DEV Q&A - ASK A PIRATE DAY #6

4 hours ago, QUSP COLOSSAL said:

Even if it is interior or exterior from this video I'd be happy 

Thanks for the update Conch & Devs!

But... Wow. These guys (Darkside RP) get it, you need to watch this. I'd recommend that you halt new content, and shift to solely optimization, bug fixing, and increasing the capability of your dev kit. There is no shame in making a great foundation for a game and then handing off more control to your players to mod. There are several  developers that do this, and are very successful. It won't be easy if you've already budgeted and planned out your roadmap for development that includes content development and overhauling game mechanics. You'll also need to consider how to support console mod support as they're your growth market. Ramping down your official servers is another cost saving perk as the modded player run servers take over.

Reducing customization of ships, and sea tames to pull ships. Two points in your Q&A highlight the classic error in development, I see it again and again. On one hand you're steering away from the original core game, while adding new content that destabilizes & dilutes the scope of the game.

Do this- go back to the original Atlas trailers. Consider what attracted 40,000 excited players. What kind of game did they expect to play? What are the remaining active players holding out hope for? You're making the game that you think they want to play, and that's fair, but frankly you're missing the mark. I expect to see the same cycle of player population up and down after updates and wipes, but overall downward with your current strategy.

TL;DR - If you don't understand the game that your players want to play, then focus on your dev kit and divert resources to optimization & bug fixes.

It would be nice to see some more realistic Pyrate ships available. The fantasy theme is ok, but not everyone wants to sail around in a ship that looks like it was built for squidly diddly.

23 hours ago, J.Dawson said:

Yall stupid fucks, changing the ship building system? That was the selling point of the game. 
As costumizable as you possibly can make without breaking the limits of whats possible. 
Fix bugs first before adding new content to the game that is already broken. (nvm just remembered yall developing is just adding more bugs to the game) 

learn to read you meatball head

17 hours ago, protozz said:

I play pve not pvp and I can play but its retarded how its set up were u don't have to do a thing but log in once ever week and a half move gold from warehouse and log out.     So u really think ppl who don't play holding islands makes ppl want to ay pve

Owning land on pve is completely useless. The single advantage owning land gives you doesn’t matter on pve. 

Take care my fellow forum members.

If anyone receives an acknowledgement and a "thank you for your advice" from the devs be sure to let us all know...

@Grendalsh laughed so apparently the developers have heeded his suggestions. He took all the time and energy to type up his feedback. Thats how an appreciative community leaders should respond, correct? With silence, right?

They've got 2 years worth of comments right here the developers could skim but ,uh, now they need you to type it on discord... and, um, fill out some surveys..

Lord knows that during the 18 months I've been reading these forums daily that the community here has been crying out for Ramming Galleys and tamable Sea Horses...

I've given them well over a year to acknowledge that I may have some valuable advice to offer, but, apparently, it either inconveniences them to speak directly, privately or, more likely, they're not listening.

Once again take care y'all. Just remember, true friends tell you the truth, even if it's bitter.

I'll visit from time to time

Well, at the moment i just secure the gold from my warehouse once a day. I no longer travel out to explore other islands and get different wood from there for better equipment.

I dont farm ressources as my farmhouses do that for me.

I not even dig for treasury, as it is easier just to use trade to build up a gold stock.

The last once stuff remaining is building custom ships with intelligent armor\cannon design to smoke all these easy-play teen boys.

Now it seems this last fun factor is taken away with the „new ship system“.

The only good new stuff are the armored docks, the ships inside are my bases.

See the point ? Land bases are a joke in PVP, my superfortresses did not even last 5 minutes versus small raiding teams.
-NPC turrets are outranged, not only by mortars but also regular cannons

- stone hp is a joke

@Gortok & dev leadership

     Last bit of free advice. If you are skeptical that there is a G.O.AT. way of proceeding that I can assist with, we should open up a 4th server with our merged concepts and let the players vote with their feet.

     Sometimes you just need a bit of faith and have to invest some money to make some money.

     Also, just because I curse like R Lee Ermy sometimes on here doesn't mean Im not a sweetheart to work with.

Off I go. Either your listening, have a functional chain of command and ya contact me... or.. well, whatever.

If you take away the ability to free build ships just because of a few people using exploits you will lose your player base. No one wants cookie cutter ships that you buy from a vending machine. Instead of punishing those that do crazy exploits you punish everyone and stifle all creativity. Believe me if you take away free build and I cannot build how I like to and customize my review will change everywhere where I have left a good review for this game and I will warn people to stay away. You cater FAR too much to the whiner and complainers instead of just dealing with the exploiters head on and making an example of them specifically by wielding the ban hammer and banning them from your official servers. Hopefully this won't affect anything but your nasty official servers which I don't play on anyways and I will continue to enjoy playing the game I love how I love it on unofficial servers. Literally played on official for maybe 2 weeks and will NEVER go back!  Let us free build and make the  crazy exploiters walk the plank! You but off your nose to spite your face otherwise...

Ship building is my favourite part of the game, however as i've said before I would settle for less build capabilities for more realistic and customisable ships. The thing is a ship hasn't just got an exterior, it has an interior too. Same goes for buildings. If we are gonna lose something in the build ability then we need ships that are worth the sacrifice. That means cabin and interior furnishings and other changeable details to me. Not just hollow shells. And if that  fantasy squid bucket is gonna be an example of the ships we can get, then i'd rather stick to building my own. Being an artist myself I know first hand that you can sometimes take ideas too far. I'm surprised the masts aren't giant tentacles too. look at the ships in black flag! they almost make me drool.

On 2/5/2021 at 8:21 PM, protozz said:

Could u fix this anyone can turn your farms off. Its causing alot of problems on pve. If that was addressed it was not fixed. I have fuel i have nothing in it. And ppl walk up trolling turning it off. Also not the only person having the issue

They did it was terrible because while they can turn them off, they can also turn them on. 

On 2/5/2021 at 10:16 PM, UnderTaker905 said:

If you're talking about the farmhouses being turned on/off by random trolls, I do believe they've already taken care of that previously. Otherwise your farmhouse will turn itself off if any of the following happen: It runs out of fuel, it reaches its weight capacity, or it reaches storage capacity.

This is still broken by the way.  You can turn on/off any farmhouse regardless of ownership, and also in PVP.

On 2/5/2021 at 12:24 PM, ATLAS said:

Are there any plans for more "old style" ships to be released (build from frame up ones) or will all future ones at this point be prebuilt?
The new system contemplates a more modular design that isn't as intricate as the old system and isn't "prebuilt". For now they are as we work on the system, but ultimately it will be a modular system that allows you to swap components and create ships with different functions without allowing for the crazy exploits that the current system permits.  It will also be more performant which should improve frame rate.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Backup, listen to your players and realize this is a huge mistake. I can appreciate the idea this would improve performance, but you MUST reconsider this change. It is a game killer. You're going to piss off all of the people who pay you. The current customizable ships is a HUGE selling point for Atlas. If there are exploits, fix them. Don't throw a bomb at it. If you change this, it will mean great damage to Atlas' success. Atlas has a lot of promise, but your development team/leadership is completely Lost at Sea. 

This decision, Grapeshot's incredibly high employee turnover rate, a decision to use a Google form (!?) to accept bug reports, complete lack of acknowledgement or organization of feedback, and the state of this game after 2 years of early access shows major deficiencies in your ability to recognize what is important in game development. Please get yourselves under control and hire competent, experienced, game development leadership. I've been in the video game industry and have 20 years of UX experience and I cannot believe anyone who knows what they're doing would think this is the right move. It is completely backwards.

@Captain Dingbat

      I've stated that I have the concept solution that they need for over a year now and haven't recieved a singly inquiry. It's not like these message boards are on fire either. I've seen days pass with zero posts.

     I guess Discord, Facebook and Twitter are giving them one hell of a kickback. They're GIVING AWAY all their user communications, ad revenue and GENERAL CONTROL to their future competition. For sale to the highest bidder.

     Simple monitoring would show I've visited this site almost everyday since the season 3 wipe. 2400+ game hours between 2 accounts since Season 3. PvP and PvE. Its like a restaurant chain giving away free samples and then ignoring the sample feedback.

     Dunno if they're scared to engage the audience on the message boards due to some bad legal advice, a break in the chain of command, or if they're trying the old interrogation trick of using silence to get someone to blurt out info.

     I actually agree that modular building on both sea and land could be the way to go if they implement it correctly. However I catch more lag walking by a single armored dock than 5 gallys.. hence some cautious skepticism. Either way they're still only nibbling the edges of whats possible. I'm 45 years old and in video game development those should be counted in dog years.. but, alas, we talk while they fiddle

On 2/5/2021 at 11:16 PM, Reeking cannonbait said:

If you followed the patches and updates and utilized the new trade system you wouldn’t have to sail across the map for wood. If you don’t want any risk go play pve gold is super easy to come by and shouldn’t have trouble collecting gold through maps and whales in a few hours. Gold cost is good for the game! 

Have you even played pve unless your a mega tribe  then there’s literally no land to build on and 18k for brig and 50k for galleon  it makes farming for gold extremely hard by time consuming especially if your someone who has job many people have only a few hours to play the game the gold for ships should only be there if you wanted to buy. The ship  if your still doing grind for it it seems pointless  and if they did it to stop ship spamming you could have made a  ship limit per tribe right now they took fun out of the game used to love sailing the seas in my galleon  and taking my brig for whaling but now by time you start up  there’s no way to take advantage of trade system islands are two small and crowded and many owners kick you off if you try to build

57 minutes ago, SpeedyStar said:

Have you even played pve unless your a mega tribe  then there’s literally no land to build on and 18k for brig and 50k for galleon  it makes farming for gold extremely hard by time consuming especially if your someone who has job many people have only a few hours to play the game the gold for ships should only be there if you wanted to buy. The ship  if your still doing grind for it it seems pointless  and if they did it to stop ship spamming you could have made a  ship limit per tribe right now they took fun out of the game used to love sailing the seas in my galleon  and taking my brig for whaling but now by time you start up  there’s no way to take advantage of trade system islands are two small and crowded and many owners kick you off if you try to build

There is tons of land in lawless and your first mistake was playing pve where you are missing out on half the game. There is always somewhere to build.  On pvp where the game is much more risk we had schooners on day one and brigs on day 3 by whaling with sloops and common maps. The only excuse on pve since there is literally no risk is you’re lazy. I gathered all the gold for a brig in about 6 hours on pvp. In pve you can anchor anywhere overnight if you have limited playtime and at most take 2 days if you can play 2-3 hours a day. Take a trip to j9 set up a little base on a iceberg and farm whales for a day or two and you will have your gold. Easy. 

Tbh there is so much missing from Atlas now anyway. We could have rare game hunting for trophies, Fishing for rare fish. Stranded sailor quests, etc. I know the devs seem to want to hijack a sea of thieves style, but in sea of thieves you at least get your ship back if you sink. And there are more skins to get. Quests etc. Yeh sure even sea of thieves is getting complaints about being boring but that's cos its pvp based. And all the rest of the additions are secondary to that. I understand Atlas has a small dev team. But if they don't pull something decent outa davy's locker soon the game might just sink beyond salvage. I'd love to see Atlas turn around and become a really good bona fide Pyrate game. Ps cannonbait, calling pve players lazy is just dumb. Not everyone wants to do battle with abusive players and griefers when they get home from work, especially if your work is intreracting with the public all day. Some people just don't want to hassle anyone else. That is their choice. Some kids pull the legs offa spiders, some keep them as pets, and some run away.

3 minutes ago, Whitehawk said:

Tbh there is so much missing from Atlas now anyway. We could have rare game hunting for trophies, Fishing for rare fish. Stranded sailor quests, etc. I know the devs seem to want to hijack a sea of thieves style, but in sea of thieves you at least get your ship back if you sink. And there are more skins to get. Quests etc. Yeh sure even sea of thieves is getting complaints about being boring but that's cos its pvp based. And all the rest of the additions are secondary to that. I understand Atlas has a small dev team. But if they don't pull something decent outa davy's locker soon the game might just sink beyond salvage. I'd love to see Atlas turn around and become a really good bona fide Pyrate game.

Pvp based is the best part of the game, that is your endgame. Ships are cheap I don’t want a game that holds my hand and gives me my ship back for sucking and sinking. It’s a pirate game there is suppose to be risk and that is the best part. 

17 hours ago, Ranger1k said:

 

I've been hearing you talk about your idea for a while, but I dont recall you ever explaining it. I read a lot of too long posts where people throw up thier ideas. Some are good and interesting, some are lame. Then you get the despicable factions people who would kill the sandbox style for thier own pirate theme park.

The thing is you can't say you have an answer on a public forum, then never provide your feedback. This isn't a direct line to the devs, it's a public forum, for us to share ideas and concerns amongst each other and with the devs and cm's.

You know they read and act, even if the pace is slower than we would prefer.

We asked for barrels to be taken out of cannons. We got it.

We asked for better farming parody. We got it.

We said , whoa, too much glider nerf. They unnerfed it slightly.

We've been complaining about performance and lack of ship selection for years now.  They introduce new and more ships comming out that will improve performance and now there are assholes bitching about it, and saying they don't read and it will kill the game.

All of these actions were and are, openly and heavily discussed on these very forums.

I believe, because of the evidence listed above, that your best chance of having your idea implemented would be to detail it and advocate for it. Rather than hint at it and demur about it.

I honestly look forward to reading it because i think you put more time and thought into this game than anyone else I know of.

I would like to say, that we have been asking for more realistic Pyrate ship types. I dont remember anyone suggesting a greek trireme or a giant octopus container !

55 minutes ago, Reeking cannonbait said:

There is tons of land in lawless and your first mistake was playing pve where you are missing out on half the game. There is always somewhere to build.  On pvp where the game is much more risk we had schooners on day one and brigs on day 3 by whaling with sloops and common maps. The only excuse on pve since there is literally no risk is you’re lazy. I gathered all the gold for a brig in about 6 hours on pvp. In pve you can anchor anywhere overnight if you have limited playtime and at most take 2 days if you can play 2-3 hours a day. Take a trip to j9 set up a little base on a iceberg and farm whales for a day or two and you will have your gold. Easy. 

Lawless zones are crowded from beginning  and obviously you did not read. I don’t have all time in world to play. Pve is best place to play with out having to worry about being wiped by trolls while I work 7-10 hour days  unlike you I have life outside of atlas 

Let's have a conversation here Grapeshot.

When ATLAS was first announced, the trailer featured a pirate port with pistol duels and gallows. It featured a host of mythical beasts, all deeply unfriendly. It featured epic naval battles on ships that looked like ships.

Later, we are told, (in a very obscure way) about the lore and how the Damned and Kraken tie into it all. Most people are either ignorant to the lore, or think "hey that's neat."

Some time down the line, we get the Trench. Visually, it's beautiful. Unfortunately, despite being at the sea floor, it's shallow as a puddle.

 It was also at this point the animals started to become more of a focus. The crabs were a weird choice. They serve no real purpose to players. They're just an ARK boner.

Some time later, I don't really remember when, we get the Snow Cave. Fantastic looking dungeon. Terrible choice of occupants. Why the hell is it full of animals, when it could be full of NPC pirates, with a final boss called Frostbeard or something?

So let's fast forward to now.

It's quite a thing to allow people to tame dolphins and seahorses. I get it, someone on the team REALLY likes Aquaman. So, why then, have you not provided more Atlantis-themed content than the one Trench? Why are none of the buildings in that trench open to exploration? The possibility for story-telling in a sunken lost city is immense. Capitalise on it. Here's some ideas;

• Open the buildings up to exploration, rewarding Atlantean themed loot. Remove the skins from the vendor. Let people find Atlantean armour down in the trenches. Tridents. Diaries. Food and drink recipes. Skins for cannons. Statues that can be reforged into figureheads.
• Rare spawn Lost Atlanteans who can be subdued by reducing their health and recruited to crew your ship, stronger than regular crewmen.
• Doors that lead to mini-dungeons that can only be completed on foot.
• Quest givers. Maybe a sad, lonely, Atlantean warrior who remembers the war that destroyed the city and asks you to find relics of the past.
• Or hell, why not have the hecking City of Atlantis be a random encounter at sea. Imagine the spectacle of an entire city of ghosts rising out of the water for your crew to explore.

All of those things sound a lot more interesting than using a dolphin or seahorse as an outboard motor. P.S. A cryopod equivalent would be immensely useful, especially with sea tames. And we all know it does wonders for server lag. So hey, there's another; The Atlanteans had Soul Spheres that they used to safely store and transport their aquatic buddies.

The Snow Cave. A beautiful dungeon full of opportunity for story telling. Instead, yetis. Why is there an abandoned city under the ice? Who lived here? What did they leave behind? Was it pillaged? By pirates? Where are they? Why is there only one dungeon???

This is ever the problem with the game. NONE of the ideas you have get fleshed out, there is just the bones of an idea.

Ships.

So recently, we've finally got a new ship. It's a mixed bag.

On the one hand, the new damage system is great. More patching holes, less vanishing planks. On the other hand, a massive shield box on the front of it, holding 2 large cannons?

On one hand, oars! Yay! Alternative locomotion! (P.S. Where are our paddle wheels and steam engines?) On the other hand, incredibly limited ability to design the ship yourself.

If personalised designs are the issue, implement fixes to them rather than trying to circumvent it by killing the system a lot of people enjoy. No walls outside of ship rail bounds. Cannons can't be placed above other cannons on the same deck. Or, let's go full Conan Exiles and require structural stability.

The Kraken Ship. So much potential. Could have been a nice ship for those that don't want to spend time building one, fitting in size between sloops and schooners. Torpedoes though? I'm not convinced pirates used many torpedoes, especially ones that have missile guidance. Why not just allow people to put cannons on it?

Regarding Torpedoes, if they're needed in the game (spoiler; they're not) why aren't there options for a more basic torp launcher that just fire in a straight line once launched? Torp and launcher itself just made of good ol' brass or something. Similar deal with the submarine. The original single man sub would fit great in the game for salvaging and trench exploration, and was basically a bicycle inside an iron ball with a breathing line. 

I could go on, but to summarise; stop half-assing things. Whole-ass one thing at a time. Expand on your ideas, rather than constantly adding new flavours to an already very jumbled soup. There are so many good ideas, but none of them are explored even close to their full potential and that is a huge shame. Remember the original direction of the game that got people excited. Expand on that. 

1 hour ago, Chucksteak said:

I've been hearing you talk about your idea for a while, but I dont recall you ever explaining it....

I believe, because of the evidence listed above, that your best chance of having your idea implemented would be to detail it and advocate for it. Rather than hint at it and demur about it.

I honestly look forward to reading it because i think you put more time and thought into this game than anyone else I know of.

     First off thank you @Chucksteak for inquiring about my "idea" and secondly thank you for acknowledging that I've been quite dedicated to this games development process for a while now.

      First off a statement of intent is in order. Definitions if you will.

My desire is to be asked to join the development team as a consultant. To assist them in focusing their attention on the correct details, motivating the staff and regaining the respect of the players. A guiding hand if you will.. With this goal in mind I have done the following...

1. I have offered tons of free advice as an act of good faith and to ingraciate myself with players. In various threads I've also added to the advice already being given or offered alternative solutions. Assisted new players with troubleshooting. Verified bugs and reported them using the link here in the threads. Having been ignored completely by the developers and often not receiving feedback from the one-off new player asking the question I've stopped doing that. Apparently GS would rather let threads go unanswered and pay MULTIPLE people to run Discord, Facebook and Twitters business' for them.. No updated beginning guide. No moderator providing even the simplest of answers... Basically I stopped working for free.

2. I've given the developers plenty of free ideas, once again, as a show of good faith.

      a. Flintlocks and rifles should double as a club when empty (simply press power hit/ block buttons)

      b. We have a "beast mastery" tree. Some people love the tames. Other people feel they're OP and dislike them. I proposed a "beast-slayer" or "big-game hunter" spec as a counter balance. Simply put, being, specced into it would provide increased damage versus animals balancing the scales...

      c. Discussed the "exponential growth" dilemma on PvE regarding tames AND the monumental time investment that restricts casual players ability to partake. Offered a multi prong solution.. Simply put we "age" in this game, animals should also. Furthermore the "wandering to mate" system should be replaced with a random (RNG based) "in heat" system. Miscarriages, infertility and mate rejection should also occur. Then the associated time sink could be adjusted.

      d. Proposed that the "achievements" system be adjusted. If I defeat the Kraken for example let ME choose MY reward. The generic name I used was "Boss Points". Maybe I want a sub or maybe I want torpedos. Also let it be respecced.

      e. Recently proposed that the trade system be implemented in a different manner. Trade should COST money, not create it. Also the absolutely terrible UI should be changed to function more like a stock market. Offer your goods up and let people fill the order or pass. Let them shop and bid.

      f. Passive income should be provided via gold (and SILVER) bullion deposits scattered high and low around the map. Attach a widget with an NPC and gold gets deposited. Let us players have generic little taverns, bakeries, tailors and even brothels in our little settlements to generate passive income.

We both know this list could go on... and on...

     Now, please remember, these are the ideas I've given FOR FREE. As a show of good faith. If that doesn't wet the appetite for my most SIGNIFICANT idea, well (speaking to @Gortok and the dev team) too fucking bad.

It may be copyrightable. Pretty sure its novel and I KNOW its worth millions.

No more free shit.

I'm taking that idea with me, or, they pay me for it.

This post is too long already, besides, @Chucksteak i know their lights are on, but, I don't know if anyones home. Understand now my friend?

Sorry Ranger but you can't copyright ideas for a product you do not own. How do you think bethesda got all the free downloadable content? Also an idea in itself is very hard to prove authorship of. I have been doing design work for companies since I was 16, I am now in my 50's. and if I could get paid for every time one of my designs or ideas has been used or blatantly stolen I would be a millionaire by now.

@Whitehawk

Trust me its VERY much a possibility.

     Its applicable to ANY game, not just Atlas. Also it's not about the Copyright, GS legal can check for that golden egg, as stated, my goal is a consulting contract..

Example: TiVo owns the copyright on the DVR, so, ANYONE that provides DVR service is legally obligated to pay TiVo.

If you think I'm mistaken please feel free to elaborate, it is appreciated, however may I first suggest you watch the movie titled The Pirates of Silicon Valley. Quite the coincidental title, LOL.

     Also as a sidenote, your point provides zero reason for me to give it away for free and actually reinforces my position. You get PAID for your ideas... You haven't been doing the work for free have you?

Of course I have been paid for a lot of the work I do, or I would not do it. But I have known companies and agents i've worked through to blatantly steal my ideas and it would be my word against theirs. Intellectual copyright is a very hard thing to prove. If you were to have your own Pyrate game in developement and you put the ideas you had for Atlas into that then the ownership would be legally your own. Since they relate to your own property, eg game. However if you state on an Atlas ideas forum that the devs should do this or that with their game and they do, then legally you are in a very grey area indeed when it comes to ownership rights. Lets be honest some of us know that our ideas on here have been taken on board by the game devs and utilised. However Atlas is their game and the suggestions we make exist only within that context. ie no Atlas or forum, means would the ideas have still come into being or have any relevance elsewhere? ie a different game. Like I say intellectual copyright is a minefield.