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6/2 Dev Blog *sigh*

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From the 6/2 Dev Blog:

 

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.

That's not how land-based PvP happens. Ever. Island attacks rarely if ever involve actual ship vs.ship battles. The standard procedure is to land as many players and tames as possible, build a FoB and kill/blow up everything. Typically, the landing ships retreat afterwards if there's any real chance of a naval counter-attack. Any organized attack will make landfall LONG before there can be any meaningful naval response. In fact, quickly destroying ships at anchor with tames is a favorite tactic. Add to that the fact the gold cost of ships, and no smart defender will ever un-anchor a green-anchored ship in an armored shipyard during an attack unless the defending side is guaranteed to win. The stated vision of PvP in this blog is pure fantasy.

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.

Attackers will always have the initial advantage in any island attack for no other reason than because they're prepared and have a plan, while the defenders have to scramble. And I'm curious, what "powerful defenses" are available for defenders when tame-towed guns will always out-range NPC defenses? ...Or manned defenses for that matter, since a tame-mounted cannon can be angled on a rock or hill to fire higher and further than a mortar placed at the same level? Bottom line: the only advantage possible for a defender is to 'be-more' or 'be-better'.

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.

Mortar Ships. I'm not even sure how to respond to that. I think that we can safely assume they'll out-range NPC-manned harbor towers, so yeah. Honestly, it's not any one "vision" for the game; it's a cumulative thing, ever-repeating evidence that Grapeshot fundamentally doesn't understand its own game.

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I don't think any  person can be more wrong athan you. The devs pretty much nailed it. The only question is will they ever do what they promise. And with peace phases this is all pretty much pointless 

Edited by chukiki

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4 hours ago, chukiki said:

Can't believe a person can be more wrong athan you. The devs pretty much nailed it. The only question is will they ever do what they promise. And with peace phases this is all pretty much pointless 

Nah, the devs just suck at their job.

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Practically, at this point, i think focus should be on bug fixes, balancing and anti exploit before additional content. 

Some seasons ago, i did not mind, understand the pace, but i feel it would be wise to give the product a more solid foundation, particularly, if we want player base to increase. 

If not a team wide project, i would like to see a specific person at the team, who's focus was, simply, bugs, balancing and catching exploitation. 

I have heard many of the current "mega's" openly discuss how they are duplicating gold, and other items - Black Hole were penalized for this (and rightly so) why not others? 

I may be new to the forums, but i have been around since the beginning of this title, to begin with, i understood the push forward, but i feel at this point, before content, first and foremost, must be doing a bit of house cleaning, iron out the bugs, get things balanced, do our best to minimize exploits, improve player stability through optimization of code / rendering, which i feel will bring a better player experience for both PVP and PVE players.

The development team, often talk about massive fleet ocean battles, im sure there are many of us here, on reasonable spec PC's that can attest to while that is fine in theory, the more ships, the more lag, the less play ability - now perhaps, that is a bottleneck that will be solved as PC hardware progresses itself, but, that doesn't really help the product in its current state. 

This is not a slight, i love to see the developers brainstorming new content, as i am sure we all do, whether we agree with it or not, but personally, i think we need stability in the title first, a player shouldn't have to worry "am i going to DC as i cross a border"  or am i going to "glitch out" climbing up a ladder, you know, just the other day, i went to climb up the ladder on the back of one of my ships, it glitched, stuck underwater, could not do anything but die, but when i did die, it was just a graphic of the body there in climb motion, and no way to retrieve the contents of the corpse - now fortunately, i was not carrying anything other than Armour and tools at the time, but what if i had been carrying gold? or blueprints? 

These things need to be addressed. 

We need to see committed, dedicated support, to this side of the project, there is a lot of negative commentary about Atlas, "the failed project that could have been amazing" by both those who used to play it, and those that still do, but i don't for one minute think the problem is not fixable, it just requires commitment to key areas, and first and foremost to any software, be it a game, or application, is stability and usability. 

 

 

 

 

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I agree to all comments before besides Chukiki of course. He is wrong as always.

There are right now way to much exploits and abusive ways to play the game. Also lots of crashes and bugs that need to be fixed.

Shipyards placeable in the ocean where ever you want to... into trade wind or just in front of your chasing enemy.

Quality 200% ships out of common shipyards.

New towers caused server crashes used by loosing troll and flaming players to crash their enemy servers for days(stucked themsevles to play with their seconds). Towers got removed again(not placeable) - no patchnotes (15% speed buff is a big joke anyways)

I got information that complete ships can be duplicated - not even the BPs or precrafted parts, barrels, gold which are all reason for a permanent ban. Some Players i know play their 5th to 10th account already because of the bans they already got. Even "big" Atlas streamers/youtube with prior status in official Discord get banned for exploiting.

BP balancing is stil of way - found and crafted cannons with 350% damage(ok, only 3 crafts) It's the game target to find BPs and craft them to gain advantage about your enemy. Now BPs are rare, ships cost gold and everybody under company size 30 will never take the risk to lose such ships - forever docked in the harbor^^ BPs need to drop in damage on cannons to max 200%(my proposal) for mystical. 100-115 grey, 116-130 green, 131-145 blue, 146-160 masterwork, 161-180 legendary, 181-200 mystical(+ inteligence). Durabiltiy could be variable/random. Same level for medium planks durability. large planks/gun ports should be caped at 150% =max 18k HP + inteligence. This would make ships with blue or masterwork more interesting and also accessible to solo players and small companies.

mystical Brigs driving around with 17/18k HP on the gun ports(3-4 crafts) but you find only so little planks max 11k HP. Ships look so ugly with all the different HP planks due to the low craft amounts.

Large handling sails BPs are rare as always causing big company internal issues who gets those on his ship(where is the fun left to play the game?). The loot needs to change to drop more medium and large planks like you get gun ports and also more large Sails. Nobody needs medium besides Sloops. If mediums would be balanced that you may use two of the on a shooner instead of large + small...(will not happen) Spearm whale you can only hunt after server restart.... otherwise there are just no to find... and they do not drop the good BPS anymore like previous seasons.

If there would be more discounts players would buy 5-10 copies to make sure they can play further on after being baned because of exploiting. This would cause some income for GS but not new Players. But more second company Players which means more overall Players.

Of course the limit of one warehouse per island is good for PVE but on PvP it's a pain now. Most farms are not connected and have to be emptied by hand. I would still argue it should have a range of the total island.

Only positive of the new Season  is the reduced amunition weight in the new container. Oh and as well that you can drop now resources out of this container and the warehouse(may not intended by devs - no patchnotes)! That is QoL improvement. You can also drop from gathering buildings... but the resources may not drop where you can reach them^^ (Quarry - center; lumber - center below; Mine left edge half inside; farmhouse - in the wall) This could be fixed to this new buildings.... why the hack they don't test this before adding? If warehouse is placed on structures the resources droped fall through the warehouse texture and you can't reach them inside.

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Logical to me Nocona is that they would focus on bug fixing, and exploit elimination first.  - i appreciate they are a smaller team, but if they were committed to stabilizing the project, i don't think anyone would complain, stable is good - i would rather that then a hype on a new ship (Which might be fun) but only serves to bring new people into the game, that leave, due to poor experience for bugs, stability, play-ability, exploit etc - which are all coding issues. 

Seems simple logic to me, spend some time tidying up the code, everyone would appreciate it. 

 

 

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13 hours ago, Kashmir_Z said:

Logical to me Nocona is that they would focus on bug fixing, and exploit elimination first.  - i appreciate they are a smaller team, but if they were committed to stabilizing the project, i don't think anyone would complain, stable is good - i would rather that then a hype on a new ship (Which might be fun) but only serves to bring new people into the game, that leave, due to poor experience for bugs, stability, play-ability, exploit etc - which are all coding issues. 

Seems simple logic to me, spend some time tidying up the code, everyone would appreciate it. 

 

 

Yeah being a small company is no excuse for all the things they have done. That is just being unethical and unprofessional. I wouldn’t care if it was only 3 people. Behavior is key

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