Jean Lafitte

Are you kidding? If you could see the SotD further out, on some servers you'd be so lagged you couldn't move. (*note the sarcasm*)

I'm pretty sure my choice in that case would have been from Monty Python's The Life of Brian. Over and over and over again.

To digress and discuss the preserving bags: My issue with those wasn't about the preservation times though I admit I didn't study them much. My concern became focused around the bags themselves. It was the fact that meat consumed large quantities of salt, something my home island doesn't have. Furthermore, the bags degraded so fast that I had to empty them out. If I'm not mistaken they require either sap or paste to repair which is another commodity my island doesn't have. Once I emptied the bag out, it stopped degrading, and I stopped using valuable resources.

This sounds like a great idea! This turns it into a personal quest which would be a lot more fun than the crap they have now. Not only would this potentially lead to players out sailing and making discoveries, it would probably lead to meeting new people along the way. Where I see this fail is on a PVP server. If the location of your personal fountain just happened to be inside a building, inside a fortress on an island with the largest company on the server and they don't like you much, you'd be screwed. Furthermore, this could have problems on PVE servers should you be given the quest location and before you get there, someone builds a structure on it. And that's why I'm assuming, they put the FOY on the golden age islands where nothing can be built. Having the FOY on those islands isn't the bad idea. Having ONE across all servers and having this ONE guarded by mobs that no solo could even think about killing is a bad idea.

Well bud, I've read many of your posts and agree with just about everything you say. But in this case, I think you may have been brainwashed by eggheads. I'm gonna stick to my position. If the ship is sinking I don't give a damn if you are a pastry chef, grab that bucket and start baling water.

If everything is otherwise working smoothly, I could agree with this. You won't want to hand out pilot pay to a mechanic's assistant. However, everything is not working smoothly in this game. As a matter of fact, using the aircraft analogy, it appears to be ready to plow into the ground like a yard dart. In which case, it's time to put people where you need them and not necessarily where they are skilled. You are not going to teach C# to an art major in a few days. But you can have them play the game and test fixes before you release them to the public.

While this is an oversimplification, when the shit hits the fan it's time for everyone to grab a shovel. You take these doodad makers and you tell them, "guys, we're up shit creek and we need your help. Until further notice, you are no longer doodad makers, you are QA testers. Fire up the game and hop on the test server." I'm pretty sure that even an art major can be taught how to play Atlas in a relatively brief time.

I second this opinion. While the idea of dragging older players back to starting zones to interact with new players is a great idea, right now, I see another lagfest coming. Add into that the decay rate of ships in a freeport and you have a mess. Furthermore, imagine this: A company of players intent on griefing all respawn at the same freeport and begin sinking player's ships, or more easily done, they all make RSloops and block players in till their ship does sink. While I've been patiently waiting for trading to come to this game, I'm inclined to agree with the OP. I'd rather keep tossing shit on the ground as a method of trading than have a shop to play with and the core of the game busted.

The problem I see there is turning the device on and off. I have traders and treasure hunters come visit my claim. With such a device I could completely prevent them from anchoring (I have a very deep and narrow cove), which is not something I necessarily want to do.

Unfortunately, your only home protection in this game isn't a 12ga but a finger you get to wag at them and say, "now stop that." Even when you try to call the police for help you find out they're all wearing clown costumes and are entirely too busy tossing confetti in the air to come help.

So here's the deal. I have roughly 12 claims that are almost completely surrounded by mountains. The reason nobody else wants them is because the water access is quite small and there's nothing of huge value on any of them. But, it's lots of room and basic resources to get you started. What I'm looking to do is help a husband/wife duo who are interested in building, trading or exploring get started in the game. The good points: Tons of basic resources except fiber. There is some fiber but not a lot. Pristine wilderness with a very low predator count. Bears, horses, pigs, cows, chickens, crows, albatross, a few wolves and lions to tame. A few snakes but not many. I have public crafting tables to help you get started. You'll have access to my small shipyard and a pier to park a schooner or sloop. I'm working on a new stable and you'd be free to park animals there when you go out sailing. That means, you could essentially live on the back part of the claim in the deep woods and just ride horses to the front. I have a bear sized trap up front, you'd be free to use it. No taxes. No Chinese (yet). Awesome scenic views. The bad points It's in the tundra so you'll want some fortitude. It does get cold but I run around in the daytime in hides. Small harbor. I will not be building a large shipyard as there isn't much room. So, if you can be happy with a schooner, you'll fit in. Gobs of fiber and sap on islands a quick sail away. No specific minerals, no salt, no coal, no crystal, no gems... just the basic resources. You won't be on the beach. But, it's a pretty safe walk/ride. SotD, we have our share and then some. Whales. Not many but they are there. No alpha whales spotted (yet). Requirements: If you already have a claim please don't. This is intended to help others at the least get a start and if they like it, a home. No asshats. Respect the claims. No shit builds. A shanty to get you started is fine but if you plan to hang around, a respectable building is expected. Again, this is for builders/traders/explorers, not pirates and grog swillers. Respect the neighbors. We're all pretty friendly and help each other out on occasion. I was referred to the other day as the local coast guard for rescuing a neighbor from his sinking ship. If interested, please PM me and we'll set up a time to talk.

Look on your discovery screen. It will tell you there are 1719 discoveries to be made. If you want levels, hoist the sails.

What did I say mister cool emoji dood? What did I say? Oh wait, let me pull one from your playbook and quote myself. And if I had a game that was #17 a month after release, you're damned straight I'd call it a success. Let me clue you into something dimwit. There's an old saying in business, "there's no such thing as bad publicity." Even you on your soap-box with your libelous posts, you're just creating more publicity. And when people like me shut you down, it causes others to want to play this game even more. If Atlas is going to fail, it will fail just as fine without you flooding these forums with half-witted defamatory rantings.

Here we go again with your crusade to kill anything WC/GS does. Tell me, just how successful have you been at that? Oh wait, you haven't have you. You'll pardon me if I base my opinion on the game itself and not your cockeyed viewpoint. Go buy the game and then you'll have a right to bitch. AND IF YOU READ THE POST PROPERLY... NOTHING IN THERE IMPLIED PRIDE. I was stating very public facts. Do the math moron. Using the 24 hour peak: Ark has lost ~56% of it's players since peak. Atlas has lost ~45% since peak, less than Ark. BOTH are still in the top 20 games. If I had 2 games on Steam in the top 20, I'd be doing a serious happy dance and laughing at your stupid attempts to sabotage them. If you get to #10 in the Steam rankings by being messed up beyond belief then YOU should develop a game. It oughta hit at least #2. My god man, you are the only person I know of who's so insecure that they need to quote themselves.

Ark Stats 27,448 - playing 21 min ago 46,377 - 24-hour peak 106,170 - all-time peak Atlas Stats 21,355 - playing an hour ago 31,772 - 24-hour peak 58,788 - all-time peak Ark is currently listed at #10 Steam's top games by player count. Atlas is #17. I'm not sure where you learned business or economics but those do not look like failures. As a matter of fact, based on the success of Ark, I'd fully expect them to use the same exact playbook they did with Ark. In this case, the method obviously isn't broke so they have no reason to fix it. Despite all the bitching that's been done about Atlas, all the threats to quit and all the prophecies of doom, the fact is, people are still playing it. A lot of people. As disheartening as this sounds, until those numbers start to tank, expect them to proceed exactly as they have planned. Apparently they're going to have to screw up even worse than FOY.

Anyone figured out how to paint on just a canvas? Tried, doesn't seem to work and the Ark canvas is different. Painted it a solid color and tried to save it, said it couldn't save a blank canvas. Tried to load one of the compass snapshots to it, the canvas wouldn't list the file to load.

I didn't disagree with that but you're looking at a dev TEAM, not one individual who knows the entire code base. Changes to one function could have drastic effects across a lot of other parts of the code and it's not as simple as one guy in one department working on one set of code saying... hummm... I just fix that now.

Then I shouldn't have to give you a childish lecture on just how difficult it is to make stable, idiot proof code should I? Nor should I have to sit here and have your educated ass lecture me about being a fanboy because we both know what we're talking about.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/what-is-unreal-engine-4 or you want something easier? Try Unity. https://unity3d.com/ Come back in 6 months when you have a working knowledge of C# programming and either of these engines and say that again.

You need to get your head out of your ass and read the forums. I am NOT one to suck up to the devs. Read my posts and you'll find out I'm just as pissed off and just as vocal and just as critical about what's screwed up as everyone else. The difference between me and you is, I write code and I understand just how difficult it is to prevent unintended ways that the code is used. The code for this game is MILLIONS of lines... do you understand that? MILLIONS of lines and much of that is written by another company who makes the gaming engine. Do you understand that? That changing that entire gaming engine isn't as easy as you would like to imagine. If you think it's so damned easy, why don't you go out and download Unreal Engine and write your own game... it's free. I'm going to say this again and maybe it'll sink into your thick skull. They have attempted one fix already and will most likely attempt more. Just be glad I'm not one of the dev's otherwise I would have already thrown my hands up in the air at your brand of ignorance, looked at the other devs and said, "Well, we made bank. What's our next project?"

If they didn't care they wouldn't have bothered with the first attempted fix. Get a grip.

Again, that may not be so easy to fix. What if they're just 1 under being encumbered? Do you still allow that grappling hook to work? How about climbing picks? What about zipline anchors? At what point do you say those things won't work? 50%? Well, ok, so it takes twice as many of them. Ok, so in this scenario they all build cages and put them on your ship. They then toss chickens in that cage and lock it so you don't have access to it and you... are over crew and can't do jack about it. I haven't tested this theory but from the way this game works, yea, I should be able to sink ships with chickens.

Well, I see several problems here. First, there's the over-crew issue whereby they could essentially sink you just by tossing a gob of passive/nofollow chickens on your ship (wait, did I just give them ideas?) Second, there's the overweight issue. Now, if they simply prevented ships at anchor from being made overweight then of course they wouldn't sink. But what about when you lift anchor? What was to prevent them from all jumping aboard your ship and sinking it that way? If they had prevented ships from moving when overweight, what's to prevent them from all boarding your ship and preventing it from moving as a griefing tactic or, as I suggested, just tossing a bunch of chickens on your ship that you can't get rid of and just walking away, causing you to be over crew the minute you lift anchor What they have to come up with is a method that prevents unintended weight, not added by the company or the owner AND unintended crew being added without allowing a griefing method. That may not be as easy as it sounds as it creates even more issues. One thing I've done in the past to allow for easier trades is to unlock some boxes on my ship so the trader can easily transfer items without having to toss them on the ground. How to you allow that to happen without allowing the potential for griefing? Look, they've already attempted one fix. It's not a complete fix but it has prevented one type of griefing and forced them to switch to others. I've always said that writing code is easy. Making it idiot proof is the hard part. They're learning from their mistakes as we progress and are attempting to fix them. For now, all we can do is keep making them aware of these methods and hope they fix them quickly as they come up.

Shouldn't have to.

Because then we'd all be hating on Germans and not the Chinese.