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Compliments to the Developers


markand1019

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It's possible that this may be addressed elsewhere, however, there are far too many threads to sift through.

I want to state my general support for the developers.  There's no doubt in my mind that this job is difficult.  There is a razor thin line that you cross each and every update trying to balance every aspect of the game to please as many of your current player base as possible, while coaxing new ones into the fold with new and enticing content.  The constant process of fixing bugs, with each new update introducing new ones or reimagining the code from old ones, requires time, effort and patience that quite a few people in today's world don't have.  There's also the necessity of developing thick skin so you can brush off the criticism of individuals with too much time, a lack of appreciation and an overabundance of attitude.  I can't say that I would ever want to trade places with any of you.  I want you to know that there are definitely still those of us out there that appreciate the game, despite its bugs and issues.

After all, Ark is a game like no other.  How many games can boast gargantuan, terrifying, and downright adorable dinosaur species?  Seeing these fulfills a fantasy for many of us that has existed ever since we learned the word 'dinosaur,' and this game meets those desires in such a way that leaves the player wanting for more.  I can't ever forget my own emotions in seeing a brontosaurus on Ark for the first time.  It was a sense of awe, and sheer excitement that I hadn't felt since I was eight years old, walking under bones in a museum.  And then knowing I had the opportunity to tame this incredible beast?  It was like being a giddy kid again, despite my age (33 years old.)

But what about the other thrills that Ark offers?  It has gentle herbivores to be sure, but what about those dinosaurs that exist in the darkest nightmares for some?  The first time I met a Rex face to face, I was hunting alone in the forest.  I was gathering the berries I needed for a tame, not paying attention to where I was going, or what was going on around me.  The ground around me started to shudder, and I heard a rumbling growl.  I turned to see the fearsome predator behind me, its footsteps shaking the ground, and felt my heart stop and the blood drain from my face.  I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I turned to run, hoping desperately that what I knew to be true was just a ugly lie, but learning in the next few seconds that Ark had harsh lessons for the unwary.

Most recently, this past Christmas season, I was fortunate to have the money to buy myself an Oculus Rift.  Despite the many negative reviews that others had posted about their VR experiences in Ark, I chose to attempt it regardless of their opinions.  While it did take some setting tweaks to fix some of the issues, seeing those same dinosaurs real scale blew my mind.  I got that same heady rush that I felt when first playing the game, and felt truly elated that I had this experience to call my own.

For these experiences and others, I want to sincerely thank you, the developers, for putting out a game that continues to amaze, inspire and entertain more than any I've ever played.  There aren't enough words that I could type or sentences that I could weave that would do justice to the appreciation and gratitude that I feel for what you've done.  Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

 

 

 

 

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"with each new update introducing new ones or reimagining the code from old ones, requires time, effort and patience that quite a few people in today's world don't have"

 

reimagining code is a very polite way of saying changing code and hoping it doesn't break the game further.  Like throwing your poo at the wall and hoping it sticks.   I gotta say if all these updates take time why am I getting a server message every night that says they are downing the server for another update?  It's almost like they roll out the new attempt daily with no patience, time, or effort.   Maybe you play unofficial or something I don't know.  It seems that this game has so many different levels of performance depending on what system you use and what server. 

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I think I see myself as one of the people that don't show a  lot of appreciation  to the devs, I stopped doing that about one and a half year ago.
When devs started to be bad devs that do bad and poor game design changes.
Devs that ignore a "bug report" section in the forums, even on this very official forum.
... gotta stop writing, or I'll get anger issues again with the Studio Wildcard devs and the day has just started here in GerMoney.
 

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@Steeze Have you ever written a program?  It requires testing, going through code line by line and trying to find the error that caused the bug.  I can tell you from personal experience that it takes all those things that I mentioned.  Understand that the only reason those bugs get fixed is because a specific developer has to sit down and go over the code, perhaps for hours to find the particular bug that's caused an issue.  There's no guarantee that when they fix that one, it doesn't cause another one somewhere unrelated.

@RoyHess666 They don't ignore the bug reports though.  There's definitely cases in which they respond to them and fix the ones that they can.  Additionally, I think a lot of players forget sometimes that there are so many thousands of us and only a few of them.  Expecting them to be able to respond to every single one of those reports at any given time is somewhat unrealistic.  Perfect example is the reason why I started this post instead of looking for an old one.  There were just too many threads to sift through and I'm only one person.

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On 1/8/2018 at 9:57 AM, markand1019 said:

@Steeze Have you ever written a program?  It requires testing, going through code line by line and trying to find the error that caused the bug.  I can tell you from personal experience that it takes all those things that I mentioned.  Understand that the only reason those bugs get fixed is because a specific developer has to sit down and go over the code, perhaps for hours to find the particular bug that's caused an issue.  There's no guarantee that when they fix that one, it doesn't cause another one somewhere unrelated.

I am sure many here wrote programs, it's a common hobby this days.

I am a software developer and sometimes i don't get why they don't fix simple issues that don't require hours of debugging. For example blueprints taking more mats then slots are in the smithy or Rock Elementals are not tamable with rocket launcher after the rocket launcher change almost a year back.

Other times i am surprised how fast they fix a reported issue. All in all they do a lot of decisions which are hard to follow. Good thing is they give us a lot of options and we can run unofficial servers, that fixes a lot.

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4 hours ago, Thorium said:

I am a software developer and sometimes i don't get why they don't fix simple issues that don't require hours of debugging. For example blueprints taking more mats then slots are in the smithy or Rock Elementals are not tamable with rocket launcher after the rocket launcher change almost a year back.

2

Then you know that what get's fixed is management and not developer call ;)

It's just matter of available resources and bug severity, sometimes we all must accept to live with some non-breaking bugs and use resources to fix or work on more important stuff.

Having a better communication with players (even though they have decent one compared to others) will help with problems like that, but, we players, sometimes behave as entitled bunch wanting everything fixed now and in the same breath asking for more new stuff and for free, so even posting a realistic roadmap wont please a lot of us.

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5 hours ago, Thorium said:

For example blueprints taking more mats then slots are in the smithy

Well, this is not even a bug and is definitely intended. The Tek Replicator is the station you need to craft such blueprints and this is called "progression". You need high-tech machines to make high-tech items - even in the real world.

5 hours ago, Thorium said:

Rock Elementals are not tamable with rocket launcher after the rocket launcher change almost a year back.

Well, I guess you will have to practice your aim as it works perfectly fine for me. I even just recorded a short clip just for you:

You can clearly see that the Golem takes 250 damage when its head is missed and 62 damage + instant torpor otherwise.

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Hello,

To Wild Card and the author of this tread markand1019. There is no way to describe the feelings I got seeing NerdParade just swimming to Herbivore Island in a Youtube vid. Can I do that? From that point on ARK made every moment I play stick in my memory.

Words are available:

Jaw drop

is one such word seen in many new players. Do not forget that!

Regards, Ariana                   who did not read the other comments to this tread. ;)

 

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@invincibleqc

You might know this answer regarding Rock Elementals. Twice on 2x I have knocked out a Golem using cannonballs flawlessly. No errant hits. I use mantis kibble and the Golem does not take any damage after being knocked out. On 2x I should be getting 130's to tame out to 191 using kibble. On 1x I should be getting them to tame out to 184. Both of my tames (on 2x) tamed out at 185. Any reason you can think of? Is dododex off on Rock Elementals? The 140's and 150 also tamed on 2x both also came in under what is listed on dododex. 2 of the 140's and the 150 did take some errant hits but the the other 140 was also a flawless knockout. 

Sorry to derail the OP's topic but me, me, me. :P

I'll take my answer off air. 

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@yekrucifixion187 Yes, and while it is annoying, this is totally normal and intended. When the cannonball hit the Golem, it deals instant torpor and then the "splash damage" is applied and affect the taming effectiveness; thus decreasing the bonus it gains hence why it tames at lower level. Same issue with Karkinos, as I mentioned there:

I debunked his Golem argument as it was used as an example against OP but yeah, let's keep this thread on topic and create your own threads if you have questions and feel free to @ me there. ;)

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3 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, this is not even a bug and is definitely intended. The Tek Replicator is the station you need to craft such blueprints and this is called "progression". You need high-tech machines to make high-tech items - even in the real world.

Well, I guess you will have to practice your aim as it works perfectly fine for me. I even just recorded a short clip just for you:

You can clearly see that the Golem takes 250 damage when its head is missed and 62 damage + instant torpor otherwise.

@invincibleqc ty for this confirmation, i should stop listening to rumors lol. 

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5 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, this is not even a bug and is definitely intended. The Tek Replicator is the station you need to craft such blueprints and this is called "progression". You need high-tech machines to make high-tech items - even in the real world.

Well, I guess you will have to practice your aim as it works perfectly fine for me. I even just recorded a short clip just for you:

You can clearly see that the Golem takes 250 damage when its head is missed and 62 damage + instant torpor otherwise.

No it's not intended. There are blueprints you can't even craft in the Tek Replicator.

So, they silently fixed the rocket taming, didnt read it in the patch notes ever and we waited month for the fix and tried it a few times in between. It wasnt because of aiming, smartass. It was a bug, just take a look at the scorched earth bug report forum, it was reported multiple times after the rocket launcher change from quality to none quality.

Should i start listing more bugs? Whats with the compass, crop plot, water jar blueprints? Even after finalizing the drops, thats still a issue, which is easily fixed. Takes about a minute if you look at the loot crates to figure out why they come up so often, and i fixed it on my cluster with custom loot crate settings.

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I will never understand the amount of irrational hate and bile that a chunk of the Ark community aim at the developers.  This game is hugely extensive and has a ton of content, with more coming.  There are bugs, and you can see that they address them based on priority of impact to the player base, balanced with working to finish the content and features that they envision.  I can't speak to other platforms, but claims that the game is not playable or broken beyond ability to enjoy yourself on PC is utter and complete rubbish.  I have been playing since the game came out and continue to love it.  The greatest frustration for me comes from the toxic nature of a painfully large portion of the player base.

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9 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, this is not even a bug and is definitely intended. The Tek Replicator is the station you need to craft such blueprints and this is called "progression". You need high-tech machines to make high-tech items - even in the real world.

Except there are currently BP's requiring over 600 slots (the max slot number of a Tek Replicator) to be crafted. I just hope there is a Tek Industrial Replicator in the works in some not so far future. 

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1 hour ago, BoboOfTheFriendlies said:

I will never understand the amount of irrational hate and bile that a chunk of the Ark community aim at the developers.  This game is hugely extensive and has a ton of content, with more coming.  There are bugs, and you can see that they address them based on priority of impact to the player base, balanced with working to finish the content and features that they envision.  I can't speak to other platforms, but claims that the game is not playable or broken beyond ability to enjoy yourself on PC is utter and complete rubbish.  I have been playing since the game came out and continue to love it.  The greatest frustration for me comes from the toxic nature of a painfully large portion of the player base.

I would take a wild guess that it is because of the way this game came to be...that is Early Access. 

Usually a game would be developed with a very limited number of people outside the company knowing of its existence and then when alpha and beta tested, it would be released to the general public. If this was the ARK way, most of us would have discovered some of the bugs only after release and would be comprehensive that sometimes ''poop'' happen and takes time to be fixed. The negative side of it, I doubt ARK would have been as popular as it is today. 

But ARK was part of Early Access, something relatively ''new'' in the history of gaming industry. It allowed the devs an immense support (financially, idea wise and so on) during critical phases of their projet. But on the other hand, it exposed some of the game flaws for quite a long period of time. And when some basic bugs still live in the game since June 2015, I can easily understand why some people are throwing rocks at the devs. 

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1 hour ago, BoboOfTheFriendlies said:

The greatest frustration for me comes from the toxic nature of a painfully large portion of the player base.

 

Well, it comes with the territory (PVP ;) ) I learned long time ago to just ignore it.

And note, that developer, (almost) any developer, is more frustrated about any bugs in the product on which they work on that any user who finds it, but sadly, available time and resources are finite and compromises must be made.

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15 hours ago, Thorium said:

No it's not intended. There are blueprints you can't even craft in the Tek Replicator.

Well, if such blueprints were looted on TheIsland, then it should be reported in the appropriate section. On the other hand, if they were looted on Ragnarok for example, then I wouldn't qualify it as a bug in the game. Ragnarok is boosting the quality of certain drops which affects the crafting requirements. If anything, this is Ragnarok's devs responsibility to make the proper balancing and ensure the loot generated is craftable. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I personally never found any blueprints on TheIsland that I was not able to craft and who knows how many thousands of drops I looted.

15 hours ago, Thorium said:

So, they silently fixed the rocket taming, didnt read it in the patch notes ever and we waited month for the fix and tried it a few times in between. It wasnt because of aiming, smartass. It was a bug, just take a look at the scorched earth bug report forum, it was reported multiple times after the rocket launcher change from quality to none quality.

That's not the point. Your argument was, and I quote:

On 1/10/2018 at 11:34 PM, Thorium said:

Rock Elementals are not tamable with rocket launcher after the rocket launcher change almost a year back

Which made your argument invalid because it is fixed and working as intended now.

15 hours ago, Thorium said:

Should i start listing more bugs? Whats with the compass, crop plot, water jar blueprints? Even after finalizing the drops, thats still a issue, which is easily fixed. Takes about a minute if you look at the loot crates to figure out why they come up so often, and i fixed it on my cluster with custom loot crate settings.

 

Well, once again, this is not a bug. This is called probabilities. Every entries in the loot table has a "weight" parameter that makes some items more common and other rarer. Since you are a programmer, here is a simple python code that should illustrate the basics of it:

from collections import defaultdict
from random import randrange

common = 'Medium Crop Plot' # 75%
uncommon = 'Water Jar' # 20%
rare = 'Sarco Saddle' # 4%
very_rare = 'Rex Saddle' # 1%

def generate_loot():
    x = randrange(100)
    if x < 75:
        return common
    elif x < 95:
        return uncommon
    elif x < 99:
        return rare
    else:
        return very_rare

for x in range(10):
    results = defaultdict(int)
    for x in range(10000):
        results[generate_loot()] += 1
    print(results)

"""
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Medium Crop Plot': 7563, 'Sarco Saddle': 379, 'Water Jar': 1966, 'Rex Saddle': 92})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Water Jar': 1939, 'Medium Crop Plot': 7555, 'Sarco Saddle': 403, 'Rex Saddle': 103})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Medium Crop Plot': 7512, 'Water Jar': 1953, 'Sarco Saddle': 426, 'Rex Saddle': 109})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Medium Crop Plot': 7541, 'Water Jar': 2001, 'Sarco Saddle': 381, 'Rex Saddle': 77})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Sarco Saddle': 413, 'Medium Crop Plot': 7576, 'Water Jar': 1902, 'Rex Saddle': 109})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Medium Crop Plot': 7481, 'Water Jar': 2037, 'Rex Saddle': 107, 'Sarco Saddle': 375})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Medium Crop Plot': 7521, 'Water Jar': 1999, 'Sarco Saddle': 366, 'Rex Saddle': 114})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Water Jar': 1948, 'Medium Crop Plot': 7502, 'Rex Saddle': 98, 'Sarco Saddle': 452})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Water Jar': 1981, 'Medium Crop Plot': 7539, 'Sarco Saddle': 382, 'Rex Saddle': 98})
defaultdict(<class 'int'>, {'Medium Crop Plot': 7537, 'Water Jar': 1965, 'Rex Saddle': 93, 'Sarco Saddle': 405})
"""

As you can see, out of 10 attempts of looting 10,000 drops, we get quite a lot of common/uncommon items while the rare and very rare ones are... well... rare. The current loot system is fine as it currently is in my opinion. Would not be as exciting to loot the rarest items if they were contained into every drop you loot, no? In conclusion, mechanics that are not balanced like you would like them to be are not "bugs".

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  • 3 weeks later...

Tell that to the Aberration players... 99% garbage from all regular spot supply beacons including yellow and purple, even white loot drops from TheIsland are more useful than most of the yellow Aberration common supply beacons.

And don't tell us that 8 out of 10 times you get a fish trap blueprint from looting a green, blue, yellow or even purple beacon on Aberration even though the server loot quality multiplier is set to 5 (or higher) - is intended. This is BS.

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47 minutes ago, RoyHess666 said:

Tell that to the Aberration players... 99% garbage from all regular spot supply beacons including yellow and purple, even white loot drops from TheIsland are more useful than most of the yellow Aberration common supply beacons.

And don't tell us that 8 out of 10 times you get a fish trap blueprint from looting a green, blue, yellow or even purple beacon on Aberration even though the server loot quality multiplier is set to 5 (or higher) - is intended. This is BS.

But I need all those crop plot BP’s!!!!  Ab drops are terrible. Useless

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