Bullet Force

The developers on here don't often get much support but their decision today to cater to both types of player - both the hardcore and the casual is one that should be met by a round of applause. This is a fantastic decision that will keep everyone happy and not alienate sectors of your player base. Well done devs.

Yep well said. A lot of folks on this forum were not pleased to say the least with these changes being forced upon them. The devs have taken a logical and very sound decision in realizing this and listening to their player base. Now everyone will be happy us hardcore players can wage unlimited war and the casuals can do their thing on that other server.

Its the other way around. Hardcore players will play Empires where they will engage in brutal ARK style wars and be able to make strategic decisions to give themselves the advantage, while quasi PVE types will enjoy the safe Colonies server while still enjoying the excitement of theoretical PVP.

Yep. What this game is lacking is content and that is also why a lot of players have stopped playing it. Having only 3 combat ships in a naval game is a bit pathetic to say the least.

The point I was making is that in games like this don't remain static they are fluid. You have to adapt and change or you get left behind. A tribe could be your enemy on one day and the next day be a useful partner* or even an ally. In a previous example I showed how you can maximize profits while taking minimal personal risk by feeding off your allies. The great thing about these kind of games is that you can get ahead not just through brute force but through subterfuge as well. It's a true sandbox there are many ways to crack the egg. One of my proudest moments though was where I managed to get my two allies to attack the large Chinese tribe on our server. In our first few months of playing ARK we had formed an alliance with several other tribes on this particular server. Also on the server was a large Chinese tribe who were peaceful towards our alliance. The server was thus very peaceful and everyone in my tribe was getting pretty bored with this PVE crap. So basically we hatched a plan to kick start a war that would undermine the other tribes on the server while simultaneously strengthening our position. Me some buddies using second accounts made some Chinese sounding characters and created a fake Chinese tribe called "ABC" which then went about aggressively attacking our allies bases while they vigorously chased ghosts trying to find our main base which never existed. To make things look less suspicious we even staged a mock attack on our own base and made sure our allies witnessed it to allay any suspicions. The real Chinese for their part truthfully denied they had anything to do with this, while we did our best to try and link the two. Finally we decided that the best way to do that was to show conclusive proof that they were harboring these Chinese bandits. On a dark night I swam over to the South East Island on the map with a base in my inventory and planted down a fake base in the name of this bandit tribe smack bang right next to the Chinese tribe's main base. I then went on our allies Teamspeak and told them what we had "discovered" and pointed out that it was no more then 30 metres away from the Chinese base and yet hadn't been touched by them and that was really all it took to set things in motion. For several weeks our allies and the Chinese bled each other dry while we more or less looked on and grew stronger. Eventually it ended up a stalemate and then finally a truce but the damage was done. One of our allied tribes disintegrated and we ended up absorbing a lot of their players which was perfect because until that point we were actually the smallest tribe out of the three. At the end of the war we came out as the strongest tribe on the server. The first battle of war the was filmed on video by an ARK streamer. Ironically we were fighting alongside them and in their Teamspeak at the time during this battle: Also I have been in 3 mega tribes or "zerg" tribes are you call them in ARK and 1 in Atlas. I wasn't a leader no but I was afforded a great deal of independence especially in the Chinese ones. I basically ran their Westerner department. By your own words were you were in an alpha tribe which is basically a large "zerg" tribe that only controls 1 sever as to multiple like that of a mega tribe. Alpha tribes definitely don't match the definition of a small so by your admission you were a zerg tribe member.

Tribes ranks and limits exist for a reason. I played ARK for 3 years and never got insided once. If you recruit properly and keep a lid on internal tribe politics its actually pretty easy to stop issues from developing. The main thing you have to look out for as a tribe leader is ambitious players and the formation of micro groups in a tribe. Ambitious players will try to quickly rise to the top even if they aren't deserving of it. The way you beat this is by pitting other players against them. If you encourage 3 players instead of just one to apply for say squad leader then it looks less suspicious when you appoint your man for that job rather then the ultra ambitious guy. Micro groups are another problem. Players will tend to play with other players they know or like. If one faction in your tribe is allowed to get too powerful then you have a problem. It is quite often these groups that try and make a power play or will try and break off from the tribe. The way you solve this is by avoiding the issue in the first place. Never let people that are friends IRL only play together. Force into their group outsiders both to keep tabs on them and also to encourage them to get to know more players. Ideally you want to rotate who plays with who so that everyone gets to know each other thus building up the tribe spirit and loyalty to the tribe as a whole.

It had many positive qualities especially with regards to PVP that this game now lacks. A solid design philosophy that knew what its players loved and loathed. That's why it remain ever so popular. TBH the whole cart meta needs to disappear. The devs have made a mistake turning ground combat into who has the most tames. Tames should be there for farming not fighting.

"Griefing" lol that buzzword again? If someone did that it would be a legitimate tactical play by a PVP player not by a "griefer" nor a "troll" nor a "toxic player".

Look when you are a tribe leader sometimes you have to make tough decisions that may seem harsh but in the long term prove beneficial. If we had helped our allies we would have joined them in the pile of ashes. I made a decision that this would not be a fate worthy of us. The lower ranks never found out about the secret pact and so there was no issue. Nearly all of them were able to put their grievances behind them and followed us into the merger, that is what I call an adaptable player especially in this kind of game you have to be adaptable. At any point your allies could betray you and your enemies could become useful. You can't hold grudges. To give you a little example we once had a sort of solo guerrilla fighter attacking our mega tribes PVE farming outposts we had around the map on one of our servers. This guy was real sneaky and very clever. For about 3 weeks he constantly raided our bases on foot and doing a lot of damage. As a result a lot of folks in our tribe were very angry with him. Eventually we tracked him down and caged him. I then made him an offer. Instead of attacking us he could join our raiding squad. I was taking a big risk here he could of then betrayed us or worse but he proved to be one of finest raiders. With regards to politics you seem a bit naive as there is plenty of it in Atlas as well. I can speak from my own experiences in my current company We have a lot of allies but some are worth more then others. Sometimes some just aren't worth saving, but you never tell them that of course. I'm sure other large companies do this as well but we tend to place our allies in a ring around our main island so that they are in the path of any direct invasion route of our main island. When they get attacled we'll get the notification and be ready well in advanced of any possible attack our main island.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here champ but I didn't mention about betrayal in my post. It was proper allocation of human resources within a tribe.

I was referring to the OP's abuse of the laws of physics.

If they listened to their player base there wouldn't be this silly FOY system for example. There would also likely be more then 3 ships and 2 cannons and 3 guns. I know that is probably asking for a lot.

Summed it up very nicely there Talono.

And how is that relevant to Battlefield again? I'll leave the back door open, you may now exit the building quietly..

This is really a rather irrelevant issue given all the other issues this game has atm.

Right so then why did you try and use it as an analogy for Atlas then?

That is a really bad analogy. A better example would be that your playing Battlefield 5 you've taken all the flags and your team is advancing onto the final flag. Then the enemy team pushes the mercy button and suddenly your guns stop doing any damage. A message then appears on the screen: "Combat will resume at noon tomorrow".

So with all the talk and excitement about this upcoming patch that will ruin PVP servers I'd also like to point out a serious flaw in this game that has been with us for quite a while now and that is the ship variety or rather lack of. For a game that prides itself on being a naval game there is depressingly only 3 ships worthy of choosing from when it comes to naval combat. There is the Schooner which is fast but more fragile, the Brigantine which is less fast and the Galleon which is both fast and strong but more expensive. As a result naval combat after a while feels a bit like deja vu you feel you have already seen all this before. This is also not helped by the fact that in addition to 3 ships we have the incredible variety of just two cannons to select from. What is troubles me about this I have yet to see a single post from the developers acknowledging the problem and certainly none saying they will be adding more variety.

Let the disaster begin...

Cute concept but I guess you've never heard of insiding? It would be very easy to do. Then there is the issue of what is basically communism. Why should I spend 10 hours building a galleon only to have some slacker from my team drive it into rocks when I go to sleep. No one wants to farm for strangers.

Look I will admit in my time playing Atlas I attacked plenty of bases and some of which the owners were probably offline. However I didn't purposely offline them. I would be sailing along and see a target of opportunity. Blow a hole in the wall with my ship and take all the loot and knock off a few tames. There is a key difference between your neighbor sitting there with his spyglass out waiting and watching for you to go offline and someone like me just doing some exploration. None of this changes the fact though that these new changes are going to make life a lot harder for small companies and solo players. A solo player now is basically an enforced PVE player. He won't be raiding bases any longer. For smaller companies it doesn't get much better they will basically be reduced to defensive entities at the mercy of larger companies.

I noticed a lot of people in this thread are going on about this exaggerated PVO nonsense when in reality it wasn't all that common and certainly if it did happen I doubt it was by choice but rather most likely by co-incidence. What folks seem to be forgetting about though is the negative consequences these changes to PVP servers will have for smaller companies. There is just no way a small company can take on a much larger one head to head and win. Now before these changes smaller companies had several options available to them. They could go the suicidal route and attack a larger company head on (the only option now available) on or they could make a tactical play. With the second option it was possible for a small company to inflict serious damage on a larger one by selecting their targets carefully in particular looking for weaknesses in enemy defenses and then striking them where they are most vulnerable. Sadly this is now no long possible even if there are enemy players online and at the target location. This makes ZERO sense on a PVP server. To remove and limit the available strategies that can players can choose from in a game is always a bad move and in this game its a particularly bad move given the different dynamics between large and small companies. Going forward it is going to be very difficult for small companies to make their mark on the world.

NA

I am in TPG in Atlas.

I used to be in Bloody Marie in ARK. Before that BLDX and before that HongXing.