Captain’s Log #39: Meet The Crew!

10 hours ago, xwildslicerx said:

Did we really go from 25x25 down to 11x11 AND mix up West/East all confusing like?

 

15x15* to 11*11

What about the discovery point system? I think you guys should either work on it or remove it completely as we're still on EA, especially for PvE servers.

RIP xbox players, the lag to sail from an owned island to the golden age area, would have been better to reduce the lawless islands not for more ppl on to them (PvE) they will have no chance to setup on a lawless island to once ppl start building big walls all over the island, the build blocking is still an issue and the 1 structure auto-decay is so easy to negate that it's pre pointless

@Chismebeard @Nami tried messaging you on discord i could i pm'd you on here 0please respond 

I think that everyone will basically go as close as possible to the temperate/equatorial line. This will enable people to have a place where all crops and be grown, and another where all animals can be bred. The rest of the map will not have a solid concentration of population. Not really a fan of creating an environment where everyone will be clustered in one area, rendering the remaining portions of the map relatively useless. Am I missing something?

@Nami

@Gortok

Welcome! Glad to have you onboard, I look forward to hearing more news soon(tm)!

Map looks neat, cant wait to see island locations on it, I think it will be interesting to say the least. Will we be able to go from A1 to A11 or A1 to K1?

Also looking forward to more news on the PvE situation. As others have noted combining 450 servers into 121 servers may cause some overpopulation/Xbox issues.. can you confirm if there will be 2 server groups (ie 2 11x11 server groups) for pve on map release/patch day or just the one server group (ie 1 11x11 server group)

Thanks,

Gin

Ok folks I have one teensy little issue with a smaller map. Dont get me wrong I like the idea of not having to sail for hour after hour to get anywhere, however, the na pve server has been taken offline giving the eu pve a massive influx of players already. Unfortunately and I know this is not going to be a popular opinion but the map needs to be made larger with more islands available to be claimed by smaller companies whilst somehow implementing a system that's stops the megas buying up all the smaller islands and instead making it more worthwhile for them to set up bases on the bigger islands. Also giving us the option of a cross platform server and dedicated console servers would be nice

Don't expect a warm welcome when the community has been given the cold shoulder for so long.

18 hours ago, Grendalsh said:

A smaller world will drive more interactions for a smaller population. 
How are you addressing the need to escape the land resource grind in order to participate in the ocean game?
Some method of hiring NPCs and training them to harvest mats would go a long way towards freeing players to focus on actually pirating at end game.
Being able to blueprint a completed ship, throw that into a smithy, and have NPCs take over constructing the basic hull would free players to focus on customization and play, rather than spending a week landside for every sea adventure. 

Vitamin deficiencies effects should persist through death, to make cooked food worth the effort. No more killing yourself to get past not bothering with vitamin D. 
Conversely, significantly increase the time it takes to get a vitamin deficiency. It should take several days real time to get a vitamin deficiency debuff, and similarly a few game days of eating right to remove it. It should be something you had to actually work at neglecting your character to get, but them have to actually work to get rid of. 

Your suggestion on vitamin deficiencies are out there, it is already hard enough to micromanage it as it is, I guess if you have a LARGE company that are doing the gathering and building and feeding and taming and raising the babes and gardening then sure as you have nothing to do anyway..... that would be fine but not for a solo player. I don't join large groups for a reason, I like to get my moneys worth out of a game and that means playing all aspects it has to offer, gathering, taming, mating, raising, etc. etc. why buy a game if you are just going to have others play it for you, seems a waste imo but to each their own.

I'm glad. I'm gonna jump in after wipe.

I know this is not going to be a popular opinion but the map needs to be made larger with more islands available

No need to make map larger. With current grid and islands sizes it's possible to multiply amount of islands at least twice.

19 hours ago, Zoch007 said:

Does East and West mean something different in atlas then the real world???

Are you a member of flat earth society?

On 6/18/2020 at 11:55 PM, electricjazz said:

I've always been PVE, even on Ark and it always irked me when new things were added and important mechanics changed that hurt PVE for the sake of PVP balance (flyer nerf). The same with Atlas. Please Wild Card/Grapeshot, give some love and attention to your loyal PVE fans. Thank you.

i couldnt agree more, the moment i stoped having fun in this game was when they nerfed the guns's PVE damage to "balance PVP" and when they nerfed the glider for PVP reasons (again), i can hardly imagine the game in its current state being able to afford losing its PVE players.

On 6/18/2020 at 11:34 PM, Jat said:

Alrighty, news is out there now. Probably no surprise to most that Dollie and myself have been working on ARK for sometime now. We're glad to finally be able to introduce some of ATLAS new crew members, including their Community folk.

It was a pleasure sailing the seas with y'all and we're looking forward to the changes that are coming from the team. 

does that mean you are no longer associated with this project and the decision making in regards of ATLAS?

On 6/19/2020 at 12:57 AM, Yomaz said:

I really hope you just take out some grids in current map. Im sure this sounds like a fix for some issues but I assure you that it will create new ones and take away a feeling of actually sailing the world instead of just some random map some game designers throw at us haphazardly. As a pve player since launch  I wish you would just say if your not getting enough traffic on your pve servers to make it worth it because that would be the only reason I could see why you are taking a new direction. I feel basically you want to limit the money your spending on the official servers and run us to community servers. Most of us that choose official have multiple reasons but id say the biggest for me is the thought that if I log in every 7ish days(tame timer diffen't than structure timer) I would have a persistent game world to come back to. Give us some stability a lot of things in this game require possibly hundreds of hours to do  which is fine if you believe it will still be there tomorrow. Last note seriously take out some grids in a square around middle and put new age ruins through out the middle of the entire grid all will be happier.

indeed, one of the critical mistakes done with this game since start was the lack of value given to the player's time investment, yet as i read how they have decided to set up the new map i find evident that (at least in PVP) bases getting completely and utterly destroyed will still be a thing (wich i dont mind) i just hope we PVErs can finally get rid of the "decay timers" since i made an oath with myself that i wouldnt be playing this game for as long as decay timers exist.

On 6/19/2020 at 12:38 AM, Akajerry said:

so if you live on the edge of the map your gonna have to travel 5 hours just to get to the golden ages? the people who live closer to the golden ages are going to be at a great advantage with closer availability to better bps. this looks BAD

 

they clearly stated this is done to encite conflict, wich makes sense, if you are not gonna play a PVP server probably you shouldnt care.

On 6/19/2020 at 1:00 AM, Gortok said:

Hi Folks. I was brought on recently to help build a new team working exclusively on Atlas! I know there's been a lull in development lately, and we've actually got several things that are in development that we are going to be rolling out over the next couple months. I want to address a few design topics about this map.

We wanted to get people moving around the world more. This map lays some of the groundwork for that, and aligns with some of the systems we're rolling out in the next couple months that we will have details on soon. What's shown here is the plant and weather biome layout, which dictates what type of plants an area contains. We've separated the mineral layer and the edges of those mineral biomes do not line up with the plant biomes. The areas in the middle of the map are densely populated with islands and are closest to the most diverse selections of plants and minerals. The outer areas of the map have less access to rich diversity of resources, and they also use the claim system. This is intentional. The outskirts are safer and less rewarding.

In the short term, we expect more conflict in the center of the map around the Golden Age Islands. We're also introducing new systems for Trading that we will dive into soon. This should provide opportunities for both cooperation and conflict. What's a pirate game without the opportunity to pillage trade routes? More on that in the weeks to come.

Hello @Gortok and welcome.

I have a question, do you have any plans to rework/change the rules of the current claim system? or will they stay as they are?. one of the many reasons of controversy in this game was the fact that "pirates" were forced into a "feudal" territory system in wich everything they had could be lost at the whim of the "overlord" (island owner) wich for many was a conceptual contradiction with the standar idea of what a pirate life is about (freedom), hence i am curious if that will remain or will be reworked.

Also, I am what you would call a completionist and i absolutely detest the idea of losing progress simply for not accesing the game, decay timers were actually the main reason (among many others) for me to quit, and i will never comeback as long as they are present (in PVE), so could you clarify if they will stil exist in this new development approach?

And lastly for now, Winds, the first image that comes to mind when sailing in ATLAS is mentioned is that one time that i had to spend literally 1 hr of my time to sail across 2 regions due to wind directions being constantly against me, honestly thats an experience i am not willing to repeat, so i would like to know if there is any rework ideas on the matter.

22 hours ago, ZetaZhan said:

Why would you join a MMO pirate game to PVE. that just makes no sense. Go singleplayer then. 

why would you want to assert dominance over a bunch of pixels if at the end of the day when you go out in real life you will still feel the need to quench your inferiority complex?

1 hour ago, The D Legacy said:

they clearly stated this is done to encite conflict, wich makes sense, if you are not gonna play a PVP server probably you shouldnt care.

thats the point, the people are being forced to do something they dont want to do, and if they do this with every map then its just a loose loose situation for pve players

9 hours ago, Az Apocalyptic said:

thats the point, the people are being forced to do something they dont want to do, and if they do this with every map then its just a loose loose situation for pve players

when you say being forced to do something they dont want to can you clarify exactly what you mean? there are many things that fit that description in this game

This post reminds me of that time my drunken father came back home after being missing for eight months and told me I had to change schools because we were moving with no explanation of why. He also introduced my new “mom and brother”. He was really friendly but I just felt like I was being poorly handled.

On 6/18/2020 at 9:55 PM, kalohepirate said:

one would think a sailing game that uses maps would have figured out where east and west is, but then again.....I guess not.

Still waiting to hear the why we've been sold a game that has PVE for it to be now removed.  Maybe that we got new community managers we can get some answers to why NA PVE is removed and what sounds like EU PVE could be gone next.

 

Making an educated guess here. I would imagine the NA PVE server has been decommissioned as it had the lowest population of the 4 available worlds. I would also guess they have done this as to free up the hardware to build out the new world for load testing on comparative systems. Thus reducing unnecessary expenditure and allowing them to develop the new world faster.

Can you confirm please  @Chismebeard @Gortok and @Nami?

Really excited to see the neaxt phase of development!

Hopefully with the new system and map there's some kind of build limit on islands. I get tired of dashboarding as I approach an island only to load back in and my ship is crashed and I am dead because people build unnecessary structures that cause serious lag for others...

The map is a lot smaller, I think this will be laggy as hell for Xbox players....

I wih you the best of luck. If you respect honesty  then the following should not offend you and you may even come to regard the following as constructive criticism...

Not a SINGLE PLAYER ASKED FOR YOUR RESUME. Harsh, i know, but its a fact. Corporate advocated a pep rally that statistically speaking is irrelevant.

I have personnally asked......How.... Many....... Atlas..... Game......Hours....Do......You......Have?.....

Are you capable of operating independently from the incompetent leadership?

When will the "pre release" end? When will the company begin taking responsibility for the product its selling/ releasing?

How will changes that wipe hours of gameplay be handled moving forward??

Not responding directly to ANY of these questiong is proof that the chain of command is comprised and all players should just let the crooked companys involved keep thier con money and the player base should permanently boycot the products.

Harsh, i know but weve been left zero recourse.

Ranger1k, Formerly from the Company The Military. PLEASE show some support community

I personally do not understand why the game would be going more towards PVP. I've seen the PVP servers there's no actual pirates on there. 90% of it is offline griefing the rest is camping free ports. To those who think that PVE players shouldn't play a pirate game you're absolutely right. they should immediately remove all cargo racks and player shops from the building selection. they should remove weight sails and anything else that is not related to piracy.... Smh. If it was just a pirate game you wouldn't have the option to be a merchant, a breeder or other things. 

Maybe the pvpers would like it better if y'all just made this into a pirate version of call of duty.

@Chismebeard @Gortok @Nami are very happy to see you, welcome! I hope that at least you get the habit of communicating with the community, past CMs were not very talkative, to say the least.

So, apparently, with the change in the global map, the new season starts in Atlas, what will it be? But this is a general question, let's move on to the essence and specificity.

1. As far as I understand, developers are removing PVE servers and in the new season they want to combine aspects of PVP & PVE, as well as their groups of people. That is, you will be forced to make the PVP server more loyal to the PVE community. Are you not afraid that features intended for PVE players will be abused by PVP players? If this really happens, then we will come to a more deplorable state on PVP than now. We, pvp players from ARK, are tired of the fact that people are used to being more fighters of global chat and freeport, and not to fight in the normal way. You know, there are such companies on NA, but more of them on EU. If you know what I mean. I would like to know in more detail how this combination of the two sides of the game will be implemented. Do not get me wrong, I do not want to infringe on the rights of PVE players, on the contrary. But just as they consider the combination of PVE and PVP community unnecessary! Because this will generate more toxicity between the community of the game in general terms.

2. The concept of a new world map is incomprehensible. West and East located simultaneously on the same side of the world look a disorienting i think. I will not say anything about the rest, in shock ... but I will not say anything. It is also not very clear why the Golden Age and Lawless zones were moved to the center of the map, what is the point? Yes, in this way you will create more competition between the companies, create a “storm in a glass" (only a larger one) the so-called hunt / fight for experience. But all this will again affect PVErs, will they be deprived? 

 From a “storm in a glass” it will turn into a storm of diarrhea in a global chat, my opinion. On the one hand, it’s a lot of fun to watch, probably ... but it really saddens me a lot.

If I understand correctly, there will be sectors on the Lawless borders with islands that can be captured, as I heard they are called Low-Risk zones. These are sectors in which you can claim the islands, and at the same time it will be impossible to fight or raid on this island. The war is only in the water and lawless sectors. If this is for PVErs, that’s good, but again this refers to the first point that I wrote. If this is abused, I suggest that these islands will be clogged with PVPers parking lots. Or maybe whole cities on rafts, as they are now in free ports. As a result, we will not get any competition that the developers had in mind, and again we will return to afk campaigns against each other and to the chat war in words. I think that people from the first season look at all this with a wild laugh.

3. Lags, bugs and everything related to this. Two or three months ago, I already wrote a post about how much lags interfere, I play on PC. Can’t even imagine what the hell is going on with the guys on the Xbox, I am sorry for them. I’ll write again, the game is seriously lacking in normal optimization both in terms of ping and in terms of the graphic component. There is no breathtaking picture in the game, but the lags are like every pixel was made for some kind of ultra-super-nextgen project. Can we, the community of your game, hope in the new season not only for remaking the map, but also for normal optimization from the client side (in terms of graphic changes) and server optimization, normalization of ping for large Pvp hassles, for example? A large share of the lags is played by the fact that the game engine calculates the NPC aimbot very poorly. The more NPCs - the more lags and crashes. This applies to huge battles on ships. For example, imagine a battle of 25-30 ships, or rather galleons, more than 1k NPCs simultaneously in one sector, I’ll say more - you don’t need to imagine, just look at YouTube or the GMs guys will be present in spectator mode at one of these battles. Sea battles are certainly understandable, but imagine for a second that this is happening in the sector where all the islands are built up and they have at least the same number of NPCs. What will happen to the server in this case? Crash, crash after crash ... lag after lag. It is necessary to optimize it, please! #NeedForOptimization

As for bugs, a person who recently laid out everything on the shelves was doing a post here recently. But his post was deleted, probably due to the fact that it contained information on duplication, starting with sets of armor and ending with duplication of anything. Also in this post contained information on other bugs that no less need a fix. I really hope that before the post was deleted, at least they read it and use the information received for the benefit in order to eliminate the vile errors that currently exist in the project!

4. New content, in particular the addition of new types of ships and landing mechanics, hijacking, improved melee mechanics. Will this be done? If not after a wipe, then when? Can we hope the developers still stick to the roadmap they once announced? Forgive me if you have the impression of a very curious child who asks too many questions that are very difficult to answer right away. But, as you understand, there was no normal communication with the community, so I think that so many complaints and questions have accumulated. I'm not trying to offend the work of developers or somehow belittle it ... It’s just that the situation is that less and less people remain and support you. It is deplorable and very sad. The fewer people - the fewer potential beta testers who report problems and send bug reports. It’s very a pity your rather promising project, it is as if shouting to the developers: "Mom, I do not want to die!"

The request of those who read the post to support it please, peace my dudes!