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Murreth

An open letter to the developers of Atlas

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Dear devs, @Jatheish, et al

     First I'd like to say that until recently I've enjoyed Atlas immensely and I appreciate the hard work that was put into this game, so thank you for that.

     The vast majority of us who are here love this game, we all want it to succeed and become what we all know it can be. This is somewhat Deja Vu for me because I went through exactly the same thing with H1Z1's survival game, Just Survive. As you may or may not know Just Survive was shut down in October of last year, and the number one reason that happened was a lack of communication between the developers and the player base.

     Now, that isn't to say you guys are as bad as Daybreak was. I don't think anyone could be as bad as Daybreak was at communication, you're already better than them because this forum exists, whereas Daybreak's main form of feedback from their players was the Just Survive subreddit, which was run by people who had their idea of what they thought the game should be and censored anyone who had an idea they didn't agree with. Unfortunately for Daybreak the subreddit mod's ideas were in the vast minority of what players wanted and the game suffered because of that.

     Another of Daybreak's faults was that they did things without telling anyone in the community and then released them and when people hated the changes they stubbornly stuck with them, driving people away every day, until they finally relented and reverted, by which time it was too late. You guys have a tendency to do some of that. You at least respond to the feedback, or dare I say backlash. The thing is, there doesn't have to be any backlash. All you need to do is communicate with your player base about major changes before they happen, state your case as to what you're seeing that caused you to think the change was necessary and why you're making the change, get feedback and adjust accordingly. I'm not saying you need to do that for every single change, but something like making taming maddeningly annoying or the changes to the stone walls are major changes for people and shouldn't just be thrown upon us without discussion and a chance for us to offer you alternatives that satisfy your goals and make us happy, or at least accepting of the changes. For example, with the taming if you thought it was too easy make it take more feedings to tame an animal, or make the bolas not last as long, or increase the radius of the animal's attack or something that doesn't make it so we have to split the atom to not get the "press E to release bola" option. That doesn't make taming harder as much as it makes it more annoying. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun and it taming isn't any more.

     @Dollie seems to me to have all the makings of a great envoy between the community and the development team, utilize her talents, talk to us, create surveys, hold more live streams even if it's a thrown together affair with one developer, communication is the key to making Atlas the game we all want it to be. Lack of communication is what killed Just Survive. I don't want to see that happen to Atlas.

     The vast majority of us are here to back you up, to help you make this game great and to offer up suggestions and alternative. We are a great resource and you should use us to your advantage. I think I speak for all of us who love this game and want to see it reach its potential in saying we stand ready to serve.

Thanks for your time,
Murray

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Wow, a genuine, well constructed, well thought out post with sincere passion and criticism offering fantastic ideas the devs could actually learn something from. 

 

Devs: ignored.

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Well said.

Its weird to me that they release the game in early access, and then dont talk to players about upcomming changes . That is kinda the whole point of it. Not just getting money early to help further development.

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20 minutes ago, Xzyzz said:

Well said.

Its weird to me that they release the game in early access, and then dont talk to players about upcomming changes . That is kinda the whole point of it. Not just getting money early to help further development.

Depends. 
They may have run out of money and needed more or publisher decided it was time to test the game and see if there is any point in further investment (hopefully this wasn't the case). 

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I am actually impressed that he/she used punctuation, spell check, and made a real effort on not sounding like they are whining.  

NOTE to everyone, this is how you complain.

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3 hours ago, Mephos said:

aaaaaaaaaaand another one. but this one will make the difference, FOR SURE! 🙂

It may. 

It may not.

Either way it has a greater chance than the zero chance that snarky pessimism will make any difference.

FOR SURE!

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1 hour ago, Elrood said:

Depends. 
They may have run out of money and needed more or publisher decided it was time to test the game and see if there is any point in further investment (hopefully this wasn't the case). 

Given the pile of cash they are sitting on from Ark’s success and how reusing assets from it allowed them to reduce the large upfront development costs of an MMO, it’s doubtful they ran out of cash, but string pulling from back office powers that be certainly isn’t out of the question.

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