WC: Why don't you like the Center?

[Rahthos]

I'll make this post simple.

1) What happened to all the spawns on the volcano? Life was great, then poof, all gone. Dimetrodons, Rexes, all gone.

2) What is with the thick and constant atmospheric fog? You cannot enjoy the beauty of the map when it's this constant.

3) According to the Center creator, it is apart of your plan to make it so all tek engrams are not acquireable on the center. Why?

4) What happened to all those islands off in the distance to the west of the map? I don't care overly, but again, poof, gone.

5) Why claim you don't want the dragon boss on the Center, if the Gorilla and Spider are fine? No replacements? Just gone?

For a map you guys don't care a whole lot about, it seems you enjoy taking taking things away from it. Why pigeonhole players into playing the Island? I just don't understand why you can't make things fairly balanced across all maps and keep the options open for people who prefer one map over the other. 

Why do you all ignore every post on the fog, lighting and Center? It's a trend I've been noticing. A little transparency, please.

[LouSpowells]

"Why don't you like the Center?" Well...I'm pretty sure they do.

This post takes me back 25 years to elementary school when kids would ask each other questions like, "Do your parents know you eat boogers!!" It's impossible to answer the question if you don't eat boogers. 
 

[Rahthos]

4 minutes ago, LouSpowells said:

"Why don't you like the Center?" Well...I'm pretty sure they do.

This post takes me back 25 years to elementary school when kids would ask each other questions like, "Do your parents know you eat boogers!!" It's impossible to answer the question if you don't eat boogers. 
 

They do? Then why do they keep making backwards choices, like removing everything from an entire area without a peep? Or making the map hardly visible 50% of the time, or removing core boss fights that advance progression, just because they don't want to share the same bosses, YET the other two bosses are fine. Not a whole lot makes sense and while the question may be worded like a kid in elementary school, your post wasn't constructive in the least.

[Jostabeere]

Because the Center isn't an official WC map and they do not work on the Center?

The creator makes the map. Spawns, fog and other things are done by him, not WC. He poofed the islands. He made the choice to remove stuff from an area. I have no idea why though. Optimization or he thought this place isn't needed anymore. Ask Center dev guy.

[wallaby]

try living on SE where there's 1 boss and 3 caves seriously ur complaining about the centre lacking features? are you serious!   obviously there vision is to have people travel to other arks and not just sit on 1.

[Rahthos]

Just now, Jostabeere said:

Because the Center isn't an official WC map and they do not work on the Center?

The creator makes the map. Spawns, fog and other things are done by him, not WC. He poofed the islands.

This isn't true. Well, it is to some degree. He works on the map and they go with it, but with regards to boss fights and adding in new things like tek engrams, they give the go ahead on that and he follows suit. His hands are tied at the moment judging by his responses on twitter.

The fog issue, you are right, he most likely did boost that a bit, but why aren't they concerned? You can't see poop half of the time.

[Rahthos]

3 minutes ago, wallaby said:

try living on SE where there's 1 boss and 3 caves seriously ur complaining about the centre lacking features? are you serious!   obviously there vision is to have people travel to other arks and not just sit on 1.

No, they want to keep people on the Island. If they wanted people to travel to other ARKs then they would have given Center unique engrams or whatever to give people more incentive to go over there, instead of taking engrams that the Island has away from us. There's no incentive to go to the Center from the Island, unless to build.

Scorched Earth was a beefy DLC, one of the biggest DLCs I've ever seen released for a game. The only people who are begging for new features are the people who claim they didn't get their $30 worth, when they obviously did. SE is a big addition to the game. The Center, people just want it to have the basics. It's not about new features.

[Jostabeere]

2 minutes ago, Rahthos said:

This isn't true. Well, it is to some degree. He works on the map and they go with it, but with regards to boss fights and adding in new things like tek engrams, they give the go ahead on that and he follows suit. His hands are tied at the moment judging by his responses on twitter.

The fog issue, you are right, he most likely did boost that a bit, but why aren't they concerned? You can't see poop half of the time.

Well, to be honest, I understand why they tie his hands on bosses. Center should not be the main map, and therefor WC wan't to keep it "less important". I think.

[Rahthos]

11 minutes ago, Jostabeere said:

Well, to be honest, I understand why they tie his hands on bosses. Center should not be the main map, and therefor WC wan't to keep it "less important". I think.

I guess we can agree to disagree on that one. What consitutes a main map, when a game like this has such limited features after a certain point of breeding and doing bosses? It's a beautiful, fun as hell timesink, this game, but the main map thing is just an illusion. Whatever captivates the player the most should be a main map. If they told people when the Center was made an official DLC map that it wouldn't getting the full extent of tek, just because, how do you think that would go? It's silly, but it's their game so I can't stop them if that's what they want to.

For unofficial server hosts it sucks, as we like to switch it up and break down some of those boundaries, but by keeping the Island the main map, it's just requiring us to keep paying for/hosting a server that people may not actually want to play on. I figure this may all be Jeremy's vision or something and it's not the end of the world, I just don't get what the harm is in throwing up those arenas and engrams on other maps. Many will still love the island and see the incentive to play it with the new tek cave, which I fully understand won't be apart of the Center.

Whether it's WC or Ben, I think I'm mainly upset about the constant fog and lack of volcano spawns. I can deal with the boss stuff.

[Jostabeere]

What constituted a main map? If the map is made by the main game development team and is officially made the main map. Not that it was taken as an official mod and is developed by someone who is not the games devteam. Imo.

I disagree with you on the captivation of the Center. I think this map is horrendous. Not the landscape itself, but the system behind it. The spawns of this map are beyond broken, dinos do not recognize structures and spawn on, beneath or inside houses, it runs worse than the Island because it's too much for the engine. It's eyecandy for sure. But it's like a pimped ride by Xzibit. Beneath it is still an old car.

If I would be a game dev, I wouldn't like a modded map to become more famous than my map aswell and would push it down a bit.

[Rahthos]

39 minutes ago, Jostabeere said:

What constituted a main map? If the map is made by the main game development team and is officially made the main map. Not that it was taken as an official mod and is developed by someone who is not the games devteam. Imo.

I disagree with you on the captivation of the Center. I think this map is horrendous. Not the landscape itself, but the system behind it. The spawns of this map are beyond broken, dinos do not recognize structures and spawn on, beneath or inside houses, it runs worse than the Island because it's too much for the engine. It's eyecandy for sure. But it's like a pimped ride by Xzibit. Beneath it is still an old car.

If I would be a game dev, I wouldn't like a modded map to become more famous than my map aswell and would push it down a bit.

While I am totally supportive of people getting the most out of whatever they enjoy, when it comes to the Center I can't really disagree with you. I love the look of some areas, but I only consider the Center to be a valuable building map. The spawns are indeed terrible and the map does lag and crash quite a bit. I defend it since quite a few people who play on my cluster enjoy it, but yeah, it's pretty bad. Even the Crystal Isles seems to run better, when it's much bigger, though the spawns there aren't solid, either.

[CyanicEmber]

Well, the Ragnarok Devs have stated that all three Island Bosses are being removed and replaced with exclusive bosses for Ragnarok. I don't see why The Center won't end up the same way.

And honestly, Ark is ultimately about more than just taming and building, and if players can just go off willy nilly and pick "The Center" as their first map cause it sounds... Central. They miss all that.

Players should be rewarded for playing on the Canon ARK's with completeness and cohesion. All the Unofficial ARK's are just brownie points for afterwards, in case you're interested.

[Captmeatsack]

I gave up on the center when they added that stupid forest on the edge of the map. The floating island was hard enough to get to or live on but that map after the forest biome just got so locked into zones it just turned into pointless traveling times.  No matter where you build a base land dinos become useless.  Then the flyers nerf happened and just turned the whole map into a pain staking travel fest.  

[invincibleqc]

1 hour ago, Rahthos said:

No, they want to keep people on the Island. If they wanted people to travel to other ARKs then they would have given Center unique engrams or whatever to give people more incentive to go over there, instead of taking engrams that the Island has away from us. There's no incentive to go to the Center from the Island, unless to build.

They recently added a TheCenter specific achievement so your argument is invalid.

[wallaby]

1 hour ago, Rahthos said:

 

Scorched Earth was a beefy DLC, one of the biggest DLCs I've ever seen released for a game. The only people who are begging for new features are the people who claim they didn't get their $30 worth, when they obviously did. SE is a big addition to the game. The Center, people just want it to have the basics. It's not about new features.

the centre has way more content than SE  , im not saying SE isnt good its great but it could definitely use a cave expansion update  and u go on about how im being greedy for wanting  some more features on SE whilst you literally started a thread whining about ur free map.... ok reasonable pshhh. 

[Extraterrestrial]

As people have stated already. The Center, while approved and supported by WC, is not actively worked on by WC.

It was one of the first of many approved additions to Ark, as part of their sponsored mod program.
All work and for the most part, all creative additions or subtractions to the map are done by the mod's creator.

That being said, the center is created for the most part, using assets owned by WC, so, they can really say/do
what they want with it. It's not a matter of "why don't they like it", because if they well and truly didn't like the map,
they'd never have sponsored it to begin with.

[Z0mbie]

1 hour ago, Rahthos said:

While I am totally supportive of people getting the most out of whatever they enjoy, when it comes to the Center I can't really disagree with you. I love the look of some areas, but I only consider the Center to be a valuable building map. The spawns are indeed terrible and the map does lag and crash quite a bit. I defend it since quite a few people who play on my cluster enjoy it, but yeah, it's pretty bad. Even the Crystal Isles seems to run better, when it's much bigger, though the spawns there aren't solid, either.

I would seriously consider moving to a Ragnarok map if I were you. I used to like the center map too but I grew tired of having to practically beg the map dev Ben to work on his own map and add missing spawns or fix map bugs.  I really don't think his heart is in it anymore. The devs of the Ragnarok map on the other hand are much better. They originally made a map called Valhalla which was also good but much too large for the game engine so they switched their focus to Ragnarok. Ragnarok is far and away the best ARK map to date and it should only get better.

[thefusense]

I take center as some kind of Test for the sponsored Map program.

It was a sucess to build up on the expanding content that folloed it. Like Ragnarok, which has exclusive creatures and gets actively worked on by WC

[Jostabeere]

2 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

They recently added a TheCenter specific achievement so your argument is invalid.

Which is kinda stupid in my opinion. Adding achievements for a mod map.

[Niphead]

While still relatively new and learning the game i chose Centre as my main map, now i either have to not get all the Engrams and not Ascend or transfer to an Island server try find a base location within the pillar spam and maintain 2 bases on my own.

[invincibleqc]

Just now, Niphead said:

within the pillar spam

Of course, pillars are only an issue on the island, everybody knows that.

[Hobgobblin247]

4 hours ago, wallaby said:

try living on SE where there's 1 boss and 3 caves seriously ur complaining about the centre lacking features? are you serious!   obviously there vision is to have people travel to other arks and not just sit on 1.

If it was truly their vision for people to travel to other arks for bosses, then why would they stop the ability to transfer the boss matts?

[Niphead]

22 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Of course, pillars are only an issue on the island, everybody knows that.

Please enlighten me i was honestly thinking about Transferring to Island to start bossing.

[Rahthos]

4 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

They recently added a TheCenter specific achievement so your argument is invalid.

The one where you get a costume that was present as a console skin and a mod for over 6 months now? 

Sorry, but that's not exactly the same as tek engrams.

[TranqRex]

4 hours ago, CyanicEmber said:

Players should be rewarded for playing on the Canon ARK's with completeness and cohesion. All the Unofficial ARK's are just brownie points for afterwards, in case you're interested.

I can sort of see what you're saying as it applies to The Center being 'locked' pending ascension, but if you buy the game (base game, $60) there's only 1 'canon ARK' to choose from - The Island. You don't get SE (or either of the other 2 announced-but-not-done ARKs) as it's paid DLC. The Center comes with the game at purchase point whereas you'll have to buy the DLC ARKs. Ragnarok will, like The Center, be a free modification however that seems to come with specifically-developed bosses. It can't be packaged with the game as it's not finished, but it at least seems to have had some major effort spent on it.

Perhaps the problem is that The Center's creator now works for Wildcard as a level designer and you'd assume, is heavily involved in these 2 announced-but-not-done DLC maps. Maybe he doesn't have the time (or isn't allowed to spend too much time) working on The Center - who knows.

Whatever the reason is, the map in it's current state may ultimately be a disappointment to those playing it for the first time, especially if they go through the process of unlocking it by ascending via The Island. I agree it's a nice bonus - far better than just having 1 map, for example! - but it's certainly also disappointing in certain respects.