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PR Disaster


Zainwolf

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I love this game, I really do... so it makes me feel quite sad that your support department is really letting you down so badly and creating what amounts to a PR disaster for WC.

Reddit, Steam reviews, Facebook... people who have bought this game are NOT happy with the lack of useful support and lack of coherent communication from you.

Are you listening? Will you turn things around? I really hope so. Jat and Jen need to stop pretending everything is great and set this ship aright, before it sinks.

I want ARK to sail smoothly, I really do. Please guys, listen to your players. Read the Reddit threads, Steam reviews, Facebook posts. Sure, take some of them with a grain of salt.. a big one. Unhappy players are not always the most reasonable, but a lot of them have very valid points that you seriously need to address to turn "mixed" into "mostly positive" which is what I would dearly, dearly love to see for a game I haven't enjoyed playing so much since WoW's heyday. (since long past, alas)

The silence for many unacceptable issues, is deafening. If matters aren't dealt with, I fear the worst...

If we didn't love the game, we'd simply grow quickly bored and go elsewhere. You already got our money, please show us that investment (and the bigger investment of time) hasn't been wasted. Please!

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24 minutes ago, Shrekasaurus said:

Lack of support/communication seems to be the most valid/frequent complaint, and I agree. As much as I love Ark (and man do I), WC needs better communication, which has been their "Achilles Heel" for some time...

Even more with the recent "Full Launch" of the game. They launched the game, and then while attending PAX west they were basically silent on all the serious issues that are currently affecting the game. It was very bad timing for the launch of the game!

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Poor support at game launch is a pretty common complaint across console as well as PC platforms.

Some communities seem to hang together and you end up with support being given by regular forum-goers that exceeds that given by the company/developers. Other communities descend into chaos, mud-slinging and waah me!

I see some great support in this community, and hope the mud-slinging dies down soon.

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3 hours ago, LameoveR said:

They are listening, of course.

When Phoenix been released there were so much "unhappy" people that Phoenix then has been turned from poop to OP in 2 days.

I wouldn't say OP, but now it is what it should've been from the beginning. And yeah, the Devs also listened to the community and changed the Phoenix to be ridable. Some other things they listened to us: Electrophorus, Leedsichthys and Pegomastax nerf, server-setting for mindwiping...

But I agree that the release was rushed. There are still so many serious issues and stealth nerfs - since when does the Thylacoleo take a serious amount of fall damage? O.o 

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4 hours ago, Shrekasaurus said:

Lack of support/communication seems to be the most valid/frequent complaint, and I agree. As much as I love Ark (and man do I), WC needs better communication, which has been their "Achilles Heel" for some time...

This is the #1 thing in my opinion. Their communication is an absolute joke, there's no other word for it. Just look at the evidence from this week alone - Kayd Hendricks (WildcardTheRightHand @ Reddit) posted an announcement regarding the 1 hour AFK kick update on Reddit rather than their own official forums. They seem to struggle to balance the avenues of communication, when they should really only post official things here, or at the worst their official Twitter. If you want to do it 'officially' then afterward on other social platforms, sure go ahead - otherwise the players will handle that for you in literally seconds anyway.

Communication was awful, then started to get better and seems to have declined once again. I get that they're busy, yes they've been at PAX and are bound to be exhausted - that's fine, completely understandable and just, well, being human after all! But one of the team was still happy to post a topic (and then continue to post on said topic) on another website, which just seems really poor.

It was also said (again by Hendricks, here) that for a lot of the fixes, they tend to just fix them and get them turned around in <12 hours or so, so they don't generally bother with 'proper' announcements. They did in the early days, but then stopped when people complained they were 'spamming announcements' so we're now where we are. But even this could be fixed with a simple log of changes that they maintain. I'm not asking for their comments on each commit to source, but a really basic "fixed issue where player couldn't remove x from their inventory" or something - posted as a locked thread on here, a static text file, hell even from a Twitter account that was literally for that purpose would do! The argument is that they don't have the time... well, if you can't spare 2 or 3 minutes to write a simple line of text then you've got bigger problems, imo ;)

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3 minutes ago, MrDynamicMan said:

Theyre hardky bothering to uodate the patch notes, little own cster to the hundreds of thousands of people that need support.

sad.

Tell me about it. If your on PC someone appears to be updating the patch notes on the ark wiki, but it sucks to be console. Last update i can find a note for is on the 11th of August. Am still wondering about the patch that apparantly dropped yesterday on xbox. Only reason I know there was a patch yesterday was because of the 2hr rollback issue lol.

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2 hours ago, StormLord said:

Huh. Too bad the game is getting good reviews. 72% on Metacritic. 7.7/10 on IGN. 3.7/5 on MMOs.com. Average player review on Gamespot is 7.2. 72% on PC gamer. That's all just from 30 seconds on Google. Weird that it's a "PR disaster." Please, tell me more.

Those didn't mention duping, griefing, waking up every 3-4 hours to do an imprint (on PvP, if you don't imprint your dinos, other tribe will do, and that tribe will be more powerful than you; wiping you), taming a dino for more than 2 hours without kibble, the game being unplayeable if you're less than 10 people and if you want to succed on PvP.

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16 minutes ago, Megar said:

Those didn't mention duping, griefing, waking up every 3-4 hours to do an imprint (on PvP, if you don't imprint your dinos, other tribe will do, and that tribe will be more powerful than you; wiping you), taming a dino for more than 2 hours without kibble, the game being unplayeable if you're less than 10 people and if you want to succed on PvP.

Duping, they're doing what they can. If someone really wants to find a way to dupe, you can't reasonably expect them to have a fix before a new crack is found.

Griefing exists in nearly every game, that's human nature.

Imprinting is a choice, not a must.

Taming a dino without kibble is also a choice.

Game is perfectly playable with 70-100 people on in PvP.

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18 minutes ago, xLunacy said:

Duping, they're doing what they can. If someone really wants to find a way to dupe, you can't reasonably expect them to have a fix before a new crack is found.

Griefing exists in nearly every game, that's human nature.

Imprinting is a choice, not a must.

Taming a dino without kibble is also a choice.

Game is perfectly playable with 70-100 people on in PvP.

If your tribe has less than 10 people.

They didn't mention duping.

Griefing? You can be caged basically forever if some alpha tribe wants, and your character gets stuck there.

As of imprinting, if you want to be competitive, you have to imprint on PvP. Imagine a tribe vs another tribe, 1st tribe has gigas with 30% imprinting while the others have gigas with 90-100% imprinting. Those gigas with 30% imprint will have their stats incremented by 6%, while the 90-100% will have them for 18-20% more. If the imprinter rides the giga, that's 27-30% more dmg they do and less dmg they get, while the 30% is only 10%.

Let's say both tribes have gigas with 250% melee, the first tribe will have their gigas on 265 melee (1272 raw dmg), and if the imprinter rides the giga, it will do 10% more dmg, 1400 raw dmg.

Let's get on the second tribe, with 100% imprinted giga, their 250 melee dmg jumps up to 300 melee, 1440 raw dmg, and if the imprinter rides the giga, that's 1872 melee dmg, dealing 472 more dmg than the non-fully imprinted gigas. That's just a 1vs1, but with more gigas on each side, let's say, 5, the second tribe that fully (or almost) imprinted their gigas will be dealing 2360 more dmg if the 5 attack the same target, while the 1st tribe won't, let's not forget that the imprinted gigas will have more HP, lowering the chances to make them rage.

Again, if you want to be competitive on PvP, you have to try to get the best taming effectiveness, and taming with mutton, prime or raw meat will never get you the same effectiveness as if taming with kibble (unless on boosted servers, but I'm talking about official ones). 

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I have been talking about the lack of communication from the brginning of EA. I even talk about their website here being outdated compare to the one on steam.  This is their web site but now if I want to see if there a patch coming I go to steam not here. The other day when I brought up this site not being updated I was told by the moderator they will update it when they have the time or something like that. Can't remember the exact word.  But I never got the answer I was seeking as to why steam is more up to date  then here.  

Its not the PR that's a disaster it's there communication.

Someone said if at least they say it on their official twitter. Find that not acceptable. Any game I play and I think it's mostly everyone, when I want a question answered or looking to know what is going on with the game I come to the official forum to find out. I don't go to twitter lol.

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I try to understand your current strategy and I can't. Let's get at it step by step.

 

So first of all, you guys had a really stressful and hectical EA story and finally got close to release. Personally I think the game needed 1 or 2 more months before full release, but I guess there are reasons for the early release beyond common understanding [Studio pressure, marketing issues etc. etc.]

You found a good solution for wiping the servers: Closing empty servers, and giving away the savegames. Everything sounds perfect so far.

But then you leave it unclear if those savegames can be accesed without paying to host them via Nitrado. You say the savegames will be out by the end of the week, (it did not happen) then you say no word about it up to the present moment.

Instead of rewarding your EA customers, with maybe a skin or whatever [not much], for their efforts and patience with everything you pulled off during the EA, you decide to cut the support for all the legacy servers, where most of the EA players are. As I can understand there are financial and economical reasons tied to this, but you could ve seeked an alternative solution: Offer support for maybe 1 or 2 months more for legacy servers, giving the tickets from the new servers priority over the old ones. In this way, EA players would not feel as if you showed them a big middle finger, and I think you also wouldn t waste lots of extra ressources.

Then the official release follows! But sadly, you did not open enough servers for the great playerbase waiting for release or even worse, for the new players who bought the game and could not play. It is in your interest to get rid of the old servers, yet you did not open enough new servers. You said the tool is broken and you will add them manually, then you did not say anything more. People waited and waited and they started to either quit, go to single player / unofficial or GO BACK TO LEGACY. Now I assume you did not want those legacy servers to get filled back again... It s been more than a week and still no word on the issue.

You ve been meanwhile at PAX and showed us a nice new expansion. You do realise that everyone feels really angry as a customer. Your game still has lots of frustrating issues, there are not enough servers open for people to play and you are away on launch week announcing a new expansion. The expansion is awesome and looks cool. I bought the season pass because even if you guys are really bad at managing a community and make lots of bad decisions and the game is full of bugs, conceptually and visually you have put together a marvelous game and I expect no less from the expansion.

Still, even if you were busy, communication is the key. It s better to tell people why stuff doesn t work or when it will maybe work, instead of letting them boil inside in annoying silence.
Please, do something to straighten up your relationship with the community. You made a great game, and continue making it, but we are the ones playing it and we also make your game great and sucessful. Don't keep dissapointing us.

Cheers !

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41 minutes ago, Megar said:

If your tribe has less than 10 people.

They didn't mention duping.

Griefing? You can be caged basically forever if some alpha tribe wants, and your character gets stuck there.

As of imprinting, if you want to be competitive, you have to imprint on PvP. Imagine a tribe vs another tribe, 1st tribe has gigas with 30% imprinting while the others have gigas with 90-100% imprinting. Those gigas with 30% imprint will have their stats incremented by 6%, while the 90-100% will have them for 18-20% more. If the imprinter rides the giga, that's 27-30% more dmg they do and less dmg they get, while the 30% is only 10%.

Let's say both tribes have gigas with 250% melee, the first tribe will have their gigas on 265 melee (1272 raw dmg), and if the imprinter rides the giga, it will do 10% more dmg, 1400 raw dmg.

Let's get on the second tribe, with 100% imprinted giga, their 250 melee dmg jumps up to 300 melee, 1440 raw dmg, and if the imprinter rides the giga, that's 1872 melee dmg, dealing 472 more dmg than the non-fully imprinted gigas. That's just a 1vs1, but with more gigas on each side, let's say, 5, the second tribe that fully (or almost) imprinted their gigas will be dealing 2360 more dmg if the 5 attack the same target, while the 1st tribe won't, let's not forget that the imprinted gigas will have more HP, lowering the chances to make them rage.

Again, if you want to be competitive on PvP, you have to try to get the best taming effectiveness, and taming with mutton, prime or raw meat will never get you the same effectiveness as if taming with kibble (unless on boosted servers, but I'm talking about official ones). 

They implemented the anti-DDOS system for that purpose as well.

You will run out of health eventually by starving. Pro tip from my PvP days. If you aren't sure you'll be there the next time you log in, log off dead.

I do agree with you on the imprinting side, but again, it's not mandatory. If someone spent more time than you and more effort, shouldn't they get better rewards? Although it is unreasonable honestly to expect imprinting every 3-4 hours (since people do need sleep), it's what it is at the moment. They stated multiple times that they don't want to change this. Also, avoid fighting gigas with gigas lol.

For kibble...well, you are SUPPOSED to use kibble for the high-end tames. You don't have to, but you're expected to. You can tame lower level ones without kibble go build a farm/get some decent dinos, get some eggs rolling and do a good tame. I'm not saying this system is OK, since it encourages huge lagging dino farms, but again, it's their game and they chose it like this, at least for now.

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1 minute ago, xLunacy said:

They implemented the anti-DDOS system for that purpose as well.

You will run out of health eventually by starving. Pro tip from my PvP days. If you aren't sure you'll be there the next time you log in, log off dead.

I do agree with you on the imprinting side, but again, it's not mandatory. If someone spent more time than you and more effort, shouldn't they get better rewards? Although it is unreasonable honestly to expect imprinting every 3-4 hours (since people do need sleep), it's what it is at the moment. They stated multiple times that they don't want to change this. Also, avoid fighting gigas with gigas lol.

For kibble...well, you are SUPPOSED to use kibble for the high-end tames. You don't have to, but you're expected to. You can tame lower level ones without kibble go build a farm/get some decent dinos, get some eggs rolling and do a good tame. I'm not saying this system is OK, since it encourages huge lagging dino farms, but again, it's their game and they chose it like this, at least for now.

I mean that they didn't state how the old servers were filled with duping items and dinos, and that went for more than at least 3 months without a fix.

If you die by starving, your cagers are poop. They keep feeding you and filling your water every 5-10 minutes.

That's my point. It's unhealthy, and yeah, people that sacrifice more for the game should be better / have better things, but not this way.

At the end of the day you will tame high lvl Rexes, Brontos, Stegos, Quetzs, Gigas with kibble, + the imprinting kibbles. So yeah, after the early game where you tame those dinos without kibble, needing a few hours to tame those, you will eventually have egg farms, and taming everything with kibble because it's so much better.

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20 minutes ago, Voidstar said:

Please, do something to straighten up your relationship with the community

One of the best posts about this situation...but u realy think this will happen? i mean, for how long do they have this problem?? Comunication problem? There are many many post about this topic here, rediit...everythere, and yet seing that this is important for us they didnt responde to any! The game is the best ive played yes, but with the worst company behind it.

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28 minutes ago, Megar said:

I mean that they didn't state how the old servers were filled with duping items and dinos, and that went for more than at least 3 months without a fix.

If you die by starving, your cagers are poop. They keep feeding you and filling your water every 5-10 minutes.

That's my point. It's unhealthy, and yeah, people that sacrifice more for the game should be better / have better things, but not this way.

At the end of the day you will tame high lvl Rexes, Brontos, Stegos, Quetzs, Gigas with kibble, + the imprinting kibbles. So yeah, after the early game where you tame those dinos without kibble, needing a few hours to tame those, you will eventually have egg farms, and taming everything with kibble because it's so much better.

Well, if they feed and water you constantly, they will get tired of it eventually lol. You have a point that a person can keep doing it for hours, but I'm honestly not sure what can be done to prevent this and not break something else.

Can't really do much about duped items under UE4 short of a full wipe. You cannot track the duplicated items by code, you cannot simply make everything a stack of 1 (since that will piss everyone who didn't dupe and is a BAD idea code-wise) and as long as you have people who understand how UE4 works, you will see dupers every now and then since they will look for cracks in the engine. It's a game engine - runs off code and is by no means perfect, but WC can't do much about it until the UE4 devs fix it or patch it up, and WC can only band-aid until then.

My personal opinion is that UE4 was convenient when they started developing the game and they didn't know that Ark would become this behemoth of code and content, it kicked off as an indie game after all. At some point I'm guessing they realized that, but too late. Developing a custom or modified custom engine is extremely expensive and time consuming, reason why a lot of games license already existing engines.

Edit: My point was that they don't want to say to the community that they can't do much about duping engine-side, reasons their own. They had a poor netcode, they fixed that one, props for that, but the engine is a different story.

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