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Dollie

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Hello Dear @Dollie ,

I suppose you are the community manager for Atlas.

One thing i would love to see in Atlas as well in ark, is the Return of a game mod called SOTF(Survival of the Fittest)

If you could somehow implement it into the game it  would be huge.I love ark sotf i think it will completly correspond with pvp mechanics  in Atlas.

🐢yacque.

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How about making pvpve mode instead of pve. The essence of the regime is the ability to play pvp, but without protecting your base for 9 hours a day. This mode would be suitable for the bulk of players and add to your popularity. The essence of the regime is as follows:

1) In each square there is one main island, where the 9 hour military phase, and the rest of the satellite islands, where the 3 hour military phase. The main acute is rich in resources, the owner of the main island can impose a tax on the extraction of resources on all other satellite islands, and payment for maintaining the islands with gold from the flag goes to the flag of the owner of the main island. The main island and satellite islands can be declared war for 24 hours once a week, while the main island can declare war on the satellite island in its square for a price 5 times cheaper and with the possibility of 2 times a week. Thus, the pve players on the satellite islands are protected from the daily grif by a 3-hour military phase, but there is no complete pve, this is just a simplified pvp mode, where there are fewer ground raids and accordingly more sea battles, as the game was supposed to be from the beginning.

2) If the owner of the main island occupies the satellite island in the same square or in the neighboring ones, then its satellite islands receive the same military phase as the main island in this or the neighboring square, that is, 9 hours. This is necessary so that the owner of the main island does not use satellite islands as safe bases.

3) On water everywhere pvp mode.

The game requires a rating system for the meaning and incentive of the game for pvp players. The meaning of the rating system is as follows: when killing an enemy player, glory points are given, they are taken from the enemy when he dies from the enemy. Points are awarded for killing a player and for sinking an enemy ship. The higher the opponent in the ranking, the more points are given for him. Killing the enemy, the player receives personal fame points, and also earns them for his clan. Thus, the rating of players and clans as a whole is formed. This will encourage players to fight against strong opponents, because for them more glory points are given. For fame points in freeport you can buy unique items and skins.

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I love the game and play with a great group who have become friends....what makes MMO's work.

When do you think you will put some effort into optimisation, I have a top end PC, top end Graphics card, the game struggles to run and crashes often, not just me the whole company.

I do understand the need to flesh out the base game and expand the various mechanics, but it is a horrid game as far as performance and memory consumption. Your missing out on a lot of potential customers too I suspect.

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20 minutes ago, Jeheil said:

I love the game and play with a great group who have become friends....what makes MMO's work.

When do you think you will put some effort into optimisation, I have a top end PC, top end Graphics card, the game struggles to run and crashes often, not just me the whole company.

I do understand the need to flesh out the base game and expand the various mechanics, but it is a horrid game as far as performance and memory consumption. Your missing out on a lot of potential customers too I suspect.

optimization is usualy the last thing they focus on from a development standpoint. there about to release for xbox so im sure they have a ace up there sleeve as far as optimization goes.

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13 minutes ago, lordkhan4444 said:

optimization is usualy the last thing they focus on from a development standpoint. there about to release for xbox so im sure they have a ace up there sleeve as far as optimization goes.

I work in Software Development and to some extent I do understand the notion, however architecturally if you don't fix core issues early they become more expensive later. Typically its UI that gets the final polish (you don't paint the house until you have finished building it, but if the the foundations are wrong, no amount of paint will fix it).

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- Do you have plans to complement the underwater world?

- Should we wait for the domestication of sea creatures other than crabs?

- Is it possible that once the ugly square shadow on the water surface disappears when the camera is zoom-out during sail?

- You promised after the last wipe the cool skin for hat. Where are they?

large.891083673_CosmeticReward.jpg.52c04516d1d992fcf4ac59c7333080a7.jpg

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40 minutes ago, Kanske said:

- Do you have plans to complement the underwater world?

- Should we wait for the domestication of sea creatures other than crabs?

- Is it possible that once the ugly square shadow on the water surface disappears when the camera is zoom-out during sail?

- You promised after the last wipe the cool skin for hat. Where are they?

large.891083673_CosmeticReward.jpg.52c04516d1d992fcf4ac59c7333080a7.jpg

I thought I was the only one getting those ugly square shadows on my boats man is that ugly and annoying lol

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I have many suggestions / questions.

 

Will you consider wiping and merging the servers (PVE/PVP/EU/NA) 

A wipe without changes to the core game mechanics would be only short lived though, there are many reasons ive watched people leave this game and not return.

- Peace time set by company not by island to stop people staggering peace times across multiple islands to always stay in peace.

- No changing of peace times except immediately after claiming.

- Stop restricting the amount of people you can play with, remove company and alliance limits.

- Larger the company / Larger the war time

- Smaller the company / smaller the war time

- Neutral tags

- No shelter in ally harbours, green anchor and their defences should be enough.

- Cool-down on rejoining a company you have already been a member of.

- Seated NPCs not counting towards tame cap (something promised at first wipe announcement)

- Structure limit around flag proximity to stop honeycomb rat nest flag protection.

- More boat types / customisation options / skins for planks, walls, ceilings, roofs, doors, etc

- With the amount of islands added, reduce the grid size to something around a 10x10 (Accept the fact you will NEVER have 40,000 people play on a server)

- Free port placement more uniform (Equal distance between them)

- You currently have 3 zones Freeport, Claimed, and Lawless. Suggest adding a "Lawful" zone. That is sort of like a half way for new players after leaving freeport.

- Damage and resistance on boats is too over powered when people can put all points into one stat. Make it scaling so after a certain amount of points go into damage or resistance the amount of extra damage or resist you receive is smaller.

- Remove Red-alert and return it to when we could swap crew on the fly to different stations, allowing a skill based system of moving your crew from one side of the ship to the other.

- Dont hide PVP feats behind PVE content.

- Make it easier for the small companies to do the content you add (Yeti / Kraken / Powerstones)

- More governance and tax options

I could go on, but answers and hearing opinions on these ideas would be a good start.
 

 

 

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1. Are there chances of merging NA and EU networks together with west regions being on NA servers and east regions EU servers?

2. What is Grapeshot planning to combat cheater/hackers? Current situation is horrible. Banned/Devwiped ones returning.

3. People want new additional shiptypes, when can we expect them?

4. Have you thought about adding upkeep costs for having big companies? My idea how that should work is here: 

 

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Will we see visual damage to planks in the future? Like a damage skin for planks that starts showing at a certain condition (Client side).

Maybe one important question you might want to talk about:
Have your goals for the game changed after the EA release or are you still planning to bring the game to the same success and scale you intended for it in the first place?

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Could you tweak Autodestruct to give us a little more time to loot structures and explore ruins?

For example, 7 days before everything goes poof.

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Are there plans to Change the skill System And reduce skillpoints per Level so one Charakter only has 2 Professions to Force Economy in Game. And if yes will we be able to use mythical Equipment Without beein able to craft them. As it is right now a Charakter is able to learn everything atm which is Boring imo. 

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I would like for the incredibly low player count to be addressed as well as how you think you will be able to attract new player and bring old players back. This game only succeeds one way and that is to have a large player base. Content creators are going to be your best source of advertising so I think it is incredibly important to keep this game content creator friendly.

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Hello there, 

I am fairly new to Atlas (3+ weeks or so) and despite all the weird glitches and server connectivity issues, I'm having a blast. I have, however, few gripes against the game that might seem minor but, in my opinion, influence the overall feel of the game especially for new guys like myself. So here are my questions: 

1) Are you planning on redesigning the interface? The current one is, to put it gently, a little bit coarse... that font (the font is so bad that using Comic Sans would actually make it better), the overlapping sections, unintuitive icons, hard to read the information on the screen etc.  - I believe that the interface might be one of the most off-putting things for the newcomers. I came here from Ark so I'm used to a rough design but I know people (2 blokes I hoped to have in my company) that issued a Steam refund ticket after seeing the tutorial message. 

2) I have a feeling that there are very limited sources of experience for dedicated builders/housekeeping types of players. I am running with a small crew of four guys, while three of them run around collecting maps I build, farm, tame, harvest and do maintenance and I am literally getting no experience when compared to the guys that are running some cheap, common maps. The only chance of getting any experience points is when I encounter an alpha creature. Do you have any plans to grant players more sources of experience gain in the future? 

3) It appears to me that fighting Fleet of the Damned ships, unless you are looking for some higher-level NPC's, is currently a waste of resources. I might be wrong since I'm new to the game but I have downed my fair share of lvl 20ish vessels and the rewards are rather disappointing for the amount of effort you have to put into this. Especially gold-wise it seems much more time/resource effective to just do sunken treasures all-day - 0 effort and only resource you use up is fish oil. Do you have any plans of rebalancing that? 

4) I see that lots of people are asking about more tames, I for one believe that we don't need an "Ark but with boats" and making a tame-centric pirate game will completely ruin its unique feel. Boats and naval combat should be one of the key selling points of a pirate game, not tames. And there is a lot of cool stuff that you guys still can implement to enhance that aspect of the game. That being said I am wondering if you guys plan to implement more ships and ship customization options in the future?  
4b) Somewhat connected to the previous question: I am watching lots of tutorials on boat building in Atlas, and it seems that there is no reason to even use the broadside cannon planks since nobody fights like that, instead we see some disgusting abominations with ceiling contraptions and stacked cannons, are there any plans to gently push players towards more "realistic" naval combat? Or the meta will remain roof-covered eyesores?

Edited by Whisky Bob
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1.With all the islands that you plan on adding, will there be a wipe?

    1a. If you do wipe can you leave characters alone?

    1b. Why/why not?

2. Pre "mega" wipe hat skin?

3. Any new ships coming?

4. New animals?

 

Ya'll are doing a great job. Love the game. XoXXoooo

 

 

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Three questions:
First, will we be getting new ships at some point in the near future? There is a fairly large gap between brigantines and galleons in terms of resource costs and firepower. It would be nice to have a ship with a bit more fire power than a brig, but better maneuverability than a galleon.

Second, are there any plans to make stealing a ship actually possible? Right now, even with the what's yours is mine feat, it takes hours to capture a ship. Unless the other party just gives up there is no way to realistically steal a ship. Frankly I think if you have gone through the trouble of boarding an enemy ship, killing ALL of the crew and destroying all of the beds, then you should be allowed to take the boat within a couple of minutes at MOST. (Anchored ships should basically be immune to theft, but out at sea it should be easier).

Third, this is more of a suggestion than a question, would you consider re-balancing cannons? I think both in terms of balance and for realism it would make more sense to have the larger cannons be shorter range, but have damage buffed, and make the medium cannons longer range. I also think speeding up cannon balls in flight would be a good idea, right now ship combat lacks the sense of impact that it should.

Edited by BLT
Clarifying second question.

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3 hours ago, BLT said:

Three questions:
First, will we be getting new ships at some point in the near future? There is a fairly large gap between brigantines and galleons in terms of resource costs and firepower. It would be nice to have a ship with a bit more fire power than a brig, but better maneuverability than a galleon.

Second, are there any plans to make stealing a ship actually possible? Right now, even with the what's yours is mine feat, it takes hours to capture a ship. Unless the other party just gives up there is no way to realistically steal a ship. Frankly I think if you have gone through the trouble of boarding an enemy ship, killing ALL of the crew and destroying all of the beds, then you should be allowed to take the boat within a couple of minutes at MOST.

Third, this is more of a suggestion than a question, would you consider re-balancing cannons? I think both in terms of balance and for realism it would make more sense to have the larger cannons be shorter range, but have damage buffed, and make the medium cannons longer range. I also think speeding up cannon balls in flight would be a good idea, right now ship combat lacks the sense of impact that it should.

Big no for number 2. Unless they want to make the ships 1/10 of the resource cost or even lower, then sure

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Hard - I don't expect any of these to be answered, would be a nice surprise though.

 

1. Are you planning on changing ANY of the core game mechanics?

2. Have you considered merging all of the current networks into one network with all of the former networks being represented in form of grids?

3. Have you considered reducing the size of the current Atlas world in addition to merging all networks to compensate for the low player numbers?

4. Have you considered adding PvP Hotspots with very high end PVE content to incentivise Ship PVP and maybe even non-laggy ground PVP?

5. Do you think you can find a way to make the game playable for small groups or even solo players on the official network? If so, how?

6. Have you discussed the "ship in a bottle" solution to combat the atrocious FPS people are getting in their harbours in addition to finally getting rid of ship griefing?

7. Do you think having to defend your precious loot and boats 9 hours every single day is a sustainable and healthy system in the long run?

8. Do you think not being able to take a break from the game for as little as 10 days, without losing almost all meaningful progress due to auto decay promotes a healthy playstyle?

9. Do you think people are too occupied maintaining octuple-honeycombed bases with 10's of thousands of structures just to defend their progress, lagging the servers by rendering these beasts, instead of taking boats out to fight or explore some foreign land?

10. Have you considered offering 100% free & unlimited item and ship (in a bottle) storage in freeports?

11. The +max velocity stat on speed sails has now been broken for a longer period of time than it has worked. Completely killing ship pvp in the process. Can you explain why this is such a challenge for you?

12. Why does it take so long to get some very small balance tweaks or changes done nowadays? Dragons, whales, Npc's on tame swivels/ballista, large cannons, fire arrows, torches, shields, were all nerfed in a heartbeat. Things that are deemed extremely unbalanced and have been voiced many times have remained untouched for the last 4 months. How and why has your approach to these issues changed?

13. How many developers have worked on atlas? How many developers are working on atlas now? How many developers are going to work on Atlas if the player base decline and low sale numbers continues?

14. In Captain's Log 19 "The Golden Age of Piracy" you said some of your 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

Considering most new quests are mere milestones of existing content, and the player markets being DOA - Can we expect any of these promised design changes in the future? If so, when?

15. Will you ever go back to making Captain's Logs which don't spoil content but instead talk about the design direction of the game?

16. Considering how badly new tames are perceived by almost all players, could the developer(s) working on tames be reassigned to something the player base actually wants?

17. Do you think parts of the Atlas project were to ambitious (40000 players, 225 Grids, 4 Different Server Networks, Openworld, Sandbox, Piracy, MMO, Multiplayer, the pre-wipe hat)?

18. Right now people have no idea where this game is going or what you are working on. Can you involve the community in discussions about future content or design choices, if possible without spoiling the content?

19. Can you make this Q&A a regular thing? Maybe monthly? (only if its fruitful and you answer actual questions)

20. Right now there is a huge risk attached to fighting another ship with 0 reward. Speedsails being bugged makes ship fights almost completly voluntary resulting in no ship battles in a game about ships and battles. What are you plans on incentivising ship battles?
21. The last couple of months, we've gotten no significant changes to PvP or multiplayer. Do you stand by your statement that multiplayer is still your primary focus?
22. Considering ATLAS is an assetflip, do you think you can ever distance yourself from ARK so much that people wont realise it's an assetflip within 1 minute of playing both games?

23. You have been provided detailed feedback about the game, yet we see very few suggestions make it to the official servers. Many things get suggested repeatedly and we never know why you don't want to implement them or what your thoughts about said ideas are. Can you be more transparent and openly discuss why you dont want to implement certain ideas?

24. Do you have a vision for the game?

25. Do you think big significant changes are necessary to improve the game or are small incremental changes sufficient?

 

Medium - Very fair, not as loaded questions

26. Are you working on a freeport wide auction house, in the hopes of creating an economy?

27. Have you considered reworking the blueprint system? (99% being complete garbage, insane variance, useless blueprints on the drop tables)

28. Have you considered reworking the crafting system? (Crafting characters/constant respeccing whenever you want to craft something)

29. What are your plans to attract new players?

30. Do you think it's realistic that you will be able to optimise the game to a point were high end computers will get consistent 60 FPS on normal settings, even when loading huge bases and harbours?

31. Have you considered revamping the building system (ships and land building) and/or reducing the structure limit to help achieve consistent mediocre FPS?

32. How are the developers distributed amongst projects (PVP, Balance, Assetflipping from Ark, PVE, Cosmetics etc.)?

33. What are your thoughts about switching from a Pay to play business model to a free to play model considering steam reviews are the number 1 factor for customer acquisition and you already have a cosmetic system in place?

34. Where do you see this game in the near future (the next 6-12 months), and the far future (1-3 years from now)?

35. Do you think you can bounce back from current player numbers - if so, how?

36. What are your honest thoughts about the current state of the game?

37. What do you think the playerbase wants the most right now? Have you considered polling the playerbase?

38. Can you give us a roadmap/timeline of future development?

39. Do you want to distance yourself from ARK or get closer to it development wise?

40. Do you want ATLAS to be distinguishable from ARK or do you not care that they are very similar asset/content wise?

41. Will future update stay focused on importing ARK content or will you start making more original content?

42. Have you considered adding or putting developers in charge that know little to nothing about ARK in order to get out of your ARK mindset (tames, recycling content)?

43. Are you aware and satisfied with how harpoons have changed ship fights or do you plan on tweaking them?

44. Do you want to incentivise ship fighting, if so how?

45. Is the absence of frequent PVP balancing caused by a lack of information provided by the playerbase?

46. Are you planning to get rid of or at least heavily reduce obnoxious, tedious and grindy parts of the game? If so, what are your CONCRETE plans?

 

Easy - Questions you want to be asked (bad)

47. Do you have any plans to add more colours to the current pallet? ヾ(〃^∇^)ノ

48. Do you have plans to add cosmetic whiskers, cat ears and a cat tail? These could be 

harvested from dead baby cats that we are all so eagerly waiting for. ♥‿♥

49. When will we finally be able to have intercourse with our fellow players (asking for a friend)? ≧◡≦

50. When will Captain Jat Sparrow return? (◕︵◕)

Edited by realTim
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I would just like to know what the game plan is. what is the direction planned for the year and onwards? 

additional questions:
1. how far down the road are tarot cards or has that idea been scrapped?
2. what is going to be done to foster an actual economy? 
3. will automated shipping ever be a thing?
4. will non crafted "special" or "rare" items/loot (not just skins and BP's), ever be added to the game?

5. fancy hat

Edited by Enki Anunnaki

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when do you start talking care of your playerbase? 

Only answering once per month a small amount of questions in your official forum and website sending out nearly the same signals to us as you would spit in our faces with a smile on yours.

What you doing with your game doesen't matter anymore, as long as you don't start implying new pirate stuff and ships.

No one wants cats, rats and seahorses. Fix your game, bring in more pirate stuff and the company will love you again.

Edit: why does the playershops not act as an access to the globalwide auctionhouse like in WoW, aion, SWtor? This would change the Whole game in a better state. 

Edited by Forb Hidden

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Developers I've been playing ATLAS for almost 2,000 hours since the beginning.

We realized that ATLAS should follow an line type MMO's,  We have a lot of connection issues when atlas peaked at 40,000 players.

In those 9 months, we had an update that improved 20% performance for VGAs, just this update to help in performance.

There are many things we wish the game had,  like, rich cities full of NPCs giving life to FreePorts capitals as shown in the game trailer.

We played ATLAS a lot, we really liked their game,  what we really wanted is that the game was lighter and the servers could support large numbers of players.

 I have a 255 Ping problem and many friends, we don't know where is this problem . Since it  happened in the last two months, so far we haven't had a solution to this problem.

 

When we get more performance upgrades to VGA or CPU. will server support be improved someday to support 40,000 players as a massive game?

When will we have a solution for 255 ping?

 

 

Edited by FatalCrazy

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Right now there is a lot of concern over Atlas and what it is and where it's going. 

Is there an updated vision for Atlas? 

Is it possible to get a road map from the developers?  e.g https://fix.pubg.com/

What is good in PvP life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women. Done that and now we have nothing to do. We raise their fleets and destroy their base and then they quit? How is that going to make a sustainable player base? What are your plans for incentives and accountability? 

Many, many, many people have asked for combining PvE and PvP and given great suggestions, myself included. Are you even considering doing this? Why separate the player base? 

Why is decay of structures forced into the game? Can you not allow the player base to clean up things? This has created all kinds of nuisances including but not limited to people not reliably being able to take a break and helpful structures such as ramps to treasure maps auto destroying. If someone quits, let us be pirates and pillage their items. We should be able to destroy structures and get resources. We should be able to take over ships that are abandoned and either sink em or salvage them. Auto decay is awful.

 

 

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