wildbill

I've noticed this too. The down side is if you find a high level and don't have the time to tame it, you can't just log back in later and tame it. The plus side, is if you search an island and find nothing good to tame, you can just log off, log back in and search again. The second time around you have another chance at finding what you are looking for.

I definitely like the port part of the idea. We should have some type of travel between ports. Also I agree the travel should be auto piloted.

What you call the thing that travels between them, and exactly how it works could be worked out, but it should carry resources like you say, also the player.

1 hour ago, Damit MC said:

Really how do Private servers work on 1000 f other games lol I love this game there PVE online is so bad with full on lag and most or full but thank you for your opinion they can make this with out tethering this is hurting this game 

On all the other games, like ARK, you run a dedicated server or rent one that is hosted.

You have both of those options for Atlas. The problem is, you would need a very large number of servers to duplicate the 225 girds (each is a server). So your choice is run a custom set of maps with a small number of grids or use the Blackwood map. I've seen as many as 49 grids configured for a private server. I've also played where they had just four. The Blackwood map is maybe the size of 3 grids.

On all other games, like ARK, the non-dedicated sucks the same way that you've seen it suck for Atlas.

The PvE online that you've tried is the official servers. There are plenty of private servers, have you tried one of those?

1 minute ago, Damit MC said:

Have had friends quit playing because of this.Give us private server with up to 10 players to host love this game having a blast with friends we all play PVE only on single player Host just remove Tethering it really hurt this game bad 

The gave us the Blackwood map. You can rent a dedicated server and play with up to 10 players easily on that map. Now it has a few bugs, but most can be worked around.

The non-dedicated mode is for you to play "together" with a few people. By together, I mean in the same location, in the same tribe, in the same ship.  Any other use just isn't going to work. There is is no way they can remove the tether, this thing is running on your PC with you playing the game also. It is not a full up server like you need with 10 players.

My game crashed when I was sailing and I had a monkey on my shoulder (I assume the cat was on your shoulder).

When I logged back in, the monkey was just floating in the air. At first I didn't notice and moved the ship. It remained floating. A tiger on shore then saw the monkey and swam out to try and kill it but couldn't reach it. Hilarious  I circled back and got the monkey. Normally anything on your ship does not get attacked by stuff on the shore, but apparently a tame floating in the air (or I suppose in the water) seems to not count.

So my guess is you cat was eaten. I would think you tribe log should show that.

On 12/5/2019 at 6:04 PM, i have no name3 said:

I loved playing split screen  with friends on ark when they come over. And I tried playing atlas with my brother but there is no split screen. I really hope the devs add split screen to atlas on single player. It would be amazing to sail the unforgiving sea with friends on a shared screen.

When people say split screen, they mean XBox, right?

I can play non-dedicated with my wife, but we both have our own PC for that.

On the Blackwood map they spawn at the farm on the freeport Island.

Wiki says they are found at all freeports.

Seems they are good to use to catch fish. I might want to try and tame one 

5 hours ago, The D Legacy said:

future? what future? ROFL they already burned half the time they themselfs set to release the game, they will release the game after the 2 years period but only in name because the game will still be in alpha quality. you say the community is not smart, but, what community? the remnants would be a more appropiate name, that said once the game hit rock bottom (hopefully soon) the only direction left will be up, but do they rly have what it takes? the new guy seems to have a much more clear vision of what the game should be but i can envision "difficulties", as of now the game development is more a tv drama than a game development so we will see (i will most likely never play it again but i wanna see how the drama ends xD)

Ya, got to wonder how many people are playing just because they have so much invested in the game and are waiting to see how it ends up. Me, I keep coming back every few months to check on the progress. I don't have the patience to actually play the game, but I'll be playing it once in awhile and reading the forums occasionally. I've put in 600 hours on the game, now I want to see how it turns out 

1 hour ago, George Catcher said:

It looks funny, but the situation itself is saaaad.

At the beginning I lost first 7 of my boats to game glitches. Each ship was hours and hours of building (without tames, harvest skills and x2 weekends, each one took me couple of days actually). That's game problem - totally unbalanced state between efforts, rewards and easiest way to loose all in just one moment.

For example, you could spend couple of weeks, gathering resources all over the atlas, to create and upgrade mythic armor. Then you use climbing pick, and it just kills you without corpse, so all you've done - just gone for ever. You totally wasted couple weeks of your life for nothing.

Or like with a ship. I once got battle Brigantine. I hunted for like 100 damned ships to level my ship, I've got good blueprints and create them. It took me a weeks to get there. Then, when I engage battle with yet another squad of damned, I just step a side from my steering wheel, and next second found myself into the ocean, watching my ship sail away, raising sails. While I was chasing my boat - all damned ships just went aside and sunk it. Instead of finish leveling my ship, and go hunt 50-Galleon I had to start over with no guaranty next attempt will be success.

I have to agree, this game is short on the rewards and heavy on the losses. I'm now only playing single player and if I do lose something to the game, I'll just use an admin command to restore it. No more playing on servers for me until this game gets out of Early Access. The game is just too hard core for my tastes. I also can set the rates so that making a brig is just an hour or two, not a two day grind. That feels about right to me.

BTW, from what I've heard, the bug with the climbing picks has been fixed.

The ship grounding should not cause a ship to sink in my opinion. I can see it doing some damage, letting some water in, but there should be a method to unground the ship and get it afloat again. There are just so many ways you can lose your ship, why should hitting the bottom also be one of them? Ships have hit the bottom since they were invented. Most times they just bounce off and take some damage, but can be repaired. They don't usually sink because of it.

1 hour ago, George Catcher said:

Actually I recommend NEVER USE this "get on board" button. Because there is a slight risk that when you push the button, your tame will fall down right to the hell, or flies up to the heavens. I'm not joking, it's game glitch, that rarely can hit you. When it's happen - you tame is gone. I lost two of my bears this way (one was carrying around 2500 gold btw).

Safer way is just get your tame follow you, then get on board yourself, and watch you tame appears after you.

When was the last time you tried loading with the menu? Yes, this was a glitch when I played 10 months ago. Someone told me this is now fixed and I've been using it. The only problem I've seen so far, is one time the tame loaded under the deck, but then I put it on follow and it popped out. The get on board menu works differently now. It will gray out the option if there is going to be a problem loading. Before it would just load anyway and that is when you would lose your tame. So have you lost a tame to this recently? I just started playing again a few weeks ago, so don't have a lot of experience with it. Now it might just be easier to have the tame follow, since it sometimes takes several tries to position a tame before it will load onto the ship.

LOL. That animation of a ship sinking cracks me up (as long as it isn't my ship sinking) 

We have all been there, done that. Why the heck a shipyard can be placed in shallow water is beyond me as being a game mechanic that is allowed.

I now place and then quickly swim the length of the shipyard and pick it back up if I at all see any chance of it not being placed deep enough.

Would be nice if it would just not place or if there were some kind of indicators as to what depth is needed. As it is, you just have to make a guess and hope you are right.

1 hour ago, MOTIK said:

i managed to put all crafting stations on a schooner plus two bears and a rhino and we still had room for 3 crew cabins....

so im gonna call bullshit or "get gud" hahaha

why do you NEED land for shipyards? if you could buy schooner, brig, galleon from freeport then you only need shipyards for increasing quality (mythic) which SHOULD be restricted to large companies and NOT a solo venture. my opinion.

*edit it is an mmo not an ark 20 player server or a single player game. i dont think every special snowflake should have their own island to build barbie dollhouses. i keep saying this and people dont get it. THERE ARE DOZENS of barbie dollhouse games. we need a sailing / shipbuilding focused game. if u want to puke barbie dollhouses all over people go play ark, minecraft, conan, fortnite, 7days, empyrion, avorion or one of the other hundreds of builder games.

**if you need / want help designing efficient ships with space to move around i can try to find some pictures of our last builds

Just built a schooner. I put everything on it that would fit easily. Loading an elephant, some supplies. It was about half the weight (this is a modded ship, so would be more for a regular). I went out and collected a few resources. Adding just 1k more weight noticeably slowed the ship. Ya, you really can't use a schooner as a base because it just slows down if you add anything more to it when you are out exploring. I love the schooner for treasure hunting though, since it can get into all the harbors and most shallow areas. The Brig can't do that.

Also Atlas is not just an mmo. The official servers are what some would describe as an mmo, but not like most, but the game also has other modes you can play it in. I can play single player. If I want someone to join me on an adventure in my single player, I can launch it as non-dedicated. I personally only play the single player mode and think it is an important addition to the game. Until the game is out of Early Access, it is the only way I'll be playing. I'm waiting to see if the game becomes something I'd play on a server (my preferred way to play games). If it never meets my expectations, I'll never play anything but single player from now on.

If Atlas is ever changed to be more like a typical mmo (player is not in game when you are offline, etc.), I'd play the mmo version. Right now, I don't consider Atlas to be an mmo, more like they found a clever way to extend a low population server game to have many more players, but in the process did not add any of the typical mmo features.

1 hour ago, LunarDracos said:

so far i havent crashed with treasure maps..  and i have been playing for a month now.. 

Are you playing on Blackwood single player? Every youtube video I've seen where they play single player it crashes. Happens every time to me. I've seen lots of posts about it too. You are the first to say it isn't crashing. Many people use the Blackwood map for single player play, because it is big enough to get the flavor of Atlas, but not the huge over 100 grid server that takes up so much time traveling all over those maps all by yourself. People also use it for non-dedicated, since you can do that when you don't have to travel across grid borders. I have not tried non-dedicate yet, possibly other maps would work with it, not sure, but Blackwood should be a good choice. I didn't mention single player, I just assumed if someone is playing Blackwood, they are playing single player.

2 hours ago, MOTIK said:

whitehawk, we can already buy ships at freeports. remove the xp limit at freeports and it would be pretty easy for solo or small groups to get a sloop or schooner going. 

from there you can go exploring, join a company with some land, or start pirating just outside the freeport grids.

wildbill, you say it will take years to make that game but, i literally see it as two days deleting files and a couple months to balance could be a complete game. compared to the aimless steampunk spacesquid clusterfug path it is currently on.

i will admit to being salty about buying a pirate game and getting "barbie dollhouse: my little pony rancher" instead

I'm salty too. I stuck with the game for maybe six months. Got tired of my wife complaining about the boring sea trips just to kill a few army of the dead for treasure maps. She loves to kill stuff, but there just isn't enough killing in this game to keep her happy 

When I did play with my wife, she would play with me maybe 1/4 of the time. I would tame up some bears. Make a good schooner or brig, collect a bunch of treasure maps and we would go out killing and collecting the treasure. This was about a year ago. Back then, the game was half fun, half frustration. If she logged out on the ship, sometimes I'd run into problems with that. We lost tames when loading onto ships (this is now fixed thankfully). We would find treasure, but find we couldn't get to it with our bears. My wife hates dying, so we would skip those maps. Occasionally an alpha would kill us. Then a server would shut down when everyone got bored with the game (we played the unofficial so the grind was less). Just seemed like there were better games for her to just be killing stuff 

7 hours ago, nethrosdefectus said:

Blackwood has WPEs - Yes/No?

Blackwood has Ships of the Damned and Treasure maps with chest protected by the undead - Yes/No?

Blackwood a similar amount of sea ife (sharks/whales/dophins etc) compared to the vanilla ATLAS region(s) - Yes/No

 

Thanks in advance

I've only played Blackwood about 10 hours and haven't played Atlas on a server in over half a year.

There are SoTD, but I've yet to see more than one in one area. Not the groups like other maps, and I think not that many.

There are Treasure maps, you can look at them and try and guess which island they are for (there are I think 8 islands, so not too hard), but do not select them in your hotbar, this will crash the game. If you are playing single player, this will cause a rollback. I've had like 5 minute and just like 1 minute rollbacks so far. It is very easy to accidentally hit a hotbar key even when you know this will crash the game. Takes some practice to not do that, so this one bug sucks pretty big. I did manage to find a lot of treasure though, so not too big of a deal breaker.

I have not seen much sea life, but I tend not to go in the sea. The freeport island only had fish in a few ponds. I use a mod for food, so the difficulty in finding fish is not a big deal for me. Shouldn't be for you, you are bound to get eaten by a tiger at first, this will balance your vitamins 

You didn't ask about sunken ships. It has those, although I've never done one. Maybe I will try it when I have a submarine or Brig. Right now I have just the schooner.

3 hours ago, Enki Anunnaki said:

automated shipping and trade routes are the answer.

I think that could be a fine addition to the game.

They made banks where you could place them near a resource and it would tax all that gathered the resources within the claim at that location. Instead of requiring others to harvest the resource and then taking part of their hard work, this could be adapted to have a new building with a few NPCs that harvest selected nearby resources and then ship them back to a home port (the automated shipping part). On the return trip, the home base would send food and gold for the NPCs to pay them for their work. This could be a "Trade Post".

This new way of getting resource would essentially remove the need for fast travel. You find the resource in your travels, then set up a trade post to gather them for you. You place a few NPCs there and then continue exploring to find more locations or head back to the home port. Other players could place trade posts in the same area. Each trade post would have a small no build area, limiting the total number of trade posts that could be placed.

I like the idea of trade routes too. A player could set these up from either their home port or the locations of their trade posts to exchange resource or gold with other players.

I assume this idea has been beaten to death, although I haven't read any of those posts.

An addition like this could work for single player too, you just wouldn't trade with other players. Possibly NPCs could be added that you trade with.

4 hours ago, MOTIK said:

boomer, well said.

this is why i believe the best course of action is to REMOVE 90% of tames and 80% of land.

i think you will find that if land and food become precious commodities worth fighting over, then the game will transform into something truly special.

i believe this game is the perfect example of "less is more".

Think of how many diaries, books, and letters from sailors expressed a desire to flee overcrowded colonies and seek freedom on the high seas. freedom wasnt colonizing new lands, freedom to them was simply getting away from overpopulation for a few weeks/months.

I'd like to see a game like you describe, although Atlas is a long ways from being that game.

If they just removed 90% of the tames and 80% of the land and made no other changes, the game would be the mess we saw in the first few weeks of the game. Players plopped down claim flags on every claimable bit of land. You could sail for hours and never find a spot where you could place a flag.This is because when something is scarce, people horde it. It will not be a pretty site, not fun for you average player.

I had hoped the game would allow you to live on your ship and stay at sea for long periods. That game is not even close to what Atlas is. It would take years to transform the game into that, which I suppose is the reason they did not go that route. Instead they took what they had from ARK (and I think a ship mod) and made the best game they could. It seems obvious now, but I did expect more.

Now that they have picked this course of combing ARK with ships, fantasy stuff, and pirate aspects, they should probably stay on course and just keep improving it. It will never be what many were hoping for, but could eventually be a very good game.

4 hours ago, DannyUK said:

I think they could use the land for more buried treasures and add the pirate encampments to them. I don't know why they have multicoloured ships of the dammed, not a fan of them to be honest. Why can't we have the real ships that we currently make? Add them into the game the same way ship of the dammed are now, put NPC on them that fight back and make it so we can board those ships to take anything they have on them.

I'd much rather they changed from companies to factions though, that would make it easier to help out others and make pvp and pve in the 1 server, each faction has their own place on the map where you start out.

The freeports could be used for all faction members to meet up and if they had events on they could have the festival atmosphere like they show in their videos that was supposed to be in from the start or so we thought.

So many ideas they could come up with for this game but they don't seem to listen to the way the community wants it to go, it's their way or the highway and many chose the highway, it's about time they learn from their mistakes.

I keep seeing this idea proposed of having a server with both PvP and PvE. I assume you are suggesting they add a new type of official server with this. Although I fail to see how PvP and PvE on one server isn't just a PvP server. All PvP players engage in PvE activities. When they make alliances and establish a safe area, maybe a whole island or grid of the server, they are essentially just playing PvE only in that area.

So what game has no separate PvE and PvP servers? Never seen this. Does it actually work? If it is such a good idea, where are the great examples of it?

Personally I only play PvP on games where you don't lose your ship/base (your main location where you log in / log off). I think if Atlas ever switched to only having this "combined" (PvP only) mode, they would lose over half the player base instantly (almost all of the PvE players). So what would be the point? PvE players aren't fodder for the PvP players if that is what you are thinking. They aren't slaves to them either. They aren't added content to keep the PvP players interested.

I've seen games with just PvP, but they are not sandbox style games. You don't play them for months collecting tames and building a huge base. One I played quite a long time ago was I think called Battlestar Gallactica. You would never lose your ship if you lost a battle, you just got moved back to the starting location. You never really lost anything, but you could gain stuff if you won. ARK is nothing like that and a PvE player would never want to play it in PvP mode.

Some of your ideas make sense for a PvP server. You might get more people to play PvP mode if the game had factions. Those players that play PvP in most games, but not Atlas might play.

I wonder how many people use icebox? Maybe just people who have a base in the north.

I have never used it, I use the preserving bag.

I took a break from Atlas shortly after posting in this thread on Feb 4. I've come back to play a bit of Atlas and I'm a bit surprised that 10 months later this has not been addressed.

In the week I've been playing, I've seen some other nice additions (single player is one of them) and other bugs have been addressed (some like this have not).

I expected maybe a bit more would have been done in 10 months.

17 hours ago, randomname2090 said:

I have been playing this game for about a week now and I have to admit I am a little disappointed by the lack of design options for some ships. I know this isn't real life but sloops in some cases carried 8-16+ guns. I think you need to redesign some of the ships or redesign or implement new styles of cannons that are smaller in size that allow you to have more cannons/gun ports on certain ships I mean the brig only naturally has 12 cannons IRL they carried 18+ some times. I shouldn't  have to make my ship look like a layered cake to have 20 guns.

You don't say what platform or where you play, but there are mods that can be used in single player, non-dedicated, and unofficial servers. Several different mods add new ship types. I've yet to try any of these, but just reading about them, some look interesting.

2 hours ago, Gemini Five said:

I was reading all this about it's a pirate game and it just hit me... I've been here since day one (on my  pve server) and I can't recall ever seeing a pirate. Are we calling the SOD pirates?

Yes I did hear something about the new pirate camps. Maybe I should go check them out when I get enough time to sail that far.

edit: I don't think that was Boomer's quote. I think I quoted the person he was quoting.

Doesn't really matter who said it, but here is the first sentence from the paragraph on the Steam page that describes the game: "From the creators of ARK: Survival Evolved comes ATLAS -- the ultimate pirate experience!" It ends that paragraph with: "Become a pirate legend in this ultimate quest for fortune and glory!"
 

So the makers of Atlas say it is a pirate game. You kind of prove the point I was making, that Atlas is supposed to be a Pirate game, but it has yet to deliver fully on that promise (still in early access of course). I think the intent is that the players in the game are pirates, but also the SOD. When hire crew from shore or a SOD, you are hiring pirates.The hide outfits you learn also make the player look like a pirate. You can give your player a tattoo, which is a pirate thing. Now they have added pirate encampments. I've yet to see one, but apparently they are pretty buggy still.

As someone else pointed out, pirates don't normally fight other pirates, they fight other countries armies mostly. From the trailer release when the game was first released, it appeared like that would be a thing, but instead we have pirates (us) fighting pirates (NPCs) in PvE, and in PvP you can fight other players (pirates too). That is a whole different discussion.

This topic is about fast travel. On that topic, I wish that the ship travel would have been more like how you use a quetzal in ARK. When you are traveling somewhere to get resources in ARK with your quetzal, you travel above the danger in relative safety. You can go down to the ground and engage various threats when you want. Also when you land you deal with creatures on the ground. Travel is quick (less than 15 minutes). You can land pretty much within a minute at relatively safe locations pretty much anytime you desire. In PvE, your quetzal dominates the skies (at least for the Island map). That is what I would have liked sailing to be like. I know that most people don't agree, but possibly most of the PvE crowd might prefer this.

8 minutes ago, Whitehawk said:

I don't know why the 'what a real pirate would do ' is even a basis for an argument in a fantasy mmo with a submarine, torpedoes and a giant crab!! Also in reality pyrates very rarely attacked each other at all and mostly worked together. Once you accepted the un golden age canon stuff you accepted that this is no longer a  pyrate mmo, so let's please stop using it as an argument for everything eh. Yeh this is deffo fantasy but golden age pyrate mmo? do behave. And for me the sailing is fine but I and a lotta players just don't have 6 hours a day spare to play the game. It doesn't need to be more exciting imo, just quicker.

Ya, the game has nothing to do what a real pirate to do, I only said that because boomer brought up it up. But still, you can't avoid some comparison when the game has pirates in it, but that is not of course all the game is about. It also has sailing ships too, but that doesn't mean the ships should actually act like the real thing. When I went sailing on my boat it would take me eight hours or more to get where I was going. Nobody wants that here either (I hope). Yes, I do like the sailing too, just not how long it takes. I like to play games with my wife. She will not play Atlas at all with me after she tried it for a bit. She spends half her time on the ship just watching for SOD and then me steering around them most of the time. Extremely boring for her. She likes to kill stuff. The game could use more of that and less of sailing.

My actual biggest gripe with the sailing is that you can not pause the game or log off while you are sailing if suddenly something in real life comes up (and it does). I'm now playing single player only, since I think I'll be able to log off on the ship, although I've yet to try that. I would like to play on servers, but with the current state of the game, that won't really be an option for me.

5 hours ago, boomervoncannon said:

ummm, what's the thing you most closely associate pirates with doing? What's the thing they are literally almost always doing when pictured in movies, tv or talked about in books? Sailing. Pirates on land who rob your convoy going back and forth aren't even pirates, they are just bandits, thieves, highwaymen etc. There are two defining characteristics of piracy: stealing commercial shipping and doing so while at sea. Piracy itself is inherently associated with sailing, so if you bought a Pirate/fantasy themed MMO and didn't expect it to involve a lot of sailing, I just wouldn't be sure what to tell you. 

Where the devs have missed the boat (pun intended) is in not making the time spent sailing compelling or enjoyable enough to keep people around. There can be land based content, you can have dragons and treasure and underwater stuff sure, because it's /fantasy and that gives you a nice loophole. But look at the trailer man, look at the website, how is anyone NOT supposed to get the strong impression it's largely about piracy, and how is anyone NOT supposed to associate piracy with sailing?

Arguing that it's piracy and not a sailing game is like saying "No no it's a soccer game, not a game where they run all the time." Saying there's an "it's a sailing game" crowd is the same as saying "there's a crowd that understood what was advertised." 

You kind of removed all of what I said that supported my point and only left the part that supported your point. Yes, a pirate game would have sailing, anyone that would think it doesn't is not too bright, but that wasn't my point at all. This game has sailing (and yes, many don't enjoy the sailing) required before you can do many activities, but it is just a means of travel most of the time, not really an activity that many would chose to do for it own sake, hence the game is not a sailing game, it is a pirate game. The reason for the distinction? Removing some of the sailing would not damage the game, because it is a pirate game, not a sailing game. Removing the pirates from a pirate game, unquestionably a bad choice. Removing the requirement to sail to do just about any activity (like find treasure or go kill that monster) from a pirate game, not that big a deal. So why the big objection to maybe adding a portal or some other device that lets you get to where you need to go faster? And maybe we need to make the distinction between PvE and PvP. For PvE I think it would do nothing but improve the game. Don't care, don't know about PvP.

If there were less sailing, there would be more pirate like activities, that is my point. Not that a pirate game should not have sailing. The other point I made that you removed, is that if the game is based around sailing, and it is. Why the heck isn't having a base on a boat a reasonable thing to do? I explained that in my other post, why not. But that really should be a thing in this game, and that it is not, makes it not even that much of a pirate game as it should be. Who ever heard of pirates that didn't live on their boat?

So yes, there are two ways to fix this game. The "Altas is a sailing game" crowd say make the sailing the more enjoyable. But some of us that think this is a pirate game think maybe just have less sailing. Because I think both camps pretty much agree, the sailing part of this game sucks after you've sailed about 100 hours.

This skill system is a bit confusing for someone coming from ARK. This page describes the skills:

https://atlas.gamepedia.com/Skills

Things are color coded with a colored thin lined box around each skill. If the box is green, you have that skill. If there is no colored box around the skill, you have not learned the prerequisite for that skill. If you start with the left most tab for skill (I think it is called survival), you can start at the top and then each time you learn a skill pay attention as to whether it unlocks a new tab. If it does, then when you select that tab, the top item should now have a colored box around it (I think it is orange). You learn that skill and the box goes green and it unlocks skills below it that you can learn.

So I think what you were doing was trying to learn skills that are locked behind prerequisite skills.