I sincerely hope the devs read this and take this to heart. I'm sure some will disagree but after talking to countless people and being in streams asking streamers and viewers alike why they stopped playing the same few answers keep coming up. The main answer being the devs went too “Ark” with Atlas. I think describing that would be an insult to peoples intelligence as there is a reason the recent 24 hour peak of Ark was 55,518 people and Atlas was 3,430 people.
The reason people were so excited for Atlas originally was the idea of a survival based piracy game. Somehow that concept got morphed into a game with a fictional AI enemy (ghost ships), animals that are far too important when it comes to raiding and hostile animals such as crocodiles that are massive and pull from the experience. It seems much easier to just add the ships from Atlas to Ark to get that same affect.
What people actually wanted from Atlas was a survival based piracy game without the Ark style creatures in it. Which is why Ark has more daily active users than Atlas by a long shot. What people want to see changed that will draw large numbers back:
A game that doesn't feel like a job in terms of gold/food upkeep for AI.
More AI enemies and different factions that are realistic to the lore of it i.e. AI pirates and a Royal Navy that is out trying to catch pirates (even the AI pirates) and if you are able to sink them they have loot on them such as weapons, armor, gold, supplies, etc.
Add the possibility of the Royal Navy landing on your shores to kill/capture pirates. Maybe even a "reputation" with them that provokes more aggressive attacks the higher your reputation is. Essentially like a wanted system. Help relieve the pvp griefing when AI is also attacking people that are killing the AI navy.
Have animals that are relevant and realistic i.e. cows, horses, parrots, monkeys etc.
Limit the number of AI members for a company instead of the insane gold upkeep (which mostly only Megas can keep up with). Make it so it's expensive to recruit them and only takes food to upkeep them and limit it to 10-15 AI per person with a cap of 200 AI in a company or something to that affect.
Anti griefing measures which most agree have been resolved already. Thank you for that btw!!!
These are just a few of the major recommendations people had to help bring life back to the game and make it something they would enjoy again.
For the life of me I can't wrap my mind around why the devs keep pushing Atlas closer and closer to Ark while watching the player base drop constantly to the point where I can hardly see it being profitable to keep trying to develop this game which means the game is literally dying. I would love to hear the devs reasoning for constantly taking this game down a road that clearly pushed over 55,000 people away from their game (all-time peak of 58,788 per steam). At a certain point there needs to be a realization that the current model/path for this game is not one that is conducive to a large player base.
I agree with most people that “you might as well play Ark instead” at this point. Minus the stability issues this game is a goldmine if it just goes away from the Ark mentality. It's clear the devs did a great job at Ark because the daily peak is literally 16x higher than Atlas. The issue is people don't want Atlas to be Ark with ships and that is how the vast majority describe it.
I beg the devs to take a serious look at what they are doing with the game and to take a serious look at what the community actually wants out of this game. Of course it is absolutely their decision how to develop the game and where to take it but it's those same decisions that are killing Atlas. I understand that this will most likely fall on deaf ears and will mostly get responses from trolls but at least I can say that I tried to help push the game in the right direction before watching it die.
