Atlas was planned to be an ARK DLC?!

Dragnelus

https://store.steampowered.com/app/834910/ATLAS/#app_reviews_hash

Kyleran

We were having a bit of a debate on another thread on what constitutes a "cash grab."

It's looking more and more like this title can be considered one.

Asheram

Is $25 a bad price for DLC?

itsover

Asheram said:

Is $25 a bad price for DLC?

+$1.56 tax

Dragnelus

Asheram said:

Is $25 a bad price for DLC?

If it was intended for Ark, yes. Cause alot of ppl bought the season pass this way they can get more money off it.

And this will be 60 on release.

Kyleran

Dragnelus said:

Asheram said:

Is $25 a bad price for DLC?

If it was intended for Ark, yes. Cause alot of ppl bought the season pass this way they can get more money off it.

And this will be 60 on release.

If this really was supposed to be a DLC but is now being marketed as a wholly new game just so they can fleece season pass holders again I'd clearly have to call foul.

mcrippins

I disagree - Yes you can clearly see this game plays like Ark in a lot of ways. However, the map is MUCH larger, there are tons of new models and assets. Many new gameplay aspects, and it is more centered around PvP. If you want to generalize features and break it down, then you can compare most MMO's to any other MMO in that light.

To me Ark was more like a testing ground for this game. They learned how to do taming, genetics, farming, crafting, and a ton of other sandbox features with Ark. Now they can implement them into Atlas on a much larger scale and bring us a true and massive MMO.

mcrippins

DMKano said:

mcrippins said:

I disagree - Yes you can clearly see this game plays like Ark in a lot of ways. However, the map is MUCH larger, there are tons of new models and assets. Many new gameplay aspects, and it is more centered around PvP. If you want to generalize features and break it down, then you can compare most MMO's to any other MMO in that light.

To me Ark was more like a testing ground for this game. They learned how to do taming, genetics, farming, crafting, and a ton of other sandbox features with Ark. Now they can implement them into Atlas on a much larger scale and bring us a true and massive MMO.

And yet they still limit zones to 150 players - didn't learn how to do a seamless world.

They are "stiching" together Ark servers to create the overall world.

I think it's a little absurd to assume day 1 launch will be exactly how the game plays out in the future. They already expanded the freeports by 400%, and I'm sure will increase over time once the network is more stable. 

In regards to servers, as far as I know it would be required to have a server cluster to manage a map that large. I won't presume to know their network configuration, but utilizing multiple servers seems like a no-brainer.

lahnmir

I think the cap per zone and server stitching is quite awesome, if/when working properly, some minor stuttering when transitioning between servers is fine with me when traversing a world of this scale, its absolutely massive.

I also think 150 in just one area is perfectly fine. Its like complaining you can only have 150 people in one WoW zone. I do wonder, when a zone goes above 150, does it spawn a new instance of it with shared chat channels etc.? I wonder how many people fit into one regular ESO zone for instance, or a GW2 one.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

ConstantineMerus

Kyleran said:

Dragnelus said:

Asheram said:

Is $25 a bad price for DLC?

If it was intended for Ark, yes. Cause alot of ppl bought the season pass this way they can get more money off it.

And this will be 60 on release.

If this really was supposed to be a DLC but is now being marketed as a wholly new game just so they can fleece season pass holders again I'd clearly have to call foul.

They could also add a Season 2 pass like many other games. 

MaxBacon

Atlas is its own game, built upon the same engine. The MMO server feature-set, its scale make and a focused different type of gameplay (ships heavily) make it worth of its own title, vastly using what Ark itself has built already.

Game is worth of its own title, calling it DLC because they reused much of Ark like that's some heresy, it simply makes sense because Ark already has most of the features and even assets they are using here so not sure why would they recreate their game engine just to make it not resemble Ark. That would be less of a priority for early access launch in any case.

A game on this world and MP scale could never have been intended to be one ARK DLC as is, over being different themes and gameplay focus, it's the type of stuff that wouldn't fit the design of Ark itself seeing from all its expansions until now.

Octagon7711

Would there be any real way to tell unless you were in the room during the games development?  Is it possible they started it out as a DLC but like someone said later decided they could make more money by making it into it's own game, so they just built on what they already had to create a new game?  The time they spent on it after that was to create something large and different enough to be called a stand alone game.  But like I said who would actually know unless they actually worked on it cause the results would probably have been the same either way.

Wizardry

Well it wouldn't surprise me one bit.We have already seen how developers are already working on the next DLC or expansion BEFORE making sure the released product is fit and ready to continue forward.
There is right now ,way too large a crowd that just buys everything new and the epidemic is allowing devs to keep ripping off consumers.
I was just watching a fairly well know YouTuber talk about RDR game and it was sad to hear him talk about all the games he owns that he never even opened,i was a large amount like 50-100.This is a very intelligent person who understands the entire industry and balks at a lot of it and he still has done the very same mistake of just buying everything new.So imagine all these Twitch groupies who subscribe and follow around the same streamer day in and out,they buy everything they see.

I get it,i understand the human psyche ,people want to feel a part of something popular,be a part of the crowd,be in a fun busy game but they make the decision to jump in so incredibly fast w/o thinking at all.Like i was watching many of the popular streamers last night some of them were grouped together and it was sad that as soon as the game loaded up a large crowd of people were like "where can i get this,i want  to play"w/o seeing but a minute of the game...sigh.

Phry

lahnmir said:

I think the cap per zone and server stitching is quite awesome, if/when working properly, some minor stuttering when transitioning between servers is fine with me when traversing a world of this scale, its absolutely massive.

I also think 150 in just one area is perfectly fine. Its like complaining you can only have 150 people in one WoW zone. I do wonder, when a zone goes above 150, does it spawn a new instance of it with shared chat channels etc.? I wonder how many people fit into one regular ESO zone for instance, or a GW2 one.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

SW:TOR has the same limitations due to the Hero Engine, 150 players/zone is low compared to mainstream MMO's though as they normally support multiple 100's, afaik ESO has much higher player capacity/instance  at 350+.

MaxBacon

lahnmir said:

 or a GW2 one.

A GW2 is indeed 150~ players per map.

Zoltos

Personally I don´t care if its a reskin or an Ark 1.5! I prefer playing a Pirate game over a Dinosaur game anyway. The game looks fun enough for me to throw money at it

MaxBacon

Zoltos said:

Personally I don´t care if its a reskin or an Ark 1.5! I prefer playing a Pirate game over a Dinosaur game anyway. The game looks fun enough for me to throw money at it

Yup, this is a jump I was waiting for one mainstream survival game to do, to jump from small single-server type of game to one MMO with an actual more MMO theme and progression, and here it is. 

Let them deal with the initial broken parts of it and Atlas having broken past the small survival server-based game has all potential to become one mainstream MMO.

Forgrimm

Here's a clip of the stream where some guy shows it https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1076680604878626816

Kyleran

MaxBacon said:

Zoltos said:

Personally I don´t care if its a reskin or an Ark 1.5! I prefer playing a Pirate game over a Dinosaur game anyway. The game looks fun enough for me to throw money at it

Yup, this is a jump I was waiting for one mainstream survival game to do, to jump from small single-server type of game to one MMO with an actual more MMO theme and progression, and here it is. 

Let them deal with the initial broken parts of it and Atlas having broken past the small survival server-based game has all potential to become one mainstream MMO.

Goals are good however I question whether they have the talent to pull it off successfully. 

To this day people often report ARK itself remains somewhat unstable and poorly optomized which if true (I've never played) doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

I'll be sitting back and watching from the sidelines until they get to the finish line, early access just isn't for me.

lahnmir

MaxBacon said:

lahnmir said:

 or a GW2 one.

A GW2 is indeed 150~ players per map.

Can’t wait for all the outrage when people find out about that one! 

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Spiider

Why are you worried? It does not work, its super unplayable, laggy and terrible.

Kyleran

Spiider said:

Why are you worried? It does not work, its super unplayable, laggy and terrible.

Which was to be expected of course, but it still amazes how many buy into something like this and act all surprised or hurt about the inevitable. 

MaxBacon

Kyleran said:

Goals are good however I question whether they have the talent to pull it off successfully. 

To this day people often report ARK itself remains somewhat unstable and poorly optomized which if true (I've never played) doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

I'll be sitting back and watching from the sidelines until they get to the finish line, early access just isn't for me.

It's not like we have many ambitious developers creating MMO's, so it's as good as it gets for now, if we had the most experienced studios doing one MMO on this sort of designs then much better prospects, but we hardly have.  The Ark devs having a go at it is better than LiF devs, the engine is quite better even if still wonky.

MaxBacon

lahnmir said:

MaxBacon said:

lahnmir said:

 or a GW2 one.

A GW2 is indeed 150~ players per map.

Can’t wait for all the outrage when people find out about that one! 

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Yup, people have a go they don't even realize mainstream MMOs like GW2 actually have the same cap in their game world, and others not much more than that. And that's quite better, it's better to have all the game world populated within cloud setups than have just X set of areas full with the rest empty as it usually happens in the traditional MMO server setup.

MadFrenchie

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

There's no way to defend that "early access" anyway - it's completely bugged, unplayable for most - and to boot, it' s a copy of Ark.

Right now, I would strongly advise AGAINST giving those people any money, and keep on watching the project as it progresses as there are good ideas in there.

For now, to me, this earns the label "worthless cash grab".

I agree, it needs to prove a little more before it seems like it was worth releasing as a stand-alone title.

There are free conversion mods you can get for games like Skyrim that are just as impressive what I've read and seen about Atlas so far.

anemo

So they just need Vampires and Merfolk now.   And we'll have a Magic the Gathering plane.