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The reality of ATLAS

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I don't think it's a lack of a roadmap.  They knew exactly what they wanted to do.  Make a PvP sandbox game with a massive map where large guilds/clans could fight it out for domination.  Also add some PvE boss fights.  Basically Ark, but making server transfers that much easier.  Unfortunately I think they really missed what made Ark a success.  Hint: It wasn't people playing in Alpha Tribes on the official servers.  The official server population in Ark makes up about 15% of the people playing at any given time.  As for Atlas, it was around 65% on the four official servers.  It's been around 55% since single player has become available.  

 

Because so few people actually play on Ark Official servers, the Ark devs (who's management and much of the creative team created Atlas) never felt the need to make Official servers playable for a wider array of people.  And because each server can only hold 70-100 people it doesn't really matter as the 6500-9000 can fill up quite a few official servers.  Or at least give a large number of them good player density.  Though in Atlas, where the game world can handle up to 35k and you have four servers, 1500-3500 players at peak doesn't make for high population densities.  

 

It's not that they didn't have a roadmap, it's the concept was faulty from the beginning.  They didn't analyst Ark's success.  Which is heavily reliant on single player and unofficial servers.  And in creating the Atlas world map as they have, it means you won't get the same game play experience as you do on the official servers.  With Ark, every map is the same, official or unofficial.  You can have the same, or even an enhanced experience.  I've spent quite a few hours on unofficial Atlas servers and they are missing way too much.  Now they are stuck with no clear way forward because they don't even understand the nature of the problem.

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Great post with interesting points. Food for thought. One question: How did you arrive at the 15% of Ark’s playerbase being official number, because I never found a reliable source for that info or came up with an accurate way to guesstimate it, and I was always curious.

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1 hour ago, boomervoncannon said:

Great post with interesting points. Food for thought. One question: How did you arrive at the 15% of Ark’s playerbase being official number, because I never found a reliable source for that info or came up with an accurate way to guesstimate it, and I was always curious.

Kinda guesstimated it.  I'd look at the total concurrent players on Steam, then I would load into Ark.  I would sort the official servers by player count.  Then I would try to count how many were nearly full, 50%, 25% full, how many below 10% and how many are empty.

 

I'm going to try to get a better count using battlemetrics and a spreadsheet.

 

Edit: Just got 17.19%, though that's still a rough number and around 54% on officials on Atlas.  I'm going get more data the next few days.

Edited by Slash78

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1 hour ago, Slash78 said:

I don't think it's a lack of a roadmap.  They knew exactly what they wanted to do.  Make a PvP sandbox game with a massive map where large guilds/clans could fight it out for domination.  Also add some PvE boss fights.  Basically Ark, but making server transfers that much easier.  Unfortunately I think they really missed what made Ark a success.  Hint: It wasn't people playing in Alpha Tribes on the official servers.  The official server population in Ark makes up about 15% of the people playing at any given time.  As for Atlas, it was around 65% on the four official servers.  It's been around 55% since single player has become available.  

 

Because so few people actually play on Ark Official servers, the Ark devs (who's management and much of the creative team created Atlas) never felt the need to make Official servers playable for a wider array of people.  And because each server can only hold 70-100 people it doesn't really matter as the 6500-9000 can fill up quite a few official servers.  Or at least give a large number of them good player density.  Though in Atlas, where the game world can handle up to 35k and you have four servers, 1500-3500 players at peak doesn't make for high population densities.  

 

It's not that they didn't have a roadmap, it's the concept was faulty from the beginning.  They didn't analyst Ark's success.  Which is heavily reliant on single player and unofficial servers.  And in creating the Atlas world map as they have, it means you won't get the same game play experience as you do on the official servers.  With Ark, every map is the same, official or unofficial.  You can have the same, or even an enhanced experience.  I've spent quite a few hours on unofficial Atlas servers and they are missing way too much.  Now they are stuck with no clear way forward because they don't even understand the nature of the problem.

Think you're giving private servers abit more credit than they deserve.  Sure many were running for several months.. but eventually,  with 5x harvesting, taming etc which nearly all of them had, people got bored faster and moved away.  Where as officials tended to have smallers pops, but they lasted for years.  Well at least 2-3.  I've seen people go and make their own private several times over my stay on a single map. 

I think the biggest boon tho, to ark, is the ability to move between map worlds with all your favourite tames, with comparitive ease, using the gate system.  And later, by freezing them and walking over.. this allowed people to play on all the expansions without having to continually retame or restart, to a degree.. I seem to remember ark blocking transfers for several months after inital releases.  Just goes to show that buying a game as soon as it releases, doesn't pay off.

The biggest problem private servers did deliver on tho, was youtube videos falsely promoting the game, with many tubers using cheats to make the game look easy along with alot of people on private servers claiming this was easy that was easy this was hard etc and not listening to people on officials at all, infact it honestly felt like we were completely ignored.  Officially.   Nothing was ever done about spamming or duping or any of the various other exploits that a private server can actively hunt down and terminate.  There were a few large groups who were eliminated by devs for exploiting etc but they were rare occasions.

I do feel that Atlas is Ark 2.0 but without the useful dinos.

Overall I think Atlas/Ark 2.0 is better than Ark 1.0  We'd been asking for ships in ark.. since well.. the 2nd day into EA.. Now we have them.. people want to play ark again.

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I've had to restart on enough unofficial servers to know all about them.  You say I'm giving them too much credit, but the majority of people playing Ark at any given time are on private servers.  They have been the drivers behind Ark's success.  Not the official servers.

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33 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Think you're giving private servers abit more credit than they deserve.  Sure many were running for several months.. but eventually,  with 5x harvesting, taming etc which nearly all of them had, people got bored faster and moved away.  Where as officials tended to have smallers pops, but they lasted for years.  Well at least 2-3.  I've seen people go and make their own private several times over my stay on a single map. 

I think the biggest boon tho, to ark, is the ability to move between map worlds with all your favourite tames, with comparitive ease, using the gate system.  And later, by freezing them and walking over.. this allowed people to play on all the expansions without having to continually retame or restart, to a degree.. I seem to remember ark blocking transfers for several months after inital releases.  Just goes to show that buying a game as soon as it releases, doesn't pay off.

The biggest problem private servers did deliver on tho, was youtube videos falsely promoting the game, with many tubers using cheats to make the game look easy along with alot of people on private servers claiming this was easy that was easy this was hard etc and not listening to people on officials at all, infact it honestly felt like we were completely ignored.  Officially.   Nothing was ever done about spamming or duping or any of the various other exploits that a private server can actively hunt down and terminate.  There were a few large groups who were eliminated by devs for exploiting etc but they were rare occasions.

I do feel that Atlas is Ark 2.0 but without the useful dinos.

Overall I think Atlas/Ark 2.0 is better than Ark 1.0  We'd been asking for ships in ark.. since well.. the 2nd day into EA.. Now we have them.. people want to play ark again.

He's not giving them credit, he's doing actual research into activity. Your view is based on....your view, not any tangible information beyond your own personal experience. I played both official and unofficial servers and spent significant time looking at server populations for both when doing searches on battlemetrics.  I also ran an unofficial cluster of 4 servers for about a year and a half and I know exactly what activity was like on it because it was whitelisted and to be added to the list you had to be personally interviewed by me.

While it's true that many unofficials have a transient existence in Ark, it's also true that there are many stable, well run, long term active unofficial servers. I know this for a fact because I kept in contact with a number of them. We kept each other informed about problem players, common issues with mods etc. Even if three quarters of all unofficials are little used personal wastelands with insignificant activity, Battlemetrics currently shows 50k unofficials to under 1200 officials. This means even if you ignore 75% of all unofficials as dead, you're still talking about ten times the number of official servers which are active, and that's if you count every single official as being active, which isn't the case.

The numbers make it plain that the majority of activity in Ark is on unofficial servers. Considering the strength of Ark's modding community and how punishing many players view official rates as being (my servers btw used rates of 3x on harvesting/taming/xp 5x on breeding to make it bearable), this should surprise no one.

My personal feeling is that Atlas is a similar game with a different emphasis (ships and exploration vs dinos and technological progression) I'm of the opinion that Atlas would be better if it leaned away from Ark more and became it's own thing, instead of leaning on taming, building and other shared aspects. Given the current state of Atlas I can see how many see it as being merely an outgrowth of Ark. I agree that Atlas should focus more on the ships and even underwater content and less on taming/breeding and land based building.

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3 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

He's not giving them credit, he's doing actual research into activity. Your view is based on....your view, not any tangible information beyond your own personal experience. I played both official and unofficial servers and spent significant time looking at server populations for both when doing searches on battlemetrics.  I also ran an unofficial cluster of 4 servers for about a year and a half and I know exactly what activity was like on it because it was whitelisted and to be added to the list you had to be personally interviewed by me.

While it's true that many unofficials have a transient existence in Ark, it's also true that there are many stable, well run, long term active unofficial servers. I know this for a fact because I kept in contact with a number of them. We kept each other informed about problem players, common issues with mods etc. Even if three quarters of all unofficials are little used personal wastelands with insignificant activity, Battlemetrics currently shows 50k unofficials to under 1200 officials. This means even if you ignore 75% of all unofficials as dead, you're still talking about ten times the number of official servers which are active, and that's if you count every single official as being active, which isn't the case.

The numbers make it plain that the majority of activity in Ark is on unofficial servers. Considering the strength of Ark's modding community and how punishing many players view official rates as being (my servers btw used rates of 3x on harvesting/taming/xp 5x on breeding to make it bearable), this should surprise no one.

My personal feeling is that Atlas is a similar game with a different emphasis (ships and exploration vs dinos and technological progression) I'm of the opinion that Atlas would be better if it leaned away from Ark more and became it's own thing, instead of leaning on taming, building and other shared aspects. Given the current state of Atlas I can see how many see it as being merely an outgrowth of Ark. I agree that Atlas should focus more on the ships and even underwater content and less on taming/breeding and land based building.

I don't view content as the issue.  It's the game world issue.  The reliance on large guild/clan PvP and the destroy-anything-at-any-time mentality.  This chases people off the official servers in Ark and they can find places to enjoy them game on unofficial servers.  For Atlas, the unofficial server option is no where near as robust, because unofficial servers are so limited.  They literally can't be the complete game.

The issues...

1.  Safety

2.  Participation

3. Extremely limited in game economy.

 

Safety.  For solo players and small groups, they can't defend their stuff 24/7.  And when (not if) they get wiped, it will take a lot time to rebuild.  They are trying the "colony" system, but it's obviously not working if the game's population isn't enough to be in the Steam Top 100.  Giving people windows they can attack you isn't what's needed.  There needs to be a deterrent.  A reason for people not raid every small shack they come to or sink any boat.

Participation.  Solo players and small companies have no role in the game and it's as if the Game Devs have had to grudgingly admit they should exist at all.  With the Alliance system as limited as it is, small groups can't band together for mutual protection and they won't be taking part in large Battles/Wars.

Economy.  It's extremely weak.  Yes, people do trades, but a robust in game economy would give and greatly to long term playability.

 

So what should be done?  Abandon the notion of Large Company vs Large Company warfare.  Instead a number of factions should be created.  No fewer than 6, but 9-12 would be better.  Anyone can join a faction, from the largest Companies to solo players.  Factions would instead fight for territory, etc.  And if you attack members of your own faction, you get booted from the faction.  Also reputation system.  Basically a measurement of what you do, positive and negative.  If you attack friendly or neutral factions/companies, off-line raid, sink random vessel, etc, you get Infamy points.  (Though attacking current enemies would give you a boost to your reputation within your faction).  The more Infamy points, the more you make your company and faction look bad (until they eventually kick you) and with enough infamy points you would automatically labelled as "Hostile" to other factions/companies.  If you're "Hostile" you can't build on land by owned others, nor would you be able to enter ports controlled by other factions.  (There would still be freeports, but I would add ports that can be taken over and owned by factions).  Likewise NPCs from other factions would attack you.  Factions and a reputation system would go some way, but not all the way to address the Safety and Participation issues.  Ports need Markets, actual markets, which would go a long way to improving the in-game economy.

I do have other ideas, like "mothballing" ships at friendly ports (like saving stuff in the Obelisks in Ark).  Though it would only save the structures on the ship and not the content of the inventories, nor the crew.  And when you load the ship back into the game world, the hull would be at 50%, so it would need repair.

How would factions be controlled?  A group of players, lets call it a parliament for now, would vote on faction policies.  Who are allies, who are enemies, if a war should be declared or ended, if a player or company should get removed from the faction (due to excessive infamy points) and how factional resources are spent.  Players with the most positive points with the faction would be give the option of being part of the Faction Parliament.

I'm sure someone will come in and say "this obviously isn't the game for you because...".  Yeah, keep saying that.  This game is dying.  The Devs have gone to drastic measures once before the game was out 4 months to save it (and it hasn't worked).  The game has to become something else or they'll close down the servers and halt development.

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3 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

Great post with interesting points. Food for thought. One question: How did you arrive at the 15% of Ark’s playerbase being official number, because I never found a reliable source for that info or came up with an accurate way to guesstimate it, and I was always curious.

Going old school and adding all the numbers up from the server list.

i used to do it on Xbox but I don’t have a pc so I can’t help you there. Those numbers closely resemble what Xbox numbers were but yet again it is another platform.

once it releases on console I can keep people updated on console numbers. Yeah numbers are just a thing to me.

11 minutes ago, Slash78 said:

I don't view content as the issue.  It's the game world issue.  The reliance on large guild/clan PvP and the destroy-anything-at-any-time mentality.  This chases people off the official servers in Ark and they can find places to enjoy them game on unofficial servers.  For Atlas, the unofficial server option is no where near as robust, because unofficial servers are so limited.  They literally can't be the complete game.

The issues...

1.  Safety

2.  Participation

3. Extremely limited in game economy.

 

Safety.  For solo players and small groups, they can't defend their stuff 24/7.  And when (not if) they get wiped, it will take a lot time to rebuild.  They are trying the "colony" system, but it's obviously not working if the game's population isn't enough to be in the Steam Top 100.  Giving people windows they can attack you isn't what's needed.  There needs to be a deterrent.  A reason for people not raid every small shack they come to or sink any boat.

Participation.  Solo players and small companies have no role in the game and it's as if the Game Devs have had to grudgingly admit they should exist at all.  With the Alliance system as limited as it is, small groups can't band together for mutual protection and they won't be taking part in large Battles/Wars.

Economy.  It's extremely weak.  Yes, people do trades, but a robust in game economy would give and greatly to long term playability.

 

So what should be done?  Abandon the notion of Large Company vs Large Company warfare.  Instead a number of factions should be created.  No fewer than 6, but 9-12 would be better.  Anyone can join a faction, from the largest Companies to solo players.  Factions would instead fight for territory, etc.  And if you attack members of your own faction, you get booted from the faction.  Also reputation system.  Basically a measurement of what you do, positive and negative.  If you attack friendly or neutral factions/companies, off-line raid, sink random vessel, etc, you get Infamy points.  (Though attacking current enemies would give you a boost to your reputation within your faction).  The more Infamy points, the more you make your company and faction look bad (until they eventually kick you) and with enough infamy points you would automatically labelled as "Hostile" to other factions/companies.  If you're "Hostile" you can't build on land by owned others, nor would you be able to enter ports controlled by other factions.  (There would still be freeports, but I would add ports that can be taken over and owned by factions).  Likewise NPCs from other factions would attack you.  Factions and a reputation system would go some way, but not all the way to address the Safety and Participation issues.  Ports need Markets, actual markets, which would go a long way to improving the in-game economy.

I do have other ideas, like "mothballing" ships at friendly ports (like saving stuff in the Obelisks in Ark).  Though it would only save the structures on the ship and not the content of the inventories, nor the crew.  And when you load the ship back into the game world, the hull would be at 50%, so it would need repair.

How would factions be controlled?  A group of players, lets call it a parliament for now, would vote on faction policies.  Who are allies, who are enemies, if a war should be declared or ended, if a player or company should get removed from the faction (due to excessive infamy points) and how factional resources are spent.  Players with the most positive points with the faction would be give the option of being part of the Faction Parliament.

I'm sure someone will come in and say "this obviously isn't the game for you because...".  Yeah, keep saying that.  This game is dying.  The Devs have gone to drastic measures once before the game was out 4 months to save it (and it hasn't worked).  The game has to become something else or they'll close down the servers and halt development.

As long as wiping bases happens there will always be that issue. Shouldn’t be able to erase months within minutes. Just shouldn’t happen

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1 hour ago, Realist said:

Going old school and adding all the numbers up from the server list.

i used to do it on Xbox but I don’t have a pc so I can’t help you there. Those numbers closely resemble what Xbox numbers were but yet again it is another platform.

once it releases on console I can keep people updated on console numbers. Yeah numbers are just a thing to me.

As long as wiping bases happens there will always be that issue. Shouldn’t be able to erase months within minutes. Just shouldn’t happen

Base wiping happens because there are no negative consequences.  There also isn't anywhere to safely store stuff, like a port.  Faction system would also give you far more people to protect you areas.

There are times when base wiping should happen.  If someone your hostile with is building on your island, you should get to wipe them.  And when I say "hostile" I mean they have been doing stuff to your or been doing stuff to a lot of other people.  Though it shouldn't take minutes.

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1 minute ago, Slash78 said:

Base wiping happens because there are no negative consequences.  There also isn't anywhere to safely store stuff, like a port.  Faction system would also give you far more people to protect you areas.

There are times when base wiping should happen.  If someone your hostile with is building on your island, you should get to wipe them.  And when I say "hostile" I mean they have been doing stuff to your or been doing stuff to a lot of other people.  Though it shouldn't take minutes.

You are preaching to the choir man. I have been a fan of factions for 6 months already.

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9 hours ago, Slash78 said:

They didn't analyst Ark's success.  Which is heavily reliant on single player and unofficial servers.  And in creating the Atlas world map as they have, it means you won't get the same game play experience as you do on the official servers.  With Ark, every map is the same, official or unofficial. 

Yes indeed and unfortunately facts don't lie.

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Unfortunately I think they really missed what made Ark a success.  Hint: It wasn't people playing in Alpha Tribes on the official servers.  The official server population in Ark makes up about 15% of the people playing at any given time.



If only they would add single player.... :classic_huh: and maybe EVEN possibility to easly play with 2 or 3 friends..... 😜 on the same map as official servers..... 🤪
No way they would do it.... Wouldn't they? 🤦‍♂️

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3 hours ago, Elrood said:



If only they would add single player.... :classic_huh: and maybe EVEN possibility to easly play with 2 or 3 friends..... 😜 on the same map as official servers..... 🤪
No way they would do it.... Wouldn't they? 🤦‍♂️

I'm sure that will help overall with the numbers eventually, but as of me writing this about 72% of all players are on the four official servers.  

This far into Ark's development that still had a player base of 75% from what they had at launch (76% average players, 74% peak players).  Atlas has about 10%.  That's a massive drop off.  The lowest Ark ever slipped was 65.9% of average players in Sept 2018, 61.2% of peak players in Sept/Oct 2018.  That's the lowest the population ever got.  By February, two months after release, Atlas had dropped well below that (29% average, 42.6 peak players).  You can pretend it's not an issue, that a game that more often than not can't even make the Top 100 Games on steam.  But eventually they are going to pull the plug as they can't keep on living off of sales from the first month and off Ark's money. 

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18 minutes ago, Slash78 said:

I'm sure that will help overall with the numbers eventually, but as of me writing this about 72% of all players are on the four official servers.  

 This far into Ark's development that still had a player base of 75% from what they had at launch (76% average players, 74% peak players).  Atlas has about 10%.  That's a massive drop off.  The lowest Ark ever slipped was 65.9% of average players in Sept 2018, 61.2% of peak players in Sept/Oct 2018.  That's the lowest the population ever got.  By February, two months after release, Atlas had dropped well below that (29% average, 42.6 peak players).  You can pretend it's not an issue, that a game that more often than not can't even make the Top 100 Games on steam.  But eventually they are going to pull the plug as they can't keep on living off of sales from the first month and off Ark's money. 

There is no subscription nor micro-transactions - so player retention is not something that generate income directly. Only true telling thing will be how many people will buy expansion when/if they get to making one and/or buy game on release. And that is actually depending on them giving a reason to buy it for those who already left altas (and to get new player to buy it).

Assuming that you are right and only 10% people play today. This means that people who like whats going on are actually a minority - 10% of initial people. This means their feedback is actually irrelevant or even counterproductive because it further goes into where the 10% wants to go - further into a niche atlas becoming right now and may have nothing to do with reasons for 90% who left. And it has to go back out of this niche to get back to wider audience. Which means... Changes which may not be according to the taste of those who stayed, nor according to their priorities because that 10% is not a priority. Sure, I'm simplifying quite a bit. Sure, its not that easy. But for me this is high level overview of that kind of situation.

 

Edited by Elrood
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8 minutes ago, Elrood said:



Assuming that you are right and only 10% people play today. This means that people who like whats going on are actually a minority - 10% of initial people. 
 

It's going to be far less than 10% because many of the people who stayed are staying for the potential of the game, which could be very great, and a chance to influence the design back to a better potential.  (Which is seeming much less likely based on the types of decisions that are being made)

There's a good percentage of people still playing the game who dislike a lot about it, but really like the original concept.

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6 minutes ago, Elrood said:

Sure, I'm simplifying quite a bit. Sure, its not that easy. But for me this is high level overview of that kind of situation.

Yep, but you still manage to hit the nail on the head. The "90%" that left most likely left without a refund. Their money will be spent on marketing when the devs start to care about concurrent playerbase. The 10% that stayed tho may not necessarily "like what's going on" but understand the process of development and are willing to stick through to the bitter end. The niche that do are a percentage of that percentage. What matters in the end is new sales.

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Grapeshot only did it right by having the game be half price during "early access" with plans to increase at launch.

 

We bought in expecting a modded ark that has a roadmap to an mmo.

 

However, unlike what that video points out, Atlas has NO roadmap. They're just winging it and hoping shit turns out okay.

 

It worked in Ark but that won't work for an MMO that attempts an economy and conquest.

 

And in saying MMO with economy and conquest... Single player, private servers, pve servers HAVE NO PLACE IN AN MMO LIKE THIS.

 

Make the game to for 1 server. Ffs...

 

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2 minutes ago, Pallist said:

We bought in expecting a modded ark that has a roadmap to an mmo.

Nope. Some of us expected ark with ships and bigger map.
 

3 minutes ago, Pallist said:

However, unlike what that video points out, Atlas has NO roadmap. They're just winging it and hoping shit turns out okay.

It worked in Ark but that won't work for an MMO that attempts an economy and conquest.

I want your crystal ball. Or tea leaves. Or whatever else clairvoyance tools you use. 
Okey, got them. Thanks.
It will work! They will make it! It work for Ark after all. 
 

4 minutes ago, Pallist said:

And in saying MMO with economy and conquest... Single player, private servers, pve servers HAVE NO PLACE IN AN MMO LIKE THIS.

But it has a place in survival pirate game. Which Atlas also is. (sorry, forgot caps)

 

5 minutes ago, Pallist said:

Make the game to for 1 server. Ffs...

Don't do it ffs.... 

Ps. I know how constructive my post is. But you know what? I don't care 🙂

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13 minutes ago, Pallist said:

It worked in Ark but that won't work for an MMO that attempts an economy and conquest.

Day 1 of ARK EA to Release was also quite the train wreck. Claims and the Economy are additional curveballs sure (very challenging to get right) but they still have time. A lot relatively speaking. The roadmap that you claim doesn't exist does have one public facing fact and that's 2 years of EA development. We're only 7months in.

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36 minutes ago, Elrood said:

There is no subscription nor micro-transactions - so player retention is not something that generate income directly. Only true telling thing will be how many people will buy expansion when/if they get to making one and/or buy game on release. And that is actually depending on them giving a reason to buy it for those who already left altas (and to get new player to buy it).

Assuming that you are right and only 10% people play today. This means that people who like whats going on are actually a minority - 10% of initial people. This means their feedback is actually irrelevant or even counterproductive because it further goes into where the 10% wants to go - further into a niche atlas becoming right now and may have nothing to do with reasons for 90% who left. And it has to go back out of this niche to get back to wider audience. Which means... Changes which may not be according to the taste of those who stayed, nor according to their priorities because that 10% is not a priority. Sure, I'm simplifying quite a bit. Sure, its not that easy. But for me this is high level overview of that kind of situation.

 

Here is where I'm getting my numbers...

Atlas: https://steamcharts.com/app/834910

Ark: https://steamcharts.com/app/346110

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Nari said:

Day 1 of ARK EA to Release was also quite the train wreck. Claims and the Economy are additional curveballs sure (very challenging to get right) but they still have time. A lot relatively speaking. The roadmap that you claim doesn't exist does have one public facing fact and that's 2 years of EA development. We're only 7months in.

I bought Ark in November 2015.  When I did, they had a very long list of dinos that were going to be added (some took years), boss fights and various features they had already talked about.  As for Atlas, who don't know where they are going.  They occasionally announce a new animal (crab, sea horse, water thing, etc), they haven't said if there will be new ship types and they are struggling badly with some of the basic features.  (Yeah, I'm looking at you claim system).

Ark was more of a simple concept.  A Dino-themed survival game.  They could get away with the "do the most basic play, add stuff later" approach they did with Ark.  With Atlas they didn't just try to make a Pirate-themed Survival game.  They decided they wanted large guild PvP to be the driver of the game.  They spent quite a bit of time promoting that aspect have have a spot on the official site dedicated to the top pvp companies.  When it comes to games like that people always point to the success of EvE.  Though other games have tried that, like Albion Online and it failed for them.  (Though have Guild PvP and a very large part of the map set aside for it, but they had to shift it to a seasonal format because how stagnant it became after only a few months.  They also have had to add a lot of other game mods/features because participation in what was supposed to be the key draw was very, very low).

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10 minutes ago, Slash78 said:

(Though have Guild PvP and a very large part of the map set aside for it, but they had to shift it to a seasonal format because how stagnant it became after only a few months.  They also have had to add a lot of other game mods/features because participation in what was supposed to be the key draw was very, very low).

Easy to draw parallels between the two isn't it? So I'll emphasis this part "They also have had to add a lot of other game mods/features because participation in what was supposed to be the key draw was very, very low" and this "2 years of EA development. We're only 7months in." Atlas may be inspired by EvE~esque gameplay but it's a stretch to say they're aiming for it.

Edited by Nari

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I guess if you're playing the game to enjoy single player or modded private servers, you can still have hope for the game...

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17 minutes ago, Nari said:

Easy to draw parallels between the two isn't it? So I'll emphasis this part "They also have had to add a lot of other game mods/features because participation in what was supposed to be the key draw was very, very low" and this "2 years of EA development. We're only 7months in." Atlas may be inspired by EvE~esque gameplay but it's a stretch to say they're aiming for it.

The game devs have heavily focused on it, same with Albion.  And again with Albion, they had a participation issue.  Not as many people were participating and were leaving.  

People have left Atlas for any number of reasons.  Some don't like the survival mechanics.  Some don't like the grind.  A few of the guys I've played with left because of exploits (they had been in a large pvp company while I was away from the game).  Part of the reason I left Albion was that as someone who played solo a lot of the time and only in a small group when I did play with others, I felt that when I ventured out into the world, I was nothing more than a target.  That I was just content for someone else's gameplay experience.  When they introduced Faction Warfare I thought about going back.  There was something I could participate in.

I feel the same way on the official server in Atlas.  That I'm spending hours of my life and the only outcome is that when I finally leave and never come back, it's a win condition for those who randomly sink ships and wipe bases.  Not only that, but the Devs are fine with that, that they have no desire for the game to be anything but that for a lot of it's player base.  The old, tired "raid for resources" mantra the Ark/Atlas devs always fall back on, because making a game with meaningful pvp is beyond them.

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