noquarter

2 minutes ago, Nari said:

The reality is even AAA studios go through phases of development akin to this. Even the quality controlled environment I spoke of where builds are tested for weeks if not months go through these same struggles and iterations you just dont get to see it or pay to get hands on. The "Proper EA" titles people like to point to are often much further in development before you're allowed to actually get your hands on the product and even the edge cases like Star Citizen are accused of scamming people daily. I think people are conditioned to a higher bar that has been set and there's nothing wrong with wanting to see success for a product you see potential in but ARK is not a failure. It has its flaws but paid the bill and profit enough for them to start Atlas. We're only a month in, it's not the end of the world (or game).

I don't consider ark a failure, it's one of my all time favorite games. Doesn't mean the devs didn't make mistakes. I sure don't agree with everything they did. I want atlas to have at least a chance to survive. maybe they made enough money with launch to already insure that, I dunno. But, IMO, they are making very bad decisions so far. 

6 minutes ago, Nari said:

This is a live PvP environment with PvE as an afterthought. To assume that the pendulum must swing the other way under this approach is naive. I'll remind you of Fire arrows and Feat exploits as well as many other security issues already allowing player to basically be gods albeit temporarily. As well as rejuvenation. Does the stack cap? If so when? How many stats is it in total? Is that OP and need to be adjusted? Time will tell.

those weren't patched in though... but they sure were patched out

And you're very right about the time will tell, but in the mean time, it's going the wrong route...on how they are doing things. 

Did you try steam launch options of forcing to connect to ip of server? You could atleast tell us what's happening? crashing? error message? what?

6 minutes ago, Nari said:

There are two primary methods of software/game development. Quality controlled iteration and rapid fire break it & fix it iteration. Grapshot's workflow is the latter and they choose to involve the community early. Meaning our in-game experience will be as chaotic as the production.

It may be an extreme suggestion if your argument is for healthy steady growth and success but it is certainly not unheard of. If the argument is it EA we're supposed to test and break things then no it's perfectly reasonable to expect 1pt per skill and 5x harvest or the ability to simply spawn loadouts/resources until Beta or even release, but that is not what these devs expect from their EA trial. We are community testers and guinea pigs that paid to be here right now not later when things are more balanced and stable. You need to look no further than ARK to realize this. These devs already have a sweet/sour rep from it's history and so far it seems pretty clear that most of that history will repeat itself throughout the course of Atlas's development.

ark was exactly opposite of this in the beginning.  It wasn't until later they started that. It's part of what stunted their growth when they started it and it's what killed dark and light.  If ark had started out like this, it would never have been a Dark and light or atlas because it never would have held its population. This is something you do in closed testing, not EA, or it will fail.

They even know this already, that's why they gave us a character respec button. But even they did that badly, because of the way to fast leveling early on. I'm just saying, if they keep on doing things the way they doing them, this will just be another dark and light. Atlas just has further to fall...so it will seem like it's doing better. 

Here's the one thing I've noticed, concerning your rapid fire theory, why has almost every extreme balance patch been towards taking away or nerfing the player? If its rapid fire like you say, where are the patches that go extremely towards making the player to strong? Nerfing isn't the answer to balancing a game, never has been, never will be. Content is what balances gameplay more than anything. If player are to strong, add more harder stuff to do. 

Think about it, 40k players played this game pretty consistently at first with all the negative reviews and rocky server issues. That means they must have really enjoyed it in the beginning to overcome that....

43 minutes ago, Faicorf said:

Well some people have to be when there are people like you running around claiming there is fuck all wrong with how this game is being developed. I understand wanting to back a game you want to do well, but you are just completely naive.

 

Not to mention it has been named "the worst video game launch in history"

Then whoever claimed that has no experience with MMOs… it's an outright silly opinion and in is no way a fact. I can name several that were worse and were FULL release games. Even the biggest MMO, WOW, was as bad, but I do give them credit, what they had to deal with was pretty major.

2 hours ago, Nari said:

Depends how you define test. They could give us access to spawn commands and all skills then wipe later if the point was to break the game so they could fix it but its not. Just like ARK the point is to let things play out naturally by design and monitor feedback. There is no one way to develop games. They have chosen the rapid fire iteration approach and that's their decision to make.

what rapid fire? You mean swinging from one extreme to another? Just like you just did, spawn commands and all skills? That's the thought process of what is exactly what is bad for the growth of the game. It's not balance, it's throwing shit out because they have no idea what they want it to be most of the time. That's why the keep having to reverse things they do. People say,  well it's early access, it's the time to do that....NO it's not the time to do that.  Stability, bug fixes, sound decisions of balance are what keeps an Early Access game growing and getting better.

Lemme give you just a small example. Testing tames. I had not yet got a giraffe yet. I tried, taming it is so annoying now, I really don't even care to get one to try it out.... I know it might seem trivial. But, i'm kind of a hard person to frustrate. I don't get bored easily. So is just about me figuring out the "new gimmick" or did they make the mechanic 'challenging"? in the end , does it really even matter. If I stop playing because of it, they won't know that. They just see one less person online. They may chalk it up to stone nerf, or lag issue, or taming nerf, who knows.... All I know is, why spend a few hours trying to learn the latest way of taming a giraffe when it just gonna get changed again. So, as a huge supporter of EA and knowing exactly what it means, I ask you what's more important, testing ways to tame or getting to test the tame itself? oh wait, maybe I did tame it and ordered it to get on a ship and it disappeared and received a death message.....see the problem here... 

I'm just one person, I understand in the grand scheme of things, my opinions mean little to this game.  in the end, all that matters to me is, one more piece of content is out of my reach(for whatever reason).

6 minutes ago, tateybread said:

One of the reasons im not enthused by single player and unofficial servers is that by design, those modes can't capture the feel of the full game... a 2x2 square private cluster can't replicate the official servers scope... it's too expensive.

single player shouldn't be limited in the same way multiplayer is, your computer doesn't been the entire map at the same time in single player. It should just load up the one you're in and surrounding nodes. When you move, it loads new nodes. This is how huge map single player works.

3 hours ago, Percieval said:

I highly disagree. I have been oppose to every detail that makes this game easier. (Except for ridiculous stuff like the SoTD spam). We don’t need to forget that this is an MMO and I don’t want to complete a MMO the easy way, that’s just boring. And for the record, this game isn’t dying. This was bound to happen and it did. And no, if they take the game down and release it years later god knows what the hell will happen to this game. Atleast now there’s a say. If they did the same with ARK, it would’ve been a screwed game - just like it would with this one. 

And... by making the game harder, people can't test EA and see what's good or bad for the game. I don't have access to most skills. On any other MMO, that's fine, I can make a new character that is a tank, or healer, a crafter, etc....you can't here. I too want a challenge, But I don't won't the challenge to be  if I'm gonna decide to play today or not...heh

You create the challenge with new content, not by nerfing.….they don't seem to get that, and neither do you I suspect or you'd not be defending 

It's funny, Ark you had access to most stuff (cept for that time they made skills to expensive and changed it pretty quickly) Ark, you could hit end game pretty easily. But a lot of people stayed anyway, because it was fun. All they had to do was wait out new content. But, I digress. They also made a lot of piss poor decisions that capped their game pop growth. 

4 minutes ago, Caldrin said:

It's normal for early access titles to lose a lot of players.

It will settle down to the people Woh are ok testing EA games and are enjoying the game.

People will come back for large updates and leave again after.

Nearly all EA games are like this.

Dark and Light currently 303 people playing. I wonder exactly what devs were part of Dark and Light and if those devs are part of atlas. I see the exact same path, terrible, terrible decision making. Both offshoots of Ark.... 

To me both have one thing in common. They focus on balancing before bugs. Their balancing generally has a negative effect on EA testing.  

You can't make drastic changes constantly and expect to keep 50k players. No matter if you "turn it back" later with another patch, once people quit only a few come back at a time for big updates. And each time, it's less and less. Until you get Dark and Light 303 current players.

Lemme put it like this, The minute they took away all the skill points in one of the early patches. I knew the path this game was going right then and there.  It showed their thought process.

37 minutes ago, Bradley1928 said:

They never did a wipe on ark till release and even then it wasn't a wipe, it was a new cluster. I doubt they'll do it on Atlas.

Yes they did wipe ark very early way before release.  One time was so awesome, Race to get the rex. Race to get a spot before someone else.  

Except they fly through cage as if it's not there sometimes. Flyers can be a major pain in the butt to tame sometimes. Usually you can crouch or go prone to get them to follow you in.  

any npc you just hold E on it while close to boat and has option to move to that boat

so I watched most of that video. Mounts didn't seem Op in the slightest.... In fact, the zerg shoulda lost, talk about getting in your own way..... could someone show me an instance in that video where the mounts we doing op stuff? I saw a lot of nekids and uncoordinated zerglings, running around mindlessly, only to get smacked down... I saw a crap load of times where if people had just worked together and used even some basic prioritization skills.

seriously, this vid can't be why they are nerfing... it just can't be...no hope if it is.

Well, you do get upgrades + the initial bonus on BPs.  IMO they still need a little work though. After I made an item, I started upgrading it, and game crashed. So, i'm not sure what happened, but I did lose my gold for upgrading, Just not sure it upgraded heh

43 minutes ago, Shakarian said:

Servers are down!  I DID IT!!!

Well done, sir, well done!

Just now, Shakarian said:

Better late than releasing something that breaks the servers, I guess.

Nice, you just jinxed us, certain breakage incoming

3 minutes ago, Linea said:

i do like the increased wind strength but really dont like unrealistic sailing against the wind.

you just need to cross the wind and are already making progress against the wind at about 30% of full speed. going forward directly against the wind feels really bad, its raft mode for all ships...

but also im not sure if it is what they mean, it could also imply that you will be pushed back at 30% speed when your sails directly face against the wind. which would finally allow us to move our ships backwards and (un)park them more precisely in harbors or docks.

but if they allow sailing against the wind i hope they add it to the game.ini so we can adjust it at least on private servers together with an amount value for the ships of the damned like we can already adjust creature amounts.

We have been able to move ship backwards already, It's been very precise for me so far. almost if I got some secret thrusters built in. Though it is really slow, you can back a ship very precisely.

just hold S to back up folks....wow, yall have not been doing this?

I'm positive not a single person there owns a watch or got one for Christmas

5 minutes ago, TheSzerdi said:

You see the other patch note that makes claiming enemy territory faster the more claims your company has? They clearly favor mega clans. This is not a solo game. 

AS a solo player myself, I know I have to concede certain things. AS a solo, should I be able to control as much land as a mega tribe? no. So they have taxes, as long as it manageable, I can deal with it. But if it's a chore, I won't be going to any claimed islands

I think there is a skill that allows players to subvert codes on locked storage anyway, even on pve…. I saw someone glowing purple'ish and looting locked storage on pve

Yah, this update basically lets me know I made a mistake buying this game. Sad to, because I found it really enjoyable. Oh well, wasted 25 bucks. 

They want to force relying on each other, but that isn't the reality of MMO gaming. Forced grouping should only be for combat on end game content or special things. never for character development. The less I can do, the less I will play. They stay with this path, watch the game wither and die.  When the new wears off, mass exodus.

12 minutes ago, Lethality said:

This is a very different game than ark... when you've got whatever 40,000 players, but also a persistent world between them all... it's not the same kind of game.

And therefore, the game design philosophies have to be very different. In order to make large companies work with lots of specializations, they can't also make lots of specializations available to solo players. 

There has to be a choice made, for the integrity of the design... and solo players I don[t think are going to win this one. They can't, unless they're re-tooling the whole game.

Or perhaps that's why they also allow private servers? Can't you set up your preferred rules that way, and ignore public servers?

retool the game for solo players? Or here's an idea, undo the stupid patch to the way it was....then add stuff to make company balance better. After seeing the patch notes.  saw originally intended....basically another dark and light thought process. We see how that turned out....  

You watch the game fall, it's specifically because of this skill rework. You  will see... if they don't undo it quick, the game is doomed. It's already gonna have a hard time recovering from launch problems. This will be the nail in the coffin.

Dark and Light doesn't even have 600 players logged on right now. The reason, poor, poor , poor decisions. This update is exactly that. I've defended the game. I know how MMOs work, I know the connection issues. I had no problem dealing with it the first 3 days. I realize it's EA and I have no problem with bugs, I know they'll get fixed. I know devs are working hard. 

But then this update comes and they show their hand. The skill change was ridiculous. Add content if you want challenge players to group more often and bigger groups. Don't take away content. That's exactly what you did, everyone that doesn't like zerging around or relying on sometimes worthless people had content removed from them. I don't care how you spin it, that's the outcome.

I am really, really disappointed with such a bad decision this early on.