Winter Thorne

It's deja vu all over again. - Yogi Berra

1 yr. ago - We have a new roadmap so you're not getting anything new for 6 months and we're going to wipe all the servers, but there will not be any more wipes.  Oh, and screw you NA Pve.

Dev team disappears to work on another game for 6 months.

Today - Roadmap  What roadmap?  Who needs a roadmap?  We have a new map instead.  And another wipe, and PVE, you're not going to get anything until we finish developing the pvp game, which we've already been ignoring for a year.  That goes double for YOU, NA PVE, you red-headed stepchild.  Enjoy your shutdown, and stop whining, we already told you we aren't working on your game anymore anyway.

So glad I left.  Wish I hadn't popped back to the forums to see if a miracle had occurred and they'd turned this into a real game yet.  Oh well, 37 days to go, and then it'll be a whole New World.

5 hours ago, Muppetish said:

I see a lot of negative comments from the community on here and I can't help thinking that a lot of you seem to be forgetting a few important details. The game is incomplete, we all know that, there is fair warning before purchase and every time we load up on the main menu. The other thing that seems to be forgotten is that devs who waste time responding to every little coment, from players who have forgotten that they knowingly choose to play pre-release, aren't working on the game. Personally I enjoy the game and am looking forward to seeing what Grapeshot have planned for full release. Be patient and if your not happy with the state of the game then just take a break until it's closer to actual launch.

So it looks like you're an xbox player.  Let's see what your opinion is after you've been here over a year, (if you're still around), with few if any helpful or interesting updates, a couple major changes in the wrong direction along with complete wipes, and then the announcement that the next 3 months development will all be focused on bringing some other group of new players online and you'll get a wipe at the end of that.  And after they do all that they announce they will be heads down on patches, but they disappear completely and you find out they're not Atlas patches.

You may have a different perspective than a bright-eyed newbie at that point.

And you should know that they claim to have Community managers and staff whose job is just to, you know, communicate with us.  Nobody expects the coders or graphic artists popping in here.

If that's the way it really went down, it sounds a little bit crazy to me, like the CSR is making it up as they go along.

10 hours ago, Alpha Rabbit said:

As a player who has played both PVP (except this last season) and PVE every season thus far i think it's time PVE got some end game development love and while i know we are on the roadmap i don't think many of us will remain throughout EA in PVE without some change to that roadmap especially when a lot of the current roadmap and patches have heavy amounts of development time devoted to PVP server centric changes.

 

PVE server endgame is honestly boring at this point, we have all done the Kraken and Snowman many times over to help get every new player the achievements, breeding is on Auto pilot especially with how well connected our community is now with trading stocks, we all have way too much materials to craft all the crap we have collected getting to lvl cap that I am at and a lot of other people are at or very close to. What now?...

 

We want PVP on the PVE server in a limited form. Why not just go play on PVP you say? Well we all know each other on the PVE server, we chat all the time on Discords and have a real community going on and we want more ways to interact with other companies but not force them into PVP as a lot of these players just won't go play on the PVP servers, they just won't for a multitude of valid reasons.

What i propose (and i welcome other people with ideas to comment below also) is we turn a few of the central lawless grids in full PVP zones with full land and see combat with full building allowed on land. The sea combat would be welcomed by all PVE groups alone we all want something to build up disposable ships for and just go blow them and each other all up. I would also like to see land combat rewarded with a reason to be there with either some specific tames only spawning here and resources like gold, mythos and multiples of material types to be gathered here. Encourage us to go there and we will go there, we will build defensive and offensive bases and we will fight our friends over them.

I welcome feedback and debate but please no just go to PVP servers for PVP because honestly a lot of our friends just won't and that argument is mute, we just want more end game content within the community we have built.

 

I don't like the idea.  There are plenty of other ways to add more depth and competition to pve without bringing in pvp.

All these proposals do the same thing...add optional pvp and tell pve players "Don't worry, you don't have to pvp if you dont' want to", and then they set up areas of the map where pve players can't go anymore and make fat rewards which pve players can't get.   Pve players become second class citizens on their own servers.  If you're a person that doesn't want anything to do with pvp, this idea has nothing but drawbacks for you.

11 hours ago, photek said:

well this is the devs post:

"To kick off the new year, we’ll be releasing a new patch late next week for both PC and Xbox. It will feature a number of various bug fixes, QoL improvements, and balance tweaks in a similar vein as the update from this past December.
 

The biggest change that players will see this update is the reduction of the max player level from 150 to 120. We wanted to give the community advanced notice of this particular change since it’s a fairly large shift in how players’ characters will experience ATLAS.............. "

 

i would say this sounds like phase ONE (1)

QoL improvements, bugfixes and balance tweaks

you wanna know why? because it is written there.

it is not only the reduction to level 120.

and ofc we all know that not all on this phase one list will make it into this patch, but some of them will.

 

They've already called a delay without specifying anything else in it, but yeah, I assumed there would be something else in there.  I do think anyone who imagines phase 1 to be contained in one patch is nuts though.  They've implied a "process".  It's a long time to wait for anything in the game to change.

1 hour ago, Voromja said:

The Patch that is dropping soon is Phase 1. 
 

I repeat the patch that is dropping soon is Phase 1. 
 

What?

According to the patch notes we've seen so far, this patch reduces the top level from 150 to 120.

Phase 1 according to the roadmap:

Just a few of the changes and fixes (both small and big) we’re planning to make:

Fixing speed sails and increasing overall wind speed effectiveness.

Adjustments to blueprint stat rolls and crafting requirements.

Making improvements to logs for companies.

Increasing max stack sizes for certain items.

Removing the negative effects of status effects, including vitamins.

Giving players the option to choose which Kraken to fight.

Reducing the frequency of surface attacks by sharks.

Increasing the treasure map spoil time.

Cargo Container adjustments.

Replacing the text in the game with a universal font style.

Hiding more text behind the “Extended UI” function

Making ladders easier to climb.

Keep in mind that some of these items are things we want to address quickly, even if we consider them to just be temporary fixes for now. The changes in this phase will provide a much better experience in the present; however, we’ll be circling back to these areas in later phases to make much more extensive changes to these systems. 

One example of this would be “sailing.” We’ll make some early improvements to sailing during Phase 1 (such as fixing speed sails and increasing overall wind speed) and then we’ll loop back to sailing during Phase 2 for a more thorough pass on sailing functionality. 

Some more examples like this include:

Tames and breeding will get a general balance pass, then we’ll do a larger update on tames and creatures in Phase 4.

Blueprint scaling will get some early adjustments in Phase 1, then we’ll address it some more in Phases 2 and 3.

Temporary fixes for certain combat meta pain points (until they can be further ironed out in Phase 3) such as: stat scaling, torpor, NPC swivels, harpoons gliders.

So, no.  Reducing the max level is not phase 1.  There has been no real communication from the developers since Oct., when they communicated that they wouldn't be communicating.   If you're a PC player on official servers, the last real communication for anything having to do with your game was in August.  One of the last communications to those players was that they were going to be getting wiped to enable all the changes they were making for the other players.    The situation is not quite as you've described it.

I can see nobody else is going to answer the OP's question, so here you go:

Where are we on the Roadmap?

According to Google maps, we are at the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

35 minutes ago, Whitehawk said:

Just to say about xbox players not using chat, although you find this in most games anyway, the voice mode in atlas  for xbox doesn't always work and typing a message with a virtual keyboard in a survival game is pretty dicey too. I'm lousy at typing on the pc but the xbox is just impossible for me, and really slow at best. By the time I reply to someone, they are usually gone.

Yeah, a couple of them have told me that.  It's a shame.  There's not a lot of point in playing an MMO when you can't communicate with anyone.

2 minutes ago, Salty Captain said:

They did way better at making a game than any of us have.

Not a good comparison.  It's their job to make games.  We're their customers, not their teammates.

Still no reason for toxic comments, although I do think we've earned the right to a good bit of snark.

One of my biggest beefs with the game is the current environment.  For some reason, xbox players don't use in game chat.  At all.  After the xbox expansion I was excited to finally see a lot of people in the grid, but it's like they're not even there.  Nobody says a word.  Same old ghost town.

On 1/23/2020 at 3:09 AM, PeglegTheAngry said:

Ice and salt together makes the ice last longer, which will vastly increase spoil times of food. Cold weather will also lower spoil times when using ice.

It's been a while since I tested this, but when ice first came out, I checked the spoil times of food with salt, food with ice (including salted meat and fish put in an ice bag), and the same stuff in a bag with both salt and ice.  Including salt in the ice bag lowered the timer and made thing spoil quicker.  I didn't test to see whether salt made the ice last longer, because the important thing to me was the food timer.

*Forgot to add that salted meat in an ice bag lasts way longer than raw meat in an ice bag.*

A stack of 100 ice lasts at least 3 days in a bag in the tundra.  YYMV depending on climate.

Oh wait!    There's been a communication!

Incoming patch - max level reduced to 120.

~thud~

FWIW I started getting low memory fatal errors a few days ago.  Nothing has changed on my side, so I'm wondering who did what.

10 hours ago, lordkhan4444 said:

yall did hear about the Q&A a couple days ago right? they pretty much nerfed pvp  griefing in that game to the ground, check out the video of it on youtube, people are mass refunding that game atm. it pretty much became a PvE focused game overnight sad days

If the griefers won't police themselves someone else will do it.  Good for them.

3 hours ago, The D Legacy said:

that wouldnt be strage at all, specially considering they kicked the PC development of atlas to the side of the road for 10 months to focus on the xbox release, my advice is just wait for "new world" from amazon it seems it will be a medieval-survival kinda thing and is scheduled to release in march.

Have you heard anything about when the beta is supposed to start for that?

NM..I just saw closed beta April, so I'm thinking March is incorrect.

Some of the islands in my grid have changed hands 3 or 4 times since the last relaunch.  Look around for for an island that seems to have little to no activity on it.  Maybe combine that with a long sailing trip to get discovery points.  The population isn't that high, and the flags do expire.

7 hours ago, UnknownSystemError said:

You missed the 24 hour window to remove the foundation. Known display bug. The single foundation timer is still counting down to 12 hours, so displays that it can be demoed. However the structure on top of it, bed, smithy, loom, whatever that has the 10 day timer is what you go off of. Everything poofs at 10 days, so if you have a tannery that says 40, have no fear, at 10 days of them not coming back to refresh it, bye bye. But, if they keep coming back, currently you are SOoL.

I didn't miss it.  The timer's borked.  Possibly the company settler notification is also borked as well, although those have never been that helpful to begin with.  If the beds appear less than 24 hours after you've checked for them the last time, they can't possibly be outside the demo window.

On 9/19/2019 at 11:29 AM, Dollie said:

There has been a Captain's Log and a Roadmap Recap since this thread was first posted:

There's loads of info in the Roadmap Recap regarding acknowledging the issues that we’ve identified in the game and outlining our plans to address them. Aside from those, our current status remains the same: we'll be a little quiet as we focus on important things internally and we're looking forward to a stream and some announcements towards the end of the of the month. 

Oh wait...

There's also some sort of bug with the 24hr demo timer.  I patrol my island every day because people keep putting a damn bed on a thatch foundation all over the place.  I'm finding them, but often the foundation will still be in the 24 hr. window but the bed will not.  How does that happen?  It won't let you demo the foundation because the bed is not in the window.  Guess I'll try opening a bug report on it and seeing if I can get anyone to come get rid of them, but it's pissing me off.

There are a number of people playing or used to play that never played ARK or don't want to play ARK.  I think the players are dropping because the devs announced a long time ago that nothing new was coming for a long time.  See the phases announcement - Phase 1 bring on xbox, phase 2 performance and bug work...it'll be spring before we see any new features probably.  The latest communications have focused on two things - telling us nothing new is coming, and the charity work they did (which is nice, but meaningless game-wise)   Aside from that, they haven't said much of anything to anyone for a very long time.  The game feels dead.

4 hours ago, LunarDracos said:

I finally tamed my first bear.. He refuses to get on my sloop .. ( the words are all blacked out) .   The sloop has enough weight to carry him and me plus  the cart on his back side.. ( already took that off to check) .   is it the design of my deck? that he refuses to get on?? any suggestions?
 

Happens to me all the time.  You'll have to tell him to follow you, then get on the sloop and after some fumbling around the sides he'll get on board.

It's true that not everyone likes doing all the things there are to do in the game.  I don't really like doing power stones or things that require a big coordinated group to do, mostly because I don't have time for it.  But the thing is, I don't expect to be able to have all those rewards because I didn't do the challenge.

Why do the people who don't like to travel and get the DPs expect to still get the DPs?  It's crap.  Do them and get the points or don't do them and don't get the points.

Otherwise, if you insist on demanding all the bonuses without having to do anything, I'll have to find a group to start bugging the devs about handing us the kraken rewards and all the powerstones just by going to a Freeport and asking some NPC for them.  It's no different really.  And what about the people who don't like having to build things?  We could have them hand out prebuilt barns, houses, towns, etc. until every island looks exactly the same and we can all build them in 10 minutes flat.  Instakill whales and sotd for people who don't like to do that part.  What have I left out?  Any other parts of the game people don't like?

I have no problem drinking while playing this game.

Practice practice practice.

1 hour ago, CoopedUp said:

I've been both a settler and an island owner, and I can say that the system is powerful enough and shouldn't be any more powerful.  I have had bad landlords that popped my bookcases and resource boxes to steal all my shit in the opening days after the last wipe, so I do know that trolling potential is totally there even on a PvE server.

HOWEVER, as a land-owner I do know the frustration that comes with people spamming DP beds in the most stupidest locations.  People won't take the time to place them on the top of a mountain someplace out of the way, they would rather hide them under a rock on the beach blocking potential new settlers.  What land-owners need is just a better way of FINDING those things.  Perhaps something like the Flag Aura when you hold 'H' but in a different color/diameter?  Then a land-owner can once a day glider around his island and see if there is any new aura's that stand out from the previous day.

I just wish they would key the settler message for when someone actually builds something.  Then you have the location and can just go there and look.

2 hours ago, PoE said:

lol Ok, Raise your hand if you actually own an island. Do you think I would be here if any of that silly monitoring business actually worked?

The settler notifications are ridiculous.  Nobody can figure out what triggers one.  Someone harvested something?  Someone killed something?  It certainly isn't based on building something because you get the messages when they've not done that.  So it becomes a stupid treasure hunt every time you get a message to see if anything was built.  The best you can do is run around placing a thatch foundation to see if you get the "too close to an enemy" message and see if there's anything thing there.  (Hoping that message works because we know the proximity thing is a little buggy).  What a waste of time.  Before you can do anything gamelike in this game you've got a to-do list - check on crew check on tames, run around the entire island with a thatch foundation, jump on each boat to make sure they don't disappear.  (Because while unwanted beds are forever, boats docked in your own harbor are not).

The devs realized that unwanted spam on owned islands was a problem and offered a howitzer solution where the island owner could raze the entire island including all their own stuff.  That got walked back when everyone pointed out how ridiculous it was.  They could have just made the settler notifications sensible and given a longer demolish window..36 or 48 hours or so.  Only kiddies can play a game where is you don't log in every damn day all your stuff is ruined.

10 hours ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

 

This is a problem with all survival games where raiding and wiping is a thing.  This is exactly why these games get a lot of interest when they are new, but the population dies very quickly.  The population dies, because people feel like they are spinning their wheels.  Farm, build, get raided, farm, rebuild, get raided, farm, rebuild, get wiped, farm rebuild, get raided, farm, rebuild get wiped...quit and move on to a new game.
 

From a PvP perspective, I suppose that's true.  From a PvE perspective, it's the devs that keep wiping you out so you have to rebuild.

Yes, it's EA.  Everybody expects there to be a lot of churn and expects a wipe might happen if there's no way around it.  But in previous EAs, betas, alphas, and other unfinished games, it has always seemed to me that a wipe would happen in order to enable some big new thing everyone was looking forward to, or fix some really rotten thing everyone hated.  Our first one here was to put in a new claim system nobody wanted, and our second was to fiddle around the edges with reconfiguring some of the islands and adding a few more.  Pretty disappointing reasons for wiping everything and everyone out, and the player base has shown their opinion of it by heading for the door.  That's from a PvE perspective.