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Either you are not reading the official forums or you are ignoring the community. Which is it? How many dozens of threads showcasing people's stuffed wolf and Alpha pens do we need before the message sinks in? This can't possibly be that hard or time consuming to fix. You've adjusted spawn rates already, so we know you can do it. I've just now killed 27 wolves in a killing pen we were forced to make and 8 Alpha's. All within a hour. They are ruining the fucking game. The current situation is fucking asinine and it's making people give up the game. I've personally lost 6 friends to it, because the tedium of fighting massive packs of wolves and Alphas just to engage in the tedium of farming all goddamn day to have a couple hours' worth of fun is too much. I have personally submitted tickets, screenshots, video, ccc, etc. Never heard a word back! Reduce wolf and Alpha spawn rates, speed, damage, health, and damage reduction! ENOUGH, IS ENOUGH....

Hello, I would like to suggest following things to the Balance of the PvE Creatures. - Decrease the Aggro Radius of Animals like Wolves, Tigers, Lions, Snakes, etc. (-30% to 50%) - Decrease Damage dealt by said Animals. (-20% to -30%) - Lower Spawnrate of Alpha Creatures. (-50%) - Increase HP of tamed Creatures. (+15% to +30%) - Bug: Animals can hit Structures like Storage Boxes, Smithy, Wooden Floors, etc through Stone Walls Reasons: - A Bow does around 80 Damage with a Headshot towards a Wolf, a Pistol around 130 and only the Blunderbuss + Carbine 1-shots them. Same goes for other written above Animals, except the Lion. The Lion's take more damage from these Weapons. Around a 110 with a Bow and so on. - No matter how much you try to be safe and look around you, these animals jump you out of nowhere and you usually end up being dead. - Alpha Creatures in the Territory I live in and after asking multiple People on other Islands face around 5-20 Alpha's a Day. Late Game they are easy to kill with Fire Arrows and Carbines, but early - midgame they're pretty much an annoyance and a Tamekiller of everything you own. No matter how careful you are, their Aggro Range is so huge, they'll jump at you out of nowhere and you mostlikely end up being dead with a Tame which gets 1- or 2-hitted. - It says something if its easy to take out a whole Crew of Damned Warriors when you look for Treasure, but then having trouble cause a Lv3 Wolf interrupts. The big difference is the Movement Speed I suppose. You can kite Damned Warriors, but you can't kite Wolves, Lions or Tigers. They're just too fast. It would be nice to maybe learn a Skill to increase your Movement Speed for around 3 - 5 seconds and call it "Charge, Rush" or something like that. Not to be super quick, just so you can barely outrun these Creatures and make it possible to either Run + Shoot them or get to some high ground. - Tamed Creatures seem to have a really hard time competing against Wild Creatures. Usually even a low level wild Creature seems to be stronger than a tamed one. It also seems like Wild Creatures have more HP than Tamed ones. Do tamed Creatures lose HP after they are tamed? If you have a different Opinion or agree with the points above, feel free to write it down. Please remember to give constructive feedback and add your suggestions, this is not a Topic to complain or troll. Thank you for reading!

Are you guys ever gonna balance these out. Wearing metal armor and metal weapons are useless. I try to explore. Get the xp and then proceed to die. Then die about 30 more times trying to do a corpse run. I've watched elephants and rhinos die to a solitary wolf, snake or vulture. It's getting harder to log in everyday since exploration is kinda pointless. taming is pretty much pointless. I've played the game. got land, got a base built. built ships, watched ships get sunk by other people griefing. Takes 2 carbine shots to kill a single wolf. When im getting tagged by snakes, wolves, crocodiles and vultures all at the same time. It's a bit much and the reload isn't fast enough. Then you have the pointless lvl 200 alphas... Yeah so I can waste 200 arrows to kill it just to have another spawn in its place.

This is not saying wolves should not attack players or tamed animals on sight, just not other wild animals. Have it so wolves will attack and eat other wild animals only when their hunger level is below 2/3 The issue is on certain islands where there are not many spawns capable of killing a wolf wolves will hunt and kill all other animals until all the animals are rolled as wolves so that the island is full of wolf packs and not much else. This would go a long way to solving that issue

I would love to leave the lawless lands, and a lot of people who have claimed lands have quit so there is land up for grabs. However you are unable to claim land because while waiting that 6 hrs to claim someone walks into your claim to farm a tree, to tame an elephant, to farm rocks or even just walks near not even over the line in some points. This has been tested by me I've seen it. Please fix it so that we can claim and someone walking into area doesn't disrupt it. Make it so it's an option if they are wanting to challenge in some way please, and not simple because they needed resources. I've been trying to claim a spot now nearly 24 hrs and it keeps reseting just because a guy needed stone on my spot. Also today it took 3/7 of our company to take out an alpha lion with cannons, arrows, fire arrows etc. I have a full log of deaths it took to get rid of it. Then after getting rid of it not even a min later an alpha wolf spawned in and killed all animals many people are quiting saying it's not fun to consistently fight off the wolf/lion spawns and all the alphas. I would much rather be out looking for treasure maps etc but you have to have a base set up in order to build boats and you can't build if overspawns are happening.

Bump. I've killed my fair share of alphas without the need for fire arrows, it's manageable, but the spawn rate is ridiculous. Lost 3 bears and 4 of 6 wolves this morning due to being tag teamed by a snake and wolf. Pack killed the snake with relative ease but were hurt by the cone aoe. Seconds later the wolf took advantage of the weak and wounded. The steep terrain and IK didn't help. Spawn rates and damage multipliers. Tweak them!

Alpha Animals need to have one of two philosophies, either OP as they are now but extremely rare spawns with the condition that one can not spawn while another exist even if the other is a different species. The other option is to leave them as they are now but reduce their power by at least 50%... personally I prefer the first idea. Second, animals in general need some tweaking, a T3 Rhino shouldn't be able to die to a wolf 30 levels lower simply because the wolf can out pace the rhino. Larger animals like that should have a rear defensive attack/ability.

Had already like 4-5 horses spawn inside base, 1 alpha horse and 1 wolf. Died once to that single wolf and lost all gear then died multiple times while trying to kill it as it destroyed bed and one machine. Would also love it to be fixed bcs right now have to sleep on our ship.

I was just trying to tame a wolf on a dungeon Island. I used bones and prime meat, but the wolf didn´t wanted to eat anything. Is taming on the dungeon islands maybe not possible?

As title says, I was riding my wolf and I accidentally walked up a ramp that I thought was a bridge but the fell into someone's taming pen. My wolf can't jump out and it doesn't seem anyone from the company that owns it is on, what can I do, if anything?

Alphas are a great source of experience... but realy, they give nothing else than that, more enjoyable is going ona treasure hunt which gives as much if not more exp than an alpha than slapping a sticking thro our stone wall head for few minutes in which time we would rather prefer to load/unload our ship and get moving for another supply travel. Gods save from having to gather some wood or rock behind home , the only way to survive alpha that is faster than player is by getting into water or behind stone wall bcs there is no fair fight, we could one-tap a wolf with reflex and precision before guns were nerfed (now we are forced to take damage from everything that is faster than player bcs guns are just water guns, they are good to kill vultures and fish we guess...), we can't do that to an alpha wolf, it will kill us in 2-4 hits, depends if having equilibrium buff and what lvl alpha is, when didn't have fur armor and health stats, would not survive even 1 hit... "insert counterplay being put into trash bin". They also give nothing special, just a ton of hide, meat and whatever, we don't get better at killing their species by % dmg or we don't get some cool bp, we just get more hide to our 10k+ collection and amount of food that no one can eat except maybe mega tribe.

So I'm attacked by a non stop barrage of wolfs tigers and spiders the a alpha snake, I ran, then alpha wolf who instantly killed a lev 40 bear while i was using my maxed out perks of dmg and health regen and he just proceeds to one shot both of us, thing is i have seen more alphas here than anywhere on another game, my island that my friend are on have 1 of each alpha consisting of Bear, Monkey, Parioits, Segal, Wolf, Giraffe, Lion, snake and Pig all trying to kill you and you cant do nothing about it because there level 233 or 210 or 213 some BS like that, I have lost High lev Elephant, Bears, Wolfs by being 1 shoted by a lion who laggidly hoped over a 2 high fence and proceeded no murder my day. Also if you die in a Free port and you semi high level you lose all gear ( I lost full sets of gear weapons and around 1K gold)

This is the second time this has happened now. I log on to someone having built on top of my ship. It looks like two of the same sides of a ship built on top of mine. Theres no tag for their ship. It seems like a hack of some sort. First time the guy was sleeping up top. A wolf aggroed me from the beach nearby and then aggroed him so I waited to see what would happen. When the wolf killed him finally then his stuff disappeared with him. This time I don't see anyone around. It glitches me around and knocks me off at times trying to move around.

i got 2 alpha wolf and 2 lion at same time lion lock me and wolf kill me nice team work

I log on today to find that all of my tames were killed by a level 3 wolf even though they were in a completely enclosed barn, on passive (not flee) in the middle of the room away from any walls. So the only thing I can imagine that happened was that their behavior was either reset and killed through a wall or a level 3 wolf spawned inside the barn, killed everything, then was despawned. I also logged in dead somewhere out in the middle of the ocean far away from my base when I had logged off last night in my house. I understand this is early access and I genuinely love the game so I'm going refrain from throwing a bunch of profanities out right now. But that is a lot of time and effort wasted through no fault of my own. Pretty mad right now. Additional note: Half walls and railings were used in the enclosure to let light in and try to address issues of animals attacking through windows which is what was happening previously. So maybe it doesn't matter if they're windows or railings but animals can attack through them. EDIT: Yesterday and so far today mate boosted wolves are spawning and attacking every 10 mins or so, they attack through walls to the house and are hitting containers. -PvE

So here is the thing people keep going on and on about pvp and pve, there are some off us who play on pvp-RP servers we love to immerse our selves even more in the game and be that pirate who chases down a ship to plunder or that trade ship who tries to out run the black flags and then we have the navies as well. We want to immerse our selves entirely in the game atlas has great potential for this and in time with mods it will shine just like ark did role play in ark was amazing to encounter and made the game last a lot longer for some off us cause we needed that immersive fix and the friends around us. For me as a role player albeit a bit new to the voip style off role play a glowing evil wolf jumping in hell even a normal wolf jumping in and shredding everyone in very few second is a break in that immersion, a farmer, cook or even other civilians would hardly carry 10 slots off pistols, blunderbuss or even carbines, maybe a bow and arrows maybe knives perhaps but to walk around and explore one needs this much protection. A fellow role player pointed out to me that when a human with a shield can tank a 200+ alpha but a rhino or elephant or even a bigger predator like a lion or tiger gets shredded it make him wince. this is early access as many has pointed out the game is needing a lot off polish and elbow grease but could it be possible to look at wild creatures across the board before looking at balancing out pvp? is it too much to wish for that one day i can have my lion with me and it wont get shredded by two or three wolves, or hell even my self walking around an isle in plate armor with a bunny on my shoulder can i have a fighting chance for once to survive those encounters, with out having to carry every conceivable weapon available? I know asking people to be a little nicer to each other over all might be a naive wish from my side but i have been reading these forums and the absolute disregard off other people just for them having a difference off opinion from who ever is absolutely saddening, we are all humans and should take the time to speak our minds yes but when doing so take the time to breathe relax and cool off, throwing insults at people you disagree with just floods good threads with pointless he said she said. that said i play on role play servers i enjoy this form off play i do not want to be in mega companies to survive my at some point farmer wont be in a military or pirate crew she will be living on an island with her live stock who as things are now will be dead before they even have a chance to produce, breeding live stock in a closed off farm should not kill the babies if they are native to that island, i understand there are plans for greater things here and i liked the breeding in ark all tho the official times are nuts its a game not a job we have other things to do than sit and stare at a all tho very well made pixel baby and stuff food down its throat or build giant arrays off air conditioners or as i saw earlier today grills to keep babies alive or line a barn with penguins? I know they want us to keep playing and for long hours when in smaller groups perhaps but i do hope they will take a look at what is a little to much over the top, i have a wish for a little more decoration items perhaps treasures i can place down but i am sure once the modders get their hands on it we will see a lot off that. that is really all i wanted to say a little reminder that we are a portion who play a third or even fourth type off play style. In memory off a bear and his two lion escorts

Walked out of my base last night, got killed instantly by an alpha wolf. It gets killed by my company, then I go get some wood. Alpha wolf aggros me from half the island away while im chopping wood. Get killed instantly. Is this intended? I figured i'd be griefed more by players and not npc spawns.

I have been a huge supporter of this game, I understand it's early access and will have bugs, so I never got angry about those and totally understood, but the spawning and aggression of creatures, wolves in particular, is something that can easily be fixed and should be, so the fact that they haven't is actually making me angry, I was just doing a treasure hunt, had only one damned left and a wolf shows up and kills me, I can't outrun it or fight it, and this is just one wolf. These creatures were bad enough before the nerf to guns, now they're impossible.

so we lost all our tames this night.... seems the wolves are still glitching inside walls and killing all your tames when you are offline they where behinde big stone gates and our elephant even whas having his owne pen so the alpha wolf glitched trou 1 big gate to get to the first group of tames and then trou a other gate to the elephant and you guys say >> we fixed the wolf<< ???realy where??? they still glitch inside bases and kill tames / people and when you fight with them they jump like frogs and yesterday i got even launched into the air and almoste fall to my death and now i can spend hours replacing my tames just to find them dead tomorrow again?? fix those wolfs ASAP and there stupid instand respawning when you have 1 dead can spend hours and hours on this shit way of taming all for nofhing -.-"

Except there's 3 wolves charging in that respawn every 3-5 minutes and they take 2-3 headshots now from a flintlock (the 20+ lvl wolves or something like that take up to 3 headshots right now) so we don't care about any burst damage when they clearly have no burst, we can do as much dmg as a flintlock with 2 arrows that can shoot in 2 seconds, other than carbine everything sucks against wildlife now, only carbine is able to one-shot a wolf in the head an the ammo and fixing of guns takes resources much more expensive than just a bunch of grass, sticks and stones as the bow + the bow have dmg perks (not sure if they work tho) which even further makes it better than guns. Blunderbuss is junk right now, 21 dmg from bodyshoot per pellet so even a full face of shotgun it won't kill a higher lvl wolf in 1 shoot even when all 8 pellets hit... which they almost never do unless calmly aiming at their head sticking thro the wall.

So, my mate and I were out on our galleon.. All day. Like 16 hours out at sea. We have a holding pen for our tames. Pin coded. Nice and secure. Sadly, it's not fully enclosed. Elephants are stored on the top of it. That being said, everything is set to passive, that way if a lion starts attacking the structure, all of the stuff on the roof doesn't just.. Run off and potentially (most likely) die. With that information, we just got back.. Opened our taming pen and! All of our tames are gone. They all apparently died because a F***ING LEVEL 4 WOLF SPAWNED INSIDE. INSIDE!!!! OF THE PEN! Seriously! What the f***! That was over 10 hours of work taming stuff. Gone. Done. Down the drain. Most of those tames were for other people on the island! Seriously! Grapeshot Studios. Wildcard Studios. Whoever the f*** you are. FIX. YOUR. GAME. THINGS SHOULD NOT SPAWN WITHIN X meters of a player structure, like in Ark. FFS! And my work week starts today, so I won't be able to do anything for the island until my next set of off days. This is absolutely absurd. OH! And 1 other thing! We are on a PvE server. Don't have a PvP oriented mindset, plus the degree of griefing in PvP.. NO thanks. It's already bad enough in PvE. With that in mind, we nuked a lv 25 SotD with our newly built galleon. We started hunting them to gain levels on the ship, loot, ect. We kill the lv 25. Took us over 10 minutes because of the ship wiggling, fog and the agro range being super low. I had to almost touch the ship before it agro'd, which I'm not complaining about! I like their agro range being small. Makes it easier to get the galleon through things safely. ANYWAY! We kill the ship once we actually got it agro on us. Took less than 2 minutes and 30 ish large cannonballs. Cool. We see the loot in the water. I stop the ship as fast as I can. My mate jumps into the water and goes after it. Then, some ***hole comes in and steals the loot box before we can get to it. There is literally nothing that could have been done. At all. Grapeshot, Studio, whoever. Please, for the love of god, add a TIMER to SotD loot boxes, so that whoever did the most damage on the ship gets a chance to get to the loot and look at it so some p**** in a boat that actually turns around can't come in and steal it from us. We are a 2 man crew. 2. Manning a galleon. That was a rough battle for us, just to have some guy with his shiny little brig come in and steal the loot from us. A TIMER would fix that, and I'm not talking about some 30 second timer before it becomes open to public looting. It has to be at least 5 minutes long. Galleons don't slow quickly. They don't turn quickly. Getting to the box can be a challenge in of itself. Seriously. Grapeshot, my mate and I love your game. We've logged almost 200 hours onto it since launch. We run a taming service, own a large chunk of land and are a part of an alliance full of active players that love your game. Even with its faults (and trust me, there is a lot), it's an amazing game. I love a lot of the mechanics, love the difficulty, ect ect.. But seriously? Aggressive mobs spawning INSIDE of the holding pen I painstakingly built to keep my tames safe? And other players able to loot my SotD kills? That's just stupid. The taming system is already kind of messed up and your breeding system for this game is... Cancerous. Loosing all of our tames because some lv 4 wolf spawned in our stuff? That shouldn't be a thing. If I left them outside, then I can get it. Again, please fix this. This is something that we shouldn't have to worry about. We were having a great day. Full of adventure. We found like 18 discovery points today, made some new friends, got some new elephants (that I am not terrified to loose).. Just to have our loot taken and our previously thought safe tames slain.

Tbh..., those are good points even tho don't like EVE for it having a reputation of a second job. Yes, the trading system is just drop stuff..., on't trade with ppl that don't know for now. Yes..., here didn't explore any further than the shore, once went in, ended up with a pack of wolves, then seagulls + vultures (bcs hit by mistake a seagull while killing vultures), it took half hour to get stuff back with alpha wolf camping the body. The only exploration that did later was suicide naked rush before freezing/being ripped apart an did not get much further than the mountain behind our house. The SoDs rapid fire bug was fixed, yesterday was bombarded by yellow SoD, did not anihilate us. However, they still camp borders (that's why it agroed, never getting that close to one on purpose or greed, we just simply teleported on top of it), they still spawn in swarms creating artificial walls and don't serve any purpose other than wasting time going arroun them since they dont give anything special compared to resources and risk needed to take them down. In atlas, well, every island is almost similar in resources except climate and few missing things, like no iron or gems or something and different types of animal spam so yeah.., unles going to power stone islands, then propably seen almost everything this game has to offer which is wolf tower defense. As for overcrowding..., yeah, on our island there's 5-20 players only at once online, traveled to warmer climates, especialy lawless and there's so many ppl their shipyards are all next to eachother, can't even dock to the shore in some places. Also the 150 player limit which causes fire wall to show up which destroys someone hard work for free, it can turn on at any moment bcs we can't tell if the server we are going in have 1 player or 149 of them. There's also oversubscribing which kicks players out of the grid, randomly, so someone defending from invasion can just get kicked out of their base and be unable to fight back.

i seriously dont get why complexity is put on the same page as , for example, harvest rates. the game can be super complex, yet not too grindy to play. its all a level of risk vs reward. if you want the best loot ? go to the most dangerous places. which , right now, is everywhere and it does not scale at all. there is no natural order of progression in the game. you are stuck on lvl 1-8, then get thrown to the wolves,. literally as you will not be able to defeat a lvl 3 wolf if it hits your first, you have no high ground and no water to get it swimming. also, a lvl 36 wolf might be right next to a lvl 1 snake. how is that a natural progression ? if you are lvl 10, you are cannonfodder for every mob out there, except the slow ones. and you keep being cannonfodder, except the ones you can kite or can shoot from away or above. a lvl 40 char with the right weapon is as danerous in battle as a lvl 10 with a flame arrow. sharks in lawless are as deadly as they are in the middle of the map. it all makes no sense whatsoever. trading is not needet at all as there is no incentive of foing it. politics instead of all out warfare will probably never establish because there is no incentive in doing so... griefing is more efficient than real pvp and battles. if it continues like this, the servers will consolidate more and more until theres only two mega tribes left (or alliances) that meet in the middle and battle it out, OR do offline raids as in ark whoever thinks that grinding days for a schooner is fun gameplay needs to wake up. only because somelarge companies can do it and others cannot does not make the game harcode. dieing evere 5 minutes to restart from scratch s not harcore. it is bad game design. any MMO should not be played because you get "the best loot.. highest weapons" but because the content the sandboix allow you to create. I havent met so many players in atlas yet that really want to create content. most just want to see the world burn.

Sheehs tonight it's been hideous.... logged in one time to see 4-5 vultures attack my roof... no sooner i get through them, then it's a wolf... then two more fly inside and start damaging everything. It's a lawless grid, so it's not like I can spawn inside, and sure as heck cant melee the darn wolf down.. and if the raft/ship is too close the damn things attack it.

His agenda is the same as mine. I want an enjoyable game. This game has many problems. And we see, and hear nothing that indicates the Devs understand the actual issues. They often go in the opposite direction of what will make the game more appealing to the masses. First, while this is a survival game, EVERYTHING doesn't have to be a struggle. Like the fiber. It's the most commonly used item. It needs to be everywhere. We have a bear to gather it, but will lose it if we take it to where the fiber actually is. So many times I was tempted to take the bear with me, but was so glad I didn't because I ran into very high level Alphas on the way, while on foot. Bear would have been killed. But because I have max sneak, I went undetected, or was able to get away. And that leads me into the fact that I'm not interested in every 500 interactions, in two hours, with wolves, lions and snakes being a near death experience. I was doing OK until they nerfed the guns against these creatures. And, with the crappy hit boxes, making it all about a head shot on one of these creatures was the wrong direction. I really get the feeling that the Devs are so paranoid that the game will be too easy, they go over the top in the opposite direction with everything. Humans cannot take constant stress. People aren't looking to have PTSD after several weeks of playing the game. I am building a schooner specifically to go to the Freeport to collect fiber with the bear, because I am tired of going to that area on my island where the fiber is, which seems like the chow hall for all the predators on the island. Believe it or not, we do want to be able to gather stuff without the constant fear that we are about to be jumped on by an animal that is going to kill us before we can get our three guns out that it takes to kill them. Once in a while, OK. Guaranteed 50 encounters while gathering 5k fiber...no. It gets irritating. The Devs don't seem to understand this. They make US the reason that these animals spawn, and the spawn relentlessly, and often, and it's not why we came here. I don't mind shooting a few wolfs, or a couple of lions, or snakes, but then it should smooth sailing for a while...not 30 seconds before something else migrates into the area. And how about making the different types of predators fight each other. Wolves and lions and snakes aren't going to coop in a fight against a human. They will attack each other. But here, I have literally had snakes, wolves AND lions all trying to get at me at the same time. Let me show you how ridiculous this is. That's little ol' me, the smallest character you can build in the game. This is the rock I get on when in trouble, while gathering fiber. I have been on this while lions, wolves, and snakes all try to get to me, at the same time. A lion actually jumped up there and knocked me off once. I didn't last long as there were 3 lions, a wolf, and 3 snakes. Know what that is? That's my dead body, with many ship parts, all metal tools, 3 guns, 2 bows, ammo, and resources, inside that small shipyard. INSIDE the shipyard. How did it get there? I was on the Large shipyard I took this pic from, shooting at a lion in the water below me. Somehow, the lion jumped up out of the water, and had me in it's mouth, while it now stood on the large shipyard. I got away and tried to jump in the water as it hit me one last time to kill me and my body flew into the shipyard. Luckily the schooner was in good enough condition to launch, so I could demolish the shipyard, and get my stuff back. This game gets so many things wrong. My body can fly through that object and end up inside it to where I can't get my stuff back. I killed a 42 wolf because every time I put it down to feed, the mouth was in the terrain. Yet, I can't make a decent building because fucking foundations, walls, ceilings, etc.. won't place because it says it's blocked by terrain. This is just the opposite of how things should work...and do I think they will ever listen? No, because these issues were always here for ARK. This is the frustration of the OP. We know that Devs think we just whine to get our way. No, we have legitimate complaints. FYI...lions aren't actually known for their jumping ability. In this game, you might as well throw a red cape on them, especially if they are running down a hill when they jump. To the right of this ship is where I put that small shipyard, and twice now, I have seen lions running down the hill, and jump completely over that schooner. And speaking of ships, why no bowsprit and jibs? Sure, this is something that can wait, but the ships look off without them. How about some word on where things are headed? Do they intend to ever put them on? Even as a cosmetic would be nice. A weightless cosmetic, unless they want to slightly increase the weight to compensate. But at the same time, this is another issue. Meta gamers ruin games. You have to always understand that they do the math. If a bowsprit can be left off, to save 100 pounds, they will do so, and then the game just doesn't look good. They turn all the video settings down to garbage level, not because they have to in order to run the game...they do so because they can and it gives them an advantage vs the players who want a good looking game. Devs don't seem aware of this, or just don't care. Have multiple servers. Ones for those who can't run in high settings, and one for those who can, and remove the options. On the high server, no ability to turn off stuff like ground clutter, or go with chunky graphics. Or, a better option would be to design the game in a manner that doesn't give an advantage to the Meta gamer. For instance, why did I make the character smaller? Well, the belief is that it makes for a smaller, harder to hit target. The problem is there is no penalty for going small. The big guy can't carry more weight than the little guy. The tall thin guy can't run further. Etc... Yes, this last section is just ranting, but gamers are tired of the lack of progression in game design. Same old bugs, same bad code, same problems.