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i think most complained about both - offline raids and the rework i think it is dangerous to listen too much to the forums after like most of you ppl stopped after the wipe announcement...most will not really post here and just wait for the wipe. those left were basically mostly vocal but a minority if you ask me... if you look at the numbers of the servers since release it was clear that PvE was played way less than PvP so most were looking for a "eve-like" game with politics and all this. i bet the top 2 reasons for ppl leaving was: being raided offline (no matter if large or small company) and all island cluttered with claims (tho i still think if you were determined you would always find land on pvp). now if you split small and big companies by design a lot of these politics vanish and a lot of the thrill is being lost. i for one tend to play in small companies mostly but i still love the thrill and drama going on with big alliances around me or surely on me raiding my base too ^^ seperating this by design might not be the best decision made - better make 1 system that is rock solid and i mean limiting claims would also have been all that is needed for PvE servers too. on a side note: why not just wipe the servers, put on the patch and let us test this until it's ready, wipe again and go? i mean hardly anyone cares to play anyways since you announced the wipe and the numbers just continous to drop...still sad that you don't explain the char wipe too

I think most pve players already stated that they don't want those changes. So we're getting those stupid islands in pve, even after so many players already stated they don't want that ! We want a claim flag, that is limited per player. Again pve gets almost no info. You're destroying pve, and all you had to do was limit claim flags, so many people have been asking for that, yet you fail to listen. As a pve player i really feel kinda screwed, we never get enough info, changes are made while most of the pve players don't want that those changes, they take away stuff from pve, they're just making it worse and worse for pve. To the other pve players, am i the only one that feels this way ?

The whole idea of Empires/Colonies is an absolute joke. Empires is basically old Atlas which is dying in its current condition. Hardly anyone is going to want to return to that nightmare and I do not foresee a significant amount of people returning to that play style. Colonies at least breathed a little hope back into the game and addressed some of the serious concerns for why many people had quit the game originally (ie. the chronic offline griefing and sleepless nights just to maintain your claims etc). But to separate the player base into these 2 different realms and limit the company size in Colonies to 50 I fear is a huge mistake and will only further reduce the population base. They should have just stuck with their original plan for Colonies and let the players test it out as planned. Sure maybe not everyone would be happy but you can never honestly please 100% of all players in a game. I am personally in favor of testing out the new plans they had suggested such as the war token system and such and promoting more naval combat. I think the free-for-all and unlimited claim flags of Empires will just be too much of a headache... people already tried that style of game play and it drove most of the population away because it can be abused too much. Part of the thrill of this game is engaging in alliances/diplomacy and also face the threat and excitement of going against companies that may be somewhat bigger...finding ways to defend yourself whether it be via fortifying your land or establishing networks of alliances. Mega tribes are a problem for sure, but you had already somewhat addressed that factor by reducing the company numbers and alliance groups. Those changes were enticing enough to most players to feel like at least there was a bit more of a chance to survive. But to completely put large companies and small/medium companies on two different servers is extremely disheartening and I fear will only drive even more players away. Please reconsider simply moving forward with your original plans that you had already announced because that is what many players were looking forward to and many were considering returning to the game because of them. If you continue to delay PTR and move ahead with this new system of pulling small and large groups apart on two (or 4 if you keep EU separate) servers, then I believe you won't have the support of the community and will lose even more players. No one wants to play on dead, empty, lifeless servers where you see the same faces daily and fight the same groups repeatedly. No one wants to waste 10 hours sailing the seas and not finding anyone to fight.

This Captain's Log is so lacking in actual substantive information that I've really gotta question why it was four days late. The future of Atlas currently has a very serious problem where there are too many unanswered questions and too few concrete answers. And since this Captain's Log actually reduced the number of concrete answers we had, and raised plenty of new questions, it actually makes the current problems worse, not better.

I believe that to create 2 separate PVP systems to try and please 2 different player populations is an error on your part. It may show that you dont have a clear vision of how the game should have its PVP system implemented in the future or at minimum are uncertain of it. I would ask, even though i know that it may not make much difference for me to ask this, that you continue with your previously decided PVP system as the rule of thumb for this patch and if needed adjust it further down the line and not segregate even more the low population of players that we currently have. I also believe that when you keep pushing the PTR and wipe dates as you have been, its making you lose players to other games that are coming out of alpha and beta stages. This is something you will need to address internally from a marketing and management perspective. I predict a huge quantity of players now complaining about this delay again and quite a few, even, give up on investing any time into waiting for this. Please review this internally and consider things before you make them... i bet that if you had asked the company/alliance leaders about their opinion on this 2 pvp system (where you still have the NA and EU separate also, making it a 4 pvp system) they would of told you in unison that they would disagree with this system.

After they announced the 1 island 1 claim system and said they would just copy paste that to PVE but no wartime the forums were full of "please don't do this". I was very vocal in discord about what a bad idea this was but, I knew that they wouldn't develop two claims systems, its too much effort. We (my company) had all but decided to go. In discord I was told to wait and the changes might not be final. Then Dollie solicited a bunch of feedback in discord on PVE, and for a moment I was hopeful. Then we see the captains log today and what we got was... "We're keeping it how we said in captain's log but we'll keep an eye on it". I think I got my money's worth out of the game, so I am not here to complain, just to say, farewell. It's clear the direction of this game is PvP and offline raiding and that's totally a fine choice. We tried PVP and we spent all our time defending our tiny base and no time on the water. I dont see that changing significantly, and pve is "Feudal Lord and Serf Simulator 1.0". We've decided to move on, but did enjoy our time here.

They actually made a good decision to split the playerbase in half. They actually couldn’t have made a better idea really. small groups simply don’t want to play with big groups. The big groups will now have to fight each other instead of allying with each other and overwhelming the smaller groups(if you are a small group that goes on the big group server and get wiped, I will be happy that you got wiped because you do not belong there). the small group servers will still have some problems however since the big groups will still go there and form multiple small groups and still basically be a mega. the reason why this is important is because it is time for one play style to die out. Splitting the playerbase will be able to accomplish this. I am sure the big groups will complain because they want to raid the smaller tribes but they don’t really deserve to be able to do that, so very quickly we should be able to see how well the big group servers do. i will put my money on the small group servers being more successful. This game is an mmo not a sandbox. There need to be very strict rules and less freedom in this game. i really gotta say that I don’t just like, but I love this change. Time the Megas got put in their place and were left alone to play with themselves. ps. Hey @Percieval, I made a post without saying anything bad about the devs.

if the game had the playerbase to support splitting it in half and still having packed servers sure.

I feel pretty stupid for waiting all day for this Captain's Log when it actually served to -reduce- the amount of information we have about the upcoming patch. This isn't the first time I've felt stupid for being so invested in this game, but this is definitely my stupidest moment.

Honestly, the game is great, but there, the wait becomes unbearable, you do not hold any date, you will kill small business ....

Honestly it's taken too long already.

so we have to wait like 2 month´s to play after wipe with same configs .... cant wait This Delay and early anounce of the Wipe is killing the game not the bugs not the Serverlags or the game, you organisation is killing it. Learn Time Management!

you guys keep killing this game with every delay atlas already lost most of its players guess for this week or next one none will be playing it

I'm sure I font just speak for myself, and we want to get back to playing. I love the game but the wait is becoming annoying. Just release it how you planned to with the new claim system and fix it as you go along. You may end up losing more players by delaying it further.

It's like you don't really have a firm grasp about the game you are trying to make or you simply can't agree internally so you just said fuck it, lets just make as many copies as it takes to keep everyone happy. Stop trying to make a game and focus on making a world that feels alive. This game could be something really special imho. But not like this.

Well if you continue to vote in that direction i will be able to hold several islands solo, very cool how the slaves compete with each other to serve their masters well on Colonies

uhh..I"m not gonna tell him. One of you guys do it.

I don't think anyone wants that offline raiding crap, that's not pvp. They should of given us the opportunity to try out the first idea they had, then make changes based on our feedback. Now they are delaying development for changes no one asked for, I get that pleasing the customer is the idea, but you don't do it to the point of being fickle in decision making. Why not open the ptr for one month with the initial changes, let us play through, then give feedback. A 1 week ptr is useless for anything but break the server testing. It would be better than wasting money on 2 more servers, on live, where one would wind up empty. You have a limited number of people playing this game, as it stands pvp is limited due to the population allowed on a grid.

we should not applud them for this… splitting an alrdy dying playerbase will be the last nail in the coffin for this game... the empire server will be empty and the mega tribes will just join the colonies server split their mega tribe into 5 groups of 50 men and the allie up i alrdy see them talking in discord about this… this is a stupid decision not a smart one

PVE An extended wait for changes we don't want. They say they are making changes base on our feedback but this is not the feed back I read. If one thing stood out in the PVE feedback, it was we don't want a one flag per island system.

Yay, by the time the patch hits live you can put all remaining players in one company on the 2-50 Server.

Hard community we have here. Nothing changed yet but all of You complain. I personally think changes in this game will work in some kind of way to get NEW people to come and play with us. Stop thinking about yourselves, think about the future of the game and how to provide the most fun for everyone. btw. Crying about PVE ? Go PVP Simple as that. This is survival game You know ? With Kind Regards Heil Hydra

Why keep up NA and EU? Just merge those servers. This way the population would be higher and you wouldn't have those times when nearly no one is online. Right now we are a mixture of NA, Eu and Asia anyway on the NA server.

40k whent to 20k whent to 10k whent to a few ppl, this is sad, hope you get it up rinning this year, was a fun game

I dont like to think negavitely, but it gets harder and harder after each time i read the upcoming patches.

Man, i myself was a leader of a 70 man group. some people call that a zerg. tough decision? are you kidding? it's a game. we were facing annihilation from dynasty and their hordes. we were offered to alliance with them instead and betray our alliance partner who spammed their streamer, who was raiding them, with all sorts of racist and stupid screaming thus making him have to shut down his stream. they had a valid vendetta to wipe those fools and we were in their way. instead, we didn't throw away our alliance because we had honor. we ended up merging the whole alliance and fought dynasty to the last island. we lost, but we gained mad respect from everyone, including dynasty and their alliance. it was fun. it was pvp. it was worth it. if you compromise in a game you'll compromise in life. no respect.

TLDR: There's a pretty picture at the bottom... shiny! This is designed to appeal to multiple types of players in order to booster player numbers to maximum potential. The objective of this game is to experience life within this environment. Not to drive others to stop playing. The concept is designed to give people goals and objectives which will in turn create player interaction and game-play opportunities. I'm pretty sure the Dev's are fighting internally so this is really just a conversation piece at this stage. This idea will not appeal to everyone. But remember, there are always unofficial servers. Not a new idea, just rehashing it on paper. So with these things in mind. Why not scrap the PvP large tribe servers, scrap the PvP small tribe servers, scrap the PvE servers. Anyone can still setup one of those servers unofficially. However no one can afford to run an official size server cluster. So put it to maximum use. Basic Premise 2x PvE Colonies surrounded by PvE squares. This represents the land that has been colonised and is properly governed. These areas are under the defence of a governing force. Thus they are PvE. Players are limited to one claim flag. This lets them build what they like and maximises room for others to build also. Experience is capped at 1x. With low risk comes low reward. The flags represent the primary player hubs of the area. The Devs should make these places feel alive. It should house a Faction Controlled Auction House. Prices and content should obviously be controlled by the players. There should be an option for players to speak to a Captain of the local army here and sign up as militia. That would unlock a faction warfare game to encourage the PvE players to participate in PvP. They would gain faction points for killing players of the opposite faction. Perhaps a significant goal/reward could include the ability to drop an additional claim flag. Between the two factions is squares dedicated to ship PvP primarily. It supports raid PvP but uses the Raid Warfare system. This is for your casual PvP players who want to participate but also have to maintain a job and family life. 2x PvP Pirate Colonies. These two squares represent NPC controlled Pirate villages. Each one would be lead by a fearsome pirate band. It would offer a similar quest to the one above except they would obtain faction points by destroying members of any other faction. These squares would have a NPC run Trade House and form a player hub for the Pirates of the world. Player Hubs create community and are necessary in an MMO. These squares also offer a Dungeon Experience for other players. There is the option to raid these NPC towns. Incredibly difficult. But with great risk should come great reward. Perhaps once taken the successful company takes control of a tax bank on this island and they get a cut of all profits made via the Trade House. Outer Skulls These represent perfect islands. They have everything a fearsome PvP pirate warband could want including a juicy 5x XP. These are open PvP and designed to house the hard-core Mega-Company-PvP crowd. For living in constant danger they are rewarded with much higher XP. This lets them rebuild quicker and also entices them to live and play in the area. The 5x will also entice visitors. Holding one of the four skull islands needs to come with rewards. I'd like to see a rank system where players of the controlling company collect points for destroying members of the other 3x PvP Mega-Tibes. Have a live web board for displaying the top companies and even top pirates. This encourages the mega tribes to fight each other. Everyone around gets to hear about the epic fights and aim to one day participate. The surrounding areas should have a UNIQUE trade item that is necessary for high-end crafting. It will encourage people to seek out the items or trade for them. It doesn't matter which. For the people that seek it themselves it will generate PvP. For those that trade it will generate PvP and a Market. Markets will get people moving around the map move which will in turn generate for game-play opportunities. Ghost Ships - Replace them with.. If you must have Ghost ships. They should be incredibly rare and be incredibly difficult PvE Raid Content with amazing loot. British/French Navy ships who sail within their realm of control. They target players with enemy faction points. These ships should be encountered in the Raid PvP waters and offer a PvE Ship Battle challenge. NPC Pirate Ships should sail the waters all over the place. These are PvE Ship Battle Challenges. Various scales of reward. Resources and Skill Points Resources requirements and availability need to be overhauled. It should be possible to build low level things relatively easy. It needs to be challenging to gather the resources required for high level things. The resources need to be positioned strategically around the map in order to encourage players to have to go and get them. This will force movement around the map which will create play opportunities. It will also create the need for trade which will create a market. Again this will create play opportunities. Biome positioning will play a part in this. Skill Points need to be limited to ensure that no single person can achieve absolutely everything. You are not going to create a world where players create the content of the game if they don't need to interact with each other in order to achieve their goals. Players should need to specialise into skills making them valuable to their companies and assisting with the creation of a skill market. What Will This Do It's simple really. A game of this size needs players in order for other players to play with them. The content is largely player driven. This idea maintains that concept. The players will still largely drive the content for the game. It will still be a game focused on resource gathering, building, fighting and stealing each others shit. This however brings everyone into a single game. Allowing us all to play how we like to play while encouraging styles of play that will encourage player interaction.

The developers on here don't often get much support but their decision today to cater to both types of player - both the hardcore and the casual is one that should be met by a round of applause. This is a fantastic decision that will keep everyone happy and not alienate sectors of your player base. Well done devs.

I think the devs need to turn away from the ugly gate meta game we currently have. It is nothing but an easy ship pounding wall and to slow down little twerps from entering to oil down boats.

Totally agree. 100%, better buildings and structures are definitely needed, they would cut down on lag too. However... it would literally take one of their graphics artists like 1 minute to do this. I personally find the giant dino gates annoying and ugly. The fact we have to use them as walls though because we don't have real wall sections also bothers me. Actually it wouldn't take one of their artists very long to do the gates AND what you are talking about. Why not both?

You are confusing PVE players with PvPvE players. They are not the same player base. Basically punishing PVE players with less skills and less mats because they do not want to engage (in)directly with any PVP is not a good PVE game design. It is a very good PvPvE design and why a number of unofficials have adopted this model. But those proposing it for officials need to recognize you just told PVE players to take a hike as they do not want to play in that structure. PvPvE is different from PvE is different from PvP. As far as NA/EU combined server there are already unofficials that do this, it is technically possible todo. The only issue is the ping to the redis database but the servers themselves could be regional mix.

There would be no delays if the patch was release a week after it was announced and only announced when it was completed :D

for this to be EVE you'd need to wall off each grid, with a single gate between squares where people can just sit all day and shoot weapons that automatically drop your anchor so you can't move. You'd also need to set harvest rates to 0.000001 in safe areas and x40 in the unsafe areas... then sit back with popcorn at the amount of PvErs rage quitting until it becomes like Elite Dangerous in OPEN mode

If Justin Biber is on board then for sure

Wow, thanks folks, if enough people respond saying they are with us maybe, allthough I've pretty much lost hope. I want to be clear, I think something needed to be changed with the existing claim system. I think the change was simple for PVE (not speaking for PVP). Limit number of claims, make them square and not overlap etc, BUT the key was it is clear the solution for PVP doesnt work for PVE, we're just asking to consider that. Who else do I speak for?

Of course they will. I called it on a different thread. The playstyle they want is garbage. It killed the game once already. They cannot survive without huge odds in thier favour. Shit tier players hiding in a huge zergs.

Lmao I'm sure all those companies that were forcefully swallowed by the megas or quit due to offline raiding cant wait to join the empire server Its gonna be a HUGE success. There is and has been a giant demand for a pvp MMO for a long time now. We will see soon enough I guess.

I call myself "We" because if you read my original post, it is me and my company, I'm not speaking for anyone else. You sound less important by not reading. You should try reading. For context, my original post said "We (my company) had all but decided to go. " Also could you please define "Intelegent discusion"

Ahh. A perfect opportunity to introduce you to my thoughts on why time travel is impossible. How is this in any way related? Stay tuned to find out! If you were to just go back in time, where do you think you’ll end up? Floating in space. Why? The Earth moves very quickly. Even a time jump of just seconds would probably result in your death. Part of the patch is adding and moving islands. Where do you think structures will be? Floating In the air over the water, just waiting to smash a passing ship. Perhaps they could keep the characters during the wipe. But, with the addition of these same islands, additional discovery points will be added, and some may be removed. They may also be tweaking the skills tree, which yes, on its own is not enough to require recreating a character. But, if you had to choose between them spending the time to get the game mechanics to where they want them to be, or put the time into making it so people can retain a current character, which would you choose? “But Del, you never really said why time travel is impossible, just that it would kill you. It would still be possible if you didn’t mind dying, right?” I hear nobody asking. I think of actual time travel like this. Time itself is a construct for people to be able to measure the rate of change. The only true time travel would be to return everything in existence to it’s previous state. And you’d still have to move yourself to where you want to end up, hoping you don’t end up with your molecules merging with something else.

Just kidding, this game is dead af

"One person's freedom ends where another's begins" How do you satisfy this kind of request with a claim system on a PvE serv?

They don't have any big changes announced that would actually warrant a delay though. They planned the new 1 flag system a while ago and announced they will keep another set of servers that don't follow that. No drastic changes are announced. ~Lotus

@Dollie Will ATLAS: Empires and ATLAS: Colonies both have 15x15 grid map?

I dont think you understood what i was talking in my post or at least i didnt make myself clear on it... to have 2 different pvp systems (4 actually due to the NA/EU servers) is to separate even more the very limited population that we already have and add even more development work for themselves as they would have to mantain 6 types of servers (4 pvp and 2 pve). It does indeed show that they are listening to the things players are saying but instead of having a clear route of development they decided to try and please everyone instead of deciding internally on what they wish to obtain out of their own develpment as future for the game. Also to note that, unless i am wrong, the previously announced pvp system would still allow you to be raiding outside of your war timer by the use of a token... At this point i dont really care so much as to what system they implement but that they actually implement something and go ahead and work from there instead of complicating things and segregating even more the dwendeling population of this game. I WOULD ALSO RECOMMEND TO THE DEVELOPERS TO UNDERSTAND A LITTLE MORE ABOUT PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND PERHAPS USE SOME SIX SIGMA OR AGILE/SCRUM METHODOLOGIES IN ORDER TO STOP MAKING ALL THESE MANAGEMENT MISTAKES.

Part of the issue here is not just the repeated delays, but the fact that changes are constantly being made based on feedback from the community, feedback that is being given before even testing the proposed changes. By doing this it makes it look like the Developers have no clue how they want their game to be. The delay to the PTR is not good, but it's not the end of the world, but there's too much of a focus to make everyone happy and making constant changes based on pre-testing feedback.

Christmas has been delayed this year! ~Lotus

in game politics is just extra content to me, i love it. it's like a story that never ends, just gets juicer. IRL politics do not belong in game tho. I game to get a break from life.

I think the game as a foundation is solid, It just needs some minor tweeks paint is one no need to get pissy because we are talking about it over an issue u have somewhere else

Atlas... a game of the year. If you start losing then you run and merge with shitty megatribe. If you can't win a fight then you go raid offline. Hmm what a hardcore 2019 game...

there have been So Many posted requesting a claim flag limit since day one. Devs still not listening.