Delete the “connect ‘server-IP’:’port” entry in the Launch Options window where the server-IP and port are actual numbers representing the server. If this launch option wasn’t there, you can try to fix the problem by finding out the IP address of the server you want to connect to and typing “connect ”.

Little kid racing games. Three years ago, Trion Worlds became one of the bigger names in MMOs to embrace free-to-play, Rift joining The Lord of the Rings Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic in a quiet revolution that tackled an old stigma head-on. “Our players aren’t frickin’ ATM machines,” Rift senior design director Simon Ffinch told us at the time.

How many of the best strategy games on PC have you bested?

Yet here they are making the switch again – backwards. Trion’s colourful, competitive tactics game Atlas Reactor entered alpha in free-to-play, but is now passing through the membrane in the opposite direction. It’ll sell for $29.99 / £29.99 in traditional fashion on both Steam and Trion’s own service starting next week. The question is: why?

“Truth be told, we just kind of assumed by default that since our last two games had been free-to-play that this one would be too,” laughs Trion CEO Scott Hartsman.

Only when Atlas Reactor went into testing earlier this year did the studio realise: players were hoovering up the packs bundling together characters and customisation options that would otherwise be microtransactions. And decided: “Huh, we should probably think about this.”

“It surprised us,” remembers Hartsman. “Those things just took off. People were vastly more interested in that than they were in the microtransaction side.”

Atlas Reactor has been in beta for a fortnight, and in that time, Trion have trawled Reddit, news sites and streams. They’ve seen concerns about potential grind to unlock freelancers – Atlas’ playable corporate mercenaries.

“This is something we’ve been trying to figure out for two or three weeks now,” says Hartsman. “Are we gonna do it, are we not gonna do it? Seeing those comments coming up really does reaffirm to me that we’re doing the right thing here.”

Two or three weeks is a short time in game development – but Trion have turned the ship quickly, relying on internal tech that has shipped fixed-price games in the past. The Atlas Reactor dev team are now at work rejigging freelancers to be unlocked by default, and dividing up taunts into DLC packs. Remarkably, no deep mechanical changes have been necessary.

“The game itself has been tailored around fairness completely,” explains Hartsman. “So in terms of the core game design, buy-to-play actually fits it better.”

With Rift, Trion played a part in fighting free-to-play’s reputation for “really janky games”. In a post-League world, they seem vindicated. But rather than enjoy their victory lap, embracing a role as evangelists for the form, they now believe that one business model does not fit all.

While free-to-play might suit games with slow progression systems or an element of randomness – think Hearthstone’s card packs – it’s a less comfortable fit for Atlas Reactor’s cycle of failure and mastery.

“Sometimes being outplayed can also mean being out-guessed,” says Hartsman. “Which means you didn’t necessarily do a bad thing by losing, you just didn’t do the right thing in that one situation. And so now the learning becomes part of the fun.”

When players are digging into the way those systems interplay, they don’t want to be doing a second set of calculations on top – working out which microtransactions represent best value. Boom blox bash party walkthrough.

“We have a portion of our audience who literally demand free-to-play games, because for them, min-maxing how they spend their time versus money is a huge part of the fun,” reveals Hartsman. “But at the same time, not every game is going to suit that type of audience.”

Beyond Hartsman’s own explanation, I wonder if turn-based tactics players are used to stumping up full price for specialist wargames and board games, and simply like the idea of paying upfront for a metaphorical box before carefully unpacking the contents.

And maybe competitive games – the sphere in which free-to-play has finally found success and acceptance on PC – actually present a unique problem. In generations past, losing players pointed the finger at alleged botters rather than accept their own mistakes. Microtransactions provide a contemporary scapegoat. It scarcely matters if the system is fair, so long as players are convinced it isn’t.

It’s territory the Atlas Reactor team are never going to have to navigate. Just like Blizzard, who cracked free-to-play with Hearthstone but have reverted to fixed-price form with Overwatch, Trion have come to realise there’s room for more than one business model on their belt – and learned to apply the right tool for the job.

“Business model isn’t religion to us – we’re a logic-driven company,” says Hartsman. “You’ve probably talked to a million people over the last couple of years who were treating free-to-play as the only answer. But now we’ve come through that and we’re on the other side.

“There are now many more viable options again, and I think that’s just a winner for everybody.”

Hello everyone.I've found a potential fix that solves the problem of the loading issue, where the game would become unresponsive, you'd have long load times, system would become unresponsive etc.In my investigation in an attempt to find out what could be the cause of this issue, which you can read about here: lead me towards the solution, so onto the solution, though be warned: You have to do a bit a of manual work here.The Solution:1. Navigate to where Atlas is installed - this you can easily find without any real hassles. First right click on the game name in the steam library, click on properties, then click on the local files tab, then click on the browse local files. This will open the game folder where the game is installed.2. Then navigate to this folder: ATLASShooterGameContentMovies.3.

Create a folder named Backup in this folder.4. Move AtlasTitle.wmv and LoadingScreen.wmv to the backup folder.2.

Launch the game.2. I can confirm this works, I've successfully loaded in a good bunch of times now, where I'd normally have 15+ minutes of load time without it necessarily successfully loading into the game, where now it around 3 minutes. Ever since doing the fix I've been able to log in.What I've have settings-wise, is have most graphic settings set either to low or off, and it's running in windowed mode.But once I get in I prefer to set it to fullscreen, and then turn on some graphics. However I don't think this is necessary, I just do it to be on the safe side. Has not worked for meFirst I need to say that this can only fix actual loading and stability issues, it does NOT fix any connection or network issue.If you're getting any of these messages like; 'Host Connection Timeout' or 'Unable to fetch server data' or similar, this is a connection issue and not a loading/stability issue, which this fix can't do anything about, as thats actual network connection issues.So in order for me to help you further, I need to ask a few questions in order to better understand whats going on with your system when you're attempting to load into the game.1. What message or messages are being displayed, if any?2. Are you using any kind of startup parameters, and if so, which ones are you using?3.

What were were your load times before applying the fix?4. What are your 'load times' now? (from you click join until you get a message).I hope this helps in some way and I can be of further help to you to get your game to load properly into the actual game.Edited December 30, 2018 by IncarnateGrammar. Please give us an update on when servers are coming back online that aren't online for a long time, and look into PVE issues where players kill eachother with Repair hammers, destroy buildings on PVE by stacking snakes under it (or letting them attack dunno what they mean) L9 EU-PVE offline since.? Been waiting nearly 3 hours nowAnd please look into raft weight damage when anchored also against griefing on PVE (and PVP maybe) players just come on your boat to get it to sink with alot of stuff.Make stuff that is pincoded with longer pincodes or password or add an optino 'Company Access' so griefers don't sit down for 20 minutes to guess a 4 digit password.Apparently people get inside houses by going to sleep next to the corner of a house and get inside that way when they log back in then kill players with repair hammers and ruin their experience.

If you are gonna keep ignoring people who are playing this game solo or with a smaller group this will bleed to death quickly. I already got chased off PVP cuz everything to rekt when logging out for a couple of hours and now on PVE it's nearly the same with the only difference u can't even fight griefers off in most cases.Edited December 30, 2018 by Jozzie McTowelmore complaints. Worked for me, but when i tried exit the game whole pc froze had to restart.Good that it worked, but this seems like a different problem, one unrelated to what the fix deals with.What you can do is go here: ATLASShooterGameSavedLogs and see if you have any files with the extension.dmp, if so, you can share it with me and I'll attempt to debug it.

Alternatively you can share it with the devs if they would be interested in the.dmp files as that should help them identify the issue.I'm not sure if you can attach the.dmp file here, though I'd recommend it's sent directly to me as more system sensitive information can be in the dump file.Would you or any of the other devs be interested in any of the.dmp files?