DeadbyFrag

Bought mapping bears from these guys. Amazing stats. Cleared Journeyman maps with ease.

Currently at sea, NPC has a hard mount on sails, cannons, chairs ect. They are locked in and don't move. 

Ark's S+ mod had a hitching post you could use to lock your dinos in place.

Can we get an equivalent for ships? A hard point to lock tames so they dont glitch around in high latency areas? Maybe it can disable animation and just keep them locked while attached. 

Major quality of life improvement.

Awesome. I'll check it out

Returned to Atlas, scored an Island... but it's quiet.

I played at launch and joined Lotus to be part of the first group on NA North to defeat the Kraken. The effort and teamwork was great. This was the old, bugged Kraken that insta killed entire ships. There was a ton of excitement as we tried to complete all the missions.

Now that I am back I managed to get a few friends together and start a new company on our island and I am looking to reclaim those fun days but I dont see any groups posting about this. Are they there? Do I have to recruit harder and build the group?

8 minutes ago, wildbill said:

This is what Wurm tried to do. Guess what, I don't play that game anymore. In my opinion, it was a failure at creating a market by just limiting the number of skills you can learn. Instead it just drove its players away. I and most other gamers don't have the patience to play a game for six months to a year just to become proficient in most of the skills.

If Atlas was the only game available and you had to play it (kind of like in real life, there really is no other choice), then you can create a market economy by forcing players to deal with it. This game isn't real life and it isn't the only game you can play, so you can't force players into a specific mode of play. You can make advantages to trading that will get players to do it, just don't think the way to create an economy is to take away all the other choices.

I can appreciate your opinion. It sounds like Wurm did something wrong but there is also an established successful model with Eve Online. I use this as the point of reference as Atlas used it in their PR campaign leading up to the release.

So if we leave the skill tree alone and hand it out to everyone, what incentivizes the player base to interact with each other? What incentive do I have to be part of a company if I can do everything myself? What makes me a valid, useful member or gives me purpose in my company if they can do everything without me? 

What incentive do I have if there is nothing better to grind for after a month of playing?

My opinion is that by handing out the entire skill tree to everyone it kills player community engagement. Think of all the islands that people lock down and then never let anyone in. Why would they when the can turn to a hermit and do everything themselves without ever leaving shore? They don't need anything beyond their walls.

I also think when you can't find a purpose in an MMO it gets boring fast. 

There are plenty of MMOs with fully unlockable skill trees (Ark, Rust, 7 Days to Die, ect) and time and time again I see friends come and go in 1 - 3 months in these types of games as there is nothing to strive for beyond that point. So what keeps people engaged for years instead of months? How many friends have you already lost due to boredom? 

I agree that to make any of this work you have to rework skill points and you have to limit barriers to trade but give me something to keep going for.

53 minutes ago, arzosah said:

Though I don't think this game was designed for solo/small groups, I don't agree that solo play has no place in an MMO.  Things should be more difficult solo but it should still be viable.  The skill system you've outlined sounds more tedious than anything else, there are ark mods that added in processing steps for wood, and it just makes the whole building process slower and more boring.

I look back to Eve's model. Complex but simple enough. What it allowed was for people to make and sell intermediate parts. If you make a ship from scrap it is tedious, but if you sold an intermediate part for currency, you could by a finished ship. Or if your a ship builder you could buy the intermediate parts, assemble the ship and sell for a profit. The skill tree requires an active market, not doing it all yourself. 

Think of it like a car assembly plant. You don't mine the materials to make the parts for the cars. You have a mining company that sells to a metal refinery that sells to a manufacturer that makes a part that sells it to the car manufacturer that assembles it. 

Make more jobs and everyone can find their nitch. Then buy and sell off the market. 

Can't solo a galley? Maybe sell parts needed that are in low stock and buy one. Hate mining and building and just want to pvp? Spec in weapons or captaining and hold territory with good resources and sell them to builders. Love building but hate harvesting, buy intermediates from the market and sell your creations. 

23 minutes ago, vaylain said:

Well yes, since you can lose those brigs overnight to griefers, sure.

Assuming you have at least 4 people in your company, that's about an hour investment on current rates.  16 people farming 30 min for two? What more do you need?

I don't get this. You can already solo pump out a brig in 3 - 4 hours in the right zone with just a bear, pick and an axe. Is the goal to pump out 2 - 3 galleys a day? What are you all  doing that this is not enough? It's too easy to build as is.

23 minutes ago, krazmuze said:

So you mean like Wurm Online?    Do you know how long and painful it is to make a ship in that game?   They actually removed the different woods on a texture performance pass and it never came back.

https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Caravel

Everything matters, including using a master carpenter so you do not fail at the thousands of pegs you need.

8 minutes ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

I don't think you understand what I am saying.  If I run solo, I CANNOT play this game.  If I run with a small crew, I CANNOT play unless the others are playing.  Many companies, even one I play with on official, have very few members who are actively playing every day.  So let's say I need a ship to be built.  If I am not spec'd into it, I cannot have a ship unless somebody in my company, who is, also happens to be online.  This is game breaking limitations.

Instead, I should be able to do what I can do, in game, and convert that to gold to buy what I need.  I am not saying that I should be able to do everything, but I should be able to do what I can do, and be able to function in game.  So I should be able to mine for metal, wood, stone, etc...and sell it for gold.  That gold is then used to buy the ship parts I need in order to create the ship.  This of course, would be a more expensive way to create that ship, than if I, or a Company Mate, is spec'd into creating those parts.  but not excessively more expensive.  Not like twice as costly...maybe something like 15 to 20% more costly.

If I am not spec'd into taming, I should be able to purchase tames.  Again, it would be cheaper to have somebody in the company tame a creature, than buying a tame.

I find this game too limiting on official.  Makes the game more a chore, than a fun way to pass the time.  So I will stick to unofficial servers, where I am not so limited.

This is where player markets come into play. If you can't build it, you sell off what ever you harvested/built with your specialty and use the funds to buy what you need. It creates community engagement which generates content.

Playing solo has no place in an MMO. Small companies like what you describe would still thrive under this system.

Create market places and everything can be obtained. I personally don't think a shipwright should be a master blacksmith, farmer, tamer, ect. I don't see the dolphin trainer at Sea World dropping ships in his spare time. 

The basic concept is this, give me something to make my skills valuable. Give me something to keep grinding towards and I will play for years. Let me specialize everything in a month and I wont have to interact with the player base, I'll run out of things to do and I'll be done with the game by 3 months. 

I don't understand the "we should be able to do everything mentality". What is there to strive for when you can go from level 0 to level 25 on 3 maps and unlock half the game? Who's buying resources if you can pump out a brig in 2 - 4 hours solo  with a tame? Once you figure out how to play this game effectively, it's easy mode and there is nothing to grind to so it gets repetitive. 

So when I first read about this game it was sold as an Eve Online rival. A new MMO that was going to take it to the next level. After two shorts months of play I am out of content as I am able to build everything on my own, skilled in everything and have done all the end game content. 

So what gives? What is there to strive for when one player can unlock all the skills needed to do everything?

What I would have like to have seen is a complex skill tree with depth to keep me engaged & player stores that make specialized players needed.

Imagine instead of everyone being a master harvester of lumber, everyone had the ability to harvest rough cut lumber. Rough cut could be converted to basic long boards at a mill which could be sold or used as an ingredient in crafting basic small planks.

You can spec into lumber mill skills and learn more complex cuts which can be used in more advanced structures or you could learn about wood species which would allow you to identify tree types and harvest specialty lumbers. Even more, you could spec into a specific lumber type and then progress to more efficient harvesting of that type. 

There could be libraries at different ports where books could spawn for purchase to open the skill trees.

Give each wood type a special value. Hardwoods reduce dmg taken, light woods reduction in weight, wet wood reduces fire dmg ect. 

This is an example of the harvest tree, do the same with other trees. Make them deep and robust.

If you can master a skill tree and have no need for specialists, then you don't need a player base to make things happen. I would love to see a skill tree as deep and robust as Eve that forces player markets to buy unique resources that cannot be readily built by yourself. Give me a tree that takes a year to master just one area of specializing and I have something to strive for. Right now it takes a month a best. Put a trade hub island in every grid for people to stock. 

There is so much more that can be learned from Eve about generating content on the PvE side that feeds the needs of the PvPers. 

Mix the servers and set grid restrictions for PvP, some with only PvP with a required fee to allow war between groups and some that prohibit war all together. Make the full PvP areas have the high quality materials, mid tiers in areas war can be declared and basics in PvE areas...

I'll end my rant with the suggestion of xp being changed to wisdom with age. Gaining xp as you grow older so that xp gain is steady throughout the game..

This game has a lot of potential, now give us a reason to keep playing it for years.