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.

3 minutes ago, Gindorf said:

Yeah, fuck Arks taming system.

I like the knock down, feed system. Much faster (key here) and more engaging than Arks. They do need to fix the location dsnyc and glitchyness, but bringing in the Ark system isnt the solution.

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.

 

On 7/4/2020 at 11:20 AM, DannyUK said:

Yes I found out there was no fiber also, asked in chat and they said it was a bug. I searched all over for it, could not see any. Probably be fixed in the next update, don't get your hopes up it will be soon though, it's anyones guess when they bring patch out.

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

1 hour ago, sjskdjkfa said:

Some preliminary questions. Should I build a ship or a land base, is a ship even a base? Should I tame animals, like is it as important as in ark to do so? Are animals good harvesters?

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.

5 hours ago, Pant said:

You can make a new character, join a faction say meet me at xyz and sink their trade boat with your main character on an enemy faction. You will have to go out on a limb for your faction members the same as you would in the current system. The drama you had in those alliances is going to happen the same way in a faction thats just human nature. 

I am not sure where you are getting at, I am saying there is no reason to attack or fight someone for their materials. Most people are happy that you farm on their island because they get a tax cut from what you farm. There is very little reason to fight over resources in the current system, if the island is hostile to you theres a dozen other islands you can go to, I have never experienced beeing denied a resource. 9/10 people will not attack on the pvp server unless you act like you deserve it. The only materials I have ever seen conflict over is the Iron wood and the thatch on those islands because they are limited to only 3 or 4 islands.

If you're in a faction the map won't spawn in another factions territory and this problem won't be the same? I have had to abandon more maps to bugs then because they are on a hostile island and like you said at worst you'll just have to delete the map and move on, I don't understand why this is such a big deal. The blueprints in this game are insane so ofc the good maps need to have some risk to them...

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.

12 hours ago, Pant said:

The current system allows smaller companies to form alliances. If one company is attacked the members of the other companies spawn at a bed in the base thats attacked, get invited into the company thats attacked and help them fight. After the battle they return to their company again and go on with their day. I have seen alliances fight off megas more then they have been raided by them x20. So no I don't agree with your "join or be crushed" statement.

What does gear matter when the griefer is in your faction blocking your resources with buildings you can't destroy, blocking your buildings so you can't build, making underwater walls so your ship sink when you try to leave port? 

What is stopping you from joining or forming an alliance and trading within the alliance? You just have to talk to people and set up deals it would be EXACTLY the same....

You don't raid enemies for materials... You raid for gear, bps and gold. Materials are way to heavy to move. The time it takes you to set up a raid, fight someone and sail home you could have just farmed 5 times more on your own and you wouldn't risk any gear or ships...

You can't do a treasure maps without a faction system? That does not even make sense, you realise you are gonna have more enemies in a faction system right? In the current system you have a couple of enemies, some friends and a bunch of neutrals so the amount of islands that are actually hostile is only a small percentage of the map. In a faction system depending on how many factions you have atleast 50% of the map will be hostile to you, 66% if you have 3 factions and 75% if you have 4. 

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.

19 hours ago, The D Legacy said:

but once again, you cannot give just a bit of advantage without highly reducing the hassle to get all those materials, i mean, i dont rly care if they reduce the stats as you request as long as they also reduce the hassle to build better ships, there must be a proper time investment vs reward balance.

Yes, you are correct, wich is why i never like the idea of megas, they literally just break the game balance, its like placing 50 wolfs and 6 deers in an island, deers wont be able to reproduce fast enough to survive and the wolfs will eventually die of hunger. And you dont even get to enjoy the game since you become the private bitch of whoever is in charge of the mega and to top it off they keep all of your buildings the moment they decide to kick you, this game design is by far the worst i have seen in my 20 years of gaming, so i rly hope this team decides to rebuild the game from 0 because if they dont this will be a fuck fest all over again.

 

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. 

1 hour ago, Pant said:

You already have factions through diplomacy and i think its more flexible and interesting then a faction system. If you force a faction system on the current groups they are just gonna join as the factions they already have and keep doing the same shit they are doing now. They are not going to go out of their way to protect some random pve nerd just because theres a game mechanic that says you are in the same faction. 

If you have falling out within the faction whats going to happen? Can they just up and leave? Are they going to start a grief war? What stops someone from just making a second account put it on a different faction and use it to spy or grief the faction?

Faction system just seems like the worst of both worlds if you ask me. 

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"

19 minutes ago, The D Legacy said:

the problem is that this game is poorly designed so you have ships that take like 2 whole weeks to build (mythics/legendaries) because you need every single variant of every material type to build them so it would be a problem if people with regular ships could sink them easily, but yeah i get your point.

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.

18 hours ago, Hannibalxx said:

While I agree with the persons above me, I will also share some information to better yourself.

 

If you wish to learn the current meta and how to play pvp at a high skill level I would advise you to check out some youtube videos for educational purposes. Watch and learn, see how they build etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9GQdusefyU&t=76s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOQ8TRliR-A&t=2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkFe0Ak1Umg&t=75s

lots of good pvp videos from this season out there, tons of useful information.

 

 

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

2 hours ago, The D Legacy said:

why would people want to invest time in a game in wich they gain no advantage for time investment? there is already lots of pvp equalized games out there

Quote

 

yet where is the fun in a game where eveyone is average??? you want to have the same things while slacking than other person playing the game a lot??? nonsense

 

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.

27 minutes ago, Pooter said:

That won’t happen.

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.

On 6/24/2020 at 2:14 PM, Big diglett said:

BRUH please just explain it stop being ominous 

Logged on after being gone over a year, and have a recent notification...

You put 2 gates facing each other, so that when the gates are "open" they are touching, thus making a double door. IDK if it still works because I haven't logged on in over a year.

With the new Map update, did they nerf Blueprints?

I heard they did minor tweaks to Int stacking and blueprints, but here is the issue with blueprints, Mega groups will have absurd ships and will be able to stomp any smaller group into the ground. Having 50%+ damage and health, and massive speed boosts on top of that, just makes their ships so much better that they can just delete basic ships, not take any significant damage, then outrun anyone that tries to out play them. 


I get it, some people want their amazingly OPed ships and they think it is a good reward for the hard work and effort they put in to get all the materials, but a small group of 10 or even 20 (let alone a group of 5) has no hope or prayer of getting any significant amounts of materials to get good ships and even if they do, they will have 1, maybe 2 of those ships, then get clowned by a mega that has a full fleet of them.

If blueprints are left in, they should be capped at 10% more, maximum. That way they have an advantage, but not a massive, absurd advantage. 

Checking back in on the game, after multiple warnings about how they shouldn't add torpedoes in the first place, because they would be extremely overpowered in a game that relies on sail power, they have been nerfed multiple times by huge amounts and will continue to be nerfed over and over again.

Why are torpedoes and sail power bad? Because torpedoes are supposed to be high damage weapons and the counter to them is to dodge them so that the enemy wastes their shots. However, under sail power, if you turn into the wind because that is your only option to get out of the way, you basically come to a full stop when your sails go red. The enemy just has to get you to turn then they can dump torpedoes into you and you get destroyed. 

Now the devs will have to nerf them into the ground because of that and make them more on par with large cannons just to prevent this from happening.


Anyone that has ever played World of Warships can tell you how bad of an idea it is to add torpedoes to the game where ships cannot turn to avoid the torpedoes.
 

Every tiny guild wants their own island, that is the problem. 5-10 active player guilds thinking they should be the kings of the world. That is the problem, then everyone allying up and making super alliances (outside of the game mechanics) causing land to become scarce even with basically no one on them. Declaring war on small groups becomes extremely risky because your small group, cant fight that small group + all their direct allies and the "allies" that are made outside of the alliance system in game.

That is where the land problems are coming from. There is plenty of land, just too many small guilds refusing to work together in a more direct way, because that would mean that they "I'm the king" leader giving up their power and the individuals actually having to work as part of a larger group. "my stuff" "my ship" "my mount" runs rampant, when all they really have to do, is just MAKE MORE, increase your production and you do not have to worry about "my" because there is so much of the stuff, it doesn't matter. Just take one of the 40 extra rifles, or 1 of the 10 extra tames.

15 minutes ago, Willard said:

No, galleons are bad at turning, especially in comparison to brig and schooner. Pretty decent really isn´t enough for catching a brig which tries to escape from you. 

I just refuse to theoritise about it before we got enought info  We don´t know range, we don´t know exact mechanic, we don´t know how easy or hard will it be to destroy it, we don´t know how much time it takes to stop both boats. There is simply too much things we don´t know. And if people don´t know they usually expect the worst, we all know that  

Here is the thing, being as I assume you have never been in a naval battle before, brigs and schooners rely on their maneuverability to out class a galleon They tend to get close so they can keep up the DPS on the planks, they normally do not have the ability to do long range one shot planking on a galleon, they take a while to sink. If that galleon now has the ability to bring the brig or schooner to a complete halt, that removes their advantage. If that galleon can bring a brig to a complete halt, it will start stripping planks, because the cannons will be able to hit the target easier, especially if it uses cooldowns.

Even if it takes literally one hit to destroy the harpoon, depending on where that harpoon hits the person who may be absolutely ready for that harpoon to come in, must one, get to a location to destroy it, take aim, then attack it.  In that time, cannon balls will already be in the air, and that ship, being at a complete stop, wont be able to get out of the way due to he acceleration needed to go from full stop, to full speed.

People like you are like:
"how do we know if the dragon will be OPed? We have to test it first, how do you know that it will be an unkillable machine that will wipe bases unless we test it" Then after multiple bases are wiped out and dragons are shown to be nearly unstoppable killing machines, they get nerfed hard to the ground.

"How do we know if a whale that is faster than all the ships and in one attack can knock off most of your planks is a bad idea unless we test it?"

"how do we know if having dozens and dozens of ships of the damned spawn as soon as we implement it and have them so strong that they 2 shot ships, have a massive aggro range  and will hunt you for a very long time is a bad idea?"

45 minutes ago, Willard said:

1) They can destroy your harpoon. 

2) If you want to escape from gally with a brig you can because gally needs half a sector for turning. 

3) If you catch a brig with gally why don´t you just shoot it with broadsides? Why trying to harpoon it too? 

You are making an elephant from a fly  

1. Destroying the harpoon, after it brings you to a complete stop, doesn't really help, there is a time where the people have to destroy the harpoon, that time difference, the enemy is still acting.
2. it isnt that bad, Galleons can turn pretty decent with good sails and a good captain
3. You do both, if you can bring the brig to a stop, you can just unload on a target that isnt moving.

 You must work for grapeshot because you cant see how things will work. 

4 minutes ago, Willard said:

You see? We both heard smt else. We don´t know how it will be. We have no problem because we don´t know how it will work yet. 

Captainslog 28: May Mega-Update

Stop your fleeing enemies in their tracks and reel them in with the new Boat Ballista Harpoon! Load up your ballistic and fire the projectile, if it successfully attaches you and your target will be unable to move. Reel them in before they destroy the harpoon. You can only successfully harpoon same-or-smaller ship classes.


Ok, so Galleons will be able to destroy all the ships below it,  I can only imagine a galleon with a couple of these snagging a brig then popping all the cannon cooldowns to delete them.

Since galleons are the fastest ships in the game, brigs are screwed. They cant even dodge and are sitting targets. Even if they break the line, Galleons accelerate faster and can unload multiple volleys.

3 minutes ago, Willard said:

It will be like ramming, you can´t hook and slow down a gally with a schooner/brig, only the same or lower tier of ships. I think I´ve heard it somewhere. 

From what I have heard that both ships stop, and the larger one pulls the smaller one to it. That doesn't solve the problem.

6 hours ago, Willard said:

None of you guys know exact parameters of this new feature but you know exactly how it will be exploited...

This doomsaying is exactly why they should not announce new features more than a week ago.

 

It is pretty easy to see how things will be exploited, people on the forums have had a pretty good track record when saying specific things are a bad idea, when talking about how they can be exploited, then the thing gets implemented and those exact warnings on the forums come to pass.

If the harpoon can bring your ship to a stop or even significantly slow your ship down, that is a major red flag. It is a double edged sword. People will be able to deal with mythic galleons with fully upgraded sails now I guess, they just have to get the harpoon to land and have a few suicide schooners hit the thing with those harpoons and have other ships swarm it.

3 hours ago, DilBert said:

both ships will be immobile while harpoon is attached. larger ship can just pull smaller to it. 

That sounds like a colossally bad idea, both ships becoming immobile? FFS speed schooners harpooning galleons and allowing other ships to swarm them. That cant end badly or anything....