Meerkat

This all feels like a big social experiment. You could end up with a good king or a bad one. Islands that have good owners, don’t tax more than they need to and encourage good community will have great experiences while no doubt other islands will be owned by big companies that max out taxes and are non existent or worse, grief players will have terrible experiences. i guess over time people will eventually migrate to better islands (if they don’t stop playing entirely). I think it would be priceless to see an island form a coup, buy a war token and declare war on itself to “evict” the land lord and obliterate every ship and structure they own (in PVP). Either way there needs to be major incentive for land owners to play nice and build community. I’m not sure it’s quite there atm. There doesn’t seem to be consiqences, espically in PvE. You can move out, that’s about it. Offloading GM responsibility’s to players will have mixed results, it’s going to be interesting...

Did you see the broadside from the SotD galleon? That’s the only thing that I fear. Currently I sail straight through SotDs without much thought on my galley. Even if you try to avoid fire it’s not always possible. Unless they change the turn speed on galleys I’ll be sticking to brigs (I prefer them anyways).

Instead of making up new terms, let’s just call this what it is. This feels about like a public beta. They could have avoided all this drama by making it available as a public beta first. A few months down the line they could have gone into early access and charged $25 and probably made just as much initial money and not had the negative ratings which just hurt in the long run. So many games get put out as early access that aren’t there yet and end up dying as a result. There are so many aspects of this game that they got right that get over shadowed by the glaring failures.

It seems obvious to me that these changes are meant to limit larger companies from creating super companies or super alliances so I am a little confused when you ask if it will help or hurt small companies. It will definitely help. Is it enough to give the little guys a fair chance? Probably not, you will still need to work with your island and claim owner to protect your land. But at least it’s a step in the right direction.

I thought the island owner sets the time frame. So, not only do you need to find someone that’s a somewhat decent person and doesn’t go around bullying and trolling everyone else on the island you also need to find someone that plays roughly the same time you do.

tested with a wolf, you can bola it but was not able to get the "feed" to pop up.

start with 1 claim, earn more with discovery points, max at 3-5. if you don't have some reasonable claim limit people will use foundation spam as a way to claim land

This actually made me laugh.

Similar to player housing or phased zones in other games. Only your company or allies could visit your island. This would be an option if you aren’t lucky enough to snatch up a public island right away (because they will go quick). Not sure if that’s technically viable in this game but it’s a cool idea and would solve the claim issues.

let's talk difference in turn radius between ships sloop > schooner is about what you would expect, gradual schooner > brig again is about what you would expect brig > galleon not even close, it's absolute night and day as people have pointed out handling sails make no difference. i made a gally with 6 upgraded handling sails before i know this, rip. i think this could be helped by adding a large ship that handles better or make handling sails do what you think they would do on a gally and help turn radius

Similar experience. I was traveling though a polar area (l8), head on a swivel, and suddenly started taking very rapid damage numbers from the lower rear of my hull. I did not see anything within render distance. My only guess is that it was invisible whale. I was lucky enough not to get stuck and was able to sail out of range fairly quickly.

Lost an elephant somewhere between I8-H8-H7 NA PVE. Name was ZIGGY <Hearing Aid Brigade> dont expect to to get it back but I do want to contribute to this thread because animals falling off (flying off) ships is a problem. Almost lost another one as it started to fly away after entering a new zone. I was able to whistle it back. Wrote it off as a graphical error but who knows it might have flown away for good if I didn’t whistle.

Since the render distance issue was never an intended change, they probably did not feel compelled to announce its resolution. They simply fixed it.

just this basic idea is interesting. basically the opposite of how it is now, i like it. i also like the policing idea to prevent offline raiding/griefing. i thinking someone mentioned something similar in another place drawing inspiration from Eve there are some interesting things here, law enforcement (and fighting law enforcement), rep grinds: could have a loyalist rep and an unlawful rep with pros and cons for picking sides, more robust questing. certainly adds some MMO elements.

to clarify, i do NOT think a wipe is feasible. the dev's do have their backs up against a wall and damage control should be top-of-mind. it was for that reason i suggested a voluntary fresh start on new servers with claim limits implemented in the original post. the gold upkeep idea is an interesting one with each claim costing exponentially more. i think this would be a decent trade-off although i would assume that this would not effect larger companies as mush a smaller ones due to having more people to farm maps. you would most likely have solo players up in arms, but i will say this... i am a solo player with over 30k gold just wasting away with nothing to spend it on. gold isn't that hard to come by. that being said, i do like # of claims tied to discovery points a bit better. this rewards the most dedicated players and still eliminates claim spamming. start with 1-2 and gain 3-4 more over time as you reach higher DPs. you might need to re-balance some of the bigger bosses giving so many DPs since a solo or small company won't necessarily be able to kill the kraken, etc. taxes, just another incentive to claim spam. needs to be reworked or removed.

First of all I want to thank you for addressing what I would consider to be the biggest issue plaguing Atlas at the moment, the claim system. For those that missed the latest Captain's Log. I was lucky enough the claim a spot in the first week, so i am not coming to this as a player that is speaking purely out of frustration. I am concerned with the overall health of a game and it's systems. This game has big potential and I would like to see it grow in stead of shrink over the coming months. The problem currently is that not only is everything is taken (and has been taking since day 2), but it is all locked by players that have far more claims than they will even use. Over half of my island is claimed by companies/players that are playing on entirely different servers. There is massive amounts of land in this game right now that is locked and unavailable because people have 30, 50, 100 or more claims that will will never be able to use. It's not only big companies that are doing this (although they are probably the main cause) but individuals and smaller companies as well. Go to any polar region and see entire islands completely empty, claimed mostly by 1 person or company. This causes frustration among new players and old players alike. This causes servers to feel dead with little or no community and forces people to lawless areas just to be able to build and explore. So what's the solution? From day one the obvious solution that almost everyone was suggesting was limit the number of claims. If this was implemented the first week people would have been able to take it in stride a bit better. Yes, there would have been backlash from people that got off starter areas first and blanket claimed islands but the long-term benefit would have probably been worth the short-term backlash. I hope you (the dev's) have a miracle fix up your sleeves to solve the claim issue, I would be all ears to hear it but I just can't see a solution that doesn't involve some reasonable limit on number of claims. I hope that is in the works for the new system. The perception right now is that every "solution" has worsened the problem and added new issues. I don't think a server wipe is feasible at this point but, if you were to start new servers with a claim limit my guess is that the vast majority of your player base would happily make the move over to start fresh. What would be a reasonable claim limit? 3-5 claims per person would allow you to have multiple bases in different regions and do basically everything you need to do. Larger companies with more players would have more claimed area, smaller companies would still have a comfortable amount of space. You could even tie it to discovery points, starting with 1-2 available claims and grow over time as you reach your max 5 claims with say 200-300 DPs. The DP system could also be expanded to include taming, breeding, killing rares, collecting rare resources, etc. It's a cool system that has room to grow imo. The Ladder system for claims just incentivizes this problem. A ladder systems is fine for other things like discovery points or maybe structures destroyed in PVP (as long as offline raiding is addressed). As is stands the claim systems latest change addressed those people that wanted the peace of mind that their claims would still be there after a hypothetical three week vacation. The vocal minority is loud but rarely think about pros and cons. Generally just emotional reactions to their specific problems. The biggest mistake a game company can make is NOT listening to their player base. The second biggest problem IS listening to the player base. I feel for the dev's and hope there is a good solution out there that everyone can agree at least helps move into the right direction.