Captain's Log 15: Treat me like a Pathfinder and Gimme dat Patch!

Ahoy Pathfinders!

Hang on... Captain’s Log on a Friday? Yes, it’s a little earlier than we had planned (first for everything, amirite?) but earlier this week we released a significant update based on Community feedback we had received as the game has now been available for two weeks.

We’re going to do a quick rundown of the updates leading to v9.3, as well as discuss our huge incoming patch, v10 which will drop anchor on Monday Noon EST (or around then at least, we’ll keep you posted on social media!)

All th' stuff 'n thin's

If you wanna skip the meal and just check out the changelog, you can do so here: 

As highlighted in previous Captain’s Log, our number one priority was making sure that the game was stable from a client and server perspective, that there would be minimum connection issues, and we’d be handling data issues with a broadside of fixes! Since the launch itself, the game has tremendously improved in all 3 of these areas. Our crashes have statistically reduced by 97%+, players can get in and fully experience the ATLAS, and as of v9.3, we have solved many critical cases where Company and Alliance data would have been lost. There are still many more things we want to do in this area in the coming days and weeks ahead -- you can expect us not to rest until server baseline performance and hitches are much further improved.

Released notes up to v9.3:

- Resolved massive server-side stalls related to perf large companies
- Company Member, Company Groups, and Alliance data loss issue should hopefully be resolved.
- Official Network Companies are now hard limited to 500 members, and this is a current measure until the Company system receives a backend overhaul in the long-term.
- Fixed some server crashes
- Slightly improved server performance and generally reduced server stalls

Upcoming changes in v10:

- General note regarding server performance improvements, stalls, connection issues, etc (We’re going to work on improving this constantly!)

However, that’s not all that we wanted to address! Since the launch, we have received so much support and feedback from our Community Hub, Steam Forums, Reddit, Discord, and social media. The team have been working hard on development, whilst watching with our prying eyes to see which to determine what needs addressing. Patches up to v9.3 and the incoming v10 have been planned to improve ATLAS’ as a game from its core based on most impactful, important, and how immediately we could see results. We won’t go into the thought-process details for each specific note, but we’ll try to give you guys a general idea around our decision making. 

Please note: these changes are not the only thing we’re going to do. There will be a boatload of updates following v10 too, every few days another major drop. ATLAS launched as an Early Access title, and we are a highly iterative development team. We’ll continue to pump out patches to improve the game and get it where it needs to be! So if there’s something in here you feel like we’ve missed, let us know on our Community Hub, Reddit, Discord, Twitter, etc. We’re watching like hawks and consuming like hogs; we will make adjustments; whether that’s introducing new things, tweaking, or taking a step back and redesigning. That’s what this development process is all about, shaping and growing the game rapidly with your input. It’s gonna get chaotic and messy at times, but we appreciate you weathering the storm as we sail into calmer waters!

Lemme be a pirate, Grapes!@# Games!

So two things. One of the coolest aspects, without a doubt, is that you can be a fully fledged pirate. You can captain a crew, sail one of many boats, have a fleet, hunt for treasure, explore and discover islands, pillage, plunder, salvage -- the list goes on! However, at launch, we perhaps made this a bit more difficult and tedious than it needed to be. We love being a bit hardcore but it was clear to us that adjustments were necessary. In no particular order...

Released notes up to v9.3:

- Default resource and taming speeds have been increased to 2x as the baseline.
- Sailing against the wind now provides 30% of with-the-wind sailforce, as opposed to 0%.
- Also increased the amount of sailforce provided by minimum windspeed conditions by 30%, and the sailforce provided by maximum windspeed conditions by 15%.
- Increased the base carry Weight of all ships by +40%

Upcoming changes in v10:

- There are 4x as many trade ships on the seas, and they now also sell commodity types for gold, as do NPC's at Freeports.
- You can now buy a "Ramshackle Sloop" from the NPC Shipyardsman at Freeports. The "Ramshackle Sloop" is a pre-built sloop which has permanently lower plank HP, carry weight, and crew limit, but is cheaper and faster to acquire if you want to get into sailing faster.
- Some ship costs have been adjusted, and in some cases reduced by approximately about 50%

We believe that these first steps will help us get players to experience the epic piracy side of the game much sooner, whilst overall not having too much of a heavy impact on our balance and design.

Captain Grapeshot, why do you hurt us with these hardcore mechanics?

Well, you know what they say… pain is love and love makes the world go ‘round. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

But in all seriousness, we can be a bit overzealous at times, what can we say? We like it a little rough but we understand when things go too far, sometimes it just takes the fun out and that’s when we need to consider, is this piece of the puzzle really worth it?

Sometimes aye, but also, sometimes nay! At times we should consider not punching people in the face when all they want to do is sail their raft and build a thatched home. What are some of the nays? Cooking, land ownership, survivalism, progression, and creature balance. Here are some of the adjustments we’re going to make to deal with the nay;

Released notes up to v9.3:

- Every Tame can now get a minimum of 30 tame level-ups put into it, plus however many base levels it had when wild. So for example, a level 5 wild wolf would get 35 tame level-ups to apply, whereas a level 40 wild wolf would get 70 tame level-ups to use. 
- Melee weapons are now temporarily ineffective against ship planks. Later this will be changed so that it will only be ineffective against anchored ship planks.
- Buffed Tamed creatures HP and Damage globally by 25%

Upcoming changes in v10:

- Claim Flags now allow a "Neutral Zone" setting which allows any other tribes to build within them, with the specified tax rate applied to them. You are also able to specify an inclusion or exclusion list to these, to only allow or exclude specific company ID's / player ID's. All claim flags will have this enabled as a default setting when placed, and this will also be a retroactive change. However, it will not function until Wednesday the 9th of January at NOON EST, where we will release another server update to make Neutral Zones active. This means you will have two days, from Monday to Wednesday, to decide and adjust the settings on your claim flag before the change is live.
- Enemy Claim Flags can now be directly pinged to identify any contesting enemies nearby, and the time required to steal an enemy claim now decreases the more Claims that enemy team has.
- Farming rebalances to be easier; water can now pipe uphill, region requirements for growing crops are more forgiving, and crop growth & yield is much faster and higher. 
- Reduced shovel stamina cost.
- You can now fill waterskins/jars from ground spouts.
- Metal Tools can no longer damage the planks of anchored ships.
- 50 more player levels added, and Skill Points per level increased.
- Loot stat scaling has been boosted (retroactively) by 60%
- Sea Monsters' damage has been reduced by 66%
- Animals health regen rebalanced, so they're not regenerating high amounts whilst in combat!
- Fixed up some temperature scalings and adjusted Fortitude stat effect

Alrighty, fair enough Grapeshot... but what else? Betcha didn't know that <thing> is <state>!

Yes, there are still a number of things we plan to address and change going forward. This isn’t the be-all end-all of our updates. There are more fixes, balance changes, new game features and content just beyond the horizon (basically daily) so if there’s something which you feel is important and we haven’t addressed, let us know. It might have been something we’ve overlooked, it might be something we’re tackling in an upcoming patch, it might be something we’re still sitting on to see how things fair, guess you could call us seafarers XD! 

You can be reassured that as each night passes, we’re fully dedicated to ensuring that ATLAS gets one step closer to becoming one of the most ambitious online worlds of all time and fulfilling its destiny as the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure! And on that note, here are some additional patch notes that we’ve made up to v9.3 or will be making in v10 such as addressing fire-from-the-depths-of-hell arrows and gatling mortars. These notes are pretty miscellaneous and tackle many things at once. 

Released notes up to v9.3:

- Reduced min damage and min percentage on flame arrow buff by 33%.
- Reduced max damage done on flame arrow projectile hit to 50.
- Increased gravity on flame arrows 20% to make it less ranged.
- Increased firegel cost of flame arrows by 100%.
- Added durability consumption to flame and stone arrows (1 dura per shot, 40 shots per bow repair).
- Change bow durability from 50 to 40.
- Fixed a bug which allowed Mortars to have rapid fire.
- Fixed alliance chat sometimes duplicating messages
- Fixed a bug where clients could end up invisible when demolishing a podium
- Default resource and taming speeds have been increased to 2x as the baseline.
- Fixed a bug which allowed Mortars to have rapid fire.
- Fixed inland water buoy's being invisible and fixed buoys, so they no longer prevent resource respawn.
- Prevent ship collision damage from occurring when caused by other player ships on PVE servers.
- Fixed sunken-ship area indicator lingering even after a shipwreck has been entirely salvaged.

Upcoming notes in v10:

 - All Cannons/Turrets can now be pin code protected for lever activation/deactivation
- Lawless servers can no longer be specified as Homeservers. If your Homeserver was a lawless server, you'll be required to pick a new (Freeport) Homeserver upon respawn.
 - "Favorites" server selection drop-down is added for Unofficial
- Joining through Steam browser server list with password now properly caches the password for ATLAS travel
 - Weather events are now indicated on the HUD
- Armour effectiveness will be adjusted so that firearms are more useful in PVP
- Fixed some bugs related to Sea Claims
- Eating poop is now instant-death
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't kill yourself by exhaustion (for stuck situations)

Show 'n Tell!

Hear ye, hear ye!

We be seekin’ fer the finest of ATLAS community creations! Show us yer mighty fleets, paint pieces, flags & sails, impenetrable forts, hellish tats, scenic screenshots, 'n entertainin' videos! Each week, we'll be runnin' a contest where we'll select th' best o' th' bunch 'n award tha winners wit' a cash prize!

Entries can be posted in the Creative Section, the Steam Workshop, or shared via social media. We’ve created a dedicated thread for submissions, don’t hesitate to show us what you’ve got cause we’ve seen some pretty cool stuff so far!

Alrighty, that ’s it for this post. We will have a general Captain’s Log on Monday, most likely late night as that’ll be patch day. Next week we’re also looking forward to getting the ATLAS Dev Kit into your content creator hands and seeing what amazing new gameplay mechanics and environments the community can come up with! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

‍For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information‍

Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit:https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
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