Captain’s Log #37: ATLAS arrives on Xbox with Steam PC Crossplay

13 hours ago, Zirn said:

So just to make it 100% clear.

All servers wipe the 28th.
Only NA PvP will be put back up straight away.
All other servers will have to wait til october 8th to be restarted (10 day wait).

 

Want to make sure since I am having some people say EU PvP will restart at 28th aswell but I can't find any info on that.

Good question.

Seems that only na gonna be wiped at 28th

This is all very frustrating...  again. (I apologise in advance for my rant below but I need to vent.)

It looks like I'm going to have to take time off of real life work to be able to level up quick enough to have half a chance to earn enough gold to claim/upkeep an island.

This is exactly what happened to my company on the last wipe. What was left of the company (decimated because of the wipe) played as often as we could to get to a nice place, start building up resources while venturing off to gather some scraps of gold,  only for a much bigger company to get their claim flag down first. On PVE, that's end of story.. Too late. We hunted high and low but it was too late, everything my company had enough claim points for was gone.. well that sucked. Stuck into a corner of an island and the claim owner left us a little space luckily to do something. gone was the asperations to attract my old buddies back with the thought of our very own shops and friendly community

As a very small company, if we don't get levelled up early enough, all the small island will all get taken by the large companies again (as they can gather resources/gold far quicker) and i'll get stuck on a lawless islands having to scratch around for space, competing with the foundation/sign post spammers or begging claim owners for a little space to build. As they say snooze you loose. Yes it's just a game, but its being made far less enjoyable when your hard work and progression gets thrown away again and end up in a worse place than the one you just fought for.

Before anyone berates me with "its a Pirate game not a Minecraft sandbox building game" of course. Let me reverse the question back to you, where do you build your galleon? where do you buy that high level tame to do treasure maps with? where do you save all you hard earned gold and possessions, blueprints, 6 types of  materials etc for your Mythic weapons? Everyone plays differently but everyone needs at least 1 building somewhere to act as a base for the High Seas adventures.

From above you can see I simply look for an island to operate out of with enough space to build an attractive town to trade from in PVE, however consider the very varied way people seem to like to play. For some that's Lawless island as they only want a simple 3 x 3 bamboo hut on the beach to spend their time raiding and pillaging the high seas, or perhaps try to build something bigger to allow for multiple shipyards with some docks with many differently configured ships, fighting for floor space on the lawless chaos,  for others they want a vast stronghold to defend against in PvP,  some enjoy a community around them that works together for common goals or perhaps vast shipyards building and selling ships to order and of course those Huge alliances looking to control whole swathes of the maps.  All of these and many more and everything in between of course

I absolutely get the reason for the wipe, honestly I do, but how are we are treated for being loyal?.... nope, 0, nada, nothing. "Thanks for playing, hope you had fun.".... gone..... never mind...… here we go start again #facepalm. Do you even want us to come back after the 8th?

I get that we have significantly less real world $$ value to offer as we have already paid for the game and xbox is a new cash cow. How about some recognition or incentives for sticking with you through the journey, Unique cosmetics only available to those that had played more that xxxxxx hours? a bonus for harvesting or damage % a unique ship type. (clipper would be fab by the way), something for the many thousands of hours spent. At least the NA PvP players get a week to establish themselves, the rest of us get what ? THANKS !! If you need more $$ give us a way to spend our cash and keep us interested in the investment. Pay to win is not the right answer imho, however incentivise us to keep coming back or spending our $$ with you.

And Yes, I know quite a few are also happy for the wipe and are not precious about what they built or how they levelled. That's cool, I also really appreciate the new content and new players being brought into the game, however the above issues as I stated above seem to be completely overlooked by GS and the thought of the grind is tedious. Good job Skulls and Bones is not released yet, or I could see a bit of an exodus for those that like that style of gameplay

Soliasis

1 hour ago, Soliasis said:

I absolutely get the reason for the wipe, honestly I do, but how are we are treated for being loyal?.... nope, 0, nada, nothing. "Thanks for playing, hope you had fun.".... gone..... never mind...… here we go start again #facepalm. Do you even want us to come back after the 8th?

I get that we have significantly less real world $$ value to offer as we have already paid for the game and xbox is a new cash cow. How about some recognition or incentives for sticking with you through the journey, Unique cosmetics only available to those that had played more that xxxxxx hours?

Spot on, you nailed it.

This is AWESOME news!  Honestly the best option for the game in current state.  For those of you who are complaining about the wipe, turn that frown upside down, buttercups! 

Quote

I absolutely get the reason for the wipe, honestly I do, but how are we are treated for being loyal?.... nope, 0, nada, nothing. "Thanks for playing, hope you had fun.".... gone..... never mind...… here we go start again #facepalm. Do you even want us to come back after the 8th?

I get that we have significantly less real world $$ value to offer as we have already paid for the game and xbox is a new cash cow. How about some recognition or incentives for sticking with you through the journey, Unique cosmetics only available to those that had played more that xxxxxx hours?

How can they pay us back for being loyal to Oct.8th, when they still working on the code for paying us back from last Wipe. Never trust a company or support a company that cant follow through with what they promised!

I

13 hours ago, Bullet Force said:

But still only 3 combat ships? Wow awesome priorities.

Ships/seas/sailing improvements and additions wont begin until after they have gotten the base of the game QOL and all locked down.. yes it IS an awesome priority.. The new items being added and changes now are the stuff that have been on the ptr already. New ships wont be addressed until further down the development line as they see how things go.

That being said, yes, still only the raft and 4 ships but, unlike most games, they are ships you can build on and customize at least, not just 4 ships.

13 hours ago, Bullet Force said:

But still only 3 combat ships? Wow awesome priorities.

Well done Grapecard

@Jatheish  Any chance of a full set of patch notes including what grids were updated with new islands?  I've taken a quick look through the servergrids.json from the github and don't see a lot of changes. Mind you it was a casual glance. But looking at L10 for example it still has the 2 same islands within view distance of each other.  I get that its a ton of work to create unique islands for every grid, but do copied islands need to be in the same grid?

On 9/26/2019 at 7:36 AM, Dollie said:

We have some more notes to come, which we’ll be sharing in full on Friday.

where? 

"We’re working on getting Unofficial servers setup for Xbox Day One with Nitrado, where cross-platform can be enabled or disabled (in any direction so PC or Xbox player servers only)"

So just for nitrado it means? So the whole feature is useless trash. You can't use it for a good server, only for Nitrado trash. It's a pity that a good feature is announced, but only usable for bad servers.

Just be sure it doesn't wipe when it's actually finally released.

The powerstone grind is garbage and I'm not going to play a game that puts ALL of the end-game content behind a grind only for it to wipe every 6 months.

Oh and for the love of MMO God put a fucking group finder in the game. I mean wtf kind of MMO doesn't have a group finder.

Quit thinking in terms of Ark 2 and make a fucking MMO already.

PS: The PVE/PVP mixed server cluster is a horrible idea. The game needs some kind of solo-player/lfg docks with limited personal storage and maybe up to two schooners and that's it. Personal storage is important not only for Companies but for individual players as well, so that they can "own" some stuff that isn't really just property of the Company.

On 9/27/2019 at 3:22 AM, Soliasis said:

This is all very frustrating...  again. (I apologise in advance for my rant below but I need to vent.)

It looks like I'm going to have to take time off of real life work to be able to level up quick enough to have half a chance to earn enough gold to claim/upkeep an island.

This is exactly what happened to my company on the last wipe. What was left of the company (decimated because of the wipe) played as often as we could to get to a nice place, start building up resources while venturing off to gather some scraps of gold,  only for a much bigger company to get their claim flag down first. On PVE, that's end of story.. Too late. We hunted high and low but it was too late, everything my company had enough claim points for was gone.. well that sucked. Stuck into a corner of an island and the claim owner left us a little space luckily to do something. gone was the asperations to attract my old buddies back with the thought of our very own shops and friendly community

As a very small company, if we don't get levelled up early enough, all the small island will all get taken by the large companies again (as they can gather resources/gold far quicker) and i'll get stuck on a lawless islands having to scratch around for space, competing with the foundation/sign post spammers or begging claim owners for a little space to build. As they say snooze you loose. Yes it's just a game, but its being made far less enjoyable when your hard work and progression gets thrown away again and end up in a worse place than the one you just fought for.

Before anyone berates me with "its a Pirate game not a Minecraft sandbox building game" of course. Let me reverse the question back to you, where do you build your galleon? where do you buy that high level tame to do treasure maps with? where do you save all you hard earned gold and possessions, blueprints, 6 types of  materials etc for your Mythic weapons? Everyone plays differently but everyone needs at least 1 building somewhere to act as a base for the High Seas adventures.

From above you can see I simply look for an island to operate out of with enough space to build an attractive town to trade from in PVE, however consider the very varied way people seem to like to play. For some that's Lawless island as they only want a simple 3 x 3 bamboo hut on the beach to spend their time raiding and pillaging the high seas, or perhaps try to build something bigger to allow for multiple shipyards with some docks with many differently configured ships, fighting for floor space on the lawless chaos,  for others they want a vast stronghold to defend against in PvP,  some enjoy a community around them that works together for common goals or perhaps vast shipyards building and selling ships to order and of course those Huge alliances looking to control whole swathes of the maps.  All of these and many more and everything in between of course

I absolutely get the reason for the wipe, honestly I do, but how are we are treated for being loyal?.... nope, 0, nada, nothing. "Thanks for playing, hope you had fun.".... gone..... never mind...… here we go start again #facepalm. Do you even want us to come back after the 8th?

I get that we have significantly less real world $$ value to offer as we have already paid for the game and xbox is a new cash cow. How about some recognition or incentives for sticking with you through the journey, Unique cosmetics only available to those that had played more that xxxxxx hours? a bonus for harvesting or damage % a unique ship type. (clipper would be fab by the way), something for the many thousands of hours spent. At least the NA PvP players get a week to establish themselves, the rest of us get what ? THANKS !! If you need more $$ give us a way to spend our cash and keep us interested in the investment. Pay to win is not the right answer imho, however incentivise us to keep coming back or spending our $$ with you.

And Yes, I know quite a few are also happy for the wipe and are not precious about what they built or how they levelled. That's cool, I also really appreciate the new content and new players being brought into the game, however the above issues as I stated above seem to be completely overlooked by GS and the thought of the grind is tedious. Good job Skulls and Bones is not released yet, or I could see a bit of an exodus for those that like that style of gameplay

Soliasis

Have you ever thought of , I don't know. Maybe getting a private server for you and your friends to invite others to where you can boost your harvest rates and do what you want on it without the 123 griefers and such? Yeah that's a thing, maybe ask your friends to chip in  . We ran into the 123 griefers, we killed two off, an hour later they came back way higher level and knocked us out to grief us and just be jackasses which atlas will never fix. Ah well. Thank GODS I go onto rp servers where there's nice people, battles are set up and harvest rates are boosted, SUPER fun.

SO  you are bringing on XBOX and you can't even keep PC going.

Now everything is wiped 

The installer thought Steam is jacked up!!! 

Down loading three times 17.6  gb  wasting hours  of downloading!!!!

Love the game! 

BUT  YOU NEED TO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!!!

Lots of people on here not understanding what early access is... if you cant handle a wipe dont buy early access 

14 hours ago, Ember said:

Have you ever thought of , I don't know. Maybe getting a private server for you and your friends to invite others to where you can boost your harvest rates and do what you want on it without the 123 griefers and such?

I enjoy the PVE side of things, sailing about seeing what other people do around the world, meeting up with fabulous community based groups, trading joining raids etc..  Given we are so small a company now, (down to 3 players again now since the wipe) a private server will just be a pointless empty world.

Maybe time to give up until the 8th as PVP with a small group is pointless as well. As soon as you logoff, someone just sinks your ship, kills you and destroys any building you start.. Perhaps I don't understand the "Rules" of a PVP server, however, I would love to understand how new players, let alone established PVE players are supposed to survive without just becoming cannon fodder for petty griefers while the do things like .. I don't know, sleep.

On 9/25/2019 at 4:21 PM, [Sic] said:

See ya' next season!

yeah season 3 comes lol....i think the xbox crossplay is gonna start a war bettween the pc players and the xbox. and the devs add op ship weapons (torpedo)...

On 9/26/2019 at 4:15 PM, Bullet Force said:

But still only 3 combat ships? Wow awesome priorities.

yes they need more ships for full on server war(or they are gonna make flying ships?)...and add attachments for weapons 'cuse stuff is gonna go down on day one...i think xbox player should rush to a island or just stack up mats.

On 9/25/2019 at 5:01 PM, lordkhan4444 said:

yes the screams of the xboxers will be legendary! I can't wait for the slaughter!!!!!

yes the screams of the raids.. a xbox clan can probably kill a pc clan>the pc players have harder controls but the xbox players do not now people read this theory!!!!

Ty, for the hat.

Making this a cross platform game is just stupid , I am an Xbox player and I am supposed to use a keyboard in order to have same advantage? Screw that!

So a wipe without any significant content update... honestly such a bad idea.

Good luck GS!

5 hours ago, Jizraeli said:

Making this a cross platform game is just stupid , I am an Xbox player and I am supposed to use a keyboard in order to have same advantage? Screw that!

the keyborad is not a advantage the controller is

21 hours ago, Savageshrimp said:

 

Ive been using the xbox controller since the game was released and it's been fine. I've been testing the new setup in single player too and the only thing that is slightly slower than mouse is moving amounts in your inventory. The rest is the same.

10 minutes ago, Whitehawk said:

Ive been using the xbox controller since the game was released and it's been fine. I've been testing the new setup in single player too and the only thing that is slightly slower than mouse is moving amounts in your inventory. The rest is the same.

that is true but what about the wsda controls vs the joystick i mean like if there is a battle and keyboard is slightly slower guess who wins

I've used it with the npc's on the ship now and it's pretty damn good. The left joystick Does up and down sails and controls sail direction too. And I managed to actually reverse the ship and park it just using the joystick now, I used to need to do wasd. Also there is nothing stopping any pc player from using a controller, I do.

thats true but imaging a 1v1 tho 

On 10/1/2019 at 9:18 AM, Whitehawk said:

I've used it with the npc's on the ship now and it's pretty damn good. The left joystick Does up and down sails and controls sail direction too. And I managed to actually reverse the ship and park it just using the joystick now, I used to need to do wasd. Also there is nothing stopping any pc player from using a controller, I do.

On 9/26/2019 at 7:43 AM, AnneBonny said:

What incentive do I have to continue supporting your product?

I'll answer your question with a question:  What incentive do the developers have to keep you (or me) happy and playing the game?  They already have our money.  Atlas has no microtransactions so they're not going to get any more of our money.  Making us happy and keeping us playing doesn't put any money in their pockets.

So, it makes sense (financially) that they would ignore those who bought in early and focus their efforts on bringing in new players (console launch) who will give them more money. This is the fatal flaw with early access games which keeps most (if not all) EA games from ever reaching their potential.