Feedback based on time spent playing

[RydelSleak 6]

 

 Just a bunch of suggestions I've thought of while playing the game. I know you guys are still really early in development and are probably already considering a bunch of stuff, but just thought I'd toss some ideas out there to hopefully help improve the game.

 Personally, I think Atlas is exemplary in regards to EA status. Delays and bugs are a part of EA, but the quality of the content and the attention paid to the community members has been outstanding, in my opinion. But, if I had to be critical on one aspect, the PvE side is incredibly boring and offers very little challenge.

 That is honestly what most of these suggestions are based on, my own boredom while playing the game. I do realize though that right now you are basically building the foundation, and that the "meat and potatoes" of the content will come in time.

 

SotD Fleet Event
 Mark a location on a map with varying colors to indicate difficulty, add a countdown timer to when that event starts. Have the SotD spawn in Waves that increase in difficulty, instantly aggro'ing onto any ship in the area. At the end of the "event", loot is split between everyone within the area. Obviously, these would be more difficult than standard fleets and should require multiple ships. This would be a great way to get people to work together in PvE, and possibly stir up a little trouble in PvP. The loot from these being large in quantity or quality would also make them worthwhile, possibly make them the only way to obtain Legendary+ quality Ship BPs.

Change Treasure Maps
 All the enemies spawning in a very small area is not very challenging. Any Crab can instantly take out a Mastercraft or below solo, and do fine on the higher quality maps. Have them spawn randomly in a certain radius and come at the players in Waves. This could be done in a protective bubble like the Kraken, so as to keep the AotD from wandering off. Obviously, this would have to come with a change to map spawning and location selecting as well, doing a map on top of a mountain in this manner probably wouldn't work well. Just force the maps to spawn their location below a certain height, the ones on top of the mountains are pointless anyway. Again, Crab makes it pointless since they can just jump up anyway.

Change Flotsam
 Sailing around to grapple or jump out of the boat and grab Flotsam is super tedious, especially on PvE where they are practically worthless. Make it so that Ships can simply sail over them to pick them up, the loot going to whoever is on the wheel or something. Anything other than Wood Building Part BPs from the flotsams are completely useless on PvE, so at least if you could run them over it would be a little bit of bonus gold.

Player Economy
 The player economy might be working somewhat on PvP, but realistically there is no reason to trade when I can just get whatever I want myself. The changes to make the game less difficult for solo players really overshot, it's super easy to do anything now. But, there is a simple fix for this. You need more T2 and T3 resources made from the gather-able T1 resources. More diversity and difficulty of acquiring the T2 and T3 resources will help to promote a player economy when people would rather buy than gather on their own.

Player Crafting
 Another way to promote the economy is with Player Crafting, which right now sucks. A simple respec into whatever you need to craft, along with all your points into Intelligence, is pretty much all you need to do to craft whatever. Giving Crafters that have put the time into their trade bonuses would help encourage people into staying in their build, such as "The first 100 Large Speed Sails you craft boosts your knowledge of Large Speed Sails, from now on any Speed Sail you craft will have an extra 1% added to their abilities", or something to that effect.

Base Attack Event
 Something similar to Conan, where every once in awhile a hoard of whatever would attack your base. At the immediate moment, there isn't much of a reason to work together on PvE, you don't have any real fear of being attacked, and once you get tames you don't really care about the wild animals. Make it based off of Power stones, the more a Company or Person has the more often the attacks. It can even be based on the claim flag, once every X amount of hours Army of the Damned show up to "take back the Power stones". This would even add an interesting aspect to PvP, where you might have to fend off attackers and AotD if they happen to coincide.

Exploration
 So boring, and mostly just done by bedding around to spots other Company members have left beds. There is no real point besides simply adding more points to your level, which is super tedious, in my opinion. Exploration adding to your "experience level" should be more about unlocking special things, such as crafting recipes, rather than just increasing your overall level.

Ships
 Ships are the lifeblood of this game, more important than tames and more dynamic than bases, yet they feel incredibly lifeless. They should be more akin to Ships in Eve, having "modules" that allow for unique builds. The actual building limits are also a pain, you either build a ship that is functional and the same as everyone else's, or you build a ship for aesthetic reasons and it's useless. Also, stop forcing us into the build you want us to use. Everything about shipbuilding forces us into putting the Cannons into Gunports, if you are going to force us to build ships a certain way, don't make me waste my time putting it together. Just let me put the mats into the Shipyard and spawn the damn thing. 

Boss Fights
 Make them Arena style like Ark and change "Any key working for any Stone". It's just too easy to cheese them in the open world, and ships make it a joke to fight them. Bears with Carts, better weapons / armor, etc etc should be needed to do those fights. They will still get cheese'd, but not nearly as cheesy as right now. This would also add to the necessity of crafting high-end gear on PvE, where it really isn't necessary for anything other than Intel boosting.

Mythos Nodes in Trenches
 Right now the primary method of farming Mythos is just hunting the Bosses, but because people also do those for Keys, they are often over farmed. An alternative method of obtaining mythos would promote the use of the mythical BPs. An easy way to add that is Mythos Nodes in the Trenches, difficult to obtain and mid-late game. The subs also have a low carry weight, so that kinda serves as a barrier against people just farming the crap out of it and obtaining a bunch. Maybe increase the weight of a stack just a bit.

Edited May 15, 2019 by RydelSleak