boomervoncannon

Your response is a red herring because I am not attempting to equate the level of seriousness of the two, merely illustrate by analogy the unacceptable ness of lackluster support. I strongly suspect you are deliberately pretending to miss the point in order to avoid confronting the soundness of the underlying argument.

Ummm, reread the Op’s post. Dollie’s response didn’t resolve the issue, merely advised that at some unspecified point in the future a GM would address it. No disrespect to Dollie but this isn’t a true response unless you consider hearing “please continue to hold, your call is important to us” to be a response.

The car analogy is a poor fit because no one sells cars still being designed to the public. Let me offer a different analogy instead. Test pilots are warned and fully aware of the risks associated with flying test designs, they accept those risks much like any player should accept EA will have bugs. But try telling the test pilot that if he crashes medical assistance may be slow in arriving “because it’s just a test design, it’s not a full plane yet,” and see how many pilots get in the cockpit.

Notice how I never argued that GM’s should give back items. My statements were about reasonable levels of CS support or lack therof. Nothing you just said invalidates or changes my statements. Ark had a lousy track record of CS responsiveness and as I explained Atlas’s core differences mean CS responsibilities are less easily offloaded onto private server owners.

I just want to add a quick note about the thread title while I’m thinking about it. Notice how the OP used the phrase “I don’t feel...” This is a better way to title an editorial thread because the difference between using it and not is the difference between stating something you know for certain (your own feelings), and conjecturing about things you probably don’t know for sure (developer attitude, intent, mindset, etc.) It might not seem like much, but it is the difference between far minded statements and largely unsupportable allegations.

*tackles him and stuffs a gag in his mouth to keep him from putting ideas in the devs heads* I got it folks. We're good. Just don't let him go on like that when I go to get lunch.

A fair point. I could see giant magical creatures like say cyclops or hydras being used. GrapeCard™, I will expect my retroactive royalty check by the end of the week. Lynx , my apology for unfairly assigning implications to your statement you did not intend.

The minute one pays for a product, one has the right to expect to be treated like a customer. Testers in free alpha and beta trials of times gone by could not reasonably expect support. In a paid EA, one should certainly expect to encounter bugs and glitches, but to say that one should expect unprofessional levels of CS response times just because it is EA is ignoring the difference between free trials and paid. If Wildshot™ does not want to provide reasonable levels of CS support during EA, let them make EA free. They are not broke, sitting on 3 years of Top 10 steam levels of revenue from Ark. Failing to provide professional levels of CS in a paid product, EA or no, is not excusable.

This thread raises a legitimate point. Wildshot's™ track record with customer support is not what one might call confidence inspiring when one looks at Ark, and by contrast that was a game where they could offload a lot of the support function onto private server owners (Last time I played Ark, it was as one of those private server owners and private servers outnumbered officials by a factor of 45 to 1). Atlas as an MMO centered around a handful of vast official servers expected to support the bulk of the game's population will not be able to get away with such lackluster support levels. If support response times are lackluster when the playerbase is shrinking during Early Access ( a period where one would expect a conscientious developer to provide increased support staff owing to higher instances of bugs and glitches), that does not bode well for what kind of support one might expect further down the road if playerbase and activity levels rise. Further GrapeCard cannot plausibly plead poverty the way many independant studios can when trying to get their new game off the ground. Stiglietz and Co. sitting on a rather sizeable pile of cash generated from Ark's out of nowhere runaway success for 3 years should be able to afford greater customer service staffing than just about anything short of a AAA studio.

Doubtful. They've said repeatedly that animals will not be the focus of Atlas. It's funny how some players analysis of the game is so paper thin that they glance at the reuse of some assets and immediately go "oh it's just an Ark reskin." Right. Because Ark had all those profession classes and skill systems and different kinds of sailing ships and submarines and gear you could upgrade after crafting, and different kinds of mats within a single category, and it was definitely about trading resources with others in a vast game world where you all..no wait.. it didn't have any of that. (That wasn't directed at Lynx btw, just a general observation.)

Atlas is a fusion of MMORPG and survival. Obviously since the same developers produced Ark, it is the natural comparison for survival, but the survival genre is a younger genre than MMO’s. The short answer is that MMO’s need to continue to offer content to survive. New ships however are not the only options for new content. Look at Wow, the best known example of an MMO, or Eve, the game Atlas is openly patterned upon. These games have both been around over a decade and keep players engaged by producing new content. New ships for Eve or new classes for WoW are not the only new content options. Expanded NPC opponents, new quests, building components, new gear, further refinement of systems like trading, all are ways to provide new content to keep players engaged without just pumping out new ship types. Since Everquest created the genre in the 90’s, Atlas’s developers will have over 20 years worth of ideas to pull from without reinventing the wheel for their game. I think the update coming next might provide some insight into ways new content can be added. Underwater biomes to make more of the game world space usable and explorable, submarines to do so with, and giant crabs to find when you go there. The bottom line is that Atlas certainly can be viable long term, whether it will depends upon the developers execution.

If you think that reply reeks of bitterness, then your understanding of what the word means is wrong. What it reeks of is intolerance of whinging. In reality it’s just you trying to throw shade by mischaracterizing it’s tone in order to dismiss it so you don’t have to confront the legitimacy of its point. The developers have stated that animals are not the central focus of Atlas. If there is a tame that significantly enhances thatch gathering great, if not the game is not crippled. As Jean illustrated from his personal experience, it is entirely possible to build large structures without thatch gatherers even in inhospitable locales. What he’s saying isn’t bitterness, but dispensing hard nosed advice apropos to a survival MMO: Suck it up buttercup.

I'm in complete agreement that the fact you paid money for the game means you have the right to expect something more than a free alpha or beta. But to play Devil's advocate, when you say you want the game advertised on the trailer, that is obviously the developer's putting their game's best foot forward. A trailer is never going to show you the game's bugs, glitches or early stage design choices that are less than optimal. The core problem is that even though consumers are asked to fork over money for Early Access games, there is no clear set of standards a game must meet before being offered as Early Access, so although even a brain dead lemur on crack should be able to understand that the bar should be higher for a thing you paid money for than a thing you didn't (glances at some of his fellow forum posters who seem to have trouble grasping this distinction), there is no consensus on where that bar should be. Since you've got the right to criticize when warranted, and I agree there are definitively some things that warrant criticism, let me suggest that you consider criticizing not only GrapeCard™ for offering a product obviously less than worthy of paying customers, but Steam for allowing developers to offer pretty much anything they can reasonably get away with calling a game as Early Access. Given that Steam felt compelled to suspend their own refund policy during the charlie foxtrot that was Atlas's launch, it seems obvious even Steam acknowledged Atlas wasn't up to paid product standards.

I feel like we're not even talking about the same thing. I'm not sure how many times I can try to clarify an argument you seem at this point to be willfully misinterpreting, but I'll give it one more try. Whether the man can dance or not is besides the point. It's whether you expect him to be able to make the sword in order to use it. Knowing how to use a sword or dance ≠ making a sword or teaching dance.

The grass is always greener isn’t it? Do you know I’ve been playing online games and posting to their message boards since 2004, and one thing that has always remained constant, regardless of the game, it’s merits or flaws, how well it was doing at the time, or what other games were coming out soon, is the never ending stream of people proclaiming they will shortly be leaving this trash game for a new game coming out soon which will be much better. Hope springs eternal I guess. Spoiler alert: Sisphyus never gets the rock to the top of the hill. Wile E Coyote never catches the Roadrunner. No one ever catches Keyser Soze. ”All his life has he looked away...to the future...to the horizon...never his mind on where he was hmph! What he was doing hmph!” - Yoda

But nobody you know links pirates with sailing right? Cause that would just be crazy.

Nowhere in the US Declaration of Independance does the word freedom appear, yet few would argue that it is indeed the underlying theme of the document. Some things are...what’s the phrase..self evident. Grapeshot may not call Atlas a sailing game but they most definately keep mentioning its about pirates. Do you know anyone who does not immediately link pirates with sailing?

No one was ever arguing you don’t need to know how to make cupcakes to make cupcakes. I am arguing you shouldn’t need to know how to make cup cakes to eat them. The knight of old renknown had to know how to use a sword. He neither knew nor needed to know how to make the sword, nor his armor, in order to use either. That is the essence of the point.

It doesn’t affect your play style but it does affect your experience to the extent that wailing and moaning and knashing of teeth on the forums leads to an easier and easier average game experience. The tragedy of players like the Op is that they are the minority who seek and crave greater challenges and the reality is the effect of trying to sell your game to the widest possible audience means that developers seek to set their game challenge level to one that the greatest number of players can overcome without enough difficulty to drive them away. This most often leads to all but the most niche hardcore games leaving players like the Op SOL in meeting their desire for harder challenges and a higher bar.

I guess we should set aside that you did not specify who or what he fucks, and merely take your comment as the obviously intended compliment.

No, for several reasons. While the riding requirement does potentially dampen the market for the sake of tames, the developers have stated that tames are not the main focus of the game, so this is a consistent design choice. Also if I want to tame animals and sell them, I can do so without the need to ride. Further the real market for tames is going to be in breeding and thematically it makes sense that the riding and breeding of exotic animals would not be an easily acquired skill. In effect taming as a tree is closer to what crafting should be, because breeders will be able by virtue of their greater investment into the tree be able to offer tames that others can use with a lower point investment than required to create their own bred animal. Show me a functional adult who can’t figure out how to don armor or which end of the hatchet should hit the tree and I’ll show you the village idiot. Beyond this tames do not have stat increases for their riders baked into them. The only exception afaik is an insulation bonus on certain tames. Failing to use tames does far less to gimp a player relative to his peers than failing to use armor/tools/weapons. In my company are both players who use tames and players who do not. The latter are not being kicked out for their ineffectiveness.

Cloth is useful not for its armor values but for its highest base hyperthermic insulation. Legendary cloth armor is actually useful in the desert to keep one cool. Personally I am all for rarity to a degree, the issue is balance. It should be possible to obtain higher quality bp’s without having them overflowing from your ears. Also to be fair the number of points required to merely be able to wear higher quality armors is not especially burdensome at the higher levels, it’s the points required to both wear them and not suffer drawbacks as heavily that becomes costly. Merely wearing up to mythic isn’t expensive in points. Being able to wear that armor, move well in it it, not suffer heavy insulation penalties from it, and be able to maintain it cost effectively is another kettle of fish.

Masterwork flag spammers sounds like a great name for a company.

Fixed. Also there are numerous threads addressing that topic. Please do not attempt to drag this thread off topic.

This isn’t a comparable analogy because driving the car is demonstrating use. The game requirement equates use to building, in effect saying before you can get a drivers license you must first demonstrate the ability to build a car. If you went to get a license to drive and were confronted with engineering and metallurgical tests that would indeed be unreal.