devtrackers.gg
Honestly I don't even know where to start?
I have 24 hours into this game, I thought the concept was great. Huge MMO with 40k on a server, make your own ships etc. Turns out it's not even close.
I have over 3000 hours into ark I know it was rough at the start, but let me explain my story.
I waited a few days after launch to play the game as I knew it was going to be a rough start. After a few patches I jumped into the game when I could and enjoyed what it was, I was so excited to get into atlas that I took my raft out for it's inaugural voyage and it was the most painful gaming experience of my life. I sailed from the freeport to the closest island and tried to sail back but was fully against the wind, so I sat for a good few hours until I was able to tack? back to the freeport. While I was stuck on the ocean I died several times due to not having food or water and instead I had a bed and just let my guy die over and over. It was annoying but what ever. Well I went I spent time building up my resources to go over one full grid to a lawless zone, made 4 water skins got tons of food etc. Waited for the wind to change and boom jumped into my raft and away I went. Wind changed against me and their I was stuck again on the ocean, ah but this time I was prepared. Go to check my food and water, nope all gone. Food expires faster then you can harvest it (joke but it's pretty close) and the water magical returns to whence it came. So back to dying over and over and over on a raft waiting for the wind.
Me and my friend hook up on the island and start trying to build our first sloop, elephants and crocs everywhere on the beach but what ever it's a survival game. Until you realize the crocs spawn in 2s and 3s and like every 60seconds. So you get a beach that is just swarming with crocs when you are level 8, you stand no chance against these things. I eventually learned to lead them to the elephants and try and attack them when they are fighting each other, it wasn't perfect but it worked. Oh did I forget to mention the entire time I'm playing Ark/Atlas what ever engine they use has a serious bug with any new GFX card? If you have an RTX card the game will bluescreen randomly. So every time that happens I have to hard restart my PC and log back into atlas and pray I'm still alive.
So after hours of getting resources, and thank god for you as the community in discord because if it wasn't for you guys I would of given up along time ago. GS sure as hell doesn't make it easy to learn skills and what does what etc. So we build the sloop, my friend goes to sleep and I launch it, it's got all our resources everything in it because anywhere you go you can't build shit since everyone and their mother has a claim down. So I'm sailing around and it looks good, I go to head back to the island as I didn't go far and bluescreen. No problem I'm frustrated at this point at having to restart everything for the 15th time tonight. I log back in and guess what, seems my ship kept sailing without me and went into a high level ship of the damned, I tried getting away from the goddamn thing but you know why the hell would the devs make it easy for people at low levels until you build up enough resources. So the ship sinks mine in quick order, and with it everything that I had. Why the hell does GS allow something like that to bend you over when you do nothing to provoke it?!? This isn't Ark, I cannot hop on a bird or dino and run away in 3 seconds. I can't send my ship away while something eats me, If i was harvesting something in ark and a trex rolled up on me, I could easily whistle and send my dino running so he doesn't die. Nope not in Atlas, because f**k you that's why.
So those poeple who just start the game, you need a place to put down so you can start to harvest resources and start to build up to things. But no places to claim anywhere near you, so you can't do that. If you build a raft or a sloop and put your things on that, well sorry if it get's blown to smithereens because our shitty engine crashed your PC for the 900th time. Which btw is well documented and has been going on for months but not a single dev has responded or attempted to fix the problem.
So all and all a very shitty experience, I'm extremely frustrated with this game. You shouldn't be punished so harshly for trying to barely scrape by. Why can't you have boat insurance, why don't you have something that allows me to get my ship back? Why not have those goddamn ship of the damneds only attack when you do. Why not allow the player to build something or have somewhere he can have as a safe place at the start. Why punish low level single players at all?
I bought 6 copies of this game when the xmas sale was on for friends and family. I'm starting to regret that.
Sorry about all the bad luck. :/ We have heard the feedback about the early game and are making changes. Starting with v 10.0 early this week you can buy a Sloop from the NPC Shipwright in exchange for resources, which should help the early game not be so punishing (in addition to recent wind changes to make sailing against the wind easier, permanent increase in rates and reduced cost of ship crafting, among other things).