So let me get this straight.
Over time most of the population on a server get a pretty hard permanent debuff ( currently at least, -10% health, stamina, carry capacity, melee damage etc) after a certain time on the server has passed making them near or at least 10% worse compared to those without the de-buff. 10% is quite a lot on a PvP server. Most of the population here meaning around 95-99% of the total active population after perhaps a month or so of real life time has passed. Then out of all those players only a select few can manage to travel to a randomized location on a power stone island where you can remove the permanent debuff AND get rewarded with a permanent stacking buff. The select few being the ones playing in one of the largest companies in the game and a handful of lucky others.
Let's think about this for a while shall we. At this point you have the largest 500 member companies fighting over an area with a maximum capacity of 150 players. Every company wants to control this super important buff-giving area so that only their company members will be superior compared to EVERY OTHER PLAYER IN THE GAME. PERMANENTLY stronger, I might add. Besides being stronger by the amount the debuff weakens all the other players, these stronger players are rewarded with a permanent buff so that the actual strength difference becomes even larger every time they manage to stack the the permanent buff. So on a PvP server you "get to" one versus one players who are eventually say 30% stronger than you while they're using their superior tech AND numbers to raid your puny company.
Then there's the issue of utter lack of logic behind this. Why would any one of the largest companies let anyone else remove their permanent debuff and gain the permanent buff then, when the fountain happens to spawn closest to their company. This "letting other people get to the fountain" thinking would mean diminishing their own superiority over everyone else on the whole server on purpose, gaining in return only stronger enemies. It's obviously the only logical option for everyone playing the game will be to control this hugely important area if you have the power and means to do so, which only the largest companies willing to do so obviously have. I mean during the early access period people might not be too serious about the buff or controlling the server cell, at least while not everyone on the server is 90 years old or older. People might actually help each other on the island at first while trying to kill the hard open world boss for a key item just to get to see what happens after, or for the fun of it, but there's no logical reason for this other than the smaller companies having to band up together to actually manage to kill the boss while hoping none of the large companies get a hold of the whole server cell before that. 150 people from a 500 people company isn't even half their manpower and then the server is full and nobody else can get in. One of the dozens of larger companies could leave a fleet of 10 galleons in the cell and destroy every ship entering it one by one while the server was still almost full preventing anyone else from ever getting the buff. Their reward? Making sure they stay the strongest on company on the server, of course. And because it's a PvP server and this is where all the action is going to be and people play on PvP servers to enjoy PvP action.
If for some absurd reason there are no large companies present on the server cell the whole cell will eventually be full of 2 kinds of people: people trying band up together trying to get to the fountain through a hard PvE boss and people who have already gotten the buff via various means and are there killing the other kind just for fun because they are already there and it's a PvP server and this is where all the action is going to be and people play on PvP servers to enjoy PvP action.
Oh and even if the island was completely empty of other players (which isn't something that is going to happen as long as the game still has active players) it's still super hard to get to the fountain as a small company since you have to take an end game boss down, which isn't something a handful of people can manage in an afternoon - or ever. If you go there well prepared you just lose more resources when you get killed by every other player there.
Then the randomized spawn location. So there's a 1 out of 9 chance of the fountain spawning within 2 cells of our company's current location for example, meaning that in this perfect case scenario it's only about an hour's sail there through PvP infested waters. 8 out of 9 chance it's going to be at least a 2-3 hour sail to get to it, the worst case scenario being a 10 hour sail per direction to get there. So that's at best a 2-3 hours of brainless sailing to get to the edge of a full server cell that has a few other ships surrounding it waiting to get in. You hope they don't sink your ship at first sight but out of boredom and lack of trust some of them still sink you and it's still a PvP server after all, people do PvP for fun. You spend some, say, 10-30 hours trying to get into the actual server cell with the fountain on it depending on how far away from your one and only home cell it has spawned. That's 10-30 hours of trying to get somewhere while being forced into doing PvP as a means to an end. You then manage to get into the cell and get sunk by that one paranoid company ship or that 10 galleon fleet just to make sure you don't hinder them in any way. Or you get sunk just for fun, it's a PvP server after all. Repeat. You finally manage to land on the island, your ship is sunk while you're trying to make landfall, you can't respawn anywhere near there. Repeat. You eventually manage to get ashore and inland towards the hard PvE boss and the PvE monsters and/or actual boss kill(s) you amidst other players on a PvP server while other players sink your ship on the shores, again. Repeat. You've now spent 40 hours trying to get to the fountain and after allying every company you see, sinking every ship before they sink you, building a new ship over and over and over again you manage to somehow kill a hard PvE boss and get the key item for the quest. You manage to get inside the cave without dying and losing the key and you finally manage to remove that annoying hard debuff you've had to deal with for the past weeks and get rewarded with that sweet, sought after buff. A buff that at this point every other large company member in the game has had for several months, a buff that most of the larger company members have already stacked a few times. Then the aging process begins again and in 1 month or so you have to repeat the quest again or play with a new permanent debuff. But hey at least you also still have that buff you got earlier after spending 40 hours trying to get it. Maybe next time the fountain randomly spawns 2 cells closer so you can save 2 hours each try, or maybe it spawns even further away and you just know you wont be getting this one no matter what happens.
Really think about what the power difference between the strongest players and everyone else is going to be in say 3 months of this madness. 3 cycles of buffs for the already strongest while everyone else enjoys a hearty debuff. I've read from multiple sources that this utterly absurd game mechanic is supposed to be like the first half of the to-be-fully-implemented-and-completed aging mechanic in the game so I'm guessing the other half is that you can also die of old age and start as an offspring of your last character if you want to. In this perma-death/offspring scenario most of the people in the game have no buff or debuff since the people with the debuff eventually die, and the strongest few dominate absolutely everyone else in all forms of combat making the PvP servers in the game an unbalanced joke. The strongest players have say a 30% strength edge over everyone else, making it even easier for them to hold the fountain every time it spawns anywhere near their waters. Remember it's already a 10% edge with just the debuff.
Based on how your character currently ages in-game you'll have to complete this majestic "Quest" for the fountain every month or so. Imagine doing this once. Every. Month.
I would have loved to sit in with the developers when they were seriously discussing adding this mechanic into the game - like I'm seriously wondering what happened there. Did all the experienced staff members call in sick and the decision got made by trainees and that one guy updating the @sailtheatlas Twitter page? This mechanic has so many different layers of flaws in it it's utterly absurd. This mechanic couldn't possibly even work on paper, on any level, by anyone's standards. "40k+ players on a single server" fighting over a single grid cell with a max population of 150 people for a PERMANENT buff should've raised quite a few questions within the development team. Have the devs not ever played any other MMORPG's, or other multiplayer games for that matter? This is some next level game breaking decision making right there. There has been a visible loss of players on Atlas and for good reason too, most of the people who haven't already refunded the game because of the huge balance issues, logical flaws and fundamental problems are starting to think that it's better to play actually finished, polished and well thought out games than to act as paying early alpha game testers for a company that doesn't think stuff through.
PS. Perhaps if they release a few soulless 20€ DLC's and a battle pass it'll be totally fine, right? And besides you can always pay extra each month to play on a actually working heavily modded unofficial server and get to the actual content of the game once before uninstalling it because that's how the really good ambitious new age MMORPG's work, apparently. Early access? More like a badly thought out social experiment gone unsurprisingly wrong.
