Gorelander

That's nothing. 7 Days to Die zombie survival game has been early access alpha since 2013! This is another game that has abused the EA program via Steam. It's not a bad game but eight years in Alpha? What a joke.

That’s awesome.

Here's an idea I was thinking about: Another way to launch a player would be to have a cinematic with them setting sale as a crew member on an NPC boat but get caught in a storm (or sucked into a portal). During this storm they could have an instanced tutorial on how to do things in the game (control/ repair, place items on the boat). They end up getting shipwrecked on a semi-deserted island. Here they have to build a boat/ raft and try to find their way forwards, continuing the tutorial until they set-sail. Of course the cinematic could by bypassed if you've done it before. Upon building your boat you can sail to a freeport nearby where you can buy some crew (like the current start zone), and join a faction: Merchant Guild The King's Navy Unlawful Pirates Benefits: the game could position the player on a deserted island in the least populated area of the map thereby spreading out players and better distributing land claims having such a dramatic cinematic could be more interesting for new players and maintain their attention (anyone see the first episode of Lost?) gives players a raison d'etre - some sort of back story that gives them a reason and motivation to continue If anyone would like to contribute ideas feel free. I'm not sure if the devs actually read these posts, but it's fun to spit-ball ideas for rhetorical reasons.

One of the things I like to do in this game is build on ships. Maybe some players aren't into that so give them the modular ship option. The modular ships should cost gold as they're pre-made. Non pre-made ships should be cheaper or not cost gold. I will admit due to the fact that I'm somewhat pedantic, that some custom ship builds aren't very realistic. A good example is that ship that has a massive array of cannons on the stern. One idea to combat this is to have a weight distribution mechanic. If you mass too much weight on one side it could cause the ship to tilt and have a reduced maximum speed, or affect its turning ability somehow. However this is a mechanic that given the games development to date, is probably too complicated.

I think we've had multiple devs so it's hard to blame whom for what. The last blog entry they said that they're going to focus on bugs which is a step in the right direction. I'm not trying to be mean but isn't it beyond ironic that you typically wipe after releasing a bunch of sh!t? I thought the irony was funny although it sounds mean to say.

For sure. As you know I suggested factions in this post in case others want to see my ideas: I think factions would make things quite interesting and fun personally. However, I think they need to get the core of the game working properly first.

So I just re-rolled and joined the server(s) since the last wipe. After leaving the starting cell in Rookie Cove I encountered 12 ships of the damned between me and the first island. On my pathetic ramshackle sloop, having no way to defend myself I managed to zig-zag, switchback, and ping-pong my way through them without getting attacked. While it was somewhat exciting and challenging, anyone new to this game would have probably come under fire and lost their sloop having to start over. #ragequit I think it's time to retire the tiresome SotD and make them more of a special encounter. No sea is *that* haunted. I would suggest switching the SotD to Wild Pirates as that would make more sense as long as the Wild Pirates aren't broken/ indestructible like they are in solo play. Encountering a fleet of Wild Pirates is much more plausible than multiple haunted ghost ships. Also, picking up normal pirates from a destroyed SotD doesn't make sense. Picking up crew from destroyed Wild Pirates would be much better. This is more of a rhetorical post. I'm not sure if the devs even look at this forum. I''m not sure if more than half a dozen players look at this forum lol.

So I started a fresh game and noticed that if you're stationary and you try to turn your ship, you turn at an alarming rate. I don't remember this happening before. Anyone else experience this?

I personally feel Atlas is an abuse of early access - especially for the amount they charged. In this case, Grapeshot has used this program to "pay to develop" and "pay to alpha / beta test". They clearly had no idea what they were doing and should have had the game mechanics and networking more functional before releasing it to the public. To top it all off, they simply copied and pasted Ark in order to build the game which in my opinion should have put them much farther ahead than they are now. Early access isn't a good description of this game. It should be classified as "learn as we go". If you want a good example of what an early access game should be like, check out SCUM or Valheim. Both games have a polished foundation and at this point are simply adding more content. I can't remember a single instance of either crashing. Atlas is largely broken and yet they're still trying to add content on top of it causing it to break further. In my opinion an early access game should be in a "somewhat finished, and working state" before asking people to pay for it. Atlas has never been this and I don't think they've really had a proper direction. Mostly I think their creative vision for this game is wrong and continually going in the wrong direction. Catering to the hard-core gamer and forcing players to log on each and every day to protect their investments is morally wrong as it begs players to perpetuate unbalanced lifestyles. The land domination concept they insist upon is working completely against the game and causing new players to give up as they struggle to a place to find home. They need to focus on creating a great pirate sailing experience first and foremost. Hopefully the new devs can turn things around. In the last set of notes they said they were going to focus on fixing bugs and have marginally addressed issues such as gold for ships etc. This is somewhat promising and hey, I'll take whatever I can get at this point.

There are a lot of decisions that have been made that make me want to facepalm. If you were leading Grapeshot, what changes would you make to this game to point it in a proper direction? Here is my list: Firstly fix the bugs as the number one objective. You need to have a functioning infrastructure to build a game upon. Do all the testing on the PTR and wipe the PTR regularly instead of the main servers everyone plays on. Personally I would forget the land hoarding, land conquest aspect of the game and create a good pirate adventure game as the primary focus. Create a game that allows for healthy gaming practices. Negative things shouldn't happen to someone if they're not online. That being said there should be a mechanic to dissuade people from being offline for long periods of time tying up land, or logging off to avoid getting attacked. Slow down the aging process. You age far too fast. I have that experience already in RL. Stop catering to the mega companies. New players need a fair gaming experience if you want to grow this game. I think they should create factions in the game that a player could align with depending on their playing style: the Royal Navy (PCs), Pirate Outlaws (PCs), Wild Pirates (NPCs), Merchant Guilds (PCs) - if they want to perpetuate the land-claiming objective, and the Cursed/ Damned (NPCs?). As a player you can gain reputation with these PC groups which can gain you certain benefits either via skills, access to larger builds, quests, or ship cosmetics. Certain cells are "lawful/ crown governed" and thus easier to settle on (less dangers and less wild animals) but you have to pay tax, potentially on ships and shipyards. This could explain why you have to pay gold to build a ship/ shipyard. You could have a mechanic whereby if a player is attacked on lawful areas, the game could spawn some NPC naval ships that would attack the grieving player. This could be beneficial for starting players. If you join a faction and attack another faction, there could be a bounty put on your head. On PVP servers you could even spend gold to put a bounty on another players/ company's head. Any player can check the bounties and try to hunt down that player/ company. If they sink that player they get the bounty amount. A whole career can be made as a pirate "bounty hunter" or a Naval officer chasing down scoundrels. I think this would be a fun game mechanic. These are early ideas and after writing them, some ideas remind me of some elements of Sea of Thieves. However SoT is a functioning game with a decent amount of polish so it's not a bad idea to look to them for working examples.

I know exactly the type of people you're referring to. Those are the types I'd rather not associate with on any level.

Imagine if Atlas had the original player base it used to. Nobody would find anything. We would assume that Atlas' goal is to increase the player base so this is an inherent problem with their game design. It's these choices that lead them to inevitable failure. I almost think they need to give up the whole land claim domination/ hoarding game paradigm and just stick to being an exciting adventure pirate game. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's what people are looking for when they buy this game. I know I am. When you think of exploring the seas and coming across islands, you wouldn't expect every single square foot of land being overpopulated. If I wanted that I can just look at real life. It would be more exciting to find deserted islands instead. Assuming that they changed directions and wanted to forgo the world domination aspect, maybe they should simply allow one base per cell per company? Even still I think that wouldn't be enough to free up space for new players. They need to have room for new players to settle, and they shouldn't have to travel for hours real time in their shitty ramshackle sloops to find it.

I think South Park said it best:

It makes me think they put all their junior developers on Atlas, at least at this point. Maybe they consider the Atlas project a "sinking ship" (pun intended). Or how about this? You are a game developer and want to recruit talent into your company (Wildcard). You hire a bunch of interns who work for free, or practical free for your junior company (Grapeshot), and get them to work on a early access project (Atlas) which you don't care if it's successful or not because you've already been paid up front for it (early access). Any intern who shows promise, you promote to work on your important projects (Ark etc). Is that being too cynical? Actually it's not a bad plan for a development company, but bad for players. No offence, but I think you overestimate your importance to Steam. You are one of 120 million steam users and sadly, are not even remotely on their radar. I do however, understand your frustration.

You are right, I haven't considered PVP because I refuse to play it. It's far too much of a time commitment for me and the grieving is something I exclude from my life whenever possible. I didn't realize that a shipyard could be destroyed so easily, but I guess anyone could wander by with a ship full of cannons and destroy it. I remember when I first started playing Ark I didn't understand why my base was half destroyed each time I would log on. I hate the fact that you practically have to be on all the time to protect your builds so I simply stick with PVE.

I agree. It appeared at one time (or still does) that the devs were/ are trying to create a game that resembled the board game Risk - a game of land conquest. They would showcase the top land dominating companies on the website. This is great for hard-core players (well not great b/c it forces them into a huge time commitment), but not so great for casual players or players that can't afford that time commitment. If you consider the plausibility that there are more casual, non-hard-core players with lives outside this game, you're alienating a huge amount of potential players and buyers as well. I think most players are primarily looking for a pirate game of adventure, not a game of land conquest and domination.

Yes, there is a gold requirement still, but it is an improvement slightly over the previous requirements. So rather than acquiring the gold for each and every ship built in that shipyard, you only have to do it once. The advantage is: if your ship gets sunk due to a fleet of SotD or some sort of stupid glitch, you don't have to acquire all that gold again. To play devil's advocate, I can sort of see the reasoning behind the gold requirement. I would skip over building a sloop and go straight to the schooner. I find that trying to do a build with the sloop challenging and makes going to the next tier ship feel like a bigger accomplishment. Trying to acquire gold gets you out from building, doing other activities such as treasure maps, salvaging wrecks, and such. My main gripe with it is it doesn't make sense. Why would you need gold to build something you're making with your bare hands? Some sort of shipyard tax? I think the positive thing here is it appears they are listening to the complaints. Although they didn't abolish the gold requirements, they did make a change.

This is my main gripe with this game - you have to have no life and play it daily to survive. This promotes unhealthy gaming which is unethical IMO. Having to log each day even in PVE to feed tames and crew is insane. They should only consume food while you’re online and able to do something about it. Alienating less hard-core players is a huge mistake and is going to kill your numbers.

So my hunch about Grapeshot having little or no proper direction/ leadership seems accurate. I have very low expectations, but hope that something good might come of this game eventually. I remember when I tried Sea of Thieves I was blown away at a pirate game that actually had some polish to it. Hopefully someone sometime will make a pirate game halfway between SoT and Atlas. One can dream.

I think I remember reading there are multiple reasons for the map change. Some are to accommodate future plans. On one hand the portals offer opportunities to guide gameplay in certain directions. On the other hand I feel it normalizes magical portals and almost makes them ubiquitous. In a pirate game, magic should be rare and top tier otherwise it changes the nature of the game to something else IMO.

To what extent is Grapeshot affiliated with Wiildcard? Did any of Atlas’ developers come from Ark?

What do you mean by the "old dev company"? Are you referring to Studio Wildcard? If so, I felt that the development of Ark was "smooth sailing" compared to Atlas. As for being corrupt, I"m not sure what specific point you're drawing upon. I don't think I'm cynical enough to think Grapeshot is corrupt, but lacks proper direction, leadership and at the risk of sounding harsh, competence. I think they went into this with lofty goals and good intentions, but continue to prioritize incorrectly and make bad decisions. I hope that I'm wrong and they pull an awesome game out of all this.

About half of that was spent getting my character/ boat unstuck, or regrinding after a wipe. ;D

I can take this game in spurts. I try it, I enjoy it for a few weeks, then the bugs make me delete it. This has been going on for years. It's like a smouldering dumpster fire that you keep lifting the lid to see if it's finally safe to play. To Atlas, early access is an excuse to get paid to develop or have people pay to alpha test your game. After Atlas I was very reluctant to pay for another early access game. However since then I tried Valheim and SCUM, both early access games. They're totally playable games in my experience, and a much better example of what early access should be. What Grapeshot is doing should be a crime IMO. If there was justice someone would start a class-action lawsuit and get everyone's money back. Not that this would ever happen. All this being said, my main gripe is their expectations of players. They seem to expect players to be on this game every day or so or lose their tames/ crew etc. This promotes unhealthy gaming habits which is bad for most people. So clearly their moral compass is broken. You look at the directions they're taking and you scratch your head. Even if the game wasn't full of bugs, their decisions leave you with little or no confidence. I try to take away from the game what I can enjoy, but it only lasts so long. It was/ is such a great idea with tons of potential. I feel to realize this potential they need to fire their team lead and get someone else to lead them in a proper direction. I have little confidence this game will be great even after a few more years. I hope in that time there will be another developer who will create kick ass pirate sailing survival game. Until such time, we have to sate our appetites with whatever we can squeeze out of this game for as long as we can stand it.

What's really sad is they totally borrowed code from Ark so they should really be farther along with this game BUUUUUUT... ... I wonder if it was worse trying to convert another game into what they wanted. Maybe it would have been better to build the game from "scratch". Sometimes I feel this is a big cause of their problems.