Jan 21, 2019

Captain's Log 18: Grab yer booty, it's time to bite yer coin!

ATLAS - Jat

Ahoy Pathfinders!

We’ve hope you’ve had a bountiful weekend! For those of you on our Official Network, we’re currently running a bonus 2x event through until Wednesday with double harvesting, gold, and taming on all our Official Servers! This Captain’s Log wraps up a big week which included our first ever livestream, which we’ll have a link to below, as well as the introduction to our upcoming mega content patch, featuring bounties, player markets and more!

Thar she streams!

Thank you for joining the Seattle Crew for our Livestream! We were thrilled to interact with the community directly in a live environment whilst answering questions you had sent in, sharing an overview of our developmental process, our vision for the game, as well as giving ya a sneak peek at what’s to come!

For those who weren’t able to catch the stream, you can check it out here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/365978125

Land Ahoy for Bounties, Markets, Cosmetics, and More!

Complete Patch Notes

During the livestream, we spoke about three pillars of development: optimisation/bug fixes, balance changes, and content. Over the past few weeks since the launch of the title the team have been highly focused on the first two pillars, but now we’re ready to talk about the 3rd: additional content!

In February, we’ll be launching our first major content update which will introduce a number of exciting new gameplay features and mechanics, new areas to explore, creatures, end game balance, fixes and miscellaneous changes.

Here’s what you can look forward to:

v16 - ETA: Late February

New Features
- Bounty System for PVP: Don't like a particular player or Company? Set a bounty on their heads, then other players can get gold for bringing in the target's head
- Guillotine: hanging your foes in a noose taking too long? Off with their heads!
- Submarine: explore the depths of the ocean in this small scouting submarine. No weapons on board, but it does have claw arms to help harvest the ocean floor and explore (demolish) shipwrecks

- Player shops in freeports. Players can setup automated shops in each freeport, listing loot for sale and naming their own gold coin prices
- New creature: Giant Crab. It can carry heavy loads, along with players, tames and wild creatures

- Tame tokens are available for more mythical creatures, allowing players to have limited-time tames of the Fire Elemental, Rock Elemental, Cyclops, and Gorgon. BONUS: Rock Elemental and Cyclops are rideable!
- New cosmetics: get your pirate on with hook hands and peg leg cosmetics. Yarr!
- New armor cosmetics to customize the look of your Company and crew

- New Ship Figurehead Cosmetics

- Streamer Stealth Mode: client option to disable showing all location information; super useful to prevent stream-sniping :wink:
- Added a new deep ocean trench environment to explore, with powerful underwater creatures and is the home of the new Giant Crab
- Added a new extensive Polar Dungeon, only accessible by Pathfinders who have all the PowerStones or have defeated the Kraken

Endgame Balance improvements
- Beating the Kraken unlocks a new Feat, which allows players to prevent wild creatures from aggroing on them within range for a period of time
- Beating the Polar Dungeon unlocks a new perfect water breathing Feat, allowing players to remain underwater for a period of time without consuming any oxygen

Updates
- Players can now mount a sail to directly control the sail's open/close amount and rotation settings in a more intuitive way
- AOD AI Ships will now come in multiple size variations with different stats and difficulty levels
- Global territory message updating
- Any dead ships (shipwrecks) from your Company appear with a unique icon on your map now, so you can find the wrecks
- Character creator now has a Height slider to make it easier to set your character's desired height
- Territory map will now display allies as teal-colored
- Reorganized claim flag notifications, so they no longer clutter up the entire HUD when lots of messages are flying by

Misc
- Streamlined ship hull rendering for performance gains
- Server Performance improvements round 2 (+25%)
- Additional balance changes - NPCs will be added to Freeports which will allow players to redesign their character's tattoos for a gold cost
- Significant server improvements over the coming weeks, where we'll be doubling performance increment by increment.

Released Patches and Verified Notes

Over the weeks ahead, we’ll be talking more specifically about some of these features in detail, including the Bounty System for PVP servers and Player Shops in freeports.

Whilst the team have begun working on the content changes, we’ve still had a lot done over the past week in terms of updates, with more on the horizon too! In regards to balance, we gave wolves a thorough overhaul, as well as tweaks to both the Wild and Tamed Dragon plus the Kraken is now easier to defeat after having it’s health sliced and more rewarding, with a brand new passive skill that reduces all Feat cooldowns by 33%!

Additionally, this patch also introduced phase one of our aging process and the Fountain of Youth. Characters aged 90 years and higher will receive a specialist quest which encourages them to visit the Fountain of Youth to reset their characters age back to 20, remove an age debuff, and receive a rejuvenated buff which is a significant permanent statistic boost.

The past week has also included a number of other bug fixes and balance changes as we continue to iterate on and fine tune the live game. You can check out the full list of changes here:

Current Version: v15.35 - Fixed an issue with Wild and Tamed Dragon scaling which would have cause it to have incorrect stats. - Rebalanced base weights for tamed creatures (increase) - Added an additional Fountain of Youth on a different Golden Ruins server, so 2 are active tonight. The additional Fountain of Youth will not be visible until the client side update releases later tonight. v15.3 - Fixed an issue where clients would not correctly see the Rejuvenate buff - Fixed an issue where players could not tame the Dragon using the token - Fixed an issue where players may not have been able to feed bola'd creatures due to a desync on servers v15.21 - Fixed an issue where doors, gateways, and gunports would break on server reload v15 - New "Fountain of Youth" quest will appear for characters aged 90 years and higher. The "Fountain of Youth" (currently represented as a magical particle effect) appears in a single Golden Age Ruins across the ATLAS, near the Power Stone Container. Every 50 in-game days, it teleports to another Golden Age Ruins, on a cycle. If you find the Fountain, and activate it, your character will be set back to age 20, and if you do this when you were aged over 90 years, you'll gain a significant permanent statistics boost (you can do this multiple times to gain further boosts, each time when you're at least 90 years old). - Characters over age 90 get an old age debuff that slightly reduces stats (shown in char panel) - Fixed an erroneous feat cooldown time calculation, now all the feat cooldowns are what was originally intended. - Defeating the Kraken now gives you a unique passive skill which permanently and automatically reduces all of your Feat cooldowns by 33%! - Summoning the Kraken now only require the first 8 powerstones (Ghostship powerstone is no longer necessary) - Fixed the bug that was preventing recruiting new Crew in Freeports - Reduced the total time for unclaiming enemy claimflags, the max is now 4 hours, with 15 minutes when at 100 flags. - Vultures no longer target low-health wild creature - Reduced Wolf spawn frequency - Reduced Wolf natural targeting range - Reduced Wolf notify neighbor range. - Reduced Wolf hp and damage - Fixed land creatures AI's not getting aggro properly if attacked from a a ship - Stop Allies being able to Capture other Allied territories - Fixed rapid unclaiming, now if your contested flag is unclaimed it will unclaim at the same rate that it took to claim! - Improved door ticking performance - Added cheat DestroyAllNonSaddlePlayerStructures - Reduced default gold from treasure maps by 50% (as originally intended) and added a new server scaling value for treasure gold. Though, the Official 2x weekend puts the gold back to pre-patch values. - +50% tame damage resistance - Shark and Jellyfish targeting/neighbor ranges reduced 30% - Diving suit adds 90 fortitude now and lasts for 2 hours at surface and about 30 minutes at deepest depths - Crop plots are now prevented from being placed on ships and are destroyed if they were on ships. - Ocean creatures can no longer be Alpha. - Fixed Whale AI to target the ship or player more, rather than the point the player touches the ship. - Fixed NPC Merchant ship showing as overweight when players carried a lot of weight aboard. - Fixed Merchant ship showing as Raft with company ID 0 when looking at it. - Fixed Company ID O showing on none player owned structures on maps (water spouts, etc.) - Fixed Pillars being build-able on PVE islands. - Fixed Fog event not appearing for players using low settings. - Fixed Chicken hurt SFX. - Added new Large Cannon SFX. - Fixed Parrot hurt SFX. - Fixed players not getting aggro when attacking whilst based on a ship. - Added Streamer stealth mode option. - Fixed Monkey hurt SFX. - Fixed a bug causing Map Markers to draw at incorrect locations on the map UI. - Fixed skill description error, "mythical" changed to "legendary." - Fixed flotsam items spoiling when reeled in with grappling hook. - Fixed client crash when transitioning with sextant buff. - Fixed a Song not referencing the correct song buff. - Fixed a bug making it so that the Raft could be repaired for free. - Increased Flame Arrow durability cost to 4 durability consumed per shot. - Reduced Flame Arrow max percentage damage by 25% (4% health per second to 3% health.) - Reduced Flame Arrow max damage per second from 10 to 5. - Reduced Flame Arrow damage to mythical creatures by 75%. - Reduced Kraken health by 60%. - Reduced Kraken Minion AoD Ships ship Health 50%. - Reduced Kraken damage by 50%. - Reduced Wild Dragon damage by 40% - Reduced Wild Dragon health be 40% - Reduced Wild Dragon targeting range by 66%. - Increased Dragon end aggro grace period from 6 second to 9 as it has a tighter aggro range now. - Fixed Lucky Loader feat ability to not be used whilst prone (as you cannot reload prone.) - Fixed Cloth Gloves clipping into hands in FPV. - Fixed Dreadlocks not shrinking correctly with hats. - Fixed LtOrderSeat collision bug. - Improved death collision to human corpses. - Fixed female emotes playing male voices. - Fixed female player characters using male sleep SFX. - Added ability to place top hat on certain creatures. - Fixed Gorgon "Remove Snake" text. - Corrected Repair box inventory name to read "Ship Resources Box." - Removed Elephant having weight reduction for Wood, as this was never an intended mechanic and resulted in players being able to get around ship weight restrictions. Accordingly, we'll be re-balancing the base weight of tamed creatures early next week. - Fixed treasure guards despawning instantly on stasis. - Fixed Giant snake lock on and player ability to damage it using melee attacks. - Fixed Monkeys dropping human poop. - Fixed Client Crash when rendering ocean harvestables. - Reduced Greek Fire range by 40%. - Increased Greek Fire crafting costs by adding 6 firegel per ammo. - Fixed Cow death harvest component giving the same amount of prime as a Bulls. - Reduced trample damage for all applicable creatures. - Updated Pig force poop ability to scale with creature level, to incentivise taming higher levels. (45 secs at lvl 1 and 15 secs at lvl 130). - Reduced Lion grab weight threshold. Prevents unrealistic grabbing of Wolves and Horses. - Fixed newly tamed creatures being hungry despite being fed during taming. - Increased Dolphin follow ship range by 33%, and reduced interval by 20%. - Fixed Bola'ed HUD to better indicate where to feed creature during taming. - Removed "Giant" prefix from creatures' descriptive name that use it. - Changed "Giant Snake" descriptive name to "Cobra". - Fixed incorrect sounds being used by Lion and Tiger animations. - Fixed incorrect Bear attack ranges to prevent stopping movement for claw attack, which often missed and allowed players to gain distance when being chased. - Reduced attack and AI ranges for Cave Bear, based on its smaller size. - Fixed incorrect item weights for cloth, hide and plate armor. They are now heavier. - Added folder paths for wooden gateways and gates so you no longer see them instantly when opening the Smithy inventory. - Fixed ability of players to feed through walls of taming pens and not get attacked. - Prevented some creatures from not being able to be tamed if they are clipped too far into terrain or structures. - Prevents multi use feeding from the root, putting themselves in harm's way. - Improved Waking Tame Feeding sockets on Cow and Razortooth. - Improved bola socket on Crow - Updated Vulture AI controller to aim lower when targeting corpses. - Fixed various creature spawn issues. - Fixed players being able to bola certain alpha creatures (now you cannot.) - Updated Dolphin to prevent health bars appearing when they follow players. - Improved torpor animations of Razortooth and Ostrich. - Increased Ostrich melee swing socket radius to more consistently land attacks. Updated Ostrich IK to prevent leg distortion when running down slopes. - Reduced max wander height on flyers. - Improved server list efficiency for a better experience. - Fixed Greek Fire SFX. - Fixed player on fire SFX. - Fixed inability to repair door frames in certain constructions. - Added some additional server configs:

Game.ini: [/script/shootergame.shootergamemode] EnemyBuildPreventionRadiusMultiplier=1 (only applicable if not using claimflags) bDontUseClaimFlags=false (this will disable claim flags) bUseStaticCharacterAge=false (this will disable dynamic aging) TreasureGoldMultiplier=1.0 (treasure map gold multiplier)

14.11 - Remember 'Show Non ATLAS Servers' setting - No lover overwrites the last connection string - Grid Number columns are now hidden when displaying non ATLAS servers 14.1 - Fixed a client side crash that could occur on login v14 - Launched ATLAS Devkit https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/atlas-news/atlas-devkit-launch-r66/ v11.4 - Fixed multiple exploits which allowed movement of excessively encumbered players through various gameplay mechanics - Disabled non allied players and creatures basing on anchored or docked ships which can be toggled with a server-setting on PVE servers the in Game.ini - set bPvEAllowNonAlignedShipBasing=true If you want to allow non allies to be able to be on your ship - Disabled feats when encumbered - Melee auto target should no longer pick ally targets in any mode, or player/tame targets in pve - Disallowed freeport npc crew recruiting if 20 or more level 1 npc crew's for that company on the server

We’ll continue to work on issues as they arise, including tackling ones that are important to you and relentlessly improving our server and client side performance. Additionally, there’ll be an update later this week which should enable BattlEye for Windows Insider builds which should allow those of you using that operating system to rejoin our Official Network.

Devkit Ho

Early last Friday morning, we were able to release the first iteration of the ATLAS Devkit. As the game continues to grow overtime, you can expect the Devkit to grow in tandem with additional features, content, and gameplay mechanics for modders to enjoy. We put up an announcement thread which covered a lot of details regarding the kit and how you can get the most out of it, so if you’ve yet to have a read, we’d recommend doing so:

https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/atlas-news/atlas-devkit-launch-r66/

Additionally, our modding Community Manager, ZenRowe, has also been working on with the team on putting together some documentation for the editor which will be updated on a regular basis. Check it out here:

https://devkit.playatlas.com/

Dynamic ATLAS Maps Round-Up

The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands.

Each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim.

Those who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges…

The companies that have occupied islands for a certain period of time will soon gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land!

Remember you can don your tribe’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP]The Whale’s Wrath

Held: XSM???, French & Ships, Bad Company, BLDX DouYuTV 56876, Chem B, LEGION, ETERNIA, The French Monkeys, Enslaved, and IVANARMY

[NA PVP] The Kraken’s Maw

Held: Dynasty, High Seas Booty Bandits, TPG, CSTG, Barry Sails, OwO, The Federation and SNC, No No No, and Destiny.

The top companies on both PvP Networks have held their positions! Are we already seeing the best companies as players contend for their place in the overall pecking order or will new contenders emerge next week?

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following tribes for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren’s Call

Held: Compagnie des Indes, Paragon, Rum ueber Bord, Woelfe des Rudels, Future Company (HUN), Fenrirs Dogs, Tacorsair, SouL SanD, Dos Bros$ and SwiftS.RU.

[NA PVE] The Hydra’s Den

Held: Plunderers, Scales & Sails, Dead Men Floating, Atlas Shrugged, East India Trading Co, CN- adilt supplies, Paragon, and Narcos.

Arrivals: Sons of Orion

Departures: The Exiles

Show ‘n Tell #3!

We have extended the due date on our current Show ‘n Tell to give you all a little longer to astound us with your creations, be they your fleets, building designs, imaginative tatts, entertaining videos, original fanart or scenic screenshots. Don’t be shy and head to the submission thread for a chance to win some booty in the form of a cash prize!

https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/forums/topic/32535-show-n-tell-3-deadline-monday-28th-jan/

Alrighty, that’s it for this post. Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information🏴‍☠️

Hoist ye sails to our Homepage: https://www.playatlas.com/
Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

Jan 15, 2019

Captain's Log 17: Co-Captain Content Edition!

ATLAS - WC Dollie

Ahoy Pathfinders!

I'm Dollie, your new Community Manager with training wheels. I'm excited to be a part of the team, especially working on an MMO title focused on Pirates! I've enjoyed meeting new people via ATLAS on the Discord & Forums, along with seeing familiar people from the ARK community. You’ll definitely hear more from me on those platforms, as well as on Twitter.

As for my background, I've had extended experience with running communities or operating in a leadership role across various gaming platforms. Some of you may recognize me from the Official ARK PVP community. For those of you who aren't familiar with me -- I come from a competitive PvP background and have a love of FPS, Survival, MOBAs, and MMOs along with quirky lil indie games. Other Dollie funfacts include my penchant for anything post-apocalyptic, suffering from an unhealthy addiction to pistachios and an equally unhealthy repertoire of bad jokes and puns.

Don't hesitate to message me with all of the things and I’ll do my best to get back to you...or I’ll just pile it all onto Jat's desk. Real talk though, I'm looking forward to getting more involved with the Community, I do read all of your messages but I may not always have time to respond to each one. Rest assured, Jat and I, as well as the rest of the team, do take note of everyone’s feedback and with your help, we’ll work together to shape and realise the vision for ATLAS as the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure.

Now on to more exciting topics!

Thar she streams!

On Friday the 18th of January, at 1 PM Pacific Time, the ATLAS team will be hosting our first ever Developer Livestream! Join our crew at Seattle HQ as they unearth a veritable treasure trove of information and news regarding upcoming content, gameplay changes, and future development plans. You'll want to keep your eyes trained on the waves, or perhaps beneath them, as you might just catch a glint of what's to come!

It's a few days away, so here's a little early look at some upcoming content:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625892780

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625867109

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625866286

With so much more planned to be revealed live on stream! Seriously, you'll not want to miss out.

We'll also be opening the floor to questions from the Community! You can ask almost anything here on our forums or on Reddit. We’ll be selecting an assortment of your questions to answer live on stream.

Whether you’re a twitcher or a mixer(er?), you’ll be able to catch us on both platforms at Twitch and Mixer! See ya scallywags then ;)

Performance, Performance, Performance!

Complete Patch Notes

This week is all about performance! Well, that’s not entirely true, there have been a multitude of various fixes. But we’ve made vast improvements to our networking and server performance on our most intense Official Servers has increased by approximately 20% (an in some cases, more). The team are currently working on additional changes which we hope to be able to deploy later this week which will further improve server performance by approximately 25%. Incidentally, we’re not going to stop there! We’re going to keep hammering on server performance so that your grand Naval Battles can take place on the smoothest seas (unless you’re in a storm, of course :P)

Current Version: v11.3 - Fixed an exploit [details coming later] - Additional backend infrastructure for anti-cheat and hack detection v11.2 - Server performance optimisations (20%+ improvement). We'll have more changes in the week for an additional (approximately) 25% server perf improvement. v11.1 - Enabled BattlEye Anti Cheat on all Official Servers. Please restart your Steam Clients and make sure to install BattlEye in order to play on our Official Network. Unofficial Networks can still play without BattlEye, and players can right-click the title in their Steam Library and play without the anti-cheat. For those of you who have made custom shortcuts, please update the executable to this: ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\AtlasGame_BE.exe - Implemented code to kill off inactive bodies in Freeports and Lawless Regions (players who have been logged off for more than 10 days). v11 - Re-enabled weapon/attack based feats - Fixed game exploits v10.82 - Temporarily disabled weapon/attack based feats v10.80 - Claim Flag Settings have now been enabled - Taxing Resources now affect crops - Tax Bank will stack items similar to a Crew Resource Box - Tax Bank will no longer allow you to drag item's into the inventory, so to prevent items from being taxed, they must be dragged from within the Tax Bank itself to the ignore folder. - Cost of Drake Token has been reduced to 20,000 Gold Coins and is now available for purchase at the cosmetic vendor in freeports. - 25% buff to explosives against stone structures v10.79 - Changed how custom blueprints are crafted for STACKABLE items when they're given a stat roll: > If a stackable item is crafted from the same blueprint and you already have an item crafted from that blueprint in your inventory, it will stack on that pre-existing item and not receive a different Intelligence Stat Bonus. > If you want a different roll from the same blueprint, you must make sure that you do not have an item which was crafted from that same BP in your inventory (stated or non) > This means that you can keep rolls by keeping the item in your inventory when crafting from the BP, even if you do not have the level of intelligence required to get the crafting bonus. Alternatively, you can remove the stated item from your inventory to get a new roll from the BP. - Resource respawn should now function as they did on Lawless servers prior to v10. - 50% reduction in the enemy structure prevention radius so that you can now build closer together on Lawless Servers. v10.75 - Wild land creatures will no longer target crew, tames, or characters on ships unless they have been aggro'd - Fixed a bug where Ship of the Damned would have rapid fire - Temporarily reduced Crew Log length as it undergoes some rewrites because it would cause performance problems. v10.71 - Fixed a bug which prevented cannons from being reloaded - Tightened up server-side protection on gliders - Fixed an exploit with mortars v10.5 - Fixed Ramshackle sloops breaking when you leave freeports - Fixed a bug which prevented you from accessing newly tamed inventories unless you relogged - Fixed a bug which caused Mantrays to be unusually aggressive - Commodity trader gold cost increased

We’re going to continue repeating this: it's just the very beginning of our journey. You can expect frequent major (and minor) patches multiple times each week to improve the state of the game - including exploit and bug fixes, QOL improvements, balance and design changes and new content and features. You will always have something to look forward to and the team are already working on some major content & feature additions in tangent with our frequent live game patches, so be sure to tune into Friday’s Stream for more details on that!

Sinking Cheaters!

In our previous Captain’s Log, we expressed how much of an internal priority it was to crack down on cheaters, exploits and general foulness. We planned out a 3 step process:

Enable BattlEye
playATLAS Tickets
Additional Detection & Prevention

Since that initial announcement, we have completed the process. We’ll be continuing to work on our anti-cheat measures, including detecting tools, patching out exploits, and expanding our team to tackle cheaters. There will be no room for them on our network. Over the coming days you’ll likely see a number of complaints regarding bans and, should they be necessary, Company wipes. Cheating will not be tolerated on our servers, that said, please make sure you’re using our reporting tools to alert us of those whom you suspect are playing unfairly. None of our decisions regarding bans and/or wipes are taken lightly. We’ll always aim to be thorough with our investigations. Additionally, as a studio, we’ll continue to funnel resources into dealing with exploits and problems via technical implementation as well as through the efforts of our Game Masters.

Devkit Ho

It’s nearly here! Yes, I know we’ve been saying that for a while but this time we’re so close. We expect to be ready to have the devkit available for pathfinders to download on Thursday or Friday this week. For those of you who have experience working with some of our kits, the ATLAS kit is more robust than anything you would have used prior. It will include a new more powerful map-extensions-type functionality so you'll have a lot of options when creating your server grid. This will facilitate COMBINING multiple Steam Workshop maps ("islands") together in your overall Server Grid OR you can just replace the entire persistent level with a new map. We're excited to get that into your hands and check out all the amazing content you produce.

Dynamic ATLAS Maps Round-Up

Held: XSM???, French & Ships, Bad Company, BLDX DouYuTV 56876, Chem B, LEGION, ETERNIA, The French Monkeys, and ENSLAVED.

Arrivals: IVANARMY.

Departures: OOOOOOOOOF.

[NA PVP] The Kraken’s Maw

Held: Dynasty, High Seas Booty Bandits, TPG, CSTG, Barry Sails, OWO and The Federation

Arrivals: SNC, No No No, and Destiny

Departures: Order of Freedom, Darkblade Army, and The Late Shift

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following tribes for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren’s Call

Held: Compagnie des Indes, Paragon, Rum ueber Bord, Woelfe des Rudels, Future Company (HUN), Fenrirs Dogs, Tacorsair, and SouL SanD.

Arrivals: Dos Bros$ and SwiftS.RU.

Depatures: Black Lotus and M.E.R.C Spirit.

[NA PVE] The Hydra’s Den

Held: Plunderers, Scales & Sails, Dead Men Floating, The Exiles, Atlas Shrugged, East India Trading Co, CN- adilt supplies, Paragon, and Narcos.

Arrivals: Lotus, and Darksea Dawgs.

Departures: Plunderers and The Salty Seamen.

Show ‘n Tell #2!

Check out our PlayATLAS announcement to see the results of our second Show 'n Tell contest!

Alrighty, that’s it for this post. Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information🏴‍☠️

Hoist ye sails to our Homepage: https://www.playatlas.com/
Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

Jan 9, 2019

Captain's Log 16: Patch v10, Anti-Cheat & Support ho!

ATLAS - Jat

Ahoy Pathfinders!

We hope you had a great weekend filled with adventure, action, and bountiful booty! The seas were much calmer for us as we put our heads down to work on the major update v10, which is now live on Steam!

Thar she deploys! v10 is now live on Steam!

We won’t go into too much detail about this patch, as we covered it quite extensively in our last Captain’s Log:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/834910/announcements/detail/1701698220979264823

This is our biggest update thus far, taking into account various feedback we’ve received over the last 2.5 weeks since the game’s launch, as well as making design changes based on what we’ve experienced and witnessed ourselves. The patch notes have grown tremendously since we first put them up on Friday, and the full list of changes can be seen here (as well as on our dedicated patch note threads):

Current Version: v10.42

Claim Flags Changes

- Claim Flags now have settings which allow other companies or players to build within them, with the specified tax rate applied to them.
- You are also able to define an inclusion or exclusion list to these, to only allow or exclude specific company IDs (also used by players without companies). To grab someone's ID for the inclusion/exclusion list, you'll need to look at a structure they've placed which will list their Company ID; this number can be input into the flag's list system to prevent/enable building. Please note that exclusion/inclusion lists are not saved when altering building permissions, so switching from 'Everyone' can build to 'Company & Alliances' only will clear your list should you wish to return to 'Everyone' can build.
- All claim flags will use the 'Everyone can build' as a default setting when placed, and this will also be a retroactive change. However, it will not function until Thursday the 10th of January, where we will release another server update to make this setting active. This means you will have two days, from Tuesday to Thursday, to decide and adjust the settings on your claim flag before the change is live.
- Only admins and above will be able to make changes to company claims.
- Claim Flags will have icons above them to represent their owner and setting. Your claim flags have a green icon. Claim Flags belonging to your allies that do not permit you to build, have a blue icon, or purple if they do belong to your allies and allow you to build. Claim Flags which belong to your enemies and do not allow you to build have red icons, or yellow if they belong to your enemies and enable you to build within them.- Fixed some bugs related to Sea Claims.
- Enemy Claim Flags can now be directly pinged to identify any contesting enemies nearby
- The time required to steal an enemy claim now decreases the more Claims that enemy team has.
- Looking at your Claim Flag will show you how many land claims you have, and looking at an enemy one will show you how many land flags they have, note that this does not update dynamically on the client for server performance reasons. To always have the latest number, you can relog or re-enter stasis range of the Claim Flag.

General Changes

- Server performance improvements
- All Cannons/Turrets can now be pin code protected for lever activation/deactivation
- There are 4x as many trade ships on the seas, and they now also sell commodity types for gold, as do NPC's at Freeports.
- Lawless servers can no longer be specified as Homesevers. If your Homeserver was a lawless server, you'll be required to pick a new (Freeport) Homeserver upon respawn. This does not mean that land will be claimable on these servers, just that they cannot be selected as a server to respawn on.
- You can now buy a "Ramshackle Sloop" from the NPC Shipyardsman at Freeports. The "Ramshackle Sloop" is a pre-built sloop which has permanently lower plank HP, carry weight, and crew limit, but is cheaper and faster to acquire if you want to get into sailing faster.
- "Favorites" server selection drop-down is added for Unofficial
- Joining through Steam browser server list with password now properly caches the password for ATLAS travel
- Fixed up some temperature scalings and Weather events are now indicated on the HUD
- Armour effectiveness and some values have been adjusted so that firearms are more useful in PVP
- Fixed some bugs related to Sea Claims, Enemy Claim Flags can now be directly pinged to identify any contesting enemies nearby, and the time required to steal an enemy claim now decreases the more Claims that enemy team has.
- Farming rebalances to be easier; water can now pipe uphill, region requirements for growing crops are more forgiving, and crop growth & yield is much faster and higher. Crops now take much longer to spoil when placed in a preserving bag.
- Reduced shovel stamina cost.
- You can now fill waterskins/jars from ground spouts.
- Metal Tools can no longer damage the planks of anchored ships.
- 50 more player levels added, and Skill Points per level increased.
- Loot stat scaling has been boosted (retroactively) by 60%
- Some ship costs have been adjusted, and in some cases reduced by approximately about 50%
- Animals health regen rebalanced, so they're not regenerating high amounts whilst in combat!
- Eating poop is now instant-death
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't kill yourself by exhaustion (for stuck situations)
- Pipes can now move water upwards and the vertical limit on underground junctions has been eliminated. Also, pipes can go farther without foundation requirement, and underground junctions can now be snapped onto existing pipes.
- Guns and melee weapons have had their damage and penetration values adjusted to make them more effective against armour
- Throwing Knife does significantly more damage when thrown to unarmoured targets (body and headshot)
- Armour penetration has been reduced on spear throw to make it less effective versus higher armoured targets
- Explosive Barrel weight has been increased
- Stone Arrows now stack to 60 and a bow can fire them 60 times before breaking
- Fire Arrows now stack to 40 and a bow can fire them 40 times before breaking
- Puckle damage has been increased and also been made more effective against armour
- Fixed Salted Animal & Fish Meat so that they naturally generate when placed in an active preserving bag (must use raw meats)
- Updated some legacy sounds and icons
- Updated stair collision on shipyards
- Fixed a bug which prevented passive feats from applying after death
- Fixed a bug with the torch which caused it to repair endlessly
- Lighthouses can now be lit even if they are touching water
- Using a bucket on a tamed cow now causes the bucket to lose durability
- Fixed a bug where players would get stuck in the crouched position
- Fixed a bug which sometimes would occur where players would disconnection when being invited to a company
- Fixed a bug which prevented creatures from receiving experience points above a certain level
- Fixed a bug which would cause NPC Crew to sink into foundations when exiting stasis range
- Rewrote structure destruction logic to avoid cases of floating structures
- Inventory ranks per structure and creature will now work for companies
- Fixed a bug which prevented admins from accessing remote inventories with the F key when changing group ranks.
- Autolock all structures in 'PvE only' with an inventory, except campfires and similar structures which can be placed without a claimflag. Unofficial Servers can run this with PvE enabled & ?ForceAllStructureLocking=true
- Gunmounts are now colorizable
- Gates and Gateway costs have been adjusted and now include metals (wood) and alloy (stone)
- Gateways and Gates are now crafted in smithy instead of player inventory
- Fixed an exploit with Prying Eyes
- Can no longer glide up mountains with the glide suit
- Fixed an exploit which allowed you to gain massive height when using the zipline
- Fixed a building exploit which allowed you to float structures and fortify walls with floors

Creature Related Changes

- Sea Monsters' damage has been reduced by 66%
- Tamed Creatures take 20% less damage
- Wild Alpha creatures HP and Damage reduced by 20%
- Tames HP and Damage scaling nerfed by about 40%, and Cannons/Explosions damage to tames increased 50% due to level increase and scaling possibility
- Killing the Monsterous Sperm Whale or Blue Whales (as they're now named) provides (one-time) 50 Discovery Points each to everyone within 100k units of that event.
- Penguin AoE insulation now scales by level, the higher the level, the more insulation.
- Updated Mounted and Rider buffs to display icon while active, to better inform players the source of stat boosts.
- Dolphins now periodically leap out of the water. If you're nearby to witness that at close-range, you'll gain a temporary Intelligence buff!
- Updated affinity ineffectiveness values based on the recent x2 taming increase
- Updated creature specific buffs and ability value clamps to be scaled across 130 levels, due to recent extra 30 level ups for tames.
- Increased Wolf attack destination offset and increased some physics bounds to reduce clipping into players. Temporarily increased Wolf saddle scale in the engine to limit fur clipping.
- Updated taming ineffectiveness values to allow the highest efficiency to only be achieved with Taming Proficiency skill 3.
- Updated some undesired movement speed bonuses on tamed creatures
- Adjusted Seagull and Crow aggro speeds (Would previously take a long time to de-aggro). Updated collision to allow player attacks to land more consistently.
- Updated Vulture AI to only target sleeping humans if the player is connected. Updated attack logic to better harvest corpses, while reducing its melee swing radius (Was previously hitting from very far away)
- Reduced Bee movement to allow player attacks to land. Reduced sting buff duration to better reflect its size.
- Increased harvest amount of fur and milk from Sheep and Cow to incentivise taming and better compete with natural resource gathering amounts. Updated max yield timings to scale with creature level, similar to other creature abilities, instead of food value.
- Added durability decreased to the bucket when milking.
- Clamped amount of fur gained from harvesting wild sheep, again to incentivise taming. Wild sheep will also flee and may attack players after excessive shearing. We'll be adding recipes in an upcoming update which can be used to heal your creatures!
- Added Lion roar animation.
- Fixed fur stretching on Wolf's face and hind leg
- Decreased Crocodile swim speed.
- Creature health regen rebalanced and changed so that they no longer regen health when forcefed or from consuming corpses. With the exception of Wild Carnos, which still can consume corpses to heal at a reduced rate.
- Baby breeding balance changes to compensate for the overall creature regen changes.
- Wild Scorpions will no longer target large creatures, will no longer be aggressive towards Elephants, Giraffes, etc.
- Lion will only dismount players that are on medium and less sized creatures, will no longer dismount players from Elephants, Giraffes, etc.
- Updated taming foods to allow a variety of items to be used in taming creatures.

Effectiveness left(more) to right(less):

Tier 1 Chicken - Fruits, Berries Monkey - Fruits, Berries Parrot - Hardtack, or Berries Rabbit - Carrots, or Berries Sheep - Flowers, or Berries

Tier 2 Bear - Honey, Vegetables, Fruits or Berries Cow/Bull - Rushes, Fronds, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Crow - Worms, Fruits, or Berries Horse - Sugarcane, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Ostrich - Chili, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Penguin - Prime Fish Meat, or Fish Meat Pig - Maize, Vegetables, Fruits, or Berries Seagull - Prime Fish Meat, or Fish Meat Vulture - Spoiled Meat, or Worms Wolf - Prime Animal Meat, Bones, or other Meats

Tier 3 Elephant - Wheat, Vegetables, or Fruits Giraffe - Beets, Vegetables, or Fruits Lion - Prime Animal Meat, or other Meats Rhino - Turnip, Vegetables, or Fruits Tiger - Prime Animal Meat, or other Meats

As mentioned previously, this is just the very beginning of our journey. We’ll continue to frequently pump out major patches every week to improve the state of the game, introducing QOL changes, bug and exploit fixes, rebalance adjustments, redesigns, and new content. ATLAS fans will have a lot to look forward to and we’re so excited for the future. We’re already working on some major content & feature additions in tangent with our frequent live game patches, so stay tuned for more information on that!

As for what’s in the immediate future, well in addition to a current hot topic we’ll go into below, Pathfinders can expect to see a tremendous increase in server performance over the coming weeks. We are confident that we will be able to double it incrementally over forthcoming updates. Plus, you’ll be able to change your tattoos in freeports at your local Tattoo Artist NPC! And we have major changes incoming related to how you’ll be able to manage and benefit from the territories that you own, improvements and additions to sailing and crew mechanics, player-run shops and Freeport interactions, and much more. Finally, the biggest news is the ATLAS Dev Kit is finally nearly ready to release, and we intend to have it in your hands at the start of this coming week -- get your creative juices flowing to help make ATLAS bigger and better than it is! We’ll have more notes to come in the next Log, so please make sure you bookmark the page below to keep up to date with our latest changes!

Complete Patch Notes

Captain Exploits and the scummy seadogs!

It goes without saying that cracking down on cheaters, exploits, and general misconduct is a priority of ours. One of the many items on a list which we are working to address over the time ahead, and here’s how we’re going to do it:

Basics of Anti Cheat & Support: BattlEye Implementation

Now that v10 is out the door, outside of dealing with critical issues that arise from that patch or are otherwise discovered, we’ll be working on intensely on enabling BattlEye Anti Cheat on our Official Network, as well as for Unofficial Servers to use, plus other underlying data-driven systems, to help put a stop to cheaters.

Secrets of Anti Cheat & Support: playATLAS Tickets

As of today, we’ll have launched our first phase of customer support. We will be (and have already done so) providing in-game assistance to players who have lost ownership of their companies, and players who have found themselves in a sticky situation that they cannot escape (outside of intended game mechanics). Additionally, we’ll be providing an option that players can use to report other users who have broken our Official Network’s Code of Conduct. Please note that this list isn’t entirely exhaustive and this is just the first phase of what we’d like to tackle as the game grows.

Code of Conduct

You can click here if you’re seeking some assistance! Please be patient as we work through the kinks and get these under control, we’re expecting a heavy influx of requests day one and there might be some lead time in responses, however, we plan to tackle these as quickly as possible in cases where we are providing assistance.

We’ll be using these systems, in addition to general feedback, to help us identify what problems people are facing and how we can tackle them from a technical point of view. To be transparent and speak realistically, as a small studio, we’re better equipped to funnel our resources into dealing with game problems that arise through technical implementation rather than customer service, however, we do see the need for it and wanted to provide an option in some cases. Over time, these options will grow and expand as both the team and game do to address the needs of you guys and tackle some of your in-game problems which aren’t viably resolved with a technical change.

Esotery of Anti-Cheat & Support: Additional Cheat Detection & Prevention

Following the implementation of BattlEye and ensuring smooth seas on BE protected networks, we’ll be exploring additional internal options to help identify, track and catch cheaters as well as general player concerns and problems. We’re not going to go into too many details, it’s important to keep these bits close to our chest, however, we just wanted to iterate that BattlEye would just be the beginning and over time our team will continue to invest resources into sinking the ships of cheaters!

Dynamic ATLAS Maps Round-Up

The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands.

Each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim.

Who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges…

Soon, the companies that have occupied islands for a certain period of time will gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land!

Remember you can don your tribe’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP]The Whale’s Wrath

Held: XSM???, Cobra, French & Ships, Bad Company, BLDX DOUYU56876, and Chem B

Arrivals: LEGION, Enslaved, The French Monkeys, ETERNIA, and OOOOOOOOOF.

Departures: PUBG GOLDEN HORDE, La Flotte Ancestrale, and Blackwater Company.

[NA PVP] The Kraken’s Maw

Held: Dynasty, High Seas Booty Bandits, Order of Freedom, TPG, CSTG, and Barry Sails.

Arrivals: OwO, The Federation, and The Late Shift.

Departures: MAGA, INFINITE, The Goodship Misery, Radium,

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following tribes for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren’s Call

Held: Compagnie des Indes, M.E.R.C Spirit, Paragon, Rum ueber Bord, Woelfe des Rudels, Future Company (HUN), and Fenrirs Dogs

Arrivals: Black Lotus, Tacorsair, and SouL SanD.

Depatures: Forlorn Hope, I.C.E, PIRATES, Unlucky,

[NA PVE] The Hydra’s Den

Held: Plunderers, Scales & Sails, The Salty Seamen, Dead Men Floating,The Exiles, Atlas Shrugged, East India Trading Co.

Arrivals: CN-adilt supplies, Paragon, Narcos,

Departures: Biz Enton Company, blublublu, and Sail, Fail, Repeat.

Show ‘n Tell!

Check out our PlayATLAS announcement to see the results of our first Show 'n Tell contest!

Alrighty, that’s it for this post. Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information🏴‍☠️

Hoist ye sails to our Homepage: https://www.playatlas.com/
Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

Jan 4, 2019

Captain's Log 15: Treat me like a Pathfinder and Gimme dat Patch!

ATLAS - Jat

Ahoy Pathfinders!

Hang on... Captain’s Log on a Friday? Yes, it’s a little earlier than we had planned (first for everything, amirite?) but earlier this week we released a significant update based on the Community feedback we had received as the game has now been available for two weeks.

We’re going to do a quick rundown of the updates leading to v9.3, as well as discuss our huge incoming patch, v10 which will drop anchor on Monday Noon EST (or around then at least, we’ll keep you posted on social media!)

All th' stuff 'n thin's

If you wanna skip the meal and just check out the changelog, you can do so here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/834910/discussions/0/1742229167204313065/

As highlighted in previous Captain’s Log, our number one priority was making sure that the game was stable from a client and server perspective, that there would be minimum connection issues, and we’d be handling data issues with a broadside of fixes! Since the launch itself, the game has tremendously improved in all 3 of these areas. Our crashes have statistically reduced by 97%+, players can get in and fully experience the ATLAS, and as of v9.3, we had solved many critical cases where Company and Alliance data would have been lost. There are still many more things we want to do in this area in the coming days and weeks ahead -- you can expect us not to rest until server baseline performance and hitches are much further improved.

Released notes up to v9.3 - Resolved massive server-side stalls related to perf large companies - Company Member, Company Groups, and Alliance data loss issue should hopefully be resolved. - Official Network Companies are now hard limited to 500 members, and this is a current measure until the Company system receives a backend overhaul in the long-term. - Fixed some server crashes - Slightly improved server performance and generally reduced server stalls

Upcoming changes in v10 - General note regarding server performance improvements, stalls, connection issues, etc (We’re going to work on improving this constantly!

However, that’s not all that we wanted to address! Since the launch, we have received so much support and feedback from our Community Hub, Steam Forums, Reddit, Discord, and social media. The team have been working hard on development, whilst watching with our prying eyes to see which to determine what needs addressing. Patches up to v9.3 and the incoming v10 have been planned to improve ATLAS’ as a game from its core based on most impactful, important, and how immediately we could see results. We won’t go into the thought-process details for each specific note, but we’ll try to give you guys a general idea around our decision making.

Please note: these changes are not the only thing we’re going to do. There will be a boatload of updates following v10 too, every few days another major drop. ATLAS launched as an Early Access title, and we are a highly iterative development team. We’ll continue to pump out patches to improve the game and get it where it needs to be! So if there’s something in here you feel like we’ve missed, let us know on our Community Hub, Reddit, Discord, Twitter, etc. We’re watching like hawks and consuming like hogs; we will make adjustments; whether that’s introducing new things, tweaking, or taking a step back and redesigning. That’s what this development process is all about, shaping and growing the game rapidly with your input. It’s gonna get chaotic and messy at times, but we appreciate you weathering the storm as we sail into calmer waters! <3

Lemme be a pirate, Grapes!@# Games!

So two things. One of the coolest aspects, without a doubt, is that you can be a fully fledged pirate. You can captain a crew, sail one of many boats, have a fleet, hunt for treasure, explore and discover islands, pillage, plunder, salvage -- the list goes on! However, at launch, we perhaps made this a bit more difficult and tedious than it needed to be. We love being a bit hardcore but it was clear to us that adjustments were necessary. In no particular order...

Released notes up to v9.3 - Default resource and taming speeds have been increased to 2x as the baseline. - Sailing against the wind now provides 30% of with-the-wind sailforce, as opposed to 0%. - Also increased the amount of sailforce provided by minimum windspeed conditions by 30%, and the sailforce provided by maximum windspeed conditions by 15%. - Increased the base carry Weight of all ships by +40%

Upcoming changes in v10 - There are 4x as many trade ships on the seas, and they now also sell commodity types for gold, as do NPC's at Freeports. - You can now buy a "Ramshackle Sloop" from the NPC Shipyardsman at Freeports. The "Ramshackle Sloop" is a pre-built sloop which has permanently lower plank HP, carry weight, and crew limit, but is cheaper and faster to acquire if you want to get into sailing faster. - Some ship costs have been adjusted, and in some cases reduced by approximately about 50%

We believe that these first steps will help us get players to experience the epic piracy side of the game much sooner, whilst overall not having too much of a heavy impact on our balance and design.

Captain Grapeshot, Why do you hurt us with these hardcore mechanics?

Well, you know what they say… pain is love and love makes the world go ‘round. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

But in all seriousness, we can be a bit overzealous at times, what can we say? We like it a little rough but we understand when things go too far, sometimes it just takes the fun out and that’s when we need to consider, is this piece of the puzzle really worth it?

Sometimes aye, but also, sometimes nay! At times we should consider not punching people in the face when all they want to do is sail their raft and build a thatched home. What are some of the nays? Cooking, land ownership, survivalism, progression, and creature balance. Here are some of the adjustments we’re going to make to deal with the nay;

Released notes up to v9.3: - Every Tame can now get a minimum of 30 tame level-ups put into it, plus however many base levels it had when wild. So for example, a level 5 wild wolf would get 35 tame level-ups to apply, whereas a level 40 wild wolf would get 70 tame level-ups to use. - Melee weapons are now temporarily ineffective against ship planks. Later this will be changed so that it will only be ineffective against anchored ship planks. - Buffed Tamed creatures HP and Damage globally by 25%

Upcoming changes in v10: - Claim Flags now allow a "Neutral Zone" setting which allows any other tribes to build within them, with the specified tax rate applied to them. You are also able to specify an inclusion or exclusion list to these, to only allow or exclude specific company ID's / player ID's. All claim flags will have this enabled as a default setting when placed, and this will also be a retroactive change. However, it will not function until Wednesday the 9th of January at NOON EST, where we will release another server update to make Neutral Zones active. This means you will have two days, from Monday to Wednesday, to decide and adjust the settings on your claim flag before the change is live. - Enemy Claim Flags can now be directly pinged to identify any contesting enemies nearby, and the time required to steal an enemy claim now decreases the more Claims that enemy team has. - Farming rebalances to be easier; water can now pipe uphill, region requirements for growing crops are more forgiving, and crop growth & yield is much faster and higher. - Reduced shovel stamina cost. - You can now fill waterskins/jars from ground spouts. - Metal Tools can no longer damage the planks of anchored ships. - 50 more player levels added, and Skill Points per level increased. - Loot stat scaling has been boosted (retroactively) by 60% - Sea Monsters' damage has been reduced by 66% - Animals health regen rebalanced, so they're not regenerating high amounts whilst in combat! - Fixed up some temperature scalings and adjusted Fortitude stat effect

Alrighty, fair enough Grapeshot… but what else? Betcha didn’t know that <thing> is <state>!

Yes, there are still a number of things we plan to address and change going forward. This isn’t the be-all end-all of our updates. There are more fixes, balance changes, new game features and content just beyond the horizon (basically daily) so if there’s something which you feel is important and we haven’t addressed, let us know. It might have been something we’ve overlooked, it might be something we’re tackling in an upcoming patch, it might be something we’re still sitting on to see how things fair, guess you could call us seafarers XD!

You can be reassured that as each night passes, we’re fully dedicated to ensuring that ATLAS gets one step closer to becoming one of the most ambitious online worlds of all time and fulfilling its destiny as the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure! And on that note, here are some additional patch notes that we’ve made up to v9.3 or will be making in v10 such as addressing fire-from-the-depths-of-hell arrows and gatling mortars. These notes are pretty miscellaneous and tackle many things at once.

Released notes up to v9.3 - Reduced min damage and min percentage on flame arrow buff by 33%. - Reduced max damage done on flame arrow projectile hit to 50. - Increased gravity on flame arrows 20% to make it less ranged. - Increased firegel cost of flame arrows by 100%. - Added durability consumption to flame and stone arrows (1 dura per shot, 40 shots per bow repair). - Change bow durability from 50 to 40. - Fixed a bug which allowed Mortars to have rapid fire. - Fixed alliance chat sometimes duplicating messages - Fixed a bug where clients could end up invisible when demolishing a podium - Default resource and taming speeds have been increased to 2x as the baseline. - Fixed a bug which allowed Mortars to have rapid fire. - Fixed inland water buoy's being invisible and fixed buoys, so they no longer prevent resource respawn. - Prevent ship collision damage from occurring when caused by other player ships on PVE servers. - Fixed sunken-ship area indicator lingering even after a shipwreck has been entirely salvaged.

Upcoming notes in v10 - All Cannons/Turrets can now be pin code protected for lever activation/deactivation - Lawless servers can no longer be specified as Homeservers. If your Homeserver was a lawless server, you'll be required to pick a new (Freeport) Homeserver upon respawn. - "Favorites" server selection drop-down is added for Unofficial - Joining through Steam browser server list with password now properly caches the password for ATLAS travel - Weather events are now indicated on the HUD - Armour effectiveness will be adjusted so that firearms are more useful in PVP - Fixed some bugs related to Sea Claims - Eating poop is now instant-death - Fixed an issue where you couldn't kill yourself by exhaustion (for stuck situations)

Show ‘n Tell!

Entries can be posted in the Creative Section, the Steam Workshop, or shared via social media! We’ve created a dedicated thread for submissions, don’t hesitate to show us what you’ve got cause we’ve seen some pretty cool stuff so far!

Show ‘n Tell #1! Deadline: Monday 7th Jan

Alrighty, that’s it for this post. We will have a general Captain’s Log on Monday, most likely late night as that’ll be patch day. Next week we’re also looking forward to getting the ATLAS Dev Kit into your content creator hands and seeing what amazing new gameplay mechanics and environments the community can come up with! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information🏴‍☠️

Hoist ye sails to our Homepage: https://www.playatlas.com/
Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

Dec 31, 2018

Captain's Log 14: Happy New Year to ye, me hearties!

ATLAS - Jat

Ahoy Pathfinders!

We'd like to wish all ATLAS Pathfinders a very Happy New Year! It's been a crazy start to our voyage, and it's already filled with so many exciting memories for us here at Grapeshot Games! We've only just explored the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what ATLAS will be and we're excited for the future ahead. As each night passes, ATLAS gets one step closer to becoming one of the most ambitious online worlds of all time and fulfiling its destiny as the ultimate fantasy pirate adventure! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1610173666

Development Update

We don’t have too much to add this week as the general battleplan is the same, though we’re going to do our best to keep you informed on a regular basis, via Social Media, Discord, and our weekly Captain's Log posts.

As mentioned in the previous Captain’s Log, our number one priority at the moment is tackling the stability, connection, and data issues, and we promised that we would make significant progress! Over the last few days, we have released a number of critical updates which have improved our server performance tenfold. We have statistically eliminated over 95% of all crashes, and are presently working on further updates to bring that number down even more. As a team, our direction is now shifting onto connection issues, data loss bugs and general balance and gameplay fixes -- as you can see, some of these changes are already underway!

Patch Notes up to v8.56

Current Version: v8.56

- Anyone can now demolish shipwreck structures to regain resources so get your diving suits ready!

- NPC Trading Ships are back and no longer affected by wild creature destruction commands! Reminder for those with deep pockets, the trader ships have an epic Dragon which can be purchased for 50,000 gold coins

v8.36

- Improvements made to joining/rejoining servers, should make it more reliable and eliminate many cases of connection lost/failure to grab server info.

v8.35

- Fixed a bug where HUD may not have shown to players in some cases.

v8

- Further improved server stability.
- Further reduced Ship of the Damned spawns by 20%
- Ship of the Damned now are allowed to "Wander" away from shore if they find themselves close to shore
- Ship of the Damned targeting ranges now are reduced by the type of ship (down to 30% for rafts (which means they will now attack rafts - but you have to get pretty darn close to them!) and 0% for dinghies)
- -LowMemoryMode now disables the background movies for lighter memory footprint
- Changed damage type on repair hammer to 0 against players, human npcs, and creatures
- Ships near shore do not attract cyclones anymore
- Vultures should now more easily harvest corpses
- Ships that players are based on do not use staggered updates now (resolving the issue of the choppy spyglass rotation when in the crow's nest, for example)
- Can no longer weapon-charge or dodge when encumbered.
- Fixed erroneous reference to chalcedony instead of flint base
- Added Ingots/Alloys and Organic Paste to the list of resources allowed in the ship repair box
- Tripled gathering weighting of metal in all the generic rocks for both pick and hatchet damage types
- Grenades damaged to stone multiplied by 3x
- Changed Human Crew character carry inv max weight from 1000 to 60.
- Switched damage weightings around so the pick tool is preferred from metal/crystal/gem/salts and hatchet for wood/coal/stone, etc. No adjustments have been made to yield changes, just tools have been adjusted.
- Fixed an issue with treasure bottle's spawning (there will now be more of them and more reliably spawned) and increased the quality of loot found in treasures.

v7.8

- Further server/networking optimisation to improve server performance and stability. We have effectively eliminated over 95% of our crashes. We'll be continuing to monitor our servers over the coming days ahead and tackle more events. Consequently, we will be turning our primary attention to data transfer issues and connection issues.
- Reduced Ship of the Damned targeting range by 50%. We're going to look into scaling that based on the type of ship.

v7.6

- Further server/networking optimisation to improve server performance, stability, and connection issues.
- Further tweaks made to Ship of the Damned should no longer wander close to shore, however, they may chase you.
- Shipyards are now properly tagged on the server side, so enemy players will not be able to demo them unless the decay timer has truly hit 0 on the server.

Link to complete Patch Notes: https://steamcommunity.com/app/834910/discussions/0/1742229167204313065/

Dynamic ATLAS Maps Roundup

Pathfinders! It’s week 2 and here’s another round up of the Dynamic Maps! For those who aren’t familiar, The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands.

Soon, the Companies that have occupied Islands for a certain period of time will gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land! So each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim.

Who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges...

Remember you can don your tribe’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP] The Whale’s Wrath

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1610174132

Held: XSM???, Cobra, French & Ships, Bad Company, Blackwater Company, BLDX DOUYU56876, and Chem B

Arrivals: PUBG GOLDEN HORDE, OOOOOOOOOF, and La Flotte Ancestrale

Departures: Le Saint Empire, The Holy Annwn Empire, Blackwater Company, and Marlong.

[NA PVP] The Kraken’s Maw

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1610174387

Held: Dynasty, MAGA, INFINITE, The Goodship Misery, High Seas Booty Bandits, Radium, and Order of Freedom

Arrivals: TPG, CSTG, and Barry Sails

Departures: Darkblade Army, Libertalia, and Black Sails.

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following tribes for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren’s Call

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1610174046

Held: Compagnie des Indes, M.E.R.C Spirit, Forlorn Hope, Unlucky, and Paragon.

Arrivals: Rum ueber Bord, I.C.E, Woelfe des Rudels, Future Company (HUN), PIRATES, and Febrirs Dogs

Depatures: Unlucky, I L O, UseR, Tacorsair, Starroad, and System of the Wipe.

[NA PVE] The Hydra’s Den

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1610174256

Held: Biz Enton Company, Plunderers, Scales & Sails, The Salty Seamen, Dead Men Floating, and The Exiles.

Arrivals: Atlas Shrugged, blublublu, East India Trading Co., and Sail, Fail, Repeat.

Departures: Test Squadron, Bad Neighbors, The Exiles, Chronically Raving Co., and Pirates of Gore.

Show ‘n Tell!

Hear ye, hear ye!

We be seekin’ fer the finest of ATLAS community creations! Show us yer mighty fleets, paint pieces, flags & sails, impenetrable forts, hellish tats, scenic screenshots, 'n entertainin' videos! Each week, we'll be runnin' a contest where we'll select th' best o' th' bunch 'n award tha winners wit' a cash prize! The first contest starts today 'n the winners will be announced in the next Captain's Log!

Here are some examples so you have an idea of what we’re looking for!

https://twitter.com/SpookyAnonymous/status/1078933391125430272

https://youtu.be/um0C4Qe0Zw0

We'd really love to see some epic boats and fortresses! Entries can be posted in the Creative Section the forums or the ATLAS' Steam Artwork Page! We’ll be on the lookout for your posts :)

That's all for tonight! We hope you guys have a fantastic New Year celebration!

All the best,

Grapeshot Games

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information

Hoist ye sails to our Homepage: https://www.playatlas.com/
Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

Dec 27, 2018

Captain's Log 13: Updates Ho!

ATLAS - Jat

Ahoy Pathfinders!

To get started, let’s discuss the launch, the boatload of updates we’ve had so far, as well as our initial development battleplan!

Launch and Patch Notes

For those that want to skip to starter, and jump right into the entrée, here’s a link to the latest changelog:

Patch Notes!

You could say that we were off to a stormy start! The initial influx of players wanting to set sail immediately was (predictably in hindsight) larger than we anticipated and our systems got crushed until we tuned the new technical systems to handle it. We have been incredibly humbled and excited by the number of seafaring Pathfinders wanting to dive into the ATLAS. Since the launch, the team has heavily prioritised connection and capacity resolutions, server and client-side performance updates, server and client-side crash fixes as well as tackling general gameplay bugs and balance concerns.

We’re going to continue to iterate at a very rapid rate, you can generally expect daily deployments and updates to both servers and clients, and sometimes even multiple if we feel like a change is significant enough to warrant it. We truly appreciate everyone’s patience and support during this launch period and we intend to show our gratitude through frequent updates that resolve the issues which matter to you and improve ATLAS in both the near-term and over the long term.

ATLAS is a very ambitious project and we recognize that there is much work to be done as it begins its Early Access journey, but as we said before, we’re hardened adventurers and we’re looking forward to the fun and challenges that we’ll experience alongside you!

We want to make it very clear to you that these rapid updates and the continuous upwards progression will continue with ATLAS. We have deployed a new server version to our Official Network (v7.104) which has resolved many server crashes and is already showing significant improvement in server stability; however, there is still more to come! Our number one priority at the moment is tackling the stability, connection, and data issues, and we will make significant progress over the coming days ahead.

The full list of the changelog for our upcoming update which focused on balance and stability, as well as the changelog for our update last night which dealt with a lot of gameplay bugs and stability.

Released 7.4 Notes

- Server-side crash fixes and stability improvements
- Army of the Damned Ships will no longer initially aggro to drydocked or anchored ships, unless fired upon by them or already targeting them.
- Reduced Army of the Damned ships spawn rate by 60%
- Reduced Army of the Damned ship HP per level scaling by 20%
- Reduced Army of the Damned ship Aggro range by 10%
- Boosted Army of the Damned ship loot quality by 10%
- Reduced Flotsam spawn rate by 35%
- Increased Treasure map item quality by 15%
- Eliminated at-sea increased rate of vitamin/vitals consumption. Now it just causes food to spoil faster, and temperatures to drop.
- Increased vitamin equilibrium range to +/- 20% rather than 10% (making it easier to achieve and stay in equilibrium)
- Decreased vitamin deficiency debuff threshold to 10% rather than 20%
- Reduced base rate of vitamin consumption by 2%
- Ensured army of the damned ships spawn farther away from shore, and don't spawn too near player ships
- Fixed Diving Platform to take any oils, not just blubber
- Changed Lighthouse HP to 25k, gave it stone structure settings, and allow it to burn oil
- Updated Vulture AI to only target sleeping humans if the player is connected.
- Army of the Damned Ships will no longer initially aggro to drydocked or anchored ships, unless fired upon by them or already targeting them.
- Added one more Skill Point earned by all level-ups above 10 (recommend players Respec)

Released v7 Patches Notes

- Added a new event cosmetic, 'Top Hat'. Permanent skin with 10 applicable uses. Can be purchased from Cosmetic Vendors in Freeports or Travelling Merchants. From the 27th of December, through til the 2nd of January, wearing this hat whilst digging up treasure will result in double the gold.
- Improved server performance by adjusting server water thread utilization
- Changed declaim period (stealing enemy territory) to 30 minutes from 1.5 hours (requires they have no alive crew or players in the vicinity)
- Removed requirement to be on a boat to steal someone's boat after placing the claim flag. Adjusted base value times to claim the boats to be 1 one minute to steal a dinghy, 2hrs~ to steal a raft, a couple hours to steal sloop, and so forth (levelling a ship increases the time it takes to steal that ship).
- Rebalanced Skill Point requirements as originally intended, where higher tier skills cost more SP. Forced a one-time 'free' respec to use these new values.
- "Low Memory" Launch Option for more reliable <= 8GB OS support. Launch the game with '-lowmemorymode' to utilize this!
- Ship collision damage is now disabled on Freeport servers.
- Alpha creature spawns are now disabled on Freeport and Lawless Servers.
- Item yield and Gold yield from Treasure have been doubled
- Significantly reduced Torch and Fire Arrow Damage
- Fixed a bug which prevented resources from respawning. Please note when this update goes live, it may be a few hours until they naturally start appearing again.
- Increased the damage from Dragon Fire AOE and set it to an 8-hour tame time with the token
- Equilibrium Buff now gives +20% XP, -20% reduced incoming damage, +30 temperature fortitude, +10% movement speed, +20% melee damage, and takes 30 minutes to achieve rather than an hour.
- Fixed a bug which prevented Bottles and Flotsams from spawning
- Fixed a bug ocean and deep ocean spawners, including Mermaids, Whales, Ship of the Damned, and Squids.
- NPC crew that are recruited in Freeport are now correctly assigned to your team.
- Fixed Shovels and Heavy Shields so they no longer damage stone structures
- All freeports now have pirate music in town
- Scuttling is now tied to the demolishing tribe governance setting and Prevent Demolishing Structures in Group Management Settings
- Group ranks now enabled on seating structures, so you're able to have better control of who is able to use those (Steering Wheel and Lt Podium)
- PvE Claim Flag contesting now displays the enemy Claim Flag's upkeep time remaining before you can contest it, and provides a proper HUD message to that effect.

Stay tuned for more updates to come in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. This game is going to be huge, and we’ve got a lot in store for you!

Captain’s Quarters

Hello all, apologies for the challenging launch here! Between the intensity of preparing for the release of a massively multiplayer title, and the needs to get all of the new infrastructure prepared to roll-out, we let the schedule and initial launch builds get away from us. Hunkered down in our development bunker 24/7 subsisting on Red Bulls and stale pizza, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, which ought to start and end with communication to the players. Despite it all, I’m so happy that so many of you see the potential in what ATLAS is, and are enjoying the immense scale of sandbox freedom that can readily be had in the game. As we churn through issues and continue to build out the game in the days, weeks, and months ahead, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s just over the horizon for the game and its growing community. As a great poet of the sea once wrote: “All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”

On a side note: the ATLAS Dev Kit & Steam Workshop! We haven’t forgotten about it, and the hooks for it are all ready to build the large-scale wargame of your dreams. We need Epic’s help to release it in early January, and tentatively intend for it to release by January 7, if not sooner. We will post further news as we get it ready to ship out then. In the meantime, you can experiment if you have server administrator rights with the following commands to mess around with some Dev Kit example vehicles:

Airplane: cheat ssf “zephyr”
Tank: cheat ssf “tank”
Steampunk Airship: cheat ssf “steam”

Have fun, just be sure you have enough runway to take off in that plane, else you might find yourself in the drink!

-Jeremy

Work Like a Captain, Party Like a… Lord?

Ye be cordially invited to join th’ crew at the Captain’s table to celebrate the New Year in style! Startin' from today with this update, the' 26th o' December, runnin' right through the New Year 'til th' 2nd o' January, Pathfinders can get involved in the' festive celebrations by pickin' up a Top Hat at thar nearest cosmetic vendor, located in all Freeports or at a Travellin’ Merchant!

All Pathfinders wearin' a top hat whilst diggin' up booty protected by the damned will be granted double the normal reward in gold! This bonus holiday effect be applied upon the distribution o' th' loot, so regardless o' whoever digs up th' booty, be it ye or a scallywag, as long as ye're wearin' th' hat ye'll get th' bonus between the 26th t’ tha 2nd.

Th' Top Hat Skins will remain in game forever, however, they will 'ave a limited number of skin applications 'n th' bonus effect will only last 'til th' 2nd o' January!

We know this isn’t the biggest Holiday Event to launch with, given our focus on shoring up our planks from the launch period. Rest assured we have far more ambitious limited-run events planned for the future!

Dynamic ATLAS Maps Roundup

Congratulations to the following companies for topping the leaderboards of our Dynamic Maps! The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands. Soon, the Companies that have occupied Islands for a certain period of time will gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land! So each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim. As this is just the first week of the ATLAS, we expect the Dynamic Maps to show a very turbulent representation as Companies expand their territories and go to war. Who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges...

Remember you can don your tribe’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

[EU PVP] The Whale’s Wrath

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1604810709

Arrivals: XSM???, Cobra, Le Saint Empire, French & Ships, The Holy Annwn Empire, Bad Company, Blackwater Company, BLDX DOUYU56876, Chem B, and Marlong

Departures: N/A

Notable changes: N/A

[NA PVP] The Kraken’s Maw

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1604811014

Arrivals: Dynasty, MAGA, INFINITE, Darkblade Army, The Goodship Misery, High Seas Booty Bandits, Radium, Order of Freedom, Libertalia, and Black Sails.

Departures: N/A

Notable changes: N/A

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following tribes for their claims!

[EU PVE] The Siren’s Call

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1604810802

Arrivals: Compagnie des Indes, M.E.R.C Spirit, Forlorn Hope, Unlucky, Paragon, I L O, UseR, Tacorsair, Starroad, and System of the Wipe.

Depatures: N/A

[NA PVE] The Hydra’s Den

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1604810428

Arrivals: Biz Enton Company, Plunderers, Test Squadron, Scales & Sails, The Salty Seamen, Dead Men Floating, Bad Neighbors, The Exiles, Chronically Raving Co., and Pirates of Gore.

Departures: N/A

Show ‘n Tell!

Hear ye, hear ye!

We be seekin’ fer the finest of ATLAS community creations! Show us yer mighty fleets, paint pieces, flags & sails, impenetrable forts, hellish tats, scenic screenshots, 'n entertainin' videos! Each week, we'll be runnin' a contest where we'll select th' best o' th' bunch 'n award tha winners wit' a cash prize! The first contest starts today 'n the winners will be announced in the next Captain's Log!

Here are some examples so you have an idea of what we’re looking for!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1599330758

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1598938195

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1599761403

We'd really love to see some epic boats and fortresses! Entries can be posted in the Creative Section the forums or the ATLAS' Steam Artwork Page! We’ll be on the lookout for your posts :)

https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/forums/forum/42-creative/

🏴‍☠️For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information

Hoist ye sails to our Homepage: https://www.playatlas.com/
Natter n' chatter on Discord: https://discord.gg/playatlas
Navigate ye olde Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/playatlas
Hear ye, hear ye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas
Watch us scallywags on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/sailtheatlas
Plus ye can band with us Pirates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playatlasgame

Stay tuned for next Monday’s Log for a peak at some of the new things which await you on the ATLAS in January and beyond!

See you there Pathfinders,
Jat, Jeremy, and Jesse