Atlas

[jmotivator]

So I have been playing a lot of Atlas since it was on early release and I must say that I am rather impressed.

Part 1

Now, will I continue to play a lot of the game? I don't know. It is definitely a technical win for the developer over the doubters (I was one of them), but the sociological development of the game will likely push me away eventually. More on that in a bit. First the Technical...

The Good - Technical: Atlas is a pirate survival game built on the Ark/Age of Conan model. What this crazy game does, however, is weave 255 Ark maps (each about the size of Conan with 2 to 4 islands and a lot of ocean) into a 15x15 tapestry. The map is so large that it would probably take most of a day in real life to sail from corner to corner with fair winds. Each map has a soft cap of 150 players, meaning that all together the single continuous game can support 40,000 players.

Most of the travel in the game is done through sailing, and this game is the best sailing simulator I've played. If you know how to sail then your won't be completely put off by the physics in this game. It has some pretty severe limitations, but if you plan is to sail in open ocean with the wind you are good to go.

The Bad - Technical: The launch was about as rough as a launch as I have ever seen. It was delayed at the last minute three times and then released in a completely unplayable state. It took two days of seemingly hourly patching to get the game playable at the server loads.

This was compounded by the design of the game that drops new players into "Freeports" by default (small towns on resource-rich islands) that are no-PVP zones. Each Freeport has the same 150 cap, however, and there were only 15 or so Freeports at the start of the game. It was a pretty huge bottleneck. The other benefit of starting in a freeport is that it is the easiest way, by far, to get your first boat, the raft.

Further complicating the launch was the design of the game that made land ownership a feature in PVP. In is MUCH easier to make a claim on unclaimed ground than it is to take a claim, and the amount of land can actually be claimed in limited (there are law and lawless regions, and you can't lay claim in lawless regions)... so those who got their boats fastest and figured out the fine are of sailing the quickest would have the upper hand.

The bad side of sailing is that the game doesn't allow you to push boats, or sail in reverse, meaning that beaching a craft is pretty much the end of the craft as a boat.. but it can still be used as a spawn point (so long as you put a bed on it).

That last bit ends up being the biggest issue with the game, and that is the survival aspect. You have to monitor overall hydration, hunger, and 4 vitamins (A, B, C, D) which correspond to 4 different food groups (grains, animal meat, fruit, fish). Getting low on vitamins (or too high in a vitamin) causes illness, and slow degradation in health, meaning it's not enough just to eat, you have to eat a balanced diet to stay healthy. That breaks down when one of the four is extremely sparse, and all foods deteriorate at a rapid pace. Moreover, the one food resource that is hardest to come by, inexplicably, is FISH. That is because, in part, the fishing mini-game is currently broken (you can't craft bait), so catching fish is a matter of swimming with a spear... but fish are sparse even with that method. It makes sea travel extremely problematic... except for the fact that when you die you can spawn right back on the boat (or any bed you own in a law region). So the only way to get anywhere by boat right now is to intentionally die when your vitamins are low and respawn back on the bed you built on your boat with balanced vitamins and continue sailing

It's weird...

Now the social aspect...

(Cont'd)

 

[jmotivator]

Part 2

Before I get into the social, I should also point out that, while the bad in my previous post outweighs the good by a wide margin in words, the balance of the game at this moment, technically, is very good.

Now, Social is neither good or bad. This game is entirely what the community will make of it. The game is in the midst of a huge land rush, and there are a lot of land wars everywhere and tensions are high. The server is dominated by Chinese players, who are by far the largest faction (upwards of 5000 active players) who are trying, and mostly succeeding to get a foothold on every main island on the map, and they have mostly succeeded. The only saving grace for most players not willing to join China is that it is a huge map, and islands with small Chinese presence are mostly going to be stand alone fights. The Chinese are by far the best organized, but they haven't established supply roots, and the wind can ruin timely supply delivery anyway. That brings me to the funny quirk I have noticed in this game...

The majority of the American players I have encountered have this notion that they will prove once and for all the Communism works by implementing a communist system in this massive virtual space. Conversely, the Chinese, living in a state run by Communists, are primarily playing this game to gather resources and sell them only in the real world... so Westerners are largely attempting communism and Communists are largely playing as Capitalists. Capitalism is winning.

The funniest thing I have seen is how fast the communist system in Atlas has fallen apart. What started off in small groups as a functional cooperative have devolved as the groups grew. People who mined hundreds of stone for their house get angry when they find that some other person decided that they needed the stone for their own project and just took it. The latter person is a true communist.

Moreover, the online streamers who organize these big groups of players and coordinate them into communes have become rather dictatorial, and have resorted to hording materials and locking them in admin-only treasure rooms and demanding everyone else spec their characters skills to jobs that they need done right now... which maybe they need for teh game they want to play, but isn't so fun for the guy who spent $25 to be a pirate and is ordered to spend all their game time harvesting fiber. So while the non-admins are chopping wood and picking fiber, the admins can be off being actual pirates.

As of last night I was listening in on one of the more onerous streamers bitching about how a group of his resource gatherers went off to build their own boat instead of gather stone for his building project. He couldn't be expected to gather stone, you see, because he was out pirating... you know, actually having fun.

The social aspect so far is just fascinating to watch from a distance. My play time right now is to just sail the seas in my little raft, reading chat, and trying to fulfill my own miniquest of completing the trip from my chosen Freeport to base of the group I joined, roughly 8 maps away. I've been sailing for about 8 hours now and made it through 3 maps, setting ashore for supplies and making harrowing escapes from various ill-willed factions in bigger boats along the way. Knowing the wind and how to use it is a thrill in my little raft when there is a big Schooner trying to ram and board my ship. Getting the wind and leaving them struggling to turn their ship is about as thrilling a moment as I've had in recent game memory.

When I deliver my goods to the commune I plan to retire.

 

[jmotivator]

Epilogue: Someone in my Commune decided to spawn in on my boat while I was asleep and take it... they then wrecked it. The Mission Failed.

Not sure if I want to play anymore. Communism sucks.

 

[Deuce]

Epilogue: Someone in my Commune decided to spawn in on my boat while I was asleep and take it... they then wrecked it. The Mission Failed.

Not sure if I want to play anymore. Communism sucks.

Eve Online is the libertarian wet dream and overwhelmingly proves the superiority of socialism. You could try that!

 

[jmotivator]

Eve Online is the libertarian wet dream and overwhelmingly proves the superiority of socialism. You could try that!

If you can pick at rocks and chop down trees and pick fruit for hours on end so that you can read in chat about the thrilling high seas adventures that your clan leaders are having then I guess socialism would appear superior to you.

 

[Deuce]

If you can pick at rocks and chop down trees and pick fruit for hours on end so that you can read in chat about the thrilling high seas adventures that your clan leaders are having then I guess socialism would appear superior to you.

Even better. Go get your ship blown up in glorious battle and get reimbursed for its loss from a tax-funded reimbursement pool!

 

[Jetboogieman]

So I have been playing a lot of Atlas since it was on early release and I must say that I am rather impressed.

Part 1

Now, will I continue to play a lot of the game? I don't know. It is definitely a technical win for the developer over the doubters (I was one of them)

You seem to really like terrible, lazy, half baked, cash grab asset flips.

 

[jmotivator]

You seem to really like terrible, lazy, half baked, cash grab asset flips.

You seem to really like talking about things you admit to knowing nothing about.

 

[jmotivator]

Even better. Go get your ship blown up in glorious battle and get reimbursed for its loss from a tax-funded reimbursement pool!

Not sure you know what socialism is.

 

[Jetboogieman]

You seem to really like talking about things you admit to knowing nothing about.

Well, considering you couldn't even recognize that Fallout 76 is Games as Service, I have no reason to take you seriously.

There are plenty of people that like ****ty things, which is why they still make Transformers movies :Shrug:

This game was such a lazy asset flip that one could open the ARK menu from a hidden button in the Atlas Menu, that's pretty grim.

But hey, don't let me dissuade you from enjoying the McDonalds Food of the Games industry.

 

[FreedomFromAll]

Epilogue: Someone in my Commune decided to spawn in on my boat while I was asleep and take it... they then wrecked it. The Mission Failed.

Not sure if I want to play anymore. Communism sucks.

Atlas team apologizes for the game’s rocky launch

 

[PoS]

Early access/release is just another word for pay to Beta test. As the saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute...

 

[Deuce]

Not sure you know what socialism is.

Anything funded by taxes is socialism. That’s the modern conservative definition.

 

[jmotivator]

Anything funded by taxes is socialism. That’s the modern conservative definition.

False. You have it exactly opposite. It is the modern Progressive that endlessly attempts to portray military and public road construction as socialism.

You just own-goaled with a Straw man. That's impressive.. ly sad.

 

[jmotivator]

Atlas team apologizes for the game’s rocky launch

It was definitely a rocky launch. But I was rather impressed, and a bit puzzled, at how quickly they took an unplayable mess and patched it to a point where they hit all of their performance marks at max population. At launch any server with more than 60 players was a rubber banding nightmare, 24 hours later they had great performance with 150 players on a server.

 

[jmotivator]

Early access/release is just another word for pay to Beta test. As the saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute...

I'm old enough to remember the golden age of gaming where every game was a paid beta test. "Failed to Launch, please free 620k of Base Memory"

Maybe I'm just nostalgic.

It's a fascinating game, bugs an all, though.

 

[Redress]

Early access/release is just another word for pay to Beta test. As the saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute...

Early access can be a whole lot of fun. Seeing your ideas implemented in a game before release is kinda cool. It can also be really frustrating. It is not just for "suckers", but for those who enjoy the good parts and can handle the frustration.

 

[Deuce]

False. You have it exactly opposite. It is the modern Progressive that endlessly attempts to portray military and public road construction as socialism.

You just own-goaled with a Straw man. That's impressive.. ly sad.

No, that’s just applying conservative use of the word to other things. If taxpayer-funded healthcare is socialism, so is taxpayer-funded roads. We don’t bring up roads because we think roads are socialism, we bring them up because you think UHC is.

 

[jmotivator]

No, that’s just applying conservative use of the word to other things. If taxpayer-funded healthcare is socialism, so is taxpayer-funded roads. We don’t bring up roads because we think roads are socialism, we bring them up because you think UHC is.

Nope. Again you have it wrong. The industry that the Government takes over in taxpayer-funded healthcare is the health insurance industry that employs hundreds of many thousands of people. Later down the road the Progressive end-goal is the government take-over of health care. It is the government takeover of industry that is socialism.

The vast majority of the work done on roads is paid for by the government and paid to private construction companies. What industry does the government takeover in that scenario?

Hint: They don't. They are a customer.

 

[Deuce]

Nope. Again you have it wrong. The industry that the Government takes over in taxpayer-funded healthcare is the health insurance industry that employs hundreds of many thousands of people. Later down the road the Progressive end-goal is the government take-over of health care. It is the government takeover of industry that is socialism.

The vast majority of the work done on roads is paid for by the government and paid to private construction companies. What industry does the government takeover in that scenario?

Hint: They don't. They are a customer.

The government has taken over the road building industry.

Doctors in Canada and Germany and Australia and Japan are not government employees.

 

[jmotivator]

The government has taken over the road building industry.

Nope. There are tons of private roads being funded and built. Hell, many major new highways are contracted out to companies that then charge tolls to make a profit.

Your goofball argument would require the government to pass a law that only the government can fund the building of roads AND that all road construction workers be government employees. Has that happened? :roll:

Like I said, in the world of road construction the government is mostly a customer, not a producer.

Doctors in Canada and Germany and Australia and Japan are not government employees.

And? Where did I say anything about Canada, Germany or Australia? :roll:

Straw Man #2.

You sure get your panties is a wad when someone bad mouths Communism, don't ya? :lol:

 

[Deuce]

Nope. There are tons of private roads being funded and built. Hell, many major new highways are contracted out to companies that then charge tolls to make a profit.

Your goofball argument would require the government to pass a law that only the government can fund the building of roads AND that all road construction workers be government employees. Has that happened? :roll:

Like I said, in the world of road construction the government is mostly a customer, not a producer.



And? Where did I say anything about Canada, Germany or Australia? :roll:

Straw Man #2.

You sure get your panties is a wad when someone bad mouths Communism, don't ya? :lol:

Communism? Who was talking about communism?

so, universal healthcare in canada isn’t socialism because the government is just a customer. Cool. I’m glad we actually agree on this.

 

[jmotivator]

Communism? Who was talking about communism?

Your poorly reasoned snark began as a response to a post I made where the ONLY economic model I mentioned was Communism. Sorry for assuming you could read.

so, universal healthcare in canada isn’t socialism because the government is just a customer. Cool. I’m glad we actually agree on this.

None of those systems are universal health care -- that is just pure semantic propaganda -- they are universal health insurance, but that doesn't translate into universal health care.

 

[Deuce]

Your poorly reasoned snark began as a response to a post I made where the ONLY economic model I mentioned was Communism. Sorry for assuming you could read.

Yeah but I brought up socialism as the alternative that you might like better. Sorry for assuming you could read.

 

[PoS]

I'm old enough to remember the golden age of gaming where every game was a paid beta test. "Failed to Launch, please free 620k of Base Memory"

Maybe I'm just nostalgic.

It's a fascinating game, bugs an all, though.

All games have bugs in them, but early access stuff is just cleverly done marketing that suckers people into being unpaid (and in fact paying) beta testers when the software development company ought to do it.

According to Steam, only 25% of games being set up as early access actually makes it to a final release build.