Server Dino Cap Discussion

[Lewiatan]

1 hour ago, Olivar said:

I'm going to get hate for this, but:

Stop playing official, join unofficial.
Playing on offical is simply not worth the hassle, and everywhere people are making the switch.
Face it, official is a minority. More than 60% plays on unofficial servers according to the various polls people are running.

And guess what?
NONE of the problems mentioned exist on unofficial.

You're right. The issues that are mentioned on official servers do not exsist on unofficial ones. I've never experienced rubberbanding on an unofficial servers, meanwhile on the offcial one I felt like to flip my table every time I played on it. The game network code simply cannot handle 70 players on the server at the same time with their dinosaurs.

However, It's risky to go to unofficial server. While I was playing on such server, admin changed the map 3 times, because he got bored off it or the new map mod was released. Usually admins are immature and cannot accept their mistakes, which leads to respawning animals they lost without granting the same right to other players.

[Olivar]

19 minutes ago, Lewiatan said:

You're right. The issues that are mentioned on official servers do not exsist on unofficial ones. I've never experienced rubberbanding on an unofficial servers, meanwhile on the offcial one I felt like to flip my table every time I played on it. The game network code simply cannot handle 70 players on the server at the same time with their dinosaurs.

However, It's risky to go to unofficial server. While I was playing on such server, admin changed the map 3 times, because he got bored off it or the new map mod was released. Usually admins are immature and cannot accept their mistakes, which leads to respawning animals they lost without granting the same right to other players.

 

49 minutes ago, Stephania said:

However Unofficial servers have another problems not mentioned.
Admin abuse.
Monthly wipe.
Ridiculous rates and awful mods.
Inactive admin.

Obviously we can rent a server to play mostly alone there.

Absolutely.
We have our problems on unofficial servers for sure, but none of those warrant the slack people are giving Wildcard.
That's people being people.
And trust me, there's amazing Unofficial servers out there as well.

 

 

_{I'm running one}

[Ferdia]

This must have an impact on the revenue income for WC.  The majority of new users will go straight to offical servers.  If they are not getting the game they paid for, they will refund.  The existing user base will start giving negative reviews on Steam and deter new business.  So if they don't spend on ensuring the offical server can support the churn, the model will start to become unviable. 

[McPaul]

This cap is simply insane  There must be other solution...

[HeatherJo]

Unfortunately this has gone way beyond a gripe session of frivolous issues.  At this point the game has become unplayable for many of us, and all we get from WC is we’re sorry survivor but we are unable to address that issue.  Their game is unraveling around them.  On our island server 3 of our tribes mates have been unable to login for weeks since one of the updates, weeks?!!! And all WC can say is sorry , good luck survivor.  What a joke!

Out of our ark community which is about 100 players that have been playing since the  beginning I would say at least 70 of those recently finally moved on.  What a terrible shame, I know that everyone of them would have been more then  willing to pay a couple hundred dollars if need be just to have a functioning game that they could have played.  What a horrible waste of opportunity for wildcard, so much lost revenue so much mismanagement. @jatheish and @jen and the rest of Wildcard better wake up soon, for their own sakes. 

 And that’s just our group I hear of stories like that everyday. The great mass exodus from ark while wildcard is oblivious.   And who can blame these people they held out for years in the hopes that when the game was released it would actually work as promised, that just never happened.  The game should have never been released period until it actually worked.  I mean we all really want to play the game, we love it but we just can’t, so many can’t log In anymore, so many get kicked literally 100’s of times a day, so many of us constantly lose Dino’s and gear because of continuous crashing or rollbacks.  And wildcard politely refuses to help.  So this isn’t just a “hey we’re mad a bout a few things” rant, we literally can’t play the game period and WC won’t help at all.  I’ve never seen this ever in the gaming community. 

And if WC Is hoping all of us “complainers” (money spending owners of the game who feel we have a right it a functioning game, I know weird huh) will just go away eventually and they can replace us with new money spending people they can take advantage of, they have a rude awaking.  And for the new people that do come in it’s terribly sad when they realize they can’t even play the game because of so many issues or caps etc.  

And for those that say, “oh well you all should just play unofficial” I’m sorry but as long as there are official servers they should actually be functioning and playable.  It’s a part of their game and they should take responsibility for it.  This isn’t that hard to figure out. It isn’t the players fault for playing within the parameters of the game, if someone wants to have 500 dodos good for them the game was setup up for that they should be able to play anyway they see fit within the game limitations.  All these responses of how we as players need to adjust our gameplay to make up for wildcards neglegience is absurd.  Wildcard needs to start to take responsibility and fix their game it isn’t our job to do that do them.  Oh and I ran an unofficial server for 6 months good luck getting wildcard to do anything support wise with them.  Our server had so many issues it was Rediculous, we basically had 5 Dino types that would spawn  on the whole map and we did everything possible to fix it and Wildcard did absolutely nothing so finally we gave up, there were so many other map issues and we could get zero help or support.    

I just hope wildcard wakes up soon There are literally hundreds leaving everyday (that like I said would have been willing to pay hundreds of dollars towards this game).  This has gone way beyond a gripe session, WE CANT PLAY THE GAME, it’s broke, and we can’t get support, and we are sick and tired of having to come on the forums as a last ditch effort to get you to care and do the right thing.  

 

[Landiah]

you on ps4?

[isu]

8 hours ago, Stephania said:

However Unofficial servers have another problems not mentioned.
Admin abuse.
Monthly wipe.
Ridiculous rates and awful mods.
Inactive admin.

Obviously we can rent a server to play mostly alone there.

You forgot the most important thing for PvP players and that's PvP community with hundreds of players on each side. 

They enjoy fighting in these mega wars, where tribes are invading enemies servers and trying to clean them up.

[Demerus]

On ‎07‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 2:12 PM, JetJaguar said:

There is a thread already with servers that are capped and no, its not just Rag servers. Even if its ONE server out of 25 or 50, its one too many. Thats $60 someone spent to play a game and cant play whats advertised because its "capped". 

If you're sitting pretty on a server that isnt capped, doesnt have the issues others have, like a Scorched Earth server, then whats it matter to you, right? Doesnt affect you, so everyone else affected must just be blowing steam, right?

Unfortunately not only is it a bigger problem then you may think, its a problem that everyone whos been in beta and the devs, have known about for years. And yet it remains and now here we are with a good chunk of frustrated people.

Exactly and as each server gets capped where do you think everyone will start moving to? Scorched Earth baby! Soon All servers will be capped

[JetJaguar]

11 hours ago, Drolord said:

havent played since server hit cap couple weeks after launch.  Told my friends to buy it but can no longer recommend it, and now I am forced to buy another game and forget about this one. 

Not having a response on this topic sucks.  Makes you wanna leave the game and not come back because it makes you think this is how they want it.

Game is ruined for me if I can't tame dinos.

I am thinking that the company train of thought is: a) stick head in sand regarding issue b) wait it out c) everything will work itself out on its own and bring players who quit back, with the release of the new xpac.

 

 

[Vrallox]

One of the issues is that there's no magic fix. Several changes have to be made to fix this problem. The Server Wipe thread had several discussions featuring numerous ideas concerning how to approach the issue although have fun wading through that mountain of posts. I'd say this is another interesting idea: 

11 hours ago, Stephania said:

Some ideas how fix the server cap issue.

Reward to tribes or players by maintaining few tamed animals and penalty to tribes or players by maintaining a lot of tamed animals.

Tribes or players who owns less than 25% of the personal cap (125) get bonus of 2x tame, gathering and breeding.

Tribes or players who owns between 25% and 50% of the personal cap (125-250) get no bonus. 

Tribes or players who owns more than 50% of the personal cap (250) get penalty of -0,5x tame, gathering and breeding and not enjoy 2x events.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tribes or players who owns less than 25% of the personal cap (125) get -30% of tamed animals food consuption.

Tribes or players who owns between 25% and 50% of the personal cap (125-250) get normal food consuption.

Tribes or players who owns more than 50% of the personal cap (250) get +30% of tamed animals food consuption.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tribes or players who owns less than 25% of the personal cap (125) get +10% of exp.

Tribes or players who owns between 25% and 50% of the personal cap (125-250) get normal exp.

Tribes or players who owns more than 50% of the personal cap (250) get -10% of exp and not enjoy 2x events..

Also turn off PvEOffline raid protection and monthly 2x events only.
Everything above is only related to PVE official server.

Although I disagree with the removal of ORP for PvE. Too much griefing involved. That was actually the go to move for most griefers. Wait until the person's not online. Just like with PvP.

More servers is obviously not a good idea. We had plenty of servers before legacy happened and servers were still hitting cap with a number of nearly empty servers available. I'm guessing the ones calling for more servers are volunteering to uproot themselves and move to the new servers though so that is very altruistic of them. There's also the problem of nothing preventing players from hitting cap on the new servers. I mean everyone started "fresh" on the new cluster and you all still hit the cap. Those "fresh new start" servers obviously didn't change anything.

It's painfully obvious the people of Wildcard haven't actually realized that to end the dino cap problem they first have to figure out what is causing it. Let me see if I can get the ball rolling...

Problem: A person joins multiplayer looking for a multiplayer experience, asks to join a tribe, and is denied due to the possibility of insiding (a PvP tactic) being used in PvE. No matter how few permissions a player has they can still destroy everything in the tribe. So the new player starts their own tribe with their own dinos, rafts, and structures.

Solution: Tribe system overhaul. Fix the rank system so players can select what rank everything is once activated, include the option to prevent certain ranks from doing damage to structures, dinos, and other players in the tribe, and make the dino tame limit depend on how many players are in the tribe in order to make tribes actually want to recruit new people and decrease the amount of tribes on a server therefore decreasing the amount of animals, rafts, and structures are on a server.

Problem: Egg farms.

Solution: Possibly the kibble rework. No mention of any actual plan so we'll have to wait for them to come up with the kibble rework first before we know if it's a solution. I've got my fingers crossed.

Problem: When someone stops playing their dinos are up for grabs. And anyone waiting there grabs everything not nailed down. Bats, arthropleura, and many other mostly worthless animals thereby continue to hog tame slots because people may not be willing to go and tame these creatures themselves but they'd be more than happy to get them for free and leave them to collect dust in their bases.

Solution: Remove claiming entirely. Stop clogging servers with old animals no one would normally tame but happily snap up if they're just lying around.

Now with these problems and solutions that would greatly help the dino cap issue a theme begins to emerge. Just like everywhere else players are unwilling to self-regulate as a whole. There are pockets of reasonable people but the majority put themselves before the very functioning of their servers and nothing will ever change that. Many other developers have tried and failed for decades.

There are many other ideas out there that can also help avoid hitting the server tame limit. This forum is chock full of good ones.

[Palenor]

Lots of input, have not seen any information specifically about what servers are at cap.

And again lots of ranting and raving.

 

By the way, kibble will in no way whatsoever fix the issue.

[Palenor]

On 11/7/2017 at 2:12 PM, JetJaguar said:

There is a thread already with servers that are capped and no, its not just Rag servers. Even if its ONE server out of 25 or 50, its one too many. Thats $60 someone spent to play a game and cant play whats advertised because its "capped". 

If you're sitting pretty on a server that isnt capped, doesnt have the issues others have, like a Scorched Earth server, then whats it matter to you, right? Doesnt affect you, so everyone else affected must just be blowing steam, right?

Unfortunately not only is it a bigger problem then you may think, its a problem that everyone whos been in beta and the devs, have known about for years. And yet it remains and now here we are with a good chunk of frustrated people.

Can appreciate your point of view, however I am looking for cold hard statistics, not opinions

You know what they say about opinions....

[desijatt]

Lots of input, have not seen any information specifically about what servers are at cap.
And again lots of ranting and raving.
 
By the way, kibble will in no way whatsoever fix the issue.

Removing kibble will solve this problem to some point, removing kibble means tribe don't have to tame 100 scorpions so they can tame rex. I really hope you know what kibble farm is.

[Vrallox]

5 minutes ago, Palenor said:

Lots of input, have not seen any information specifically about what servers are at cap.

And again lots of ranting and raving.

 

By the way, kibble will in no way whatsoever fix the issue.

Well yeah. No matter how good of a rework the kibble system gets it still won't fix it. No one change will. It'll help though and that's what's important.. I'd love to torch a good chunk of my egg farm considering most animals in this game are worthless especially at end game.

[Kallor]

Wildcard needs to get revenue from existing players, then they have a $ incentive to ensure a quality experience so that you stay, and they get more money. Right now existing players are dead weight and apart from good/bad press that might effect new sales, there is no incentive to keep them around, in fact it would be far better from Wildcards perspective if all the existing players quit.  All those servers are a financial drain, if they only had to support new players for a couple of months before they also quit they could get away with massive savings.

Their business model is new sales, the longer any player sticks around the worse the return is. It's a balancing act, drive too many players away and the game will be perceived as dead which will kill off new sales, make it too good and too many non revenue generating players will stick around consume all their resources.

[Pic1]

I say, cull more legacy servers and repurpose them. And don't just shut them down, repurpose them this time.

I've seen that there are less than 60 official PVE servers on PC, while you still kept 220+ official legacy PVE servers! And I've noticed that more than half of them are dead/ghost servers. Cull them! Give us more official servers for pete's sake!

[JetJaguar]

1 hour ago, Palenor said:

Can appreciate your point of view, however I am looking for cold hard statistics, not opinions

You know what they say about opinions....

Given that we arent WC employees with access to specifics, the closest "statistic" you are going to get for whatever research you're doing is via the other thread where players are listing what servers are capped..

[Stephania]

4 hours ago, Vrallox said:

One of the issues is that there's no magic fix. Several changes have to be made to fix this problem. The Server Wipe thread had several discussions featuring numerous ideas concerning how to approach the issue although have fun wading through that mountain of posts. I'd say this is another interesting idea: 

Although I disagree with the removal of ORP for PvE. Too much griefing involved. That was actually the go to move for most griefers. Wait until the person's not online. Just like with PvP.

More servers is obviously not a good idea. We had plenty of servers before legacy happened and servers were still hitting cap with a number of nearly empty servers available. I'm guessing the ones calling for more servers are volunteering to uproot themselves and move to the new servers though so that is very altruistic of them. There's also the problem of nothing preventing players from hitting cap on the new servers. I mean everyone started "fresh" on the new cluster and you all still hit the cap. Those "fresh new start" servers obviously didn't change anything.

It's painfully obvious the people of Wildcard haven't actually realized that to end the dino cap problem they first have to figure out what is causing it. Let me see if I can get the ball rolling...

Problem: A person joins multiplayer looking for a multiplayer experience, asks to join a tribe, and is denied due to the possibility of insiding (a PvP tactic) being used in PvE. No matter how few permissions a player has they can still destroy everything in the tribe. So the new player starts their own tribe with their own dinos, rafts, and structures.

Solution: Tribe system overhaul. Fix the rank system so players can select what rank everything is once activated, include the option to prevent certain ranks from doing damage to structures, dinos, and other players in the tribe, and make the dino tame limit depend on how many players are in the tribe in order to make tribes actually want to recruit new people and decrease the amount of tribes on a server therefore decreasing the amount of animals, rafts, and structures are on a server.

Problem: Egg farms.

Solution: Possibly the kibble rework. No mention of any actual plan so we'll have to wait for them to come up with the kibble rework first before we know if it's a solution. I've got my fingers crossed.

Problem: When someone stops playing their dinos are up for grabs. And anyone waiting there grabs everything not nailed down. Bats, arthropleura, and many other mostly worthless animals thereby continue to hog tame slots because people may not be willing to go and tame these creatures themselves but they'd be more than happy to get them for free and leave them to collect dust in their bases.

Solution: Remove claiming entirely. Stop clogging servers with old animals no one would normally tame but happily snap up if they're just lying around.

Now with these problems and solutions that would greatly help the dino cap issue a theme begins to emerge. Just like everywhere else players are unwilling to self-regulate as a whole. There are pockets of reasonable people but the majority put themselves before the very functioning of their servers and nothing will ever change that. Many other developers have tried and failed for decades.

There are many other ideas out there that can also help avoid hitting the server tame limit. This forum is chock full of good ones.

The removal of ORP for PvE is meant to create condition to tamed animals die.
You know when players tame animals and their animals not die the number of tamed animals only grows and the cap will be reached inevitable.
That is the reason why PvP servers do not reach the cap naturally.(can be reached intentionally)

Most of solo players who i know not want join tribes.(I am among them).
By several reasons players prefer play alone rather to join in a tribe with strangers.(PvE)

Kibble rework and Remove claiming is very helpful but not fix the problem.
Players will still taming and breeding animals and the number of tamed animals will only rise eventually the cap will be reached slowly but sure.

Griefing is a bad but be under cap is bad too.

 

I am only talking about servers with a active community.
Obviously servers low pop will not reach the cap.

[Glerian]

7 hours ago, HeatherJo said:

Out of our ark community which is about 100 players that have been playing since the  beginning I would say at least 70 of those recently finally moved on.  

If they have been here since the beginning, that was 2014-2015 ish? Paid 20 bucks? Got 2-3 years of enjoyable play from a video game? I mean, I'm all for trying to fix issues that need to be addressed, but complaining that you got two good years of play from a cheap early access alpha before moving on to newer games is mildly absurd to me. Yeah, server issues need to be fixed. But I dropped 60 bucks on Fallout 4 and I've moved on from that, and that was barely 2 years ago. I don't feel like Bethesda cheated me. I know the parallel isn't exactly the same but come on, you got an alpha for cheap and managed to wring years worth of enjoyment out of them. I've spent more on movie tickets, which didn't bring me near as much.

[Vrallox]

17 minutes ago, Stephania said:

The removal of ORP for PvE is meant to create condition to tamed animals die.
You know when players tame animals and their animals not die the number of tamed animals only grows and the cap will be reached inevitable.
That is the reason why PvP servers do not reach the cap naturally.(can be reached intentionally)

Most of solo players who i know not want join tribes.(I am among them).
By several reasons players prefer play alone rather to join in a tribe with strangers.(PvE)

Kibble rework and Remove claiming is very helpful but not fix the problem.
Players will still taming and breeding animals and the number of tamed animals will only rise eventually the cap will be reached slowly but sure.

Griefing is a bad but be under cap is bad too.

I figured that's why you mentioned removing ORP but I don't think promoting griefing to create animal turnover is an answer. The game just isn't hard enough. There's no real danger provided by the game itself after a certain point of progression. If they were to fix that then animals stored in bases and barns would actually die and help with the dino tame limit problem.

edit: Come to think of it, there's a slightly older thread that has a number of good ideas addressing this issue. I still kind of like the exercise idea I suggested.

 

[Ranger1]

14 minutes ago, Vrallox said:

If they were to fix that then animals stored in bases and barns would actually die and help with the dino tame limit problem.

Personally I fully support situations where even in PVE tames are more likely to die, however that is a very thorny proposition.  Even now if a tame dies, well under any circumstance really but especially within the "safety" of a base, the players outrage is palpable.  Inevitably the deceased tame had some incredibly sentimental value, or was the result of a mind shatteringly large amount of time and "hard work". 

Any system implemented at this point in the games life that puts PVE tames more in harm's way would be met with an incredible amount of resistance from that segment of the player base.  If this had been the case all along "perhaps" it would be different.  Instead the false argument that "players are being punished while the clear answer is simply add more official servers" would rear its illogical head yet again.

So yes, exploring various ways to increase creature mortality rates is a good (but very problematic) path to explore, as is the currently planned kibble rework.  But those are either just delaying the inevitable, or causing player unrest while hovering right around the cap.  There really, really needs to be an understanding that on official PVE servers a creature cap is an intentional and very necessary game mechanic... and that unlimited taming and breeding of creatures to add to your collection was never promoted to be a feature of the game.  Yes, you can continue to do both to your heart's content but that also requires you to make hard choices as to which creatures must go to make room for the new additions.

I try to avoid making "real life" comparisons, but this is exactly the same situation that actual farmers and ranchers must make every year.  They must determine how much livestock their land and resources can support, determine how many they can afford to breed each season, and make those hard choices on which animals will be slaughtered and which ones will be allowed to survive.  Any other course of action leads to the ruin of not only their land, but of their livelihood as well.  

If you want to do unlimited (or nearly unlimited) breeding or creature collection, official PVE servers with large populations are not the environment for it.  They are instead the environment for interesting and often large builds (within reason), developing cooperative communities, and trade in a large non-pvp oriented environment that adheres to the rather strict (and necessary) restrictions of a completely vanilla playing experience (which includes a creature cap).  If you want greater flexibility to breed or collect creatures, and/or the ability to tailor the playing environment to your own tastes, that is what private servers are for. 

That choice is yours to make as you see fit, but despite the fact that improvements and optimizations will continue to come that will delay hitting the creature cap to one degree or another, it is a still a choice that you must ultimately make.

[Vrallox]

19 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

Personally I fully support situations where even in PVE tames are more likely to die, however that is a very thorny proposition.  Even now if a tame dies, well under any circumstance really but especially within the "safety" of a base, the players outrage is palpable.  Inevitably the deceased tame had some incredibly sentimental value, or was the result of a mind shatteringly large amount of time and "hard work". 

Any system implemented at this point in the games life that puts PVE tames more in harm's way would be met with an incredible amount of resistance from that segment of the player base.  If this had been the case all along "perhaps" it would be different.  Instead the false argument that "players are being punished while the clear answer is simply add more official servers" would rear its illogical head yet again.

So yes, exploring various ways to increase creature mortality rates is a good (but very problematic) path to explore, as is the currently planned kibble rework.  But those are either just delaying the inevitable, or causing player unrest while hovering right around the cap.  There really, really needs to be an understanding that on official PVE servers a creature cap is an intentional and very necessary game mechanic... and that unlimited taming and breeding of creatures to add to your collection was never promoted to be a feature of the game.  Yes, you can continue to do both to your heart's content but that also requires you to make hard choices as to which creatures must go to make room for the new additions.

I try to avoid making "real life" comparisons, but this is exactly the same situation that actual farmers and ranchers must make every year.  They must determine how much livestock their land and resources can support, determine how many they can afford to breed each season, and make those hard choices on which animals will be slaughtered and which ones will be allowed to survive.  Any other course of action leads to the ruin of not only their land, but of their livelihood as well.  

If you want to do unlimited (or nearly unlimited) breeding or creature collection, official PVE servers with large populations are not the environment for it.  They are instead the environment for interesting and often large builds (within reason), developing cooperative communities, and trade in a large non-pvp oriented environment that adheres to the rather strict (and necessary) restrictions of a completely vanilla playing experience (which includes a creature cap).  If you want greater flexibility to breed or collect creatures, and/or the ability to tailor the playing environment to your own tastes, that is what private servers are for. 

That choice is yours to make as you see fit, but despite the fact that improvements and optimizations will continue to come that will delay hitting the creature cap to one degree or another, it is a still a choice that you must ultimately make.

Player outrage hasn't really been a factor in the decision making process from what I've seen. The (slow) wipe of legacy has ticked off, and continues to tick off, many players who are losing everything as opposed to just a smaller number of animals. I think some of the speeds of flyers should still be adjusted a bit but the flyer nerf was something that was necessary. I believe the decision makers at Wildcard should be persuaded that this is another matter in which they should simply power through the negative backlash because this is a change that really would improve the health of the game and create instances where the dangers in the game can possibly overwhelm us through interesting and entertaining game play.

The difference between the real life comparison and ARK is that not only are people more than happy to look out for their own interests, creating a buffer amount of disposable dinos for instance, but that they'd be unwilling to remove even animals they deem worthless simply because "Why should I get rid of something just so someone ELSE can have a new animal?" It's simply too easy to take care of and maintain ARK creatures for anyone to downsize without significant motivation or necessity. The tribe tame limit was one of those necessities and even that didn't have much of an impact because it wasn't thought out enough. Most people simply split into alliances rather then kill off their phiomia armies.

And then there is that attachment problem that you mentioned. I suppose making it possible to use the obelisks for long term storage of animals while decreasing the amount of animals each person can have active at any time would help alleviate some of the issues associated with that. 250 storage compartments and 250 active animals or something like that. People can keep their beloved animals while decreasing the load on the server. Would also help breeders as well since I would love to get a number of animals out of my hair until I need or simply want to continue a line. Possibly after finding a better stat somewhere.

You brought up some excellent points and this is yet another time when I wish I could add multiple likes to the same post.

[Meatmelt]

I think that dino slots should be assigned to single players: each player has his own fixed slots.

Having the cap assigned to tribes is unfair because a single player tribe can have as many dinos as a ten players one.

This doesn't resolve all problems but at least it has more sense.

[Atomix]

10 hours ago, Palenor said:

By the way, kibble will in no way whatsoever fix the issue.

Can appreciate your point of view, however I am looking for cold hard statistics, not opinions

You know what they say about opinions....

[Atomix]

9 hours ago, Kallor said:

Wildcard needs to get revenue from existing players, then they have a $ incentive to ensure a quality experience so that you stay, and they get more money. Right now existing players are dead weight and apart from good/bad press that might effect new sales, there is no incentive to keep them around, in fact it would be far better from Wildcards perspective if all the existing players quit.  All those servers are a financial drain, if they only had to support new players for a couple of months before they also quit they could get away with massive savings.

Their business model is new sales, the longer any player sticks around the worse the return is. It's a balancing act, drive too many players away and the game will be perceived as dead which will kill off new sales, make it too good and too many non revenue generating players will stick around consume all their resources.

That business model is at odds with the product though.   For a fast food restaurant, quick customer turnover makes sense.  But Ark is a long term game!  It takes weeks to achieve just a simple base.   As a customer I view the game as a long term investment of my time.  I would be expecting to play something like this for potentially years.   Very few games are like that (for me).  

I understand that, having paid for the client, I am now effectively dead weight.  But trying to accelerate the customer turnover on a product with such a time sink is a bad idea surely. So yes, they need to get revenue from existing players.  DLC is objectionable really because there are flaws in the current content.  Maybe micro transactions (cosmetic)?   Maybe premium servers as well as free ones?   I know I would subscribe to a premium server if it was well managed and worked well.

Whatever the solution, I hope they recognize this is a long-term, addictive game.   And an amazing game people love!  Give it some TLC. Invest in it, and there will be a loyal player base for years.  Then tap the Ark Addicts up for more revenue.