You are a game tester

[JesterSuave]

5 hours ago, SirTwist said:

Beta, and before beta, testing is typically free to most people. Hence why I said it should have been free, until close to release. This way, if you choose to leave, we wouldn't have wasted money on this game. I have beta tested games, and they were free. I was asked, in game, and via e-mail, my thoughts on things. This is what should have been done in Ark. However, I guess to support their idiocy, and their heavy handed crap, they made us pay to play a beta test of a game. I really doubt that much will change between now and release, and that we won't have any more voice than what we have had.

And if you believe WC just did the nerf because they thought it a good idea, then you have no true idea of how things work. PVP players want to kill each other in the fastest way possible. I have seen this in three different games. WoW, SWTOR, and now Ark. Ark, WC, listened to the PVP players, and decided to nerf the flyers as bad as they did. They would not have done so if it were the PVE players, or even themselves. Instead, they listened to the people who, frankly, should have their own game, and leave the rest of the people alone. If you don't know the story of nerfs, it's typically because someone can't kill someone else fast enough, and the devs nerf things at the behest of these minorities, and ruin the whole game for everyone.

Again, not how Early Access works, has ever worked, or probably ever will work. EA is for developers to get a steady stream of income in order for them to further develop their game, and only people who are excited to be part of that process pay for it. Again, it's like a kickstarter for games except you get to play it.

And if you think WC did the nerf simply because PvP players asked for one (no one on any PvP server I've ever been on has) then you need to again take a look at the development process of games and how things are balanced. I'm sure there's some forum posts of a PvP player complaining about Ptera suicide runs but it's not a common thing, and WC has even come out to say it wasn't just for PvP.

BTW PvPers do have their own game, it's called Survival of the Fittest... But again, there has to be a baseline for how the game runs, especially since there are a plethora of options to run it any way you'd like, and in order to test those baselines they implemented a nerf to find out where they wanted it to be and will buff it until they think it's good. Then we'll all change the settings to play how we want anyway.

[szabiferi]

@JesterSuave I'm a software tester IRL for 18 years, several companies, including some gaming as well. I tell you what points you didn't take into account.

1. As others already mentioned, testers are involved in the design phase, because they usually have better insights on how things work in the product. Here it is missing, while you cannot argue we play much more - as a community - than the devs can ever do. Simply the raw hours are not comparable... we are not involved in any constructive decision in advance about anything.

2. Testers give feedback in a controlled form what is taken into account. Forum topics and megathreads are not something you can take seriously as a monitored feedback tool. Also, you are making an error by default, because you marked negative feedback as "complaints".  Such attitude is wrong - actually testers by default look on the dark side, trying to find errors and give criticism on the product. I agree the tone is wrong, but this comes from the nature of the internet and the forums. I tell you, if they setup a proper system (polls, bug ticket forms to fill), the feedback would be much better with less emotions.

3. Being early access is not an excuse to not to prioritize things properly. For me, that supposed to mean I am -as a player - involved more in the game development than in case of a final product. At least thats how EA is advertised I understand theat they are in the feature development, so adding features is more important then fixing sthings, still some long standing bugs/issues should be fixed, regardless it is EA or not.

4. Proper communication is important. Patch notes are written in very vague form, the way how the incoming flyer "balancing" was communicated awfully (a single "flyer nerf"  expression was added in the patch notes 3 days before the actual rollout - an indicator it was not really designed or tought upon it, was rather a hotfix than a well tought change).
I'm also expecting the devs to respect the player's time we spent in the game - so when they make changes, they should give early warning on changes, what invalidate lots of efforts we poured into that. Sometimes the play to reach some goals is tedious, not fun, we are doing it to reach an objective - and when it is taken away, thats very annoying.

They are developing a long term game with lot of work/grind involved on the playe side, not some arena shooter.

[Faivon]

I'd like to know if ARK is no longer an Early Access game, can the devs make major changes like flier nerf or any game parameter? 

I have no doubt the dev will implement new feature, new dinos, or any additions but can the devs make major changes to the gameplay system?

Oh, when the game is fully released, we're no longer a game tester so by then any negative feedbacks will really impact everything

[szabiferi]

Just now, Faivon said:

I'd like to know if ARK is no longer an Early Access game, can the devs make major changes like flier nerf or any game parameter? 

I have no doubt the dev will implement new feature, new dinos, or any additions but can the devs make major changes to the gameplay system?

I think they can and will do.

Early Acces  is really just a label, it does not prohibit or promotes anything, its not even an indicator of a game quality. Same for V 1.0 (final), there are no quality requirements nor any other things what need to be fulfilled. Theycould even say "next patch will be the release" and go to 1.0 and continue to do anyhing as they did before, or just simply say the game is finished and abandon it as is.

Even when the game becomes final, they can do anything with it - can replace the T-rex with a Magic pony at any point.

[JoeBob1024]

It gets old seeing people preach on and on about how "the game's an alpha!".  We all understand that the game is "pre-release" but the way that wildcard has treated the game has made people question whether or not that excuse still applies.  They have already pushed full release back by like a year, and yet here we are a few months from "launch" and we're still in the additional content phase rather than the beta/bug fixing phase.  In addition to this, they released a DLC that cost money well before full release...?

I'm aware of the arguement that "they planned on SE dropping after full release, and it was already finished, so they wanted to go ahead and release it."  My main issue with this is the fact that anyone who has played SE can tell you that it's far from finished.  In my opinion, WC decided to make a little extra money by releasing a half finished DLC when they could have focused their time and resources on fixing the main game.  Why even work on a DLC when you're so painfully far from a full release?

People always want to act like this game is an "early alpha" but it's not.  WC has in essence blended an alpha and a beta test by continuing to add content while occasionally fixing a bug or two and constantly trying to re-balance despite the fact that there is more content coming which may or may not make said re-balancing worthless.  

On a side note, people do complain too much about the bugs.  If this was a ubisoft/bioware game, it would be considered a full release and noone would even bat an eye at the rampant bugs.   Every game is buggy these days, that's understood.  At the same time, the games that don't fix the bugs that are the most troublesome/concerning to their community are the ones that lose their player bases the most quickly.  Ark is a great game, and we all (or most) want to see it succeed.  I just hope that the devs realize that there is a problem with their development prioritization.  There is no point in adding another shoulder mount, or a new version of the rex, or even a freakin' lazer gun if you still can't perform a lot of the basic game tasks without losing or wasting huge amounts of time due to bugs.

I understand that the flyer nerf needed to happen on some level, though I personally feel like it was a little overboard.  What I don't understand is why the flyer nerf needed to be implemented before fixing the rampant crashing of xbox dedicated servers, before finishing the "play-anywhere" option that xbox was promised in december, and before fixing the glitches that cause babies to stop eating or tames to disappear into the map.  From what I understand about a normal dev cycle you generally add content, fix bugs, then rebalance.  I feel like these priorities are skewed with WC.  How can we know if pteras or quetzals are truly OP when turrets still don't target correctly and half of the dinos don't work as intended?

At the very least, I think flyers should have retained some of their usefulness as transport mounts until other bugs were fixed.  IMO the biggest time sinks in this game are the poorly programmed dino AI, the strange clipping/getting stuck issues, and the loss of progress from disconnects/other bugs.  I feel like flyers in their previous state mitigated some of this wasted time by allowing for quick travel and, in the case of the quetzal, transport.  I feel like they should have waited to pull out the nerf bat until "difficult" things like moving two dinos who are standing too close to one another, and having a train of dinos follow you to the volcano were fixed.  Instead, it feels like WC used this flyer nerf as an equalizer.  

"If a rex is going to constantly get trapped on tiny trees or rocks, then we need to make flyers just as tedious so that everything is balanced"...

 SMH.  One would think that the more logical solution would be to improve the poor implementation of ground tames and THEN rebalance once you're not trying to balance our fighter jets (flyers) with semi-trucks that are missing half of their wheels (ground tames).

[Milsurp]

23 hours ago, JesterSuave said:

Just one of those things that I think a lot of people don't realize when they are playing Ark.

You are playing an Early Access game (aka Beta, aka Work-In-Progress), and therefore, you are essentially a game tester. There will be many things that will be implemented in the game that the player-base doesn't like or that they love, and they're are free to voice their opinions about it, but at the very least be constructive. Sitting there insulting devs on 'not thinking it through' will get you 0 changes because they don't know what you want, regardless of how true you may feel it to be. That one isn't for devs, they've already come out saying they don't mind you spewing expletives at them, that tidbit is for those who want something actually to be done. 

A lot of people have complained about the flyer nerf, said it was terrible yada yada (similar to the great dino damage and health nerf), but no matter what your personal feelings are on it I'm hoping that people see the title to this post and remember that this isn't a released game. As such, EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE TESTED.

If you're asking yourself "well why didn't they just put in a config option to revert the flyer changes?" it's most likely because (as people have already stated in other posts) people would have avoided the patch entirely, therefore hurting the overall testing and leaving the game in a perpetual state of limbo on what kind of nerf there should be. There are a lot of players who thought the flyer nerf was necessary, so the best possible option to test what level of nerf should happen would be to start from the bottom and work up, you can disagree if you want but that's my opinion. Most likely we'll see small increment buffs until they get flyers where they want them to be, and then we'll see a big ol' INI option to go do what we want. Why don't they have a public test server for all of these changes? Because the game is in development, so every server is a test server, official and unofficial.

WoW didn't have test realms in Beta either, because Beta is Beta. But of course to attempt to compare a company like WC against a multi-billion dollar gaming tycoon with decades of experience releasing content (which btw was still broken many of those times) is also silly.

So that's my soap box, I'll leave it here for you guys to enjoy and discuss. I know this might have been said before, but I think a little reminder every now and again seems to be needed when this community goes toxic. Obviously we all like the game enough to be in here on the forums reading posts, so...

 

 

 

No. I am a game BACKER. I paid for the work they're doing, and I have every right to state my desire as to what direction they should take, and voice my displeasure with the direction they're taking. The population of people who are willing to back an Early Access game constitutes a knowledge base of wants and desires for the game. These wants and desires are assumed by the Early Access model to extend to the population of potential buyers who are not willing to back the game, but would buy it when released. And that's the model Wildcard signed up for when they chose EA for their model.

 The developers are officially supposed to be listening to the community and enacting THEIR desires so they can make the most successful game possible. Not co-opting the Early Access process to serve their own personal desires for the game, aka "take this ride with us" (that's a quote). 

So your CWA (Cover Wildcard's @ss) post is based on a completely false premise. Any changes which people want NOT to implement are legitimate feedback to the developers from the EA backer community. Having the option to not implement a change literally enables WC to learn how to make a better game in the EA model! 

And your comparison to the development of monolithic games like WoW is also out to lunch. This game is expressly supporting modding, as in "core feature modding", not just UI skins. Modding is choice as to the features you want or don't want, and choice is valid feedback to the developers.

Sorry, but people seriously need to stay off of the soapbox until they've prepared an actual case based on facts, not false premises.

[Kaelnayyan]

7 hours ago, szabiferi said:

@JesterSuave I'm a software tester IRL for 18 years, several companies, including some gaming as well. I tell you what points you didn't take into account.

1. As others already mentioned, testers are involved in the design phase, because they usually have better insights on how things work in the product. Here it is missing, while you cannot argue we play much more - as a community - than the devs can ever do. Simply the raw hours are not comparable... we are not involved in any constructive decision in advance about anything.

2. Testers give feedback in a controlled form what is taken into account. Forum topics and megathreads are not something you can take seriously as a monitored feedback tool. Also, you are making an error by default, because you marked negative feedback as "complaints".  Such attitude is wrong - actually testers by default look on the dark side, trying to find errors and give criticism on the product. I agree the tone is wrong, but this comes from the nature of the internet and the forums. I tell you, if they setup a proper system (polls, bug ticket forms to fill), the feedback would be much better with less emotions.

3. Being early access is not an excuse to not to prioritize things properly. For me, that supposed to mean I am -as a player - involved more in the game development than in case of a final product. At least thats how EA is advertised I understand theat they are in the feature development, so adding features is more important then fixing sthings, still some long standing bugs/issues should be fixed, regardless it is EA or not.

4. Proper communication is important. Patch notes are written in very vague form, the way how the incoming flyer "balancing" was communicated awfully (a single "flyer nerf"  expression was added in the patch notes 3 days before the actual rollout - an indicator it was not really designed or tought upon it, was rather a hotfix than a well tought change).
I'm also expecting the devs to respect the player's time we spent in the game - so when they make changes, they should give early warning on changes, what invalidate lots of efforts we poured into that. Sometimes the play to reach some goals is tedious, not fun, we are doing it to reach an objective - and when it is taken away, thats very annoying.

They are developing a long term game with lot of work/grind involved on the playe side, not some arena shooter.

^this

[SusanCS]

On 4/11/2017 at 0:57 PM, JesterSuave said:

Just one of those things that I think a lot of people don't realize when they are playing Ark.

You are playing an Early Access game (aka Beta, aka Work-In-Progress), and therefore, you are essentially a game tester. There will be many things that will be implemented in the game that the player-base doesn't like or that they love, and they're are free to voice their opinions about it, but at the very least be constructive. Sitting there insulting devs on 'not thinking it through' will get you 0 changes because they don't know what you want, regardless of how true you may feel it to be. That one isn't for devs, they've already come out saying they don't mind you spewing expletives at them, that tidbit is for those who want something actually to be done. 

A lot of people have complained about the flyer nerf, said it was terrible yada yada (similar to the great dino damage and health nerf), but no matter what your personal feelings are on it I'm hoping that people see the title to this post and remember that this isn't a released game. As such, EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE TESTED.

If you're asking yourself "well why didn't they just put in a config option to revert the flyer changes?" it's most likely because (as people have already stated in other posts) people would have avoided the patch entirely, therefore hurting the overall testing and leaving the game in a perpetual state of limbo on what kind of nerf there should be. There are a lot of players who thought the flyer nerf was necessary, so the best possible option to test what level of nerf should happen would be to start from the bottom and work up, you can disagree if you want but that's my opinion. Most likely we'll see small increment buffs until they get flyers where they want them to be, and then we'll see a big ol' INI option to go do what we want. Why don't they have a public test server for all of these changes? Because the game is in development, so every server is a test server, official and unofficial.

WoW didn't have test realms in Beta either, because Beta is Beta. But of course to attempt to compare a company like WC against a multi-billion dollar gaming tycoon with decades of experience releasing content (which btw was still broken many of those times) is also silly.

So that's my soap box, I'll leave it here for you guys to enjoy and discuss. I know this might have been said before, but I think a little reminder every now and again seems to be needed when this community goes toxic. Obviously we all like the game enough to be in here on the forums reading posts, so...

 

 

 

Jer supports the idea of having a flyer ini as i understand it, but he's just not sure when they will get time to set it up.

[tidalblade]

8 hours ago, JesterSuave said:

And if you think WC did the nerf simply because PvP players asked for one (no one on any PvP server I've ever been on has) then you need to again take a look at the development process of games and how things are balanced. I'm sure there's some forum posts of a PvP player complaining about Ptera suicide runs but it's not a common thing, and WC has even come out to say it wasn't just for PvP.

The only thing The lead game designer mentioned about PVE was that it became too easy to bypass much of the ground 'content'... That is a flawed argument in the first place(it assumes that using land dinos doesn't allow you to bypass all of the content, it does you just move more slowly and have to path around annoying obstacles), there was no other reason given for nerfing as far as PVE goes.

[DankestKhan]

The problem is official servers. The fact that officials are persistent/always up, are insanely grindy to do every activity from resource gathering to taming and breeding, has led to the current state of the community.

Of course people are upset that their tame/breed they've spent days of real time perfecting becomes useless. I totally get that.

The fault for all of this is with the devs- not for changing things in an alpha game, but for promoting official servers which require such insane grind to do anything when they are still changing things constantly. Example: the volcano is going to erupt now. Bye bye volcano base you spent days to build on an official server.

If you play on private or solo servers, none of this is a problem. Admin cheat yourself up and subscribe to mods and you won't flip out because nothing that you've done has taken the sacrifice of your firstborn and all your other hobbies to accomplish.

[SwatArk]

14 hours ago, JesterSuave said:

They have yet to roll out a fix because there isn't a fix to make necessarily, only tweaks to get the flyer roles where THEY want them to be. Toss in some INI configs and donezo... 

Okay so first off, i must say well done on keeping things civil. Now that's done I shan't regail you of tales about a mod with 80k subscribers etc etc. What I will say is I'm sick of the "THEY WANT" "THEIR VISION" argument. Look I'm fully aware that WC is making the game and I understand that we have no real way of telling the difference between those for or against the nerf bc WC refuses to introduce a poll system but as someone who is in a business where the consumer rules all you better believe I don't give a flip what I want or what my vision is for a client as long as they're happy. That's all that matters. Consumers make the demand, you supply the demand. If after all the touch up buffs people are still leaving the game like crazy then it will be up to WC to revert the changes. Now this is conjecture because we don't really know how many people have truly quit never to return but if at some point that number is discovered and it is the majority I see no other option but to revert or let the game die. 

 But maybe flying is how you want to play, and guess what? There are mods and (soon) settings to allow you to play the exact way you want. So again, getting bent out of shape over how the BASE OFFICIAL GAMEPLAY is going to be when you can literally go to one of the several thousand unofficial servers (or play solo, or host a non-dedicated) and play every aspect the game will ever have to offer is... well kind of ignorant tbh.

But again, my opinion...

As to this everyone's opinion should be listened to, after all everyone has one but speaking for people who play exclusively on console (I play on console and PC) they are royally fricked over. They have no mods like you mentioned, no private server hosting or the like. Only unsupported unofficial servers where it's always a 50/50 if it'll have good admins/population. 

 

[powerstuck]

23 hours ago, KingGalahad said:

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Approximately 1 year, with a full release planned for June 2016 coinciding with the console versions.”

Yet we're about to get the 2 year anniversary candy. 

People need to realize that Early Access is just another transformation of the gaming industry helping developers see if their time is worth the effort BEFORE taking all the risks. 

In 10 years time we will probably collectively realize Early Access was one big scam. There are games that were part of EA, never released and haven't been further developed (read have been untouched for over a whole year). Why do everyone think Ark won't be one of those ? 

9 hours ago, Faivon said:

I'd like to know if ARK is no longer an Early Access game, can the devs make major changes like flier nerf or any game parameter? 

I have no doubt the dev will implement new feature, new dinos, or any additions but can the devs make major changes to the gameplay system?

Oh, when the game is fully released, we're no longer a game tester so by then any negative feedbacks will really impact everything

Simple answer is yes. World of Warcraft is one of the biggest if not the biggest MMO we've ever seen and there have been more than one controversial change to the game that was made. Prior and post-expansion releases. 

1 hour ago, SusanCS said:

Jer supports the idea of having a flyer ini as i understand it, but he's just not sure when they will get time to set it up.

If Jat supports the idea of a flyer.ini thing...why was it so urgent that the flyer nerf be applied right then and there ? 

I mean, it could have been tested out of our release and given a thought. A simple analysis instead of giving us a ''flyer nerf'' 3 days before release without a single detail and then pushing it creating a massive storm. No explanation.

Why not, do it like they did before ? Give official servers what devs think is good, and give the private servers option to ignore that modification or adopt it. Then, as you further make changes, leave the option to private servers to adopt latest changes or keep ignoring them ?

What was hard about that ? Let me tell you what. Devs knew they were going to make A LOT of people unhappy. They didn't wanted to see a massive exodus off official servers to private servers that chose to ''ignore the nerf''. That's why it didn't happen. 

 

Early Access is the most common excuse I see about this game. But for how long does that excuse holds true ? How long is it reasonable for a game to remain in Early Access stage ? 

To all people saying you knew what you were getting into when you bought an EA game. Well guess what, we're a few hundred thousand people that did gave a big push to this game to reach the level it is at today. If all of us said ''Meh, i'll wait till it officially releases'', I can assure you the game would have been dropped a while ago. Let's remember that SE DLC gave devs $40M of much needed funds. 

[JesterSuave]

9 hours ago, szabiferi said:

 

Sure, we can all go back and forth about the definitions of game backers, testers, helpers, players, supporters, on-lookers, guy who read an internet article about a game once, etc. The intent of saying it that way was to change the approach to the topic, not define specifically what you are.

9 hours ago, Faivon said:

 

There are a lot of games who change their content and/or mechanics drastically, so yes they could make more changes after release, which is one of the reasons people get upset about new content instead of bug fixes.

3 hours ago, Milsurp said:

 

1st paragraph = opinion, 2nd paragraph = opinion, 3rd paragraph = opinion. I guess I'm failing to see where your soapbox was prepared with an actual case of facts.

These are our opinions. You've stated yours and I have stated mine and they're both valid...in my opinion (whew don't get triggered).

1 hour ago, DankestKhan said:

 

I'd agree with you as well. Official servers need love, but they have their place in the world, too. Those are the server with your guys who will and have put thousands upon thousands of hours into the game, are hitting end-game, are exploiting every workaround, etc. I don't personally play on them anymore and I am of the belief that admins should have a more active role on them, but I can see them serving a purpose.

 

Sorry if it's confusing that I didn't include the text of the posts as it made this one huge and kinda unreadable. It also helped me keep in mind who I was responding to without having to write down names for '@' mentions.

[Cronogenvic]

4 hours ago, JoeBob1024 said:

It gets old seeing people preach on and on about how "the game's an alpha!".  We all understand that the game is "pre-release" but the way that wildcard has treated the game has made people question whether or not that excuse still applies.  They have already pushed full release back by like a year, and yet here we are a few months from "launch" and we're still in the additional content phase rather than the beta/bug fixing phase.  In addition to this, they released a DLC that cost money well before full release...?

I'm aware of the arguement that "they planned on SE dropping after full release, and it was already finished, so they wanted to go ahead and release it."  My main issue with this is the fact that anyone who has played SE can tell you that it's far from finished.  In my opinion, WC decided to make a little extra money by releasing a half finished DLC when they could have focused their time and resources on fixing the main game.  Why even work on a DLC when you're so painfully far from a full release?

People always want to act like this game is an "early alpha" but it's not.  WC has in essence blended an alpha and a beta test by continuing to add content while occasionally fixing a bug or two and constantly trying to re-balance despite the fact that there is more content coming which may or may not make said re-balancing worthless.  

On a side note, people do complain too much about the bugs.  If this was a ubisoft/bioware game, it would be considered a full release and noone would even bat an eye at the rampant bugs.   Every game is buggy these days, that's understood.  At the same time, the games that don't fix the bugs that are the most troublesome/concerning to their community are the ones that lose their player bases the most quickly.  Ark is a great game, and we all (or most) want to see it succeed.  I just hope that the devs realize that there is a problem with their development prioritization.  There is no point in adding another shoulder mount, or a new version of the rex, or even a freakin' lazer gun if you still can't perform a lot of the basic game tasks without losing or wasting huge amounts of time due to bugs.

I understand that the flyer nerf needed to happen on some level, though I personally feel like it was a little overboard.  What I don't understand is why the flyer nerf needed to be implemented before fixing the rampant crashing of xbox dedicated servers, before finishing the "play-anywhere" option that xbox was promised in december, and before fixing the glitches that cause babies to stop eating or tames to disappear into the map.  From what I understand about a normal dev cycle you generally add content, fix bugs, then rebalance.  I feel like these priorities are skewed with WC.  How can we know if pteras or quetzals are truly OP when turrets still don't target correctly and half of the dinos don't work as intended?

At the very least, I think flyers should have retained some of their usefulness as transport mounts until other bugs were fixed.  IMO the biggest time sinks in this game are the poorly programmed dino AI, the strange clipping/getting stuck issues, and the loss of progress from disconnects/other bugs.  I feel like flyers in their previous state mitigated some of this wasted time by allowing for quick travel and, in the case of the quetzal, transport.  I feel like they should have waited to pull out the nerf bat until "difficult" things like moving two dinos who are standing too close to one another, and having a train of dinos follow you to the volcano were fixed.  Instead, it feels like WC used this flyer nerf as an equalizer.  

"If a rex is going to constantly get trapped on tiny trees or rocks, then we need to make flyers just as tedious so that everything is balanced"...

 SMH.  One would think that the more logical solution would be to improve the poor implementation of ground tames and THEN rebalance once you're not trying to balance our fighter jets (flyers) with semi-trucks that are missing half of their wheels (ground tames).

Great points and exactly was what came to mind when I was thinking about the value of this game. Ark was a recent purchase for me and my lady. We play on the PS4 so we haven't been hit with the flyer nerf yet and are not experienced enough to begin dino breeding. I was concerned after stumbling upon these forums and learning of the problems plaguing this game.

I'm really glad to have not progressed far enough to waste tons of time on breeding dinos. Most breeders seem to be upset about losing their hard work on breeding "perfect" dinos. I would be too if I spent months messing with breeding for a strong squad of superior dinos only to have them nerfed unfairly with no compensation.

However, similar to you, I enjoy this game and would like to see it succeed. I've lost several tames likely because of glitches (i.e. disappearing dinos, etc) and hate that I have to buy another PS4 if I want to play Ark tether-free, but I have hopes for this game. I believe WC saw their recent error with the flyer nerf and are working hard to apply their fixes to make flyers more balanced.

[JesterSuave]

1 hour ago, SwatArk said:

 

Sorry I missed your post because I thought you just quoted mine.

I can understand the butthurt of the Console community, as they have almost no other way to play than the base game (with some setting tweaks) and still paid a mighty penny for it.

25 minutes ago, powerstuck said:

Early Access is the most common excuse I see about this game. But for how long does that excuse holds true ? How long is it reasonable for a game to remain in Early Access stage ? 

You had a lot of good words, and what I would consider legit criticism with intent to foster a better alternative, which the original post was speaking to, so I thank you for that.

So the only real response to your post I have is of the above quote.

Team Fortress 2 was in beta for, what, 6 years? Gmail had 100 million users and had been in beta for 5 years when they officially took the label off. Now before people flip out, I understand those are both free, they're just examples of successful products that sat in beta for an extended amount of time. Beta, Early Access, Unfinished, whatever you'd like to call it, is just a way for a company to say "we're not done yet." The game has been in EA for almost 2 years now, and considering the immense complexity of the game that's not really too bad. Minecraft, a game of blocks, was in Beta for almost a year.

I'd imagine that all of us, even myself, would be having a different conversation if this game was fully released and we were in the same situation... That's why those tags get thrown around all the time.

[SwatArk]

2 hours ago, JesterSuave said:

Sorry I missed your post because I thought you just quoted mine.

I can understand the butthurt of the Console community, as they have almost no other way to play than the base game (with some setting tweaks) and still paid a mighty penny for it.

You had a lot of good words, and what I would consider legit criticism with intent to foster a better alternative, which the original post was speaking to, so I thank you for that.

So the only real response to your post I have is of the above quote.

Team Fortress 2 was in beta for, what, 6 years? Gmail had 100 million users and had been in beta for 5 years when they officially took the label off. Now before people flip out, I understand those are both free, they're just examples of successful products that sat in beta for an extended amount of time. Beta, Early Access, Unfinished, whatever you'd like to call it, is just a way for a company to say "we're not done yet." The game has been in EA for almost 2 years now, and considering the immense complexity of the game that's not really too bad. Minecraft, a game of blocks, was in Beta for almost a year.

I'd imagine that all of us, even myself, would be having a different conversation if this game was fully released and we were in the same situation... That's why those tags get thrown around all the time.

Yeah my bad on the reply lol. I understand it's in early access and I really really want ARK to fully realease because it truly is a game like no other. But my concern is that by the time WC can fully realease the game will already be dead on arrival. Because I mean if we're being honest since it's been in ea for nearly 2 years it's gathered a massive fan base. So IF and it's a big if because again we just don't know where the majority lies but if it lies against the flyer nerf then even on full realease ark may not keep its player base. I suspect mk3 of the buffs may bring things back to a reasonable spot but who knows. I don't trust the # of subscribers on a mod but there's definitely some genuine concerns. As far as my opinion goes the only flyer my tribe and I use is the quetz to farm metal as it might be a "cheaper" way of raiding but we didnt use suicide Pteras we just spam about 75-100 brontos on a base so are tactics won't change much. I just don't want WC nerfing every little thing they decide is "OP". 

[SusanCS]

3 hours ago, powerstuck said:

Yet we're about to get the 2 year anniversary candy. 

People need to realize that Early Access is just another transformation of the gaming industry helping developers see if their time is worth the effort BEFORE taking all the risks. 

In 10 years time we will probably collectively realize Early Access was one big scam. There are games that were part of EA, never released and haven't been further developed (read have been untouched for over a whole year). Why do everyone think Ark won't be one of those ? 

Simple answer is yes. World of Warcraft is one of the biggest if not the biggest MMO we've ever seen and there have been more than one controversial change to the game that was made. Prior and post-expansion releases. 

If Jat supports the idea of a flyer.ini thing...why was it so urgent that the flyer nerf be applied right then and there ? 

I mean, it could have been tested out of our release and given a thought. A simple analysis instead of giving us a ''flyer nerf'' 3 days before release without a single detail and then pushing it creating a massive storm. No explanation.

Why not, do it like they did before ? Give official servers what devs think is good, and give the private servers option to ignore that modification or adopt it. Then, as you further make changes, leave the option to private servers to adopt latest changes or keep ignoring them ?

What was hard about that ? Let me tell you what. Devs knew they were going to make A LOT of people unhappy. They didn't wanted to see a massive exodus off official servers to private servers that chose to ''ignore the nerf''. That's why it didn't happen. 

 

Early Access is the most common excuse I see about this game. But for how long does that excuse holds true ? How long is it reasonable for a game to remain in Early Access stage ? 

To all people saying you knew what you were getting into when you bought an EA game. Well guess what, we're a few hundred thousand people that did gave a big push to this game to reach the level it is at today. If all of us said ''Meh, i'll wait till it officially releases'', I can assure you the game would have been dropped a while ago. Let's remember that SE DLC gave devs $40M of much needed funds. 

Jer (Jeremy), not Jat. Either way though sometimes it really does take a while for someone to do the technical work to expose options to ini. I specifically pleaded the case myself, and he explained that he felt with the current production schedule he couldn't make time to offer ini options on this nerf soon. Additionally i think the work would take even longer than usual as it involved so many species.

[powerstuck]

2 hours ago, SusanCS said:

Jer (Jeremy), not Jat. Either way though sometimes it really does take a while for someone to do the technical work to expose options to ini. I specifically pleaded the case myself, and he explained that he felt with the current production schedule he couldn't make time to offer ini options on this nerf soon. Additionally i think the work would take even longer than usual as it involved so many species.

I get that. But I ask my question again : 

How hard, complicated, hurtful to the game and the community, would it have been to work on a proper flyer nerf. Get community ideas of what should be nerfed, how, etc. And take time to work on the fix or nerf. Take time to build an alternative ini version. 

I am honestly asking, because the way the nerf was imposed, with a 3 day warning, what it did was piss off a good chunk of the community without really solving any major issues. All I am hearing left and right, that yes flyers are not what they are, but when it comes to PVP people are still duping items, so be it player duping 100000000000000000 of ascendant rockets for a raid or dropping 100000000000000000 C4 charges off a ptera, the issue, the main issue is till there. 

I know things go take time. I am just asking where and what was the emergency to squeeze the flyer nerf into patch 256, a patch that could have been one of the best patches, but that got written in history as one of worse because of the nerf. 

[SusanCS]

11 hours ago, powerstuck said:

I get that. But I ask my question again : 

How hard, complicated, hurtful to the game and the community, would it have been to work on a proper flyer nerf. Get community ideas of what should be nerfed, how, etc. And take time to work on the fix or nerf. Take time to build an alternative ini version. 

I am honestly asking, because the way the nerf was imposed, with a 3 day warning, what it did was piss off a good chunk of the community without really solving any major issues. All I am hearing left and right, that yes flyers are not what they are, but when it comes to PVP people are still duping items, so be it player duping 100000000000000000 of ascendant rockets for a raid or dropping 100000000000000000 C4 charges off a ptera, the issue, the main issue is till there. 

I know things go take time. I am just asking where and what was the emergency to squeeze the flyer nerf into patch 256, a patch that could have been one of the best patches, but that got written in history as one of worse because of the nerf. 

It's not for me to divulge the production schedule  but they have genuine reasons as to when they do what they do. As to how it was done, I personally agree it could have been done differently to cause a lot less anger and difficulty.

[powerstuck]

24 minutes ago, SusanCS said:

It's not for me to divulge the production schedule  but they have genuine reasons as to when they do what they do. As to how it was done, I personally agree it could have been done differently to cause a lot less anger and difficulty.

I would love to hear a dev on why was it necessary to do 256+flyer nerf at the same time. 

Take volcano as an example, we have no idea when the modifications will be implemented, but we already have a pretty darn good idea where not to build if we want to avoid chaos when it does happen. If someone complains they lost stuff on volcano when the volcano update happens, it is only their fault. Same sadly cannot be said for flyer nerf. 

[Bigskybear]

On 4/11/2017 at 1:12 PM, JesterSuave said:

 

 

On 4/11/2017 at 1:12 PM, JesterSuave said:

I'm not sure what disclaimers came with the console versions since I've played only PC, but it seems to be a trend that console players thought they were getting the released version. so I can't argue with that too much.

I'm not sure why. I'm on XBOX myself, it was in the description plain as day on the XBOX store. I knew it was Early Access before I even clicked the trailer.

[Critter]

I don't know. 

All I know is I paid for the game so I consider myself more than just a game tester. 

[Poltron]

20 hours ago, DankestKhan said:

The problem is official servers. The fact that officials are persistent/always up, are insanely grindy to do every activity from resource gathering to taming and breeding, has led to the current state of the community.

Of course people are upset that their tame/breed they've spent days of real time perfecting becomes useless. I totally get that.

The fault for all of this is with the devs- not for changing things in an alpha game, but for promoting official servers which require such insane grind to do anything when they are still changing things constantly. Example: the volcano is going to erupt now. Bye bye volcano base you spent days to build on an official server.

If you play on private or solo servers, none of this is a problem. Admin cheat yourself up and subscribe to mods and you won't flip out because nothing that you've done has taken the sacrifice of your firstborn and all your other hobbies to accomplish.

I understand, but I would disagree that the fault is on the dev.

We all play on borrowed air. 

They may wipe everything tomorrow, in a month, in a year, or never.

Most people that are upset about "wasting time" on building a volcano base, or breeding X species to perfection, or farming X resources, seems to forget that it's all borrowed air.

We, as player/tester, are making the choice to do this. To take the time to do this. And I assume you all have fun while doing it.

If you're not having fun while doing it, why are you doing it?

 

Currently, I'm breeding dire bears and ovis, for the fun of it. Trying to get some good tames out of them for the future. But tomorrow, if they nerf mutton and direbears, who's to blame? Me and only me. I'm fully aware that any part of the game can do 180 turn, for everything and everyone.

 

I'll voice my opinion in a constructive manner afterward if I feel it necessary, but I wont blame nobody except me for the time lost on borrowed air.

 

 

 

[XaralDoBruxo]

1 hour ago, powerstuck said:

I would love to hear a dev on why was it necessary to do 256+flyer nerf at the same time. 

Take volcano as an example, we have no idea when the modifications will be implemented, but we already have a pretty darn good idea where not to build if we want to avoid chaos when it does happen. If someone complains they lost stuff on volcano when the volcano update happens, it is only their fault. Same sadly cannot be said for flyer nerf. 

There will still be people who will complain. Remember the Redwood Update? Even with a month of delay. Even with a freaking barrier warning they were not safe.

Regarding the nerf... Well, they said they were nerfing speed and stamina at one point...but by that time too much speculation was kicking around, and people tend to believe only in what they want.

 

Now, for the complaints about the devs. I fully agree comunication with userbase is not stellar. However, most people don't grasp that software development have satges, and something that is reported today, might not be slotted for a full month or even more. That is not not hearing us, that is - in a worst case scenario - bad project planning. Bugs cannot and must not get full priority over furthering the development, otherwise user who don't suffer from a set of bugs will start to complain that the game does not get any new content added.

I would also like to see the players that complain about a bug or another to present evidence as they have submitted the corresponding bug report. As previously stated forums are not a bug reporting mechanism.

Software testers are not involved in designing an application. They are involved in the analisys. That, in turn leads to designing. Of course, some companies might choose to fuse the two processes together. Bottom line, every software developer stipulates their workflow as they see fit.

Given enough power to us "testers", we would end up with a dino-themed "Call of Duty - Infinite Warfare".

 

The only thing Wildcard desperately needs is a better comunication strategy, IMHO.

[Poltron]

12 hours ago, powerstuck said:

I get that. But I ask my question again : 

How hard, complicated, hurtful to the game and the community, would it have been to work on a proper flyer nerf. Get community ideas of what should be nerfed, how, etc. And take time to work on the fix or nerf. Take time to build an alternative ini version. 

I am honestly asking, because the way the nerf was imposed, with a 3 day warning, what it did was piss off a good chunk of the community without really solving any major issues. All I am hearing left and right, that yes flyers are not what they are, but when it comes to PVP people are still duping items, so be it player duping 100000000000000000 of ascendant rockets for a raid or dropping 100000000000000000 C4 charges off a ptera, the issue, the main issue is till there. 

I know things go take time. I am just asking where and what was the emergency to squeeze the flyer nerf into patch 256, a patch that could have been one of the best patches, but that got written in history as one of worse because of the nerf. 

I think you see all this from a finished game point of view.

It would make no sense to nerf flyers to the ground in a finished game, and people would have the rights to be angry there.

This game however is early access. All borrowed air, and nobody except the devs knows where the train is going.

What doesnt make sense now may make a lot more sense in a couple weeks/months, after everything's been tweaked to match this nerf. And it may not, and at that time, we'll be able to voice our opinion by weighting the situation as a whole, not just a part of it.

Just look at the weight reduction for doed, anky, mammoth etc. If you only look at the flyer nerf in a vaccum, within the old way of farming, you scream. If you now look at all the game as a whole, it's actually in a better shape. And nothing stops the devs from tweaking the numbers, and I'm pretty sure they will, for every part of the game.