Maticus

Thanks for the update Conch & Devs! But... Wow. These guys (Darkside RP) get it, you need to watch this. I'd recommend that you halt new content, and shift to solely optimization, bug fixing, and increasing the capability of your dev kit. There is no shame in making a great foundation for a game and then handing off more control to your players to mod. There are several developers that do this, and are very successful. It won't be easy if you've already budgeted and planned out your roadmap for development that includes content development and overhauling game mechanics. You'll also need to consider how to support console mod support as they're your growth market. Ramping down your official servers is another cost saving perk as the modded player run servers take over. Reducing customization of ships, and sea tames to pull ships. Two points in your Q&A highlight the classic error in development, I see it again and again. On one hand you're steering away from the original core game, while adding new content that destabilizes & dilutes the scope of the game. Do this- go back to the original Atlas trailers. Consider what attracted 40,000 excited players. What kind of game did they expect to play? What are the remaining active players holding out hope for? You're making the game that you think they want to play, and that's fair, but frankly you're missing the mark. I expect to see the same cycle of player population up and down after updates and wipes, but overall downward with your current strategy. TL;DR - If you don't understand the game that your players want to play, then focus on your dev kit and divert resources to optimization & bug fixes.

Grapeshot: So, you want a giant tamable sea snail that shoots lightning bolts, disrupts the already wonky imbalance, and introduces new bugs? Got it.

Haha. Good one.. This is a joke right? Where's the real patch notes?

Is this a joke?

CCC: cheat TP K6 -38915 408830 5232 Is there any chance this could be restored?

Big sections of my base just... disappeared. This is awful, I just lost the most critical part that had my smithy, and resource box so I am going to have a hell of a time patching up before combat phase in less then an hour. Please fix this.

This... Please, just don't. Atlas is really refreshing compared to ARK because of the limited scope. I know the game has a fantasy aspect, but I personally dread the idea of flying ships unless they're non-player controlled. The challenge and limitations of sea travel and limiting it to ships/sail power is really interesting and fun. I get that flying ships might have been in the original scope, my point is that it cheapens the fun of the inherent limitations. I was joking with a friend about how it's only a matter of time before people are flying around on mutant bat creatures, having mobile bases strapped to giant sea monsters, and steam powered wave runners. Which all sounds great, don't get me wrong . But, I realized later that.. yeah, it's probably going to happen. This development team is super indulgent and more likely to add in more content than to solidify the existing content/game mechanics. This time around I hope this team maintains a little bit project management, and keep Atlas within some sort of scope.

This. This is exactly why the building requirements are a secondary issue for PvP. It's so much effort to build a structure now, and so easy to destroy it. Even if they rollback the sap/metal from the recipe, it's still a problem that they are so weak and can't withstand a bit of cannon fire. You have to join a large company, play unofficial, or just accept that you will spend your time starting from scratch each day. In PvP if you can't maintain a reasonably secure base, you can't build ships or actually go out and do anything fun. It's no wonder companies quitting. Please rethink this destabilizing change Grapeshot, you were doing pretty well up until the FoY and stone change.

Spoiler alert for people new to Grapeshot/Wildcard... These guys are primarily the creative types, they can make neat looking creatures and environments, but they use a 3rd party for a lot of the game nuts & bolts so to speak: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/what-is-unreal-engine-4 So, I'm afraid that we're more likely to see them add in new stuff (e.g. fountain of youth bs, bounty systems, ruining stone structures, and dozens of more creatures and armor skins, etc), before you will see any fixes to the way the game actually operates. Clipping, teleporting up under a ship, things falling through the ship floor, that's probably here to stay for a while. I love the concept of the game and enjoy many aspects, but they've proven to be approaching development the same way they did with ARK.

Title says it all. Grasses poking up through foundations looks ugly, and stones/trees are a constant annoyance. This seems like a really easy fix.

I'm okay with increasing the cost of stone, but it shouldn't take sap. More of the base stone, wood, thatch, fibers and maybe metal would be reasonable. Clearly they want to limit the overbuilding going on. Aside from the cost, the nerf is the real issue here. It makes building stone pointless when you can topple 3layer thick stone walls with ease. Just build with wood and use more layers. It's more economical and doesn't take the stone/metal/sap. Our whole base was left in ruins last night. 1 person can place a thatch foundation & cannon and go to town. Stone is styrofoam quality now.

And, inevitability this was going to happen... moments after voicing concern about weakened stone bases it happens. Someone placed a foundation and mortared us. I was able to capture a lovely screenshot of a mortar round on impact. ~30,000-40,000 combined damage seems high . The whole assault was a few minutes and just knocked the place over like a cardboard fort. It happens... It's a pirate war game. I'm not here to cry. My complaint is how unbalanced it is now. The effort to topple our base was very minuscule to the effort to make the base. People need to log off sometimes and sleep or work. If my ships get sunk, whatever. But, I need a workshop to rebuild. I hope they reconsider this.

I must not have been clear. a) No, I don't care if people build mega stone boxes around their ships. I even try to build the enormous ugly stone walls around my ships to keep them safer when I'm offline. I just recognize that when more of these structures go up, the game performance dips. But people do it because sinking ships offline is ridiculously easy to do. I suspect the devs are trying to reduce the buildings by making them easy to destroy. b) I don't like it, sure. But, I said I accepted it because I had a reasonably strong base that could survive mostly intact. It seems that they over did the nurf on stone building. It takes very little effort to destroy them.

Please re-think the stone wall nurf. If it's an attempt to limit the massive structure spam, then consider at limiting structures a company can place, or require maintenance to it over time. The enormous boxes people build around ships are lame, and cause lag, I get it. There are other game mechanics to alleviate it. This change feels like one of those knee-jerk ARK changes. Up until now the game changes have been somewhat logical. This will penalize small companies like mine. Our ships all get sunk nightly when we're offline. It's lame, and a constant struggle, but we accept it because we can at least rely on the stone base to stay standing and provide a regrouping point. Even it can get raided if someone wants to invest the effort. Now it's like they're styrofoam walls.

This just happened to me and my company. "Pending connection Failed" error message after our ship crossed over from E7 to E8. We were stuck at the loading screen with Primal data loading and kept restarting. eventually could log in but when we spawn on the ship we immediately die/disconnect. It seems the ship keeps teleporting between E7 and E8, like it's stuck in between them.