Evir

At a minimum they could look at their stats and find out who was doing the exploit then drop their level to the appropriate level or have them start over at level 1. They wont even do that minimum, what makes you think they will ban anyone? They didn't even properly fix aftermath the guillotine exploit, they just level capped people. There was video evidence of people doing the guillotine exploit and people doing guides on it, yet they took forever to fix it, then did nothing to the people that exploited it.

Dark and Light (their other game) had a far better system IMO, similar to Ark but much faster and more interactive. You could choose to club them down or use the arrows to lock them down.

Atlas is a game without a clear direction, it was presented as a pirate game built on the Ark engine where you and your crew could sail around and go on adventures, fighting at sea, and it had some land bases. What we got was a ground based game with a few ships, most combat took place fighting over islands with absurd mega-companies dominating everything. Literally locking people off the server because they brought so many people to the fight. Ship tended to be used as mobile spawning points and artillery platforms for specific bombardment of areas. You send in a crew that could grapple, fly, or climb to an area, and take out the defense crew in an area, then use ships to hit the walls to breach them with large cannons from long range. Mostly when people were offline and your company was online. A small group basically could do nothing because the Megas controlled most of the islands (Not all but most) and even controlled lawless islands. If you got too big, you got trampled upon because you became a threat. the "join us or die" mantra was repeated a lot. So they were like right, the pirate thing isn't really working, so lets lean into the "magic punk" aspect and add more mythical creatures, submarines and torpedoes, but still have people be at the mercy of the wind. They allowed you to get fantastically overpowered ships that could take on multiple normal ships with ease by literally one shotting normal ships even ones with a few upgrades. Because balance? Whats that? How about we just allow mega companies to control all the resources they need to be able to make OPed death machines that no one has a hope of challenging because "they worked for it" and changing the game isn't an option, we have to keep that in because the megas, will get mad when they cant use their blueprints to be able to destroy everyone and leave, since they drove everyone else away from the game, that would kill our game. Things they should change: Nerf blueprints to a 2% bonus per material used beyond 1. 2 material 2%, 3 material 4%, ECT. Hard cap company size and alliance sizes to a much lower number, total numbers of players in alliances instead such as 150 total players, that way many small groups can ally up, but it handicaps megas. I know that Mega's will still work around this, but make it harder for them and it will also cause more drama for them when they constantly have to sort out. I do not know how to sort out the material scaling, where when you are small and in the stone age, it takes forever to get anything done, but when you are a mega, it takes minutes to build ships. Maybe limit resource respawning on islands by a lot, 12 hours per tree and rock or something, so that they cant clear an entire island of resources, then do it again as soon as it respawns. This prevents megas from spawn clearing entire areas every 30 minutes or w/e the absurdly low time is. Also, limit the special materials to rare spawns and have generic versions be the default to limit blueprint usage. have "metal" and "rock" and a generic "alloy" for generic cannons and rifles. I still think they should add factions to allow people to have a "safe" haven that they can somewhat rely on to be more friendly, so they can build relationships with people around them instead of instantly distrusting literally everyone around them, to be able to build up. The New player experience is rather abruptly ended at level 8 with your next step being onto lawless islands where you get murdered instantly. You haven't even built your first hut yet and you are being murdered by guys with guns and you are still working with basic spears trying to figure out how to build things and where resources come from. I think factions would bridge that gap between freeport and OMG EVERYONE IS AN ENEMY. I just lost the ship I spent 3 hours figuring out how to build, and now I have nothing after being one shot by a rifle and do not know what happened. Uninstall. I am a long time player of ARK and other games similar to this, most people aren't on that level, and will quit because they do not understand what happened.

Lol it was like this over a year ago at launch... I bet dollars when they changed the maps, they built it on the oldest build they had. Literally the same exact problem with tundra lacking fiber, they later added small bushes that gave fiber.

Never mind

Land bases are far safer, you can lose everything in seconds with a ship base and it is far harder to maintain a ship base, with NPC crew costs and repairing damage on the hull. Animals are amazing harvesters, and are almost as important as they are in Ark. If you are in a small group, just expect your ships to be sunk at any point, do not invest heavily in them, use them to get resources not available on your island, then bring them back. Ships are extremely hard to defend requiring massive investments into defenses just to have one somewhat safe. It is far better now that it was at the launch of the game but they are still very vulnerable to attack, especially when you are first starting out.

Maybe things have changed but every time I played, setting foot onto someone's island without permission was a death sentence level offense then they found your ship and sank it. Unless they were far weaker than you. Because people just out and out attacked people all the time for anything, basically "if its red its dead". I never experienced a time where that wasn't the case. Gathering resources, doing maps, didnt matter, people would lose their minds and try and kill you, sometimes they would then counter attack you for daring the set foot on your island. IDK what carebear PVP server you played on but for the opening months of the game it was brutal and anyone that did anything that could even be considered a threat got destroyed, many times sailing through a tile was enough to get people to chase you for several server tiles. This "oh people wont attack you, and will let you just come on their island, do maps, crawl around their base, and gather resources", is a pure fantasy world from the game I played. I had many epic battles that sparked off of, trying to get resources. When I played, mega's controlled the Lawless islands with smaller groups they absorbed, and would attack you for trying to get things on a lawless island if they caught you. What you are describing sounds like a PVE server.

Wow, where to begin with this nonsense. it is almost like you cant grasp the fact that being part of a much larger overarching faction, facilitates trading, grouping, alliances, and helping each other, much easier than the absurd levels of distrust that people have because literally no one trusts each other even in alliances, I have seen multiple alliances break up because a mega made a deal with one of the alliance members, and then destroyed the alliance. Just farm for 5 different fibers on your island, right? You would never take a different one from someone, it is way too heavy to take back, just take the blueprints and make it with your 1 material on your island, that you control with your small group! GENIUS levels of intellect here. Just get the materials! DUH, no one is going to contest them! Here is how maps work, you go to an island, you try and sneak on, people assume you are raiding them, they kill you, or you announce you are coming on the island to do maps, they tell you no, and you try anyway, they start fighting you because they think you are scouting them. Or you delete the map and sail on to a different one. This is how they work. In a faction, you see some people on your island, you are like hey whats up, they are like "doing maps" you are like, cool, mind if I help to leech, or "have fun" as you walk off. If you are solo or in a small group, you can just do the "safe" maps and if you have one in enemy territory, you know there will be a fight and can prepare for that. Even as a 50 man group it was annoying to do maps with a small detachment, because any time we did we would ether have to sneak, or fight to do them.

I do not think they even need to reduce the material costs, it should be 1-2% per material you add to the mix IMO. I have gone over why it is a problem, it doesn't slow mega groups down, they have multiple islands on lockdown and have basically safe passage between those islands and are able to get all the materials they need. Small groups do not, they have to go to lawless or sneak onto islands controlled by others, there is effectively no real trading that goes on in the game, because why give materials to someone that is a potential enemy.

The game currently has the worst system, it is basically, join/ally with a mega or get crushed by "content" seekers, I would rather deal with second account guys with poorly geared griefers than deal with a full on mega with full top tier gear. That way, at least if there is a mega in your faction, you do not have to deal with them, and you can worry about the other groups, this also gives smaller groups a chance to gather for a common purpose so that they can potentially fight back against the raiding attacks from the megas in a different faction, instead of the "not my problem once they are crushed I am next" mentality. Forcing the mega to ether come in full force, and that can potentially bring lots of other people in, or they find other targets for their raiding. The best reason for factions is internal trading, you can control an island, someone else controls an island with materials you need, you offer them a trade via the faction and you know you can go to them and they are allied by default, allowing you to exchange materials much more easily, where as the current system, why not just sneak around and steal? Why give a potential enemy anything? It is always better to take from them. Also treasure hunts are absurd to try and pull off without factions "can I do a map?" the answer is normally NO because you are basically scouting the island for potential attack.

Factions are always better than Megas. You can have megas in factions, but having an over arching group that unites players and develops faction pride, always works better than having everyone distrust anyone and foster toxic behavior of "well we cant fight the megas so lets pick on the weaker group until they quit because that is the only PVP content available to us"

Yes, and they should address the poor design problem of blueprints to make them less of a "god mode" and more like, hey nice job getting all that stuff here's a bit of advantage. Megas have absolutely zero issues getting all the materials they need, it does not take 2 weeks once they have a blueprint to churn out those ships, they literally have hundereds of people farming blueprints, they take dozens of ships around collecting full cargo loads of each material and in a very short amount of time they can make a few powerful ships and outfit a few people with the best equipment, use those ships to secure their territory, then not lose those ships and equipment because of the massive advantage they have, then make more of them to outfit more people and it snow balls. Where as a lower end group say 10-20 people, they can spend weeks getting all the stuff they need to get 1 ship, have it swarmed, lose it, then are back at square one, it takes a significant amount of time just to make a basic ship for small groups, a brig can take a day or more of hand harvesting, because lets face it, you probably cant get access to the animals because those are locked down or if you get large enough to make the areas to secure the animals, you get attacked. It is a Sisyphus problem, you constantly try to make progress, just to be "stone aged" any time you do. On top of all that, everyone is mad because they spent all that time and effort to get a good ship, just to have it sunk in short order because of the absurd numbers game, causing tons of drama, because to compete you have to make such a massive investment, and unless you do not, you will never get anywhere, so your options are stay small and get no where, or try and build and get wrecked.

The first 2 video was annoying to watch, the 2nd video was basically unwatchable, the 3rd one was probably the best of the group.

Because the advantage is so great, that it is akin to having cheat codes on, I remember when I played last seeing 5 ingredient galleons being able to sail so much faster, have guns that had such high alpha damage and had so much health that you had almost no chance of fighting back. even with armored brigs they would rip through your armor then rip through your ship in seconds. Galleons were even worse since they could not get decent armor and were bigger targets, they just got instantly holed, if you landed a full broad side you did barely anything to them and had to land multiple to even break a single plank. Then they had guns and armor that made them able to one shot anyone even if they had armor but took 1 damage in return. Literally 1 damage... with hundreds of health. I just asked if they would or had been toned down to the point where they gave an advantage, but not one so massive that it was basically impossible to fight back against.

The power difference will just do what it did before, just have mega groups crush everyone under heel. Ruining the game experience, they already have the massive numbers advantage, when they have absurd ships, and personal equipment on top, it basically makes them invincible. Outplaying is an option, but when the megas have the deck stacked so high, anyone that has less than 50 basically stand no chance. When you have a 250+ group baring down on you with their allies, you just get deleted. I remember fighting against megas several times, even sinking a few of their high blueprint ships baiting them into mortars and stuff, but they just come back later with more powerful ships and larger numbers.