[2019] Devs; why do you keep rolling over the small company & solo player?

I'm reading over the threads on this topic and taking the various opinions on board. As always, we're open to feedback.

I'm a little confused on one specific aspect in relation to PvE brought up by a couple of posters though. I've seen examples of an island owner leaving or going awol and thus leaving settlers open to being wiped. Wouldn't those settlers just continue to pay the upkeep on the claim to keep it secure in that case? (aside from waiting to jump and claim it themselves of course). I'm not quite understanding how people can just "lose" a claim.

You can't place gold in the flag? You should be able to.

Hmm that's a good point. It's something I'll discuss with the team.

We've gone ahead and will be disabling the option to raze islands on PvE. Structure spam is still an issue, and one we would like to resolve but we recognize the problems this causes on a PvE network, in particular to settlers who have been living under the guise that their bases would be safe following the initial structure-placement timer. We'll keep on reading your guys' feedback and consider ourselves more suitable ways to approach this.

This patch also introduces a change where island owners can place down more tax banks around their island, to help encourage other settlers who live there to contribute to the upkeep cost.

There's a lot of fair and valid feedback here, but there are also some unnecessary remarks towards one another. Remember, it's okay to have a different opinion and share it folks, but keep things civil