SlayeDraye

Dollie, I believe the obvious cause for suspicion was the fact that he was in TPG company. Had he been found by himself without a company tag, I doubt the uproar over this would have been as serious.

I do understand. He joined the Company so they could communicate exactly where they go to get the crash at their base. QA are focused on finding issues and bugs and getting a repro for them asap, not so much the community side and "what might other players think?". I also understand it would have been very disruptive if his body had been contesting or used ny players in an exploitative way.

I had a chat with him about being careful but I'm not mad, he caught a serious crash and we all make mistakes at times. Thankfully this didn't directly disrupt the game.

The account was one of our QA members repro'ing an Xbox One/Xbox One S memory crash that occurs in specific areas and causes the player to be unable to log back in afterwards. This base spot was one of those locations.

Generally our QA go into spectate before they log but the fact he successfully repro'd the crash so we can work on fixing it meant his body was left there.

Doesn't look too bad for a platform our game isn't available on :)

We put in a possible fix for this crash in a patch earlier today. It would be good to know if you're still experiencing it on the latest version (currently .4, but the fix would have been live from .3)

Ya_like_dags

Happy but out of the loop player here:

Are you still planning on adding NPC pirate bases and cats soon?

Keep your eye on the PTR this weekend, hopefully we'll have something there for you ;)

Luckboy28

That's a fair point -- other pirate games have less ships.

I think the big difference is that the Skeleton Ships in Sea of Thieves actually have skeletons that you can fight, and there's more than one way to sink them. That adds a whole lot more gameplay/immersion than just "I shoot cannons at an empty ship."

Think about it from a PvE perspective: There's currently no such thing as raiding/boarding ships in a pirate game. If you want to swashbuckle something, you have to go on land and dig up a chest. But even that combat is clunky and unsatisfying -- which is why ATLAS combat is pretty much just a sniping game: Slowly reload gun via mini-game > Shoot once > slowly reload gun via mini-game.

It would have been cool to see a really rich move-set to allow for more detailed combat. Things like rolling, grappling, execution animations, dodges, etc, could make melee combat more engaging, and make ground combat more viable.

PvE pirates with their own ships and island bases are coming and more: https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/atlas-news/news/captains-log-34-wild-pirate-encampments-non-dedicated-mode-and-more-r171/

Luckboy28

I think they meant more verity, not literally more spawns everywhere.

Launching a pirate game with only like 3 pirate ships was... bold?

And I was massively disappointed when I realized that they don't even have crews. I wanted to throw a hook, swing over, and do swashbuckling battle with skeletons. But no, it's an empty shell that just magically shoots cannons without a crew.

I'm talking about more variety, not spawns. More variety means more unique meshes that cannot be batched together for drawing (performance) and cost more memory.

Also I think you are confusing ATLAS (4 ships + dinghy + raft) with Sea of Thieves (3 ships).

fatherteachergamer

And Grapeshot would have you believe that many of these Changes are not possible or will take many months to do.

On the contrary, these changes are along the lines of our own plans for balance and changes and (as mentioned briefly in the Roadmap Recap post) our changes will be coming to the Live Game during Phase One. And no, they don't take long to implement. In the past, our approach was waiting to do a full pass and programming changes to improve these aspects of balance but, again, as mentioned in the Roadmap Recap post, we're now going to bring some quick and simple changes in to improve player experience in Phase 1 then loop back to do a full pass in later phases of our Roadmap.

Myself, Jat and Erik watched all of Okasen's vids a few days ago, took notes on some great ideas and discussed alternatives where we felt his proposed value changes weren't quite where we'd want it. Okasen frequently sends us valuable feedback and theorycrafting.

WorcestershireToast

What's the reason for not adding more pirates ships to your, you know, pirate game?

Currently, performance and memory.

usernametakennr57744

It is literally the same engine, you just added some more ue blueprint systems like the water.

You still haven't learned that lies suck .

The engines have a lot of custom source code and are quite a bit different, from each other and from stock UE4. Also if you think the ocean water system is ue blueprints I have a bridge to sell you.

TamatIRL

I think you're missing the point here, Jesse. Trust is like a currency and because of the actions in the past by WC and now Grapeshot, you're flat broke. You'll need to build some trust if you want to come in here, say shit that seems unlikely, and have people just take you at your word.

There is no reason it won't happen, and we demoed it on the stream live today (so I'm not just "saying" it). We designed the ATLAS engine for crossplay between all platforms. ARK engine is not.

Also there will be no Win10 version of ATLAS at launch, only Steam and Xbox playing together. So... There you have it!

BasharAlAspaci

Yeah it'll work just like Ark where if you want crossplay you have to purchase it on the Microsoft store. Atlas will not cross play via Steam.

You will not have to buy it again and Microsoft is fine with Steam cross play. It will just work. :)

Let me repeat that for you.

mangodurban

How about they make the game prioritize pirate fun shenanigans instead of grindy anti fun mechanics. There is a reason the trailer got so much hype, make all that stuff shown there easy to experience. There are ways to add some grind without it effecting every aspect of the game.

That was literally the entire point of the information in the live stream. :)

BasharAlAspaci

Yeah im interested to see how the cross platform works because steam doesn't cross games with Xbox because of Microsoft. Might have to buy the game again just to play cross platform.

You will not have to buy it again and Microsoft is fine with Steam cross play. It will just work. :)

How do you tame it?

Jokes aside, if you take a look at the ATLAS Keyart, it is something that we've alluded to happening in the far off future -- whether that ends up being the case we'll see as plans can change, but we are certainly open to it.

Pretty cool final piece though :)

Khardac

It seems the latest patch just added auto demolish - "Structure Decay auto-destruction has been enabled on all servers. Was previously only enabled on Freeports, Golden Age, and PvE servers" - i assume that means all structure that is demolisable - will auto demoish? or am i understanding that wrong?

Yup, that's the case. So anything that has ticked down to 0 on the inactivity timer will automatically demolish.

Frostbite023

Just wanted to say thank you for fixing that update! The hidden pillars are no more! Great work to you and the team.

No problem. Glad that we were able to take care of it promptly.

We are investigating this at the moment and plan to get in a fix for it ASAP.

DatPVMGuy

To those wondering. This is a exploit cstg and them are using. In order to to this bug.

Have a group of people each holding a sail. Do a countdown and have each person place a sail at the same spot. If done right you can have 2 sails in the spot of one glitched without the ship sail unit points. I figured its better to post how to do it instead of reporting it because devs reads reddit more than their support tickets.

This is broken when done on schrooners...you can go 35+ knots. Obviously we did it just to test we are not using the exploit ourself but it is broken.

Thanks for the repro steps, we're looking into this at the moment. (I don't read Reddit more than other things. This was called to my attention yesterday via Discord but those reporting it weren't sure of the repro so it has taken a little time to investigate. ;) )

Capokid

Yeah, the only time I've seen devs actually care about an exploit is right after its been described in detail in public.

The majority of exploits we've fixed go under the radar in terms of the general playerbase and are called to our attention due to players reaching out myself or Jat via DM.