boomervoncannon

I could live with that, it’s not making all structures decay at an extended 2 week rate all the time. I’d consider that workable.

It is always easier to give than take away. Witness the cacophony of howls that go up at even the perception of a nerf. Lengthen the timers and shorten them again and the interested minority will raise a shitstorm and the very first argument they’ll likely make is “but it wasn’t hurting anyone.” They will be wrong but that will most assuredly be their perception. The issue is not merely one of overcrowding. Every structure creates stress on the server. This is why your game lags when you pull into a harbor area full of ships and shipyards. It is inherently true that allowing unused structures to stand for longer detracts from active players experience, whether from space use, impacted server performance or longer timers making pillar spam more viable and appealing to those who would employ it. The more central question is the issue of what percentage of the playerbase benefits vs the entire playbase experiencing the drawbacks. The benefit is easier for that minority to perceive than the drawbacks are because the mind does not go “if the decay timers were shorter there might be less lag in this zone” or “the nincompoop who did this pillar spam might not have bothered with shorter decay timers.” or “if decay timers were shorter this massive base wouldn’t be here but the guy who built it only has to log in twice a month to keep it so here it sits.”

I am answering both these posts in a single reply because the issue is the same. It is not NA vs the world or EU, but it is about compromise. The length of the decay timer is always going to be a compromise between competing interests. Active players want the decay timers to be shorter to free up space faster and more frequently. Both of you have raised the issue of fairness to players in parts of the world where 2 week vacations are common, but my objection is based not on whether this is fair to those players vs NA players, but the percentage of players who legitimately have this need. NA players do not because we don’t get 2 week vacations. Non NA players who belong to any decent size company do not, because other company members can cover while they are gone. Non NA players who belong to a small company that does not all go on vacation together irl does not for the same reason. So in the end, who might actually need 2weeks? Non NA solo players and NON NA players in small companies where the entire company goes on vacation together. What portion of the playerbase does this represent? I don’t know but I have a hard time believing it could be more than 5% to 10% at most. Thats why I’m not in favor of lengthening the decay timers. At the end of the day it would be putting the wants of a fraction of the playerbase ahead of the interests of the whole. Even those players who want this change and arguing for it would be unlikely to ever notice when it worked against them. When they couldn’t get the spot they wanted because some other guy only had to check in twice a month to keep it from them permanently. Human beings are bad at perceiving what doesn’t happen and weighing it against what does, but in this instance what doesn’t happen (space being freed up) is more impactful than what does.

I would totally buy ship insurance from Plunderwide. Especially if instead of the Geico Gecko, they had the Plunderwide Parrot that said things in their ads like "Bwack, Polly want a powerstone."

Ah. Missed that. My apologies. I also agree Sulfur has a lot of good ideas.

Legit point. Atlas does have something I haven't come across in other MMO's which speaks to this: mat categories of half a dozen specific mats within a category and the need to use more of these specific kinds of mats within a category to craft increasingly higher quality gear ie legendary needs 5, mythic needs 6. Doing this and them having the different specific types spread across the map in different biomes and regions does help stimulate a need for trade or at least travel, but I agree that it only does so much and addressing the point you raise would go a long way towards stimulating an ingame economy to a much greater degree.

Good point. It's not just what got their initial interest that got everyone's attention, but what drove them away. I think there are multiple factors there as well, but wiping definitely seems likely one of the biggest.

Fixed. Thorne is female and to the best of my knowledge still alive (assuming no one poisoned her coffee this morning).

So, what is the defining act of piracy? Attacking merchant shipping. What's weird about Atlas as a pirate themed game? The act of piracy itself is largely absent from the game because there is little to no merchant shipping. As someone who loves the economy aspect of MMORPG gameplay and thinks it's vastly underdeveloped in Atlas, I don't think any sort of central auction house is the way to go for this game. The need to actually physically transport goods AND develop the personal interactions of trade networks rather than anonymous bidding systems is something Atlas should encourage more of through design, not truncate by plopping in the same systems other games use.

The problem there is I think Atlas's difficulties to date have to do partly with the fact that with limited information of just a single trailer, there was a bit of a tabula rasa effect prior to launch where people filled in their own desires and expectations which may never have been reflected of what the game actually could or would be. I do think people were excited about a vast game world and the possibility of thousands of players on a single server (which turned out to not really be a single server but different servers patched together). Maybe they were just excited about the possibility of a pirate based game that rose above mediocre, it's hard to say with any certainty, but where your suggestion has merit is it certainly couldn't hurt to pause and look back at what led to the initial excitement to see what elements of it could perhaps be regained.

You don’t like the current system but don’t have any suggestion for how to improve it. Saying “it’s not my place.” is a cop out. This is the part of game design that doesn’t require coding ability, just conceptual thinking. It’s easy to sit back and say “lol ur system sux, fixit, I’m out deuces.” But until you have a better idea, you’ve contributed nothing but bile. If that’s all you have to offer, few will mourn your absence. You are conflating different things when you talk about losing progress. Just like any other MMORPG, you don’t lose character levels or experience if you stop playing, but expecting your ships and structures to stick around infinitely in a finite game world that others must inhabit while you are gone is just not a reasonable expectation.

What? Richard Parker has attacked every single elephant or gator that has wandered into my house irl. He’s fierce like that, even if a bit pudgy. He’s so good at defending his territory from them that I don’t even worry about coming home to find either in the living room.

Yeah no sorry, I’m not of the opinion that the decay timer needs to allow solo players to maintain outposts while gone on vacation for 2 weeks straight. Setting minimums to accommodate solo players so they experience no inconvenience when gone from the game twice as long as most NA players are able to be away from work at a time (yes I’m aware EU generally get longer vacations) is not the direction the game needs to go. MMO’s are built around multi player organizations. Some accommodation of solo players is reasonable, but wanting the decay timers to be extended so that you must make zero additional contingencies to maintain what you have because you want to do so as a solo player in a game designed for group play undermines the game’s needs in order to cater to your wants. If you get what you want, solo players need only log in twice a month to never have anything they’ve built go away. This is catering to super casual solo players at the expense of the entire rest of the pve playerbase. Yes under the current system you must make some additional effort and plans to maintain what you have if gone this long. I am of the opinion this is a reasonable cost and requirement of choosing solo play. When you choose to play solo every structure you build is taking up finite space in a game world designed around and intended primarily for groups of players. Without realizing it, you are imposing upon the rest of the playerbase by choosing to stay solo. Their bases with crafting stations, gardens, tames and storage, to say nothing of ships, support a minimum as twice as many players as yours does. You get to have all these things for your exclusive and personal use if you choose, but I for one am perfectly fine with the trade off being you have to have some contingency plan to maintain what you have if gone for half a month. I don’t find this unfair or unreasonable, just a trade off you must deal with if you choose to play solo in a multiplayer oriented game.

I really really like this idea.

No in fact the opposite. It was just us and one other group on the island, but over the weekend a third company has settled here and started a modest base.

I have a sell order up. As soon as Red and I have extra coin and a shopping list I'll probably use it to buy stuff. Seems like a solid system, just needs user backing. C'mon people, make it work.

I don’t think the map has been released yet.

I've noticed dramatic increase in spawn rates of cobras this weekend since the last patch. At our small land base in K5, conditions have gone from killing one or two cobras every few hours to continuous fighting of them in groups of 3 or 4. They are destroying all other animals on the island and making gathering untenable. Is anyone else experiencing this?

We do? I think we know that wipes are possible, but not assured.

Can't speak to the issue of it locating on the wrong drive, but Atlas seems to be having an issue known to cause frustration with Ark, namely that for some technical reason I'm not qualified to explain, the game needs you to space greater than the size of the entire game free, not just the update itself, in order to dl and install updates, which makes no sense, but I have seen it happen numerous times with Ark. As far as the wrong drive thing, my only guess is once it initially routed it to the wrong drive, it keeps wanting to send it back there until you find a way to direct it specifically to the other drive. Please enjoy the music while someone with greater technical proficiency hopefully sees this thread and offers more substantial help.

Then the obvious question would be, how would that differentiate Atlas from Ark? Ark is clearly tame oriented, and my gut feeling is given the choice between a game with dinosaur centric taming and more traditional animal centric taming, people would tend to go for the dino one. Do you think Atlas can succeed by rebranding itself around fantasy type tames of creatures like the olfend, giant crab and turtle, or sea horse? Keep in mind the sea horse was just announced and the impression I'm getting of the reaction on the boards was not just that most people weren't excited about it, but many seemed actively irked development resources were put into it as opposed to other things they would have preferred, like new ship types. Not saying it's not a possibility, just asking how you see Atlas differentiating itself from Ark if it is going to be tame oriented, since the former currently is floundering with a bad rep in the industry and the latter is an established hit.

So we're six months into what has been announced as a 2 year EA (minimum) development cycle. After a burst of initial excitement at intriguing possibilities like 40k players all on the same map and 700 different islands to explore, it's probably safe to say that the precipitous drop in playerbase is a strong indication most who tried Atlas out initially on the promise of these and other selling points have found them wanting. While the devs have worked continuously to make improvements and produce new content, I'm not getting the impression that any of it has created meaningful enough interest to draw significant numbers of players back to the game. All successful MMO's must have at least one aspect of their game that is the draw, the thing the game hangs it's hat on and is known for. Atlas will need to differentiate itself not only from other MMO's and survival games, but other pirate games as well. I think one of the reasons it is struggling is because there is no one aspect of the game which is strong to the point that when any of us as players are talking to friends, family and other gamers, if they ask "Why should I come play Atlas with you?" we could answer "Because it really does X well." One quarter of the way into that 2 year EA cycle is a point where either this should have started to become apparent, or the devs need to pick something and focus on it to really make it shine and stand out. My question to everyone is: What do you think that thing could or should be, and why?

Are you taking into account variance in the wind strength when sailing? Not to assume you don't know, but I've been surprised how many people haven't caught on that the length of the arrow tells you how strong the wind is.

Yes but... why is the rum gone?

There are far greater sins, like using a non Duke's brand mayonnaise on your tomato sandwich, or dumping sugar into unsweetened tea and trying to tell a southerner it's sweet tea (blasphemy!).