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On the Horizon - Dev Blog

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Ahoy Pathfinders!

We hope you've been enjoying your sails on the Tradewinds and the other new changes we've brought into the game. In this post, we were able to take some time with the Dev team and have a few questions answered regarding the future plans of Atlas and what the rest of the year may hold. Again, we are in Early Access and the changes mentioned in the responses are subject to change. Although this may all just be speculation, we wanted to provide some transparency into the upcoming aspirations of the team. Once again, we'd like to thank you for your support and patience.

On the Horizon: Dev Insights

Regarding the Tradewinds patch, what were your goals and expectations for the strategic impact of the Tradewinds and new map layout?

The Tradewinds in the latest update to go hand in hand with the recent map changes to help create more interesting strategic choices for players and companies.  The new map layout is intended to provide spaces that are desirable to all different player types.  New players are given better opportunities outside of the Freeport areas which allows for a more even spread of action.  Islands with valuable resources are spread across the map to make sure no one area is perfectly suited to all needs.  Islands with more valuable resources are in the North of the map, driving higher level players to that general area.

The Tradewinds provide for faster sailing times across large areas of the map.   Players interested in exploration, trade, or raiding will be able to find ways to use the Tradewinds to their advantage.  This will also push player conflict towards these shipping lanes and the islands near them, adding more opportunities for pitched battles over valuable resources.

What is the plan for PvP combat and balancing? Is there a philosophy that dictates what gets buffed, nerfed or removed?

We feel that PVP conflict should consist of interesting challenges and opportunities for both sea and land combat.  We want to drive the focus first towards fleet battles and provide ways to effectively defend your holdings with the ships you customize and build.  The ships you build will be able to blockade your island, with your opponents first having to deal with those defenses before they can safely make landfall.  Your fleet will also be your main weapon of attack – both to defeat your enemies blockade and to soften their land defenses.

In general our PVP philosophy focus is on counterplay – to provide options that are deadly and effective but can be countered with the proper tactic.  We want to see powerful options that players can use to attack their enemies, and equally powerful options the defender can access to counter them and fight back.  Ideally this allows for and encourages players to have different tactics available to them instead of always relying on one mainstay ability that works best in every situation.


What more are we going to see in the upcoming patches? Are we done with map/macro enhancements in favor of micro adjustments and additions? Is there new content that we can look forward to? 

Updates are on the horizon for the game map, such as separating the map into regions with different geographical theming.  Piracy happens all over the world in Atlas, and players will be able to experience this more when they travel from an area of arid desert isles to a region of the world with tropical islands and crystal blue waters.  There is a system in design to allow for the capture and control of strategic resource points placed in the world.  These will unlock many capabilities for the companies who control them, such as structures which provide server-wide buffs you can share with all of your allies.  Some of these structures will require monumental levels of materials and time.  This all leads towards a long term goal of having large projects with huge collaborative efforts that companies compete over.

In the upcoming patches there will also be many new ship options.  Players will be able to customize more of their ship, starting with the midship portion of their modular ships – adding options such as gun ports, rowing banks, armor and more to the broadside sections of your vessel.  In future updates there will be more options for other components of the ship, such as new sail types and front and rear castle varieties.  There will be additional pre-built ships coming to the game, as well as a larger modular hull class that players can build. Players will have the ability to craft fleets that consist of vessels with different roles in combat and utility.  When two enemy fleets clash there should be a variety of ships and tactics at play, each one effective unless properly countered. 

In the next major update we will see two new ship types – the Mortar Ship and the Turtle Ship.  The Mortar Ship will add a long range artillery option to ship combat, while the Turtle Ship is armored up to break through blockades.  You will be able to construct and customize these new classes of modular ships as well as the existing types in the shipyard. New BPs will drop in the world to allow the crafting of the railings, midship tiles, and ship types being added.  We want Atlas to become known for large, collaborative fleet battles that require the coordination of multiple players and companies.

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Happy Sailing,

- ATLAS Crew

:skull: For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information :skull:

Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas

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Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame


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Have you thought about fixing "stuff" that is already broken instead of adding more dumb stuff? 

Edited by Stuart
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I think ACTUAL Players of Atlas just would like bugs and issues fixed.. I understand some will take a while but whats the sense of developing more when there is a ton of existing that is still broken...?

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Reading their comments about PvP...they do understand that people can't literally play this game 24/7, right? 

 

Hell, I have no life and even I would have a hard time being online while an island's timer says it can be attacked.

 

My guess is no, they don't.

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my guess is they do play and control the megas and thats why it stays unfair and does not get fixed.

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7 hours ago, ATLAS said:

such as structures which provide server-wide buffs you can share with all of your allies.

:skull:

 

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Nice idea!

.. but can you please fix buff towers for Sea Fort such as Atlantean spire and so on from the recent patch first? They cannot be put on the island of the Sea fort.

Edited by Redrick

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Dear DEVs. Pleas read the thread about current Ramming Galley unplayable state. Because right now it's broken. You need to fix and improve it to make it playable. Before you go any further with ANYTHING about current modular ship upgrades and bringing new ship you have to work Ramming Galley:

Fix it!!!

- Fix ship dimensions so it match visual model.

- Fix paint (add paint to unpaintable parts and make railing and decks don't loose their paint).

- Fix crew dismount sails every time we cross.

- Fix junk sails graphic and manning sails spot for crew.

- Make ship do ramming damage to damned ships again.

Improve it!

- Add snap points on board sides for rope ladders (right now stern emergency ladder is our only option and every1 hates this ladder).

- Adjust sinking time. Right now it sinking extremely fast (it's like 10 times faster than BRIG even with all in captaining and like 140% sturdiness).

- Adjust HP of front and back castle (same spot on Brig has 4x6K planks, 40k deck, 4x5K ceiling 84K HP in total. With Ramming Galley we have just 15k HP)

- Ship should NOT be sinking because of front/back castle damage (and right now front castle hit 0 HP every first damned galley volley) It's just higher then waterline.

- Leaking Icons should be added to damaged parts. New ship HP icon should be removed (it just shows random numbers and those doesn't tell us anything. Ship can sink with 78% HP or so).

- To repair ship with all 135 patches it consist of, you should waste almost 7 minutes. Imagine doing it while Kraken battle hm? You either make patches apply with no time (maybe 0.5 sec same as usual repair with minigame), or make them repair way more damage. BRIG can be fully maintained in just 30 sec, you know?

- Patches costs are extremely high. For most dangerous BRIGs adventures I pick same amount of resources as it requires for just 10 patches. Usual damned ships hunt mission requires at least 200 patches (which are more expensive than whole NEW BRIG building... I mean I don't count a gold price, just resources). I could build new BRIG every time I go hunting and it costs me less than patches for same mission with Ramming Galley.

- Oh and while we can repair BRIG from resources box, we have to carry patches in our inventory. Make them useable from resource box.

- Also crew maintain this anchored ship using resources, but what resources are required for that - is hidden! Make this clear somehow.

SO.

You fix it. You improve it. You adjust maintenance costs and time. You adjust HP numbers. Only after THAT it goes to playable state, so we can test it through leveling, and maybe Ghostship and Kraken battles.

I'm really experienced SotD hunter. I wrote about it many times. With boardside fight I was facing 11 damned ship at once! I fought 2 galleys and 2 brigs lvl-50+ at once. All with my BRIG. And with this Ramming Galley It's not like I'm fighting. I just surviving against green damned ships. As for high level damned in Goldens it's... well. Fight more like this. I sail by and shoot. Then I point my Galley away and go apply 15 patches to fully destroyed front castle. Then I turn around and shoot again. Then I go for another 15 patches applying. If I lucky enough - I'll take down couple lvl-50 schooners within 10-15 minutesRight now... I'm not sure how many patches needed for lvl-50 Galley for quest? Maybe 1000... (which is gonna be more expensive than building new Galleon) I don't know...

p.s. - Facing mermaids is completely safe with Ramming Galley. Pathfinder just can't jump over the stern wall lol.

Edited by George Catcher

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- Fix the placing of docks and farms that you broke with the last patch...!

- If you want to have sea battle before land battle (and you want to remove more spam - that we have to place) make it so that claims prohibit building for anyone else.
Thereby we don't have to spam our islands to restrict enemy building on it. And the enemy has to use ships as FOBs to respawn, which then we can have sea fights over to stop the land invasion. The attacker has to defend his FOB ships thereby has to bring man-o-wars to do that.

- You do understand that making global buff - strategic points that anything smaller than a big alliance will be cut out of it and has to deal with even more powerful player-enemies...?

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Haha, i dont even know were to start.
I play pve so i might miss some points, but how you want to motivate people to do the epic big fleet battles?

You introduced the trading system, having an idea to create points of conflicts. Then you fail or skip the physical trade ships, which was critical to it. Maybe you realised how dump of an idea it was. You now replaced them with the buff towers.
I dont play PVP, but i guess you get less fights them more now, bc the attacker is in a worse position.

So again, talk about motivations of fighting instead of shitty untrue stuff like this:
 

Quote

Islands with more valuable resources are in the North of the map, driving higher level players to that general area.

I think the further a resource is away (or the least accessable) the more valueable it becomes , but it depends on where you live.
High level players, what do you even mean by that?

How your epic seabattles with multiple companies plays along the efforts to enable smaler groups?
 

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25 minutes ago, Sheepshooter said:

- You do understand that making global buff - strategic points that anything smaller than a big alliance will be cut out of it and has to deal with even more powerful player-enemies...?

This, intelligence crafting had to die for that shit 😕

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New content is always welcome, but at first you should focus on fixing existing bugs
Game is really broken and instead of that you add more and more new stuff, for example you added new towers for defence/attack/speed and i already saw even 5 and more at one seafort.
You should really stop adding new stuff, you can announce them so people will know where do you want to go in the future, but don't add them yet, just focus on fixing existing problems and then slowly move on otherwise at some point you will have that many bugs/problems that it will be almost impossible to fix.

You want add another modular ships but how they gonna compete with blueprint qualitty non modular ships ?
At this moment nobody is using new modular ships, because they have no chance against mythical ships or any other that are better quality than common. If you already added them you should also allow us to have an blueprint quality on them otherwise it's just wasting gold and time spend on it.

How do you want Atlas to become known for large, collaborative fleet battles?
Atlas fleet battles are already broken, there is no tactics since you have 250 ping when you have 80 people on the grid. 
You can have maxim 150 players on the grid and that will only increase lags so you should work on your server first to improve lower ping and less lags. Adding even more ships will not improve any tactics, it will stay the same.
People will stay away from each other and use their range for shooting, there is no other option or tactic to provide because it is impossible to make it happen with such a high ping/lags.

Like i said above, it is nice to know future content and where the game is going on but please, first focus on fixing problems then go add more stuff and not the other way around.

 

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Also that global buff will boost biggest companies/alliances even more. You should focus on smaller companies.
That kind of buff works only if you have fractions in game, because with fractions it stay balanced, all people are included in buff.
If you want add that kind of contet you could also make 3 fractions, pirates, navy, pirate hunters but then it will start slowly more looks like mmorpg and no open sandbox.

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Mortar ship? what a joke, imagine being a small company in a small island, it's all ok, you managed to have your island even when now there's less claimable, and you managed to defend it somehow even being outnumbered, how are you supposed to defend an island, when they can mortar almost the whole island, in small island case? it makes 0 sense in my opinion, and in naval battles it's pointless, nobody stays still in naval battles, so it's just a weapon for griefers or megas that wants an easy way to have more islands. Just think it a bit, you'll find it's senseless.

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Mortar ships for navla combat.....honestly i think thye just love to troll. 

 

OK we will take barrel bombs away from Canons to stop island decimation....EXCITING NEWS! Heres a new mortar ship for naval fights....

 

How thick are these people? Do they even understand they game they are developing?

Mortars on ships were removed in season 1 and now they want them back???

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Updates are on the horizon for the game map, such as separating the map into regions with different geographical theming. 

Sounds like wipe...AGAIN ^^

ATM WE DONT NEED MORE STUFF!!! FIX THE OLD SHIT!!!! TWO SHIPS HAHAHAHAH....USE YOUR RAMMING SHI(T)P...


...NEVER PLAYED HER OWN GAME!!!

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the only good thing in the patch I read is the mortar ship.

 

REMOVE      PEACE PHASE  from the damn islands!!!!!!

including tames and loot stacking from the freeports and cancerous invincible armored docks

 

Edited by chukiki

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22 hours ago, Xime said:

You want add another modular ships but how they gonna compete with blueprint qualitty non modular ships ?

How do you want Atlas to become known for large, collaborative fleet battles?
 

- As they said, the old ships will be removed as soon as replacements are available with modular ships.

- As the modular ships are less structures (to load in) lag goes down (hopefully). That was the initial thought to make the new ships - less structures less lag with current engine...
Same goes with land structures. They tried to get us more on the ocean and needing less land support. But because the fail in balancing PVP we need more and more land structures, because available defenses are getting more useless = so we need more of it.

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7 hours ago, chukiki said:

the only good thing in the patch I read is the mortar ship.

 

REMOVE      PEACE PHASE  from the damn islands!!!!!!

including tames and loot stacking from the freeports and cancerous invincible armored docks

 

Mortar ship good thing? remove peace phase? 🤡🤡🤡🤡

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Quote

The new map layout is intended to provide spaces that are desirable to all different player types.  New players are given better opportunities outside of the Freeport areas which allows for a more even spread of action.  Islands with valuable resources are spread across the map to make sure no one area is perfectly suited to all needs.  Islands with more valuable resources are in the North of the map, driving higher level players to that general area.

There is a system in design to allow for the capture and control of strategic resource points placed in the world.  These will unlock many capabilities for the companies who control them, such as structures which provide server-wide buffs you can share with all of your allies.

The Mortar Ship will add a long range artillery option to ship combat, while the Turtle Ship is armored up to break through blockades.

All I see from any of these "improvements" is more pandering to the megas. 😒 If the devs were even the least bit interested in balancing the game (which at this point I very seriously doubt for the record) they'd make it harder for these gigantic super groups to control literally everything important.(You know, like Ark) There's no way that the devs  could miss the abuse of power they've continually created and seemingly reinforced short of absolute ignorance, especially considering how they claim to want to hear what we have to say. Instead they need to ACTUALLY listen and at least try to fix the problems that already exist, some of which have existed since Ark. Hell even the link they give us to report bugs and problems is broken, which to me says ALOT about the future of this game (or lack thereof)

Honestly I had such high hopes for Atlas, and even now the game isn't beyond redemption, but as it currently exists if it wasn't for private servers and single player I'd have tossed this game away just like I did Ark, and given the current trend of the game I may yet do just that.

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Modular ships? Why? They're worthless. Nobody asked for or wants them. Yet, keep making this game worse. This game used to be great. Now it's overly complicated for no apparent reason. Adding more crap. Don't fix anything that's broken. Just keep adding more broken crap. Thanks. Half of the problem of this game are the bugs. People are losing hours of play over bugs. For me farm and warehouse placement has been a huge issue on top of randomly losing everything within these dumb troll tools of claim towers. The player base is toxic because of the "directions" the devs are taking. I've lost faith in this game and my interest is fading fast. There are soooo many better games out there and coming out. These devs need to stop adding anything and fix bugs to hold on to the little that is left.

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