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Evir

Devs not considering knock on effects

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The lack of forethought that these developers have is amazing. After the dragon fiasco you would think that introducing an extremely powerful creature that isnt that hard to tame for decent sized groups would be a red flag, but no, they introduced a tame that completely imbalances the game yet again for the people that have access to them. Sure they can be killed, with a huge amount of effort with tigers or sniping the rider from an elevated position, but the force multiplier that the crabs bring seems to be WAY too much. Are they going to fix it? probably not, maybe slight nerfs but the problem will still be there.
Lets move onto putting NPCs behind walls so where they are protected but can still shoot out? What could possibly go wrong there? Why is it so hard to stop these nonsense things? You have the same engine that runs ARK, how about transferring some code over to prevent all these wall exploits?

The guillotine, why did you not even consider people exploiting the XP gains? You allow people to get to absurd levels, to be far and away ahead of the competition, and you didn't even consider, maybe someone will use this to get over level 130 in a short amount of time? Then you allow absurd % bonuses to gear using blueprints, then on top of that, the absurd intelligence bonuses.


Instead of the "this would be cool to add to the game" then adding it to the game. How about you  hire someone to be like, yea that would be a bad idea, and here is why. 
Dragons, the only flying mount in the game and air superiority being the thing that decides most battles? bad idea
Crabs? bad idea
Massive repetitive XP gains? bad idea
torpedoes in a game with SAIL POWER!? Bad idea (probably wont even matter at this point with ship hulls getting 500% more health due to the other exploits galleons will probably just eat 30-40 before it even breaks a plank)
having weapons and armor that are so far beyond the baseline that it makes you unkillable and able to kill someone else in one shot to people in even blue gear? BAD IDEA


Please stop and think about how bad of an idea things are to release into a live environment.


Edit: for those that will say "that is what testing is for". No, it is trivially obvious that these things shouldn't be in the game, you just have to think for a moment and consider how they will be used. No testing required.

Edited by Evir
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I am not against something like a Crab being OP, but it has to be done right.  WWIIOL had tanks, and in the beginning, they were insanely powerful.  Not because the tank itself was too powerful, but because the rest of the game was not ready for it.  Little to no cover or concealment on terrain that was as flat as a golf course.  So you would get shot by them, as infantry, from distances where you could not even see them.  The howling from the community was intense, and it never stopped.  Not until tanks were nerfed into near uselessness.  Sadly, all that was needed, was for the rest of the game to catch up.  It eventually did, but the howling didn't stop.  The Devs had been beaten into submission, and so they never stopped with the tank nerfing.  Meanwhile, infantry can run with loaded bazookas...a huge no-no in real life, as the round was not locked, and already armed, so just falling on the ground would cause it to explode and kill you.  Where as killing a tank, using infantry, was hard, and exhilarating in the beginning, it became way too easy in the end.  The answer the Devs always gave was to work with the infantry...get them to protect you from other infantry...except that they would not, except for the occasional, rare person who would...for a short while.

The answer here, is not to make Crabs nerfed, it is to alter the game, and Crabs, such that they make sense.  For instance, Crabs should have to be kept in the water, and only venture out for short periods.  They should start to lose some health and abilities, if out of the water for too long.  How long?  I don't have a good answer for that.  Additionally, they should be impervious to small arms fire..arrows, pistols, carbines, etc (except the eyes)..but very susceptible to Cannons, and Ballistas.  Tigers, and Bears, etc., should be useless against them, as they shouldn't be able to do anything to their shell.  But cracking that shell should be very harmful to them.  The jumping should be toned way way down.  They should be quite the nemesis of Submarines.    They should be able to traverse rough terrain fairly easy, but trees, regular large trees, should provide a natural barrier to them.  Smaller trees, should not.  Full grown palm trees and up, should not topple over to them.

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10 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

I am not against something like a Crab being OP, but it has to be done right.  WWIIOL had tanks, and in the beginning, they were insanely powerful.  Not because the tank itself was too powerful, but because the rest of the game was not ready for it.  Little to no cover or concealment on terrain that was as flat as a golf course.  So you would get shot by them, as infantry, from distances where you could not even see them.  The howling from the community was intense, and it never stopped.  Not until tanks were nerfed into near uselessness.  Sadly, all that was needed, was for the rest of the game to catch up.  It eventually did, but the howling didn't stop.  The Devs had been beaten into submission, and so they never stopped with the tank nerfing.  Meanwhile, infantry can run with loaded bazookas...a huge no-no in real life, as the round was not locked, and already armed, so just falling on the ground would cause it to explode and kill you.  Where as killing a tank, using infantry, was hard, and exhilarating in the beginning, it became way too easy in the end.  The answer the Devs always gave was to work with the infantry...get them to protect you from other infantry...except that they would not, except for the occasional, rare person who would...for a short while.

The answer here, is not to make Crabs nerfed, it is to alter the game, and Crabs, such that they make sense.  For instance, Crabs should have to be kept in the water, and only venture out for short periods.  They should start to lose some health and abilities, if out of the water for too long.  How long?  I don't have a good answer for that.  Additionally, they should be impervious to small arms fire..arrows, pistols, carbines, etc (except the eyes)..but very susceptible to Cannons, and Ballistas.  Tigers, and Bears, etc., should be useless against them, as they shouldn't be able to do anything to their shell.  But cracking that shell should be very harmful to them.  The jumping should be toned way way down.  They should be quite the nemesis of Submarines.    They should be able to traverse rough terrain fairly easy, but trees, regular large trees, should provide a natural barrier to them.  Smaller trees, should not.  Full grown palm trees and up, should not topple over to them.

I agree, the game was not ready, that is what I was talking about with Knock on effects and them not considering them. They have a "cool" idea, then implement it, but no way to deal with the idea. There should be an "anti-crab" defense but as it stands now, a handful of them can completely wreck the enemy and are too much of a force multiplier. Like your example said, they are like having a tank against infantry that have no real way to counter them.

It is going to be bad when they introduce torpedoes, go look at a game like World Of Warships Torpedoes everywhere and people are able to dodge them, be cause they have engines that allow them to be propelled in different directions to be able to dodge the torpedoes, even weave their way through torpedoes, but you are going to have sail power vs torpedoes in this game, low wind or wind going against you, you are boned and unable to dodge them. What a colossal joke this game is becoming. 

I am just waiting for them to go full on nonsense and introduce Ironclads with steam engines that run on coal, as well as flying ships. Then have no real way to counter them, and have the "haves" completely obliterate the "have-nots". Like they do with most of these things they introduce.

2 hours ago, Nutcutt3r said:

Maybe they know what they are doing and you dont, lol

If they or you have some magical insight as to what they are doing, please do share with everyone. They are trying to make a bad version of Ark, it wouldn't surprise me if they introduced a tame soon that made all ships worthless, like a massive whale mount that has more carry weight than a galleon and can go deep underwater as well as be able to carry 10+ players.

Edited by Evir

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The devs of this game live in some kind of dreamland, completely void of reality.

It took them months to work out that a bear towing around a swivel that functions like aimbot was perhaps unbalanced. They still have yet to discover though that when you market your game as a "naval" game players expect more then 3 warships...

We are getting new cosmetics though that will keep everyone happy..

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Is it too early to say EARLY RELEASE?   They're playing with game mechanics, already said they're implementing this to see how well received it is.  People fundamentally need to realise that we're all 'testing' atlas, after having paid a nominal sum of money for the pleasure.

Let the devs play with ideas, and lets play with those ideas and provide feedback.  Some people don't deserve to be part of the family because quite frankly they're here to ruin the experience for others, but for the mainstream, we're here to help perfect a pirate game we all subscribed a little bit of our free time to try out.  

Yeah I know I'm back to the early release cliche, but, it is what it is.  These posts provide good feedback, but no need to be abrasive  :classic_huh:

I think the GS team, by now have thick skin.... bit like the tips of my guitar fingers lol.

 

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On 5/17/2019 at 3:05 PM, Evir said:

Sure they can be killed, with a huge amount of effort with tigers or sniping the rider from an elevated position, but the force multiplier that the crabs bring seems to be WAY too much. Are they going to fix it? probably not, maybe slight nerfs but the problem will still be there.

The crab had been an overpowered creature even back in ARK. I was so sickened when I saw it being incorporated into Atlas as well.

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8 hours ago, Vorxius said:

Is it too early to say EARLY RELEASE?   They're playing with game mechanics, already said they're implementing this to see how well received it is.  People fundamentally need to realise that we're all 'testing' atlas, after having paid a nominal sum of money for the pleasure.

Let the devs play with ideas, and lets play with those ideas and provide feedback.  Some people don't deserve to be part of the family because quite frankly they're here to ruin the experience for others, but for the mainstream, we're here to help perfect a pirate game we all subscribed a little bit of our free time to try out.  

Yeah I know I'm back to the early release cliche, but, it is what it is.  These posts provide good feedback, but no need to be abrasive  :classic_huh:

I think the GS team, by now have thick skin.... bit like the tips of my guitar fingers lol.

 

I already covered this in the OP, I edited it the day of, well before your post.

On 5/17/2019 at 6:05 PM, Evir said:

for those that will say "that is what testing is for". No, it is trivially obvious that these things shouldn't be in the game, you just have to think for a moment and consider how they will be used. No testing required.

 

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I have to agree with EVIR.  Early Access is not for this kind of testing.  An idea is supposed to be largely tested before being put in game.  You aren't supposed to be using your player base to test the new aspects of the game.

But, at the same time, a little common sense goes a long way.  We don't have silenced, semiauto, sniper rifles with a 4x scope, right?  Why not?  Because that would be dumb in a game like this.  But we have torpedoes going in, with no idea how they will affect gameplay.  And, will they require mythos?  If so, kiss small companies goodbye.  Not that many are left at this point anyway.  Yeah, just what we need.  Something that strips planks off below the waterline in one hit...yeah...that's just what this game needed.  Facepalm.

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Agreed.  From the outside, the design process looks like a bunch of kids in superman capes about to jump off the roof  saying "Hey, THIS would be really cool" and throwing stuff into the game.  What's lacking is anyone with any sense having a final look at things with an eye to "What could possibly go wrong?"

 

We're starting to rerun all the original claims system discussions again because all the elements of claims that we thought landlords wouldn't like are starting to make landlords unhappy.  We haven't got round to reruns of all the things that would make players unhappy yet, because there aren't enough players, but that will be next if the numbers come back up.

This isn't an EA thing.  Put something buggy in the game?  Sure...EA..patch it.  Put some minor thing in the game that nobody is screaming for, yet which can easily produce massive XP exploits?  That's not an EA problem, it's a judgement problem, and those don't go away just because a game moves out of EA.

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Agree with the Op. There is a fundamental lack of judgement being displayed to an alarming degree on some of the things being put into the game for “testing”. Player shop rent was a shining example. It can be debated whether player shops should have a rent cost or not, and there are arguments to be made on both sides, but daily rent of 1400 gold was so insanely out of proportion to anything reasonable as to call into question the developers grasp of basic economics. Not at a PHD or even high school level, but more like a “did you grasp what they taught you in 5th grade about money?” sort of level.

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While I disagree with the OP on some things that should or shouldn't be in game, as boomer said you can debate about whether or not player shops should or shouldn't have rent, or whether they should or shouldn't be centralized, but the daily rent was crazy and not thought out at all. And I believe it was 14,000 if I recall correctly. Ridiculous.

I definitely agree with the spirit of the post, adding things without thinking about ramifications is what it seems like they do a lot. 

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3 hours ago, SIEGEGUN said:

While I disagree with the OP on some things that should or shouldn't be in game, as boomer said you can debate about whether or not player shops should or shouldn't have rent, or whether they should or shouldn't be centralized, but the daily rent was crazy and not thought out at all. And I believe it was 14,000 if I recall correctly. Ridiculous.

I definitely agree with the spirit of the post, adding things without thinking about ramifications is what it seems like they do a lot. 

I think it was 1400 gold per day.  Not good at all.  I am not even sure why they think it needs a rent cost.  Once again, these things need to be thought out.  Ask yourself one simple question...why will anyone use a player shop?  The answer has to be simple...because there is a benefit to it, and that has to be on both sides.  I said this before...you have to think in terms of in game meta.  For somebody to use a Giraffe to gather thatch, it has to gather thatch faster than a person with a pick can.  Otherwise, nobody will use them.  And that doesn't mean more thatch per hit, that means more thatch per minute.  Like with weapons, when balancing, you have to think DPS...damage per second, as that is what matters most, though you also have to add in how hard it is to hit a moving target with it, so we might want to add a P to that...PDPS...Practical Damage Per Second.

With the player shops, you have to look at both sides.  Why would I pay gold for a raw material, like Cobalt?  Easy...it has to make sense in terms of getting things done.  Can I get enough cobalt, that I save time?  In other words, can I go get enough gold to pay for it, in a short enough time, for it to make sense.  I can sail to the location that cobalt nodes exist, and mine it, or I can go t a shop, and pay gold to buy it.  Which is easier, and faster.  Time is the most important aspect here.  Can I farm the gold faster than I can sail to the location with the cobalt, and get back with it.  This is also why all player shops need to be tied together.  If I have to sail to a location near the cobalt, then the player shop just became all but useless, because now I have to farm the gold, which equals time, and then I have to sail to a location near the cobalt, which equals time, and then sail back, which equals time.  In other words, it takes more time and effort to farm the gold and buy the cobalt, than it would have taken to just sail to a location and mine it myself.  If shops are to work, there has to be an obvious benefit to using them.  Tying them together, such that if you look into one, you look into them all, would allow them to be useful.  You now have a reason to use them.  You save time.

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I like this idea.  They could then add a merchant ship that transports said item directly to your location!  

 

Now that hat would be awesome!

 

heck even add on a mission that gives a bonus if you escort that ship!

Edited by Captain Stabbin

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42 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

With the player shops, you have to look at both sides.  Why would I pay gold for a raw material, like Cobalt?  Easy...it has to make sense in terms of getting things done.  Can I get enough cobalt, that I save time?  In other words, can I go get enough gold to pay for it, in a short enough time, for it to make sense.  I can sail to the location that cobalt nodes exist, and mine it, or I can go t a shop, and pay gold to buy it.  Which is easier, and faster.  Time is the most important aspect here.  Can I farm the gold faster than I can sail to the location with the cobalt, and get back with it.  This is also why all player shops need to be tied together.  If I have to sail to a location near the cobalt, then the player shop just became all but useless, because now I have to farm the gold, which equals time, and then I have to sail to a location near the cobalt, which equals time, and then sail back, which equals time.  In other words, it takes more time and effort to farm the gold and buy the cobalt, than it would have taken to just sail to a location and mine it myself.  If shops are to work, there has to be an obvious benefit to using them.  Tying them together, such that if you look into one, you look into them all, would allow them to be useful.  You now have a reason to use them.  You save time.

Numbers have to work for the seller also, and considering that you have to travel to freeports back and forth, and the way you generate gold is pretty much the same everywhere, even if you centralize everything in a single market, you can only get marginal gains for everybody  which i doubt it wil solve much. The screw up of the insane upkeep of player shops, is because they are too worried if people use freeport as a safe spot for their stuff, which is stupid imo.

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3 minutes ago, znasser said:

Numbers have to work for the seller also, and considering that you have to travel to freeports back and forth, and the way you generate gold is pretty much the same everywhere, even if you centralize everything in a single market, you can only get marginal gains for everybody  which i doubt it wil solve much. The screw up of the insane upkeep of player shops, is because they are too worried if people use freeport as a safe spot for their stuff, which is stupid imo.

The solution is to allow only so much stuff in the market at one time.  You would need to make it enough to make it worth taking it there, and once there, they could also make it such that you can't withdraw it from the market.  Thus you can't hide your stuff there.  You would only deposit what you actually want to sell.

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Sounds like your crying about crabs and bp gear is you just being mad that you cant get it, crabs are not op at all they are easy to kill. BP gear and ships just make the game more bearable and something to look forwards to, if you cant deal with these things take your lolly pillow and go play in a pve server like the fairy cake you are. And the XP exploits i agree they should have never put them in and should be punishing the people who abused them severely to set an example right now anyone can cheat and nothing is done about it.

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2 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

The solution is to allow only so much stuff in the market at one time.  You would need to make it enough to make it worth taking it there, and once there, they could also make it such that you can't withdraw it from the market.  Thus you can't hide your stuff there.  You would only deposit what you actually want to sell.

This may work for cobalt, but why would i put in the system a high end bp if i can't retrieve if it doesnt sell? Can i change the pricetag? if i can, what stop me to store it there at an insane price and change it to a lower one when i want to get it back and ask a friend to buy it for me? There's a million ways to exploit that, and would make the market system worse. Imo they have to realize this isnt like any other survival game out there and having safe spots isn't that big of a deal.

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41 minutes ago, pigaz said:

Sounds like your crying about crabs and bp gear is you just being mad that you cant get it, crabs are not op at all they are easy to kill. BP gear and ships just make the game more bearable and something to look forwards to, if you cant deal with these things take your lolly pillow and go play in a pve server like the fairy cake you are. And the XP exploits i agree they should have never put them in and should be punishing the people who abused them severely to set an example right now anyone can cheat and nothing is done about it.

I honestly do not think you read what I said and just skimmed it. It is common, I do not blame you but that is what you did. Because they already nerfed the % gain on the blueprints after this post went up. That is what they should have done in the first place. 
50-60% better gear, good, not too far out of reach for most people to overcome and gives people an advantage and a reason to strive for it, 300-500% Absurd.

Edited by Evir

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46 minutes ago, znasser said:

This may work for cobalt, but why would i put in the system a high end bp if i can't retrieve if it doesnt sell? Can i change the pricetag? if i can, what stop me to store it there at an insane price and change it to a lower one when i want to get it back and ask a friend to buy it for me? There's a million ways to exploit that, and would make the market system worse. Imo they have to realize this isnt like any other survival game out there and having safe spots isn't that big of a deal.

I had thought about that.  I see two options.  One, you can pull it out, but just once, and only after a significant cool down timer, after putting it in.  And I do mean significant.  If you are putting it in to sell it, there needs to be time for customers to discover it.  Maybe a week minimum, or maybe even a full month.  This allows for somebody to legitimately buy it.  I also believe the Devs would need to sit down and do some math...figure out some parameters for each item...such as a minimum price you can charge for items, and a maximum...to ward of exploiting.

Second option is to never allow you to retrieve it, but instead, give you a minimum price in gold for the item, if it doesn't sell.  If you are truly trying to sell it, you don't need, or want it, so getting some gold for it beats not being able to sell it...agree?

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Captain Jack Shadow has an excellent point....

I remember way back to Ultima Online.... you could place a vendor on the porch of your house.... people would place their house key on their vendor for thousands of gold.... if you wanted to buy their key (and everything in their house for that, go ahead).... people did this so they would not be killed and have their house key looted....

Back then you did not really have game forums like you do now where devs can disseminate information to the players.... I did see where to combat this exploit that they were going to make all keys on vendors cost the same as a blank key....

I took the day off when that went down and bought myself 14 house keys for 3 copper each..... took me over 8 hours to loot all those houses.... had to purchase 3 more small houses just to hold all the stuff.... it was a good day....

thanks Captain Jack for reminding me of that....

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14 minutes ago, znasser said:

Imo they have to realize this isnt like any other survival game out there and having safe spots isn't that big of a deal.

This is core issue that people aren't articulating well enough.

What is a major reason people leave the game? Starting over every single day/week/month gets real old real fast. 

I know when I build my ship on Saturday morning, that by Monday morning [] [] [] [], a lvl 100+ guy will destroy it while I am not online. There is no gain to [] [] [] [], there are no treasures, no valuable mats, just the end of my/your Atlas until the next weekend. That is a problem. It is a longevity problem.

It is NOT a big deal to have a safe spot. It will in fact be necessary. At some point, players need the ability to log off and do RL things, maybe even for more than 15 hours at a time. These people deserve to be able to come back and have some sense of progress gained over the last time they played. 

Atlas needs an AH, in whatever form it comes in, and it will by default HAVE to act as a bank. Atlas needs a bank as well, and at some point a safe harbor to put an empty ship in. These are fundamental systems necessary to have an economy, and an economy is fundamental to a MMORPG. Other wise we are playing a different version of ARK, a terrible survival game with capped people on small static servers.

I fully believe we will see these systems implemented over the next year. Otherwise I would not even bother playing EA or released Atlas, because in all honesty this is NOT a good game as it is now. It is a great start to a good game that needs finishing.

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I think one of the reasons that ARK has lasted so long is that for one, it doesn't take as much effort to get built up.  Second, you could actually save a lot of your stuff by uploading it.  Your most important breeders, your most important blueprints...could be uploaded, and then downloaded on another server...saving you from having to completely start over.  And I think most people had several bases anyway, so they could quickly set up shop with their best stuff.  Granted, this did not always happen, but at the same time, very active tribes had their BPs and tames spread out in those different bases, so losing one base wasn't the end of the world.  A lot harder to do that here in Atlas.

I have quit playing, but only because I couldn't be competitive with a small company, and merging that small company with another company, turned out to be not so enjoyable.  Most of my company quit.  Only 3 remain with the new company.

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