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The powers that be at Atlas really should play the game more than whatever amount that they do. The most active, loyal, and dedicated players so far in the 7 months since Atlas's launch have been repeatedly given the impression that those calling the shots do not play the game much if at all. I am not talking about design choices that split the community, those have their supporters and detractors. I am talking about design choices that leave any experienced player scratching their head wondering how anyone at Grapeshot ever thought *insert your favorite dumb idea here* was a good idea. Examples include, but are not limited to: -Insanely over the top rent prices for player shops that render them pointless. -Initial spawn rates of sotd's and hostile creatures that made play for the average player insanely difficult. -Storm frequency and damage out of all proportion to reality that made travel a perilous crapshoot which could cause players to lose tons of time and resources invested in ships and everything on them to be lost due to unavoidable storms which sprang up with little to no warning. -Unnecessarily complicated land claim and retention mechanics which practically invite griefing of other players. -Skill mechanics that require the ability to craft an item in order to be able to use it. In any game purporting to support ingame economy, this is unbelievably dumb. Despite the fact some of these things have been corrected (others over corrected), these and other design choices have left the playerbase wondering if those calling the shots at GrapeCard ever actually log in and play the game they're creating. If they don't, they should. If they do, perhaps they need to do so more often, or interact with other players more when they do. If they are actually doing both these things, we might all be screwed. Because honestly, even though the game has it's moments and is fun enough to win my time, there are more than one or two calls here that are "should have died on the brainstorming table" bad. Yes, the players in an Early Access game are here to provide feedback and input, but the needed level of input and feedback should start somewhere above, not at "fire is hot." I don't care who it is, but whoever is making the decisions that lead to these things really ought to spend more time in the game. Or at least stop making design choices so facepalm worthy as to give the impression they never do. This is not my first EA rodeo, but it is the first one to make me wonder if the people making it ever play it.

I could be wrong but so far the only benefit to having a bookshelf is that you can quickly press the arrow key and it will put all maps (and blueprints) from your inventory straight into the bookshelf. So this benefit saves a few seconds of time since if I had to put maps into another storage device such as an NPC, smithy, or Large Storage Box, I would be required to first type "Map" which then only shows the maps I have in my inventory and then I can mass transfer these into the storage device of choice without other stuff I might be holding going in there. Essentially Bookshelves are useless particularly as the main use for them is to put them on ships so you can complete maps or store blueprints inside them. When weight is an issue for each ship, the bookshelf weighs the ship down. You would be better off to give the maps to each of your NPC crew on board to save the weight of the bookshelf. My proposal is to do some or all of the following, so as to give bookshelves a benefit: * Make Maps stored in a bookshelf not decay as fast. Maps only last a few days anyway. Making maps stored in a bookshelf last a little longer would be a great benefit. * Make stuff stored in a bookshelf weigh less and maybe the bookshelf itself weigh less too. When you have a lot of maps weighing 0.3 each it adds up. (BUG? ----> ACTUALLY whilst it says maps weigh 0.3, they actually weigh 0.35. Try carrying 1. It will say weight 0.3. Then carry 2 it will say 0.7. Or carry 10 and it will say weight 35). I'm not sure why they round down 0.35 to equal 0.3. 0.35 is always rounded up to 0.4 if anything. So currently if you have a bookshelf full of maps it will weigh 280 x 0.35 = 98. That's not including the weight of the actual bookshelf itself. * Make more slots in a bookshelf. 280 storage slots can be filled up easily.

I agree. That being said, from day one playing Conan EA, the same question was asked many, many times. The population also dropped to barely there. Changes that made everyone scratch their head eventually started making sense, the further we went through the EA process. Multiple, multiple wipes, cries of, the game is dead and other growing pains. Having stayed with the game through all that, things the devs did started making sense, clicking together until the official release. The game at official release was 1000% better than 6 plus months before. I am only hoping that it will be the same with Atlas.

We can only wait for some update to correct this problem. It is very easy to lose the boat to those with this problem. I'm very sad and it's hard to go to another server (GRID). We do not know when this will end, but it has been a long time, others have given up game. I hope they find a solution, the new update is coming and our fun has been hampered. - I formatted the computer - Update all drivers - The game has been reinstalled cleanly. - Ip config /flushdns I don't think the problem is about my internet, Players from different locations around the world have this problem.

I stopped doing Treasure maps about a month ago, after the ubernerf, but since that time have been introducing new players to the game, and low-level treasure maps seem to be fun for them. As a result we have all been collecting maps from islands local to us and getting a serious pile of them in our own zone that would have been too low for me to consider playing with in the past. I have a few new observations based on this large sample in a concentrated area, especially on our own island. 1. In another thread that I cannot seem to find, there were huge arguments about spawning AoD on top of other player's structures, and the fact that island owners should know where their spawn points are and not build there, I was skeptical then, but most of my experience had been on very high level, very remote maps, which by definition were rarely in the same zone, much less island, so I didn't feel my experience was sufficient to comment. After doing more than 20 maps on our tiny 15-point island, not even once have I seen a duplicate location. There seem to be about 5 areas that they are generally clustered around, and I have seen a few of them within about 20 feet of previous spawns, but never on the same spot. I am now certain that the idea anyone knows precisely where you can or can't build is patently ridiculous. 2. After encountering several pre-built structures that other players left behind from fighting high-level treasure maps in remote locations, like on the top of remote pillars, never once did the undead spawn in the location that those players had obviously built "around". Instead it seemed to always spawn some distance away from an enclosed structure. Whether that means that maps modify their spawn location based on existing player structures, or if the above RNG is to blame, i don't know. I don't really have an adequate sample of this, but after roughly 200 maps, I have yet to encounter one that actually centered the AoD spawn within an enclosed player structure. The closest I have seen is about 10 feet away from a player structure built over a temple, which made sense to me if the spawn was actually supposed to be on the temple somewhere, but got kicked to the nearest side by the location algorithm. I'm also quite sure that once a map is 'locked in' at the moment a player picks it up, the location is never modified by subsequent player construction, mostly because I used to construct tons of traps and enclosures before spawning a map, and it never moved the beam as a result.

pfft 10. 20 spot min. This is quality shimmy action here...

*waves a ten spot in Dosgimp’s direction and whistles* C’mon hot stuff, do that bear shimmy on over this way! Oh yeah! Shake it baby! I’m ready for the adventure of a lifetime!

Dunno if you understand how a game is made. But the design team can't work on bugfix, cause that's not their work, so instead they add content, while the bugfix team do their job. As increasing performance (as on last patch), remove the PvE Raize, remove exploits, etc etc.. Désigner Team can't work on that part x)

Many of the islands have far to many high cliff faces

I believe in general he's talking about the kinds of thing people build to fight aoD, not structures in general. For example, you enter a clearing in the woods and there are stairs to nowhere with a platform on top of it...it's likely built for Aod, but the AOD are actually spawning away from it where the structure is now useless, so that's not a static spawn spot. Same with ramps up mountains. You know it was built for an aod spawn, but when you get there it's on the next peak over instead, or halfway down on a ledge. I've seen this on our island too. The spawns can happen in a pretty large radius, and he's right saying that on a small island, if you take all that area into account, there can be nowhere left to build. We've had people spawn aod inside our barn before, so I'm not putting too much faith into the enclosed vs not enclosed ideas.

I also agree with 8Ball, The game is EA, its working progress, its going to turn into something amazing. However I also agree with the OP. The Devs really need to play the game like we do, to really understand its issues. You have to admit - Atlas is improving... Who doesn't remember day 1 with all player corpses @ the freeport. The struggle alone just to get off the island..

i felt like it was pointless playing and farming resources outside these bonus periods i felt forced to play within these small windows of time and it made the game un-enjoyable last thing im going to say unless you improve the quality of life for brand new players in PvP servers the game will never grow without growth everyone suffers and the game dies i constantly see new players try out the game who end up quitting within the first 1-2 hours

We should build a city somewhere to concentrate everyone left. Everybody could have a small base or shop. If anybody has the ambition to make the most populated city on atlas, I would come.

Bookshelves are fine as is in my opinion. If you are concerned about double-digit kg of weight on your ship from them, I think you may have other issues of weight to fix first. I have one bookshelf on my ship that I mass dump all gathered maps, blueprints, songs, etc into while traveling. Then those are transferred into the 6+ bookshelves at my base, which are painted by color codes, and have folders setup for sorting and organizing. Works fairly well and don't have many complaints. I have my own rules for how good a BP must be to not just be thrown on the floor. I do agree that there should be more options available to extend map decay timers either with a new object called "map case" or maybe allowing preserving salt in the bookshelf to extend maps. If you are not aware (and possibly a bug that could get fixed), maps on your hotbar will not decay. I seem to always have a few maps cluttering up my hotbar because they are good ones that I know I want to do, but the timing isn't just working out. The fact the bookshelf can hold 280 items, much more than other storage options, is a big benefit it provides.

Like that you didn't just complain, but elaborated with sound reasoning why you think bookshelves aren't worth it in their current form. Also that you provided ideas for how to improve them. I like all of your suggestions and second all of them, they would make bookshelves more worthwhile. Excellent feedback. I think the devs in particular should take note that on ships where weight matters, bookshelves don't currently offer enough benefit to justify their weight cost.

Just a little insight really quick. On Twitter one day Ced(ark dev) said they played in the first few months but it had been years since they had played ark. In the past I would also see on the dev tracker that some of them were playing fortnite(not kidding). so based of the experience I have had I would say that no they do not play the game. Ced is also one of the awesome devs so I am pretty sure that any of them that are not awesome may very well have not even played a day. just putting it out there.

Funny how common sense posts just seem to hang out, but the whiner threads go on forever. Should have thrown in some waaa waaa text for good measure I guess @Boomer

I haven't played since the gathering rates were really high before the wipe. Putting in about 14 hours over the last three days. Not been raided once. Ships haven't been sunk, nothing hasn't even been damaged. Nor have I seen a soul. Likewise there isn't the building spam there was before the wipe. Island I building on only has a pair of taming pens, nothing else. I rarely even see people enter the grid square. With so few people actually bothering to log in, it's made solo play viable. Probably not what the Devs intended, but congrats anyway!!!

Ok, fair enuff. Let me try to make a vid of some sort to explain, with numbers ofc, to show you how we got to this. No worries, not taking it personal. As for the AoD, what I mean is; they should agro soulely on the player(s) who activate/participate with the treasuremap. And hunt them down. In ARK (ikr lol) there is an offline protection. Perhaps this code works or can work the same in a way. As in ARK, I'm convinced the map locations should be "unbuildable". The sad thing with this; if it's being implemented, players will loose pieces of base.

Gotta agree here, the lack of communication on the forums makes you wonder if there's any point in posting here. Feels like you're not reading or paying any attention to the bugs and problems people are posting. All people want to their posts is some acknowledgement that you've agreed this is a bug and it will be processed in due course. For something major like this disappearing structures bug, an actual update would be great. For a game where community is everything, you're not really being a solid role model or doing much to uphold the community that keeps the game alive and kicking.

I am saying that a very particular kind of opinion, their feedback on the game, should be regarded as more valuable than yours by the developers, because it is based on common sense. There is a reason former professional athletes are forever hired as commentators on the games they used to play. It is because their first hand experience gives them greater insight when commenting, all other things being equal. No one is suggesting anything regarding right or wrong, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up. I'm also pretty sure I didn't imply that everything is fine or that that is what the developers should listen to when soliciting feedback. I'm disagreeing on one very specific point: that you asserted it would be better for the devs to listen to those with no play experience than those who have it, on the basis of earning your potential future business. This isn't to say that GrapeCard should discount the opinions of those who might buy in the future as to what they want out of the game, that's perfectly valid and useful market research. But any CEO can tell you that market research is, while valuable, generally less valuable than customer satisfaction research, especially when customer satisfaction is low and needs to be improved.

The problem with your premise is the notion that those that are playing are all telling them things are fine. This is observably not true and you should realize this. Those that are making many of the suggestions for change and improvements should be listened to before those who have never played, precisely because their input is based upon actual game experience, not second hand knowledge. Just because you might be spending money at some undetermined point in the future does not make your advice and suggestions somehow more valuable than those of people who have already paid, have actual experience, and may also be paying again in the future for cosmetics etc. (which is how this thing will really pay for itself if ever.)

i would love to have my npcs to have human level intelligence so i could send them on thier own missions while i sit in my castle huggin penguins and whatever my skewed up psycho sexuality desires . just an idea

"First thing, kill all the lawyers." -Bill Shakespeare

I regularly pull whales with carbines, as recently as last Friday. They have a very strange hitbox. Head hits usually penetrate from low angles (like a Sloop), other places just porcupine, but high angle shots (from a Galleon) seem to penetrate almost anywhere.

Hi everyone! I do agree with the to each his own preference. I believe that those focused on the 2x 3x 4x stuff are completely losing sight of the game... Just PLAY! I play at all times I can, and enjoy it thoroughly. I just count the X weekends as a bonus, love them of course, but I do the same when they are off. There are all walks of life in here, from those working 80 hours a week, to the unemployed. I believe Grapeshot is doing a great job in spreading the wealth to all. It is not like we are now on 4x 7 days a week, and who knows how things will change in the future? Geez, if you want to go 4-5 days a week without playing the game, fine! But please don't come in here complaining about the weekends when MOST people have time to play.

I will third this because I see a lot of erosion of the player base on EU PVE. People that have played a lot are walking away from the game. I have played for the last 2 days at my normal time and been the only one in my grid at L9. Normally there would be about 7 or 8. What really made me scratch my head concerning management though is when Dollie said this in our “Don’t Raze Us” thread: Im a little confused on one specific aspect in relation to PvE brought up by a couple of posters though. I've seen examples of an island owner leaving or going awol and thus leaving settlers open to being wiped. Wouldn't those settlers just continue to pay the upkeep on the claim to keep it secure in that case? (aside from waiting to jump and claim it themselves of course). I'm not quite understanding how people can just "lose" a claim.  With all due respect to those running the show, why do players need to explain this? Are there so many moving parts in a game like this that it is difficult to grasp them all or do they just need to play more as Boomer said? Usually the architect of a game understands the implications of rule changes or at least what game mechanics are working. Oh well, it is what it is. None of the answers really matter anyway because 1) early access and 2) I definitely got my monies worth out of Atlas. But I so hate lost potential of something that could be great.

- Fictional NPC Royal Naval Forces (the real enemy of the pirate)- with the associated merchant marine at sea and on land.(with WPE we're advancing) - More types of ships and realistic front-triangle sails - which ensure that speed can be generated with little wind,from negative wind angels. -A sophisticated trading system for all game modes. -Prevent wild animals from destroying trees(especially elephants) Almost all of my other points have already been mentioned / except for this one : To find a way to reclaim the lost players and win new ones - though this is clear anyway.(of course,that's easy to say when you're not in charge) My and other suggestions do not necessarily have to be considered,as it has already have been done too quickly with some questionable. With all due respect,dear devs,you did a great job so far,but unfortunately one could almost get the impression that the game is just played by you too little. Just my little personal view. ( this isn't my native language)

i think this thread is kinda hilarious... atlas is a survival mmo and even if it wasnt there will always be a huge gap between casuals and no lifers or solo/small group vs large group... if you remove certain elements you get humilated with skill and if that is not possible nobody would buy the game cuz it would be boring... that said what is your goal in a mmo like atlas? as i started i did not care at all about what large companies did and dwelled on lawless thinking im mighty with plate and carbine vs animals... specially if you choose to play pvp instead of pve... sink ships and destroy stuff without consequences and get everything for free? all i can say about this is... delusional+ignorant... probably does not matter anymore in the current state of the game as you can basically solo on official pretty easy...

After the Pirate encampments are in and if they turn out to work real well. 1. New boss/dungeon. A Pirate one with the boss as the Captain. 2. Just more humanoids/Npc in general. Rather they have a function or not. Just makes the world seem more alive. Stick "Bob the retired" at one of the abandoned pre build shacks in the world. Maybe a random sketchy looking Npc, creeping around the ship wrecks with a fat loot pouch on his back.. little things like that, even if they do not have an actual function currently. Maybe in the future, Make it so Bob will exchange goods with you or Creeper guy "will give you a deal on a hat" 1 single hat cosmetic :P donno, just along those lines.. lol

its a silly little thing , but more hairstyles...Ark had a load of options for barbers including (and i dont understand why they didnt add it in the first place) the ponytail i mean honestly , you can probably count the number of people who use the dread's option in double figures , as is I just constantly shave it all off as it looks too much in standard style

Hardly tek in comparison to a sub or torpedos. For pvp make them a placement only weapon that can finally out range cannon bears. In pve this weapon if used on a cargo saddle could be a viable option to take to golden age which are islands that by far do not get enough use. Obviously they need to have a low damage and low ammo resource cost. Something that would deter people with tames and kill high level golden age creatures but not high enough to drop a fire elemental or cyclops in seconds either.

Maybe one of these

For the love of god get a damned computer I am sick of Games getting dumbed down so they can work on a Console!!! Oblivion dumbed downed version of Morrowind all so it could go on console and the trend hasn't stopped.... Consoles are the devil...

+ Peasants (NPC), hire-able, who could milk cows, gather manure or automate farming, etc. main usage would be for single player obviously, but it would also cut a bit on tedious on PvE and PvP. It would also add sense of progression (making things easier for well established player).

So much bad information here. The OP says PVE so I will go over how it works. The claim process takes an hour. You find an island that is claimable. You have the points and the gold available. You drop your claim flag and wait. If you hit H you can see the circle that it is in. You need to stay in that circle while it counts down. The only way that someone else can claim that island before you now is if they contest the flag. They have to drop their own flag within the circle of your flag. Say you have 30 minutes left. Your timer will stop at 30 min, and theirs will stay at an hour. Now it is a standoff. The way you can lose is if they have a second person. A company can only place a single flag at a time, but that does not stop a 3rd company from claiming. So a common tactic is to have a person port to the island that you are contesting. Pick up enough gold to claim said island out of company/ship storage, leave company, form their own, drop a 3rd claim flag somewhere else on the island. You sit there watching the other guy, and his friends counter is timing down. Once they go below 30 minutes they now have you beat. Problem is, if you leave your first flag to run over to the second, the first one starts counting down. You can't win. Island is claimed by 2nd person that came over. He then just merges his temporary company into the original company and done. The whole "have a person contest flags" is NOT a thing anymore. This was changed after the EU PVE first wipe debut and people were blocking others who were trying to claim islands that had gathered the gold first as a blocking tactic while their crew was out gathering gold. So when NA debuted they had the one flag per company rule in place. They as usual just didn't account for the lengths people are willing to go to fuck the intent of a system.

This game needs moar Olivia Munn.

Some daily and weekly quest could be fun

Yeah I think our experiences might be quite different, I am owner of a Company and have responsibility 2 bring in Gold for upkeep of 2 islands and that is a bit rough sometimes. Even more so since almost everyone else is away on holiday. Also we have tons of tames to look after. The weekdays mon - fri being lower rates don't bother me - I always have tons to do then anyway - transport rare resources, take care of tames, do our big gardens, look after and keep our islands clean from spam, etc. But if there werent 2x rates on weekend I don't Think I would be as interested in the game - cause everything just takes too da*n long already, as it is... If they removed 2x, they would have to make sailing way way faster or something, for it being worth it, to me. Perhaps up the minimum wind speed by 100 %. Just upkeep alone, when you're an island owner, takes up lots of time. Aswell as trying to recruit new people etc. I almost never have time to go out and just explore stuff, it's mostly upkeep and farming materials i spend time on, as slow as everything already goes in this game. I don't have any numbers to support it but my thought is that I have seen far more people talking about what a time sink this game is, and that that makes them bored, rather than the other way around. Just my opinion though, just as you are allowed yours ofc.

Most people that play solo / in tiny groups are the ones that lose out in big open persistent worlds. Everyone's enjoying Atlas against their own wish and rule sets, but in big open play, it's easy to get sucked into a vortex of persistently changing rules and goalposts. By bringing in solo / personal server based game options, more and more people will be able to play atlas they way they want to. If you have no time to play, but find 2x weekends the only viable time to play, then the new mode will be ideal. Some people want 0.5x some people feel that farming shouldn't be the aim of the game, but have 10x so that building a boat is trivial, but perhaps prefer PvE fun with no overhead.. ofc single and solo eliminates the spam, player mess and griefing as well. For me, being a sailor / survivor with and entire grid to myself is an adventure of a lifetime. Me vs a world to call home. Sea is a lonely place, i can finally have my house boat and play rules that suit me. I'm very luckly, the dev team just made Atlas exactly what I want it to be. I emphase the I. I now have my very own Atlas world, and a fantastic place it is. I have to exercise discipline with the settings now, so that I don't make things too easy, or, I get frustrated with the difficulty. If I don't enjoy Atlas now, then I don't deserve Atlas. I love it, settings and mods bring new life, and I'm grateful to the dev team for bringing this to me. @Jatheish @Dollie and team, you're awesome.

I could understand this in the case of hardcore PVE players, because in PVE you just acumulate more and more stuff. On the other hand on PVP you are not only consuming things all the time, but also, you usually can't take full advantage of x2 events because you are bussy attacking or defending. On top of that the major timesink is usually transporting things, or crafting and building, so i don't see the problem.

*blinks* This game had glory at one point?

Again I have to emphasize that you know nothing of the dev process nor the work that goes into these games. The fact that you can't see that a delay would happen on an early access game shows that you are either trolling or just willfully ignorant. If you think it's terrible why are you still here? Stop playing something you don't like and go trawl Reddit. Educate yourself.