Captain's Log 19: The Golden Age of Piracy

Ahoy Pathfinders!

Over the past week, the crew have been engaged in deep discussion over our core design and philosophy of the game. We’ll be making changes based on your feedback and our internal reviews over the past 5 weeks. This Captain’s Log is going to go take a high-level look at our plans going forward!

 the Golden Age of Piracy! 

We recognize that the game has a lot of fun mechanics and gameplay that players enjoy, especially when you can live out your dreams of being a pirate. However, the feedback we often receive is that it’s too tailored to large companies, alpha groups, and hardcore players. 

A large number of you have expressed that you are unable to make enough progress to reach this stage of the game, due to our hardcore design. Our thinking going forward, with the community’s help and feedback, we plan to make the game less punishing and reduce the steep climb required for players to reach the parts of the game which make it special. This means we’re going to be changing core systems to ensure that those who do not have as much time to invest or play in small groups or as solo players are still able to experience the highs seas of ATLAS. 

For those of you in large companies, worry not, as you are still a fundamental part of our design and key to the game’s vision. We believe there are changes we can make which will make the game more immediately accessible for everyone and overall more enjoyable, without detracting from the heights that large and dedicated groups of players can achieve. All players will be able to experience the best parts of this humongous shared persistent world, whether you’re a solo player, a small group, a large company, or a multi-company alliance.

Some of our design changes will revolve around:

• Allowing players to experience the ‘piracy’ side of the game immediately, whilst not trivializing the content.
• Making sure that solo players and smaller groups feel safer when logging off, or that after they’ve taken a break they can come back and know that it won’t be such a difficult feat to get out on the seas again.
• Incentivize companies to neutralize their territories, inviting others to make use of their land so that both can benefit.
• More MMO aspects: player markets, player-specified automatic trade routes, additional quests, and daily missions

and we'll be continuing as always with:

• Continuous focus on bug/exploit squashing, stability, and performance.
• Relevant QOL and Content additions to meet game and community needs

We plan to have our first real serious round of adjustments with this philosophical change in mind around March (as we’re already well into preparing the February content update so that’ll proceed with some changes), and this will continue relentlessly going forward. 

 patch galore! 

Complete Patch Notes

Between now and February’s Mega update, you’ll see a number of patches which will help improve various aspects of the game based on your feedback.

V17 - ETA: LATE FEBRUARY

The update has had some slight changes to make it more aligned with our goals. Some aspects of the update remain as we see them as a necessity for the team to develop and understand core elements, such as the underwater experience with trenches and the submarine. Additionally, some content creation has been well underway for some time, and it isn’t the most efficient move to scrap them! However, the Mega March update and the ones to follow will focus more on our core design changes.

Planned Patch Notes:

New Features and Content
- New Feature: Daily Missions for players with unique and powerful rewards
- New Feature: 7 more ‘Main Quests’ which upon successful completion will provide their own unique Skill unlock
- New Structure: Guillotine. Hanging your foes in a noose taking too long? Off with their heads! 
- New Feature: Curses. Tied to the execution of players
- New Creature: Giant Crab. It can carry heavy loads, along with players, tames and wild creatures
- New Vehicle: Submarine. Explore the depths of the ocean in this small scouting submarine. No weapons on board, but it does have claw arms to help harvest the ocean floor and explore (demolish) shipwrecks
- New Structure: Bookshelf. Store and sort your high-quality maps and blueprints.
- New Environment: Deep Ocean Trench. A new area to explore, guarded by powerful underwater creatures and home to the new Giant Crab
- New Feature: Player shops in freeports. Players can set up automated shops in each Freeport, listing loot for sale and naming their own gold coin prices.
- New Cosmetics: Multiple Armor sets to customize the look of your company and crew! Provided as a permanent unlock for completing the Quests in addition to skill rewards.
- Ship of the Damned will now come in multiple size variations with different stats and difficulty levels.

QOL Changes
- Reorganized claim flag notifications, so they no longer clutter up the entire HUD when lots of messages are flying by
- Territory map will now display allies as teal-coloured
- Character creator now has a Height slider to make it easier to set your character's desired height
- Any dead ships (shipwrecks) from your Company appear with a unique icon on your map now, so you can find the wrecks
- Global territory message updating
- Currently contested claims will be indicated on the minimap
- ‘Search Members’ field added to Company UI
- Players can now mount a sail to directly control the sail's open/close amount and rotation settings in a more intuitive way.
- NPCs will be added to Freeports which will allow players to redesign their character's tattoos for a gold cost

And of course, note that these notes below will be a given on a regular basis:

- Server and Client performance improvements
- Server and Client stability improvements (crash fixing)
- Bug fixes & balance changes

GPU PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

In the coming days, we’ll be releasing a special beta branch which players can opt-into for a minor client-side update which should increase GPU performance by approximately 25%. We’ve been thoroughly testing this internally and it feels like it’s in a good place, however, we would like some feedback from you guys before shipping it live. When the client is available to download, we’ll put up a thread with instructions on how you can download it. You’ll still be able to play on the latest Official Network or the latest Unofficial Servers even if you’re using the beta client! 

WOOD, STONE, SAP, AND EXPLOSIVES

Our initial thought behind the change was that we wanted to buff Wood so that it was closer to Stone in terms of strength, so that early and midgame players would be at less of a disadvantage if they weren’t using stone. Whilst we’re not going to be entirely walking back this change, we think we may have overshot with our changes and as a result will be making some adjustments in an upcoming update.

We plan to address the availability of sap and also look at base defence which means possible changes explosives, and other gameplay mechanics encompassing raiding to see where else we want to make adjustments. It’s something we’re still exploring internally but plan to have patched relatively soon. It’s possible that our first round of changes may not be enough, and if so don’t worry, as we’ll continue to adjust as necessary.

WILD CREATURES

We want to make some adjustments to the power of wild creatures, including on Golden Age Ruin Servers. First of all, we wanted to hone in on the strength of alpha creatures. As of Monday, we released an update which significantly reduced the amount of power that Alpha creatures held, as well as how common they were. Going forward, we’ll be adjusting spawn-weighting across the map for all creatures so that you’ll encounter less giant groups wanting to murder your face. After making those changes, we’ll see where we need to go next but believe it’s a step in the right direction.

PVE UPDATES

There are some PvE specific changes we want to make as soon as possible. First of all, we want to create two server options, which will be enabled on our Official Network.

• Sleeping/logged off players will no longer be replicated on any grid (similarly to Freeports). This should improve server and client performance, as well reduce some cases of griefing.
• Force destruction of any character that hasn’t been logged onto in 3 weeks (2 weeks if it’s a Homeserver).

We’ll also be fixing a bug which allowed sleeping characters to contest claims, even if the claim has been inactive, so going forward only logged in characters will be able to contest claims.

LINUX SERVERS

Not much of an update here, we just want to acknowledge that our engineering team are looking into the major issues reported on Linux Servers and we hope to have these resolved as soon as possible. Thank you all for your feedback and reports, it won’t be long until you’re setting sail on the high seas of your unofficial servers!

COMPANY RANKINGS

Large companies are very much still a major part of the vision we hold for ATLAS. We believe that being able to conquer and maintain large territories is an important part of the game and we’ll be rewarding those who are able to do so. By this weekend, we’ll have released a patch that does the following:

• List current top 5 companies in-game on the map (names, soon to be flags)
• Have a historic archive of companies for when they ruled the ATLAS, using both in-game days and real-life time
• Special Cosmetic Icons will be given to members of top 5 companies, which can be turned off on a per-user basis

• Unique Cosmetic Figureheads will be granted to the top 5 companies and will remain persistent as long as the company maintains their ranking within the top 5 ASSETS

• Resolving the bug which prevents some Company Flags from displaying on playatlas.com!

We plan on introducing more features in the future to expand on how influential large companies can be with their territories, as well as additional incentivizes to be a part of the top 5 rankings. We’re toying with the idea of a neutral Company Hall, for the strongest and most influential to hold their diplomatic meetings, whether it’s over trade, peace, love, or war, because we know much you love your large gatherings ;)!

Lest we forget, a quick round-up of all the updates the game has seen since the previous Captain’s Log:

 released patch notes 

 current v16.26 

- Resolved a save-load issue with appended inventory engrams (Devkit Issue)

v16.25

- Fixed Water Spout inventories not appearing on PvE servers
- Eliminated frequent server crashes

v16.22

- Alpha Creature damage has been reduced by 50%
- Alpha Creature resistance has been reduced by 50%
- Alpha Creatures are now 25% less common

v16.21

- Server optimisations for structures (approximately 8% gain)

v16.2

- Dragon Tame Token costs 40k gold as intended
- Old "permanently unlocked" Power Stone Artifacts are removed (it was a bug that they were, some weeks ago, granted as a permanent character default item)
- Tamed Dragon movement speed reduced by 33%
- Tamed Dragon health reduced by 10%
- Tamed Dragon stamina reduced by 78%
- Tame Dragon Fire has 45% less lifetime

v16.14

- Fixed a server crash related to demolishing structures
- Fixed an exploit with Grapeshot that allowed it to be shot rapidly

v16

Server Changes

- Player Movement Optimisation for an approximate 15-20% performance gain on servers
- Server Launch Option which locks the Fountain of Youth to one Golden Age Ruins server:  -AlwaysActiveFountainsOfYouth

Balance Changes

Land

- Stone Structures crafting costs have decreased by reducing the metal cost by 55% and reducing the organic paste requirement by 25%

Ship

- Steering Wheels are now considered 'stone' when it comes to their defence type, so they cannot be hurt by fire and take less explosive damage

Creatures

- Dragon now has 65% less HP when Tamed
- Dragon now takes 40% more bullet and explosive damage when tamed
- Dragon now recovers stamina 25% more slowly when flying
- Dragon can no longer be healed by Nature's Touch
- Dragon tamed timer reduce from 8 hours to 6 hours
- Dragon Fire Damage reduced by 50%
- Dragon Token cost increased to 40,000 gold coins

v15.76

- Retroactively fixed an issue which destroyed all sails on rafts
- Retroactively fixed an issue which would prevent rafts and ramshackle sloops from sailing

v15.73

- Fixed a bug which allowed players to place multiple steering wheels on boats
- Fixed a bug which allowed players to bypass the Ship Sail Unit Limit. This is a retroactive fix.
- Removed the initial stamina cost for blocking

v15.67

 - Fixed a case where Steam clients sometimes were unable to connect to the servers. We recommend hosts upgrade to this version.

v15.63

- Discovery Zones now provide 1 Discovery Point per unlock
- Resolved some connection timeout issues.

v15.61

Server Changes

- Server optimisations to increase performance by approximately 5%
- Optimized transition data cleanup in Redis to avoid DB bloat.
- Server Listing for non-ATLAS servers has been rewritten and will list non-ATLAS servers immediately.

Fountain of Youth and Aging Changes

- Fountain of Youth is only usable if you're over age 90.
- Fountain of Youth is now available on two random Golden Age Servers.
- Old Age debuff has been reduced by 50%

Bug and Exploit Fixes

- Fixed a bug which made it so that beds and boats would not display on the map if they weren't in a company.
- Fixed a bug with the Drake which allowed it to phase through structures
- Fixed a bug which allowed players to have more beds on their boat than permitted, this is a retroactive fix.

Balance Changes

Land

- Increasing explosive damage to stone structures by 2.5x.
- Increasing seige structure damage to stone structures by 60%
- Wood Land Structure has been buffed to provide better resistance to siege weapon types by 40%.
- Wood Land Structures have been buffed to provide better defence against all non-explosive/siege damage types by 50%.
- Stone Structures crafting costs have been increased by adding metal cost, and changing fiber requirement to organic paste, which requires both fiber and sap to craft
- Thatch Structures have had their crafting costs reduced by 3x.
- NPCs mounted on Puckles are now invincible

Ship

- Ships can only receive damage from collision encounters with other ships if they're of the same or a greater weight class (deals with cheesy cheap ramshackle builds to sink bigger boats).

Galleon - Weight class 5
Brig - Weight class 4
Schooner - Weight class 3
Sloop (Ramshackle) - Weight class 2
Raft - Weight class 1
Dingy - Weight class 0
Creatures

- Drake balances adjustments (10% less HP, 10% less damage, and double stamina cost for using fire breath)
- Magical tames can no longer be used in boss fights and will be destroyed when used inside the dome (Drakes)

Misc Changes

- BattlEye has been updated to now support Windows Insider Builds.
- Resolved multiple Devkit crashes.
- Updated latest translations: German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Ukranian, and Chinese
- Discovery Zones now count as 3 Discovery Points instead of 1. Players no longer need to discover all zones to reach max level. Not a retroactive change. This value can be adjusted for Unofficial Servers here:

Game.ini:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
MinPointsPerDiscoveryZone=3 

This is just the tip of the iceberg for our upcoming plans and over time we’ll be sharing more and working closely with you to ensure that ATLAS gets one step closer to becoming one of the most ambitious persistent online worlds of all time and fulfilling its destiny as the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure!

 Dynamic atlas maps round-up 

The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands. 

Each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim. 

Those who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges…

The companies that have occupied islands for a certain period of time will soon gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land! 

Remember you can don your Company’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP] The Whale's Wrath

Held: French & Ships, Bad Company, ETERNIA, The French Monkeys, IVANARMY, and ENSLAVED.

Arrivals: Frogues Orientales, Goulou Goulou, Future, and Les Spectres.

Departures: XSM???, BLDX DouYuTV 56887, Chem B, and LEGION.

[NA PVP] The Kraken's Maw

Held: Dynasty, High Seas Booty Bandits, TPG, CSTG, Barry Sails, OWO, No No No, and The Federation

Arrivals: The Cartel and Black Butterfiy ?BB???

Departures: SNC, and Destiny.

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following Companies for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren's Call

Held: Compagnie des Indes, Rum ueber Bord, Future Company (HUN), Fenrirs Dogs, SouL SanD, Dos Bros$ and SwiftS.RU.

Arrivals: Phantasia, JomsViking, and Black Hand

Depatures: Paragon, Tacorsair, and Woelfe des Rudels.

[NA PVE] The Hydra's Den

Held: Scales & Sails, The Exiles, Atlas Shrugged, East India Trading Co, Paragon, Narcos, Lotus, and Darksea Dawgs.

Arrivals: Without Divide and Sons of Orion.

Departures: Dead Men Floating and CN- adilt supplies.

 Show 'n Tell Showcase #3 

Avast, Pathfinders and welcome to the results of our first Show n' Tell Showcase 

Yer entries to the Showcase shivered our timbers. 'twas a challenge to select jus' a few! We look forward to seein' what the community create in the future. Keep yer one good eye cast on the Creative sub forum and have your mighty fleets, paint pieces, flags & sails, impenetrable forts, hellish tats, scenic screenshots, 'n entertainin' videos ready to share for next week's Showcase. Congratulations to our winners who have scored themselves cash prizes!

Winners

TOTRIDER

Totrider's thoughtful tour through their Company's building process, ships and village really impressed us. The dedication and time involved is evident and something of which they should be proud. You can check out the entire post here

VADEARLST

This ominous homage to the hangman is spot on with the composition, tone and colour. It reminded us of the cover of a Viking metal album!

TACTICALNATTY

The ambience in this serene pic is palpable, we want to pay it a visit.

SEEROWER

Where's the bucket?

MIEKKA

We think this quaint build and its' extensive adjoined harbour is pretty cool. Blackstorm Castle best castle!

Honourable Mentions

MAKO

MASTERA86

MELORA

COBOLMOON

MOETEL

That wraps up this weeks' showcase. Congratulations to those of you we've featured! We’re looking forward to seeing what amazing new art the community can come up with next week!

Sail across to the submission thread if you would like to check out all of the past week's fantastic entries. 

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! 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

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