boomervoncannon

I am posting from my company issued iPad right now and while I will begrudgingly admit that it is useful for what we use it for, my preferred use of this device would be to induce internal hemorrhaging through blunt force trauma on Apple store employees. Insufferable pretentious con artists, the lot of them.

If this forum had sigs , this would be my new sig. Best. Quote by someone using Homer as his avi. Ever.

Point taken but count me dubious about the notion that the downside you describe has outweighed the chance to generate revenue from selling access for any developer weighing their options.

Regarding the OP: The game development industry is free to go back to the perfectly workable model of free but restricted alpha and beta testing any time it chooses to. It doesn't because the EA model up to this point had literally no downside for developers. I don't want Atlas to fail, but if it does, perhaps the silver lining might end up being it serving as an object lesson to the industry that releasing your game to EA before it's ready does actually carry downside risk.

It is normal, no matter how much you want to pretend it's not. EA games have a big influx and then bleed off a large percentage of those players as the tourists who have checked out the bright shiny new thing leave. This is not to say that Atlas does not have serious issues or that large numbers of people aren't genuinely upset. It only means that it's impossible to say at this juncture that the decrease in players is due to those factors, because it is entirely normal for an EA game at this stage. If those numbers never come back up, then at some point further down the road it could be stated with confidence that the lack of interest was due to negative EA experiences which gave the game a bad rap.

Yes!!! This. This. This. This. Way to take a great idea and run with it. So many benefits to this approach and solves a number of problems. It addresses the most core issue related to land, namely how to deal with land ownership and tenancy when land is finite but playbase is variable.

I actually started a thread one time on the Ark steam forums to discuss why Ark water content wasn’t more popular. It got a lot of different responses, but a common theme I found surprising was the number of people who had real life water based fears that kept them from enjoying that part of the game. Obviously one would kind of expect that to be less the case here, but I’m gonna bet that a lot of folks are here for the pirates and sailing and not so much the subnautica Jacques Cousteau simulator. I don’t care either way, I’m just looking for a fun game and my long time gaming buddy likes sailing so here we are. She doesn’t like Ark, so she’s not familiar with the joys of a GrapeCard EA.

The addition of submarines and an underwater biome leaves me suspecting that a long term goal is to make underwater a lot more useful than just harvesting shipwrecks and a few mats, but it is only a hunch. More islands wouldn't hurt either.

Well written. Yes I read the whole thing. Your experience highlights both the joys and flaws of Atlas. My wish for you is that you may someday have the chance to return to a much improved game. I like the Robert Baratheon metaphor. Since you shared a pop culture reference, I will offer one as well. My favorite line from Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is this: ”Madam, in my country we have a saying. “Everything will be alright in the end.” So if it is not alright....then it is not the end.” May your journeys from now til then be adventures, and I will hope we see you again before the end.

Good to know but imo it’s silly that you can die from a vitamin surplus. Irl this isn’t a thing afaik.

The thing that I like about the Op’s Suggestion is how it will not only be a more reasonable approach to the problem of finite land, but his proposed suggestion will indirectly help address other things as well. What I mean is that for several problems the solution has been put forward to cap company size at X. It keeps getting pointed out that this approach won’t work because large companies will just use alliances to circumvent the cap. The Op’s suggestion creates a strong negative consequence to using alliances in this manner.

Development on Atlas to date reminds me of an old joke that describes programming languages in terms of shooting yourself in the foot. The one for (I think) Cobol seems most apt: You hear a loud bang. There’s a lot of smoke, and a hole in your foot, but you don’t understand enough linear algebra to know what the hell happened. Substitute “player feedback” for “linear algebra” and you’ve got a pretty good metaphor imo.

lol. I love that you provided a detailed technical argument to support your position but then said essentially “but what really matters is that I think it’s silly.” I tend to gree that even in a game with fantasy elements,stone ships just feels wrong,but you know what they say about opinions. I think the Op’s core point is that ships are not currently viable as floating bases and given that this is a stated design goal, needs work.

I honestly didn't think you could make them that long. *runs off to see if he can fit all the lyrics to REM's It's the End of the World as we Know it into a thread title.*

I learned Chinese just to be able to cheat in video games. True story.

That wasn’t what he was saying, but since you asked, historically yes, only men could be knights. Afaik, only Great Britain continues to bestow knighthood, but they now do it for artistic achievement rather than military prowess. This is why you occasionally see names on film credits like Sir Richard Attenborough, Sir John Gielgud. Given the change, I don’t see any reason you couldn’t bestow knighthood on a lady in theory but I think they have a separate title ie Dame Judy Dench.

Except my buoys, they tax your patience by playing Tom’s Diner on loop.

From a developers standpoint, there are two major considerations that war with each other. On the one hand, there is the perpetual siren song of pvp, where the players ongoing fighting of each other amounts to the players creating their own content. So developers love pvp for that reason. On the other hand, making your game pure pvp is problematic from a business perspective, because in the vast majority of games that have both pvp and pve, the pve playerbase is numerically greater than the pvp playerbase, meaning more moneyz. This leads to the perpetual attempt to offer both, coded as similarly as possible, but in practice resulting in frustration to both sides. *shrugs* C'est la vie

I was dubious but open minded about the notion of a "survival MMO" when Atlas was announced. Let's just say that I'm not less dubious one month into EA. Go see Neidermeyer.

The chances are very strong that a lot more of this sort of thing that is likely to piss you off will continue to happen for at least another year. EA games are wonky, under construction imperfections in the best of cases. With this development team, whose attitude towards QA seems, let us say "relaxed", you can pretty much bank on it being even less stable and more wonky.

Yeah all I can tell you is not to expect anything to stay the same in EA. Especially with this bunch. I have zero expectation right now that pretty much anything will stay the same over time. Some stuff will, some stuff won't, but there is pretty much no way to know which is which. All I can really do is warn you there is almost certainly gonna be a lot of more of this type stuff over time. Some of it might be reactions to pvp that affect pve, a lot of it will just be the developers trying different things to see what has what impact. You might be able to expect something approaching a stable game in about a year and a half with their stated EA timeframe of 2 years, but especially during the first year and with how this bunch doesn't seem to do much meaningful QA before pushing things out to us as testers, I just wouldn't expect anything but constant and unpredictable change.

Any game with ongoing development that has both pvp and pve modes will make those modes as similar as possible in order to limit the amount of work required to develop them. This isn't unique to Atlas or Ark or anything else. It's just the way game development is done. I'm not saying it's great, because I was pissed off about changes to City of Heroes that were made in 2004 for the sake of pvp balance which created major headaches in pve. I'm just saying it's not something you've got a snowballs chance in hell of convincing a development team, any development team, to change.

Believe what you want, but your statement was not an accurate representation of what was said. I’ve lost all interest in discussing anything with you because of your past behavoir that demonstrates you have an ironclad agenda and reason, honesty, and intellectual integrity are meaningless concepts to you where that agenda is concerned. I posted in this thread not because I have any expectation you would own up to your misrepresentation, but merely so others are aware of it and can view and decide for themselves. That has been accomplished so I’m done here.

Yeah. I just watched it. Twice. That’s not what they said.

“I want peace on earth, goodwill towards men.” ”We are the United States government. we don’t DO that sort of thing.” ”I want peace on earth, goodwill towards men.” *sighs* “Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”