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boomervoncannon

The Road Map to Nowhere

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1 minute ago, Realist said:

Once again boomer, you can see how crossplay was stupid to begin with. When ark stayed a stray from steam/Xbox crossplay they were very successful in that aspect. This was a very stupid decision they made.

ark pc has always been ahead of co sole pc. It always gave them the freedom to do whatever they wanted and then wait till QA from Microsoft or Sony pushed through. They had a lot more freedom before. 

Now with Xbox and steam playing at the same time we now have the pc people literally going through the same QA process that Xbox does(loving this).

so no, it was sometimes a whole month before we got what pc got. We now have the opportunity to get everything that pc gets but at the same time. Mind you, that is the same for us but a lot longer for pc players. Still loving it.

Which is fine, if you're actually getting anything before everyone quits from boredom at the lack of content. The overarching point of this thread is that there is literally no reason based on what has happened to date to believe this won't happen again on Xbox. You might still be here, because as you've said eleventy bajillion times you're a grinder and would be perfectly happy hitting the same rock all day. Everyone else will be gone. You yourself in other threads are shaking your head at the bottoming out of the activity levels in this game, yet you seem to magically think things will somehow be different on Xbox with the exact same game.

Why?

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35 minutes ago, eeeceee said:

Well, imagine if Steve Jobs could do what he did with better product.

The problem is that another component of Jobs personality was his dictatorial "my way or the highway" leadership. He could be brilliant, and there were aspects of his mentality that I highlighted because they were relevant here, but he could also be a huge dick. The reason this relates to him not having a better product is that the very best people in an industry usually get to choose to work wherever they want, and by and large they rarely choose to work for a guy who screams at them to just do things his way.

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22 minutes ago, Realist said:

It’s called progress. I realize that isn’t an acronym but that is what it is called. 

It is time to leave the past behind and move towards the future. Why relive the past right?

I refer you back to the definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Sometimes the past is relevant because it can be instructive about what we should reasonably expect in the future. 

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6 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

The problem is that another component of Jobs personality was his dictatorial "my way or the highway" leadership. He could be brilliant, and there were aspects of his mentality that I highlighted because they were relevant here, but he could also be a huge dick. The reason this relates to him not having a better product is that the very best people in an industry usually get to choose to work wherever they want, and by and large they rarely choose to work for a guy who screams at them to just do things his way.

Right. I think I was just trying to say something about how it is nice to think that if someone like Jobs could advance tech and create things, instead of advance the image of a business.

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1 minute ago, eeeceee said:

Right. I think I was just trying to say something about how it is nice to think that if someone like Jobs could advance tech and create things, instead of advance the image of a business.

Well the impact Apple has had in the marketplace has forced other companies to be more mindful of things like designing their products with more of a focus on asthetics and user friendliness, so in that way I would argue that Jobs has contributed beyond just advancing the image of a business. The world likes to look at things in terms of black and white, this person is good or bad, this thing is good or bad, but reality is rarely that straightforward. I think that Jobs legacy is an impact on multiple industries that yielded both positives and negatives.

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29 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

Which is fine, if you're actually getting anything before everyone quits from boredom at the lack of content. The overarching point of this thread is that there is literally no reason based on what has happened to date to believe this won't happen again on Xbox. You might still be here, because as you've said eleventy bajillion times you're a grinder and would be perfectly happy hitting the same rock all day. Everyone else will be gone. You yourself in other threads are shaking your head at the bottoming out of the activity levels in this game, yet you seem to magically think things will somehow be different on Xbox with the exact same game.

Why?

Because you know I will still be here. The other grinders will be here as well. Same thing for pc grinders(if they have them). I can’t comment on who is who with pc but I do have my doubts. 

This is a sinking ship boomer. Not just you and I, but we all know that. I am just wanting to play the game for awhile since I haven’t been able to. I feel bad for the pc guys that think “hooray, we will get a new influx of players”. Dude, the console people won’t put up with the pc people. They just won’t. 

Lets add in the “no content” for awhile. Sure that doesn’t bother me but it will definitely bother any pc player that has already been playing.

the stupid decisions just keep coming. By far their most stupid decision was crossplay with steam. My mind is still boggles by how stupid that was. This was yet another “let’s be new and innovative” kind of idea that will most definitely blow up in their face.

god man, I had high hopes for atlas in the beginning but sure enough they $&”@ed it up. Disappointed but not surprised. Smh

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3 hours ago, Realist said:

Because you know I will still be here. The other grinders will be here as well. Same thing for pc grinders(if they have them). I can’t comment on who is who with pc but I do have my doubts. 

This is a sinking ship boomer. Not just you and I, but we all know that. I am just wanting to play the game for awhile since I haven’t been able to. I feel bad for the pc guys that think “hooray, we will get a new influx of players”. Dude, the console people won’t put up with the pc people. They just won’t. 

Lets add in the “no content” for awhile. Sure that doesn’t bother me but it will definitely bother any pc player that has already been playing.

the stupid decisions just keep coming. By far their most stupid decision was crossplay with steam. My mind is still boggles by how stupid that was. This was yet another “let’s be new and innovative” kind of idea that will most definitely blow up in their face.

god man, I had high hopes for atlas in the beginning but sure enough they $&”@ed it up. Disappointed but not surprised. Smh

Why you think you can speak for all the PC and Xbob players? 

For me it's not a big deal to play with Xbobs, as long as the performance and grafics not get discrased.

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On 9/10/2019 at 4:56 AM, Sheepshooter said:

As should be obvious from the stream the the problem is since this thing crashed after launch, they don't know what to do and in what direction they new design needs to go...
That is why they put XBOX first which is a technical problem that with goals set by others for them (Microsoft)...

When this game launched it had an idea what it should be and where it should go...
That crashed and burned on day one, because in reality it did not work at initial contact with the enemy (players actually playing)...
They did not know what to do, no plan B, and lost complete the initiative...

At that point they started to ask the influencers like streamers and largest companies what they wanted... and did that without thinking about it first...
Obviously a guy behind a camera loosing in the game is not the best advice to get from...

Numbers dropped and so someone came up with an original though: how about we do the same think as worked for ARK? New dinos always brought people back fro ARK lets do this and ARKify the Atlas... crashed and burnt also, because even the ARK players in Atlas came here because of LESS TAMES...

At that point they are like a scared animal doing nothing, because they are locked into the thought that everything the tried before failed and so the next thing they try could fail also, so better not do anything...

 

I was waiting for someone to make that point.  Of course Boomer may be right as well.  It's one of the two, or possibly a combination of both.

The overall game design has floundered, they've got a new guy in to try to get it headed in a decent direction again, and that takes a bit of time.  So in the meantime, what better to do than a purely technical project that should bring cash?

If we had any sense, we'd go back over all our old ideas about what the game should be about, and consolidate them into something coherent that might give them some ideas of what to do.  Or we'd quit.  Depends on whether you see Boomer or Sheep as having the stronger argument.

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On 9/10/2019 at 5:14 AM, Realist said:

God, give me the damn CM position. This is complete BS. The lack of communication is ridiculous. I really want to invite everyone to look at Ced’s posts on twitter. He is doing an amazing job. Not quite as good as I would but still awesome in his own respect.

i could literally reply to every single person with atleast a speck of info and it would always be positive.

not just that but since I would be employed by you I wouldn’t be able to say anything bad at all. Not on the forums/twitter/reddit/twitch/discord. You guys are missing out on some good publicity to be honest, as well as getting rid of the bad. Oh well, the ball is in your court.

This made me laugh. Good job. 

Edited by Percieval
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On 9/11/2019 at 3:53 AM, Winter Thorne said:

I was waiting for someone to make that point.  Of course Boomer may be right as well.  It's one of the two, or possibly a combination of both.

The overall game design has floundered, they've got a new guy in to try to get it headed in a decent direction again, and that takes a bit of time.  So in the meantime, what better to do than a purely technical project that should bring cash?

If we had any sense, we'd go back over all our old ideas about what the game should be about, and consolidate them into something coherent that might give them some ideas of what to do.  Or we'd quit.  Depends on whether you see Boomer or Sheep as having the stronger argument.

My argument is that doing the purely technical project that brings in cash will be penny wise and pound foolish because if you haven't improved your game at all, and don't intend to immediately after Xbox launch, whatever cash that garners will be far outweighed in the long run by the ruining of the game's reputation on a second platform and second market. If the new guy gets the game headed in the right direction after all that, but by that point it's the same ghost town it is now because Xbox players were treated to the same experience no one liked here, who will know at that theoretical point some nebulous distance down the road?

If you don't fix your game first, then release on Xbox, you're not just pointing the gun at your own foot, you're pulling the pin and dropping the grenade down your shorts while humming Suicide is Painless (the theme from MASH).

Edited by boomervoncannon

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58 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

My argument is that doing the purely technical project that brings in cash will be penny wise and pound foolish because if you haven't improved your game at all, and don't intend to immediately after Xbox launch, whatever cash that garners will be far outweighed in the long run by the ruining of the game's reputation on a second platform and second market. If the new guy gets the game headed in the right direction after all that, but by that point it's the same ghost town it is now because Xbox players were treated to the same experience no one liked here, who will know at that theoretical point some nebulous distance down the road?

If you don't fix your game first, then release on Xbox, you're not just pointing the gun at your own foot, you're pulling the pin and dropping the grenade down your shorts while humming Suicide is Painless (the theme from MASH).

It takes some time to iron out a design and then implement it.  My point was that maybe that's what they're doing while the xbox release is rolling out.  The amount of time it takes to do that isn't increased notably by letting the techies continue to work on the xbox rollout. If you really wanted the improvements first, then nothing at all would be happening until at least the end of the year.

So if that's what's happening, I anticipate the xbox rollout, followed imediately by some mop up of xbox rollout technical issues, and then some big announcement about major game changes coming up soon-ish.  Xbox players are going to have at least a couple months of "newness" to buffer any complaints.  Of course, that may not be what's really happening.  If not, that would really be a shame, since it would indicate a pure cash grab.

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1 hour ago, boomervoncannon said:

If you don't fix your game first, then release on Xbox, you're not just pointing the gun at your own foot, you're pulling the pin and dropping the grenade down your shorts while humming Suicide is Painless (the theme from MASH).

They spoke about a first, bigger patch who will come with the Xbob launch. If they are smart enough, they will do exactly what you meaned.

Imo they will bring out really important stuff, like cats or seahorses instead of bugfixes, right working sails, pirate encampments, fixed and improved playershops, more shiptypes, no more vanishing tames, ships, structures or just a finished version of the blackwood map.

 

Sooo many open tasks. Would be nice to see the devs finishing one thing patient before rushing to the next step.

Edit: I run a car garage and imagined, how my business would run after a half year of doing just 75% of the work. Only change three wheels, or just change the breaks on one side... Change a radio without connecting them...? No one can work like that without get in trouble, except politicians.

Edited by Forb Hidden
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1 hour ago, Winter Thorne said:

It takes some time to iron out a design and then implement it.  My point was that maybe that's what they're doing while the xbox release is rolling out.  The amount of time it takes to do that isn't increased notably by letting the techies continue to work on the xbox rollout. If you really wanted the improvements first, then nothing at all would be happening until at least the end of the year.

So if that's what's happening, I anticipate the xbox rollout, followed imediately by some mop up of xbox rollout technical issues, and then some big announcement about major game changes coming up soon-ish.  Xbox players are going to have at least a couple months of "newness" to buffer any complaints.  Of course, that may not be what's really happening.  If not, that would really be a shame, since it would indicate a pure cash grab.

My viewpoint is based entirely on a business and marketing perspective because that's what I have a solid grasp of, and it's honestly what I believe needs to be the overriding consideration for a game struggling mightily at this point. I have no idea about the technical side, but can you offer a guess about what percentage of the team's resources might be needed in order to meet the technical needs of launching on xbox? Because if that percentage is anything but tiny, then my business oriented position would be that the emphasis really should be on improving the game first so that any Xbox rollout has a chance to do better than PC performance. I view any significant diversion of developer time and resources away from improving a failing game as a misplaced priority. 

There is an exception to this: if the financial situation is dire and the need for cash overrides all other considerations. I don't know anything about GrapeCard's financial state, but the information I do have suggests it's possible it could be not good. If true, that makes the game's overall chances even gloomier because of the way it limits decision makers ability to do what is needed instead of what is urgent.

Regarding any newness buffer, based on our experience here, I would suggest that buffer has a maximum window of 90 days, and that may be generous. I base this on the fact that Atlas's PC launch suffered an 80% attrition rate within that same period and with an unchanged game it would be reasonable to expect similar results. It might even be less because since the game is not brand new and there is at least some review history, Xbox players may very well give Atlas less time to prove itself. "See, the PC crowd was right, once you build a ship and a base and tame a few animals, there's not much to do but a single boss and one dungeon. Let's go play FIFA and gamble all our money away on lootboxes."

Edited by boomervoncannon

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1 hour ago, Forb Hidden said:

They spoke about a first, bigger patch who will come with the Xbob launch. If they are smart enough, they will do exactly what you meaned.

Nah, they also already said no new content before the Xbox release as well as a ways after the Xbox release.

they update they are talking about was adding the new islands. Their main concern is optimization right now.

no new content is coming for awhile 

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8 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

My viewpoint is based entirely on a business and marketing perspective because that's what I have a solid grasp of, and it's honestly what I believe needs to be the overriding consideration for a game struggling mightily at this point. I have no idea about the technical side, but can you offer a guess about what percentage of the team's resources might be needed in order to meet the technical needs of launching on xbox? Because if that percentage is anything but tiny, then my business oriented position would be that the emphasis really should be on improving the game first so that any Xbox rollout has a chance to do better than PC performance. I view any significant diversion of developer time and resources away from improving a failing game as a misplaced priority. 

 

I guess my view is based on a project mgmt perspective.  I know nothing at all about how GS operates, so I'm using educated guesses along with what the decision points would be if I were running a project like this.  

First, you're asking them to stop building something that is already in progress, and has been in progress since before the new guy signed on.  This is a money-generating effort.  You want them to stop working on this in order to work on the new stuff.  They can't  build  the new stuff, because it's likely they don't know what the new stuff is yet.  However, what they can do is design the new stuff, make decisions about directions for things like claims, how NPCs will be used, enhanced levels of player cooperation (towns&cities I hope), what the new skill trees should look like, etc.  The people making those decisions are not the same people working on coding and network for Xbox.  So those two efforts are running concurrently.

I don't know their timelines or schedules.  If it's the case that the new stuff can be released soon after the xbox release, I'd say they're doing the right things.  Even 4 months after the xbox release should be ok, as far as your concerns go.  The farther out that date moves, the better the "new stuff" has to be, but it can still work.  Even tired players will stick around if there's big new features on the way and they can make that announcement whenever they need to to spark interest.  I also don't know what their competition will be releasing for Xbox over the next 4-6 months, and that's another fairly important data point.

Keep in mind, the next effort after the xbox release is not new content, but performance improvements.  There's not much point in doing those before the xbox release, as you'd likely have to retune the whole thing again after xbox.  After that comes new content.  This means that some of what's happening now is a prereq for what will be hapening later.   You can't add a bunch of players, a bunch of npc content, and attempt to get large groups of players together without improving the performance, and you can't improve the performance  in a streamlined way without getting xbox started.  That's not to say that the work on the new content hasn't started yet.  Design phase is first, and it's worth it to take the time to do that right and make sure the various pieces of it work together.

 

What you're predicting about the xbox launch and disaffected players may be true or it may not be.  But I don't see any sane project path to avert that, so it would just have to be recognized in the risk assessment and planned for.

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4 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

I guess my view is based on a project mgmt perspective.  I know nothing at all about how GS operates, so I'm using educated guesses along with what the decision points would be if I were running a project like this.  

First, you're asking them to stop building something that is already in progress, and has been in progress since before the new guy signed on.  This is a money-generating effort.  You want them to stop working on this in order to work on the new stuff.  They can't  build  the new stuff, because it's likely they don't know what the new stuff is yet.  However, what they can do is design the new stuff, make decisions about directions for things like claims, how NPCs will be used, enhanced levels of player cooperation (towns&cities I hope), what the new skill trees should look like, etc.  The people making those decisions are not the same people working on coding and network for Xbox.  So those two efforts are running concurrently.

I don't know their timelines or schedules.  If it's the case that the new stuff can be released soon after the xbox release, I'd say they're doing the right things.  Even 4 months after the xbox release should be ok, as far as your concerns go.  The farther out that date moves, the better the "new stuff" has to be, but it can still work.  Even tired players will stick around if there's big new features on the way and they can make that announcement whenever they need to to spark interest.  I also don't know what their competition will be releasing for Xbox over the next 4-6 months, and that's another fairly important data point.

Keep in mind, the next effort after the xbox release is not new content, but performance improvements.  There's not much point in doing those before the xbox release, as you'd likely have to retune the whole thing again after xbox.  After that comes new content.  This means that some of what's happening now is a prereq for what will be hapening later.   You can't add a bunch of players, a bunch of npc content, and attempt to get large groups of players together without improving the performance, and you can't improve the performance  in a streamlined way without getting xbox started.  That's not to say that the work on the new content hasn't started yet.  Design phase is first, and it's worth it to take the time to do that right and make sure the various pieces of it work together.

 

What you're predicting about the xbox launch and disaffected players may be true or it may not be.  But I don't see any sane project path to avert that, so it would just have to be recognized in the risk assessment and planned for.

Thanks for the insight. I realize as you say, you can only make educated guesses, but since you have some background in this area and I don't, as they say "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king."  I do agree that how crowded the Xbox release space is likely can be a factor and with the all important to retail 4th quarter coming up, without knowing anything concrete my guess is it could be pretty crowded. If what you describe is true about the scheduling and timelines and nature of projects, and it all sounds perfectly reasonable to me, I can see why the decision making process makes more sense from where they are sitting.

All I can say is that regardless of how much sense that might make from a project management perspective, from where I sit the prospects for the outcome of said path from a marketing perspective don't appear promising. My guess is that Xbox players are even less accustomed to playing unfinished games still under development than PC players, and thus as a group will have less patience for Atlas's current state regardless of any clear labels on the box stating "Early Access game". Remember all those folks back in January and February already pounding the table and demanding all the bugs be fixed yesterday? Those were PC folks who by comparison should be more used to playing a game still in progress than console players.

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56 minutes ago, Realist said:

Nah, they also already said no new content before the Xbox release as well as a ways after the Xbox release.

they update they are talking about was adding the new islands. Their main concern is optimization right now.

no new content is coming for awhile 


Let’s get straight to reiterating and clarifying details in regards to the next Mega Update/Xbox launch which is coming very soon. The Xbox launch will include:

  • Crossplay support between PC Steam and Xbox players for ATLAS.
  • Parity between both platforms. Xbox players won't have to wait for updates as they will happen simultaneously with PC
  • We’ll be working on bringing day one Keyboard and Mouse support for the game, otherwise, it’ll arrive shortly thereafter.

The Mega Update includes content and changes currently on the PTR, as well as some additional content we’ve discussed, and this will go live on our Official Network at the time of the Xbox Launch.

I was not on the PTR but there will be a "mega update" with the launch. I'm hopeful that the devs noted, that to do nothing on this point is definitely the worst decision.

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5 minutes ago, Forb Hidden said:


Let’s get straight to reiterating and clarifying details in regards to the next Mega Update/Xbox launch which is coming very soon. The Xbox launch will include:

  • Crossplay support between PC Steam and Xbox players for ATLAS.
  • Parity between both platforms. Xbox players won't have to wait for updates as they will happen simultaneously with PC
  • We’ll be working on bringing day one Keyboard and Mouse support for the game, otherwise, it’ll arrive shortly thereafter.

The Mega Update includes content and changes currently on the PTR, as well as some additional content we’ve discussed, and this will go live on our Official Network at the time of the Xbox Launch.

I was not on the PTR but there will be a "mega update" with the launch. I'm hopeful that the devs noted, that to do nothing on this point is definitely the worst decision.

Just going off what they said on the stream. Phase 1 optimizations 

edit: just looked through all of the ptr patch notes and I didn’t really see any actual new content besides the new islands.

Edited by Realist
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14 minutes ago, Realist said:

 

edit: just looked through all of the ptr patch notes and I didn’t really see any actual new content besides the new islands.

no cats?  no hats?  no Cat in the Hat?

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Yeah, its confusing. I recall the devs saying that they would release stuff with the content, but then they said 5 mins later that there is no new content until after the launch, and then stressed the point that the after is going to be a while. Lol?
 

Edited by eeeceee

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5 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

no cats?  no hats?  no Cat in the Hat?

I now really badly want a new food recipe called Green Eggs and Ham which gives varying buffs depending upon whether it is eaten on a boat or with a goat, in a box or with a fox.

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23 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

no cats?  no hats?  no Cat in the Hat?

Dude, that hat everyone wants is going to be like ever getting a working cancel button for clash royale lol

Edited by Realist

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This is a beta game currently they dont have to discuss anything if they are working on a plan for the future, then if you were the cs you would be told to not say anything. 

Edited by Luxfere

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14 hours ago, Luxfere said:

This is a beta game currently they dont have to discuss anything if they are working on a plan for the future, then if you were the cs you would be told to not say anything. 

Not to disagree too sharply, but I want to make a point here.

This is not a beta game.

People continue to conflate the terms beta or alpha testing with Early Access. The two are qualitatively different. There may be other differences as well but the main one for my point is that people did not pay to participate in betas or alphas, in fact a lot of the testing in those stages were done by paid testers. Early Access we pay for, and imo one of the changes that should bring is a greater level of communication with the playerbase. We are no longer people on the payroll or testing a game for free, we are customers, and in my book customers who are using an unfinished product have a right to expect a greater level of open communication about development progress.

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