Robert Tyburne

Lack of fresh sources of water is what made me turn around and go back to a Freeport and just harvest resources until I find a Company to hang with. Desalination might be a little advanced for the theme, but given the systems it'd be a good addition. Gotta wonder what the wildlife are drinking.

Either as a bonus system or setup so it's not nearly as harsh as it is if you don't have that rounded diet. I didn't miss it at all, and like I said I appreciate what the design goal is. It's out of kilter in it's current incarnation. The gameplay ideals of a large, player-run economic game is not lost on me. It's why I'm as excited for this game as I am, it's a fantastic idea. I don't want to destroy anything, but a balance pass across these systems is needed.

If some of the forum topics and global chat in game, as well as my own experience over the past 10-15 hours, there are a number of features that are in need of balancing or need more thought put towards them. These are my thoughts on a few topics. Food & Vitamin Systems: Both of these are probably the biggest obstacles for players to overcome. Both starting out and attempting to survive out beyond the starting Freeports. Hunger - The amount of food that the avatar needs to consume in order to not starve is tuned to high, and the Freeports would easily see all flora & fauna easily wiped out if it weren't for the high spawn rates. High spawn rate can stay since these are supposed to be where players start and are going to see high rates of harvesting. A player should not need to consume entire fields of berries or consume entire pigs just to survive for a day. Food should fill faster, with hunger not falling nearly as fast as it does. Cold weather further exacerbates this (burning more calories to stay warm), further punishing the player for not carrying around several stacks of food. Vitamins - This particular system has seemingly been nothing but frustration for players, based again on what the various communication channels have to say. It started with a great idea, to push the player towards eating a balanced diet. Vitamin deficiency issues however, like hunger, are far too harsh. The reverse of vitamin overdose is also true. I mentioned this in a previous thread, but the vitamin system minigame would serve better as a way of providing bonuses to the player instead of being yet another way to kill the player. Combat: Trying to hunt or fight off creatures is a pretty painful experience given how jerky the movements are for wildlife. I don't know if this is due to bad animations or poor server resource management (more on that later), but this needs to be addressed since the gameplay loop for many players is going to involve fighting something. I don't know what combat is like against players since I've been playing on the NA PvE server, but I can't imagine it to be any cleaner than fighting the NPC's. Was absolutely a chore to fight a "Giant Bee" on another island in a Lawless Region since it was so small and had a poor animation/movement path, leaving little other recourse other than legging it. Larger creatures aren't much better with their goofy pathing when they're coming after you. Was absolutely messed up by a level 2 tiger because it was continually phasing in and out of existence and lunging silly distances because of how the terrain was sloped in small ways. World Ambience & Gameplay: This could very well sink the servers since it was a seeming challenge to get them where they are now. Freeports have the sounds already, so let's see some of it happening. Also would like to see NPC ships running around trading, conducting piracy, and patrols. Even EVE Online, which this game is being compared to, has four giant NPC empires that provide a network for players to push off from. Currently we're not really playing a Pirate game so much as post-cataclysmic survival game If I understood the lore correctly. Players being the content I totally get and appreciate. But the playerbase is in this position of being quashed before it can really get going due to a variety of bugs and balance issues with no support network to help, forcing players to start nearly at square one. As it is now, the official servers are harsh, unforgiving places where the game world must rely on the patience of players in order to be realized. A big ask in an Early Access title that's had a rocky start. Server/Region Travel: I've moved from one region to another and experienced going from dead of night to clear sky in the middle of the day. Syncing up the time might feel like it's low on the list of priorities, but when a survival game has warmth affect the player's hunger, and then vitamins by extension, it becomes really problematic when a journey that started at dawn is suddenly now at dusk because of the region server time differences. Server Management: I don't personally know a lot about server farms or game server management. Little bit with a paper slot server on Arma 3, but that's a whole different beast. It's a really cool idea to have 40,000 players able to inhabit the same map by connecting servers together. Claim territory, build settlements, sail the seas in search of treasure and adventure. Very romantic. It'll take awhile for hubs to become a thing in the game, as not even Jita 4-4 was built in a day. And therein lies the problem, we're not going to see huge towns or cities that are bustling with trade or activity due to the server capacities being capped where they are. Nor do I see huge fleet engagements being a thing without some serious optimization done to ensure both server and client machines are operating smoothly. As it stands, the playerbase should be expecting small settlements scattered around the world and not huge populations if the server capacity remains as it is. Those are my thoughts thus far. I'll likely add to this post as time goes on, or as issues get addressed.

Which is unfortunate, since this speaks to a poor design. The vitamin system would be better served as providing bonuses for the player. I totally get the "balanced diet" approach to add to the survival experience, and the design goal may very well have been to add a layer of complexity for farmers and what they choose to produce on their islands with their groups to ensure everyone is properly fed. Vitamin A for instance, if the player is able to balance it, could get a bonus to ranged attacks since Vitamin A is linked to vision health. Vitamin B perhaps could make the player's stamina pool deplete slower when active. Food could use a look overall. Food seems to spoil pretty quickly, but there could be some kind of preservation mechanics (making jerky) further down the skill tree. I know hardtack is in there. Hunger needs some tweaking, as it feels like the player is having to eat a rather absurd number of calories to stay alive, even for an active lifestyle that players are emulating at the start. A 19th century fur trapper in North America would eat around 12k calories a day, and the sheer amount of food that players put away in 24 hours looks to rival that. Hydration I don't have much critique on. Likely a larger issue in Tropic and Desert regions, which I haven't been to yet.

The high seas adventure of sailing into the unknown is what I signed up for. But I do think the level 8 cap might be need a little tuning. Level 10 perhaps? Kinda feels as though a few other items under the belt would make the journey a little more forgiving.

I've also run into this, except all that happened to me was hitting level 8 inside of a Freeport region. Soon as I hit level 8, all my skills seemingly reset and I am unable to craft anything. EDIT: Looks like a relog fixed this particular issue for me. Noticed there was also a client updated (5.91), so that may have been the issue for me. Not saying my fix will work for OP.

It doesn't look like Freeports are the only empty servers. Seen several Lawless grids also empty. Either folks are packing it in, which is unlikely, or players are having respawn and connection isues. I've been having trouble connecting to a number of the grid servers for a few hours myself.

Would be nice to add some more flavor. Some of the classic Tolkien choices, some aquatic themed stuff.

We'd have to be able to play long enough without disconnects and unplayable rubber banding in order to compile a list. Official server stability is still getting worked on, and I'd wager that the private server folks are busy playing. And there's already a bug report forum.

Been playing Day of Infamy between checking on the server status. Still getting a fair amount of rubber banding, so may return to 1944 here shortly and crack open a drink or three.

The culture certainly isn't being very kind to Atlas according to the metrics. But it's still tagged as Early Access. Expecting a full-fledged working release is unrealistic. From what I can see, the marks against the game currently in some of the comments (skimming them since there are a lot of them) relate to the delays, the lack of optimization that people feel through low frames per second, and the ongoing connectivity issues that players have been experiencing for the past few hours.

Having legit scarcity tied to geography is exactly what I'm hoping for so that we can have that economy game be a thing. Part of what makes games like EVE so appealing for the economy players.

Do we have a good idea of what the differences in play are, besides the obvious lack of being able to hurt players? I'll confess that I have a harder time seeing such systems as government or trading really matter in a world where there's no player on player action. Is the monster faction going to provide opportunities for these systems to function to their greatest potential?

I'd much rather see their official servers working first before they hand out the server files for the general populace to host. Giving us potentially broken server files would compound the issues we're seeing right now.

Each server is a cluster of smaller servers. Each grid on the map looks like it's being served by a server. Think it changes a bit with the Freeports since players start there. A player limit is also there for each grid since the smaller server would tank if it was suddenly crammed with players. Probable that this is a part of the problem we're seeing right now, despite the extra power in the Freeports. Not saying it's entirely that, but probably a part of it. As for the refund limit, just stay off of Atlas for awhile. Which I'd think the folks that are crying foul and that Wildcard hasn't learned anything from Ark's development would at least be able to take that information and go play something else.