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  • ARK: Survival of the Fittest - Summer Cup, Development Kit & Going Forward

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    Hello Survivors!

    On July 24th 2015, we announced a competitive-battle mod for ARK, called “Survival of the Fittest”!

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    A lot has changed since that announcement, what first started out as an internal mod side-project, grew into a publicly released Total Conversion, and eventually became its own standalone client - ARK: SotF has seen plenty of changes over the past year and today we’re going to discuss the future of this game mode. But before we go into that, some congratulations is in order!

    The 2016 Summer Cup

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    The past week, 31 Survivors (one unfortunately was not able to go!) flew out to compete in the first ever official SotF LAN Tournament. The teams which qualified were Kitty Cats, Kappa Pride, Beliebers, Get Out The Way, Los Bandoleros, PsychoSocial, The Rejects, Grabuge, plus local Chinese teams D.K and ZG. The ten teams took to the Island and battled it out across an epic three-game series.

    The first game was an intense match filled with a ton of action, with teams proving that they were capable of performing on a LAN environment. KappaPride’s Deki really showed off his fantastic gunslingers which a large number of solo kills using the pistol. The game became very close at the end with Turbo pulling off some clutch moves to try to even up the odds. The game ended with the Chinese teams securing the top two positions and ZG taking it on most kills.

    The second game proved just to be as exciting with a ton of blood being spilled. The Survivor League teams wanted to send a message that they were here to play for real, with the winners of the previous game immediately lost two players in an early skirmish. As the game went on it was clear that there were a number of tribes who could take the match. Kitty Cats were successful in taming the Broodmother and used it to massive effectiveness instantly as they thwarted the incoming attack from Beliebers! Ultimately it ended in a large 5-way tie with Kitty Cats taking the match with the most kills.

    As we entered the final game, the judges tallied the scores and the Cup was anyone's to take. Tied for first place was local team ZG alongside European powerhouse, Kitty Cats. Tied for second place was local team D.K alongside the seasoned SotF tribe KappaPride, with third place currently being held by Beliebers (who were playing with 3 players!). During the early game it had looked like a lot of mistakes were occurring which led to some real up-hill battles. Perhaps it was a case of nerves, or just some bad luck. D.K Captain Ke Le was sending a message to the other tribes as he single-handedly took on, with a little help from his team, an entire tribe of 4 and came out victorious.

    As we approached the platform and the final 6 - with all top 5 tribes still in the game, persevering to take the win. Of the 5 tribes, Beliebers was first to be eliminated - they put up a great fight but were taken out by ZG. Ralph was the last member alive from KappaPride and held up valiantly, playing the last moments of his life on foot before he was eaten by a Spinosaurus from the ZG tribe. The remaining tribes at this point were ZG and D.K both with 4 members, and Kitty Cats with 2. It seemed apparent that ZG and D.K were playing it safe and avoiding confrontation, as the two most powerful tribes it makes strategic sense to clear out the others first. Wilson from Kitty Cats was taken out, as team captain MOLNMAN had finished off the Get Out The Way tribe, but was inevitably killed himself. The game ended in a two-way tie between D.K and ZG both with four remaining members. At the end the judges tallied the scores and the kills and the results are as below:

    3rd Place: D.K

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    2nd Place: Kitty Cats

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    1st Place: ZG

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    If you haven’t had a chance to catch the games yet, we recommend you do - you can check the highlight streams over at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

    The tournament was a lot of fun to run, and it was awesome seeing all the strategies and skill demonstrated by our survivors. There were a lot of tense moments too with some players turning up the heat and really making a name for themselves on an international stage. Put simply: we got to witness some epic gameplay and unforgettable moments. We also learned a lot about the high-level game during these few days, as well as lot about hosting LAN matches and we’re very thankful to those of you who tuned into to support our survivors, the survivors for attending and competing, as well as those of you who were at the event itself whether as member of the team, supporting your friends, or watching the game in person.

    Thank you Survivors, we could not do it without you!

    SoTF and the Future!

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    As we look to the future of SotF, we came to a decision: Survival of the Fittest will be brought back internally as part of the ARK: Survival Evolved package. For technical functionality it will still exist as its own application, and everyone who has thus-far played the game will continue to be able to play it without having to own ARK: Survival Evolved, but going forward it will be considered part of the ARK: Survival Evolved product group. There are some key reasons behind this decision, which we believe is the best option for the success of Survival of the Fittest and we’ll go through those points as follows:

    Development Kit

    The release of the Development Kit is the main reason for bringing back SotF internally. We have been pondering for a while how to release the kit without any restrictions on content and licensing, allowing SotF modders to freely take all the content from Survival Evolved as they wish. We wanted to ensure that modders would have freedom when working with the kit to create the mods that they wanted to see in SotF. This was more important to us than any other reason, and to accomplish this, we had to bring SotF back into the Survival Evolved product. We do not want to place any restrictions on you, this community has provided a lot of feedback in regards to SotF and there are a number of you who have expressed a desire to work on the game mode itself and take it to a new place. We wanted to ensure that you would be able to meet those desires and make SotF into the game you want to see, no limits. Furthermore, we’ll be kicking off a large-scale SotF Mod Contest shortly to help give the SotF creative community a boost to get out there and make cool stuff, stay tuned for details on that! You can download the SotF Development Kit here ( http://arkfiles.com/sotf/ARKDevKitSotF_v177.2.zip -- 50 GB! ) and start uploading your SotF Content to Steam Workshop right now! Feel free to take any and all content you want from Survival Evolved, let’s see some new Dinos in SotF! Tutorials and info on how to create content (Maps, Mods, Map Extensions, and Total Conversions) are available here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?70-ARK-Survival-Evolved

    No Free To Play Monetisation

    When a game like SotF is made free to play, there are still expenses - this can range from development work, server costs, running of tournaments, prizes and of course the opportunity cost. To ensure that SotF would remain a success and a sound choice, Wildcard would have had to put a lot of resources and time into learning how to become a ‘free to play’ developer. We would have had to learn how to monetize a free game, notoriously through the use of in-app purchases such as skins and other cosmetics. Ultimately, it’s clear this is not who we are, we like to make games, and to make the gameplay fun. We don’t know much about monetization, and quite frankly we aren’t interested in hiring an economics team to take over that process, it is much more in our and your best interest for Wildcard to solely focus on the development of a game. We just aren’t cut out for free to play mechanics. With SotF being part of ARK: Survival Evolved, it’ll be able to draw from Survival Evolved resource pool directly, and enable us to continue operating the title.

    Survivor League

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    July’s Survivor League Final shall be taking place on Saturday, the 6th of August! It will take place at 11:00AM EST where the qualifying survivors across 3 tables will compete to be placed in July’s Survivor League, and earn a prize pool of over $65,000. 

    You can check out the qualifying Survivor’s here:

    https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

    The games shall be hosted on www.twitch.tv/survivtheark and casted by non-other than typeForced! We hope to see you guys tune in for the exciting games!

    Survivor League will be continuing throughout August, however due to some major gameplay changes made in the last few days, we will resetting the League’s ELO for August. This means that players current scores will reset and players will need to compete against on the ladder to reclaim their rankings. You can check out the most recent changes by reading our patch-notes thread:

    http://steamcommunity.com/app/407530/discussions/0/365163686069351564/

    Naughty or Nice

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    It’s coming back! We’re going to prepare the epic 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ battle-mode as a SotF “Total Conversion”, incorporating all the latest updates made to SotF - it will be open-source so modders can take it further if they wish. We’re hoping to release the TC by the end of August and host a gamers’ Charity Match sometime in September, to which all the qualifying members of August’s Survivors League are invited to participate! We had a lot of good feedback about our last, and there has been a lot of request for when the game mode will be making its reappearance, just to let you know - we’re on it guys! And yes, the developers will compete, and get our butts kicked ;)

    TLDR

    Right now here’s what we are certain of:

    • The SotF Development Kit will be released today, without restrictions due to this change and this means that there will be no restrictions on modders. 
    • For this to happen without content license restrictions (take whatever you want from Survival Evolved and put it into SotF!), we’re bringing back SotF Internally into the main-game’s product group again, and it will no longer be a separate “Free to Play” title.
    • We will continue to support and encourage modders through their developing endeavors to see where they can take SotF. Details on the first SotF Mod Contest will be announced soon!
    • Survival of the Fittest will be maintained as a playable game mode internally. If there are issues with the game, we will resolve them. If we’re able to make performance updates due to optimisation work done on the main game, SotF will also receive them. Major content upgrades to SotF will be pending further expansion of the team, and the development kit will continue be updated with content from ARK: Survival Evolved (which can be directly copied into SotF by modders).
    • Console development of SotF (PS4 and Xbox One) will be placed on hold so we can take a step back and see how these changes pan out in the long term, without making any hasty decisions about ARK: SotF.
    • The 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ event is making a comeback in September!
    • Summer Cup was a lot of fun - thank you to everyone who attended and all the fans who watched it live from China! Hope you enjoyed it too! 
    • Stay tuned for longer-term announcements about future regional tournaments.

    These changes will be taking place immediately. It is very important for us to see how SotF progresses and we want to make sure we’re making the right choices. We understand that these changes are quite big and will impact the future of game, but hope you can understand our reasons to do so and will continue to support the game mode you love. We are very excited to see what the release of the Development Kit will bring to SotF and where creative players will take it -- if you have some balancing or gameplay ideas, or simply want to see more creatures in the game, you can now make them happen!

    All the best,

    Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team.

    Edited by Jat

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    bo0MXxXsplatter

    I'm just curious, but SotF is faster than the base game right? What speed are the modifiers set at?

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    GP
    7 minutes ago, Silverfang00 said:

    Will holiday events ever come to consoles

    This question is best placed in the ARK Q&A Digest: 

     

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    thestiffler
    6 hours ago, Jat said:

    Hopefully I can address this in a way you'll find satisfactory, or at least so you understand where we're coming from with our decision to port Survival of the Fittest back into Survival Evolved.

    The players who have already qualified for the event will likely already have SotF in their steam libraries, if for some reason that is not the case - they can get in touch with me and I will sort it out for them, as the invites have already been sent out for the next event.

    That's a reasonable opinion to have, though would disagree on this particular choice being a rushed or drastic move to 'fix' the game. Clearly what we've been doing hasn't been working so well and there seems to be a lot of players in the SotF community who have their own ideas about how they think it should be run, that have been vocalised too - and we want to give them the opportunity to set forth and turn SotF into what it should be, without restriction. It's not a 'mod' - it's still a standalone game, just a part of the core-version so that it's still able to be funded. 

    The link with our twitch is a fair point, and I'll get that sorted right now but also that's just something that's slipped under the radar, those links likely haven't been checked in a while since they were setup, mostly because the URLs tend not to change - however I'll link it directly to the standalone app in the Steam Store.

    The game hasn't changed much since the standalone was first release, there have just been some gameplay and balance changes, the most notorious ones would be the changes to the ring - value changes itself are small and if players disagree with them, they have the ability to adjust it to what they think it should be. The balance was decided through watching games, speaking to members of the SotF community, the top players, as well as our own ideas on what we think would work. Again, if this isn't something you agree with - you're welcome to change it. A lot of the feedback does come from top players too, but again there are always going to be people who prefer something one way, and others another way. 

    We want to provide you guys with the opportunity to take SotF in another direction. The direction we were taking it in, whilst we enjoyed it clearly wasn't working - and we still want to ensure that the game remains taken care of and funded, so we'll look after it in that sense, as well as make any critical changes that are necessary to the game design itself. If the game still has a lot of potential in your eyes, which we believe it does too - we just aren't quite sure where we want to take it, so we're stepping back - then grab the Development Kit and take a stab at it. If things kick off and a mod creator is looking for more support from us to taking it to the next level, we're definitely open to that and are willing to work with them to achieve it.

    The licencing issue stems from SotF development vs SE development, with the initial plan - it would have just been a SotF kit, what would have been available, would have been limited, until SotF received it - by doing this we're able to remove all limitations and players are able to mod without restriction, do what they want, use all the content that we have available in the main game.

    Interesting and thanks for taking time to respond.

    Interesting to see that it might be an issue for those that have downloaded SOTF standalone before, when has the "move back under SE" taken place ? is it already ? so for instance if someone watching me asks now do they need to buy SE to play sotf ? Just so I can be clear with them.

    We all get wildcard has no background in esports and you could quite frankly tell that but there were and maybe still are a lot of people who believe in this as a game the frustration/rants/etc come from what is a total lack of communication and engagement, I have over my time playing this game badly and streaming it got to know quite a large potion of the "pro" or at least the top 40/60/80 scene and honestly its always the same story no one knows whats going on, who is doing what and what will happen, we are as a group of people quite frankly mushroomed. your posts here are the closest thing to concrete information any of us have had in months.

    There are some quite simple things that are always avoided and never directly answered that could help a lot, for instance

    Is Macro feeding allowed ? in May we were told NO, an "eminent" streamer tells people all the time its allowed, this causes confusion with a huge portion of the community now using a macro and those of us who don't because of the advice given in May feeling a little aggrieved.

    How long will "money" tournaments go on for ? there is a constant rumour mill that ever season is the "last" season that its all on the verge of being over, some sort of defined limit/reasoning/length would help us immensely

    Again though this feeds into a lack of dedicated "SOTF" person on wildcards end, who sets up an "esport" without putting a dedicated person in charge of it ? its madness and that over bloated prize pool would have  been far better for the game being pushed into a SOTF CM who had a bit of "marketing" budget to be spent, yes I'm aware I'm telling you guys again what to do which is a source of frustration but its clear to say (as you do yourself) the way you have been running it hasn't been working, if you compare it to the numbers h1z1 br has or hell even the culling its not a pretty picture, I think and I don't want to speak for wildcard you guys just assumed the follow through from SE players would carry it to success but SOTF and SE PVP Are very very different animals and appeal to different players.

    I get the link thing was an "oversight" but when you have 3-4-5k people watching a tournament and they want to get into the game only to be linked to a year old post talking about a mod then its really hard to get ANY follow through isn't it ?

    Interesting your opinion is that the game "hasn't changed much" but conversely we need another elo rest because of how much it has changed ? these two ideas don't seem terribly in line here.

    Then we get onto to the confusing wooley language bits that I obviously don't quite get whats being intimated, are you (wildcard) suggesting with this change that there are going to be no more survivor leagues ? are they no longer going to be the official tournaments because a lot of the rest of your post honestly reads like you guys are sort of done with it now and its up to us going forward now we have the dev kit ? I might be reading too much into it there, but this is how its coming across ? I'm not sure how much further wildcard can step back on a sotf front outside of the monthly tournaments we already see nearly nothing from you guys, apart from random patches that drop with random changes and no actual in depth explanation of "why" how much further can you step back ? There is no way a game like this can succeed without actual dev support or a community manger so I read that section as you guys "giving up" on sotf, now maybe I'm right maybe I'm wrong but more interaction, communication and greater feedback is whats needed here not less if you have to do something then empower people like the YGD guys and XPulZ guys but please don't go "welp its your problem not community" because that's entirely whats NOT needed right now.

    Unless of course wildcard is done with sotf, because you honestly don't "owe" any of us anything (monetary support or tournaments etc) but it would just be nice to know if this is the case or not in black and white and not spend the next month + wondering whats going on with zero communication.

     

     

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    Jatheish
    • 6 hours ago, thestiffler said:

    Interesting and thanks for taking time to respond.

    Interesting to see that it might be an issue for those that have downloaded SOTF standalone before, when has the "move back under SE" taken place ? is it already ? so for instance if someone watching me asks now do they need to buy SE to play sotf ? Just so I can be clear with them.

    We all get wildcard has no background in esports and you could quite frankly tell that but there were and maybe still are a lot of people who believe in this as a game the frustration/rants/etc come from what is a total lack of communication and engagement, I have over my time playing this game badly and streaming it got to know quite a large potion of the "pro" or at least the top 40/60/80 scene and honestly its always the same story no one knows whats going on, who is doing what and what will happen, we are as a group of people quite frankly mushroomed. your posts here are the closest thing to concrete information any of us have had in months.

    There are some quite simple things that are always avoided and never directly answered that could help a lot, for instance

    Is Macro feeding allowed ? in May we were told NO, an "eminent" streamer tells people all the time its allowed, this causes confusion with a huge portion of the community now using a macro and those of us who don't because of the advice given in May feeling a little aggrieved.

    How long will "money" tournaments go on for ? there is a constant rumour mill that ever season is the "last" season that its all on the verge of being over, some sort of defined limit/reasoning/length would help us immensely

    Again though this feeds into a lack of dedicated "SOTF" person on wildcards end, who sets up an "esport" without putting a dedicated person in charge of it ? its madness and that over bloated prize pool would have  been far better for the game being pushed into a SOTF CM who had a bit of "marketing" budget to be spent, yes I'm aware I'm telling you guys again what to do which is a source of frustration but its clear to say (as you do yourself) the way you have been running it hasn't been working, if you compare it to the numbers h1z1 br has or hell even the culling its not a pretty picture, I think and I don't want to speak for wildcard you guys just assumed the follow through from SE players would carry it to success but SOTF and SE PVP Are very very different animals and appeal to different players.

    I get the link thing was an "oversight" but when you have 3-4-5k people watching a tournament and they want to get into the game only to be linked to a year old post talking about a mod then its really hard to get ANY follow through isn't it ?

    Interesting your opinion is that the game "hasn't changed much" but conversely we need another elo rest because of how much it has changed ? these two ideas don't seem terribly in line here.

    Then we get onto to the confusing wooley language bits that I obviously don't quite get whats being intimated, are you (wildcard) suggesting with this change that there are going to be no more survivor leagues ? are they no longer going to be the official tournaments because a lot of the rest of your post honestly reads like you guys are sort of done with it now and its up to us going forward now we have the dev kit ? I might be reading too much into it there, but this is how its coming across ? I'm not sure how much further wildcard can step back on a sotf front outside of the monthly tournaments we already see nearly nothing from you guys, apart from random patches that drop with random changes and no actual in depth explanation of "why" how much further can you step back ? There is no way a game like this can succeed without actual dev support or a community manger so I read that section as you guys "giving up" on sotf, now maybe I'm right maybe I'm wrong but more interaction, communication and greater feedback is whats needed here not less if you have to do something then empower people like the YGD guys and XPulZ guys but please don't go "welp its your problem not community" because that's entirely whats NOT needed right now.

    Unless of course wildcard is done with sotf, because you honestly don't "owe" any of us anything (monetary support or tournaments etc) but it would just be nice to know if this is the case or not in black and white and not spend the next month + wondering whats going on with zero communication.

    Yeah - going forward people will need to own Survival Evolved to have access to the Survival of the Fittest mode, however previously if you had it - you will still own it. Macro feeding has always been frowned upon, we've put in some measures in place where it had a serious impact on the game, we cannot straight out block it because it's not in any realistic sense police-able, where we believe it has an impact - we'll patch it, to make it less effective. During the LAN events, they were prohibited - as we were able to police them. People are always going to start rumours about this or that, til you hear something from us about it - which you would in this case, because it's a big deal, then it'll just be carrying on. We did attempt to recruit people for the position, but quite franky not many were interested, as those who were, weren't suitable candidates for the position. 

    Whilst it was an oversight and something that should have been taken care of, I do not believe it has the impact you're saying it has - during the stream SotF has been spoken about in terms of what it is, where and how it is available, there are bot commands which show people where to get it, the trailer gets played frequently, more commands talking about the tournament - the information was there on that twitch channel, but aye that button should have been fixed.

    The game hasn't changed much in terms what was done between now and then, however the impact of those changes can be significant - I was referring to your concerns about the 'ruined potential' -> if you dislike our ring changes, or the balance changes, which clearly do have an impact on game balance - then feel free to go back on those in the Devkit, or don't run servers with those settings - and then you can get it to how you'd like it.

    What we're doing is taking a step back, we want to see how things pan out without making an hasty decisions - I don't necessarily think that's bad choice right? We want to evaluate what's going on and where the next step is. This does not mean we're done with it, this just means we're re-thinking on where to take the game, perhaps our decisions haven't been the greatest and we want to pause and take a moment for now - however by releasing the Dev Kit, we are welcome to the idea of others having a shot at it, and if they're able to create something that really works, with their own game balance, something the community can get behind - we're happy to work with them to support it, possibly even rolling out changes made on Official Servers due to how well they're received. Our stepping back allows us to release an 'unrestricted' dev kit, it stops us from having to learn F2P monetisation (which we didn't want to do) and grants players the ability to take the game to where they'd like.

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    Mystalias

    Will the 'unrestricting' of the SoTF devkit change the original SE devkit's eula/rules any? Will it also loosen up it's restrictions? My reading of it's eula is that it's overly broad... 

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    roguewolf

    Is there any chance we can get a more stable download method for the sotf dev kit? Excited to get working on it, but been trying and failing to download it with my browser all day. Maybe it could be available through the Epic Launcher like the standard kit?

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    Wildchild

    Guys, you promised news on ps4 release... And there still none:(

    Please provide ANY information about ARK:SE PS4 release date?

    thanks!

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    DaEndGame
    On 2 August 2016 at 1:25 PM, bo0MXxXsplatter said:

    I'm just curious, but SotF is faster than the base game right? What speed are the modifiers set at?

    Yes its got higher rates. if it were normal rates, one wouldn't be able to get to metal tools, mulitple rexs and other assorted tames within the usual 2 hrs (i think it 2, still you get what i mean).

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    thestiffler
    On ‎02‎/‎08‎/‎2016 at 4:27 PM, Jat said:

    What we're doing is taking a step back, we want to see how things pan out without making an hasty decisions - I don't necessarily think that's bad choice right? We want to evaluate what's going on and where the next step is. This does not mean we're done with it, this just means we're re-thinking on where to take the game, perhaps our decisions haven't been the greatest and we want to pause and take a moment for now - however by releasing the Dev Kit, we are welcome to the idea of others having a shot at it, and if they're able to create something that really works, with their own game balance, something the community can get behind - we're happy to work with them to support it, possibly even rolling out changes made on Official Servers due to how well they're received. Our stepping back allows us to release an 'unrestricted' dev kit, it stops us from having to learn F2P monetisation (which we didn't want to do) and grants players the ability to take the game to where they'd like.

    I'm just going to quote this bit and respond, you guys are "stepping back" but THIS week between the end of the season and the playoffs you have made massive and in some cases quite ill thought out sweeping changes to the balance of the game. This is not "stepping back" its prodding things a bit and running away.

    Currently you have spinos worse in every single way and the "rex nerfs" amount to nothing in real terms but you also married this with crapping on tech and removing an item that no one ever saw as even a slight issue in FFA (metal shield).

    You cant have it all ways as an organisation you cant say "were stepping back" then make huge dramatic changes to balance between the end of the season and the playoffs its just madness, who does that ??

    Also I like the idea that "we" can balance the game and if its good you guys will incorporate it, there I hate to tell you isn't a big enough "unofficial" scene nor can it entice the ranked play players to it actually test anything properly in this environment it just wont work, but yeah you cant "step back" and make massive changes at the same time its not how it works its really not.

     

     

     

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    Thederpychrist965

    How long are we xbox players gonna be on hold for? Honestly id play a messed up survival of the fittest then to wait 1000000000000000000000000 years to play it. Im sure id have people with me on this. *wipes off a sweat and says nervously* right?

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