Jat, here are some thoughts and feedback

[Gindorf 111]

Hi @Jatheish,

I hope you and the team are well.

Its now been almost a month since launch and I would like to provide to you and the team, my company’s feedback and comments (and hopefully some helpful ideas) on the current status of Atlas. For clarity we do not play PvP so these comments are focused on the PvE aspects of Atlas.

Firstly, we are still loving the game. The x2 harvest event have been nice and have motivated us to finish off our base and we are now saving up for the our first galleon (cant wait for it). I really hope that there will be at least one event a month(ish). I have been have a blast fighting off the ships of the damned with my schooner and cant wait to tear them up with a galleon. The recent weight changes to the ships are a great start and basically killed off our only comment (at the moment) about ships. (Although being able to runup a flag(s) on a ship would be awesome)

On Ships: Can we add the ability to use the elevator on ships, or give us a way to get tames below deck (Perhaps a Grilled Middle Grate?

                On tames: I would like to thank the team for taking in the mass feedback on the elephant weight reduction change and believe that the solution you provided (the weight increase) solves the problem in a perfectly sensible way. With that said, we have rhinos for stone, elephants for wood, bears for fiber, but seem to be missing something for thatch. While a bull and giraffe can harvest thatch, mining trees with a pick results in more thatch per tree than with a tame. This seems counterintuitive and I would like to ask if the team could look at boosting the giraffe’s thatch gathering to be inline with the elephants wood gathering. On a dps side we are having a lot of fun with using our lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) and feel that the dps done by tames are in a good spot currently.

                Weapons Balance: With that said about tames however, they are the only good option against mobs and army of the dead. The recent pistol nerf (driven by PvP) has made guns useless against mobs. This coupled with an unfun loading speed makes guns not enjoyable to use at all. Spamming 7 pistol shots to kill something and then having to wait ~3 minutes (real life time) to reload it all is not engaging/fun gameplay. Ideally, I believe that guns need a buff to damage and a decrease in reload speed. Currently a stone arrow spam has the same DPS as a pistol (with skills) Guns really should do more than a bow does, if you are able to up the damage ~25 per shot (using vs a standard croc for these numbers) for a pistol and ~33 damage for the carbine, along with about a 5 second decrease to damage, it will not only make guns more worthwhile, but also worth the resources required to make them. With these changes and leaving stone arrows alone, I think it will balance the cost/drawbacks of guns.

                PvE Armor Balance: Quick note here, currently I don’t use armor. Its just not worth it, between the little protection it gives and the huge pain it is with hyperthermia and speed reduction, it is easier to just run away from something (since fighting is not worth it anyways). I really would like to see some additional damage mitigation here.

                Alphas: With the recent nerf to fire damage, Alphas are a huge (and unrewarding) pain in the ass to kill. Carbines doing 33 damage per hit is just crazy. I think a slight nerf here to Alpha HP combined with a decrease to their damage reduction (initially I think a 25% to HP and changing the damage reduction from 75% to 50% would be a fair starting point if combined with above gun changes) would help reduce the frustrations that many players I speak to/play with.

                Spawns: Clearing out an area, beginning to farm something, only to have 2 crocs spawn on top of you (literally) is just frustrating, not fun. Nothing should be able to spawn right on top (or very near) you as it breaks the immersion (and defeats the purpose of clearing things out). With that said I have noticed a somewhat decrease in overall hostile spawns (which were crazy before (and still are on desert isles)) and I think this is heading in the right direction. By giving us tools that actual do decent damage I think we will see a further decrease in complaints in this area.

                Ships of the Damned/Whales: Overall, I think up until the last spawn changes you made (did you buff spawns b/c it sure feels like it) SOTD were in a good spot population-wise. Now they seem to be everywhere again. I have been consistently clearing 4-6 a day in my home sector but it never seems to make the seas any safer for travelers. Now they are not too difficult at the moment (especially to avoid) and I am very much looking forward to seeing/fighting some brig SOTD, but please please please be very cautious on the Galleon equivalent spawns. There should never be more than 1 galleon level in a sector at a given time. (Ultimately I would propose having a cap of 10 ships/sector with an ½ hour to hour respawn per ship) Ships also NEED to be impacted by the wind. If there is very little wind in a sector everyone should go slow, including the motor boats SOTD. Whales are the same situation. There should be only 1 or two maximum in a single sector at one time and they should not be able to 1 shot ships (well ok maybe a sloop). Right now if you agro a whale, you have to a) pray to get to a sector transfer or b) kiss your ship goodbye.

                Aging: I want to say Im sorry for all the crap the forums have been giving you guys on age and the FoY. I think its actually a neat concept and once breeding gets in will be a unique and neat idea. While rollout of the FoY was rough, I think the buff esp. since it stacks gives the players a unique way of buffing a character vs the easy way of possessing a new toon. For the time being (other than fixing the 3 hour rotations) I would leave FoY as is, until npc breeding is implemented. This is due to the insanity of powerstone isles and with the lack of usable weapons, other than glitching the crap out of the PS bosses for the keys there no decent way to handle those islands other than naked runs anyways.

                Claims: With regards to allowing others to build on claims (other than the demo bug) I think the community would really benefit with a detailed explanation of your vision for this, how it should work, and where you want this feature to go. I think claims are neat (and a good anti-troll tool, when not abused (Please for the love of Atlas do not give in to the 1 claim limit/person (I think 2 sea and 5 land are a good # if you’re already going that way)) and I like the idea of the tax system. We would like to allow folks to live on our land but people don’t want to as of now because people can just jack their stuff and screw them over.

 Here, I think this could be resolved if the area instead of being unowned, becomes partially owned by the tenants as well. By this I mean, the flag switches to half their flag/half ours, taxes still go to us however the claim is only reverted back to our ownership if the tenant is not logged on for 7 days. (Could just have players just die if they don’t log in/eat for 7 days to get around the sleeping in claim issue)) While this does mean that companies will be more selective in who they allow, it gives a recourse/troll prevention to players who want to leave lawless areas.

                Misc. Stuff: So I like were we are getting to with skill points. The unfun thing is the lack of ability to respec other than levels (and once those are gone your screwed). As a result several company members (myself included) are holding back levels in order to save respecs. (Ie I have enough XP to be level 53, but I am only level 46 since I do not want to loss my respecs). Here I would like to suggest that you look at a respect potion (medical tree? Or perhaps a Merchant Ship/Freeport?) which would cost gold plus mats to make. (I would avoid mythos as a mat here due to how grindy/difficult that stuff is already to get, and how much additional frustration it would cause players (really that PS island stuff is waaaay too powerful, esp. given the wet noodles we have right now to fight with))

                On walls/buildings I think if we could get someway to “weld” walls together it could help a lot with server rendering and lag. (Ie I weld 4 walls together into a single wall (2x2 become 1 item to load not 4) Obviously there would need to be some limit here, but I could see walls and ceilings (2x2 and 3x3) beginning a good start to reducing the overall total number of things to render/load. I would also love to be able to snap ceiling tiles to a shipyard on the side so that I can make the “deck” a little bigger (was thinking of 2 snaps out from the shipyard)

                Lastly, I, my company, and at least my sector would really really appreciate it if you could change the red X for location to another color (ie black). It can be stupidly difficult to see where I am on the map when the island is entirely red from claims.

 

I look forward to the new content that is coming soon and cant wait to see what else you have in store.

May the winds be ever in your favor,

Gin

               

[Nutcutt3r 173]

Only thing I can say is if your going to write that WOT and spend all that time you would at least spend a little time and see if there is a suggestions section...

https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/forums/forum/69-suggestions/

 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

Well written feedback. While I have to agree with Nutcutter about the section thing, it's a minor quibble and tbh most of the people posting to general could really use a sterling example of how to provide thoughtful, useful in depth feedback without table flipping.