MaxPower

I can't believe this is still an issue. I'm not one to defend the devs but its been clear from day one that Atlas is NOT a 17th century pirate game. Simply reading the entire Steam page would have revealed that its a sci-fi fantasy game... and that more advanced technology was going to be part of the game eventually.

Now, you may not like that but that's what Atlas is and has always been. Perhaps you should have done the responsible thing and read the entire store page before you bought the game... because if all you wanted was a realistic pirate sim, you bought the wrong game. 

 

4 hours ago, Atlantian said:

The engine does all or nothing, so foundations on metal would kill the spawn.

You could kill and grief an entire island that way.

Technically you can do that right now by building an enclosed structure on top of resource nodes. 

When everyone freaked out after resource spawn blocking was enabled on lawless I don't get why the devs didn't just reduce the block range instead of turning it back off completely. Perhaps there is some technical reason for it but in Ark you could set the spawn block range pretty low without issue.  

11 hours ago, Talono said:

Well, i dont think this should be possible.

https://goo.gl/images/XVVHVQ

There should be a limit to the amount of guns you can put on a ship because yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. 

Perhaps three days isn't long enough but quite frankly with a limited amount of land in the game, your claim can't be safe forever without you logging in.

You're worried about what happens if you go on vacation. So lets say you go on vacation for two weeks.... should you be allowed to occupy part of the game world for two weeks when you're not even playing? I'd argue no. If you want to own territory in the game, you should have to play the game regularly to maintain it. That's always been the rule with games where the player was able to own part of a limited world.

 

3 minutes ago, Jatheish said:

Team is looking into this at this very moment

Well that's good to hear. Is there any specific reason weight sinking on ships can't just be disabled on anchored ships in PVE? That seems like the only way to keep this kind of thing from happening.  

How about addressing the fact that its still possible (and fairly easy) to sink other players ships in PvE using weight? Its as though you guys are ignoring the issue after the first half hearted and poorly conceived attempt to fix the issue. Its a game breaking issue that's keeping my group from playing... and if its not fixed soon, we'll be done for good. 

On ‎1‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 6:18 PM, Captain Jack Shadow said:

NOT synonymous.  Nazis were socialists, not conservatives.  Socialism is what Nazis, Fascists, Communists, and the American Democrats had in common.  That is THEE ONE thing they all had in common.

You should also know a few historical facts that have eluded so many people.  The Civil Rights Bill was authored by Republicans, after the Civil War, not Democrats.  It was defeated by Democrats.  It was resurrected in the 60s.  Only one Republican voted against it, many Democrats did, and Dems who controlled congress held it up in committee.  Had they not done so, the Bill would have been passed while Kennedy was President, not LBJ.  LBJ threatened them...long story...so they let it go to the floor for a vote.

There was no switch of the parties, as some claim.  The Dixiecrats, the racist Democrat Caucus, all remained Democrats, and continued to get elected.  Two Democrats switched places.  They were not members of the Dixiecrats.  However, for instance, Senator Byrd from West Virginia, who held a very high position in the Klan, remained a Democrat and remained so until his recent death.

In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, many Northerners, many who were Republicans, moved south.  Biggest factor was Central Air Conditioning, along with NAFTA which closed many factories in the North.  People moved for work.  There are volumes of research, if you care to look for them, that showed that as racism decreased in the South, participation in the Republican Party increased.

Learn real facts...don't perpetuate myths.  You will be a better person for it.  I grew up a Northern Democrat.  I am now an independent.  I live in the south.  The least racist people I know, are Republicans. The most racist ones I have met...on job sites...lifelong Democrats.  The parties are not homogeneous groups where everyone in each party thinks exactly alike.  Pedos support the Dems for their progressive stance on sexuality, but I wouldn't dream of labeling all Dems as such.  But then, I use logic for my reasoning, not feelings.  I don't believe at all in identity politics.  I judge people as individuals.  Try to do the same, and you won't come across as ignorant, in the future.

Its very off topic so I'm not going to get into it too much... but what a load of horseshit. This post right here kids is why you don't take history lessons from people on internet forums. Youi won't believe the crazy shit people believe and push as absolute fact. 

The one hill you seem to be trying to die on here that's horribly wrong is that the Nazi's really weren't socialist. It was in fact in the parties name but socialism didn't align with any of the goals or ideology on the Nazi's. Hitler was in reality a fascist (and his use of nationalism draws scary parallels to our current president), which despite whatever nonsense you're on about to make yourself feel better about your own questionable beliefs is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum from socialism.  

I could go into it more but here... someone already has: https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/

As with a lot of conspiracy theories, you're over thinking things wayyyyy too much. The idea that they've already pulled the plug is just tin foil hat nonsense. I don't have much nice to say about the devs but nothing you've put forward here is any sort of evidence that they're packing it in or that "major" layoffs have occurred (its a tiny team to begin with, can't really have major layoffs). 

The reality is, the devs just aren't that good at what they do. They don't test their releases properly, don't address game breaking issues in a timely manner unless its impacting streamers and don't properly consider the ramifications of changes they make on the entire player base. Its really that simple and we saw much the game thing with Ark. The reason it SEEMS like their work is worse lately is because they've shifted from putting out the fires at launch to actually working on the balance of the game and adding content... and they've made changes people really haven't liked and introduced a few pretty awful bugs. Again its not a sign that the team has been decimated or anything, just a reminder that these guys also made Ark. 
 

17 minutes ago, Hodo said:

NO to invulnerability timers.... just NO NO NO NO. 

If you cant defend your stuff then you dont need your stuff.  I am not on 24/7 but my company is.   Yes we have lost ships, buildings, and countless hours of work... but that is the nature of the game.    

So what you're saying is that you spend your time in game raiding offline players and companies? Got it. 

58 minutes ago, RyuujinZERO said:

OPs theory is way too optimistic.

I think it's for the streamers. Easier to pop structures are more cinematic for streamers, half these weird changes directly benefit pvp streamers and their entourage while putting their victims at a disadvantage. 

Streamers are the cheapest way of advertising your game to a large audience and grapeshot seems to take advantage of this.  Remember how in the early weeks their twitter would never even address people's concerns or issues? All they ever did was plug pvp streams/videos.

 

/cynicism 

 

Its been pretty clear from day one that all the devs care about is catering to streamers and large companies. Very few of the changes they've made benefit anyone else and Jat even got super excited talking about his communication with streamers during the dev stream. They're not hiding it. Massive game breaking issues that effect PvE and solo players are being ignored (and compounded in some cases) so that the streamers get everything they want. Eventually they'll realize most streamers won't stick with Atlas and that most gamers aren't streamers.... but it'll probably be too late at that point.  

12 minutes ago, Scorpionshawn said:

EVERYONE YELLING ABOUT EARLY ACCESS SHOULD SUPPORT A MONTHLY WIPE!!! 

Its only EA so what do you have to lose

Quite frankly if I were leading the development of a game like Atlas, that's exactly what I'd do. It'd give the devs a little more breathing room with game breaking issues and major changes would be less of an issue since you wouldn't have to worry about causing problems with the existing server data. Want to make a huge change the claim system that would be disruptive to current claims? No problem... save it for a wipe (btw, if they're never wiping the servers don't expect a significantly different claim system. Ever.). 

Of course you'd have a huge player retention issues if you did that. 

19 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Again, a failing of the devs both in code, and enforcement.  Seriously, this is why unofficial servers are usually better.  They tell you not to do something, so you don't, or the admins will deal with it.  In the case of the things you noted, they should, and could make areas that have special resource nodes, a no build zone.  Like, you can't build within a certain distance of metal nodes, or gem, or crystal, etc...  Other resources, such as Trees, rocks, etc..., are common and everywhere, so those would not block a building.   On PvE, you should be told not to try to circumvent this by encircling the area with structures, just outside the no-build zone.  On PvP, they might allow that, as you would have the ability to knock those things down.  Or, in both PvP and PvE, you could go over them with grapples and picks, but at least the resources are there, since you can't block their spawn, and you could not build a roof over them because no foundations or pillars.

At the same time, the Devs should state, clearly, what is and is not allowed, and then enforce the rules they state.  If appropriate, one warning for offenses that may seem gray area, but for many, there does not need to be a warning.  You don't need a warning not to try to sink other people's ships in PvE.  You know it's not allowed, so if you do it..no warning...just a ban.  People will do what the Devs let them get away with.  Look, in American Football, nothing is stopping you from grabbing the other guy's facemask...nothing except the rules, and the Refs to enforce the rules.  Players rarely do it, and usually when they do, it wasn't their intention.  Why?  Simple...the refs strictly enforce that rule.  If they did not, players would do it almost every play.

I agree fully with everything you're saying although I doubt there will ever be a written set of rules for the official servers. They might come out from time to time and declare a specific thing is against the rules but if Ark is anything to go by, pretty much anything short of hacking or obvious exploiting will probably be allowed.

No one has complained about PvE ship sinking than me,  yet I do wonder how "illegal" this specific tactic is. To be clear, I'm not condoning this sort of thing. In fact, I live right next to this server and sail through it pretty frequently... so this would have potentially had a directly impact me if they left the pillars in place.

However, its a real grey area. If its a piece of territory they've claimed, don't you pretty much have a right to build whatever you want in it? I mean, I could build a large pier that sticks out into the ocean which people not paying attention to might hit and sink occasionally. Should that be against the rules? Are there even rules anywhere listing what's cool to build and what isn't? Is it considered exploiting to build houses around resources for example? There's a lot of grey here and I'm not sure where the rules should be drawn to be honest.     

The problem with these sort of posts is always that while you say you're fine with negative feedback and legitimate complaints about issues that need to be fixed.... you're probably not. I read every post on the forums and while they were pretty toxic the first few days, there are not a whole lot of whining for the sake of whining posts right now. People freaking out that the servers didn't work day one? That was pretty ridiculous but right now most of the posts I've read are legitimate feedback. 

And that's part of what Early Access is about. Its about letting the devs know not only what's broken, but what you don't like since its easier to make design changes now than it is to make them two years from now. That's not to say the devs should be dogpiled or anything but they've certainly made a few questionable choices and they've drug their feet on fixing critical game breaking issues while tending to far less important problems (You can still sink other players ships in PVE but they rushed to add a streamer stealth mode when they complained for example). Early Access or not that's a problem since its still a live service and game breaking bugs should still be high priority.   

So the whole idea of "Well, its Early Access so shut up and don't complain until its release" is just asinine and shows a lack of understanding of the game development process. Not to mention no matter what you say this is most definitely a pointless whine about people giving feedback and little more than a giant ass kiss.  
 

16 minutes ago, Lukas1987 said:

I know it already count towards ship weight,just did mentioned correctly. You might be right about render bomb but if our pc's are able to render 200 ships in FoY areas then a single galleon wouldn't be much of an issue

We're not talking about a single galleon though unless you're playing on a private server by yourself. 

When considering performance impacts you have to look at the worst case scenario. Sure, for you sitting there by yourself somewhere decorating a galleon the structure limit could probably be a lot higher and not cause issues. However, what happens if 20 galleons with higher structure limits meet in battle or anchor by each other in a free port? Not to mention that eventually the game world is going to be filled with Galleons... reasonable limits to how many structures/items each one has on it are needed. 

10 hours ago, GugoKapet said:

ATLAS - a massively multiplayer first-and-third-person fantasy pirate adventure. ATLAS will host up to 40,000 players exploring the same Globe simultaneously, with an unprecedented scale of cooperation and conflict! Stake your claim in this endless open world as you conquer territory, construct ships, search for buried treasure, assemble forts, plunder settlements and hire crew to join your powerful growing armada.

Read carefully ! it's not Fantasy MMO with boats ! this is Fantasy MMO about Boats ( Ships )  and pirate adventures , plundering , and building your own armada ...  , for me it's sounds that game about naval actions and ship battles !

P.s i have "Navel Action" too , but that game just different ! in Atlas i like idea , that i can with friends play in one ship and do maritime things ... 

That's selective reading though. This is also from the game description on the store page: 
 

Quote

A Brief History of ATLAS

Long-ago, far above the watery world of ATLAS there once existed a magic-powered “Golden Age”-- where great Empires of the Sky lived at peace alongside magical creatures, flourishing upon floating continents above the clouds, all powered by a magical source of energy known as the Heart of the Goddess, granted by the powerful beings who dwell in the stars beyond. However, a powerful warlord known as Xevos sought to unite the human civilizations over the magickind, and launched a war that broke the Heart into pieces, unleashing a wave of destruction that shattered the floating landmasses and plunged them into the waters below. 

Many generations later, as living memory of the “Sundering” has faded into legend and the once-plentiful magical energy has long since dissipated, descendants of the protectors of the Heart of the Goddess -- known as “Pathfinders” -- emerge from their provincial oceanic lives to explore the new continents and islands, and seek out the power they may yet contain. Across the vast new world they’ll encounter hostile creatures, technological remnants of the Golden Age past, and ultimately the undying spirit of Xevos himself and his soulless “Army of the Damned”, still intent on recovering the pieces of the Heart of the Goddess to raise the continents once again under his vision.

If the latest generation of Pathfinders can outwit and outgun Xevos and his legions, and recover the Heart pieces for themselves, they will be faced with the very same choice: whether to attempt to restore the old world, or build a new better one…

There is no way you should have assumed Atlas is a plain and simple pirate game. As someone else said earlier in this thread, make sure you know what you're buying before you buy it. 

53 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

The biggest advantage to "anchored ships don't lose health on pve" is that its future proof.  Right now, they are playing whack a mole to fix exploits one by one.  And forgetting things (ladders). 

The current approach requires them to fix other players weight on ships, then weight on ladders, then the fact that you can leave a ship undocked next to an enemy so tornadoes hit it, THEN the fact that you can kite sotd against other ships, THEN whatever else people come up with.

 

If they constantly only approach what people are doing at that second, they will never hit their goal as long as they keep adding content. 

Exactly. The only true fix to is to removing weight sinking and damage (at least offline damage) while anchored in PVE... otherwise the devs are going to be chasing down PVE sinking exploits for months (or not since they don't seem to care much about the problem).

1 hour ago, StefanKyle84 said:

If they used a 3d party software this is hacking and also violation of the Code of conduct and Intellectual property which must be severely punished. Why they don't punish these bastards and let them go away easily ??? 

While you're correct that using 3rd party software to break pin codes is (or at least should be) against the rules... its not really "hacking". Its just a program that enters in pin codes for you really fast. Anyway, Cantore is correct... don't use pin codes, ever. 

As for the sinking of ships, that isn't hacking either. That's just exploitation of poorly designed game mechanics. 

12 hours ago, MindOfMadness said:

They can still hang off your ladder and apply weight to your ship...  keep ladders up and use T to whistle lowering them.

You can't lock ladders and they can be lowered by other players so don't assume that will protect your ship. There are also other ways to sink ships still... so no ship is really safe right now. 

Its funny because the devs spent quite a bit of time on the stream last week talking about how every change needs to be carefully thought out and ramifications considered... which seemed perfectly reasonable. Yet its impossible that much thought or testing has gone into most of the game mechanics unless the thought was "Gee, how can we piss off the player base the most?".
 

1 hour ago, Jean Lafitte said:

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?"

Fun fact: While I generally don't mention what I do for a living in online discussions I actually have a BS in Software Engineering and work as a programmer for a living. I've even worked as a programmer (and designer) on multiple games, including one built in Unreal 4. Again, I don't generally bring that up but I'm not going to sit here and be lectured to by some kid that's played around in Unreal for a couple hours and thinks they're an expert. To respond to what you said: 

1. I have no idea how many lines of code make up Atlas and neither do you. It could be a million or it could be less depending on a LOT of factors. Unreal is capable of taking care of a lot of things for you and you can make full games without ever writing a single line of C++ code. I'm sure that's not the case here but it does make it hard to know just how many lines of custom C++ code the game contains (the engine source code doesn't count unless its been heavily edited).  

2. Total code means jack shit when it comes to solving a specific issue. Honestly, that line right there is what shows you don't actually know much about software engineering or working on a large project. Software projects, including games, are broken into a bunch of smaller code files. You don't have to pour over millions of lines of code to make changes to specific game systems, you simply edit the code files (and with Unreal, perhaps the BPs) specifically associated with the system(s) you're changing.... which are likely a tiny part of the overall project.

If you've never worked on a large project than sure, it might be intimidating or down right scary to open the project files for something like Atlas. However, when you do it for a living and know what you're looking at its really not. Most of the project is irrelevant to you at any given time.  

3. I'm also not really sure what you're getting at by pointing out the source code for the engine was written by a different company. What does that have to do with this? I suppose its possible they made changes to the source code to make the weight sinking system possible... but I seriously doubt it. I can think of several ways to make such a system in Unreal without ever touching the source. Hell, you could do it in BP if you wanted and never write a single line of C++, although it probably wouldn't be very efficient. 

4. Now one thing you're right on in your last post is that its not always super easy to make changes to an established code base. However for professional developers and a well organized project its not exactly rocket science either and like most things the difficulty in making changes depends on a lot of factors. 

5. While I've never worked on a project with a large active community, it wouldn't bother me to see someone complaining about a game breaking bug that we've failed to address for weeks on end that is causing people significant lost time. I'd know that's on us and there wouldn't be much of an excuse to be made on our part. It would be far more frustrating to see people defending such a failure by spewing a bunch of nonsense. 

Anyway, I don't like irrational debates so I'm done revisiting this discussion with you (post a reply all you want, I won't read it). The bottom line is being a software engineer and at times a designer is actually why this issue is so frustrating to me. If I was working on a game and there was a bug like this it would be top priority. Its an issue that allows PVP on a PVE server. That is the definition of game breaking and should be an all hands on deck high priority issue that gets solved immediately. Its obvious that has not been the case here (plenty of other fixes for smaller issues and content have been added since this was first reported) and the devs should be held to account for that. End of debate.

3 minutes ago, 8ball said:

That change was made last week. It's to combat grief sinking boats in PVE.  Would you rather have that back?

We still have that.... this wasn't an effective fix, at all. 

2 hours ago, Jean Lafitte said:

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

It took them weeks of being harassed on twitter and the forums to implement that "fix"... and it was extremely half hearted. Given all the other things that are far less important that have received attention since launch, its pretty obvious this is a low priority issue.  

Perhaps you should stop sucking up to the devs and pretending everything they do is perfect. I enjoy Atlas and will (and have) give them props when deserved but on this issue they have dropped several balls and deserve a lot of criticism. If all youre going to do is give them lip service here, perhaps you should find a different topic to do it in.  

2 hours ago, Anotep said:

Since nobody is actually doing something against it, why dont you guys band togheter and grief them back? There should be more european players on EU servers then chinese atm. Track them down and grief back. 

Just a guess here but it probably has something to do with playing on a PvE server specifically not to be doing battle with other players. If the only solution is to wage open PvP on a PvE server.... things are really broken. 

2 minutes ago, Jean Lafitte said:

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

1. It'd be pretty hard to jump on your ship after you start moving. Its takes time to move with a ton of weight on you so its not like you could run and spring your way onto someones ship really quick once they raised anchor. 

2. Same goes with griefers trying to pile a ton of crew on your boat when you lift anchor. Pretty damn sure you'd notice 20 people waiting to jump on your ship... if you decide to raise anchor in that situation, its your own fault. 

3. Yes, if you can board other players ships and they don't move when overweight that could also be exploited. However, I'd much rather have to deal with that than the fucking thing sinking as a result. Not to mention it should be easy to add an "expel" option to "enemy" players and tames that are on your ship so in PVE you can kick players off your board. 
 

Quote

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?

There is no way to do that. Its impossible to tell the difference between unintended and intended weight in most cases. All weight on the ship has to be calculated otherwise it can be exploited... its just that, while anchored, ships shouldn't sink due to weight and you should be able to remove people from your boat that you don't want there.  

Quote

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.

You're giving them too much credit while over stating how complex most of these fixes like are. They've been aware of the problem since day one and all they've done is spent a few minutes hacking up a lame ass solution they didn't even bother to test. Plenty of other things have been fixed and added but this issue has received very little attention despite how big of a problem it is. Its not that its super complex, because its not... its that they don't care. This issue impacts solo players, small groups and PVE... none of which the devs really care about. 

7 minutes ago, Grongash said:

What is so damn hard about just not letting anchored ships sink with overweight and instead pin them down? No way to exploit it and faster than the current crappy "fix" that only brought problems. Makes you wonder if any of them even play this game. 

My honest guess? The developer that came up with the overweight system thinks its the cleverest thing in the world and doesn't want to touch it. Seriously, there is no other excuse unless their backend systems are such a mess that its extremely complicated to make such a change... which would reflect pretty negatively on the dev teams ability to be honest. 

And its pretty clear they never actually tested the current "fix" for the weight problem. I mean, making it a death sentence to step on a raft by accident yet still allowing non-allied players to grapple your ship and climb your ladders is just horribly sloppy.  

1 minute ago, Herasea said:

i think it's an easier said than done. Also that means they will jump on your ship and log-out, meaning your ship won't be usable anymore. it's better, but still exploitable.

The current fix could still be left in place so people aren't able to board your ship in PVE (although it needs to be fixed so you don't get stuck to the damn thing if you accidently step on a raft). Conversely, since they already have the systems in place to detect that other players are on the ship they could add a radial menu option to "expel" players from the ship so if someone does get on, you can kick them. 

1 hour ago, Jozzie McTowel said:

They probably "balanced" those things (elephant rhino) because they were unable to find a way to make them add their real weight to boats, people would abuse this by storing elephants or rhinos in boats to get much more materials on a boat than they should be carrying. Same goes for the weight sinking of ships. Rather than making it impossible for a player to carry more weight than they should by dropping it all on the floor and picking it up by E you can over encumber yourself AND still move your character. Their fix is make people hover over achored shipdecks, unable to get off and having to die, whilst the weight thing wasn't fixed cuz people still abuse it by haning from ladders or spamming a boat with materials cuz they can still overencumber themselves. Now you say balancing is ezpz for them cuz they have to just change some numbers. I'm not gonna dig into which patch came out with what new bug, but it wouldn't surprise me if we had another doors not working glitch after a "simple" balancing patch. Yet again priorities and the sheer lack of insight in coding and knowledge to properly find a solution not a workaround that is bringing more frustration to the playerbase.

Don't get me wrong... the ship sinking glitch is the biggest issue I have with their game and I've pretty much not played for a couple weeks because of it. There is certainly room to complain about the way the devs go about things, their priorities and their testing procedures (if they have any at all).

My point was that you're getting bent out of shape about a balancing "fix", when there are likely going to be a million such fixes and changes over the next two years. If you can't handle that, don't play.