Bezdolnik

Totally agree. From the very beginning people were playing the game thinking this would be the next big MMO, the WoW killer if you will. I don't think the Devs vision aligned with that. Freeports should have became some kind of hub, more MMO elements and randomized systems should have been added into the game encouraging player interaction. But nothing, instead they focused on singleplayer, and PVE mob events which are honestly pathetic in design and not very fun. The cooperative and competitive player interaction is what should have been nurtured and is what the game that I think everyone at launch was desiring.

Do you have any plans to overhaul the resource system in Atlas, allowing it to be more dynamic? Such as more randomized resource location and perhaps finite resources that would deplete and respawn over a long period of time in new locations? This would promote more exploration and general movement that would be beneficial to a MMO sailing exploration game.

Vitamin depletion rate definitely needs to be decreased greatly, more in tune with real life where you won't start dying from vitamin depletion until many months.... As far as exploration there are a few things that currently hinder it or make it less exciting. One is way too much player building spam with high walls everywhere. Another is the fact of many copy pasted islands that are exactly the same. One solution I propose that would encourage more exploration and generally more movement is there needs to be dynamic respawning and relocation of resources. Maybe after a few weeks resources would be depleted on one island and thus spawn somewhere else and players would have to go look for and find it again. This could maybe be limited to rare resources but would definitely encourage more exploration. Another solution, one I assume we won't see, procedurally generated islands would be the ultimate thing in a sailing exploration game like this, ideally wouldn't even have a grid limit. But obviously the way the servers are structured right now its not possible.

In general I think the game would benefit from animal density across all grids being lowered.

I am definitely not the only one who clearly sees that 90% of the blueprints are completely useless and should be removed from the game. Overall their needs to be some improvements to 'rare items' that should be found in flotsam or other events. Items should truly be rare and of value. Maybe every flotsam shouldn't have a blueprint in it? And when it does it should be something that someone would actually want. As with many games the blueprint system is suffering from inflationary item overload. Related to this is the issue of rare items. Most survival games seem to have this issue where there really is no super rare items that may be found in other RPGs or MMORPGs, I think cosmetic items should be found in treasure chests and there should be rare ones that people seek out. Just to add more of a reason to go out exploring and searching for treasure.

I'm sure the developers have internally discussed this idea and there are some pros and cons to it but I would like to see what other people think of it. I think there could at least be a mode where resources across ATLAS would be globally finite but dynamically depleting and shifting to other islands and grids. It would truly throw a curveball to the game dynamic and I think the one benefit is that this would address the criticism that the game currently is not encouraging enough movement across the seas. So a big clan would for example control a large gem deposit, but after some weeks this resource would deplete. Now they would have to go search for this resource in another area, maybe it would end up in the backyard of a lucky small group, or a competing clan, or in the middle of nowhere. This would be a natural way for wars, trading, or logistical movement to be increased. Now one inevitable problem that would arise is that the randomness of where the next resources appear would of course provide some luck to some clans, but that would have to be the nature of the mechanic. Another problem is that this would be more frustrating for smaller groups so perhaps this would be a feature that would be done on a server more suited towards empire or 'hardcore' gameplay.

The developers are being extremely careless in their documentation of basic game mechanics. For example the exact rules for PVP Colonies flag claiming and contesting had to be basically learned through trial and error with everyone asking one another what exactly is going on. Now according to the changelog there has been minor patches with changes being described but the original rules were never documented in the first place! On official launch of 'Atlas 1.5' we were unable to capture an island due to sleeping players (allies) that were within the flag capture radius at a nearby base. Another thing we noticed is that a sleeping character will not count as a contester, but it did seem to count as a defender. Now we were mostly just experimenting and did not really care for the territory claim. With the changes implemented from the recent minor patches, it appeared our allies captured the island while we were sleeping, with their claim flag radius being entirely within our building. So I have no idea what exactly are the rules and if they have been changed. No such change was ever documented and so I have no idea how this works now. I have to basically search through these forums and other websites of peoples anecdotes and experiences to figure out how certain things work. In fact I even read that the flag timer can also count upwards instead of only counting down. Is it really so much to ask to just write a few bullet points of rules for this basic mechanic of the game?