to use one war token per island you own, and it would be possible if they had too many enemies that when war starts, the big company could lose through smaller companies planning better for combat, and a counter attack going well. The reason I think structure should be taken with an island is because while they put in the raise function to clear off the island, it doesnt give much of a sense of " I've won the island now" instead its, well we have it, do we want to spend 100k gold toward keeping it now? Instead with this war system it will be "haha the island is ours now we have more power and can put down an extra war token in 5 days if we hold it". Its incentive for your company to still take as many islands as it can hold because that's more islands you can use to war somebody else and more island an enemy would have to war against to wipe your company. With all that said the biggest thing to take away from this whole post is that there shouldn't be a combat timer and they should work on actual incentive to go pvp, so it doesnt just feel like your trying to make your enemy's log out and quit the game. Remember even without a combat timer, you'll be able to navel battle anytime the opportunity arises, and groups of all sizes could maintain an island. Which will make the game more fun for all players except the ones that are only into offline raiding which I dont feel like the devs should cater to those players.

Ya just for npcs, players can still shoot the cannon max distance, and it's not really new, they were doing optimizations 2 months or so ago. Where they outlined the changes as server optimization for npcs But the optimizations from my understanding made the npcs calculate trajectory and shot based on the client instead of the server. While it does optimize the server it also requires someone to have the npc in render range for it to fire.

I love how dynamic, and how complex, the ingame items and pvp gets. The ship combat is awesome. I love out thinking your enemy, and just thinking up meta pvp ship designs. Theres a sort of "science" that develops from it.

Used to, now they dont though they will only shoot 30 foundations away with the cannon on high range, so placing them higher effectively reduces their range. I'm hoping after they do more optimisation they'll change it back to higher up gives more range again

It's because while they still have the freedom to spam, it becomes an asset for an enemy trying to take the island, they'll get to own all that spam So basically it will make spam feel like useless work, and the best way to hurt your enemy will be to clean off the island completely resetting it essentially. Since there wont be a daily combat timer, there isn't much reason to spam up the whole island. They'll still spam up important areas, but actually trying to hit your 15000 structure limit will make your island a good hit, or raid even if you clear out all the loot.

I still dont really think it should be ffa pvp, or factions, just pvp that everyone can fight and have fun with if they want to. Shouldn't force any companies to a certain group size. This post is about changes that make the game more playable for all the types of players. The only type of offline raiding that I think should occur is if the owners got off for a long period of time (close to a week) or if the defenders decide to log out because they are losing. I also don't like the concept of making it more costly to raid, because besides in offline combat, I think the equipment system, structure health vs cannons and all that isn't in a bad spot. Make it more costly to raid and players are even less likely to attempt it vs other online players. I'll sum up the changes again because this thread is getting pretty long. 1. Freeport bank, personal bank that's not enough to get by on alone. 2. No combat timer, only war. 3. When an island is taken, all structures inside the claim, transfer ownership to new owners.(fixes foundation spam issues) The only type of players these changes make the experience worse for are the ones checking the player count on servers everyday and looking at combat timers to see, where they can find loot and who they can make quit playing that day. Simply takes away the need to offline raid or troll other companies daily. The changes I've posted are very carefully considered to accomplish this goal.

However they do it, it just needs to be fixed, this game overall is really cool. I've done what I can to help solve the problem that the biggest group is meta, and only the biggest. With the system I posted everyone gets to exists, everyone can pvp. Offline raiding would only occur if defenders are logged off for at least 48 hours, trading would become common. That alone would also make piracy and ship v ship combat more common since more groups would be able to keep their setup. Please devs, your on your last leg here.

But yeah game would have a much better chance like this.

They could go with the factions idea, I've tossed it around in discord and thought about it a bit. It would be better than letting players hard work almost always being wasted in offline combat, biggest problem I see to work out with almost any faction system is insiding. There wouldn't be anything to prevent someone making a character with the full intent of sabotaging one of the factions. Make all their islands unusable, despawn everything they can, block up allied harbors. If you fix that then factions could work, but as Congo already pointed out, these giant wars arent going so well performance wise.

Situations like this will occur while player base is low, the more it goes up, the more active players you'll need online for 9 hours everyday to defend. Your allowed to ally 4 companies, which means a company of smaller numbers is a weak ally. Also I'm guessing your company and alliance make up a good portion of the remaining players playing. I'm surprised you get attacked every night, is it by another big company, or small company freeporters? I noticed you said it HAD companies of all sizes, including single Bob's and small companies. What happened to them? The root of the problem I'm talking about here isn't in getting enough combat, it's the underhanded methods that are brought out by game design. The first time your company doesnt have many on during combat time, someone can just look up your server, see that not many are on, and anonymously attack your company. Which could be helped a bit by putting character name with steam name. It's a pvp system that gets worse and worse the more players decide to play the game. At some point you'll need more than max company sizes to be able to log out and still have assets when you log back in. If this doesnt get sorted out, game will kill itself every time it gets more players again. I'm not trying to troll or anything, I hope the system keeps going well for your company, and the battles stay fresh.

I like the idea of combining all the servers that way, I dont like your idea of removing the freeports and making pvp only zones. Would these zones just be on the current system that claims are on? Also sheep is correct, companies would claim as many pve lands as possible to try to not let more players into the game. Could rebalance that by making pve islands cost triple the island points, and possibly have higher upkeep on them.

Yeah, they will continue to optimize. That is still a very important issue, however slightly off topic. What I'm trying to talk about however is, by the games design, small companies have no place in the game which leads to an extremely simple process. Your trying to say alliances is the way in which small companies can exists. Unfortunately however the devs made the alliance limit. 4 companies. A company limit. If they made it a player limit, sure small companies could ally and have a place to stay. This 4 company alliance limit, means that unless your at max company limit, then you shouldn't be allied with as long as there is a bigger company than yours willing to ally, youd be stronger allying with the bigger company. Which if that meta doesnt change in some way Bigger=better and easier to keep ships floating. Then the entire pvp system is doomed. Eventually everyone will be one company or allied in some way, and at that point pvp has become pve, and has failed. Make some of the changes I stated above, and you can log out, plus most small companies would be not worth attacking and essentially under the radar of large companies. Plus with those changes to war. If a company much bigger than yours puts the flag on your island, you could choose to not fight, and move everything you care about off the island. Then the big company would take the island easily, and there wouldn't be much of a war, but it cost the large company 25k gold for the token, so they arent likely to harass small companies. However if a flag is dropped on your island and you think you can win. Then you get your island ready, stay and fight for it. This leads to more, war by choice and less, ohh no someones attacking us today, which faces you with bad choices of, drop what I'm doing right this minute to try and save face, ignore it and probably have your company disband, or ignore it and quit the game. I'm trying to help the devs avoid players having to make that choice, because it's exactly that choice that has killed the game currently. Instead you should try and have online battles that both parties are ready for, and anything out on the sea should be fair game for pvp.

I'm glad the wheels are turning here, I think the settler system is great, and gets more and more needed the higher the game population goes. The war system I posted may not be perfect, but as i said before sheep, that whole flag always vaunerable system, would work fine, if settlers, and enemies arent able to hide lots of stuff away on your island. If they do, then they will watch the server count and take the island after everyone logs out. Yes though this system is much better than live and promotes pvp better. You may still be forced to log on but at least you'll know it's at your claim flag. Also the war system I stated, wouldn't be "soft" or let anyone who wants but doesnt play alot have their own island, just like the current system if playerbase were to rise again companies would start competing for the islands and youd eventually be faced with the choice of, Defend everything I have with everything I have, or become somebody's settler and abandon the island. Youd HAVE to make that decision when the war flag drops. Either system would be an improvement over current however, because youd be able to log off.

You bring in another good point Congo, the game engine cant handle the giant fleet battles and wars that have been occurring because, the best way to protect your assets in the game is to join the biggest company. They have been working on optimization however some small scale battles between smaller companies would run smoother, and be more fun.

This is pointing out that the current pvp system is not going to work for a few reasons. 1. The game is modeled so that the more players join up together, the more safe your things will be. While this concept is fun for some, ultimately with one persistent world, this concept will create a gap between players who's arent losing assets when they log off and ones who are losing most of their stuff after they log off. The best way to save your assets is to join the biggest group. Eventually everyone will choose to join the biggest group or quit playing. This will end all pvp, as eventually everyone left will be on the same side, and the gap between that company and new players will be impossible to bridge. 2. In game defences are helpful when players are online to defend, but are near useless when no actual players are online to defend the base. Which is good because if they could stop online players, not much raiding would happen after sufficient defences are put in place. For this to work however you must try to design it so that almost no offline raiding occurs. 3. Combat timers are an improvement over no protection at all, however this is still a flawed system for persistent world survival where most of your assets will be collected on islands with combat timers. 9 hours a day may sound reasonable, but it doesnt promote a healthy meta. It means that if anyone in the company is not able to be online for the 9 combat hours everyday, then they are leaving assets undefended. The more popular the game gets the luckier you are that assets left undefended are still there. If everyone in the company cannot be online for the 9 hours per day, then you aren't playing the meta, and a company who is closer to the meta of gameplay time will wipe you out. Here are my suggestions 1. Everyone comming together and forming a sort of player made government is a pattern that happens in most survival games, and also probably the main reason they get stale and the playerbase dies off. To fix this problem you need to be able to save loot as a smaller company, even in a populated world. A small personal non connected Freeport bank would go a long ways here. I suggest an npc at the Freeport, that says "I'll hold your stuff for you here" or something that will hold 10 slots or so for you for free, with no limitations on what you can store there, and no gold cost. Smaller companies and players that want to pvp but do need to log off would greatly appreciate this, and you'll find that just having the threat of being able to store an item somewhere that it cant be taken back, will make larger companies more willing to negotiate and trade with a small company that has just won a pvp engagement, rather than just start an endless raid, that eventually kicks that small company off the game, or makes them join with another larger company, which the more they join with larger companies the less likely pvp is to occur. 2. Like stated above defences are very helpful when your online defending, however if your not online, and it's not healthy to be online 9 hours per day everyday. These defences wont stop very much. The best solution to this problem is to make sure little to no offline raiding happens. You should look at cases where bases get raided with no defenders, as a failed pvp engagement. 3. This ties in a bit with problem 2. The combat timer is better than nothing. However it's not enough to stop offline raiding. My suggestion here is the combat timer should be removed, and the war system reworked a little bit. This is better for multiple reasons, one being that you dont HAVE to log in every single day to keep assets, since the war will be announced days in advance the defender has time to take appropriate action depending on who has declared war on them. War should work the following way. The attacker must have held an island for at least 5 days before having the ability to declare war on anyone. When the attacker places a war token on the defenders island, the attacker gets to choose the soonest time they want the war to start(within 2-3 days). Then the defender has 48 hours to log on and choose what time after the attackers chosen time to start the war. The defenders also get to choose which of the attackers islands will be vaunerable for the duration of the war. If the defender does not log on the war starts after the 48 hour period or the soonest the attackers set it to start. When the agreed upon time is up, both islands become vaunerable for 24 hours OR until one of the islands are taken. When an island is taken all of the structure transfers ownership to the new owners, this leaves an island that's even had its loot cleaned out with some value, a point to take it, and solves all foundation spam issues. Also gives the new owners the choice, to use the old fort or scrap it and make a better one. Also a side note, shops and the player trading system would work much better with no combat timer! This would be much better than the current system of the combat timer, since with a combat timer the problem still exists that the only way to save your assets is to be a bigger group of players than your enemies, instead it should be a world that companies big and small could exists in and have fun pvp engagements. I love atlas, and hope for more fun pirate adventures, please consider a model for the rules that isn't doomed to fail based on how it stomps out all attempts to actually pvp, and remember that forcing players to log on to defend their assets, is usually not a fun experience, and if everyone has bad experiences, your game cant get popular.

I was using that for awhile to switch which side my npcs were on to man a ship out with less npcs, then it just stopped working. The reseat command specifically just stopped reseating any npcs. I think something with the command got messed up. Still though good suggestion it is a needed command to just unseat and reseat them.

I'm not sure if you have read these suggestions or not? Remove Combat timers- along with that change make it so that a company must hold an island for 5 days before being able to war. Once they can war, they can drop a war deck on anyone where the defender gets to choose which of that companies(attackers) islands will be vaunerable for the duration of the war. War ends after 24 hrs or when one island is taken. Increase anquored ship plank resistance to at least 1000%, while decreasing structure resistance on the ship by 75%. This would make it so that they can sink your ship while your offline, but it will be wasteful, and they can at least loot it without sinking it. Small personal non connected Freeport bank- an npc at freeports that will hold 20 slots of anything for you, so that smaller companies can do buissiness with larger companies. Small guys need that threat of a tiny amount of unraidable loot, so that other that putting it at the bottom of the ocean. They can steal nice things, and trade them instead of word spreading among bigger companies that they need to be kicked from the game, and that your kill on sight. Remove building on the bottom of the ocean. At least make it so that you cant build outside of claims and lawless. It makes it too easy for a company to hide raid weapons in your server, and they can just sail a sloop from the Freeport over to attack your land each and every combat timer These are honest suggestions that fit in perfectly with other things already implemented in the game. It makes the game better for large companies and small ones. These dont have to be these exact changes, but does no one else see, that the way this game is designed, only the biggest group is meta. Which is why only one pvp group will exists soon, unless devs do something. Red is dead= one day theres no red I'm getting tired of this, my voice has almost gone out.

Yeah, they said they'd include small companies when designing the game, however currently, they've introduced a settler system, which reduces the base cost of the island the more settlers you have. Other than that nothing has been done to insure that the largest group isn't always the strongest. Currently if the player base grows so must companies. It's pretty simple. Right now its low pop so 10-12 active players can hold an island most likely. Other than that if your not living out of the Freeport, or the bottom of the ocean your screwed. If the game goes up to 2000 concurrent players instead of 400, youd need a company of 30-40 to hold. If it goes back up to 40k players, only discord whitelisted max alliances are going to survive. That's why I've proposed a number of changes so that the little guy can make it and have fun playing the game such as.. Small personal Freeport bank No combat timer, and restructure war to be fair. (Meaning you must risk your island to war) Make ships easy to raid when parked, not easy to sink. I know those changes look simple, and they are but they allow companies of any size to do buissiness with one another ,and would take griefing down to a minimum. Really most of the changes to fix griefing and to make the game fun are pretty simple. Just wish devs had one person play on officials so they could have a firsthand opinion of what it's like to actually play their game. I think they just look at pvp rules and get frustrated trying to think of ways to make them better, so they come out with new content instead, and hope that fixes it. Which it doesnt, just for playability in their early access period the rules to pvp is the first thing they should work out, and only change those rules if new content of some kind causes an imbalance. I dont TRY to sound like a know it all. I know I do though ,but with 10000 hours in ark and probably 2500 in atlas, I do hope they value my opinion. Also had to add this in because it annoys me, my prediction for the dev livestream. They answer two questions posted by players then just talk about the new content, cats and hats, and avoid answering anything about how they plan to fix the playerbase or the direction the game will be going moving forward. I hope they prove me wrong though!

What are the plans to keep pvp fresh, and competitive, and are there any plans beyond being a settler for small companies?

An armored brig like the above post is good for defence, it will be too heavy to catch anything to sink it. Large cannons have further range so, they are the safest way to inflict damage on the enemy ship. Ship cannons have the highest damage per second so they are the best for getting in close and going for the sink. There is no best ship. It's all just a balance of the way its leveled and what it has to fight. Brigs have the best ratio to gain speed from leveling additional weight. So weight=faster Resistance= take more punishment And damage= harder hitting brig. If you can get shots in where you dont have to take shots, damage is best. If you cant catch them, weight is best, and if you cant outrun them, resist is best. You can always put points in all three for an all round decent brig.

Yeah, in the end it's their game they can do what they want with it, but we can see how 35000 people voted. They had some fun, got greifed after they logged off, and quit. Now most of the 5000 players that are left have the attitude of, well if you dont have enough players to defend it you shouldn't have it, but they dont think about sustainability of the playerbase at all. If the game is designed this way, only one group of players wins, the biggest one. Therefore pvp is eventually going to be pve, then it will die off/maybe have a few solo players. At which point I'm sure they'll eventually close down the official servers. Wiping and not changing anything about design will just start the same process over again where eventually the biggest group will win again. Last time they wiped they did make some changes that helped some, however they kind of just stopped, and cut out small companies entirely(pretty evident by the company alliance limit instead of a player limit). The players left have figured out the best ways to greif the combat timers, so the playerbase kept dropping, and it wont stop until the devs stop them by design, and allow more than just the biggest company in the game That's the simplest I can put it, your right some of my suggestions have been repeated from game suggestions to this pvp general section. So 35000 players, or the 5000 players left, who's side are the devs going to pick?

First of all you can use boats as defence so, you may get sunk by its cannons trying to ram it. And you honestly yourself play all 9 hours of your combat time each day? I'm in a company which has members online for the combat timer, but if the enemy shows up while members are out sailing ships, and doing things they may not all be able to just drop what there doing, but they have to. Why? Combat timer. And everyone uses ships instead of land cannons to defend their harbors now. Npcs that are far away or high up on cliffs dont shoot anymore. Puckles and swivels are about the only useful land defences, and both can be outranged by regular ship cannons on the back of a bear. Mostly wanting combat timer to go, so that having the most members in your company isn't the way to win the game. Would rather it be based more on who's better at the combat. Instead of who has more freetime between all the members of their company. Just wish anyone would take a minute, to think about the game without combat timers. It takes out alot of the reason to just day to day troll other companies, which is also why everyone gets bored and quits, but leaves in the ability to prepare as good as you can for an island seige, and show them how to destroy stuff when the war timer starts. How the game is now though if a war deck is put on your island, your best bet is to move your shit to the Freeport, and take some kits to their island and troll them in combat time each day until the war. If you win doing that, you've already won the war. In fact it's so bad since players already know the winner before the war starts most companies I see, just pack up and move, or quit playing instead of fighting.

It doesnt work for surprise attacking someone. But I dont see how it devalues land any? You could still do the same stuff you do on land now. Farm, collect resources, make better stuff, park ships. So I dont see what you mean besides people moving things off the island before war time, but if they move too many assets off, there more likely to lose their land. If you wanna talk about land not being valuable? How about currently theres tons of unclaimed land because of the small player base, or how megas are living on each others land and abandoning their home land, so that they dont have to defend through combat timers? Pretty much because of what I was saying above, way too easy to gear out and harass a company as much as they want with no ship.

My complaint is that currently blue prints have a very large range of qualities, that doesn't make very much sense, I've found prim blueprints better than legendary ones. Also blue prints have such a range on mythical ones that, they could be useless, or so good that no new player will ever have a chance at enjoying your game, since if they do find a fight it will probably be against players who have farmed blueprints for months. My suggestion is to scale down just how good the blue prints can be on the top end, and normalize them so that Prim 0-5% better Fine 5-10% better Journeyman- 10-15% Masterwork 15-20% Legendary 20-25% Mythical 25-30% Something like this would be very good for games playability and new players dont feel quite as worthless with a primitive ship and primitive guns. Thanks for reading, and keep up the good work.