Pirate MMORPG Atlas steers away from hardcore mechanics with today’s balance patch

Wildcard/Grapeshot’s sea-faring pirate MMORPG Atlas is gearing up for a massive patch this afternoon, and if you bought in to the early access, you’re gonna know what’s in it. The good news, at least if you agree with the studio that the whole “being a pirate” part of the game was “a bit more difficult and tedious than it needed to be,” is that many on those hardcore mechanics are being toned down.

For example, expect resource and taming speeds to increase, penalties for sailing against the wind to decrease, more weight capacity on ships, more trade ships on the sea with better trading, basic prebuilt ships for sale, cheaper ships, better taming, buffed tamed critters, neutral zone settings, more places to fill waterskins, 50 more levels to grind up, wimpier sea monsters and animals, retroactive loot scaling boosts, and no more griefing anchored ships with your stupid shovel.

Of course, if you’re running your own server for the game, you can set most of these stats to whatever you like.

“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.”

“Please note: these changes are not the only thing we’re going to do,” Wildcard notes. “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!”