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Whitehawk

I enjoy playing atlas

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Ok so even though according to some people on these forums I shouldn't be enjoying the game without feeling guilty, I actually do enjoy playing. So I am asking anyone else who enjoys playing to comment on this topic when they get a chance and maybe mention the best bits. For me It's boat building and the sunsets are amazing. I'm sure it won't be long before this topic has an attempt at derailment which I personally will ignore. And I know posting good things here is likely to get a loada backlash but I'm just getting tired of hearing all the negative. Please post if you like the game and what you like most. thx. 

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I like sailing my ship into combat, even solo with an ai crew when going out sotd hunting or whale hunting. Even the first time when I was clumsy at the Ai controls and kept messing up, it and couldn't remember what key did what lol, was still fun but, had to "run away" a lot till I got good at it. My favorite sotd fight, was during a waterspout storm, weaving in between the spouts to keep my fire focused on a ship. Very exciting!

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This game has outstanding looking graphics.  The scenery is so good I just stand and look at it sometimes.  I often push for more/better development on the forums, because the potential for this game is so high.  I've been playing since launch and still enjoy it, partly because I've deliberately not worried about progression and there are still a ton of things I haven't done yet.    I enjoy building, sailing, goofing off and doing silly things, and have had a lot of adventures with friends that started out to be something simple and wound up being epic stories.  I am currently building a museum to memorialize some of these events.  Heh.

Yep.  Still fun.

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Still playing, still enjoying it.

The storms may seem a bit silly in their implimentation, but when sailing though one I always go into first person mode and battle the storm from behind the wheel. Not being able to sometimes turn the ship as the seas are pushing against you, spouts dropping from the skies to be avoided, the waves getting so high they block your view ahead, that is a lot of fun and if you do it well its a good boost to your progress with the strong winds.

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3 hours ago, rasemaier said:

I think the game is great, too. A bit more fps if there are a lot of structures around, would be good. đŸ™‚

My understanding is that this is one of the benefits of structures like 4 high walls etc as found in Ark. Not only does it make building large structures less tedious, but it also reduces the number of discrete structures the game needs to render, hastening and smoothing that process. I would expect that sort of thing to be added at some point along the line as development progresses.

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Oh yeah I forgot to mention I love the fishing, I don't even mind the mini game with it, and you get gold for fishing too.

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5 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

My understanding is that this is one of the benefits of structures like 4 high walls etc as found in Ark. Not only does it make building large structures less tedious, but it also reduces the number of discrete structures the game needs to render, hastening and smoothing that process. I would expect that sort of thing to be added at some point along the line as development progresses.

Less tedious absolutely, but if the larger pieces retain the same functionality (snap points), then the benefit to performance will be pretty small.

For a 4x4, the underlying geometry can be simpler, but vertices are pretty cheap. To retain the snap points, there would still need to be the same number of bones with rotations and positional offsets. For texture, you could either tile the 1x1 texture 16 times across the object, create a monster texture 16x as large, or reduce the level of detail on the texture, which will look pretty bad next to a full-res tile. One of those is best for instancing, one is best for streaming, and one is better for memory, but they all hit specific hardware harder (RAM, CPU, GPU, or network bandwidth)

The only thing that would significantly improve performance would be reducing resolution on the textures, or reducing the number of snap points on larger objects.

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Oh yeah and I know it's in single player but the kings arena area on the  hydra island of blackwood is absolutely stunning

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Btw I forgot to thank Whitehawk for starting this thread. I'm in favor of anything that is positive, even a few days after I've leveled some of my strongest criticisms at the game. It's easy to fall into a negative mindset especially with a game doing poorly, but for the most part we wouldn't be here if we didn't care about the game, and we only care because at some point, it let us have fun. I have enjoyed many fun hours with friends playing Atlas so far, probably I liked going on expeditions to the north to gather metal etc the most, or going out hunting SOTD's.

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Appreciate the positivity!

I love the ships in general and (yes, even though it needs to be hit with our upcoming balance changes) I think ship PvP combat can be really enjoyable. I even like listening to the ship-related sound effects and visualising the talented Watson Wu and his team clambering about on a 1812 replica ship to record them: 

 

I really enjoy the creative builds you guys create. I've seen Tahitian marina, castles, taverns, hanging gardens, skull forts, Red Wedding halls...along with intricate sail and ship designs. The Aurora Borealis is really ambient. Waveworks gives a cool effect to the ocean, I know the guys spent a lot of time on that. 

Our level designers excelled themselves, I'm blown away by some of the points of interest, statues, and ruins are just amazing. The great hall in the Polar Dungeon is a place I hung out in whilst doing QA on that patch. There are also uwotm8 moments with the level designers. Case in point :classic_huh::
 

 Iso's Blackwoods map is just beautiful in general. She has a real eye for aesthetics. Hmmm oh and I like the derpy expressions on Crew's faces at times. 

I love working with my talented and technically ambitious team and acting as the human shield for them at times haha. I also appreciate the passionate Community. Most of the harshest critique comes from a place of being invested in the progress of the game and I filter it through that understanding. Acting as an advocate and voice for the Community in meetings whilst also supporting the team internally brings a sense of accomplishment.

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I love how dynamic, and how complex, the ingame items and pvp gets. The ship combat is awesome.  I love out thinking your enemy, and just thinking up meta pvp ship designs.  Theres a sort of "science" that develops from it.

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I enjoy having enough freedom in building and ship designs to make things that are truly unique and efficient.

I enjoy how much wilderness there is to be found. Exploring the bigger islands really makes me feel like a Conquistador.

I enjoy how adorable you made the baby pets look. Your team could have just made small bears using the same model and called it a day, but you went the extra mile.

I enjoy the ambient sounds of the boat and jungles.

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I enjoy playing atlas, I start writing about why and then hours later I have to delete the whole thing because I'm not sure I can make a post within reasonable time that details why. There really is so many things that are enjoyable about the game. Things like the ocean, weather effects, sounds, cuteness of baby bears, do indeed show talent and passion from the team. These things that we can see the passion in, they nearly spoil us, and can nearly make it so that nothing else is ever good enough. I'm not really sure why it is that it appears that you should feel guilty for playing the game, the criticisms are mostly pvp balance, lack of content and player count. I think it's just the vibe. If there is still people enjoying the game for the same reasons that they started to enjoy it for, then surely there has always been a good game there to play, and it's just some people don't happen to play/somehow give you that vibe.

I also enjoy reading posts about atlas. I started playing in December, and have only taken a break for a few weeks before the wipe. I kept playing PVP for a few weeks after the wipe, and then due to time concerns (and balancing) I started playing solo PVE so that I could do the content and roleplay while making my own missions. I am about 75% of the way through the missions that I had set for myself, have nearly all the quests done, so also getting there with the content. I enjoyed getting the 4 powerstones I have so far, building all the ships, taming all the animals. most of the time that was spent sailing around for 1000s of hours on missions.

Things that I enjoy about atlas:

- sailing*

- the atmosphere and game world

- anything to do with ships, mostly the building and combat, but i do like diving for treasure and stuff that makes me feel like its a real ship

- pirate rp'ing (I need to go replay Secret of Monkey Island very soon. Hehe)

- trading and breeding animals

- building bases and pirate hideaways

- trading, hoarding and grinding rare mats

- treasure!!

- making missions for myself and exploring, while pondering about the possible game story, balance and content that could be added, as I do all of the above

*there does become a point where it gets tedious, but this game nearly is actually able to be a microsoft flight simulator, and sailing can be fun just for the simulation factor. I would really like to see the sailing logistics stay how they are but also become not tedious. Just need more things to do while sailing maybe.

At the moment, I just do maintenance, as I can't commit to breeding more animals, and I've got quite a bit of maintenance to do. I still enjoy the maintenance, however, running around farming meat and sailing around for gold while meeting people is fun. The game just needs to be worked on further is all, that's why I enjoy atlas really.

Edited by eeeceee
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Open world, full loot, skill based sand box describes the perfect game for me.  Graphics that at least attempt to look real life is a necessity as well (I despise that cartoony stuff.)  The above describes Atlas to a tee (mostly).  I'm not some heavy duty PvP kind of player.  I tend to carry real life morals and values into games with me .... I know how silly that sounds.  Regardless, I don't go out killing, stealing and raiding unless provoked.  Beauty of Atlas is I will be provoked, by design.  

 

Been on Lawless from the start because that is the best way to accommodate what I want to do.  Called them "Troll Bases" ... built several 5 layer honeycomb wall thick, 6 floor high (each absolutely packed with ramps to slow grenade attack) bases.  Completely solid except for a chest in the middle containing a note that says "lol".  Difficult to explain the joy I get when I log in and some clan has put in the time and resources to get to my troll chest.  To be fair it really isn't that difficult.  Grenades or cannon bears can get through in no time.  Rebuild and wait for the next one.  If I was able to figure out who attacked me my quest would begin.  Add them to the KOS list, build a new Schooner (They usually sunk my ship too) and let the fun begin. 

 

Just one of the ways I have fun in Atlas .... so many other ways to have fun.  My point is in Atlas I was able to play however the heck I wanted to and that is what I love about it.  Despite what you may will read in the information spaces Atlas is a really good game that has potential to be great.  I truly hope they get back to skill based and stay away from theme park play style. 

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19 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

Thanks @Dollie for sharing that video of how the sounds for ships were recorded from an actual sailing ship especially for the game.  That's really cool.

 

20 hours ago, Dollie said:

I love the ships in general and (yes, even though it needs to be hit with our upcoming balance changes) I think ship PvP combat can be really enjoyable. I even like listening to the ship-related sound effects and visualising the talented Watson Wu and his team clambering about on a 1812 replica ship to record them: 

 

I often play without sound, but sometimes I turn it up while sailing, just because of the sounds effects.  Having spent some time on some old schooners and sloops, they sounded absolutely real to me.  Thanks for letting us in on how that was done.  Those and the waves are great.  Very much like the real thing.

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On 9/13/2019 at 1:35 PM, Sleepinator2000 said:

Less tedious absolutely, but if the larger pieces retain the same functionality (snap points), then the benefit to performance will be pretty small.

For a 4x4, the underlying geometry can be simpler, but vertices are pretty cheap. To retain the snap points, there would still need to be the same number of bones with rotations and positional offsets. For texture, you could either tile the 1x1 texture 16 times across the object, create a monster texture 16x as large, or reduce the level of detail on the texture, which will look pretty bad next to a full-res tile. One of those is best for instancing, one is best for streaming, and one is better for memory, but they all hit specific hardware harder (RAM, CPU, GPU, or network bandwidth)

The only thing that would significantly improve performance would be reducing resolution on the textures, or reducing the number of snap points on larger objects.

I've always thought that one of  the biggest performance issues for the client was waiting on streaming data from the servers.   Ping hits 255 and framerates dip into the single digits.  If there are less objects to stream to the clients won't that reduce what is calculated on the server side to be streamed thus reducing cpu/ram and network usage by the server therefor getting the data to the client quicker? 

 

Also in regards to snap points it reduces them as well.  Sure you have the same amount on the outside of the 4x4 as you would if you used 16 pieces to build it.  You are however removing the 15 snap points in the middle since its one solid piece now instead off 16 individual pieces all with unique HP.  Reduced cost there as well.   

 

I'm no game dev so just trying to understand it and this is how I see it. 

 

In keeping with the OP I like everything around the ships.  I using BP's to build high end gear.  Leveling the ships and praying for those high end BP's.  Still think the floor needs to be adjusted on those more so than the ceiling. 

 

Ship combat is a heart racing, adrenaline pumping adventure.  Its when you are putting all the time and work on the line to defeat your enemy.  I have not felt that since my days in Eve.  The risk you take in losing your pixels that you worked so hard to get is what gets me going. 

 

I enjoy taming, building, etc as well but the ship combat is what really does it for me.

Edited by DocHolliday

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Oh yeh I like turtle back riding, just to see how far I can travel on it's back. (this is not a metaphor for some other kind of private fetish activity btw).

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Haha been there and done that.  Damn you Jack Sparrow. 

 

Having said that I hate that they are called turtles when they are clearly tortoises.  

Edited by DocHolliday

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Thx for that Video @Dollie, i really love the sounds while sailing and i really wish for more ambient sounds like that in the future,as the game seems to be a bit too quiet at some places.

But back to Topic. One of the first "encounters" with other players in Atlas i have made was in the E12 Freeport, So i was talking with those other guys while beeing close to the water while a turtle somehow managed to get under me and slowly walked me into the water. We laughed so hard while i got kidnapped by this turtle đŸ˜„

 

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37 minutes ago, Whitehawk said:

Turtle surfing, it's the best way to travel in style!

If they get tamable i definitly going to Breed them XD  Sometimes it really is Nice to remind Yourself of why this game is so awesome đŸ™‚Â  so many good memories And Adventures And even unforseen And buggy stuff had its fun to it. Also sometimes i just Start to Write a Story to atlas using the Bits we already know,also i love Building And Placing And dress up NPCs to bring more live into our city

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And thx to @Dollie i know have that picture in my Head about few Level Designers Sitting in front of a Pc pissing  themselfs while designing that Dick pillar And are like "hahaha wait Till Jat finds out"

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Hah. My island has one of those pillars.

Also yes the ship combat should be the focus and is probably the most fun part. The first time I took my friend out on my gally and we got into a fight he started screaming screams of joy haha. Just need some balancing, and new ship types (somehow) or upgrades for them.

Edited by eeeceee

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