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The D Legacy

The reality of ATLAS

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On 7/13/2019 at 2:56 PM, Slash78 said:

 

 

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.

Singleplayer gives you the full official map experience, amazed they pulled that off as it was more than just the low effort option screen.     

Upcoming non-dedicated coop is going to drop the numbers on official even more because the majority of people just want to play with a few close friends.  They just tolerate joining the megaclans on official PVE/PVP because it is the only guarantee against wiping.   Those players who already left are currently on unofficial, but that means admins and mods and rules and maps and people that you  may not like.   

Coop of course lacks any PVP interaction as it will require leashing - but you can at least play against the island conquest game on the full map against the AI with the upcoming pirates claiming islands.

These changes are clearly being done because they are planning SP/coop the main way of play on XBOX - for the reasons you state of ATLAS official/unofficial servers cannot be as good as ARK was.   I think they are finally realizing that as they can see their server numbers have gone way down and unofficial servers cannot provide the real atlas experience.

Edited by krazmuze

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16 minutes ago, krazmuze said:

Singleplayer gives you the full official map experience, amazed they pulled that off as it was more than just the low effort option screen.     

Upcoming non-dedicated coop is going to drop the numbers on official even more because the majority of people just want to play with a few close friends.   Those players are currently on unofficial, but that means admins and mods and rules and maps that you  may not like.   

Coop of course lacks any PVP interaction as it will require leashing - but you can at least play against the island conquest game against the AI with the upcoming pirates claiming islands.

It probably will drop the number on the official servers.  However it will also bring back some players and hopefully bring new ones in.  I've only mentioned it to one of the people I game with with and he was very interested in trying it out.

Edit:  The problem is Ark's official servers were never good and all the issues with them were taken to the next level in Atlas, because how the world map is constructed.  The Ark/Atlas devs have ignored this because Ark has been successful (though it has little to do with the Official Server player base).

Edited by Slash78

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On 7/13/2019 at 3:47 PM, Slash78 said:

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.

Ok, more numbers.  

For Atlas, yesterday when I counted 72.3% were on the official servers.  A short while ago it was 62.3%.  Again, it seems to vary from 55% to over 70%.

For Ark a short while ago I got 16.2% on official servers (for PC).  

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On 7/13/2019 at 5:56 PM, 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. 

This games Engine Cannot handle a game on this massive scale. nor are they putting effort into optimization, instead we are getting mega patches of content when we need mega patches of optimizations.

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2 minutes ago, Megalithic said:

This games Engine Cannot handle a game on this massive scale. nor are they putting effort into optimization, instead we are getting mega patches of content when we need mega patches of optimizations.

I swear to dog I’m tired of answering this same misconception in game after game after game. The people who create new content and the people who do code optimization are not the same people and do not have interchangeable skill sets. It is not an either or proposition. Doing less new content will not result in more optimization, just less content.

Furthermore, they have done a lot of optimization. Check the patch notes. I see a marked difference in performance from the first couple of months. Is there still plenty to do? Sure, tons. But they aren’t sitting on their thumbs when it comes to optimization as you imply.

Finally any MMO which does not produce new content dies hard. It’s axiomatic in the industry. So producing new content is imperative.

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On 7/15/2019 at 9:35 AM, 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.

But comparing to a fully released game to a paid closed beta launch is like comparing apples to oranges. 

Early release should be renamed to Beta test

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8 minutes ago, Luxfere said:

But comparing to a fully released game to a paid closed beta launch is like comparing apples to oranges. 

Early release should be renamed to Beta test

I was talking about the EA release of ARK up to its official release. Not post-release. It was a fairly polished experience at that point compared to the first year of development. Comparisons to ARK are common around here because it's practically the same devs and Atlas started as a forked branch of ARK not on a clean slate. So it's really easy to draw parallels.

The term Beta represents a stage of development, EA's vague description allows it to cover multiple stages ranging from a Minimal Viable Product to a Feature Complete Product that needs a little testing prior to release.

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this game needs to be optimized and have its engine upgraded to something that can sustain the 150 player load.

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4 hours ago, Megalithic said:

This games Engine Cannot handle a game on this massive scale. nor are they putting effort into optimization, instead we are getting mega patches of content when we need mega patches of optimizations.

I can play Atlas better than a lot of other games and the optimization is better than it was in Ark at this point in development.

2 hours ago, Luxfere said:

But comparing to a fully released game to a paid closed beta launch is like comparing apples to oranges. 

Early release should be renamed to Beta test

Early Access can cover everything from a tech demo to late beta testing.  Most of the EA games I've played were in a early Alpha state.

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On 7/14/2019 at 2:23 AM, Slash78 said:

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.

Wrong. Official Ark is where it is at. Unofficial ar dirty, boosted, nepotistic and with 0 sense of achievement. 

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Just now, gnihar said:

Wrong. Official Ark is where it is at. Unofficial ar dirty, boosted, nepotistic and with 0 sense of achievement. 

Yet only 16-17% of Ark's playerbase is playing on Official servers at any given time.  Your personal disdain for unofficial servers doesn't change that fact.

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8 minutes ago, Slash78 said:

Yet only 16-17% of Ark's playerbase is playing on Official servers at any given time.  Your personal disdain for unofficial servers doesn't change that fact.

This is not a fact. This is your estimation. Out of 35kish people daily, very few seem to play unofficial. You might be mistaking unofficial servers count vs unofficial player count, because there is far more unofficial servers than official ones, but vast majority of those unofficial servers are empty.

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2 minutes ago, gnihar said:

This is not a fact. This is your estimation. Out of 35kish people daily, very few seem to play unofficial. You might be mistaking unofficial servers count vs unofficial player count, because there is far more unofficial servers than official ones, but vast majority of those unofficial servers are empty.

It's not an estimation.  I've started counting.

https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/search?features[2e079b9a-d6f7-11e7-8461-83e84cedb373]=true&game=ark&sort=-players

 

And if you hadn't noticed, Ark's been getting up to about 65k a day lately.

 

Edited by Slash78

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14 minutes ago, Slash78 said:

It's not an estimation.  I've started counting.

https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/search?features[2e079b9a-d6f7-11e7-8461-83e84cedb373]=true&game=ark&sort=-players

 

And if you hadn't noticed, Ark's been getting up to about 65k a day lately.

 

Wrong again. Steam charts clearly say the new average is 50kish, and its due to valguero map.

And again, a quick analysis simply proves your theory wrong. Out of top 20 servers with people on in NA atm, 15-16 are officials, while most of the unofficials are totally empty.

https://arkbrowser.com/servers?q=country%3AUnited States

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2 minutes ago, gnihar said:

Wrong again. Steam charts clearly say the new average is 50kish, and its due to valguero map.

And again, a quick analysis simply proves your theory wrong. Out of top 20 servers with people on in NA atm, 15-16 are officials, while most of the unofficials are totally empty.

https://arkbrowser.com/servers?q=country%3AUnited States

You've done no analysis.  I literally counted the official server population and compared it to players currently playing the game.  I get it, it doesn't match your perception, so you disregard it.  You'll never comprehend that Ark Official servers are not in fact all that popular with the player base.

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8 minutes ago, Slash78 said:

You've done no analysis.  I literally counted the official server population and compared it to players currently playing the game.  I get it, it doesn't match your perception, so you disregard it.  You'll never comprehend that Ark Official servers are not in fact all that popular with the player base.

I just proved to you that, in the top 20 NA servers there are 17 official ones, that is, 17 of top 20 NA ark servers with most people on atm are officials.

That does not prove that majority of ark players play on officials atm. But you didnt prove your claim neither.

Give me raw data, any serializable format will do, but it must be one file (not many pages), that shows the current number of ark UNOFFICIAL players. Let us see where those elusive guys are... because 90% unofficials are literally singleplayer modes or empty alltogether.

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2 minutes ago, gnihar said:

I just proved to you that, in the top 20 NA servers there are 17 official ones, that is, 17 of top 20 NA ark servers with most people on atm are officials.

That does not prove that majority of ark players play on officials atm. But you didnt prove your claim neither.

Give me raw data, any serializable format will do, but it must be one file (not many pages), that shows the current number of ark UNOFFICIAL players. Let us see where those elusive guys are... because 90% unofficials are literally singleplayer modes or empty alltogether.

The thing is you have no proof.  I showed you where I'm counting the official server totals.  You want to count them too, be my guest.  And it's simple math do take the number of players on the official servers and divide that by the total playing the game at the same time.  But you won't, because it will prove you wrong.  That Official servers aren't popular with the majority of Ark's active player base.

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1 minute ago, Slash78 said:

The thing is you have no proof.  I showed you where I'm counting the official server totals.  You want to count them too, be my guest.  And it's simple math do take the number of players on the official servers and divide that by the total playing the game at the same time.  But you won't, because it will prove you wrong.  That Official servers aren't popular with the majority of Ark's active player base.

I asked for a simple thing: a total number of players currently playing on unofficial servers. I am really curious where those types are. I am now even suspecting that steam totals are off (oversized, maybe even artificially pumped). Because those players are either 1-2 per server or on offiicals (which have healthy numbers of pop on both eu and usa).

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5 minutes ago, gnihar said:

I asked for a simple thing: a total number of players currently playing on unofficial servers. I am really curious where those types are. I am now even suspecting that steam totals are off (oversized, maybe even artificially pumped). Because those players are either 1-2 per server or on offiicals (which have healthy numbers of pop on both eu and usa).

Since single player and local multi-player are also options, counting the number of people on unofficial servers will not accurately represent the number of players that do not play on official servers.

Edited by Kidori
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2 minutes ago, UnknownSystemError said:

@Slash78 I know you are looking at Ark #s. There might be a tool out there similar to https://atlas.hgn.hu/ for Ark, or maybe the guys who made the Atlas one could whip out an Ark one real quick.

That's where I find my Atlas Official server numbers.  Maybe they can make one for Ark, but I don't think it would be any more useful that what I'm getting at battlemetric.

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7 minutes ago, Kidori said:

Since single player is also an option, counting the number of people on unofficial servers will not accurately represent the number of players that do not play on official servers.

Indeed, and I am curious about just those unofficial online types. Because now I found some unofficial servers in Canada that have better pop than official ones, but th total number of players there is way lower than that in usa or eu (where top servers are officials by a large margin).

 

Slash might have counted the total number of official players from battlemetric, but he might have divided that number with a wrong total (a total where single player number is included).

 

Edited by gnihar

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2 hours ago, gnihar said:

This is not a fact. This is your estimation. Out of 35kish people daily, very few seem to play unofficial. You might be mistaking unofficial servers count vs unofficial player count, because there is far more unofficial servers than official ones, but vast majority of those unofficial servers are empty.

The average total playerbase of ark is 51k not 35k. Regardless of official or unofficial they are doing something right. And no it isn’t because they are already released. They have had even better numbers in early acces 

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1 hour ago, gnihar said:

Indeed, and I am curious about just those unofficial online types. Because now I found some unofficial servers in Canada that have better pop than official ones, but th total number of players there is way lower than that in usa or eu (where top servers are officials by a large margin).

 

Slash might have counted the total number of official players from battlemetric, but he might have divided that number with a wrong total (a total where single player number is included).

 

We might not have exact numbers to work with, but here is something you should contemplate. Per Battlemetrics there are currently just under 50k unofficial servers compared to 1200 officials. A quick search of the top ranked servers by total activity shows that 10 of the top 20 are unofficials including ALL of the top 5. Even if 75% of all unofficials are empty wastelands, those that are not still outnumber all officials by 10 to 1, and we know that at the highest levels of activity they are at worst neck and neck. 

In the absence of an actual count, this strongly suggests there is more activity on unofficials than officials. When you cited 17 of the top 20 as being officials, you were cherry picking your data by searching only NA servers. Since the point of contention is about activity on officials vs unofficials, NA isn’t a relevant factor that should be used in searching.  You may not care about non NA servers, but for the purposes of this discussion they count.

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5 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

We might not have exact numbers to work with, but here is something you should contemplate. Per Battlemetrics there are currently just under 50k unofficial servers compared to 1200 officials. A quick search of the top ranked servers by total activity shows that 10 of the top 20 are unofficials including ALL of the top 5. Even if 75% of all unofficials are empty wastelands, those that are not still outnumber all officials by 10 to 1, and we know that at the highest levels of activity they are at worst neck and neck. 

In the absence of an actual count, this strongly suggests there is more activity on unofficials than officials. When you cited 17 of the top 20 as being officials, you were cherry picking your data by searching only NA servers. Since the point of contention is about activity on officials vs unofficials, NA isn’t a relevant factor that should be used in searching.  You may not care about non NA servers, but for the purposes of this discussion they count.

I have stated the fact that the number of unofficial SERVERS is far greater than the number of officials. Closer inspection reveals those are either empry or have 1 player on them though. I have ran a quick check again, this time with EU and USA both. From top 20 in population count, 17 of 20 are officials in both regions. Numbers in all other regions speak otherwise, and there are no official servers anywhere else. But all other region player numbers (people who play on servers that are not physically in usa or somwhere in eu) are way lower than in said 2 regions. This again, is not a proof of anything, but it is suggests that the most healthy and populated servers are generally the officials. I dont have the data that proves that the number of official players is greater than unofficials or vice versa, and it does intrigue me. Emptiness of unofficials suggests that even if the unofficial number is bigger, the types that play it play it almost in single player, which is curious. 

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