Decado

You could do something like this with the Freeport aspect of the game - if they expanded upon it. I have zero issues with people playing PVE - but my personal preference is I prefer the danger. But it's not just that, I also like to raid and fight and steal - you know, all the good piratey things. What i do resent though is when that kind of game is basically shat on from people who aren't living in that kind of environment. It's like playing a game like Rust - a vicious dog eat dog environment, but having a portion of the playerbase living in zones where their bases are safe, so they can selectively choose what they're willing to risk losing when they venture out on a raid - as opposed to always having everything at risk, if that makes sense. In Atlas - that's exactly how things play out. Yes islands can be at risk too, but far less so than Lawless. Lawless is a game unto itself, and for many people it's the preferred way to play, BUT - and the real point of my bringing this up - the reason it's so bad isnt from other lawless folks, it's from people coming in from other grids, other safe island grids and cleaning house. If these people were in adjoining lawless grids, it would be a completely different story. People tend to be more cautious raiding when their own assets are vulnerable, but this whole lawless vs non-lawless aspect of the game, to me at least, there's a huge inbalance there.

Straight up let me say – you’ll likely disagree with me instantly and that’s absolutely fine but I want to say my piece anyway. I find this topic really tricky to put into words that match my thoughts on it, but I’ll try regardless. And before I say anything – yes, it’s lawless, but I find that answer to be a cop-out. To start – since Atlas went into early access, I’ve played solo, in small companies of only several members, and been part of a very large company. I’ve lived in lawless and on islands owned by a larger company, and rented from a company and enjoyed relative safety. My be all or end all preference for Atlas – or where I like to live and play essentially, is in lawless. But I feel there is a giant inbalance between the lawless side of the game and captured islands and that is essentially what I want to write about today. I’m not seeking anything here other than to provide my 2cents on the topic as I find one of the best parts of the game to be the most frustrating and eventually unplayable due to this issue. Living in lawless is bloody dangerous and that’s why I love it. Similar to Rust, I like to live with the constant threat of danger – where anytime I step outside my base door there might be someone waiting for me there. Or I might be building, or farming, or anything and at any time can be attacked. I need this threat of danger to sustain my interest, and it’s why I could never play PVE. Over time I’ve noticed that little communities pop up in the different lawless zones. They’re not as bad as people make out – where you’ll see familiar faces in the chat who talk, trade and most importantly, often help each other when someone is causing trouble or raiding coastlines. I’ve made some completely random good friends in these zones – one of the best being a guy who was raiding me every time I was offline, who I’d in turn raid when I logged on (and he was off) and vice versa. This went back and forth until we were finally on together, had a chat and a laugh and formed a really tight ingame friendship. We started to even assist each other when raided. But the problem with raiding as always – 90% of the time the bigger raids come from players living outside of lawless, and this is where the problem lies. Players in lawless often attack each other. While I mention the above communities forming and the like, it is still very much lawless. There’s regular fighting on the beaches, raiding of bases, destroying of ships and the like, but at a much smaller scale than the larger company conflicts in the held island world. But what happens regularly is these conflicts aren’t won or lost by lawless vs lawless players, they’re well equipped players on well equipped ships sailing in from adjoining or nearby island grids and wiping the lawless players clean – only to disappear again to wherever they came from. I know this as I’ve done it myself – I’ve been a bastard at times and resolved an issue in lawless by bringing across a ship heavy with cannons from the safe island it was anchored at. A safe island that would never be found as I was renting on it. While I admit to this and it is admittedly somewhat shameful, I am forced to rent on an island if I want to partake in Atlas’s ship side of the game because quite frankly, it is impossible to keep a ship alive overnight in lawless. Any bases near the water get pulverised by visitors from grids that are often safe at the time they’re raiding. Any ships meet a similar fate – where walled harbours are possible, they’re also particularly easy to penetrate with a proper warship. While there are medium to very large companies who do spend a lot of their time raiding other held islands, there is a vast number of players who choose to raid in lawless for the precise reason I mentioned above – they can do so without repercussion. In a lot of cases they won’t even loot, just happy to sink someones ship and bail to the safety of wherever the hell they came from. Now the alternative is to simply not live in lawless. If I want ships to have a chance at being not sunk, I rely on there being a raid timer that offers safety for at least part of the day. But then at the same time, I’m living in a base that’s likewise safe and feels suddenly and very much to me like a PVE experience. As I said above, I just can’t do PVE, it is just not for me. I love lawless but find it is a land of empty docks and ruined bases. The whole ‘its lawless’ throwaway line just doesn’t cut it for me. Lawless is a fantastic playground for new players, solos and smaller companies but it’s not these people who are the danger but those sailing in from other grids. To me there’s a sizeable balancing issue there and IMO it’s ruining one of the best parts of Atlas – the lawless grids. I don’t know what the solution is, but in a perfect world (for me) – those living in lawless would be contending with people in lawless, and those living on islands where half their day is safe, should instead be raiding other islands and not able to wreak unchecked havoc in lawless. It would be a different story if there was an actual means of keeping ships alive in Lawless overnight and those visiting from other grids had some actual challenge waiting for them. I’d much rather see ships anchored about the islands rather than just wrecks, in progress builds or empty harbours. Thanks for reading and again, no issues at all if you disagree.

I really love the day/night cycle of Atlas - there's some seriously beautiful lighting in the game but man - when its transitioning between day to night, or night to day, there's this period where the foreground is super contrasty making it very difficult to actually see anything. An example - as it goes towards evening, things are fine, the sky starts to darken etc. Then there's this short period where the foreground is suddenly SUPER contrasty/dark. After a while it transitions to full night where it's actually quite visible when not under the shadow of trees. Likewise, as night transitions into dawn, there's the same period where the sky is ligtening but the ground remains ridiculously contrastry. When you are in places like Freeports where there's buildings, you can barely see anything around the buildings due to this heavy contrast. Any chance we can get a little more local ambient lightning at ground level or overall reduction of the heavy contrast during these phases? I like the nights being dark, but this contrast not only makes navigating the terrain painful, it's actually unpleasant to look at. Not a game breaker by any means but could be tweaked to be a far more balanced experience.

I'd like to see more variance in the open water environment that's not just islands. For example, in the tropics - more small sandy islands/atols to explore. In the south - things like icebergs. I'd like to see ruined forts to explore - or those populated with pirate npcs that require clearing.. Dynamic shipwrecks that haven't yet submerged and have keeled over - possibly in the process of sinking. More by way of NPC ships that are non combatative including an improved merchant ship, or possibly a merchant ship that's being guarded by several friendly npc ships where you can get good loot but have to deal with the escorts. I'd like to see way more variety of sealife - including more very large creature types. Things like seals, schooling dolphins, giant turtles, giant squids/octopus (but not neccessarily aggressive), different varieties of whale, different varieties of seabirds like albatross which can be hunted for buffs/risk of curses. NPC submarines which may either attack or flee underwater in which case you can chase them in your own submarine. Stranded sailors in life rafts being rescuable and returned to a freeport/base for reward. Pirate ships - or perhaps pirate ships fighting other npc ships where you can become involved on either side. More by way of air options for transport such as zepplins, or small scouting zepplins usable from the ship. Perhaps docking stations on ship masts to interact with player zepps. I'd like to see much more wave variety - from giant waves and storms that dont automatically mean cyclones (which i find very annoying ingame). Random whirlpool encounters, giant megalodon encounters etc. Patches of 'magic water (i know i know) that when sailed through drastically improve speed - maybe mermaid spew has speed boosting properties. Water in tropical areas that's crystal clear blue and beautiful and full of tropical fish and coral reefs, where exploring in better scuba gear is a thing. Literally anything that adds life, personality and interest to the water - it doesnt always neccessarily have to be a game mechanic. Having diversity and interesting water biomes by itself makes the game much more enjoyable to be in.

Nah see that's the thing, i don't want waterworld either - it's all about balance. Water needs to be the focus of the game because that's the key selling point - but without a decent land element, the water quickly loses its appeal. The game needs to offer a variety of things to do, from exploring to battles on the sea - but again it needs to be about balance. If it's solely about exploration then that soon becomes old - just the same if its soley about sea battles, well what's the real point of those in the long run if there's no meaning to it. My main point i guess is - it's the water aspect that drew me to the game, but the more i played the game the more the water became 'just a thing over there' while my focus became building a base, taming animals, harvesting items and basically being on the sea, sailing, exploring, fishing, diving, battling other ships, visiting other islands etc all became things i just weren't doing because by the time i'd finished with the farming/building/taming i just couldnt be bothered going to sea. The focus needs to shift to the water and the coastlines and away from the monotony of the landlocked game as it stands. The sea element doesn't just need to be ships, either. I'm totally not against riding on sea creatures, or travelling under water, or in the air via airships or what not. Those are all great possibilities - but given how well the ship system is implemented, it'd also be crazy not to expand on that side of things as much as possible, introducing as many gameplay elements as possible to enhance ship play - from basic sailing to combat, to random encounters and everything in between. *Edit - actually one final thing i want to say about tames - the sheer nature of them means they're practically essential to do any form of farming. The different between collecting by hand and tames is ridiculously out of proportion, both from the quantity gathered and what can be carried. Vast amounts of time is spent levelling these tames to make them even better and you're essentially gimped without them. Imagine that tamed creatures didnt play such a role and instead - you were purchasing your commodities in large quantities from trading ports (expanded freeports) instead? ie it was super viable doing very large trading runs, not to mention very profitable - making it one of the core actions in game, and also a super appealing target for pirate players? The whole balance of the game needs to shift away from this over-reliance on tames and the ground based game and put into these kinds of things. It's a pirate game without pirates, a pirate game where the water is really not even needed.

I think one way to get the emphasis away from the land based game - is change the way animals are in the game. The whole taming element is interesting yes, but it puts a huge emphasis on doing it and drastically changes the focus of players from being sea-based, to amassing and protecting vast stocks of tames. The tames also by nature become the focus of combat, raiding etc. If anything - it's as if they're unwilling to step past their ARK roots and let Atlas have its own identity. If you're going to have tames - have them purchasable for gold, and instantly. Get rid of that whole side of the game which anchors the gameplay on land, and return it to the sea. Look at new ways of obtaining gold (although what is there currently isnt too bad)- but moreso new ways of spending gold to enhance the sea gameplay. Man I don't know - but all i do know is, if Atlas is going to ever step out from ARK's shadow, it needs to confidently declare its own identity - ie a game based around the sea - and then all design decisions going forward need to be selected with that in mind. It's almost as if it needs a standard company mission statement to colour the design roadmap. If it was up to me (and it aint :)) - i'd be instantly halving the size of the map - possibly even a quarter of its current size, so the existing player base is not so spread out. You WANT players to be seeing other ships almost every time they sail. The more ships on the water the more chance of NON ship combat every single time. By that i mean - ship combat isnt a guaranteed thing because you rarely see other ships and it's omgomg kill anything that moves. It'd be good to see other interactions in addition - trading on the waves, sailing together for protection, etc. All of those kinds of interactions would make the actual combat so much more special. I mentioned above about expanding Freeports into proper towns - purposely designed port cities. Imagine there were 3-4 main cities like this - it would instantly give purpose to the map - if you say bought bananas in City A then went across the other side of the map to sell them in City D for solid profit - suddenly you've got a trading route - incentive for traders, incentive for pirates. You simply build alternate routes and concepts on top of this until there's a real game in there. But more - what if you took those Freeports and added things like rentable rooms in inns - so solo players had a safe base (at a cost) and a place to keep their ship overnight at the docks? Right now the game seems to be held hostage to the amount of land available. The map is big, and empty and dull - just so everyone can have sufficient land to spend all their time protecting and doing little else. This needs to be turned on its head somehow. The game set out to be an MMO of sorts and it was a great concept, but the reality is, those numbers are never going to be sustainable unless there's the best goddamned game ever inside - and ATLAS to me, still doesn't know what it is. It needs to be find the courage to dump the superfluous things that are keeping it from being an awesome sea based survival game.

I can assure you I very much bought the game because of the water aspect. I just didn't expect the water to be such a good part of the game as visually in the trailers or various Youtube vids the waves never looked that good, and having experienced the water in ARK, it was good but left a lot to be desired. The look and the feel of the water was considerably better than i thought it would be going in - hence my expecting to refund it and initially going in only planning to trial it. There's absolutely nothing deceptive about this other than your interpretation.

Yes all of these things and more! My idea of a sea based game is not huge land masses, encouraging people to stay inland and raise animals (that's ARK), but building coastal towns and trading centres. I'd love to see some developer (or modder) made coastal trading towns that are diverse and truly interesting. But moreso - they're a place for players to socialise and trade, but also for pirate players to attack. Drastically increase the number of port orientated buildings - docks, dock structures, shops over piers, fishing harbours, the works. Things like trading lanes would become a thing due to the sheer amount of water traffic between these important destinations - encouraging proper trading. I just feel that they're focusing on the wrong things for Atlas. Some elements are great - like the subs and the underwater trench environment etc - but practically all content should be going down that particular route - enhancing everything relating to the water experience (which includes interesting coastal locations - ie things accessible from the water, or visible from the sea).

When I first bought Atlas, I was expecting it to be a reskinned ARK. As a long time ARK player, I wasn't overly phased by that as despite the quite average performance, ARK could be a quite beautiful game, rich in diverse and interesting locations. And so when i first bought the game, I did so expecting to refund it after 2 hours. I just wanted to check it out basically. I ran around the first Freeport and enjoyed the new setting. I thought the little Freeport itself was extremely underwhelming and lifeless - something which didn't remotely look like what was shown in the trailer, but I continued. I ran around doing the basic things to level - killing, collecting etc until I finally had enough for my first raft. By this point i was planning on refunding. I liked it, but it just seemed under-whelming. And then I got on the water. I set out on my first raft and holy crap - the water was amazing and far better than I had imagined. I'd always liked the water aspect of ARK but it never felt fully-developed, but this water - the way it moved, the way it bobbed my raft atop it, the feeling of being on it, awesome. It was here that it didn't feel like ARK but it's own game. As I journeyed further out and the sun went down, i had my little fire roaring and my sail up - i bought the game. I was so impressed with that early experience. In time, I built my own sloop and started to explore properly. I crewed it with NPCs, began collecting salvage, deep diving, exploring islands. All of this was extremely enjoyable, but the more i played the game, the more dependent on land i became and the water aspect became something that fell into two categories: 1. I was either not using my ships at all or: 2. I was sailing for vast amounts of time with nothing happening other than changing the sail directions from time to time. I was spending huge amounts of time on farming. I was banging my head in frustration trying to tame animals to reduce the farming times. I was having to erect great ugly structures to house those animals and well, the cycle just became boring. I didnt want to be spending time on land, I wanted to be on the sea - but to be on the sea it required a bunch of land time and well - it just declined from there. One thing I really thought lacking in ARK was a lack of structures/towns of any form. With things like the Freeports and various ruins, I thought this is where ATLAS could have really taken itself to the next level. Funnily enough there's little docks and buildings around the various islands but they're always empty - interesting but soon forgotten. I wish it was here that the developers started to place emphasis. The game needs to be about the sea and the coastlines. Not taming animals, not erecting giant inland bases - but erecting coastal ports and trading hubs. Give us a reason to travel. Dont spend all your time on island biomes - create interesting mini-islands and atols, reefs teeming with fish and hand created shipwrecks. Create port towns which are like the Freeports on steroids - fleshed out with NPCs and things players themselves can add to them. Give us more to do when sailing - more aquatic creature diversity. More NPC ship varieties that aren't always threatening. Migrating birds, weather diversity, island forts. Return the emphasis to the sea - for that's where Atlas truly shines. Create bigger waves, different waves, whirlpools, sea monsters, different coloured water. Create a ton of different underwater biomes so we have a proper reason to visit them and dive. If we want a land based survival pvp - we have ark and conan. Atlas is only weakening itself by continually expanding down that area. Work on the sea. Focus on the sea. Make the sea the best thing possible and focus on why people like me bought the game - to sail and be on the water. Or by the water. Always

Ive had all kinds of random results, it's freakin messy.

This isnt a fix - ive done this previously and its completely random. Sometimes going through all this you'll be fine for a few mins then have the same issue. There's something seriously borked somewhere in the game. I found i wasnt getting kicked, but suddenly its so laggy its unplayable.

Same issue

Mine is back to being screwed again omg

What you said is exactly what happened to me - similar timeframe ago. I was running along with my bow about to fire at something, then suddenly couldnt switch weapons. I was not far from my base so i ran back to it - couldnt interact with any of it. There were no labels for anything either. When i pressed escape, it didnt show any connected player numbers, it was just the default text with no results. So i exited and like you, i cant rejoin the Atlas. Unlike you i joined a new Atlas and picked a quadrant. It then spawned me back as my char, alive and as i'd left it but still bugged! I've since checked integrity of the cache, restarted machine, steam etc, no joy. I notice some prick has put a claim flag on my one and only schooner (i'm a solo) and it makes me feel like something dodgy has occured. I thought i'd kill myself to see if i could respawn but it showed a completely green screen over the map. I exited the game and came back in, i cant respawn at all - i can click on the names for the islands(ie the numbers) but cant spawn on any of them. My player name is Decado Jones, quadrant M8. Help!!!!!!!!! *edit - can confirm i can make a char and play on the euro server no problems - it has to be exclusive to the NA pvp server.\ *edit edit- ok i fixed it - finally after 2 hours of messing around. From the spawn screen i selected a new home server and picked a freeport. I spawned and could interact again. I killed myself and finally i could spawn back at my own base and access my stuff as normal. Very very bloody odd/annoying.