Noodleguitar
Admin
I often see confusion among people that haven't played ATLAS, so let me try to give an idea of what the game is supposed to be and how it lives up to expectations.
ATLAS is also known as ARK DLC or ARK 2.0. I haven't played ARK so I cannot compare the two but if it is very similar it may not be a bad thing. There is the popular belief that the developers made ATLAS into its own game instead of creating an ARK DLC solely to generate more revenue, which does seem a bit like an EA move.
The game is early access so I wasn't expecting everything in the game to work well. A lot of the negative opinions and reviews originated from the launch of the game -- which was pretty bad. The developers did not anticipate so many players and their servers could not handle all players. We're talking about starting zones with constant rubber banding, a ping of 2-10 seconds and frequent disconnects. The devs resorted to transforming adjacent cells (the world map is a grid) into starting zones as well, which alleviated server stress somewhat at the cost of gameplay issues: players spawning in water, lethal NPC monsters in starting areas, level caps that limited exploration, etc.
After the launch, @ElektroVodka suggested we try an unofficial PvE server while waiting for server stability to improve and to give us some space to actually play with the game mechanics. An unofficial server features a compressed version of the official world map.
I have only played on the unofficial server from here on so I cannot comment much on the official status but from what I've seen on streams and read from updates/player reports, they improved server stability a lot in a matter of days. A war seems to have started between big Chinese and Western companies on the official PvP servers, which is enjoyable to follow. You see people actually start to think: "Hey, the Chinese are working as a unit, maybe we should not just kill anyone that's not in our company but instead form alliances or employ a taxation system to create a bigger force."
There is still a problem with the number of land claims each company is able to do. Reports say that even in PvE mode it is hard to find a settling spot on the official server for your new company. Some players also became really upset because of bugs destroying ships, but I believe the one certain event in early access games is that you will lose significant resources/time at some point for no good reason.
The survival gameplay is quite well done I feel and fairly polished for an early access game. The closest game I have played compared to ATLAS would be Conan Exiles and I enjoy gathering resources and interacting with the environment a little more in ATLAS. I have not really done any building construction on land so I cannot compare these mechanics.
Unsuprisingly, there is a large focus on ships in ATLAS. You can build quite a few different sizes, from a raft with a tiny sail to a galleon which requires an entire crew to operate. The base ship has one or multiple decks and can then be customized as you wish regarding types of sails, cannons, food storage, life rafts etc. Bouncing these ships from island to island across the open sea is very rewarding.
Another main source of complaints is the difficulty of the game, and specifically the hostile AI units. @ElektroVodka and me went exploring yesterday in an adjacent grid cell. We had not left the starting island yet. We built the second-biggest ship and set off. Not long into the journey we ran into Community Complaint #1: AI ghost ships. These come in packs, are very hard to out-run, are pretty accurate with their cannons and, even if we did have cannons of our own, would be hard to kill. We somehow managed to avoid them without too much damage and made our way to a couple of islands in the next zone. The islands themselves are pretty although there is not a lof of time to take in the view from up close before you get mauled by aggressive wolves and crocodiles. We died a lot trying to explore the islands, which was not a major issue if you are careful with spawn point placements as you can pick up your loot. The aggro range of the AI can be annoying if you don't have the means to fight them.
We did some treasure hunting on one of the islands and attempted to make our way home. One of the pirate ships followed us into the docks and got stuck on a rock there. It wasn't too fond of us hacking into it with sickles and in return sank our biggest ship that was anchored in the docks. A lot of time and resources gone, but at least we were able to salvage some of it and eventually kill the pirate ship by meleeing from the rock it was stuck on.
For an early access game I feel there is a lot of content already. There are many skill specializations. You can only focus on a few of them as the game seems to assume you are operating in a decent-sized company. It takes some coordination to get something done as a crew on a large ship (or even a fleet).
On the opposite side of the hate that this game has received regarding launch I am impressed by how fast the developers have upgraded server stability and fixed gameplay issues. They have been communicating updates and issues that they are working on, so the game seems to be going in a good direction pretty fast.
I was going to add some screenshots but the forum software won't let me, so instead see my ATLAS Steam album:
ATLAS is also known as ARK DLC or ARK 2.0. I haven't played ARK so I cannot compare the two but if it is very similar it may not be a bad thing. There is the popular belief that the developers made ATLAS into its own game instead of creating an ARK DLC solely to generate more revenue, which does seem a bit like an EA move.
The game is early access so I wasn't expecting everything in the game to work well. A lot of the negative opinions and reviews originated from the launch of the game -- which was pretty bad. The developers did not anticipate so many players and their servers could not handle all players. We're talking about starting zones with constant rubber banding, a ping of 2-10 seconds and frequent disconnects. The devs resorted to transforming adjacent cells (the world map is a grid) into starting zones as well, which alleviated server stress somewhat at the cost of gameplay issues: players spawning in water, lethal NPC monsters in starting areas, level caps that limited exploration, etc.
After the launch, @ElektroVodka suggested we try an unofficial PvE server while waiting for server stability to improve and to give us some space to actually play with the game mechanics. An unofficial server features a compressed version of the official world map.
I have only played on the unofficial server from here on so I cannot comment much on the official status but from what I've seen on streams and read from updates/player reports, they improved server stability a lot in a matter of days. A war seems to have started between big Chinese and Western companies on the official PvP servers, which is enjoyable to follow. You see people actually start to think: "Hey, the Chinese are working as a unit, maybe we should not just kill anyone that's not in our company but instead form alliances or employ a taxation system to create a bigger force."
There is still a problem with the number of land claims each company is able to do. Reports say that even in PvE mode it is hard to find a settling spot on the official server for your new company. Some players also became really upset because of bugs destroying ships, but I believe the one certain event in early access games is that you will lose significant resources/time at some point for no good reason.
The survival gameplay is quite well done I feel and fairly polished for an early access game. The closest game I have played compared to ATLAS would be Conan Exiles and I enjoy gathering resources and interacting with the environment a little more in ATLAS. I have not really done any building construction on land so I cannot compare these mechanics.
Unsuprisingly, there is a large focus on ships in ATLAS. You can build quite a few different sizes, from a raft with a tiny sail to a galleon which requires an entire crew to operate. The base ship has one or multiple decks and can then be customized as you wish regarding types of sails, cannons, food storage, life rafts etc. Bouncing these ships from island to island across the open sea is very rewarding.
Another main source of complaints is the difficulty of the game, and specifically the hostile AI units. @ElektroVodka and me went exploring yesterday in an adjacent grid cell. We had not left the starting island yet. We built the second-biggest ship and set off. Not long into the journey we ran into Community Complaint #1: AI ghost ships. These come in packs, are very hard to out-run, are pretty accurate with their cannons and, even if we did have cannons of our own, would be hard to kill. We somehow managed to avoid them without too much damage and made our way to a couple of islands in the next zone. The islands themselves are pretty although there is not a lof of time to take in the view from up close before you get mauled by aggressive wolves and crocodiles. We died a lot trying to explore the islands, which was not a major issue if you are careful with spawn point placements as you can pick up your loot. The aggro range of the AI can be annoying if you don't have the means to fight them.
We did some treasure hunting on one of the islands and attempted to make our way home. One of the pirate ships followed us into the docks and got stuck on a rock there. It wasn't too fond of us hacking into it with sickles and in return sank our biggest ship that was anchored in the docks. A lot of time and resources gone, but at least we were able to salvage some of it and eventually kill the pirate ship by meleeing from the rock it was stuck on.
For an early access game I feel there is a lot of content already. There are many skill specializations. You can only focus on a few of them as the game seems to assume you are operating in a decent-sized company. It takes some coordination to get something done as a crew on a large ship (or even a fleet).
On the opposite side of the hate that this game has received regarding launch I am impressed by how fast the developers have upgraded server stability and fixed gameplay issues. They have been communicating updates and issues that they are working on, so the game seems to be going in a good direction pretty fast.
I was going to add some screenshots but the forum software won't let me, so instead see my ATLAS Steam album:
