Ringo O'Rourke

Yeah, that's rad and inspiring.

Ship construction should not be balanced for tames. Period. If the mat cost for building is balanced for tames then we have Ark 2.0, not Atlas.

Always cut your sails down to 10% before you cross a border. You crossed the border there at full speed, which moves you farther into the next grid before the load in completes. If you are crossing only at 10% (or better yet 0% sails and coasting on momentum), you aren't going to be very far in when you finish loading. Works to help avoid SoTD, and it should work for whales too.

If Atlas has ambitions to be more than Ark with occasional ships, than something has to be done to challenge tames as the most essential utility in the game. One way to do this, in keeping with the theme of the game is to make NPC's more useful. Give NPC's more carry weight. It doesn't have to be the in the thousands like tames, but say let each NPC carry 250. To make them more viable off-ship, and again, as useful as tames, let them be paid in food only, or at least mostly in food, while working on land. Finally, consider letting NPC's wield gathering tools. Again, they don't have to gather on the order of bears, elephants or rhinos. But at least let them be in the same league as tames in this ability. Making NPC's more useful in this way would also reward those who specialize in the game's main selling point, sailing ships, through the Captaineering skill tree. It would also allow more people to specialize in sailing, if NPC's were as useful as tames.

Planks are by far the most tedious part of building a ship. Hulls and decks and fairly quick to gather for. Ceiling pieces, walls, railings, doors, cannons etc. may add up to more total materials than planks, but they are far less tedious to work with. Each of these pieces do not cost much on their own, and you are placing each piece in turn as part of your ingenious ship design. This makes them far less monotonous, though in total they cost more. Planks, however, are just a straight up farming grind. One piece after another swallowing your time that just goes into a predetermined spot on the side of the ship. It's even tedious on a 2x weekend. The devs have stated their goal is to make becoming a pirate faster and less tedious. One definite way to make that a reality is to nerf plank costs, a lot.

Yep, it sucks that tames are now the optimal way to play the game. And when you don't want to play that way, and play a different way, what happens? You feel like you are wasting your time, and so play something else. (I know, I know, no one forces you to play a certain way. But the design of the game sets the "rules" as to what is the fastest, most efficient, most productive way to play the game.)

I'd like to see Nation vs Nation (aka Realm vs Realm) as the PvP in a PvP/PvE set-up. Never been a big fan of the Eve model which replaces factions with large guilds. Nation vs. Nation is better in my opinion for small groups as you are not at the beck and call of larger guilds, and can contribute in your own way.

Yeah bookshelves are a great QoL addition. If you regularly do flotsam, SoTD, AoTD you have to start throwing out BP's because you amass so many. Somthing that stacked them would be great. I'm worried though about their compensating changes for the stone-sap debacle. It could be a case of the "correction" being just as bad as the "mistake". Sap nodes everywhere will just take away some of the pleasure of trading, living in difficult biomes or traveling to harvest. Leave this in the game for those who like it.

I really, really hope Grapeshot does not make the Tundra easier to live in. This means not adding sap. Most people who go there willingly (as opposed to be forced to go there because of lack of claimable land), do so because they enjoy the solitude or the challenge. My friend and I went there for both. We are veterans of survival games, and loved building our base up from nothing against the elements, even when the wolves were OP. We also enjoy the small community of like-minded people that has developed, with each person contributing as they can, but also minding their own business. This is what we left the more populated zones for. I fear that if sap nodes are added to the Tundra, and fur armor is easy to craft, all the problems that infest the easier zones will come to the Tundra. It will no longer be the place of solitude and challenge that it is. Keep the Tundra hard, cold and sap-free.

The problem with cyclones is that they just ruin whatever you are currently doing, and you just have to sail through them for 10 minutes. Fights with SoTD's, hunting flotsam etc. A cyclone starts? Oh well, ten minutes of dodging spouts with nothing to show for it.

Apparently the main mod on the Atlas reddit doesn't even play the game. (Not sure if this is 100% true, but that is the word in the subreddit). So the moral is: don't overly rely on the Atlas subreddit in taking the pulse of the playerbase. It's going to be skewed.

A reduction is meaningless for the quantities of blocks you have to produce to build a base. It needs to be reverted

No it's still a punch in the face, instead of a punch in the face and nards.

Mistake. They should have done nothing about sap, or removed it entirely. This is just a red flag in front of a bull.

If you live in Tundra you already do this. That was why you live in Tundra, you want it a little more difficult, and that includes weekly trips for sap. No one in Tundra wants it to be made easier to live there. Adding sap to Tundra trees would just mean an influx of the griefers we left the temperate zones to avoid. If Grapeshot is deadset on killing their game with this sap for stone patch, then at least switch paste in fur armor to another rare mat (I don't know, maybe salt?). Then at least Tundra players can ride out the decline of the game until it's time to move on.