PR Disaster

[ninjaridz]

I unsure when it happened  (probably after the loss of the lawsuit) but at some point during the nearly 3 year development process wildcard turned from new wave game developers into a company uninterested in its community at large, a ticketing system that simply doesn't work and someone who threw 10s of thousands of pounds/dollars on premoting a game mode in China that's now defunced!

And there's more, more and more and more.

I wonder what Wcs next venture will be a battle royal game in a RPG setting maybe.......?

[CrackerJackx13]

So the Metacritics User Review for ark  is a 4.0. Do you feel it is deserved, why and why not?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/ark-survival-evolved/user-reviews

[Ganelon]

Reviews have become corrupted by organized troll campaigns. I absolutely discard the opinions of trolls, as they tend to be personally vacuous, over-entitled c***s. They are the Gamer version of SJWs and Antifa.  Same thing happened to GTA5.

You want to know what the REAL review is?

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

The number of people playing ARK is the ONLY vote. 

And also... to call it the Metacritic User Review is a bit of an overstatement. That is the Argument from Authority falicy.

But then... '14 people on the internet give a review of 4.0' doesn't have the same poke in the eye, does it?

[DiogoBarradas]

49 minutes ago, CrackerJackx13 said:

So the Metacritics User Review for ark  is a 4.0. Do you feel it is deserved, why and why not?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/ark-survival-evolved/user-reviews

I would give it a 6.0 .... great game indeed but the team behind it...is one of the worst, ultra ultra disorganised team with ALWAYS the incorrect prioritys in their mind and with a bad comunication with their players, not respecting the old ones ofc

[ciabattaroll]

I can't really see myself finding a cause to discuss this considering that the lowest score on there is from a review written by yourself. I mean, this is a "cry for attention" tier thread by going "hey I did thing, let's talk about thing I did!"

[TranqRex]

Can't say I really care for reviews these days, I'd rather watch a few videos (Let's Plays etc), maybe play a demo and form my own opinion. Can't rely on the opinions of reviewers anymore (influenced by $) and user reviews can be highly polarised - this very one being case in point, there's a 1/10 given, which isn't justified and is based on someone's bad experience.

[DarthaNyan]

gotta love those reviews on "metacritic":

- "Fair Warning im awful at survival games and they don’t keep my attention for long" but i'll review game anyway

- "OFFICIAL SERVER REVIEW": goes on about problems on LEGACY servers and out of game problems(ddos) and general player toxicity(any game has those)

 

Edit (this part is pure gold):

"theres dinosaurs…
This game is full of them but theyre not as cool as I thought they would be..
Theyre essentially jerks that try to kill you while you collect sticks rocks and berries… ."

What the raptor did he expect from hungry carnivorous animals?

[bgreg]

Wow. You actually gave the game a 1 star review with an essay as to why not to buy the game and linked it here........

 

Bravo sir.

 

[DarthaNyan]

Or this one gem:

Quote

Kayla45

Sep 8, 2017

Rating 2

Ark Survival Evolved:
I have finally decided to review this game after 8400+ hours of gameplay in early access mode.

Its like saying "This game is sooooooo bad that i have played it only for 8.4k hours"

[Lewiatan]

I usually ignore reviews that give a game 1/10 or 10/10. They tell me authors loath or worship the game to the point their reviews are too subjective and give unreal impression of the game.

In my opinion ARK deservers a score from 6/10 to 7/10. 7/10 is the highest score I would be willing to give. The game launched with too many Early Access issues/bugs, bad optimisation (according to PC Gamer you need 2000$ PC with 1080Ti or SLI to run game in 1080p epic 60 fps), countless amount of unpolished core gameplay mechnics and redundant features.

 

Quote

Its like saying "This game is sooooooo bad that i have played it only for 8.4k hours"

Owing to the fact the game is grindy extremely I'm not surprised he played that amount of hours. He may have played on unofficial servers all the time being aware of bad state of vanilla game.

[Thorium]

User reviews today are worth nothing. They used to be a pretty good estimate of games. But for some years now user reviews rarly have anything to do with critic of a game. As allready mentioned huge troll campains. Bad reviews because one does not like the company or even another game the company did. Or even just for trump being president.

The only source for good reviews are small independent reviewers. There are tons of them on youtube and they will back up their claims with video material.

[ninjaridz]

On 09/09/2017 at 2:00 AM, ciabattaroll said:

The dilemma of this mindset though is that not putting forth any form of financial support isn't going to fix anything either. Such is the unfortunate state of our currency driven society : there is no problem that has been solved by not throwing money at it.

Although what you say has some truth it's not right to say throwing money solves all woes, are you aware of how much money has been spent on trying to cure the common cold or dealing with north Korea for instance??!!  (Ahh politics)

On 08/09/2017 at 8:17 PM, 2pac22 said:

I believe some of these comments take it too far....

 If anything it was released too early for launch and thats all there is to complain about. Complain about cheaters if you want but thats gonna be in any game you play. Surely that noob that 360 quick scoped you on COD last night was cheathing am i right?

I feel you've missed the point of this thread.. it's not about in game issues (which there are many) but the way these issues are delt within general!

 

On 08/09/2017 at 7:53 PM, Naerah(Qc) said:

TheRightHand said that they knew they were bad at communicating but they had no intention of getting better at it, takes too much time and efforts.

It's not lack of comminucation skills, it's a lack of will. Don't expect them to get better at it, to them , it's not important.

 

Perhaps maybe if wc spent less time in twitch channels  (dansgaming for instance) they would have more time to spend communicating with there "community"

Also I remember a large post on this forum from the right hand saying that they knew they had been bad at communication and they would try to improve! shame it never came true!

On 08/09/2017 at 6:02 PM, Askew said:

It doesn't matter if you write a love song or a curse on this forum, if you want a developer to read or comment on it you are wasting your time.

Your wrong just because they don't respond to individual comments doesn't mean they don't read the posts!

On 08/09/2017 at 2:39 PM, Williamskylord said:

I bought the season pass because I have close to 1000 hours of this game in bugs or not the only game that exceeds that time is Civilization. That's an incredible value for 40 dollars with SE and I know buggy or not I will like the new expansions just as much.

 

But further more I don't have the issues you do. I have never experienced a single glitch or bug I'd call "game breaking" there's always a way around it. I've been a pc gamer for close to 2 decades I've seen games with a lot less bugs and games with a lot more. But I've never seen a game with the level of scope, inter-activeness, and full multiplayer that Ark has. When you look at the number of moving pieces ark has working in tandem with even a basic understanding of game programming, you understand this game will ALWAYS have glitches.

 

I won't defend their communication, it's piss poor at best. But I also don't care. They are fixing and addressing things they might not address what you want the minute you want it but to say they aren't addressing anything is asinine. People almost stun me with their inconsistencies there will be a complaint that wildcard doesn't care and don't fix anything sitting right next to a complaint that the frequent updates are to much.

 

I care and you are a lucky guy to not of experienced any bugs or glitches!

I had to go through Dinos not eating, no cave drops( this is still an issue) crashing on entering water, crashing on leaving a cave, random disappearing baby's, dinos falling through the map, the now legendary allo Base raiders, super turkeys, the disappeared 150 dinos on the centre after SE was released and Don't get me started on SE or prim plus that still have issues unfixed since there inclusion to the Base game.

[Olivar]

What Thorium said.
You want to know whether a game is worth getting into? Look at youtube/streams of people playing and get a feeling of what the game is about.

I personally give Ark around 6.5/10.
There's a lot of open issues I'd like to see addressed still, optimizations would be nice as well, as additional configuration features when running your own servers.
But outside that the game is worth it, and quite fun, be it as solo player, a minor server or official.

[DarthaNyan]

16 minutes ago, Lewiatan said:

He may have played on unofficial servers all the time being aware of bad state of vanilla game.

But even if he did - unofficial servers are a feature of the game since server software is provided by devs for free. If you take that into account then score of 2 after 8400 hours can only mean one thing - reviewer burnt himself out playing the game and nothing else.

Also 8400 hours (350 days) over 2 years is a bit less than 12 hours per day, every day. Just think about it.

[Lewiatan]

5 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

But even if he did - unofficial servers are a feature of the game since server software is provided by devs for free. If you take that into account then score of 2 after 8400 hours can only mean one thing - reviewer burnt himself out playing the game and nothing else.

Burning out is very likely. Some people continue to play the game they're not happy with hoping it would improve over time. I was at same boat before I realised things I was looking forward to will not come in ARK Early Access ( major AI overahaul ). I figured out WC was going to release as many redundant features as possible during EA to keep players busy while ignoring  major game design flaws, that happened more or less.

[ciabattaroll]

12 minutes ago, ninjaridz said:

Although what you say has some truth it's not right to say throwing money solves all woes, are you aware of how much money has been spent on trying to cure the common cold or dealing with north Korea for instance??!!  (Ahh politics)

Nowhere in my statement did I say that money solves everything. If anything what I said is that not giving money has never solved anything. Those statements do not go hand in hand.

[ninjaridz]

On 09/09/2017 at 2:00 AM, ciabattaroll said:

: there is no problem that has been solved by not throwing money at it.

Forgive me if I miss quoted you ?

[ciabattaroll]

1 minute ago, ninjaridz said:

Forgive me if I miss quoted you ?

You quoted it right, just misinterpreted it. That quote right there flatly says it, that the problem isn't going to be solved by not throwing money into it.

[Awakatanka]

the game is a 8 but the company is a 3. if there communication gets better and they do what they promise then it will be higher.

[Jostabeere]

On 10.9.2017 at 1:10 PM, raptorjesus666 said:

you mean, play on a low-pop legacy server that will be "re-purposed" in the next wave, in less then 3 months from now?

or are you one of the "play unofficial" folks

 

You could play on one of those. Or you could stay here and cry over a full server. Your choice.

[ninjaridz]

Just now, ciabattaroll said:

You quoted it right, just misinterpreted it. That quote right there flatly says it, that the problem isn't going to be solved by not throwing money into it.

Agreed i missunderstood your point!

Although is money really an issue here, was ark not the biggest selling EA game before Pubg came out??

And is this truly a money problem what does a community manager do for a multi million pound/dollar company?? No really I'm not one so I'm unsure of there work load and I'm sure it's huge! 

Is dealing with social media not part of it or is it too much for an already over worked dude or dudet too deal with? 

I'm sure there are many of us who would do this for practically nothing for a mere foot in the door!

[Shoosty]

The game deserves more as a stand alone product, but given the shameful way Wildcard does business, 4.0 isn't too much lower than what they deserve.  I'd probably rate the game an 8.5 of 10, and the company a 3 or 4.  Given that you can't really avoid dealing with the company unless you're willing to host your own server(s),  a fair score would account for both the game and the company.

[Jrminot]

First off, I definitely love the game. I'm pretty patient so I can live with bugs or imbalance until they are fixed. I'm currently enjoying the playing the game as I have for the past year or so.

That said, I tend to agree with some of the sentiment in this thread and there are two main issues that I take with Wildcard.

1. Communication forum and frequency - I've seen this with other games now and it irks me to no end. The studio/company introduces an official forum and then it is the last one, if ever, to be updated. Instead, everyone uses twitter or reddit to release information. For patch notes, hire a dang intern to run around and gather/update them. My expectation is that patch notes should be updated PRIOR TO or at most up to 10 minutes post patch release. Official forums should be the absolute first place that patch notes are updated. 

2. Unfulfilled promises - At least in one regard where I was directly lied to, was when they introduced the application for beta testers, they were offering a cool little tester hat if you helped them beta test. I signed up and proceeded to help with patch testing for several months. To be clear, I filled out all requested documentation and assisted with the testing following all instructions. We were constantly told that we would get our hats "Soon". All the while, certain people would suddenly have the hat while the rest of use did not. After quite a while, I began directly asking about it but was always told that we would get it "soon" as months and months went by.

After quite a long time (at least half a year), I gave up. I didn't want to nag them and it was apparent that you only received the hat if you had a particular relationship with some of the devs. 

Now, I understand that it's just a little hat and that it's not really a big deal. I didn't do the beta testing for the hat and I still enjoy and do not regret the work I put in.

But, It would have gone a long way if they had just, A) given us the hat, or B) told us that they were no longer giving them out. Either of those options would have been acceptable.

Instead, they forever threw around the word "Soon" all the while giving them out randomly to the odd person. I would be lying if I said it didn't make me feel unappreciated and leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

 

[Carny]

22 hours ago, 10,000 Jelly Doughnuts said:

In alpha's defense, there is always a noob who builds EXACTLY on the griffin spawns. Really though. 

So one noob building on a site they want to use is a reason to them to systematically kill every single person and tame they see on site all over the map?

Seems like a defensible action.

[10,000 Jelly Doughnuts]

2 minutes ago, Carny said:

So one noob building on a site they want to use is a reason to them to systematically kill every single person and tame they see on site all over the map?

Seems like a defensible action.

Not all of them, just the noob. There are bad alphas and good alphas.