Princess Sugar

So I guess you are deciding to allow multiple farms being placed side by side to gain a huge farming advantage. Guess everyone should go for it then if you don't consider it an exploit to fix it.

When Season 4 began, we were hesitant to return but hopeful at the promises of new changes and active Devs. For the first few weeks we were really impressed! It felt like a completely different game compared to the horrors of Season 1. We reached out to old friends and were able to pull back many who had completely written off the game and everyone was having a lot of fun. We were encouraged by the Devs transparency and action with dealing with cheaters and exploiters, the balance improvements, the quality of life improvements with the farming grind... Atlas finally seemed to be becoming the game we had all initially hoped for. Then... you brought back barrels and literally killed the game overnight. The game transformed from a thriving sea based PvP game with engaging ship battles, into an endless assault of barrel bombs everywhere you look. No one wants to bring their ships out to sea anymore. What's the point if they can be deck cleared by a single barrage? With less and less action on the seas, the only way for anyone to get some PvP was to try and land raid, which after a few days becomes a discouraging pain in the ass. Pretty much everyone has now quit and you can see from your player stats that nearly every grid is empty. Sad to say you blew it with barrel bombs and I'm not sure many will be willing to give Atlas another chance considering you didn't listen to your community when they begged you to revert the changes. I still hope that Atlas can become something great, it has bones to be amazing but time and time again your community has spoken loudly that they are seeking more action on the seas and until barrels are removed or balanced better, that will not happen.

The whole idea of Empires/Colonies is an absolute joke. Empires is basically old Atlas which is dying in its current condition. Hardly anyone is going to want to return to that nightmare and I do not foresee a significant amount of people returning to that play style. Colonies at least breathed a little hope back into the game and addressed some of the serious concerns for why many people had quit the game originally (ie. the chronic offline griefing and sleepless nights just to maintain your claims etc). But to separate the player base into these 2 different realms and limit the company size in Colonies to 50 I fear is a huge mistake and will only further reduce the population base. They should have just stuck with their original plan for Colonies and let the players test it out as planned. Sure maybe not everyone would be happy but you can never honestly please 100% of all players in a game. I am personally in favor of testing out the new plans they had suggested such as the war token system and such and promoting more naval combat. I think the free-for-all and unlimited claim flags of Empires will just be too much of a headache... people already tried that style of game play and it drove most of the population away because it can be abused too much. Part of the thrill of this game is engaging in alliances/diplomacy and also face the threat and excitement of going against companies that may be somewhat bigger...finding ways to defend yourself whether it be via fortifying your land or establishing networks of alliances. Mega tribes are a problem for sure, but you had already somewhat addressed that factor by reducing the company numbers and alliance groups. Those changes were enticing enough to most players to feel like at least there was a bit more of a chance to survive. But to completely put large companies and small/medium companies on two different servers is extremely disheartening and I fear will only drive even more players away. Please reconsider simply moving forward with your original plans that you had already announced because that is what many players were looking forward to and many were considering returning to the game because of them. If you continue to delay PTR and move ahead with this new system of pulling small and large groups apart on two (or 4 if you keep EU separate) servers, then I believe you won't have the support of the community and will lose even more players. No one wants to play on dead, empty, lifeless servers where you see the same faces daily and fight the same groups repeatedly. No one wants to waste 10 hours sailing the seas and not finding anyone to fight.

A map I had made for our old island when we lived there to help new recruits learn where to find our call points during raids.

I agree with this so much. PLEASE let us rename NPCs! It's awful having a ton of NPC's all named the same.

https://discord.gg/W8HFWt