Slash78

Sorry, they are too busy talking about Ark.

Let me ask the question again, what kind of ocean content? Through some ideas out there. I don't see this as an exclusively A or B issue. The fact is we AREN'T getting ocean content, we aren't getting tames, we aren't getting new boats, NPCs aren't getting an increase role.

If she never has those kinds of problems when you're around...then I hate to tell you, but she's playing while you're not around.

For a lot of people playing the game on PC isn't much better performance wise.

What does that tell me? If true then it tells me that are unwilling to make additional content. Which is 100% supported by the fact that "Phases" 1-3 of their roadmap are completely content devoid. And as long as it would take them to due the big fixes, QoL improvements, performance improvements, then work on Sail and the Seas, then redo Combat, then we aren't looking at new content for at least a year to 18 months from now. Probably longer as NPC ports, factions and all the other stuff they mentioned they were thinking about would take time to develop. Ark: Genesis being a "season pass" means WildCard isn't going to be releasing devs back to Atlas any time soon.

Except they advertised it as a Pirate-themed Survival PvP game. I could nitpick more about your statement, but I have a question instead. Honest question. What kind of additional ocean content did you expect? Beyond the obvious "more kinds of ships".

There have been people since launch saying the "only" way to make the game distinguishable from Ark is reduce taming. Instead what they, the devs and you are talking about is making the Atlas the same cookie cutter experience for every play. What they NEED to do is fully embrace the massive open world they have. Add to that to make this game different. But that's HARD and nerfing tames into the ground and making them useless would be so much EASIER for the devs. Players are different and will want to different things. Should a player or company be able to play Atlas w/o ever having to harvest resources or tame animals? Sure. If those players are going out treasure hunting, fighting SotD and other gold giving gameplay was added, then they should be able to go to a port and buy what they need from a Commodities Market (get arid of the vendor). Owning island should be a source of passive income, not resource sinks. Add more ports, have less freeports. Give people who like to tame and like to gather resources a place to sell them. (Yeah, that happens in game now, but actual market places to greatly improve a player based economy). What is winning in a survival game? It's chasing other people off the server. Because that's the case, battles (sea and land) as well as Wars need to have new victory conditions. Both how to "win" and what you win. (Because even the mega-pvp companies leave when they finally get wiped by someone else). Instead of pushing a certain, same gameplay on people, they need to expand the horizons well beyond their Ark-style thinking were they want everyone following a fairly narrow gameplay path. What you want is the latter.

Except I really grew to hate knockout taming playing Ark.

The only new info I saw in that was Wildcard was hiring back in September. Though we now know they were hiring for Ark: Genesis and little effort has gone into Atlas. Though I was thinking about it this morning and there is some irony about the whole "wanting people to spend more time at sea". If this WAS just an Ark water world DLC, we would already be spending more time in the water, because we would have far more to do.

I actually sat down and watched the whole Roadmap livestream beginning to end. I had seen it before and I knew the gist of it, but I wasn't really engage with the game at the time. After watching it again, they seem to have the whole seems off. Like the didn't really think the phases through AT ALL! The phases are... 1. Bug Fix, QoL improvements, Performance Improvements 2. Sailing, Ships and Sea 3. Combat. 4. Content, World built, Tames, etc. (Now cynical me looks at Phase 1 as all stuff the can do while most of the dev team was off working on Ark DLC). To keep people engage, in logging into the game you need to give them something. You need to give them the Phase 4 stuff while they are waiting for Phase 2 & 3. Because lets be honest, they talked about wanting/making players spend more time at sea BEFORE actually giving people a reason. (And they aren't adding new ships in Phase 2). One of the things they could be giving people and it worked keeping people interested in Ark is more tames. Or at least more diverse creatures. But they emphasized how they want to scale tames back. What do people do at sea? I know what I do. I travel. To get tames, get materials and treasure hunt to maintain my crew. I also explore some, but as much as I loved explore Ark maps, Atlas has killed my joy in exploring. The island are repetitive. They are often difficult to get around. There's no rhyme or reason to where materials spawn. The animals are repetitive (and often stupid, like the "Arctic" Cobras). "Discoveries" seem to be arbitrary. There are other things, like pick up sea crates, do the whole SotD fight grind, fishing (which is unrewarding), salvage shipwrecks. There are also the under water trenches, but you need the sub to do that. And I've never really felt like doing a Kraken fight. But they've made it clear they don't think all of this stuff is enough to keep people on the oceans. So...how are they going to get people to spend more time at sea? Simply telling use "we want to make it more fun" isn't good enough. It's not going to keep people longing it. The part of all this is I don't think they're 50% through Phase 1 and no work on 2-4 has begun yet. The TL/DR is that all that "unimportant stuff" they are putting off until Phase 4 should be Phase 1 and continue through Phases 2-4 to keep people around. And no, don't deemphasize tames because if you WERE able to make spending time at sea more interesting, you would have figured out how to do it or at least TOLD use how you plan on doing it by now.

They can't add new ship classes. The current ship classes are too resource intensive server-wise. Things like Ships of the Damned or NPCs are much easier to add. And for it being an "pirate game", what separates Atlas from competitors ARE the tames. With out them you basically get a poor man's Sea of Thieves or whatever next game that comes along. They need to embrace that aspect, not run away from it. And yes, you were whining about tames and insisting that we can only have ships OR tames exclusively. You want less of a game because you don't like the aspect of the game. I don't like boss fights, but you don't hear me whining about the Kraken or the Snowman or Power Stone Islands. I'm not asking for those aspects of the game to be removed even though I have no use for them.

What have they been adding lately? Anything since the Oct 7th patch were they add some new islands and...wait for it...CATS!!! That's the problem. They aren't adding new ship types, they aren't adding tames. They aren't adding PVE mobs. For nearly 5 months. And it's been what? Four months since XBox release? The major addition before that was the Blackwood map in August. June was the last time an actual mount was added. Seriously, you're whining about tames and they've added FOUR since the game launched. The Crab, Tortugar, Olfend and Cats. That's it. When I started playing Ark, which was early November 2015, they added more tames by December first that we've gotten in nearly 15 months!

As much as I want Atlas to succeed, I can't expect too much from this bunch. After all, it took OVER TWO YEARS! for the same devs to realize that defensive turrets were causing server problems. The problems caused by both the shear density players were placing them and the rate of fire each turret was capable of. There seems to be a fundamental inability to grasp what's going on in the game. Which is often combined with their inability to recognize if content or features are indeed working as intended.

I usually put all points into weight, so it's hard for me to weigh my ship down enough for them to catch me.

When I heard about changes to the SotD I was excited. Until I found out they were always going to be traveling in fleets. Good job devs, one step forward, two steps back. An occasional Fleet of the Damned wouldn't be bad. But them always coming in fleets is a huge misstep. Second misstep, only NPC enemy's at sea are the SotD and some whales. It's been over a year and that's all you got Devs?

Honestly, I feel their success with Ark was largely accidental. It was just the right thing at the right time and Ark is enough of a sandbox that people can enjoy it no matter what the devs intended. When I say "devs" I'm really talking about the leadership. Why they might know how to run a dev team and while some they've hired have the technical skills to make it happen, I've felt for a while they lack the actual game design abilities. Ark has always felt like a loose daisy-chain of features and content pieced together rather than a coherent plan. The worst part is that same leadership lost interest soon after Atlas's release, so it just stumbled forward for a few months after than, then pretty much nothing since.

I don't know why they haven't used the Equus taming feature from Ark for any animals in this game. I would be great for Horses and maybe even use if for Bulls.

They are too busy patting themselves on the back for Ark reaching an all new peak player level.

Games in EA use those who buy the game as game testers and to get feedback. Grapeshot made it clear early on they didn't want feedback and when it came to them announcing a new "road map" they pretty much told us we've been playing the game wrong. All while never addressing many of the issues, technical, gameplay and player base wise, that have driven so many from the game. Not only that, but new content is MIA. All this was BEFORE they put Atlas development on hold to work on a new Ark update.

Yes, money we gave them. Also, I can't recommend this game, in good conscience, to the people I would want to play it with. Why not? Because the state it's still in and the fact I don't know if they are going to actually improve it. You look at the state of Ark at this point in it's development and this game. Ark added a lot of content and made big strides. Atlas has made stutter steps and false starts.

Why would people be fighting naval battles over the Kraken again? And if there are people at one golden age ruin, why would people say and fight instead of just go somewhere else? Why would people even bother? Personally they shouldn't try to compete with the likes of WoW or EvE.

Emergent Gameplay IF the devs come up with a mission system, then it is NOT emergent gameplay. And about you being weird about RP, I have no idea what that's about.

"Emergent Gameplay" would be you organizing it yourself. The definition is players playing the game in ways Devs didn't intend or didn't expect. If the devs add a system, then that's the opposite of "emergent gameplay".

I doubt that's the reason. It probably has a lot more to do with the number of snap points per ship and collision detection.

Emergent Gameplay is difficult when every time you log back on your ship is sunk, tames are dead and base has been wiped. But that's the gameplay they encourage. They do support the RP community (both Ark and Atlas) and the game wasn't made with roleplaying in mind. There is an irony that's totally lost on the game devs though. That is their game can only really be "fixed" using both mods and server specific rules to deter the behavior that chase most people from the game.