wildbill

Well this particular bug is documented fairly well. Is only on Blackwood servers, all modes of play.

There is an easy workaround too. That is also documented and discussed a few times already in this forum and others.

The response from Grapeshot Games does feel lacking. I've read a lot about this one bug, but never seen one response from the devs as to when it will be fixed.

I'm giving this game another month or two to start getting some attention. If that doesn't happen, I'm looking for another game to play. The game is playable, but only if you chose how you play it carefully. Currently, Blackwood does not look like the best choice for how to play Atlas.

I've read that ice preserves stuff in the preserving bag longer, but I have never used it. Seems like a lot of work is involved to make and transport something that is just going to melt. 

Does anyone else think the sinking of ships by hitting a rock, however unlikely, is a bad feature of the game?

So I've not tested it, but if you do hit a rock and your ship says it is sinking, you should be able to lower the anchor and patch the hull and save it. This assumes you have a spare plank or two and remembered to stock the ship resource box.

The most ironic thing about this mechanic, is that it is least likely to happen to a sloop, most likely to happen to a galleon. So the more you invest in the ship, materials and time wise, the more likely it will sink because the draft is so much deeper for a galleon. The deeper the rock, the less likely you are to see it, so the more likely you will hit one. Also there are more rocks you can hit if you include the ones in all the different depths of water it could be at.

So you could reply, just get good, but that doesn't help all the new players (and there are a lot after the $5 sale), that hit a rock for the first time and don't know what to do and didn't even realize it was a thing, that it could sink their ship.

This reverse kind of Atlas logic (more time and resources spent on something doesn't necessarily make it better at all things), is what in my opinion holds this game back from being played more. It is things like this that cause a player to rage quit and then forever after not recommend the game.

If you play Official PvP, the bigger question is even if you do find some island that some mega company somehow forgot to claim, and you do claim it, how would you keep that claim? Once the mega company realizes its mistake, it is bound to come in wipe you out and claim the island and maybe thank you for pointing out the error of their ways 

30 minutes ago, RIPPIIN said:

We are on official PvP so it doesn’t apply to us. Seems by now every island is taken, either by a mega or other decent sized companies.

Good luck with that. I wouldn't play on the official servers unless someone paid me.

Not sure if you are done. Looks really good, bit surprised no one has replied to this.

I like almost all of it. Especially, the food system, the towns, the ships. We do need a feature like you describe to get your ship back if destroyed. Also you should be able to buy a horse (ya, you can trade for one, but it is not built into the game). The horse should be something you get maybe even before you get a ship in Altas. As it is, they are extremely hard to tame, so I usually get one after I have a few other tames. Also making the islands closer together reduces travel times, which we also need.

One trade-off the devs made was to have things like tannery and smithy fairly small and not a building so the same item can be constructed at your base or on your ship. You don't mention if there are ships that can be configured as a base. You obviously can't build a tavern on a ship, so how would this sort of thing work on the ship?

One thing that would go along well with the towns is the ability to take a job as a seaman for hire. This could be a special class of company member or you could hire yourself out to a new type of NPC ship. Maybe these ships would be involved in trade or possible some sea battles with you as crew being vital to their success.

14 hours ago, José Gaspar said:

There should be a wall that matches the size and style of each gate.

 

There is a mod that has huge walls the same size as the behemoth gates. I'm not sure, but they might have a few other sizes, each matching other gate sizes.

On 1/7/2020 at 10:26 AM, Bigduke8121 said:

Just 1 map smaller islands spawn In to claim premade ships and islands last group to claim all islands or kill all players wins.   Maybe add random loot in ocean crates like loot boxes. 

Pretty easy for a private server to setup this as a couple of hour event that occurs every few weeks and some do. Ask around, it shouldn't take you too long to find a server that has this event. The events like this that I've seen make it just a sea battle thing, no bases involved. Although there was a server that did bases too and then after the event was over, they rolled back the whole server so no one actually lost their base.

Plenty of islands on private servers, although most of them use the older method where you just can claim a circle of land around the flag and not the whole island. 

Interesting how this new "improved" method has almost no adoption when the players get to chose which method of claim they want to use.

First time I every respec'd was a few days ago at a freeport. It went fine, but it was also a PvE private server.

3 hours ago, NoTown said:

i can see where you are coming from but then there are a bunch of players like myself that like the realistic aspect of the game forcing you to have to do different methods of sailing in order to get to your destination. I believe that was the intent in the game too. After all its  a survivor mmo. You want its quick and easy it seems. If sailing was like that everyone would be at end game content in matter of days/weeks. I felt a good method instead of "Fixing the wind" is adding boat feats. For instance "ignore wind feat" where your boat ignores all wind for 30 seconds or something.  Then again there is different types of players who see games differently. 

Sure, a lot of people play this game for the sailing, although that is not the focus, nor I think what the majority of people want. The game had more realistic sailing originally. It sucked, and a lot of players complained. The devs listened and made it easier. They added a bit more speed in reverse and forward progress straight into the wind. I've actually owned a few sailboats and like sailing, but this is game, and not even remotely a good sailing simulator, so personally I like the sailing about how it is, but would just like to spend less time doing it, because honestly it isn't that interesting. Hopefully in Phase II the the road map, they would add stuff to make it more fun to be out on your ship. I might change my mind then, but right now, I'm just wanting to get somewhere to do something that is more interesting.

4 hours ago, NoTown said:

I feel its okay. I feel they make you learn how to properly sail. With winds blowing in bad was you should "Tack" sail. yeah you lose some time but not whole lot.

I don't think the topic is about sailing properly. Tacking is not a quick way to get somewhere. It is slow for two reasons. If your desired direction and the wind direction is exactly coming from that direction, you will take twice as long at least to get there. Also you lose speed on a tack, because it is faster sailing when not at an angle to the wind.

The topic is about a suggestion of how to get where you are going faster. This one is a good one, but there have been many others. Apparently a lot of people want to spend less time going to their destination and more time at their destination.

4 hours ago, MOTIK said:

right, self respawn to feed yourself was obviously a horrible design flaw.

you are correct but, i think we all know that shouldnt be the solution in any type of "survival" game.

Ya, respawn to level vitamins is not a good design, but neither are the vitamins.

9 hours ago, Viktor Ferrahgo said:

I think some people favor the brig because of the handling.

And from what I've read, a brig seems to be up to the job. Takes just 3 large cannon shots to destroy a tentacle. I haven't built a brig in awhile, but I think you can put large cannon in the gun ports. And more than 3 a side, so it is plenty powerful enough to join the fight.

I haven't fought the kraken yet, but the videos I watched had mostly brigs (like at least 5) fighting it.

I'd like to see some comments on how to design a brigantine for fighting the kraken.

On 1/12/2020 at 10:23 AM, Talono said:

Private servers suck. I dont need abusive admins who live out their god complex because they are 12 year old boys without any love from mom in real life.

Try to survive on officials.Farm planks when the bonus is activated.

Shoot planks, while the bonus is not active.

Devs dont care about your comments, complains or suggestions. They just do what they want, shut the servers down without notification whenever they want and activate the bonus when they want.

Unfortunately not this weekend.

So private servers suck, but then you go on to explain how apparently the official servers suck even more 

Ya, there are literally 1000 private servers out there, if you played on the ones run by 12 year olds, that would certainly suck. There are some run by adults that actually care about you having fun playing the game though. Way better than the officials, where no one cares what you do.

1 hour ago, George Catcher said:

 

 

I don't. Just go as it is, usually I able to loot and hit it's corpse before sharks attack me. But as long as I live in Tundra I have my fortitude to 40 (+30 to equilibrium) so cold waters doesn't kill me fast.

I use the grappling hook to get the floating treasure and also the loot from killing a SotD. Too bad the grappling hook can't just pull the whale up to the ship and you harvest it from the ship. I used to jump in the water, but when I found a grappling hook works, no more jumping in with the sharks 

Just give yourself a permanent harvest bonus.

Move off the official servers and on to a private server with 2x, 5x, or 10x harvest rates.

49 minutes ago, Khillian MacDille said:

It does sort of feel like the 2x rates should be the standard.  That said taking the gathering by hand traits helps a bit when you don't have tames

The current rate is actually a 2x rate. If you played the first few weeks Atlas was out, that was brutal. It was 1/2 the current rate. But I agree, 2x the default feels about right.

48 minutes ago, Khillian MacDille said:

That's a nice strawman you're building there.  Literally no one criticized server donations.

Yes they did, read the whole thread.

His post makes perfect sense in the context of the whole thread if you have read it.

This is the type of complaining that makes people wonder why they are going out of their way to help other people have fun. Both mod authors and server owners come across the type of people that when you give them something for free, but give them the option to donate, they complain and call you a scammer or worse. I guess that is what you get when you put stuff on the Internet where literally anyone with access to a computer can login and use stuff for free that other people have spent weeks and months of their life to create. If they are not being charged for it, apparently they think it has no value and did not involve some hard work for someone to provide it to them.

18 minutes ago, Aotomi said:

When is the game going to delete files?

in 24/1/2020 ?

What are you talking about? Why would the game delete files?

5 minutes ago, Royerrulz said:

Yes, I downloaded that tool and was able to get it working. Noy done testing yet.

It is... a real PIA however. As I learn more about how the game works I am really befuddled by the architecture of the game. Seems like a *LOT* of wasted resources going to load assets / logic that no one is around to experience. 

I'm not even clear why the game needs to load one entire grid. Why not just load what I can see as the player? Then the map cpuld be procedurally infinite if scale is what they were looking for. 

Unfortunately my wife still hasn't purchased as we are cautious of all this overhead bugging out the experience. 

Interesting stuff. Really surprised by this. If I were to play on official and logged out of a chunk that is later offline, I am SOL?

Looks like an improvement over ark in most ways, but I think I am going to stop wssting time trying with the server stuff and wait to see if theres improvement in all this on release I guess

I haven't played with running any servers myself, closest I came was running non-dedicated once with my wife. For the official servers, they keep all 225 grids running as close to 24x7 as possible. I don't play those, but on private servers if a grid is down, and that is where you logged out, you just have to wait for it to come up to get back into the game.

5 hours ago, MeatShield said:

Unless I'm mistaken the official map is 15x15, or 225 grids, not 255x255.

You don't need the entire map to have a good time, but you probably want more than 1 or 2 grids to experience everything that atlas has. Personal I think a 5x5 can do everything. Keep in mind you don't have to have all of the servers on at the same time, just don't shut off a server if someone logged out in it, or turn it back on before they try to log in.

I'm working on setting up a server for a few of my friends and I think we're going to go with a 5x5. Middle 9 are going to be always on, the outer 16 are going to be started and stopped as needed. Middle 9 are normal grids in the different biomes and one free-port, outer 16 are the end game content and a few extra grids.

You could setup the entire 15x15 grid if you want and just start and stop the grids as needed. The file is available for download in their git repo.

LAN play is a little more difficult. To transitions between servers you need access from the internet, it's dumb, but that's the way it seems to be right now. You can get away with NAT loop-back or hair-pinning, and put a password on the server for good measure.

I can't imagine that most people are going to want to deal with turning servers on and off as needed. What is needed is a tool that would do that automatically. Before single player was created, someone had created a tool to do just that. The thread for it is here:

This had some problems that I don't think were ever resolved. For instance, the treasure map grid is determined when you add the map to your inventory. I think it required the servers to be running to assign a location in a grid, so if the server was not running, the map would not work. No new messages in the thread in months, so possibly it is no longer supported?

Possibly you have resolved the map problem by keeping the 3 x 3 center grids always on?

On 1/4/2020 at 7:59 PM, Kahlan Amnell said:

Was on Blackwood map midway between Skullclap Island and King's Arena and a cyclone stripped the planks off my brig and sank it in under 30 seconds. WTH is up with cyclone damage being so high? this amount of damage is beyond retarded.

So, those earlier reports you responded to are not at all how it works today. Like someone said above, you need to repair your ship daily, that is still true. More than likely, your ship was very close to sinking, the cyclone hit and finished the job. A single storm where you get hit a few times by a cyclone will not sink a fully repaired ship.

The other possibility is that this is a bug on the Blackwood map. That map is fairly new and has more bugs than the online version of the game (I assume you were playing single player on it, which also has more bugs than the online version).

Do you harvest the whale using the diving suit? I've yet to use the diving suit. i assume you can use the pick to harvest the whale while using it and it should keep you safe from sharks and stingray. Or maybe you just dive in with some good armor on and take your chances? I've never killed a whale, although I did shoot at a few. I'm getting the gear for it and wanting to give it a shot. They can be a quick source of gold, but of course the risk of losing your ship is there too.

1 hour ago, Califax said:

There is a wonderful tradition of high-level Elite monsters roaming much lower level zones, leaving the trail of newbie corpses in their path. This venerated tradition should never change. Fear and respect are an integral part of immersion.

However it is critical that the newbies' death be attributable to some lack of foresight or inadequate response.

Thus, the real problem with ships of the Damned is, as mentioned, spawning into a horde of them or their low pop-in distance.

Yes, I agree. It isn't that there is stuff that can kill the unprepared. It is that there is stuff that will kill you even if you are aware of its existence and have taken reasonable measures to protect your self. This and the amount of harm caused. You can expect to die and maybe your tame die and be able to recovery your stuff if you are prepared for that. Say for instance coming across a tiger or two when you are exploring an island. Something like losing your entire ship and all its contents does not seem like a reasonable result for encountering a random hazard in the game like the SotD. You can of course recover some of the materials and contents of the ship if you have a backup ship close enough, but a new player is not likely to have any of that when they first venture out on the open seas.