Timesink vs Actual Content?

[LilNastyGurl]

I see this argument a lot. Flying is a Timesink. Breeding is a Timesink. Crops are a Timesink. Collecting Thatch is a Timesick. Filling Troughs is a Timesink. Harvesting Metal is a Timesink. Levelling Dinos is a Timesink.

I'm sure some of these are just "I am not entertained by these activities" rather than actual timesinks, but really, it's a question I really want to know the answer to.

Isn't ALL of the Gameplay in ARK: Survival Evolved a timesink?

Like, if you cut out ALL of the timesinks in ARK, what would you replace them with? What would be left?

What are the timesinks?

[SingleSidedPCB]

Its more about finding the golden ratio of time and effort vs reward.

and is that time and effort entertaining, or are you just standing around, doing nothing, waiting.

[GigathisGigathat]

It's all a time sink, but they found a niche of gamers where allot time into a goal equals a reward. Higher time into a project meant the higher reward etc etc.

Remember when the rates where at 1 vs. where they are now?

Back in the day if you had any level of quetz or bred anything, you where consider a God! .. or didn't have a life lol

Now everyone and their tribe have several after a 2 week starter grind or less. 

[Shrekasaurus]

8 minutes ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

Its more about finding the golden ratio of time and effort vs reward.

and is that time and effort entertaining, or are you just standing around, doing nothing, waiting.

 

I assume there is a lot more standing around in PVE than PVP for obvious reasons.

[LadyCrescent]

From my perspective, Ark is a labor of love. There's a lot of doing things that aren't especially exciting...i.e. gathering stone for hours, for instance. But if I gather enough stone, I can build a beautiful home for myself.

The hours I sink into searching for high level dimorphodons...finding nothing special day after day, eventually will give me breeding pairs.

And all of the "grindy" things to that point, transit time to and from the resource runs that eventually accumulate into the means to make refrigerators and air conditioners combines with all those hours gathering rocks that let me build a special facility just for breeding my birds, all comes together to my "reward" for all the hours put in:

My favorite part of Ark is breeding; including the long hours and imprinting hassles that lets me see my bloodlines and precious birds getting stronger every generation.

So, I guess I wouldn't call Ark a time sink, but only if you understand that all the long hours invested will lead to something tremendously rewarding.

[GigathisGigathat]

3 minutes ago, LadyCrescent said:

From my perspective, Ark is a labor of love. There's a lot of doing things that aren't especially exciting...i.e. gathering stone for hours, for instance. But if I gather enough stone, I can build a beautiful home for myself.

The hours I sink into searching for high level dimorphodons...finding nothing special day after day, eventually will give me breeding pairs.

And all of the "grindy" things to that point, transit time to and from the resource runs that eventually accumulate into the means to make refrigerators and air conditioners combines with all those hours gathering rocks that let me build a special facility just for breeding my birds, all comes together to my "reward" for all the hours put in:

My favorite part of Ark is breeding; including the long hours and imprinting hassles that lets me see my bloodlines and precious birds getting stronger every generation.

So, I guess I wouldn't call Ark a time sink, but only if you understand that all the long hours invested will lead to something tremendously rewarding.

Thanks for proving my point, but you could of at least gaven me a quote post

[LadyCrescent]

1 minute ago, GigathisGigathat said:

Thanks for proving my point, but you could of at least gaven me a quote post

Sorry about that. Will an upvote suffice? ?

[GigathisGigathat]

1 minute ago, LadyCrescent said:

Sorry about that. Will an upvote suffice? ?

Muwah! Lol

[Jim359]

Unless its an action game I think every game out there is a time sink.  Like someone said though.  Its what you get for your time.  I like the breeding taking time for the full imprint.  I liked level 120 brontos taking 16 hours to tame.  Hell a 120 rex should of taken 48 hours IMHO to tame (tames should be allowed to be assisted though).  But so many ppl want instant gratification today that game companies go with the flow.

[DankestKhan]

41 minutes ago, Jim359 said:

Unless its an action game I think every game out there is a time sink.  Like someone said though.  Its what you get for your time.  I like the breeding taking time for the full imprint.  I liked level 120 brontos taking 16 hours to tame.  Hell a 120 rex should of taken 48 hours IMHO to tame (tames should be allowed to be assisted though).  But so many ppl want instant gratification today that game companies go with the flow.

not all of us want to play a grindy mmorpg. thankfully the devs decided to allow players to experience the game the way they choose to with mods and boosted rates.

[Faivon]

1 hour ago, LadyCrescent said:

From my perspective, Ark is a labor of love. There's a lot of doing things that aren't especially exciting...i.e. gathering stone for hours, for instance. But if I gather enough stone, I can build a beautiful home for myself.

The hours I sink into searching for high level dimorphodons...finding nothing special day after day, eventually will give me breeding pairs.

And all of the "grindy" things to that point, transit time to and from the resource runs that eventually accumulate into the means to make refrigerators and air conditioners combines with all those hours gathering rocks that let me build a special facility just for breeding my birds, all comes together to my "reward" for all the hours put in:

My favorite part of Ark is breeding; including the long hours and imprinting hassles that lets me see my bloodlines and precious birds getting stronger every generation.

So, I guess I wouldn't call Ark a time sink, but only if you understand that all the long hours invested will lead to something tremendously rewarding.

My concern is what will WC do in the future that will make your labor of love obsolete. Maybe they decided where you build is nice for a waterfall then in the next update they tell you to move. Maybe you breed a lot of high speed quetz for months and... well, you guessed it. They nerfed fliers to oblivion. All those "time sink" and "labor of love" goes down the drain. It's nice that they have industrial cooker, chemistry bench and other crafting stations to make things less grindy and such a time-saver; I dunno what will WC do about it though. 

 

[LadyCrescent]

20 minutes ago, Faivon said:

My concern is what will WC do in the future that will make your labor of love obsolete. Maybe they decided where you build is nice for a waterfall then in the next update they tell you to move. Maybe you breed a lot of high speed quetz for months and... well, you guessed it. They nerfed fliers to oblivion. All those "time sink" and "labor of love" goes down the drain. It's nice that they have industrial cooker, chemistry bench and other crafting stations to make things less grindy and such a time-saver; I dunno what will WC do about it though. 

 

They might. It's always a possibility.

They've nerfed my dimorphodons before...I recovered. The redwoods on The Island were dropped squarely on the build site I had spent months and months working on...as it happened, the top of Grand Peak was untouched, and I got to keep my castle.

I've played on Xbox from the beginning, and moved to PC recently. In that time I've dodged blunders like accidental server wipes by sheer good luck...and rumors that the pets and structures were deleted off the floating island on The Center has left me too scared to even download updates since then...and even if / when I find out if I was affected I know I'll be coming back to my Scorched Earth game facing the reality that all of my beloved wyverns are useless now.

But, in spite of all of that, I still love this game. I've cried a lot, been through times that I wondered if walking away was the right choice, because I get too attached to my pets.

However, here's what I've learned from all the heartache.

In the end, all of my hard work could be gone tomorrow. All the pets I've become so attached to could be taken away. And certainly it would be heartbreaking.

But, even if it was all gone tomorrow, does that invalidate the joy and pleasure that Ark has given me every day for more than a year?

No.

I would be furious, heartbroken...and have some very unkind things to say about WildCard while I went through the grieving.

But Ark has made me happy in a way no other game ever has. And I've come to understand that it's best to enjoy what I have each day. I take pictures, as silly as it is to say, of my pets...my completed builds, and I enjoy every day I spend in Ark.

It could all be gone tomorrow, but today I am happy.

And while it took me time to understand it, I know that once I found closure if it was all taken away... I would start over, build better castles, find new pets to love, and be happy again.

[Faivon]

17 minutes ago, LadyCrescent said:

They might. It's always a possibility.

They've nerfed my dimorphodons before...I recovered. The redwoods on The Island were dropped squarely on the build site I had spent months and months working on...as it happened, the top of Grand Peak was untouched, and I got to keep my castle.

I've played on Xbox from the beginning, and moved to PC recently. In that time I've dodged blunders like accidental server wipes by sheer good luck...and rumors that the pets and structures were deleted off the floating island on The Center has left me too scared to even download updates since then...and even if / when I find out if I was affected I know I'll be coming back to my Scorched Earth game facing the reality that all of my beloved wyverns are useless now.

But, in spite of all of that, I still love this game. I've cried a lot, been through times that I wondered if walking away was the right choice, because I get too attached to my pets.

However, here's what I've learned from all the heartache.

In the end, all of my hard work could be gone tomorrow. All the pets I've become so attached to could be taken away. And certainly it would be heartbreaking.

But, even if it was all gone tomorrow, does that invalidate the joy and pleasure that Ark has given me every day for more than a year?

No.

I would be furious, heartbroken...and have some very unkind things to say about WildCard while I went through the grieving.

But Ark has made me happy in a way no other game ever has. And I've come to understand that it's best to enjoy what I have each day. I take pictures, as silly as it is to say, of my pets...my completed builds, and I enjoy every day I spend in Ark.

It could all be gone tomorrow, but today I am happy.

And while it took me time to understand it, I know that once I found closure if it was all taken away... I would start over, build better castles, find new pets to love, and be happy again.

That's a very good attitude. I began to learn that too recently. A lot of my friends quit since the flier nerf and I'm now the only one in my tribe along with my large base and very tall wall. I don't have plans in the future since I dunno what WC got in mind so I'm just feeding my dinos for now and I dunno, live in the moment? Just playing around and doing what I think is fun because heck, like you said, they might take everything away from me tomorrow and if that happens, I'll got nothing to lose and maybe can finally try something else like pre-generated maps for fun or primitive+ 

However I still dislike making big plans and project as I really truly don't know what will happen in the future. It hits me hard when all my fliers were nerfed into oblivion. Uhmm, I'm talking in circles here lol! What I mean is I used to play the game in timesink style; Breeding, raising dinos, build big bases, etc. It took most of my time and it used to felt so rewarding but it's all gone. Now I just play the game like an action game like a true survivor.

[DESTROYER]

4 hours ago, LilNastyGurl said:

Isn't ALL of the Gameplay in ARK: Survival Evolved a timesink?

Truthfully yes but it's based on opinion if you enjoy it then it's not a timesink.

The thing is it's not easy making good content  last awhile without making some sort of grind, it's the way almost every game is going these days.

In every game you will find repetition in one form or another like a low drop rate or collect x amount of something sometimes it's kill x amount of enemies or simply a absurdly expensive item.

Just think of mmos like eso they add timesinks everywhere to increase the life of the game.

And call of duty the prestige in short is a rinse and repeat of leveling.

I will drag gta v into my example if you want some car modifications you need to win x amount of race's.

[Woodsman]

Dont forget crafting. I think crafting is a major time sink. When youre out gathering wood or stone youre also wandering around exploring and seeing the wildlife so its not completely a time sink. But crafting youre just standing around waiting for hundreds of ceilings or walls to be made.

[Quetzal]

33 minutes ago, Woodsman said:

Dont forget crafting. I think crafting is a major time sink. When youre out gathering wood or stone youre also wandering around exploring and seeing the wildlife so its not completely a time sink. But crafting youre just standing around waiting for hundreds of ceilings or walls to be made.

Yeah, but what's the alternative? Should there be home improvement stores in the game so you can just go and buy ready-made walls etc? We're supposed to put the effort into crafting - I'm not sure how that can be a timesink (at least, not in a negative aspect) because it's just a fundamental element of this type of game. You know what you're buying into beforehand so it's just a game mechanic.

[SingleSidedPCB]

4 hours ago, Quetzal said:

Yeah, but what's the alternative? Should there be home improvement stores in the game so you can just go and buy ready-made walls etc? We're supposed to put the effort into crafting - I'm not sure how that can be a timesink (at least, not in a negative aspect) because it's just a fundamental element of this type of game. You know what you're buying into beforehand so it's just a game mechanic.

for thatch and wood, you can get the blueprints from supply drops and offload a lot of crafting to the beaver. for metal, that's smithy crafted so if you learn the engrams again can craft it in the beaver. the only glaring gap is stone, because they never bothered to add stone blueprints

[Mendoza]

What I find sad is those people that grind out levels like a chore to "get to the point of playing the game when they finally have everything" only to then realize too late that they missed all the fun that they could have had along the journey to the top...and sadly finally say at the end of all the effort... I'm bored?

How often do you hear people say "the most fun I've had was at the beginning when I was struggling to survive against the odds"

This game is all about timesink or rather time investment...people need to be satisfied and appreciate what they have, live in the moment - ENJOY it for what it is... while hoping for something better 

 

[DarthaNyan]

9 hours ago, Faivon said:

Maybe you breed a lot of high speed quetz for months and... well, you guessed it. They nerfed fliers to oblivion. All those "time sink" and "labor of love" goes down the drain.

Speed points were refunded. If you were breeding Quetzes - you most likely focused on stamina, HP, weight and damage because speed isnt breedable and never was (do note that imprinting is not breeding, dont mix these 2). And if you put months into breeding quetzes then your current specimens will continue to be superior to others' fresh tames.

So saying that all the work gone down the drain is utterly incorrect.

25 minutes ago, Mendoza said:

What I find sad is those people that grind out levels like a chore to "get to the point of playing the game when they finally have everything" only to then realize too late that they missed all the fun that they could have had along the journey to the top...and sadly finally say at the end of all the effort... I'm bored?

How often do you hear people say "the most fun I've had was at the beginning when I was struggling to survive against the odds"

This game is all about timesink or rather time investment...people need to be satisfied and appreciate what they have, live in the moment - ENJOY it for what it is... while hoping for something better 

Yup.

[Kaoslion]

11 hours ago, LilNastyGurl said:

I see this argument a lot. Flying is a Timesink. Breeding is a Timesink. Crops are a Timesink. Collecting Thatch is a Timesick. Filling Troughs is a Timesink. Harvesting Metal is a Timesink. Levelling Dinos is a Timesink.

I'm sure some of these are just "I am not entertained by these activities" rather than actual timesinks, but really, it's a question I really want to know the answer to.

Isn't ALL of the Gameplay in ARK: Survival Evolved a timesink?

Like, if you cut out ALL of the timesinks in ARK, what would you replace them with? What would be left?

What are the timesinks?

This game is a Time sink, The type of grind this game has usually accumulates into a massive multi player in-depth story line. Yup MMORPG! That is the direction I thought Ark would be moving into when I first started playing on Steam and continued playing on console. Now that the only story coming out seems to be explorer notes and boss battles. For what bigger and better gear? I'm starting to become disenchanted with Ark. After taming countless Quetz's, Giga's, and Mosa's. I've learned the easiest way to solo tame these with out much fear of a "Perfect Tame" being ruined much less resulting in a player death.  It is a Time sink, but it is a fun one especially when new content is added. 

[Bedrock006]

I think in the world where there are so many entertainment choices we have become spoiled thinking every thing is tailor made for our tastes, but that shouldn't be the way we look at it. I believe we should just enjoy the fact that we have internet, height definition tvs and games that are so amazing that I just stare in amazement and I don't even get to see what PC sees. I had a PS4 it was amazing, and if my PS4 wasn't old I would still have it going, but it was old and worked hard so I upgraded to a pro. The change was amazing rendering better everything. PC is even better just saying if you can't appreciate the game maybe you haven't been playing games long enough and need to understand 30 years ago it was pong. 80 years ago no tv. The. Years from now imagine.

[Jim359]

 

3 hours ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

for thatch and wood, you can get the blueprints from supply drops and offload a lot of crafting to the beaver. for metal, that's smithy crafted so if you learn the engrams again can craft it in the beaver. the only glaring gap is stone, because they never bothered to add stone blueprints

 The lack of stone blueprints also has a huge impact on engram spending.  If you want to do any stone building you have to spend the points on thatch and wood first to buy the stone engrams.  This makes thatch/wood BP's useless.  You can of course skip stone and use metal.  I think most of us do more stone than metal building though (pve anyhow).

[Ballmann]

Isn't gaming at all a timesink? The only purpose is fun. So if someone fells like wasting his time playing a game because he has no fun playing this game why is he playing the game?

Regarding a lot of ark players have accumulated houndreds of ingame-hours the endgame content should be locked behing a decent amount of time someone needs to spend in the game at least for PvE. Or the devs want players to rush through the game in 100 hours. stop playing it and free server ressources for new players.

[Lockjaw]

12 hours ago, Faivon said:

That's a very good attitude. I began to learn that too recently. A lot of my friends quit since the flier nerf and I'm now the only one in my tribe along with my large base and very tall wall. I don't have plans in the future since I dunno what WC got in mind so I'm just feeding my dinos for now and I dunno, live in the moment? Just playing around and doing what I think is fun because heck, like you said, they might take everything away from me tomorrow and if that happens, I'll got nothing to lose and maybe can finally try something else like pre-generated maps for fun or primitive+ 

However I still dislike making big plans and project as I really truly don't know what will happen in the future. It hits me hard when all my fliers were nerfed into oblivion. Uhmm, I'm talking in circles here lol! What I mean is I used to play the game in timesink style; Breeding, raising dinos, build big bases, etc. It took most of my time and it used to felt so rewarding but it's all gone. Now I just play the game like an action game like a true survivor.

It's good that you're learning to just do what you think is fun. If you're not having fun then you're already wasting your time regardless if your stuff gets nerfed or not. And honestly everyone should have expected that sooner or later WC would work on balancing the game better. Live and learn I guess.

I'm currently in the process of breeding Rexes, Sarcos, and Kapros because I just like them and want to do it. Right now none of them are top-tier dinos. Sarcos in particular are just plain bad. But that just means that I'll have some nice buffs to look forward to whenever the TLC pass finally arrives.

EDIT: And back on topic, yes everything in Ark is a timesink. Likely a big part of the reason for this is that the gameplay is extremely simple atm. With a lot of creatures the combat system is literally just spam the attack button until your target is dead. Hopefully they eventually replace the time sink with some some actual depth to the game.

[BobRoss]

ARK is not the type of game that gets fun after you reach max level, like lol or gw1 its a game that is fun at all stages in alot of different ways. there are no timesinks in this game, only things that require time and effort that reward you afterwards.

stop rushing all the good parts of the game, you will miss it afterwards. i know i do, played since day 1 and i miss the first months so much, where raptors mattered and people used dilo packs to hunt