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Hey Pathfinders!

Just wanted to come in and give you a quick status update for ATLAS 1.5 before the weekend. We are planning on launching the Public Test Realm next Wednesday, the 3rd of April, and by then there will be an in-depth Captain’s Log which will do a deep dive on the entire patch so you know what to expect.

Full patch notes can be found here:

Going forward, we expect subsequent major updates to come on a monthly basis, which will include more content such as new items, weapons, creatures and new areas for players to check out!

We know that this update has taken quite some time and we really appreciate everyone’s patience as we dug down to the core of the claiming system and reworked it. We expect that we’ll have this ready to ship onto the main network by the week of the 8th of April.

Following ATLAS 1.5, there will be a lot more to come in terms of design changes and content. This announcement post contains a sneak peek of some upcoming new creatures, can you guess what abilities they’ll have?

 

 

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Please note, this does not mean that the PTR will accessible to players on the 27th, just that this network will go offline to prepare for it. 

We do have plans for more PVE content in the game; from dungeons, quests, missions, the list goes on but right now our focus is on this upcoming mega update and tackling some of our core design problems.

However there are some really good ideas in here, keep them coming folks

 

Nope

Just wanted to chime in here to let you guys know we are actively reading the threads, our discord servers, tweets, reddit posts, etc. We consume feedback from every where and not one place takes a priority over another. Typically we tend to do our big announcement/changes over our Captain's Log, as we're able to funnel people into one location where they can see what we're planning.

As for the PvE specific feedback, we are discussing as a team, based on the feedback and suggestions you've provided about our initial proposal and we're open to making changes. So certainly keep it coming as we do appreciate it

Edit: Dollie beat me to the punch . I am hoping that we'll be able to share more info with you guys soon, based on what we decide to do but you have all certainly raised some valid concerns over the past few days.

Ahoy Pathfinders!

This Captain’s Log will go into some of the finer details of what we shared during our livestream earlier today. If you didn’t have a chance to watch it, you can check out the full VOD here, which also includes live gameplay of some of the upcoming features:

In previous logs, we stated that we would be visiting some major design aspects of the game which make it more accessible for smaller groups and solo players, along with reducing the steep climb necessary to experience some of the later game content. There is a lot that we want to do over the coming months, and this update will be the first of many to help resolve these problems. However, before we get into that, we’d like to talk about something pretty important.

      Official Network wipe 

Please note that this wipe will not be forced on Unofficial Servers, however the old claim flags will disappear and you’ll have to replace them or allow them to naturally populate.

With the release of this first milestone, we will be wiping all our Official Networks. This is not a decision we’ve taken lightly, however we believe based on a number of reasons that this will be the best move for the game, moving forward. 

First of all, the changes we are planning for this update are huge. We are completely redesigning the world layout, introducing new island types and biomes, adding new playable areas beneath and upon the ocean along with completely revamping the claim system. Due to the impact of these changes, we believe a wipe is the best course of action so that you can experience the update in a fresh environment, without being influenced by any of our legacy or deprecated code. 

The wipe will allow us to see whether the changes we’re making are heading in the right direction, or whether we need to sit back as a team and further adjust our design for the game. We believe that these systems, which we’re going to discuss in more detail, are some of the most important and core aspect of ATLAS. Using your feedback, insight, and creativity, we want to build on the foundation of the game throughout Early Access and we’re willing to make the changes necessary, no matter how large, to get them to work. Whether that means more content, complete redesigns, or wiping the network when big changes have come in.

Secondly, since ATLAS launched as an Early Access title, there have been a number of bugs, exploits, and patches made to the game that have had a significant impact on the state of the persistent world. A number of players have benefited or have suffered grievances due to these various since-fixed issues, whether they were taking advantage of crafting exploits, alpha babies, duping, or had their boats sunk by Gatling Ship of the Damned.

As such, being a game that is focused on players building an empire, claiming and ruling over what’s theirs, and being the hero or villain they were meant to be; we believe that a wipe is necessary to put everyone back on an even playing field.

Furthermore, we’ve been a little more soft in some cases when it came to players taking advantage of these game exploits. After the first wipe has taken place in March, that will no longer be the case. We will still prioritize fixing issues/bugs/exploits, so we encourage you to work with us when you’ve discovered something that could be exploitable. That is our mandate, fixing and resolving game problems, however we’ll be taking a more firm stance against the serious cases where a company has used an exploit without coming forward which could result in company-wide and or alliance-wide punishments. 

Finally, at the end of March, when this update drops, we’ll be commiserating those of you who have taken part in ATLAS’ first iteration. We’ll be rewarding all players who have ever logged into Official ATLAS prior to the wipe with a special cosmetic item that you’ll be able to keep post-wipe. Please keep an eye out for our announcements for when the deadline is, so you can be sure to get the cosmetic!

      March milestone 

 

With this patch, the team have a number of primary and secondary objectives. With our primary and biggest changes we hope to address the following:

• Players not being able to find land to build a base on both PvP and PvE
• Offline Raiding
• Incentivizing large companies to work with smaller and solo groups
• Players not being able to connect/spawn on a server

We recognize that these aren’t the only aspects of ATLAS which need to improve. There are problems with the new player experience, how punishing it is to recover after you’ve been defeated, server performance during large epic battles, viability of creatures, weapons, boat builds, etc. The list can go on and these are things which we plan to address, and more in the coming months ahead.

This patch, however, will primarily be focused on the points we mentioned above, and will hit our PTR/Test Live Environment a week before it makes its way onto the main game, so you’ll be able to get an early look at it and experience it on that network.

Please let us know your thoughts about this upcoming update, we value your feedback and insight. We don’t claim to be omniscient, and you may raise attention to something we hadn’t considered which will either result in us adjusting the design further, or we’ll consider how to tackle those concerns at a future date.

      claim revamp and war system 

General Rules

• Players can now build anywhere, without owning a Settlement (an island which has been claimed).
• An island which has been claimed is now known as a Settlement.
• Only one claim flag can be placed per island, and the owner (player/company) is the owner of that Settlement.
• There will be a hard limit on the total number of claim flags.
• Islands are given a rank based on their location, size and how valuable they are. These rankings will be used to determine upkeep, as well as identify the Top 10 Companies which will be a sum of all the islands that Company has claimed.
• Structures that are built on islands that are not Settlements can be raided at any moment. 
• Fog of War and Shroud of War have been eliminated, so the entire ATLAS will be shown to everyone.
• World Map will now show the name of an Island (which can be changed by Settlement owners), who a Settlement is owned by, the current tax rate, and the current war status of the island.
• Islands will have colored overlay for ownership (Owned by you, an ally, or non-ally).

Company Updates

• NPC crew on offensive/defensive seated structures will no longer count towards the tame limit whilst seated.
• Company limit has been reduced to 250 members
• Group ranks have now been increased to 10
• Alliance changes will now be logged in the Company Log
• You can now sort the Company log to display entries from top to bottom
• A new group setting which can grant ‘owner’ permission for company members, which can only be set by the owner and unset by the owner. Members with the ‘owner’ permission will not be able to remove the actual Company Owner from the company.
• An alliance now only contains a maximum of 4 companies
• A company can only be in 2 different alliances at a time.

Claim Flags

• Sea Claim Flags have been eliminated
• Claim flags can no longer be used to steal structure ownership on land
• Claim flags can no longer be merged into other companies
• There will be a hard limit on the total number of claim flags per company. For example, 20. Numbers can be adjusted.
• A claim flag cannot be placed without a tax bank.
• Claiming an island will take a fixed amount of time plus an additional amount per claim flag owned. For example, 1 hour to claim and +1 hour per owned claim flag. Numbers can be adjusted.
• Declaiming will always take a fixed amount of time. For example, 2 hours. Numbers can be adjusted.

Claim Flag Upkeep

• Claim Flags now have an upkeep cost which is paid from the tax bank
• The upkeep cost will be an assortment of resources.
• The upkeep cost will scale on the size of the island, the total number of claim flags a company has, and how many different companies/players are building on the island.
• Players can only place items into a tax bank that go towards upkeep
• Claim Flag will have a grace period after successful claim to allow resources to gather in a tax bank before upkeep is charged
• The claim flag will visualize if the upkeep will not be met, so players are able to contribute directly to the Tax Bank. The Tax Bank will now stack resources like a ship resource box.

Settlements

• Settlement owners must set a window of vulnerability, currently set to 9 hours, where their island is raidable. Outside of this window, players, structures and ships will not take damage from other players. 
• There will be a timer on players before they receive the invulnerability status.
• Anchored boats or docked boats will follow these same rules, if they are in the radius of a Settlement
• Non-settlement owners who have cannons on ships and are anchored shall not be allowed to fire cannons outside of wartime.
• Settlement owners can freely damage other characters and structures on their island. 
• Settlement owners can set taxes on their island which will automatically be deposited into the Tax Bank
• Structures that are built on a Settlement which do not belong to the Settlement Owner will have a decay timer.
• Player Run shops which are placed on islands can also be taxed by Settlement owners

Declaring War

• Players can purchase a war token (significant cost) which can be used to declare war on an island.
• When war is declared on an island, players must select a schedule time in the future (3 days to 1 week)
• Only one war can be scheduled at once
• There is a cooldown after a war has ended before another war could be declared on that island
• Declaring war is per-island, so it is possible to declare war against multiple islands at the same time.
• The UI will indicate whether an island is experiencing Wartime soon or is currently in Wartime.
• Wars will last a fixed period of time
• When an island has been deemed warlike, building rules no longer apply. After the war has ended, the normal rules are enacted again. 

Settlement Build Rules

• Only the owner of a Settlement will be able to build offensive structures (mortars, cannons, and swivels) on their island, outside of Wartime.
• Other companies can build defensive structures (puckle) at any time.
• Other companies can build offensive structures ONLY during Wartime. Outside of Wartime, these structures are non-functional (inactive and unusable)

Notification System

• Players can sign up for email notifications related to company log activity
• Company Logs that have any physical in-world location shall now include the grid and GPS. (e.g a boat was sunk on K5 at 50 50)
• Discord Webhook for in game company notifications

Lawless Servers

• Will continue to operate like normal, no islands on these servers can be claimed.
• Reduced structure placement rules
• Damage decay added over time on all structures

PvE Network

• No claim flags
• Damage decay overtime added to all structures
• A new auto-repair structure which players will need to upkeep to prevent structures from being destroyed by decay.

 world redesign 

This milestone will also introduce some world changes to the ATLAS itself. The overall objective from these changes is to provide players with more land to use for their bases, as well as a general update for our current biomes and introducing new areas to explore.

• Over 200 islands added to the network, approximately 1 additional island per grid.
• Players can now set any server as their home server. Following the wipe and the potential for freeports to be overloaded, we’ll be temporarily enabling setting any ATLAS server as your homeserver. Additionally, we’ll most likely create a respawn on current server option too.

 full notes for march milestone 

- New Vehicle: Submarine. Explore the depths of the ocean in this small scouting submarine. No weapons on board, but it does have claw arms to help harvest the ocean floor and explore (demolish) shipwrecks

The submarine can also light up its surroundings, and will require fuel to run. The fuel cost will be based on movement, so the more it moves, the more it uses. Additionally, there will be a higher cost for movement that is lateral (forward/backwards) compared to longitudinal (upwards/downwards). The submarine will not outclass ships as you’ll need to pay a lot in fuel costs to be able to travel far, the intention is to use them in these underwater deeping-diving scenarios. It’ll be unlocked and can be driven by defeating the Kraken, though players will be able to be passengers in other users submarine’s without having completed the Kraken quest.

- New Environment: Deep Ocean Trench. A new area to explore, guarded by powerful underwater creatures and home to the new Giant Crab.

The trench will be found on the Golden Age Ruin servers and contain 8 new power stones which can be used to unlock fight a more difficult version of the Kraken. It’ll be an area where players can find new resources, new creatures, such as the Crab with more to come in the future.

- New Creature: Giant Crab. It can heavy loads, along with players, tames and wild creatures

The crab can be found in the Trench and it is a tamable creature. It’ll have the ability to carry and throw other players/creatures, and it can also jump very far. These abilities may change over time as we progress further into ATLAS’ development.

- New Environment: Eastern Tundra now has its own visual design, no longer using the Western Tundra style

We’ll be updating the eastern side of the Tundra to have it’s own unique design!

- New Structure: Guillotine. Hanging your foes in a noose taking too long? Off with their heads!

When you behead another player, the game will remember their facial appearance and hairstyle, which can be used as decoration on wallhooks (on gunmounts too)!

- New Feature: Curses. Tied to the execution of players

When executing a player, you’ll now receive a % of their experience points. This will have a cooldown, so it cannot be used to quickly drain/transfer experience, and some general experience will be lost when the transfer occurs. We’re not intending for this to be an incredibly aggressive feature, but something more fun which occurs when executing players. We’ll be expanding the curses system more later on.

- New Feature: Squads (ships) of the Damned will now come in multiple size variations with different stats and difficulty levels.

Ships of the Damned will now appear in squads! They’ll contain an assortment of various types including Galleons of the Damned, Brigantines of the Damned, and Schooner of the Damned. These types will determine their difficulty, and the loot will scale based on the level of the damned, as well as type of damned that the squad is comprised of. For example, a Squad containing 2 Galleons is going to reward better loot than a Squad containing 5 Schooners. Loot will be rewarded on a per-ship basis. The intent behind this change is to make the fight less predictable and a more interesting experience out on the seas. We are not planning for them to be killing machines or an immense threat, they’ll still maintain a reduced targeting ranged and players will have the choice whether to engage in battle or to flee. However it should be noted that they will now share the same target when attacking.

- New Cosmetics: Peg Legs and Hook Hands.

These will be acquired through the cosmetic vendor in freeports, as they won’t be providing any stat benefits, we prefer that they are readily available for players. You will not be able to equip both the left hand and left leg (or foot) at the same time. Additionally, it will not be colourizable nor can it be used on naked characters but we are working on both of these aspects.

- New Cosmetics: Multiple Armor sets to customize the look of your company and crew! Provided as a permanent unlock for completing the Quests in addition to skill rewards.

Rest of the Notes

- New Feature: Player shops in freeports. Players can set up automated shops in each Freeport, listing loot for sale and naming their own gold coin prices.

Balance Changes

- The higher quality shipyard used when building a ship, the more level ups a ship will be able to obtain.
- Ships can now level up their total damage output (which effects all cannons on a ship) and their total resistance, as new upgradable stats.
- All tamable creatures will be made breedable, with no exceptions except for Mythical Creatures.
- Vitamin Rebalance
- Various spawner adjustments & fixes across all islands

QOL Changes

- Territory map will now display allies as teal-coloured
- Character creator now has a Height slider to make it easier to set your character's desired height
- Any dead ships (shipwrecks) from your Company appear with a unique icon on your map now, so you can find the wrecks
- Global territory message updating
- Currently contested claims will be indicated on the minimap
- Players can now mount a sail to directly control the sail's open/close amount and rotation settings in a more intuitive way.
- Pistol Reloading now changed to have the mini game appear back to back, rather than through various points of the animation.
- All servers can now be set to a home server and have unique spawn points
- Players can also respawn on the server they died on
- Grappling Hook has been revamped, better physics & rappelling mechanics, and players will be able to realistically swing using them.

As more changes are made to the patch, these notes will be edited to include them. 

      Anarchy Update - v20! 

With our planned changes for March, the game will be heading into a more rule based system, so for the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes to experience what it would be like if we took an alternative route. 

We’ll be releasing an update tomorrow which includes the following changes:

- 6x Rates - Harvesting, Taming, Experience, and Gold.
- Claim flags will no longer prevent enemy building. You can now build anywhere, and only structure build radius will prevent it. This is a non-default, which will be enabled on our PvP Networks. Unofficials can also use this as a custom server-side config.
- All servers, other than Golden Age Ruin servers, can be set to home servers, allowing players to respawn at them.

Game.ini:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
bDontRequireClaimFlagsForBuilding=1
bIsLawlessHomeServer=1

This is what we’re enabling on all our non-Golden Age ruin servers, but please note that you must also flag the corresponding grids as homeservers on the servergrid.json

This patch will also include:

- Whispering voice hotkey
- Server side config that allows you to alter the distance for the 3 voice modes: Whispering, Normal, and Yelling.

Game.ini:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
ProximityRadius = 8500
YellingRadius = 22000
WhisperRadius = 2000

- Removing the Destruction Mesh on Lighthouses
- Increased the limit of folders in inventories from 20 to 40, and 80 in Bookshelves
- Treasure Map names now includes the grid for easy filtering

These changes will allow us to see how the game would pan out if we didn’t have the claim system affect build rules, which helps us collect more feedback on playstyles.

 released patch notes 

Complete Patch Notes

 up to v19.62 

v19.62

- New style Claim Flag with improved flag physics
- Improved mini map X icon for visibility
- Added chat tabs
- Reorganized claim flag notifications (requires updated server)

v19.52

- Fixed multiple cases where inpulses would be stacked causing players or creatures to be launched into the distance.

v19.51

- Disabled the use of some client side console commands which could be used to gain an unfair advantage in PvP

v19.5

- Army of the Damned Soldiers and Crew melee attacks now properly hit.
- Fixed an issue with servers that could have stalled them out for significant periods of time (5+ seconds)
- Improved general server performance

v19.4

- Further optimized server performance
- Fixed issue where Buffs were not being added (drinks and such) if you were on a seating structure, or if you were encumbered.

v19.3

- Significantly improved server performance when unstasising structures (50%+).
- Fixed the bug where picking up stat'ed Structures would eliminate quantity of existing structures in your inventory.
- Fixed a case where server-side Spoiling Times were incorrect on preserving bins.
- Whale corpses now last 30 minutes
- Giraffe harvesting now yields 6x thatch

v19.21

- Doubled maximum server physx substeps to maintain more consistent ship movement at low server framerates.

v19.2

- 2x Harvesting, XP, Taming and Gold enabled on the Official Network until Monday 25th.
- Bookshelf added to organize your maps, blueprints, notes, and songs. You can learn it from the Esotery of Building skill.
- Signs/Canvases can now be placed on storage boxes and bookshelves to help indicate what they're used for.
- Note added to the game to leave each other messages. You can learn it from the Secrets of Building skill.
- Company UI now displays last online time for members
- Significant server optimizations (company network data is now replicated more efficiently to clients)
- Maximum ship level is now 52.

v18.97

- Fixed Melee damage application to Army of the Damned
- Fixed NPC crew disappearing for a fraction of a second when mounting on cannons 
- Prevented climbing of the Kraken barrier wall 
- Improved Cyclops movement to allow it to clamber over rocks better

 Dynamic atlas maps roundup 

The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands. 

Each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim. 

Those who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges…

The companies that have occupied islands for a certain period of time will soon gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land! 

Remember you can don your Company’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP] The Whale's Wrath

Held: French & Ships, The French Monkeys, IVANARMY, Eternal Diamond, CHZ!!**, Kraken, Dark Project Armada, Frogue One and Stray Cats.

Arrivals: Just Look for Merge

Departures: Enslaved

[NA PVP] The Kraken's Maw

Held: Dynasty, TPG, CSTG, OwO, The Federation, No No No, Uganda, SoV, Bobs of the Seven, and Team Casualty.

Arrivals: Slam Whales

Departures: CSTG

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following Companies for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren's Call

Held: Compagnie des Indes, Rum ueber Bord, Future Company (HUN), SouL SanD, SwiftS.RU, Black Hand, Phantasia, M.E.R.C Spirit, and mochi. 

Arrivals: War Bradaz

Departures:  DoS Bros$

[NA PVE] The Hydra's Den

Held: Scales & Sails, Atlas Shrugged, The Exiles, East India Trading Co, Sons of Orion, Without Divide, Lotus, Poets and Pirates, and Darksea Dawgs.

Arrivals: Paragon

Departures: TPG

     SHOW 'N' TELL #5 

We’re still collecting entries for the Show ‘n Tell! So you have a little longer to astound us with your creations, be they your fleets, building designs, imaginative tatts, entertaining videos, original fanart or scenic screenshots. Don’t be shy and head to the submission thread for a chance to win some booty in the form of a cash prize!

 

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

‍For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information‍

Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

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Typically we don't comment on ongoing investigations, whether they're open or closed, though we have made a few exceptions in the past, such as with the Hunter Doyou company, and we'll make one here too.

We have been looking into this case for a while based on the reports we received and now that the investigation has come to a close, we have taken action. We understand that it may not come as quickly as you may like and that's a fair criticism, but it has certainly been on the radar whilst we investigate fairly and thoroughly. It is just a process that we are not and will not be transparent about.

To reiterate, threads (sometimes with scant evidence) calling for the banning of players in no way expedite our investigative process and we may make moves to moderate witch hunting in the future on our forums. Ultimately, we will take action as we deem it necessary based on our own investigations, and the reports which are submitted to https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/support-tickets/ supplement those investigations. Going to lock this thread now. 

We'll be going through quite a few things in that livestream related to our March Milestone. There should be a green announcement post on this site, are you able to see it? 

https://gyazo.com/36afcdfba2def1ea0e6b356cfacdafb4

 

I think this thread is getting a little out of hand. You're welcome to believe what you'd like about our team. Here's the deal with how we'd like to handle customer service for the time being:

When someone opens a ticket, that ticket is automatically closed with an auto response. Our GM team will then look into it to see if it's one we are currently supporting if so they'll begin investigating and may open the ticket to ask for further information. This more or less was always the situation, we'd close tickets we weren't supporting and just deal with key issues. We've just automated that part of the process. 

I understand that this isn't ideal. In an ideal situation, we'd be able to support every single ticket that comes in and deal with it from either a technical or customer service point of view. However, at this time in our development phase, we're going to be using this system to identify game issues and trends so that we can tackle them from a technical/development point of view. The team have determined that this is the most efficient use of our resources and will ensure that we're able to resolve problems quickly and for a larger amount of players. It will also ensure that we can avoid those problems existing in the future, the alternative would be tackling them more slowly and risking more players having to deal with game breaking issues. 

Yes, having a large and super responsive GM team would certainly be helpful, and I would love it but as is recruiting programmers and engineers to work on core problems which will have much more of an impact on the entire player base. The goal is to solve problems so that they do not exist overall. However, this doesn't mean we won't be doing any GM/ticketing work. We still plan to take action against rule breakers, hackers/cheaters, people who are harassing each other, resolving company problems, etc using the report system and the tools we have available to us.

We've been pretty transparent about this from the beginning, it was mentioned in the initial Captain's Log, it was included in an announcement on our Official Discord, and our automated response when opening a ticket also makes clear what the primary function behind it is for. It's not a matter of not valuing your time, it's a matter of recognizing how we can best utilize the resources we have available to us and what practically is the best way for our team to fix problems with the game and that players are experiencing on a day to day basis.

Over time, the process will improve. We'll have a larger team, who will be equipped with better tools and information to tackle problems via tickets and we'll have dealt with a lot of the current issues which are plaguing the game, resulting in tickets being created. We believe that this plan of action will inevitably lead to a better game, a better experience for players, and in the long term a better customer support service.

I understand that you may feel frustrated with this in the meantime, and I am sympathetic to you, however, this is how are going to proceed going forward. Everything is a process, and as we make strides in our development resolving issues, that will clear up the response rate. Additionally, as the game grows and the project gets further into its development cycle, the team will grow too. That will lead to having more active GMs, readily available to handle tickets. 

Going to shut down this topic, in future please be more civil with one another when discussing topics.

Thanks!

Thanks for all the responses guys. Will be going through it all with the team

 

1 minute ago, Robotukas said:

Most important thing is to split harvesting materials from food collection. At the moment when I harvesting with bear for fibre I alway get tons and tons berries and so on. I don’t know why fruits and vegetables a called Resourses. Could make another option like disable food harvesting. Thanks

We're going to be looking at moving over the tax-bank item-restrict functionality over to tames.

Thanks for the feedback folks, keep em coming

 

1 minute ago, Bradley1928 said:

Biggest thing making them not valuable is how easily they can be killed within a house or fall through the floor foundations. I have 7-8 chickens under my house in the foundations for weeks now.

Yup, I feel ya. This bug is a priority for us to resolve asap. 

Let's play a game! If you were a designer, what would you change about the following tamable creatures? We often hear feedback that players don't find value in most of the ones we've tamable, and I know some ideas have been shared in various threads previously but figured I'd make a giant thread where y'all can suggest. Not saying any of this is going to happen, but curious to see what you suggest.

• Bear
• Chicken
• Cow
• Bull
• Crow
• Razortooth
• Shieldhorn
• Elephant
• Giant Pig
• Giraffe
• Horse
• Lion
• Monkey
• Ostrich
• Parrot
• Penguin
• Rabbit
• Rhino
• Seagull
• Sheep
• Tiger
• Vulture
• Wolf

31 minutes ago, MeatSammich said:

Would there be a possibility of having the masts come pre-built with ladders, to simulate climbing the rigging? If it was all one piece, that could free up some pieces and reduce server load a bit.

It's a reasonable suggestion. I think they should still be retractable + destroyable though, which may not make it possible. Will see what the techie and designer folks say.

Just now, Archsenex said:

Just let me know when I can opt back Into the beta.  The game is gorgeous in 4k.

I see these streamers playing on low settings and I weep. 

Those specific changes which were made on that beta branch have been incorporated into the live game, though it might be that we'll end up using the branch again for these additional changes, we'll have to see how dangerous they are

We'll be making some design changes over the months ahead to make the game more accessible for smaller groups and solo players, whilst still maintaining elements focused on large groups too. 

3 minutes ago, Archsenex said:

My 1080 only pushes about 20 to 25 on 4k.  Playable but just below where I want it.  I get solid 50+ on 1920x1080.  Were you testing at 4k?

We've done some recent optimisations that should help 4k, but overall the game is pretty demanding and we need to make improvements across the board. We've got some things in testing at the moment thanks to some work directly with NVidia which should result in better GPU and CPU perf, hopefully, we'll be able to roll that out this month.

We've build limits in place for 2 reasons. The primary reason is that boats are considered dynamic platforms and each structure piece that gets added to one, the more the boat costs the server from a performance point of view. Dynamic structures are pretty expensive in general, which is why we have to introduce limitations. The limitations should vary across the different boats. Galleons allow more structures than Sloops. The second reason is for balance, we do have to limit the amount folks can build on certain boats so they don't get too ridiculous. It's by design that you cannot build as freely on a Galleon compared to a Sloop. If you're suggesting that the limits are actually the same across the boats, we'll look into it. It could be the case that the Brig and Gall are quite similar, but there should be a pretty significant/noticeable difference between the Gall and the Sloop.

CrossFire isn't something we're actively restricting, but also it's not something we've plan to allocate resources to at this time. Lot more things to tackle which effect a larger number of players.

Submit a ticket here and we'll be able to provide you with some assistance: https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/support-tickets/support/&do=form&d=21

Please note it might take a bit of time to get to you, and right now there's an auto response which will shut down tickets however we'll be opening ones which we are assisting with, such as company issues.

I mean it's not that unusual for a bunch of valuables to be found in whales... right? They have big mouths and they probably accidentally eat things all the time! As for the blubber, that is certainly odd and we should get that looked at. 

Ahoy Pathfinders! 

The Year of the Pig represents hard work, discipline and overall putting one's nose to the grindstone. It also signifies a focus on generosity and goodwill. We wish all of you a fortunate and rewarding Year of the Pig! 

 happy year of the pig! 

To celebrate, you can now save 17% off ATLAS as part of Steam Lunar New Year Sale! The game will be on offer until February 11th, 2019.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/834910/ATLAS/

 weekly patch roundup! 

Complete Patch Notes

In our last Captain’s Log, we spoke about some upcoming Design Changes for the game. That’s still a focus for our team and we’ll start to see those changes as we get into March and the months beyond. If you didn’t get a chance to read about, you can do so here:

In the meantime, the team are preparing on getting the major February content patch out. In addition to new content and features, we’ve still been iterating heavily on the live version of ATLAS, releasing two major versions and multiple minor version updates in the past week. Our time was split between various different areas, including many critical bugs and exploit fixes, as well as some major balance changes for our musical instruments, the Kraken, and some more general/misc notes.

 released patch notes 

 up to v18.46 

Server Performance
- Eliminated Cannon Animations playing entirely on the server for performance savings
- Multiple serious performance optimisations for companies on servers
- Linux WaveWorks optimisations (Linux Servers will run much better)
- Server optimisation for structures on boats

General Bug & Exploit Fixes
- Fixed an exploit which allowed players to stall out servers
- Added extra protection to inventories to fix and prevent players from bypassing pin codes
- Fixed a case which allowed players to enter the bottom of ships
- Fixed a case which allowed players to clip and stick themselves inside the boat's hull
- Protected against players accessing inventories from outside ships via clipping into boats
- Fixed multiple cases where players would fall through structures upon server restart, login, transition, etc.
- Fixed a crash which would occur when transitioning with the sextant buff
- Fixed Swivel Cannons from firing through walls
- Swapped Mythical and Legendary in the descriptions for tools skills tier 2 and 3, as they were previously incorrect.
- Fixed a bug where beds that were placed beyond the default accommodation limit were destroyed on server load
- Turrets and Cannons will no longer fire underwater and can no longer be mounted underwater
- Fixed a bug allowing players to reset all glider cooldowns by moving the glider between hotbar slots
- Increased the required minimum diving velocity before going into the glide-fall state to reduce gaining/maintaining height
- Ghost Ship has been fixed and will now take damage.
- Fixed a case where players/boats would get stuck playing transition ping-pong between two servers, frequently happened with large boats.
- Fixed multiple server crashes
- Fixed a server startup crash that would effect modded servers
- Fixed a bug which prevented players from being able to demolish structures
- Fixed an exploit related to demolishing structures on Lawless Servers
- Fixed Barshot so that it now targets sails and acts a slow through to incapacitating a ship's movement as intended.
- Fixed a bug which would cause the activity timer on PvE claim flags to tick into the negatives. Also updated so the timer now displays days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
- Fixed an incorrect fibre reference in crafting barshot
- Fixed a bug where Dead Bodies wouldn't be replicated on servers with replication turned off (Freeports and all PVE)
- Fixed a bug where picking up a higher quality structure within the pick up timeframe would result in the common structure, rather than the specific higher quality itself

Balance
- Explosive Barrels can no longer be placed on enemy ships. This is a temporary measure due to undesired gameplay. We are going to be redesigning the barrels from a technical/gameplay point of view to give them more use in the future.
- Whale Counts have been boosted on the Tundra and reduced the spawn interval between whales by 50%
- Wild Dragon damage has been reduced by 30%
- Golden Age Spawns have had their spawn interval increased from 30 seconds to 5 minutes and increased distance from players from 7700 to 9000
- The gold cost has been increased on upgrading higher quality items and structures
- Cooking Recipes spoil time has been increased
- Tamed Dragon lifespan reduced to 3 hours
- Tamed Dragon damage reduced by 33%
- Tamed Dragon health reduced by 33%

Quality of Life
- Allow players to pick-up structures if you're on the same team even if you do not have demolish rights
- Global Number of Ships is now displayed in the player's ATLAS Map UI. We'll be making this more visible on the UI in a future update. It will not display if you do not have any ships and do not belong to a company.
- Added a Crew name filter for company UI
- Ghost ship will now appear every night rather than every 3 nights
- Option to hide territory broadcast messages
- Territory broadcast message boxes now scale according to the character size of the message
- Gunport camera socket has been lowered and moved forward for better viewing when shooting from gunports
- PvE players will now be able to see their claim flag's inactivity timer on the flag itself
- Attacking Player no longer needs to be in range for declaiming progress
- Glider now has a required dive duration rather than a forced dive cooldown (achieves the same nerf effect on glider spam and feels better to use)
- Pinging on an enemy claim flag should show all contesting NPC crew, in addition to players.
- PvE servers will now automatically kill any character that has not been logged in for 4 weeks. Official Network only.
- PvE servers can now use the homeserver option which disables replication on sleeping/logged off bodies. (Non Default but enabled on Official Network). 
- PvE claim flags now only allow logged in players to contest the claim

Game.ini:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
bHomeServerDontReplicateLoggedOutPlayers=1
(enables logged off/sleeping players from replicating on home servers)
bPvEDontReplicateLoggedOutPlayers=1
(enables non-replicating logged off/sleeping players on all PvE servers)

Musical Instruments
- Various buffs/changes made to musical songs played on the Accordion and War Drum.
- Tweaked war drum battle songs to eliminate a big gap in the note sheet preview (just the preview, not the actual song)
- Fixed a bug causing the buff timer shown on the music UI during a looping song that gives a perpetual buff to become off by 1 second from the actual buff timer.
- Fixed a bug causing notes to incorrectly fail when activated near the edges of song loops
- Fixed a bug where client fps stutters could cause notes to fail that should have been auto-played
- Fixed server issue that could disconnect clients if they had a lot of map entities.

Kraken Changes
- Fixed a bug with the Kraken which would have inflicted a high amount of unintended damage
- The Kraken's Barrier will no longer damage ships on collision
- Kraken will no longer give impulses to players for the tentacle slams or tentacle impacts
- Impacts with the Kraken bodyparts will no longer cause ship damage
- Ship of the Damned Kraken minions are now damageable in PvE
- Reduced the damage of the Kraken homing projectiles by 50%
- Increased the damage taken by the Kraken tentacles by 50%

Misc
- Cleaned up an error message when attempting to craft a boat when you were at the maximum global limit
- Added a 12-second delay between playing status voice clips (such as injured or starvation)
- Reduced tutorial background opacity
- Made it so the text wasn't cut off for long paragraphs in the tutorial
- Mod Map Extensions now work (and will not require recooking the mod)
- PvE Claim Flag inactivity timer has been adjusted so that it now scales dynamically. A company with a small number of flags will be declaimable after 3 weeks of inactivity, whereas a company with a large number of claim flags would be declaimable after 3 days of inactivity.
- Top Companies will have their names displayed on the left-hand side of the map and are now granted special nameplates and figureheads
- Improved Ship position on the minimap so that it updates more smoothly
- Company Flags will now update properly onto www.playatlas.com
- Climbing on other boat's ladders now disabled in PvE if the ship is anchored
- Added Effect descriptions to Music and Cooking Recipes

This is just the tip of the iceberg for our upcoming plans and over time we’ll be sharing more and working closely with you to ensure that ATLAS gets one step closer to becoming one of the most ambitious persistent online worlds of all time and fulfilling its destiny as the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure!

 Dynamic atlas maps round-up 

The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands. 

Each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim. 

Those who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges…

The companies that have occupied islands for a certain period of time will soon gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land! 

Remember you can don your Company’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP] The Whale's Wrath

Held: French & Ships, The French Monkeys, IVANARMY, ENSLAVED, Frogues Orientales, and Eternal Diamond

Arrivals: OOOOOOOOOF, CHZ!!**, Dark Project Armada, CHEPO

Departures: Bad Company, ETERNIA, Goulou Goulou, Les Spectres, Future

[NA PVP] The Kraken's Maw

Held: Dynasty, High Seas Booty Bandits, TPG, CSTG, OWO, No No No, and The Federation

Arrivals: Destiny, BLDX, Team Casualty

Departures: Barry Sails, The Cartel, Black Butterfiy ?BB???

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following Companies for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren's Call

Held: Compagnie des Indes, Rum ueber Bord, Phantasia, Future Company (HUN), SouL SanD, Dos Bros$, SwiftS.RU, and Black Hand

Arrivals: mochi and Woelfe des Rudels

Departures:  Fenrirs Dogs and JomsViking

[NA PVE] The Hydra's Den

Held: Scales & Sails, The Exiles, Atlas Shrugged, East India Trading Co, Paragon, Lotus, Darksea Dawgs, Without Divide and Sons of Orion

Arrivals: Milky Armada

Departures: Narcos

 Show 'n Tell Showcase #3 

We’re still collecting entries for the Show ‘n Tell! So you have a little longer to astound us with your creations, be they your fleets, building designs, imaginative tatts, entertaining videos, original fanart or scenic screenshots. Don’t be shy and head to the submission thread for a chance to win some booty in the form of a cash prize!

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

‍For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information‍

Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

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1 hour ago, Jean Lafitte said:

CRASH!

Just riding my horse around.

https://pastebin.com/CSvVPdbc

Doesn't seem like the update went through properly? The client version seems incorrect.

Just a note folks, you'll need to OPT-OUT of the beta and back to the live branch for this upcoming major version. Just go to the beta tab and make sure you've not selected performancetest

 

Just now, Archsenex said:

Replying in this thread since I've been mentioning it here...

I THINK I managed to get my galleon out of limbo by suiciding, and changing home servers.  That appears to force the game to re-initalize my location data, and popped the galleon out of server transfer.  My guess is that while a ship is in transit, it's considered "part" of the pilot.  Total wild guess.  Will reply in my bug thread as well

Aye, this bug is on the top of our list. I was actually just talking to an engineer about it and I'm hoping we can get it resolved asap, sadly it's one of the more tricky ones. Additionally, it doesn't reproduce very well in our testing environment so we have to iterate on the live game to resolve it. 

Sorry for going off topic!

So update on this

The patch will be rolling out probably later this week, maybe Thursday or Friday as we need a bit of time to prepare and test the system. As for the crew thing, it's always been the case and operates like that in the live game, it won't be a new change. Just wanted to let people know that would be an option in the event that they'll need to spend some time away from the game, if they keep their crew paid + fed, they can help keep their claim.