I am still playing ark and knowing how good is it i have bought atlas at day one.
I feel this game really hard compared to Ark. Vitamins are too much, is just very hard to survive at start and that feature make the gaming experience frustrating,
My suggestion :
1) increase (double) the amount of wood that can be gathered with hands (i mean when you have nothing is so easy to die trying to carve wood from threes ) or reduce from 6 to 3 the number of wood needed.
2)avoid alpha animals spawn in lowland or in lowbie spawn area,
3) make the spawn better... how much people must die in the deep of ocean killed by jelly fish or sharks before you take on spotlight this issue?
4) insert as in ark the chance to play this game single player or put it on your pc using not dedicated server.
5) last but not least remove sleeping player from the ground (in PVE server only) so it will cost less resources to server.