aging Overall problem with aging mechanics, and how to "fix" it.

[Wyrm 6]

I can support overall idea about characters getting older and eventually die. However only when that mechanics 100% done and work without ANY issues.

 

First thing first. Mechanics not even half done. There is still no "children" mechanics in the game yet. And yes, huge portion of players would prefer to do it "safer" way with simply switching to new younger character, rather than trying and finding Fountain of Youth.

 

As of Fountain of Youth its huge problem on it own. And not just Fountain, but Golden Age Ruin isles overall. I know you tried to make those isles dangerous. But what happening there right now is absolutely ridiculous. I can even support the idea of having creature on the isle much higher level than normal. But having half population of the isle as mythical creatures is just... *sigh*. It should be at most 5% of overall population been mythical creatures, not 50%.

Caves is problem on its own as well. I know its mostly uses resources from Ark and done very Ark-like. But in Ark at least you could overcome difficulties with excessively overpowered gear (which is bad thing in Ark, and i am glad Atlas tries approach gear system very differently). Yes, caves should be dangerous. But don't try to balance it so only 30+ group of ppl with high-end gear could do it. Instead make every cave its own instance (maybe even hosted independently on same or different server). And introduce mechanics where cave difficulty scales with number of players entering it (providing that ppl in same company and/or alliance would be put in the same instance). So in the end even solo or very small group could do it. Yes, it should be dangerous regardless, but at least doable.

 

And as of what to do right now to "fix" overall situation:

1) Do complete creature wipe on every golden ruins isle that contain FoY for few days, with no respawn of anything. Just to let ppl be able to get what they came for...

2) After those few days reset everyone's age back to 20. Most ppl won't get FoY buff, but at least will have their age reset. And stall aging mechanics completely, untill it will be developed to 100% (meaning "children mechanics would be implemented).

3) Do a very heavy tweaking with Golden Age Ruins isles spawn rates.

4) Last and hardest one, you really should work toward making cave systems as an instanced-dungeons, with proper scaling mechanics where it would be both dangerous, but still doable and fun for everyone, not just swarm of very well geared ppl.