So I guess this is all we'll get..

[Nhaga 7]

Yesterday I reinstalled Atlas to see its progress since the messy launch 2 years ago (it seemed like a good time to do so since the Early Access page says the game will be in Early Access for about 2 years) and I was very disapointed to see that almost nothing changed regarding the most basic aspects of the game such as :
-Mars gravity on land (ridiculous air time / jump length)
-Moon gravity in water (the game still launches characters 3m in the air to get back on a raft or sometimes even just when trying to swim back to shore)
-Unbearable character rubberbanding / spazzing out near basically any moving entities (animals, boats, shipwreck sending you to the bottom of the sea, etc..)
-Terrible UI

Since I've heard a lot of people saying that this game was just a copy of ARK (a game I never played), I thought I would check some ARK gameplay online to see what kind of polishing we could expect for these aspects of the game since they seem to at least share the same engine, and this is the moment I lost all hope for Atlas..
Apparently, this is all we'll get, there are currently on average 70K people playing ARK daily just on Steam, a finished game that is still sold for 55€ with multiple expansions and 4 years of updates, and it's the same janky mess.

Two years of Early Access to polish core aspects of the game, and what we got instead are submarines and torpedoes in a product advertised as a pirate game.. what a disappointment..

Edited January 23, 2021 by Nhaga

[George Catcher 367]

...

submarines and torpedoes in a product advertised as a pirate game...

You forgot to mention HATS for bears, cats and rabits tames : )))

Well... if we are going to be serious then... yeah. I also came to THE GAME of sailing age, piracy and adventures. And in 2 years there were:

- just 2 more types of damned ships I fight.

- Shipwrecks I occasionally dive for.

- Some rebalance related to the treasure maps, and resource gathering.

- Cargo saddle with storage box, I use with my horse.

And that's it. That's all what was added for me in 2 years.

-- I don't care about tames, dinos, hats, dolphins etc. I'm not here to play happy farm guy, that do all taming and breeding. Everytime I put alot of XP in to beastmastery - I feel sad, because I forced to do so. There is no alternative to tames in high lvl treasure map fighting.

-- I don't care about all this trading stuff. I'm not here to play middle age tycoon.

-- As solo player I never been to Kraken, Yeti, Thench, because game just doesn't provide any instrument to gather players in groups and do all stuff together with all other players.

-Terrible UI

And yeah... I was writing and even use ALL MY POOR PHOTOSHOP SKILLS to show that, instead of this:

We could see something like this:

Instead of this:

Something like this (I know it doesn't look perfect, I just wanna show the Idea).

And even here all made wrong:

And it should look this like:

[Nhaga 7]

I did skip a few things that are worth mentioning indeed, I'm just so surprised that something as rudimentary as character physics still hasn't been improved at all for so long.
I'm not the kind of person that go rant on forums of games that I don't enjoy, I actually only complain about games I like or games I want to like and I really want to find an excuse to have fun with Atlas, but it's so hard when it's so inconsistent and unreliable for simple actions like jumping, swimming and fighting (especially compared to its main competitor for pirate games which is incredibly polished).

My tests from yesterday were concluded when I finished a raft and reached an area with ships of the damned, I wanted to see if any improvement was made to their behaviour or if they are still the "typical entity", roaming a few meters one way, turning 180° and roaming a little bit the other way.. I get that they are not supposed to behave like ships with a normal crew, but still, they just feel like any random animals staying around their spawn location and it's very obvious. (Also, they do look quite bad indeed)

Other than a better readability for the regular interface (health, hunger etc..), I think it could also use some more style. The menus could be similar to the "Dossiers" from ARK (I think that's what they are called), except that it would be a captain's journal with sketches of the different crafts, I think it would add a lot more personality to the menus instead of these boring gray rectangles (though the menu's style should probably be very low on priority right now).

I also kind of wish the vitamin system would be toned down (quite a bit) but dying would have more of an impact. Right now, if I notice that I'm low on hunger or my vitamins are too low, I just go drown myself to respawn.. It's very lame..

I still want this game to succeed, but I just don't have much hope left for it.. Can "Grapeshot" be the next "Hello Games" and revive Atlast .. ?

[WilliamMitchell 3]

On 1/22/2021 at 2:46 PM, George Catcher said:

 

 

You forgot to mention HATS for bears, cats and rabits tames : )))

Well... if we are going to be serious then... yeah. I also came to THE GAME of sailing age, piracy and adventures. And in 2 years there were:

- just 2 more types of damned ships I fight.

- Shipwrecks I occasionally dive for.

- Some rebalance related to the treasure maps, and resource gathering.

- Cargo saddle with storage box, I use with my horse.

And that's it. That's all what was added for me in 2 years.

-- I don't care about tames, dinos, hats, dolphins etc. I'm not here to play happy farm guy, that do all taming and breeding. Everytime I put alot of XP in to beastmastery - I feel sad, because I forced to do so. There is no alternative to tames in high lvl treasure map fighting.

-- I don't care about all this trading stuff. I'm not here to play middle age tycoon.

-- As solo player I never been to Kraken, Yeti, Thench, because game just doesn't provide any instrument to gather players in groups and do all stuff together with all other players.

 

 

And yeah... I was writing and even use ALL MY POOR PHOTOSHOP SKILLS to show that, instead of this:

We could see something like this:

Instead of this:

Something like this (I know it doesn't look perfect, I just wanna show the Idea).

And even here all made wrong:

And it should look this like:

This UI overhaul is amazing.

I hate the current NPC ship system. The NPC's have no purpose they are just their and they look SH*T. Yours is much nicer looking. I think they should also be much rarer but stronger and instead of having hundreds of SotD's randomly floating around we should have "human" NPC ships sailing with purpose - trade routes hopefully will add this and I hope its more than just a measly small paddle steamer circling the map. It should be a fleet of galleons travelling with an armed escort that will attack anyone who attacks the fleet otherwise just continue on its way. They should vary in fleet size and have multiple routes they follow with some being short other being longer.

 

[George Catcher 367]

 I think they should also be much rarer but stronger and instead of having hundreds of SotD's randomly floating around

Yeah. That's true. As SotD Hunter who took down hundreds of them I must say, most of time I do ignore most of week damned fleet. Those small one even lvl-50+ are totally waste of cannonballs, due to little XP reward and poor loot. Middle size... well... most of them are also trash and waste of resources. When I'm in to hunting, most of time I travel though Goldens searching huge damned Galleys lvl30++ only those are worth killing.

And this is bad, because I don't do cleaning work in my grid, and even sailing my warbird, I also avoid damned ships, as if I sail some non battle schooner...

It should be a fleet of galleons travelling with an armed escort that will attack anyone who attacks the fleet otherwise just continue on its way. They should vary in fleet size and have multiple routes they follow with some being short other being longer.

This fleet Idea also perfect. Something like that was in old Russian game Corsairs. Depending on ship you had, you could search for small trade guy with small escort to rob, and after you've got huge floating fortress, you could try trade expedition fleet.