Ellentro

Rhinos used correctly completely dominate gathering Flint/Stone. Elephants gather Wood far faster. Bears gather Fiber far quicker, as well as, I've heard, Fish Oil. You're never beating a Lion/Tiger/Wolf mount on foot at the moment in PvP. You also will never gather hide/meat/keratin faster then them (They just kill better, faster and more efficiently). Cows and Chickens are used in cooking, and for food in general. Pigs shit a ton for farms/fertilizer. Bull gives mateboost to cows, and is necessary to breed them (Which may, at some point in time, matter). Penguins give insulation. Monkeys throw shit from your shoulder (Was actually OP af for a while). Crows/Parrots give buffs to their owners when on the shoulder (Supposedly, haven't done this myself). That leaves Ostrich and Giraffe. Both of which are fairly useless, but also fairly fast, which could be considered a use in and of themselves.

Yeah, but he's part of a subset of people that would rather blame the game for him losing, and petition them to change the rules until he won, simply because he didn't/doesn't want to play by the rules of the game in the first place. It's highly unlikely that any logical or reasonable argument or discussion will dissuade him because, in his mind, he fundamentally believes that the game is the issue, and not him.

While I'm not an expert, my personal belief hearing about this is that it has to do with how traffic for the game is routed, more so then the actual location of the servers, since Wildcard probably has contract with their service provider (Which is in Europe). It's likely Connecting to NA servers routes you through a US hub before hitting EU, while EU servers routes you through EU hubs. If you're in EU and try an NA server, you'll route to a hub somewhere, likely, in Atlanta before being bounced over business/commercial grade networks to their service host provider in Germany. As an aside, I'm unsure if the US has server/network architecture sufficient for Wildcard's needs available to their financial situation. In terms of that sort of technological availability, US has lagged behind for some time, and it would explain why we're playing games on servers in Europe despite playing on an NA server.

You admit in your own post that you've seen what they said, just that you refuse to interpret it in a way that discounts your narrative. I can't help you if you purposefully choose to misconstrue their words and intentions. Very specifically, they said they wanted the game to be a merge between Ark (A game that was not very friendly to small groups), and Eve (A game in which small groups are utterly non-competitive). Megatribes inherently build miniature civilization within them. By definition, strictly so. They establish trading relationships within their own groups, have hierarchies, operate on political machinations and manage themselves with various social and political policies. Given, that sounds like a bit of a meme, and to an extent, it is, however for a video game, it's quite true.

You can play Atlas on single player servers too. Same game with a small group. Atlas isn't an MMO in the sense that Private Servers are an issue (Most MMO's don't have private servers because serverside files are not provided, they are provided in Atlas) . It just has a troublesome network architecture which makes it difficult (Not impossible) to play privately. Also yes you can say what the devs want from their game considering they have very specifically outlined what it is supposed to be, and he wants the exact opposite of what they have said they want the game to be on every level.

And by what basis do you believe that it wouldn't work? It worked, quite well, in Ark, while 6 man Ark flopped horribly. In reality, this game is not meant to appeal to the solo/small groups. The games that *do* appeal to those communities already exist, in a variety of forms. This game was designed to appeal to the large groups. It is not a good, or a bad decision. It is simply a *different* one. Everyone in Ark cried about mega-tribes too. How they'd "Kill the game". Yet, the very change that created mega-tribes (Opening up cross ark transfers), single handedly saved the Official networks, and preceded a nearly 40% boost in the overall playerbase. There is no rational, logical or statistical evidence, logic or rationale to support your stance that "The game will die" if they don't 180 their stance on group sizes.

Wildcard hasn't done just about anything to Ark since Extinction hit. It's a ghost staff supporting a game they intend to cease supporting. The entire reason why Wildcard is now Grapeshot is because they don't want the stink they generated with Extinction, and Ark in general, to follow them. Sure, it's also financial since Atlas was/is an Ark DLC, but they wanted to fully monetize it via avoiding the Ark Season Pass holders. Albeit, they did a poor job of covering the tracks, they do a poor job at a lot of things. Yeah but here's the thing. I don't want to rage or stress out over the game. I'd love to give clear, concise and well thought out feedback. I still do at times. However, as proven by four years of recorded history, rage and angst is the only thing capable of getting a reaction from Wildcard, and only if that rage and angst reaches critical mass and/or some game news website does a story on it.

The problem is whose fixing them, and their underlying motivation for it; Whenever there's an issue (Whether that's game breaking content/mechanics/bugs/issues), the people addressing and fixing them are not people with the technical skill set to do it, or really, even to comment on it. As much as I like Jat, he's absolutely clueless about the game, how it works or how it's played. He's a PR major doing his job. When the people addressing all of the issues in the community, are PR people, it's because they are a PR issue, not a gameplay issue. That is fundamentally bad because the developers inherently do not care, and all Jat is doing is trying to placate the community and keep them from rioting. The few times in Ark history I have seen non-PR people speak to the community, they have caused the issues to compound. For instance, my comment about Ark Bosses. There was a fairly infamous thread on the official Ark forums where people were complaining that the bosses were fundamentally and mathematically impossible to do without exploits. One of the devs piped in, called everyone idiots (No, I'm not joking, literally called everyone idiots), and then got shown up when someone posted a video of 20 gigas dying to alpha brood in 35 seconds. They then deleted pretty much half the thread, banned about 60 people, and beamed any boss related posts (and posters) on sight for about a week. As for why they release patches. They release patches because it's their job. It has nothing to do with whether or not they get testing or not. As we've been told in Ark, repeatedly, the games they make are made by their developers, and the community feedback is irrelevant for the course and direction they take. Also, we need to stop referring to them as Grapeshot. It's Wildcard. They're just trying to justify the fact that they live in a permanent EA cycle by changing their name.

So you contradict yourself in the same post? Let's point out some, fundamental, issues with your post; Raging in forums is *the only way to get Wildcard's attention*. They do not respond to well reasoned, thought out, calm and collected feedback. They only respond when the segment of their community upset about an issue is so great that it threatens their public image. That leads to the point that, this is not normal for an EA game. This is actually very rare. I have played hundreds of EA titles. Ranging from the bad like Shattered Skies/WWZ/ISS, to the good with GGG/PoE. Ark/Wildcard/Atlas EA games are a complete enigma because they do not follow the EA cycle. They do not release patches for testing, they do not rely on, expect or intake community feedback. No one expects perfection in EA games. They expect improvement. That is the entire premise of EA games. However Wildcard, yet again, defies the stereotypical norm, by consistently regressing in its patches. Very few EA games actively go backward and/or fail to learn from their mistakes, and Wildcard is, alone in my experience, the only company that, as a whole, gets progressively worse in their content releases as time goes on and (As a company) they gain experience in the field. You are, despite saying you aren't, trying to "Normalize" Wildcard's behavior. This is *not* normal. Not for an EA game. Not for a gaming studio *in general*.

Wildcard has never tested anything. Regardless of whether it was EA or not. We have always been the very first people to see any build in a play environment because Wildcard, by their own admission, pretty much ships any build as soon as the code compiles. The problem is that the OP is not necessarily wrong either. The developers use us as their only form of testers, meaning that most of them have never played the game, likely will never play the game, and that problem is exacerbated by the fact that they really don't care for or listen to community feedback. Most of the changes made via community feedback come from issues highlighted by Reddit or this community that generate what could potentially generate a PR firestorm and hurt their public image What Wildcard does/has/will do, is not an "EA" experience. Most EA games use the community as a testing ground, and reacts to how the community responds to changes/content/mechanics. Wildcard inherently ignores the community and uses EA as a cover for the fact that their company, as a whole, cannot produce content that is not broken. Compare and contrast actual EA projects by similar indie companies. Wildcard vs GGG, Ark/Atlas vs Path of Exile, is a very common and fairly accurate comparison. In Ark/Atlas, Wildcard puts out literally impossible content that persists for 8 months and is part of the core and integral PvE experience, ignoring (And in some cases openly mocking/degrading people giving feedback, as was done with the Ark Boss system). GGG releases bugged/impossible boss content and patches the boss out for further inhouse testing inside 24 hours (OG Vaal). We shouldn't normalize Wildcard's EA cycle, because it is not normal.

Everyone here read what you wrote. The problem is that you want to turn this game into some kind of bad battle royale or dayz clone. You want the game to be, inherently, changed from what it was always designed and marketed to be. The devs did not make Ark, nor this game, for solo lone wolves with social problems, they made it for large groups to have epic fights spanning hundreds of people. Go to unofficial. Find yourself a nice 5-8 pop server. Play that with the other 4 people who want to play Atlas PvP solo. This game is not meant to be played solo. Or by small groups. By design. They also probably won't try to do the Ark Small Tribes thing, because that experiment died and was an abject failure even in Ark, which was much more friendly to small group play.

BattlEye is the best anti-cheat on the market, however it was never meant to be a complete solution. Any passive solution (Like BattlEye), is meant to be complemented with an active support system that bans cheaters in real time as they appear. It's how every other game works. It is also, noticeably, not how Ark works. The developers are to blame, not BattlEye. It's simply not realistic to expect a reactive anti-cheat to stamp out every single hack out there.

The problem isn't necessarily the loss inherently. It's how the loss occurs. Let me paint my picture of something that happened this morning. I'm not complaining, but it's illustrative of the current issues with Alphas. I live on an island with a lot of elevations. It's physically impossible to clear those elevations, or to really even survey them at all/any given time from the ground. However the ground is where the trees are. So here I am, farming with my level 74 Elephant (Max beastmaster btw), when all the sudden, an Alpha Tiger drops directly on my tame from the elevation/pillar next to me. I know I can't outrun it, so I try to fight it. It kills me in, give or take, four bites. I deal around 40 damage to it (I used a maxed version of both the heal and the damage buff). It then one shots me through masterwork fur armor (Each piece around 40 armor). The entire encounter took about, I wanna say, 10-15 seconds. There was absolutely nothing I could do to resolve or win the situation. I can't outplay it, in fact, absolutely nothing I do will ever solve the situation. Even if I was on my 80 something Tiger. It would still eat my tiger, then me, and show no wear for it. I do not, inherently, dislike, loss in a game. It introduces an element of Risk to the gameplay I find appealing. It's why I play PvP. However, Alpha Tigers, Lions and Wolves inherently break that risk vs reward scenario because there is absolutely no recourse, escape, outplay or scenario that doesn't end with you losing if they engage you. They are, wholly unique, in the entire game. Well, maybe not wholly. The Monstrous Whale is *still* pretty bad, but at least it's rare and you can see it coming and zone out.

I mean, and here's the biggest issue I have. The devs don't learn from their mistakes. Let's take Drakes and Wyverns for instance. When Scorched Earth was first released, there was a bug that caused Wyvern eggs to fall through the mesh (at spawn) slowly, essentially making it impossible to get wyvern eggs. They fixed that bug after about a week or so. Then they release Abberation, with Drakes, the same egg mechanic and the *same* egg bug. Exactly the same. 100% the same. Everytime they have released a Tek Saddle or projectile weapon, it outranged turrets and wreaked absolute havoc on the PvP scene (Private *and* Official). They did it with the Tek Rex. Tek Tape. Tek Drake. Tek Rifle. Then they did it with the Mek. Everytime they release gameplay mechanics, it's glaringly obvious that they have never tested them. The Basilisk would get meshed if it fought *any dino* at Abb launch. Ptera's picking up anything in the new-gen dino on Extinction launch. Wyverns eggs on launch of SE. It took them literally 8 months to get the Alpha Broodmother to not one shot 120k HP rexes with 150 armor Saddles. It took them four months to make the alpha bosses in general even possible without exploits. In fact, and in all honesty, it seems like the more time we give them, the more experience they get making games, the worse they do. It's baffling, and it's a large reason why I am both so angry, and vocal. It's not the only time I've seen a studio get actively worse as time goes on, but it is, perhaps, the one game/studio I am so incredibly disappointed and saddened that they do so.

Or three, that despite being made by a company that ignores everything and does shit wrong, the game is still fun. You realize it can be both badly run/supported, and still inherently fun to play, right? I have no faith that the company will solve their issues, but I still enjoy it. I don't like to complain, but I enjoy the game enough to complain incessantly because I, for some reason, believe somewhere out there, that someone might listen. Or it helps me vent. Likely a combination of the two.

Make sure you have armor on; Take 1k Gold, drop it on the ground in a box. Repeat this step 20 times quickly. Pick all 20 boxes up. You should now have 20k gold on you. Un-equip, and re-equip armor. Crawl to a boat. Pilot boat to Freeport. Crawl off boat. Purchase Drake token.

Probably harder to farm the barrels then it is to farm the Brig.

This game, and Ark, were never designed for small tribes or solo players. It's why 6 man Ark flopped so hard, and it's why Atlas' skill system is so demanding/harsh for people like that. Stop trying to turn this game into Minecraft or Pubg. It is inherently not those games for a reason.

Im more concerned about how the rhino can encumber itself in like 5 seconds of gathering.

Some Alphas need to be desperately addressed. Lions, Tigers and Wolves specifically. They're spastic as can be, hyper aggressive, move faster then can be believed, and are absolutely unbeatable by most tames. These Alphas in particular need to be addressed because there's no real feasible way to avoid situations involving them. There's other strong Alphas, such as Giraffe, Elephant and Crocodile, but those are all, for the most part, passive or slow. Aggressive alphas from the three apex predators listed above easily create scenarios where there is absolutely no way to win, counterplay or contest the loss they inflict. Ideally, those creatures would simply not spawn Alphas. However, you could also make it so they don't three shot 800 HP wolves/tigers, have the equivalent of 6k HP or the speed of a cheetah on meth. Or all of the above.

Official PvP, including Mega and "Alpha" tribes is simply an evolution of natural human tendencies. It is, also, by far the most popular version of Ark, until 25 man came out (And at that point it was debatable whether that wipe cycle was popular because of the 25 man limit, or the perspective of a "New wipe"). 6 man and small tribes in Ark was a meme, and never really that popular (Or effective). Both Ark, and this game, are fundamentally designed to be extremely taxing, if not outright impossible for small groups/solo players. This game is even more so in that vein then Ark was. Simply put, if you want to play "Solo survival games", there are games in that niche available. Ranging from Battle Royales like PUBG/Fortnite/Blackout, to survival games like DayZ and SCUM. Instead of trying to warp the game into something it never was, and never will be, why not go play the myriad of games that exist to fill your niche.

I honestly don't buy it, to be frank, but it's a possibility. Either way, regardless of who, exactly, it is, they're very well known cheaters. The specifics elude me, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wildcard made Atlas on an earlier version of Ark but forgot to take out the admin cheat exploit tat made TEA so famous. Crashing servers, then corrupting them to force bootloads of earlier saves isn't exclusive to TEA (Which is the source of the "Rollback for raids" rumor afaik), as several other groups were using that same method in Ark. Either way, at the moment at least, there's plenty of ways to avoid the cheaters and have legit fun with non-cheating groups in Atlas. Both on Official, and by using unofficials. However I do empathize with the people who inadvertently had to deal with the cheaters in their regions.

Its not surprising. Between TEA and CG (which that tribe is probably one, or the other), they're some of the most prolific and flagrant cheaters in Ark history. The former was best known for essentially owning Wildcard servers and having personal Admins that would rollback their servers, and using the admin aimbot/esp exploit. The other, CG, is best known for having their leader live stream him aimbotting and using ESP. Yet they're both in Atlas, and it really should surprise no one that they're also cheating. Hell the CG leader is even using his standard, trademark name, Rex.

Wildcard has no investigation or enforcement team for Atlas. They didn't really have one for Ark either. Wildcard, through Ark, is famous for having nearly no real rule set or enforcement mechanism or team. The majority of Ark's playerbase is cheaters and/or exploiters on Officials. Reports for Ark through Wildcard routinely and regularly featured month long waits, and were never answered in a timely manner. Let alone resolved. The problem is that Wildcard has a reputation built upon years of neglect, non-action and failure to enforce their own rules. Threads like this, both on their official forums, and on Reddit, are routinely the only way to have any action taken by anyone. Your post is logical, and it's how it should be in a perfect world, however it is contradicted by a 4 year long record of Wildcard directly contradicting your post. And logic. And basic industry standards.

Certainly, I can agree there are other groups that support it. However, it should be very well known and pointed out that, in this community, the prominent companies are primarily chinese, and they are also very well known and documented cheaters. There are groups like VDD and Rekkm, Australian cheaters, and Chem B/A-Team, American cheaters, but then you look at the prominent cheating groups from China, ranging from BLDX, to Bloodie Marie, to CTSG and CG/Hunter. All of those companies are well documented cheaters, as well as among, if not the, prominent companies/tribes in Atlas/Ark. We could discuss that the group-centric nature of China leads to the chinese groups consolidating behind cheaters, unlike western countries, but the point remains. If you were to look at it in isolation, the majority of Chinese influence in these two games stems from a systemic and cultural acceptance of cheating, even if it is not universal.