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Is Ark dying ?


Kylir10

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So is ark dying or dead?

 

In my eyes its dying, Due to the toxic players and the long long long list of issues in the game. You have people that cant fight fair needing to DDOS or undermap just to name a few. And there not the only Issues that game itself is broken at the core really. the lag is amazing the fact we have dinos starving why they have max food in them losing dinos through the ground or in the ark itself.

 

Losing your level 113 character with so many imprinted dinos (sure they will give you the 100 levels back but all that work you just lose to ther bug in the game).

Can Wild Card fix some of the issues? we will have to wait and see as most was here from alpha and are still here. What about toxic players? the cheaters the dupers the undermapers?

Well wild card has started to work on them on PC but I fear its to little to late, even more so for us that its already happend to more than once. The game is just not fun we cant even go for a little raid no without someone crying to a megas tribe thats will just DDOS the crap out of the server and offline you no fair fights anymore.

 

Sure there will be a lot of people that still love the game and good for you Im happy some are still enjoying it, I have just lost another 6 members who just cant put up with the bugs glitches and cheaters in the game anymore. One dude lost 3 characters in the same day no word of a lie 3!!! Due to a server he went to do the tek cave on getting roledback by a group claming to be SC. He farmed up a lot of mats to get into that fight and lost everything.

 

 I would love to hear other players point of views, good or bad.

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It's certainly not dead no.

Is it dying? Certainly not on unofficial.

Unofficial has none of:

  • Lag
  • DDoS
  • Under Meshing

Pretty much everything that people claiming is causing the death of the game, besides bugs, is not on unofficial servers.

Just because all of that happens on official servers does not mean the game is dying, because there is more to the game than just official servers. So no, the game is not dying.

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The vocal are always the minority. I dont think this game is dying because a few bugs and glitches. Did you play during early access? There was a lot more then and were still here.

 

Sure, Ark wont be as popular as it was on release. There are so many people we never hear from on forums (and lots like myself) who still love the game despite the bugs

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54 minutes ago, GP said:

It's certainly not dead no.

Is it dying? Certainly not on unofficial.

Unofficial has none of:

  • Lag
  • DDoS
  • Under Meshing

Pretty much everything that people claiming is causing the death of the game, besides bugs, is not on unofficial servers.

Just because all of that happens on official servers does not mean the game is dying, because there is more to the game than just official servers. So no, the game is not dying.

Unofficial has these exclusive features though:

  • Lots of rules that don't make sense or fall into a grey zone.
    • "Don't do excessive damage when raiding". Lots of servers have this poorly defined rule.
  • Lots of rules that can't be enforced.
    • Rules such as "You may not build within 200 metres of another base". Good luck measuring that
  • Admins that blatantly cheat
  • Servers that disappear overnight
  • Admins that will ban you even if you don't break any rules but simply because your making people leave their server. Had this happen twice so far.
  • Pseudo "PVP" servers that actually play like PVE servers due to thousands of rules on everything.

In addition they also suffer from:

  • Under meshing
  • Lag - especially on servers with increased rates
  • Hackers. There are some servers that have BattleEye disabled.

In terms of the game dying according to Steam Charts it has indeed been losing a steady stream of players each month for the last 4 months. Then again it is approaching 3 years old and most games this old tend to lose players.

http://steamcharts.com/app/346110

 

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39 minutes ago, flamron said:

Steam volumes seem to indicate a downturn in player usage. 

Yeah there's a downturn, we've seen it before with ARK, it goes down then goes back up. Sure the downturn right now is probably the biggest downturn ARK has seen on Steam but that doesn't mean it's dying.

Look at PUBG http://steamcharts.com/app/578080#All

People went crazy about the massive numbers it was seeing, but then since February it's been going down fast, doesn't mean its dying.

The thing is, this happens with ALL games. The longer a game is out the more the numbers will drop, you can't expect numbers to keep going up for a game that's been in existence for several years. New games will come out, people will play the new games, doesn't mean they will stop playing ARK entirely, but their play time would of course drop, but that's normal for gamers.

Look at when Conan got official release, there were people making statements that they are quitting ARK and moving to Conan, or people saying Conan's coming out RIP ARK. They said it as if it was anything special, but in reality it doesn't matter what new games come out, there will always be a lot of people that move to new games and either stop playing older games or reduce the time they play on them. This is nothing unique to ARK, nor is it anything new in the history of gaming.

Some people just see a decline in numbers, like on Steam, and claim the game is dying. But it's just going through a natural process of what all games will go through at some point through their lifecycle. Don't forget a lot of people have played ARK on Steam now for 3 years next month, why do you expect that all those would still be playing the game after 3 years of new games? People move on for whatever reason, so what, no need to keep claiming its dying as if the situation here is unique to ARK.

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Guest DJRone89
43 minutes ago, flamron said:

Steam volumes seem to indicate a downturn in player usage. 

Steam doesn’t dictate the popularity of the game when it’s played across multiple platforms. Also, it’s been said there are way more official servers on each console platform compared to Steam. So while there may be less people on Steam playing, it’s not a representation of the whole playerbase so you can’t use it to justify the popularity of the game.

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Yes I have been playing from early Alpha, i have the game on PC, PS4 and X-box one. So in all I think i have been playing long enough. And yes Alpha had problems like most games in alpha and beta have. But the game is not in alpha or beta anymore and a lot of the issues that I sent them in them stages are still around today. The list of what has been fixed over what is still here is not much really to be fair.

 

And yes Unofficial has same problems as Official it is still open to the same exploits as official. Not all of the Unofficial are toxic but a lot are ran by people that do have power trips. plus why would you buy a game to not to play it the way the devs intended it (official).

 

I remember being on daily and seeing there server max pop and not just my server so many was max. Now you look at official and its not so. on days i can be only person on for hours. So then maybe Official is dying then. i had near on 100 people I platyed with at the start now Im lucky if we can get 10 for a boss fight. And i know this of other tribes also.

 

I believe that game is having a lot of issues, and yes it could be saved IF they devs can fix the big issues without the fear of losing people.

 

So i can rename the post to is Ark Official servers dying out?

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Just stating facts. We don’t have access to advanced analytics like Wildcard to view and understand the total scope. I’m assuming they are watching them and, based on the overall trend are working on tweaking events to bring excitement back the game. They’ve missed the mark on that (my personal opinion) for a few months. My hope is they’ll find a good balance of things that actually matter to the player base and don’t cause a large detriment to the official server game play. Because the 2x every weekend is not sustainable. My guess is they started to see a downturn WITH the standard 2x rates and wanted to refresh it with events like Kings Harvest and making the usual evo events less frequent. 

 

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Guest DJRone89
7 minutes ago, ForzaProiettile said:

Unofficial has these exclusive features though:

  • Lots of rules that don't make sense or fall into a grey zone.
    • "Don't do excessive damage when raiding". Lots of servers have this poorly defined rule.
  • Lots of rules that can't be enforced.
    • Rules such as "You may not build within 200 metres of another base". Good luck measuring that
  • Admins that blatantly cheat
  • Servers that disappear overnight
  • Admins that will ban you even if you don't break any rules but simply because your making people leave their server. Had this happen twice so far.
  • Pseudo "PVP" servers that actually play like PVE servers due to thousands of rules on everything.

In addition they also suffer from:

  • Under meshing
  • Lag - especially on servers with increased rates
  • Hackers. There are some servers that have BattleEye disabled.

In terms of the game dying according to Steam Charts it has indeed been losing a steady stream of players each month for the last 4 months. Then again it is approaching 3 years old and most games this old tend to lose players.

http://steamcharts.com/app/346110

 

If you don’t like poorly designed rules as you say, don’t join them. Plenty other people will because they are looking for said rules. If you like the politics/style of official servers to be the base line of your unofficial search, then only try those servers.

Or better yet, host your own server/cluster. Plenty people like to complain about how unofficials are run when they make statements about admin abuse etc but aren’t prepared to prove that not all servers are run that way by taking the reigns themselves.

Back to the topic; Is Ark dying? Maybe. But it’s likely official will die before unofficial does.

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I agree with GP.  I think Ark's downturn is natural.  It happens to every game.  I doubt that you can really point to any single issue.  The fact of the matter is that people get bored just as often as they get mad, and simply move on to other games.  I am currently in the log on to feed/refresh pillars&structures/log off to play Conan phase of the game.  I don't know if I will seriously play the game again or not.  I will say that the impetus for me even buying another game was the stoppage of the weekend events.  I guess I got too used to them, and it really felt like we, as a player base, were being punished.  I continue to feel that the decisions made concerning this game's direction are incredibly counter intuitive, but I also want to see where the game developers take it, as it is their vision, not mine.  I think Ark is conceptually the best video game I have ever played, and I am old and have played a lot of games :)

 

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Well I certainly hope not.  I love Aberration and can always find something to do (started ARK on PS4 The Island, moved to PC platform in Aberration).  I have not to date experienced terrible lag...yes the usual rubber banding happens, but not more or less than any other game.  Yes the building mechanics could use some tweaking, but all in all it is one of the better games I have played over the last few years (and there have been quite a few). So far the players on our server have been great, willing to help if you ask, and *gasp* even joke around a bit here and there.  So for me, I hope WC pumps out a few more variations. 

 

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It may not correlate to ARK having a diminishing player base... but it must say something.  I used to come to the forums or reddit around 10am EST (start of work day) and scan the first 3 pages.  I'd probably reply to a few posts on here and on reddit.  The next I'd check would be around 1pm (lunchish) and the first three pages would pretty much be full of new posts or new replies.  Any of my replies would be down on page 2-4.  Today, we're lucky to see a full new page of players posting every day. 

As for "go to unofficials"... it's not that easy.  There's a TON of unofficials to choose from and most of them are bunk.  The 50x servers are just not my thing.  The reasonable rate servers seem to all be super low pop.  Sure you can play on them, but after a month it gets incredibly boring.

ARK isn't dead... but it sure feels like it's been taking a nap these past couple months.  I know I just log in to maintain, check tribe log, feed dinos etc... and I have over 400 game days played on xbox.

p.s.  Conan is a terrible game.  200 hours of content that takes you 600 hours to experience due to disconnects.

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After playing for over a year and doing everything pve has to offer I stopped playing a few months ago. I got the save file from the server I was on and made it my single player, but apart from checking it was all working I haven't started the game once.

I suppose I was just burnt out after so much breeding, 100% imprinted gigas, tusos, mosa, countless boss rexes and so on.

I found myself just logging on to feed and reset and I'd finally had enough when I was going on a holiday and trying to organise having everything fed etc.

No more oh wait a minute I need to feed my pixels before I head out with friends this weekend moments. It's a great game but after a while it just becomes a chore.

Looking back I kinda blame wc as had they been honest about the whole wipe/no wipe thing I would of had an extended break till the new servers came out. Instead of getting into end game breeding and bosses. Which would of made starting over again much more tolerable.

I would of still ended up burnt out at some stage but probably not this soon

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Guest DJRone89
1 hour ago, jpcab said:

Must be..i think the each time more rare weekend events are related to that

Not everyone plays official.

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8 hours ago, edskelly said:

After playing for over a year and doing everything pve has to offer I stopped playing a few months ago. I got the save file from the server I was on and made it my single player, but apart from checking it was all working I haven't started the game once.

I suppose I was just burnt out after so much breeding, 100% imprinted gigas, tusos, mosa, countless boss rexes and so on.

I found myself just logging on to feed and reset and I'd finally had enough when I was going on a holiday and trying to organise having everything fed etc.

No more oh wait a minute I need to feed my pixels before I head out with friends this weekend moments. It's a great game but after a while it just becomes a chore.

Looking back I kinda blame wc as had they been honest about the whole wipe/no wipe thing I would of had an extended break till the new servers came out. Instead of getting into end game breeding and bosses. Which would of made starting over again much more tolerable.

I would of still ended up burnt out at some stage but probably not this soon

Well since you have finished PVE and naturally totalled bored why not try something new. The other side of the game PVP is quite exciting, every ARK player should at least experience it once otherwise they haven't played the full game.

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14 hours ago, Kylir10 said:
14 hours ago, Kylir10 said:

So is ark dying or dead?

 

In my eyes its dying, Due to the toxic players and the long long long list of issues in the game. You have people that cant fight fair needing to DDOS or undermap just to name a few. And there not the only Issues that game itself is broken at the core really. the lag is amazing the fact we have dinos starving why they have max food in them losing dinos through the ground or in the ark itself.

 

Losing your level 113 character with so many imprinted dinos (sure they will give you the 100 levels back but all that work you just lose to ther bug in the game).

Can Wild Card fix some of the issues? we will have to wait and see as most was here from alpha and are still here. What about toxic players? the cheaters the dupers the undermapers?

Well wild card has started to work on them on PC but I fear its to little to late, even more so for us that its already happend to more than once. The game is just not fun we cant even go for a little raid no without someone crying to a megas tribe thats will just DDOS the crap out of the server and offline you no fair fights anymore.

 

Sure there will be a lot of people that still love the game and good for you Im happy some are still enjoying it, I have just lost another 6 members who just cant put up with the bugs glitches and cheaters in the game anymore. One dude lost 3 characters in the same day no word of a lie 3!!! Due to a server he went to do the tek cave on getting roledback by a group claming to be SC. He farmed up a lot of mats to get into that fight and lost everything.

 

 I would love to hear other players point of views, good or bad.

 

This is from someone who was in ThePolice back in the old legacy servers that owned 131 that had over 300 people in our tribe during the raid

 

Breeding hands down killed ark PvP there is no question in my mind. It is a great part of ark and i get why the developers did it however it does not promote healthy game play for PvP.  How could breeding do all this you ask? Well let me explain <3.

 

1) Complete removal of OW Once you tame lots of dinos you start working on your breeding lines so you go out less in to the wild. Less open world PvP means less PvP encounters thus making it PvE with a side of zerging or offline raiding(acceptable strategies). While it is true these are both viable strategies of war they are not a healthy style of game play and causes more hatred then anything which turns mega tribes in to best options for defending tactic warriors. How do you defend against 66 people vs 4. You take the server down till you have more numbers. This in the long run means you rarely have to leave your base to tame more dinos to replenish your army.

2) The little guy can not beat breeding it is an endless supply of dinos that keeps the alpha on top where they would of been regardless of breeding being implemented. What this does do unlike the previous style with no breeding it makes people think they have no way of getting back at the group that wiped them. Which is totally 100% true. If we wiped a small tribe what can they do against 100-400 man alliances? Its not like they can dwindle dino numbers down since majority of mega tribes are on base defense duty. They also use the tactic kill 1 dino i replace it with 30. This turns in to a large issue for smaller tribes. 

3) Time investment - Since breeding 500 dinos all 100% imprinted to you takes a large amount of time your so invested in what happens to this dino it becomes especially apparent when players lose all their imprints wasting 100s if not 1000s of hours caring for your blood lines. Losing your character tilts you so hard because 1000s of hours lost in an instant.

These are the 3 major factors that make breeding the worst thing for Ark PvP

I could go on and on about breeding but it honestly is an awesome aspect of the game but it is not designed for PvP. All in all you have to make the little guys want to stay in the game and not quit as they are usually the ones quitting due to feeling useless. 

 

Next on my list of Hates that made me quit Ark

 

Alliances/Tribe limits  Let me start with something important first. I do believe the game is better played at at least 30v30 or even 20 v 50 it really lets dinos and foot soldiers shine in their roles. However the game can not handle it it does need to be scaled down. The alliance system was added in to the game back when the game had no server transfers so it is almost a 100% useless idea in the current meta/tribe set ups. All in all if you capped tribes at 20 and had no alliance system you would have to rely on what you have built to be ample defense not what others can bring in to your base when you are being raided.

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15 hours ago, DarthaNyan said:

which is true for all games after 3 years.

You can be at least lucky that steam is transparent and will show you how many players are online/playing. League of legends lost like half of players base, but they are not sharing online count, so nobody can see it. CSGO is going down, PUBG is going down, dota also. Every game is after some time boring and will lose casual players. Now big hit is fortnite, but you will see, when some new game will come, they will also lose players. Casual are always going to new hit games.

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