Avast, ahoy, and all that jazz, Atlas players: It’s time for another entry of the Captain’s Log, in which the folks at Studio Wildcard aka Grapeshot Games look at what’s on the horizon for the piracy-based sandbox title.
Front and center this week is the first-ever developer livestream on Friday, January 18th, in which the Grapeshot crew claims it will “unearth a veritable treasure trove of information and news regarding upcoming content, gameplay changes, and future development plans.” From the looks of things, players will soon be able to channel their inner French Revolutionaries (or Maximillien Robespierres, as the case may be), as the teaser images include a concept for everyone’s favorite execution implement, the guillotine. Oh, and there’s also a new armor concept, if for some reason you’re not the kind of person who’s excited to shout, “Off with their heads!” or “Vive la révolution!”
Meanwhile, on the game update front, the devs have been working hard at improving the game’s performance. Thanks to some back-end improvements to the game’s networking, “server performance on [the] most intense Official Servers has increased by approximately 20%,” and the team is currently in the process of implementing some additional changes that should be going live “later this week” and which “will further improve server performance by approximately 25%.” The Captain’s Log also doubles down on the game’s anti-cheater campaign, noting that the studio has completed its planned three-step process to crack down on “cheaters, exploits, and general foulness,” and in the coming days players will “likely see a number of complaints regarding bans and, should they be necessary, Company wipes.”
And last but not least, the post also announces that the Atlas devkit is finally inbound, and the devs “expect to have the devkit available for pathfinders to download on Thursday or Friday this week.” The devkit promises to be “more robust” than the studio’s previous ARK devkits, providing players with “more powerful map-extensions-type functionality” to provide users plenty of freedom to create their own unique server grids, whether by combining multiple Steam Workshop maps or crafting the whole world from scratch.
