Ellentro

Its not though. It was a good idea to look at it, and take action towards it, but they took a nuke to what should have been done with a hammer and/or a bat.

To be fair, there's no way the developers actually know that this is what it does. They have never opened the game client outside of testing whether or not the exe launches, let alone played the game for more then 20 minutes for cinematics/memes/exhibition.

No one got fired over the FoY debacle. That was a very small and insignificant speed bump compared to dozens of other issues plaguing the game, let alone what's happened with ARK.

This isn't about big changes. Or small changes. This is about the fundamental difference between good changes, and bad changes. They just tied the only defensible structure type in the game to a resource 60% of the map has zero access to, while buffing explosives to such a degree that Stone is no longer a defensible structure type.

He's doing his job the best he can, and I think someone somewhere understands that. The flames haven't really hit fever pitch yet, they're just at a slow boil by Wildcard standards. He's human after all. Only question I have is the same person that understands that no one can stop the flame that comes from stupid changes like this, hasn't gotten rid of the mentally deficient hobbits making these design decisions. I personally just feel a little bad for Jat. Its not his fault the company he works for is utter garbage.

You still think they're following a vision at this point?

-They aren't hiding. They just don't care. -Doesn't matter how often they communicate if nothing they say means anything. -No, because they don't play their own game -See above -The discovery point change was reverted because they forgot to make it retroactive -Jat is a PR major, he has little to nothing to do with getting anything fixed, and I highly doubt they listen to him much more then they do us. He's just there to keep the flames from reaching feverpitch.

Its not a good change for anyone. Now Mega-tribes have to deal with bobs figuring out that they can now blow giant holes in everything with explosives, which can literally be farmed in a couple of hours, and there's next to nothing they can do but kill the Ramshackle sloop and level 3 horse that did it after losing however much they manage to get.

The devs have never explained any of their actions beyond "We want to do this, so we did it", because there is no other explanation. You're looking for depth in a kiddie pool. The devs don't have a thought process behind their balance changes because there is none. They don't play their game, don't understand it from a gameplay perspective, and nothing in/about them suggests that they will ever change any of that.

Megatribes are losing in this deal. Small tribes couldn't compete before, and still can't. The difference is now small tribes can actually raid mega tribes. Before it was a basic impossibility. Now you can do serious damage with a sloop, a cannon, a bear, a cart and 10 explosive barrels. Something I can, personally attest, can be done in a couple of hours by a single person. There is no mega-tribe puppetmaster pulling the strings here. The developers are just dumb and unable to comprehend basic game balance.

Its terrifying how accurate that is.

Yeah. I know. But he's a troll.

Hes not. He has literally been posting troll threads every 4 hours for the last couple weeks since he got wiped and lost his schooner somewhere.

Yea but the underlying issue is that, as a solo player, I could probably raid that with a couple hours of farming time. If you don't build huge, with a disgusting amount of honeycomb and various things, you aren't safe. I can farm literally thousands of explosive barrels in a single day. 6 Hours on a weekend is my normal stint, and I can finish 2-5k explosive barrels depending on which islands are free. That isn't just enough to raid his building, that is enough to completely level it from the foundations. Stone costs were made with Explosives in mind. Now they buffed explosives, nerfed stone structures and created an oceanic gap between being able to defend and attack that is so large it is near insurmountable.

Thats half the problem. Most of the playerbase has not even touched explosives. At all. So very few people have any idea how/where/why they work, and they just gave them a 250% buff. Actually, very few people anywhere have really even attempted large scale ground raids, so almost no one, if not no one, knows how it would work if two effective, efficient and large tribes tried to duke it out. It leads to these situations. My war bear has 1.4k HP. A full blunderbuss to the face does around 70 damage. Only thing that can feasibly kill it is a tiger, but the Swivel Cannon on the back rapes anything that comes near. Literally anything. It one taps through plate and fires like 6 times a second. I just whistle another bear cart to follow me, walk up to a base, load up barrels, drop 3, boom, base demo'd.

And the second your base looks juicy, I can drop 3 barrels on it, which take me literally 2 minutes to farm, blow a 3x3 hole in your base and loot everything.

10 Barrels used to cave out a 3x3x3 area of stone. Pre-patch. Now it's like 3-4 barrels. Barrels can be fired from Bears. We can farm 1k Barrels an hour (Or so on average) with two people. Bases need to defend at least one direction, and at most 5 directions, meaning that if I can break 1 wall, the defender *should* be able to craft 5 walls for the same time investment. As it stands, I can craft more explosives to raid then a defender can feasibly craft defenses to stop it. The defense vs offense balance of this game just got utterly kicked in the nuts. It needed some attention, but this wasn't a nerf bat, hammer or even gun. This was a nerf nuke that means it's hilariously easy to raid to the point of utter stupidity.

Just keep posting shit on reddit and the forums. If enough people get upset they will actually change something. If not enough people get upset, they don't care.

Even explosives are hilariously easy to farm. Artic islands have gems+crystal+metal in abundance. Make 50k paste, grab 50k salt on the way to the artic, boom, 5k barrels or 15-20k grenades in about 6 hours with two people and a weight brig. Thats even while farming under 30% tax the entire time. The problem is that the devs are making knee jerk reactions to streams they see where streamers aren't really even crafting explosives. They see ZUnit or Toast floundering with no explosives and dying over and over trying to raid people on land and assume that "This is just what raiding looks like", when in reality most of the streamers in this game have no idea how the game is played.

You shouldn't need to test this to know that putting the only effective defensive structure type behind a resource found on 40% of the islands in the game is a bad idea. While simultaneously making it three to four times faster to farm the explosives to break the base then the base itself.

Ah yes. It's totally a good idea to put the only effective defensive structure behind a gate that like 60% of the islands in the game have no access to.

I mean, we both have about as much clue to the internal workings of Wildcard as the other, I just don't quite buy into the whole they're doing it on purpose. Wildcard couldn't even manage to put in respawning resources on purpose.

I don't have faith that WC thought about it at all. I see everyone reading into these changes so hard and so much, but in reality, I think Wildcard is just kind of clueless. Never attribute to maliciousness what can plainly be credited to stupidity.

Atlas is a progression away from PvE on Ark towards their core PvP audience, which always has been Mega-Tribes and large-scale PvP. The game is not designed with or for solo or small groups. It was designed and sold as a game for larger groups. Of course this game will not be larger then Ark. It has two main deficiencies. One, it does not cater to a wide stretch of communities like Ark did. It does not support mods and unofficials like Ark did.

Or at least add a better way to get paste. For instance 10 Meat for Paste (A nod to Glue factories), or Rotten meat. Organic Paste has been an issue for a while, but it's been acceptable because the need for it was fairly low.