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State of the ARK - Updates


Jatheish

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Hey guys,

Latest update of the 14th of July:

We're still working on the update guys, unfortunately, we lost a day (possibly more based on opportunity) due to a software issue out of our control. Thankfully it's now working again, so we're still hard at work to get the updates out to you. PC has now released with version 262 and we'll be working accordingly to make that available to console players as soon as possible.

It will likely come out on Xbox first and then once it's ready and stable, we'll help Abstraction wrap it up for PS4. Thank you so much for your patience, I know it's been a chaotic time! We're very close to wrapping up this disc submission.

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Whew, it's been a while since we've had to post one of these State of the Game posts -- but there's a lot going on at the moment, and it might get a little crazy, so we'll do our best to keep you informed on how things are going to be for the next 2 weeks.

4th of July - Ragnarok update for console has been postponed to the 19th of July and Xbox Received a hotfix today to resolve an engram issue, an out of memory crash related to Dino Meshes (hence origami dinos), and critical spawn fixes to the hibernation system (currently active in Single Player and Non Dedicated servers).

This wasn't a big patch, but a small one aiming to resolve these critical problems which were severely impacting many players able to play the game, primarily those in large tribes on Official Servers. Why the need for this hotfix? We recently increased the visual quality of our creatures, but in turn, this resulted in those creatures now taking up significantly more memory and when you've got a large base, with a lot of dinos you ran out of memory quickly.

We've introduced a measure which will control how the memory is allocated and streamed, therefore resulting in people seeing origami looking creatures in their base. This is because the amount of memory allocated for mesh-streaming has already been used, though as you unload memory through playing, new things will get updated and will progress from origami looking to high-quality. It takes about 2 minutes for something to unload completely.

This won't really affect small bases as much, but it will impact larger looking bases. We had to put this in to prevent players from having an out of memory crash which would shut down the application and return you to the dashboard. Our engineers are working on improving the logic so that the streaming is much smoother and efficient so you'll see less origami-looking creatures, as well as working on an optimisation which will get us to a decent level of detail without costing too much memory (also resulting in less origami). 

When can we expect the next set of updates?

We are currently working on a new major version internally for PC and we'll hopefully be able to release that v. early morning EST on the 5th, or a bit later. It will be similar to the other patches and contain a number of bug fixes, QOL changes, and some gameplay related changes. Once we get that out on PC, we'll be doing a port over to Xbox and we're aiming for that to come out on Friday (7th). Obviously, these are all ETAs and depending on what happens, the times can change -- but that's what we're aiming for. 

What about PS4?

Right now our main focus is getting Xbox in a good state, and then we'll be able to port over the changes with Abstraction to PS4. We're doing a lot of the hard work now so that process will be smoother later on, and we expect to drop that update around the 12th. This will get all 3 versions of the game to generally the same place / on the same version etc. From there we'll be working on wrapping up Ragnarok on console, and it's likely the PC version will also receive an update (and yes, console would get the same version of Ragnarok that is on PC).

Ragnarok

I know you guys are frustrated by the delays, believe me, we're disappointed too, however, the work we're doing now is better for both the long term and short term health of the game's development. Delays suck, let's face it -- we thought we would be able to hit out target release dates better this month, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. It is much more important for us and beneficial for you with Ragnarok having a delay to the 19th so we can focus on wrapping up these console builds and getting those versions of the game in an excellent state. Rest assured, you will get the map, as well as all these other fixes and improvements, you'll just need to wait a little longer. 

If you haven't seen, we're also currently collecting reports for issues and if you've got something you think we should check out, let us know:

It's insanely busy here and everyone is working very hard to get these patches out to you! We're sorry if it's a little crazier than normal right now :D

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Gameplay is waaaay more important than graphics. I'm just glad the tribe can smoothly play again. I'm perfectly fine with the origami dinos until it gets sorted out lol. Feel free to take out grass/tree movement, dino tail swaying and dino head interactions if it further helps. Gameplay is king. We just want a smooth running fun game more than an exceptionally great looking game if we had to choose. Just my opinion.

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Thanks Jat for the better details concerning these issues. I will pass this onto my players of my server as soon as I can. That being said, this constant case of not hitting release date targets, is way beyond a joke... A lot of us, your player base love the game, but these constant disappointments will end up driving us away, if it continues.. ? Keep us informed & keep up the good work. 

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Honestly I'd rather see a update about duping and a announcement on a wipe or not. The rest of this post was already stuff that most of us already knew. Also I'd like @lilpanda to maybe let us know about servers and cloud stuff the tech side and what u guys are doing to improve serverside and ddos protection. Thanks  

but this post is good too

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2 minutes ago, Captnmorgan said:

Honestly I'd rather see a update about duping and a announcement on a wipe or not. The rest of this post was already stuff that most of us already knew. Also I'd like @lilpanda to maybe let us know about servers and cloud stuff the tech side and what u guys are doing to improve serverside and ddos protection. Thanks

Panda mentioned something about this recently.

 

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1 minute ago, Captnmorgan said:

Honestly I'd rather see a update about duping and a announcement on a wipe or not. The rest of this post was already stuff that most of us already knew. Also I'd like @lilpanda to maybe let us know about servers and cloud stuff the tech side and what u guys are doing to improve serverside and ddos protection. Thanks

Yeah. What he said.

Duping is a serious problem in this game. A plague. Most people have to resort to duping themselves just to be able to compete with the dupers. This does not make for fun gameplay

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1 minute ago, GP said:

Panda mentioned something about this recently.

 

Thanks gp you are the best as usual.. but yeah I'd still like a longer explanation and his plan off attack. I really enjoy learning the tech side and reading about it. Just me I'm wierd like that lol

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You know what. It's not ok. Not this time. A lot of people are going to smile and nod and say you guys are doing a good job and usually I would smile and nod right along with them. But it's been delay after delay after delay. It's been so bad you guys forced a patch out only to have it break your already fragile game. How can you expect to keep people playing when the game keeps getting worse? What's the point anymore? Try to go into a cave and you crash fly towards a certain Ob and you crash. Stop announcing content we will never see on time. Don't have a big e3 announcement complete with release date and than delay it. It's not fair to the people who, and this boggled my mind as well, actually took time off work for the release of said content. Before anyone gives me the "It's a game preview" argument I am aware. But at what point do we stop making excuses? They are at the big fixing stage of said game preview. No more dinos to be released it was supposed to be optimization from now on right? Aside from Ragnarok that is. I for one am tired of expecting this game to get better , tired of hoping they'll hit a release date on time. It's ridiculous to expect so much of a game right? So from now on I expect nothing. Not a thing. I don't expect my stuff to be where I left it. My dinos to keep their levels, nothing. I'm gonna go into your game expecting it to break. Because that's the only way to stop being disappointed.

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Online gameplay right now i basically a Pyramid, with all of the cheaters and douche bags at the top because they're the most determined to ruin the experience for everyone else.

What we really need is some sort of equalizer between Tek tribes and Metal tribes. Maybe expand on industrial tier, add more worthwhile metal weapons (i.e. A mace, to counter clubs perhaps?)

If you added more low-tech weaponry to utilise the game would become less about time and more about intelligence and skill. Well, the game is already sort've about intelligence. I still see idiots gathering resources by hand. 

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