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  • Aberration Release, Turrets, PlayAnywhere, Holidays, and Black Friday!

    Happy Tuesday, Survivors! Normally our news posts go out on Friday, but we've got some exciting and also important news to share today. Let's go!

    Aberration Release Date!

    We are excited to announce we have a release date for Aberration: December 12th of this year. 

    All of us here at Studio Wildcard have been working diligently to progress through the Aberration workflow in anticipation of getting it into your hands. Aberration will be an ARK experience unlike anything survivors have seen so far. We hope you are all as excited as we are for its release!

    Update on Turrets

    large.5a14b7a0acf72_Pastedimageat2017_11

    A few days ago we announced a big change to the game wherein we would be limiting the use of turrets within a radius on our Official Servers. We have been keeping track of all the feedback, reading all the threads, and we understand that this is an important change. Therefore, we'll be making some modifications to our initial plan in order to deal with the concerns that have arisen, as well as ensure a smoother transition to the new turret system for all players. Here's what's going down:

    We are no longer hard-limiting turrets on the 5th of December, that timeline has changed. We still plan to hard-limit them, but it'll be pushed further out now that we'll be introducing a new kind of turret into the mix. Here's the new plan:

    PC players can expect the new "Heavy Turret" on the 27th, it will launch with an active server-side turret limit specifically for "Heavy Turrets". We'll take the time to monitor player feedback and our official servers to see if there's anything that we missed, so then we'll have time to consider how to fix and address those concerns. This means that if you're over the visual limit on your regular Auto Turrets, you'll be fine (for now). However, you won't be able to place the Heavy Turrets, unless you're within the limit. We recommend taking advantage of this time to slowly transition your base to using the new Heavy Turrets over the old ones. 

    When Aberration releases on the 12th December, it will have the turret hard-limit enabled on that map from the get-go. This means that neither regular Auto Turrets or Heavy Turrets can be placed on Aberration above the limit. After some time -- likely in the latter half of December -- this change will be enabled on the other maps, however, we'll be providing 2 weeks notice beforehand so you can make any adjustments as necessary. The idea is that you can immediately use the Heavy Turrets in the meantime to prepare for the change while ensuring your base remains well-defended.

    Console players can expect to see the arrival of the Heavy Turret when the Aberration launches. By this time, the Heavy Turret would have gone through multiple balance passes. The reason we opted to take this route is that we want to make sure it's in a good state before it went live on the console. Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to rapidly iterate as we do on PC, due to the cert process. Console will ultimately follow the same hard-limit activation as PC, albeit several weeks after the hard-limit is activated on PC.

    For those who hadn't seen some of our previous dialogue on the change, you can check out this short blurb post by Senior Technical & Gameplay Designer, Kayd Hendricks (aka TheRightHand). He covers what are our current thought-processes are, as well as shares some information that we had discussed previously.

    Quote

    Turrets 3: The Turret... ening.

    So, more stuff to talk about with regards to turrets. It's a party and everyone is invited!

    We've had a couple of pow-wows and hammered a few more things into stone, I just want to share them in kind of an official capacity as well as do a round-up of everything you need to know if you're just tuning in:

    - We found and identified that super dense clusters of turrets have been causing our servers to literally grind to a halt. In the worst of cases, a base full of turrets was causing a 400-500ms per tick delay on the server. (The entire rest of the game only takes up about 240-250ms in the worst cases. This means the turrets were costing up to twice as much as the entire rest of the game per server tick.
    - We're implementing a limit on the number of turrets you can have in a given radius. This radius is 10,000 Unreal Units (Which is about 100 meters). Picture attached shows a 10,000 uu sphere for visualization.
    - New BobCorp Automated Laterally Attenuated Nano-Cell Electronic Defense system will be available on the 27th of this month on PC, to allow players to start replacing their existing turrets.
    - Heavy Turrets will require normal turrets to craft.
    - Heavy Turrets are currently designed to be about 4-5x as powerful as a normal turret.
    - Stego Armor Plating is being made much less effective.

    The above are things that are guaranteed to be happening when we roll out these turret limiting changes.

    Here is stuff that's on our list to test and consider further:

    - Veggie Cake balancing.
    - Tek Turret needs to remain top-dog turret.
    - Is there anything we can further do to lower the cost of each turret to allow us to safely increase the number that players can place.
    - Knockback for some/all of the bullet-firing turrets?
    - % health damage on tick for Plant Species? (Slow poison? Prevent healing?)
    - Throwing explosives from the backs of dinos? 
    - Can we further weaponize bees?

    We're still reading all of the threads that are up and as we decide we're /definitely/ going to do stuff, I'll write up another post about it. 

    Expect the new turret on the 27th, and then all of our intrepid community members can make builds with them and if there's anything that they find that we missed, yay we'll have time to consider how to fix those things as well.

    Note: Xbox and PS4 will not be receiving these turret changes until after Aberration has been released.

    I know it's not a big post but I figured I'd be consise. 

    You can see more details in my other threads:

    WHY:

    WHAT:

    Keep on surviving!

     

    Additional News!

    PlayStation 4 SIEA (Americas) Season Pass Skins

    large.AberrationMasks.jpg

    Great news guys! Sony has enabled the skins on the backend and they should be available for players to acquire in game! As Sony marks the Season Pass bonuses as DLC, players will need to head into the PlayStation Store via their console dashboard and download them (they're free!).

    Xbox Play Anywhere

    In addition to the Aberration update, barring any cert issues, Xbox will receive the Play Anywhere update on December 12th. This update will allow crossplay between the Windows 10 version of ARK and the Xbox version. Survivors will be able to choose to allow crossplay on their unofficial servers or non-dedicated sessions with a simple checkbox on the host menu. 

    Holiday Events!

    We'd like to wish all survivors out there a Happy Thanksgiving and hope that have a great weekend! As for our plans, we will not be hosting an event for Thanksgiving this year due to our efforts being focused on Aberration and getting it out in December. We apologise for the lack of event this time of year, we love hosting holiday events, but unfortunately, we just didn't have the time to do so. Though, with Christmas around the corner, you won't have to wait long for a special Christmas themed Holiday Event!

    Black Friday ARK Sales!

    large.BlackFriday.jpg

    With Black Friday coming up, ARK: Survival Evolved will be having multiple sales across retail and digital for all platforms!

    The following prices will be in effect this Friday in North America:

    Wal-Mart (US Stores) - $29.99 USD (a discount of $30)

    GameStop (US Stores) - $34.99 USD (a discount of $25)

    EB Games (Canadian Stores) - $39.99 CAD

    ARK is also currently on sale in the Xbox Digital Store until 11:00 AM GMT on Tuesday, November 28th, 2017:

     ARK: Survival Evolved - 25% off

    Scorched Earth - 35% off

    Explorer's Edition - 30% off

    Season Pass - 25% off

    ARK is also available on sale now with early access for PS+ members and will be on sale on the 23rd of November for everyone else until Black Friday (27/11). Please note that the discounts may vary based on your region.

    ARK: Survival Evolved

    Scorched Earth

    ARK: Explorer’s Edition
     
    ARK: Season pass
     
    Complete your ARK Season Pass

    ARK will also be participating in this year's Steam Autumn Sale! It'll run from now until 6 PM on the 28th of November!

    ARK: Survival Evolved

     ARK: Season pass

    That's it for this post guys! As always if you want to keep up with the latest news be sure to follow us on:

    Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
    Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
    Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
    Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark

    All the best,
    Studio Wildcard

    :Jerblove:

    Edited by Jen


    • Like 11
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    13 hours ago, eESTlane said:

    for gods sake, cut the mutations to 5 in total or smth. zerg tribes are hatching 480+ dmg rexes and you cant balance that for your bosses. they are also hp stacking their tankers so 1 will do the job of 5. you know, since domesticated levels (#grinder_life) will add a % according to the base which is already beyond bonkers. btw, whoever thought 40 stat points was reasonable addition for breeding should be kicked to the balls.

    yet again i urge you to limit tribe sizes and alliances to accommodate the beach bobs that discover your game. otherwise they'll be steamrolled by the 70+ member alpha squad that most of your servers have been taken over by. 10 man tribes and 2 alliances means that if they would share the real estate, they'd be only 30 and any further allies would have to stay out of turret range.

    100% agree

    13 hours ago, eESTlane said:

    btw, a base has 4 sides. without knowing which side the enemy chooses, you'd have to divide those "100 turrets" equally. so in reality the offensive side will maybe have to deal with half of those. a "penis build" paracer will in most cases walk through these numbers and allow for the rider to safely go boom boom. 

    I would say that is a problem of platform saddle abuse and is not really connected to the turret changes. Also, you can build more than 100 turrets, just a bit further away ;)

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    Will we be able to host an Xbox dedicated server on a pc when anywhere is released? From reading other things I am thinking yes but. After reading this, I'm not so sure. Can anyone provide some info on this? Pretty please?

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    Can we at least just get the turkeys to run around the Ark? at least on the private servers and/or solo play? pretty please :D 

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    well, its some thing right? but if aberration is pushed back again I will unsub from their YouTube channel

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    I was thinking "beemores."  Like a tripwire narcotic (claymore), but instead of hitting you with a tranq, the wire trips a hive of bees that do some serious whippage.  

    And no event for the holiday...  Does that mean no 2x anything, or just no turkey shoot?  Inquiring minds want to know.

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    6 hours ago, GP said:

    Please don't start/spread silly rumours.

    Silly rumor ?

    Lack of information about this major game addition in a thread where they touched a lot of points from today till the end of year is nothing to classify what I said as rumor.

    • Facepalm 3

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    22 hours ago, Baner42 said:

    Good on ya. Please fix quadruple lava golem spawn and manticore not landing on rag.

    Ragnarok is dead.

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    I would like to see an increase in reasons to use the catapult. I LOVE this thing but there's not enough variety... maybe a plague catapult? works kind of like a poison wyvern breath? could use rare mushrooms and spoiled meat, or something...

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    12 hours ago, elweasel2010 said:

    Really you are too busy to put together a holiday event. How long does it take to increase the rates and release skins that have all ready have been made for thanksgiving? You did a lame Halloween event this year. And now no Turkey event. You guys are turkeys.

    Have you not experienced the 2 Turkey Trials. they were hell.

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    8 hours ago, powerstuck said:

    Silly rumor ?

    Lack of information about this major game addition in a thread where they touched a lot of points from today till the end of year is nothing to classify what I said as rumor.

    Yes it was rumour. You could have simply asked for information regarding S+, but instead you answered somebody else asking about S+ and trying to give the impression people will have to pay for S+ in a DLC. That is false and that is an attempt at spreading rumours of false information.

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    12 hours ago, Aednat said:

    Will we be able to host an Xbox dedicated server on a pc when anywhere is released? From reading other things I am thinking yes but. After reading this, I'm not so sure. Can anyone provide some info on this? Pretty please?

    You will be able to host an unofficial server on the PC using the Windows 10 Store version of the game. This does not involve Steam in any way. From the OP:

    On 11/21/2017 at 11:35 PM, Jen said:

    Xbox Play Anywhere

    In addition to the Aberration update, barring any cert issues, Xbox will receive the Play Anywhere update on December 12th. This update will allow crossplay between the Windows 10 version of ARK and the Xbox version. Survivors will be able to choose to allow crossplay on their unofficial servers or non-dedicated sessions with a simple checkbox on the host menu

    This essentially says that you will be able to allow Windows 10 users (again, NOT Steam users!) and Xbox console users to play on your server if you so wish.

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    28 minutes ago, TranqRex said:

    You will be able to host an unofficial server on the PC using the Windows 10 Store version of the game. This does not involve Steam in any way. From the OP:

    Only if it’s hosted on the Nitrado servers. 

    You won’t be able to host an Xbox cross play server on your own PC. 

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    7 hours ago, KrakenOverlord said:

    I would like to see an increase in reasons to use the catapult. I LOVE this thing but there's not enough variety... maybe a plague catapult? works kind of like a poison wyvern breath? could use rare mushrooms and spoiled meat, or something...

    @KrakenOverlord

     How about a BEE catapult, where the beehive is the projectile and would deal torpor damage? Like a tranq catapult bullet! 

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    18 hours ago, GP said:

    Please don't start/spread silly rumours.

    no offense but I will probably get a warning for this but you are wrong you keep stating people are spreading rumors etc some of us watch twitch we watch twitter many of us follow this game like the news, people can be wrong but every time someone says something you don't like you basically are calling them a liar. If they have proof etc then they are not lieing. 

    Many times we have been lead to believe things that were not true or did not happen.

    1) bridges told over and over again would happen ( they removed this.)

    2) each time a dlc is said to be released hey good news it will be out next month (3 months later it is).

    3). Bugs fixed example dinos spawning in base, gps glitch (still happening.

    4) eggs falling through floors (still happens).

    5) Legacy would have support (didn't happen ).

    6) Servers would be added due to demand ( Ragnarock most popular server how many new official were released? Instead they released more scorched earth and why because se has less bugs.

     

    Shall I go on how many times we have been told something that has not been the truth or if anything someone says something true but is negative those players have the thread removed or some get banned.  MIstakes happen , somethings are not avoidable why not just say hey have problems here we go. Many of us may agree we may disagree we are all entitled to our opinions.  If devs listened to the players more or if they were honest about a bug they can't fix right away you wouldn't have as many pissed off people. 

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    3 minutes ago, Jinxy said:

    no offense but I will probably get a warning for this but you are wrong you keep stating people are spreading rumors etc some of us watch twitch we watch twitter many of us follow this game like the news, people can be wrong but every time someone says something you don't like you basically are calling them a liar. If they have proof etc then they are not lieing. 

    Many times we have been lead to believe things that were not true or did not happen.

    1) bridges told over and over again would happen ( they removed this.)

    2) each time a dlc is said to be released hey good news it will be out next month (3 months later it is).

    3). Bugs fixed example dinos spawning in base, gps glitch (still happening.

    4) eggs falling through floors (still happens).

    5) Legacy would have support (didn't happen ).

    6) Servers would be added due to demand ( Ragnarock most popular server how many new official were released? Instead they released more scorched earth and why because se has less bugs.

     

    Shall I go on how many times we have been told something that has not been the truth or if anything someone says something true but is negative those players have the thread removed or some get banned.  MIstakes happen , somethings are not avoidable why not just say hey have problems here we go. Many of us may agree we may disagree we are all entitled to our opinions.  If devs listened to the players more or if they were honest about a bug they can't fix right away you wouldn't have as many pissed off people. 

    The response I made earlier in this thread has nothing to do with lies you claim are made from WC. The post I was responding to was:

    19 hours ago, powerstuck said:

    S+ will be part of DLC #3...a mod DLC. All sponsored mods will be integrated in the DLC allowing everyone to buy and enjoy them on official servers. 

    That is a claim that people will have to pay for S+ in a DLC, this is absolutely false and is geared at spreading a rumour that is absolutely not true. That is what I was responding to and nothing else, so please take my response in context and accept it in that context instead of making lists of other issues unrelated to the post I was responding to.

     

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    1 hour ago, Joebl0w13 said:

    Only if it’s hosted on the Nitrado servers. 

    You won’t be able to host an Xbox cross play server on your own PC. 

    Are you sure about this? If it's lika you say it just sucks... Can we have some official words on this?

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    3 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

    Only if it’s hosted on the Nitrado servers. 

    You won’t be able to host an Xbox cross play server on your own PC. 

    Er... what? Are we talking at cross-purposes here, or are you saying that when I get the Win 10 version on my PC and fire up a server, I cannot connect to it from my Xbox?

    Because if you are saying the latter, that is explicitly not what has been proposed numerous times by Jen (e.g. towards the end of this post) etc. You even quote it yourself!

    If you're talking about something else, then ... explain? :)

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    12 minutes ago, TranqRex said:

    Er... what? Are we talking at cross-purposes here, or are you saying that when I get the Win 10 version on my PC and fire up a server, I cannot connect to it from my Xbox?

    Because if you are saying the latter, that is explicitly not what has been proposed numerous times by Jen (e.g. towards the end of this post) etc. You even quote it yourself!

    If you're talking about something else, then ... explain? :)

    But why would I not be able to have a dedicated server on a linux box and have it serve both win10 and xbox users? Nitrado servers are no different than dedicated steam servers, so what's the matter? What I'd like to do is host my own xbox/win10 server on my own linux machine (or pc, whatever, but I don't want to have a PC on 24/7 when I've already got a linux server for that)...

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    15 minutes ago, ElCobrito said:

    But why would I not be able to have a dedicated server on a linux box and have it serve both win10 and xbox users? Nitrado servers are no different than dedicated steam servers, so what's the matter? What I'd like to do is host my own xbox/win10 server on my own linux machine (or pc, whatever, but I don't want to have a PC on 24/7 when I've already got a linux server for that)...

    Well, this is the result of a specific benefit that Microsoft has created - the Play Anywhere initiative - which publishers can choose to take advantage of. It basically means you buy the game on the Xbox or Windows 10 Store and you can play it on either operating environment. Essentially, it's the same game code as the Xbox is just a heavily customised Windows PC underneath it all so releasing the game on both platforms is easier. "Cross Play" isn't really true cross-platform play in this instance (like it would be between Xbox and PS4, or Xbox and Steam for example) because the games are essentially the same* - although there are of course differences in the Windows version because of the user's ability to be able to run additional programs which is impossible on the console, hence the anti-cheat stuff.

    What you're proposing may be possible if you want to run a Win 10 VM on your Linux box? No idea if VM's are good enough thesedays (in terms of graphical power etc) to handle it mind. I don't think you can just visit the Windows 10 Store from your Linux web browser, sign in with your Microsoft account and install ARK though - pretty sure it's all heavily tied into Windows 10. That's why you need to use the app from the Store to even order a Nitrado Xbox server. I have no idea how the official servers are run in terms of their server configuration (although you'd safely assume they're not the same as the Nitrado servers that we can rent ourselves!), but the option to run one simply isn't possible any other way for consoles.

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    21 hours ago, Systemskill said:

    December 12, I do not know ... I bought it thinking it was for November. as always the staff telling their stories.>:(

    I bought it when it was announced for an October release....

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    2 hours ago, GP said:

    The response I made earlier in this thread has nothing to do with lies you claim are made from WC. The post I was responding to was:

    That is a claim that people will have to pay for S+ in a DLC, this is absolutely false and is geared at spreading a rumour that is absolutely not true. That is what I was responding to and nothing else, so please take my response in context and accept it in that context instead of making lists of other issues unrelated to the post I was responding to.

     

    Of course you keep quoting my answer...but hey, check what Joebl0w13 said below... as far as I remember, Windows 10 and XBox cross play were supposed to be an added feature for the game. So I assume they were also supposed to be free...except, if we're to believe the rumor (true or false you be the judge) the feature is not free because we are forced to do it thru Nitrado who is rather expensive as a server provider.

    So my friend, what's your take on this rumor spread ?

    3 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

    Only if it’s hosted on the Nitrado servers. 

    You won’t be able to host an Xbox cross play server on your own PC. 

     

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    Are we ever getting dino armor? Like even for the ones we can't ride? (I can only trust the wiki so much about it's planned additions)

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    5 hours ago, TranqRex said:

    You will be able to host an unofficial server on the PC using the Windows 10 Store version of the game. This does not involve Steam in any way. From the OP:

    This essentially says that you will be able to allow Windows 10 users (again, NOT Steam users!) and Xbox console users to play on your server if you so wish.

    Danget. There goes dreams of dedicated server then... thanks.

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    1 hour ago, powerstuck said:

    Of course you keep quoting my answer...but hey, check what Joebl0w13 said below... as far as I remember, Windows 10 and XBox cross play were supposed to be an added feature for the game. So I assume they were also supposed to be free...except, if we're to believe the rumor (true or false you be the judge) the feature is not free because we are forced to do it thru Nitrado who is rather expensive as a server provider.

    So my friend, what's your take on this rumor spread ?

     

    Yes Windows 10 and Xbox Cross Play are an added feature to the game, you are right.

    Whether it is free or not depends on what way you look at it. You assumed it was supposed to be free, but if you look at it from a player perspective of joining someone elses unofficial server then yes there's no cost involved for the player beyond buying the game originally. If you are wanting to run your own unofficial server then yes you will need to rent from a Host like Nitrado.

    So whether you consider the feature is free or not depends on how you look at it. But I don't believe it was ever stated that you can self host on a home PC.

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