Why are the building mechanics (still) so awful?

[Pipinghot]

Note 1: This is not a whine thread, I'm hoping that someone with some technical knowledge of game engines will be able to answer this general query. The intent here is not to stir up trouble or cause grief, this is a genuine inquiry into why this fundamental flaw exists in this game.

Note 2: I know all about S+, please read below.

 

As of this post I've spent almost 2,000 hours playing ARK, far more than any other game in my Steam Collection, so you should understand that I'm asking this question from a "place of love". There is a lot to like about ARK, hence the 2,000 hours, but those hours have also exposed the aspects of the game that are deeply flawed. Of all the things in ARK that need improvement (and a few that are just outright "bad") the building mechanics are the worst aspect of the game, and for the life of me I can't figure out why.

We all know that S+ is going to be added to the game as soon as they can, but even though Orionsun has done some truly amazing work with S+ it still cannot fix some of the underlying problems. I've been playing on an Unofficial server using S+ for a long time now, and even with S+ the amount of work required to build anything beyond basic box-buildings is problematic. Some building functions that should be seamless and should never present any problems are still painful, pointless time wasters. As good as Orionsun is there are still problems built into the game, or possibly the underlying engine, that even he can't fix.

 

So... How is it that in a building game like ARK the worst aspect of the game is building?

1) Is it a limitation of the underlying game engine?

2) Is it because WildCard is using the underlying engine poorly?

 

I honestly don't know and I'm hoping that someone with some bona fide technical knowledge can offer some insight.

[AndrewLB]

Because Ark: Survival Evolved is a PVP MMO. PVE is something Wildcard considers only when the voices become noisy enough to become problematic. All the major changes to the game over the years were based on the needs and desires of PVP players, which almost always resulted in PVE players causing a crap storm. Just get used to it, Wildcard isn't going to start making changes that PVE players want anytime soon.

[Corrigan]

Build on completely even ground or entirely on ceiling tiles w/ pillars. You avoid roughly half of the flawed building mechanics that way. 

 

Although I do agree otherwise. 

Imo the devs should have preset a couple dozen LARGE areas per map that are ENTIRELY flat. 

I build strictly on islands, partially over water or cliff edges to incorporate the landscape with the necessity to build entirely upon ceiling tiles w/pillars to avoid the many building flaws.  

 

[Guest DJRone89]

I like how you don’t mention or explain what your actual issues are and just blanket blame them on “bad building mechanics”.

[hardballer]

 WOW.  After 2000 hours of playing Ark, your biggest issue is " the horrible building mechanics"?  Consider yourself truly blessed!

On the top of my head I can think of over a dozen issues that need fixing before I'd even consider the building mechanics.

[Prime99]

they need a TLC for building lmao

[Bruvas78]

I'm nearing 3000 hours and I know the frustration. That moment when the green wall shows to be in the place you want it, then BOOM, you've destroyed and replaced that greenhouse wall over to the left. I've learned to work around the misgivings of the mechanics and to patch over the bits that hurt my OCD, but an update to the mechanics would be nice.

[Mendoza]

I refuse to buy any DLC's until fundamental issues that Ark has are addressed... Including but certainly not limited to "building mechanics" !    The building in this game is so awful, I consider it still in Beta Stage, at least where building is concerned.

Why it has been left to this late in the stage of the game is still beyond me !  ?

[Pipinghot]

17 hours ago, AndrewLB said:

Because Ark: Survival Evolved is a PVP MMO. PVE is something Wildcard considers only when the voices become noisy enough to become problematic. All the major changes to the game over the years were based on the needs and desires of PVP players, which almost always resulted in PVE players causing a crap storm. Just get used to it, Wildcard isn't going to start making changes that PVE players want anytime soon.

Bad building mechanics affect PvP players more than PvE players, so your argument is really missing the big picture.

My first year in ARK was spent almost exclusively on PvP servers, including being a low-level member of a couple of different alpha tribes on two different servers, and the building mechanics are... a problem... in PvP. On a PvE server you have all the time in the world to fix a bad build, if the game is making is hard to build something you just tear out some pieces, farm some materials, and try again. As long as your base has good walls (usually walls made up of dino gates) you never have to worry about something going wrong with your base building, you have as much time as you need to fix things.

But in PvP every time something causes problems with your base building your risk of being raided gets increased. Trying to remodel a part of your main building? You'd better hope that nothing goes wrong or you might be forced to log off for the night with a weakness in your defenses. And even if nothing goes wrong the bad building mechanics make it easier for raiders to take advantage of the building mechanics.

Bad building mechanics are much more important in PvP than in PvE, and yet WildCard has not made it a priority to fix them, so even if your view that WildCard cares more about PvP than PvE is true, that doesn't answer the question.

[Pipinghot]

16 hours ago, Corrigan said:

Build on completely even ground or entirely on ceiling tiles w/ pillars. You avoid roughly half of the flawed building mechanics that way. 

 

Although I do agree otherwise. 

Imo the devs should have preset a couple dozen LARGE areas per map that are ENTIRELY flat. 

I build strictly on islands, partially over water or cliff edges to incorporate the landscape with the necessity to build entirely upon ceiling tiles w/pillars to avoid the many building flaws.

What you're describing are workarounds, not fixes. This problem would not be fixed by adding more flat spaces, it would be fixed by having good building mechanics. And while I understand that you're intentions are good it's not a contribution to answering the core question.

The question I'm hoping someone can answer is - are the building mechanics bad because of the limitations of the underlying game engine, or are they bad because WildCard is not implementing the building mechanics properly?

[Pipinghot]

14 hours ago, hardballer said:

 WOW.  After 2000 hours of playing Ark, your biggest issue is " the horrible building mechanics"?  Consider yourself truly blessed!

On the top of my head I can think of over a dozen issues that need fixing before I'd even consider the building mechanics.

That's a fair point, we might have different preferences and priorities. I left Official servers and started playing only on Unofficial servers because the taming times on Official are absurd and Imprinting is a joke, a completely abusive game mechanic. If I was still playing on Official servers I might re-prioritize.

Having said that, tame times and imprinting are easily fixed by playing on an Unofficial server with good mods, whereas the fundamental problems with the building mechanics are still a problem even when you have good mods on your server. Also, a lot more people play on Unofficial servers than Official servers, so taming and imprinting are situational problems whereas building mechanics are a universal problem.

[Guest DJRone89]

5 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

What you're describing workarounds, not fixes. This problem would not be fixed by adding more flat spaces, it would be fixed by having good building mechanics. And while I understand that you're intentions are good it's not a contribution to answering the core question.

The question I'm hoping someone can answer is - are the building mechanics bad because of the limitations of the underlying game engine, or are they bad because WildCard is not implementing the building mechanics properly?

You still haven’t addressed what your issues are. In order for this topic to progress, you need to dissect the problems. What do you consider bad building mechanics? Only then can people step in and work out if it’s an engine issue or poor implementation.

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, DJRone89 said:

You still haven’t addressed what your issues are. In order for this topic to progress, you need to dissect the problems. What do you consider bad building mechanics? Only then can people step in and work out if it’s an engine issue or poor implementation.

Edit: I misinterpreted the intent of your questions so I'm changing the contents of this reply. Sorry @DJRone89 for misinterpreting you at first.

At a high level:

1) Snap points are positionally subjective.

You have to do the "snap point dance" to find all of the possible snap points and see if the snap point you want even exists. And it's not limited to the angle, quite often the list of available snap points will change if you move closer to, or farther away from, the piece you're trying to attach to. At a basic level, you should be able to use the green plasma indicator to tell the game, "I want to attach my new piece to  this existing piece, and then use the "Q" button to cycle through every possible available snap point not matter what angle or distance you are standing from the target piece. It should never be necessary to dance around to find a snap point, they should all be available to use from any angle and any distance.

2) Objects that don't place where you've put them.

As described above by Bruvas78, the green plasma indicator shows you where the piece is going to snap... but it doesn't. It shifts to another snap point, or jumps somewhere else entirely, often resulting in destroying some other piece that you've already placed. And to make matters worse this is not something you can fix by waiting a couple of seconds. If this issue was caused by communications latency between your client and the server, you could always guarantee proper placement by simply waiting a second or two before placing the object, but that almost never works. This is an item that is "inside" the game, not related to latency or lag.

3) Pieces that can't find a snap point that absolutely should exist.

This could be a wall that won't snap into an empty space where you're trying to replace a window wall, or a foundation piece that won't snap in between two other foundations that you've laid in a grid (sometimes even on flat ground) - and so on. There are many specific examples that could be used, but the basic issue is sometimes you have to disassemble parts of an existing structure in order to place a new piece into a spot that it absolutely should snap in to.

 

4) Adding new pieces can create obstructions.

A classic example of this behavior is when you add ramps, or pillars, or possibly even a decorative railing to an existing structure, but then if you remove one of the pieces that are part of that structure and try to place a new one, it tells you that the new on is obstructred and can't be placed. So you have to remove the additional piece(s) and replace all of the pieces in the exact same order that you build them in the first place. If the ramp, or column, or railing can be attached to the existing structure without being obstructed then replaceing parts of the existing structure should be possible wihout having to disassemble things first. This isn't "Home Remodeling Simulator 3000" where you have to remove the trim if you want to replace your dry wall, if there was a piece in that space then another identical piece should also fit into that space without any issues.

5) Unintuitive behavior of the building system.

The "support" system is both unintuitive and inconsistent. Pieces often self-destruct if you remove a foundation or column that is multiple tiles away from them even though there is another foundation or support piece closer to them than the one you removed. The underlying support logic is best described as "wonky" because there is no rhyme or reason explaining why some pieces simply collapse while others in seemingly identical circumstances stay intact.

[MandaBear]

20 minutes ago, DJRone89 said:

You still haven’t addressed what your issues are. In order for this topic to progress, you need to dissect the problems. What do you consider bad building mechanics? Only then can people step in and work out if it’s an engine issue or poor implementation.

lol The op may not want to humor you here, but I'd love to. 

 

1. Snap Points. The snap points will reflect one position then snap to a different one. They will also snap to the nearby point when you may want to have that item hover in the middle close to each. One of the first things I learned building our bases is to build down and not up. Foundations will not place even to the one below because they are to busy trying to snap to the one below but collide into the mesh.

2. Textures do not match on different building blocks across the materials. A stone foundation has different mesh than a stone wall and is quite obvious when looked at. Why does this even matter since it is cosmetic? If you have uneven grounds and need to place down a pillar as opposed to a stone foundation, then you have to use walls to fill in the blanks. Raiders can see that one weak point from a mile away unless you cover up all of the foundations with walls (build limit).

3. No corner triangle pieces. You want to make a structure remotely resembling a cone? Tough. Find a work around or do without.

4. There are no half or quarter walls to fill in gaps where you have to build on uneven ground. You build on a slope because literally every other flat spot is taken and you will have pillars (weak to an attack and can be gotten under. Not to mention build limit) or an uneven wall system connected to floating ceilings.

5. Ramps do not go up but only down. I can not count the amount of times I would have benefited GREATLY if I could put supports under ramps and have them go from the bottom to the top of a hill. However, they do not do that so I had to either do without or waste hours of time farming resources that were wasted because of having to be demolished in the end.

6. There are no large walls so players have to spam a huge quantity of small ones which cause lag issues.

7. Gates do not snap to walls, or even attempt to if you want them. This creates gaps or prevents you from placing walls and ceilings correctly.

8. There are no curved structures available even slightly. There are only boxes, octagons, or fence foundation circled with straight walls and merged flat ceilings. This is a known problem for anyone wanting to build on a circular platform of any kind. 

9. There is not any marking system that is possible to be turned on/off for the ground such as a grid, so everything must be eyeballed and prayed it doesn't collide when walls or top structures are placed. 

10. Pillars do not come in different sizes so there will be times when a pillar goes down to the ground, but stops inches above it. "structure obstructed" so forget whatever you were working on before that I guess. 

11. There are not multi sided structures for scorched earth that come with protective shells but insulating interiors so build limit must be stressed to try to protect the inhabitants. 

12. Stacking. You are incapable of stacking most structures. Fencing is the only thing that comes to mind at the moment, but I don't know that is the only thing for a fact. Either way storage containers, walls, foundations, ceilings, gates, ect. are only able to be stacked after many resource expensive work arounds are utilized.  

13. Electrical cables and plumbing pipes do not have the possibility to connect via an area instead of directly (having them connect similar to electric boxes do would help). so if you are running lines from both sides at once and they go slightly off, there is nothing you can do other than rip down one side and start over.

14. Bridges do not exist in this game for some reason, and while it has no merit to PVP like the others do, this is an issue in PVE since people pillar off large portions under the water to support their structures. This prevents boats from going under unless you use work arounds involving foundations perfectly snapped. 

15. There is no option to pick up items that should be possible to be picked up. You should not be able to pick up a foundation, but not being able to push a refrigerator forward is ridiculous. That is just the example I have thought of quickly too, there are many others that are worse.

 

I'm sure if I spent longer thinking about all of the cursing moments I've had while base building I could come up with many more. But I think 15 points of showcasing the structures lacking horribly is enough to agree with the original point of this post. Half of ark is about building a base for you and your tribe while the remainder focuses on the creatures and exploring. For half of this system to still have major issues like the ones listed above, OP is well within their rights to feel frustrated. This is one of the few issues that effect everyone equally careless what game type you play on. 

[Mendoza]

Being able to pick a painting off the wall and move it somewhere else would be nice... I mean how can I sell my art works or have them stolen and appreciated elsewhere !  lol

-- I'd love the ability to "un" snap an object... There's been a few times when I want to place an object, but can't place it where I want due to the object snapping to something off to the side!

But as to the question overall; : Is it the limitation of the game engine or the game developer - I couldn't say?  -- There can at least be something done about some things however to improve quality of life!

[Corrigan]

8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

What you're describing are workarounds, not fixes. This problem would not be fixed by adding more flat spaces, it would be fixed by having good building mechanics. And while I understand that you're intentions are good it's not a contribution to answering the core question.

The question I'm hoping someone can answer is - are the building mechanics bad because of the limitations of the underlying game engine, or are they bad because WildCard is not implementing the building mechanics properly?

Very few of us are equipped to answer this particular question, and those that can will probably say something along the lines of 'the mechanics you seek don't exist yet, or arent obtainable without straneous effort for this particular game type'. 

This isn't the sims lol 

There's only a few games of this particular game type that Im aware of, and therefore few games for us to even compare building mechanics with -and their mechanics are actually worse in my opinion. 

does that help?

 

[OutlawFirebird]

At least s+ is an option for you.  Alot of us can't even use it. We're stuck with all the Stock building stuff.  

[hardballer]

9 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

That's a fair point, we might have different preferences and priorities. I left Official servers and started playing only on Unofficial servers because the taming times on Official are absurd and Imprinting is a joke, a completely abusive game mechanic. If I was still playing on Official servers I might re-prioritize. 

Having said that, tame times and imprinting are easily fixed by playing on an Unofficial server with good mods, whereas the fundamental problems with the building mechanics are still a problem even when you have good mods on your server. Also, a lot more people play on Unofficial servers than Official servers, so taming and imprinting are situational problems whereas building mechanics are a universal problem.

I spent 200 hours on an unofficial server and then one day it just poofed into thin air.  Probably not par for the course but I just went back to official.  The sense of achievement is way more rewarding for me on official too, to be honest.   And most of my complaints handle broken game stuff like stuck dinos, not much to do with official or unofficial.  The building mechanics suck too, though. Definitely not definding them.

[ArianaGaming]

Hello,

A completed ARK house have no open openings not even for longneck rifle to snipe inside dinos.

As players build they create open areas under walls and so on. These are patched with other blocks. Even in PvE such pathes are needed.

What makes players safe is dino gates. Useless in PvP and ugly in PvE.

Bad mechanics? Under mech builds have made it that way. Norhing can go into the ground if it does players use it to get under the map and all the time it could have been fixed with deadly water and deadly rocks so that creatures die if they are under the map.

I never had problems with building as long as my house have these pathes for holes and box shaped.

Regards,

Ariana 

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, Corrigan said:

Very few of us are equipped to answer this particular question

True, which is why I'm hoping that one of them sees this thread. If I'm very lucky someone who sees this will be able to provide a straightforward answer "Engine limitation" or "Bad ARK implementation."

1 hour ago, Corrigan said:

There's only a few games of this particular game type that Im aware of, and therefore few games for us to even compare building mechanics with -and their mechanics are actually worse in my opinion.

There are actually quite a few of them, and that's looking on Steam without looking around the web in general. The catch is that I don't want to spend the time or money buying a bunch of games and comparing their building mechanics so... maybe someone who understands the relationship between the game engine and the game will know.

1 hour ago, Corrigan said:

does that help?

I'm sorry to say that it doesn't. Speculation isn't and answer, and while sympathy is nice it doesn't resolve the question. Even so, happy gaming to you.

 

 

[Corrigan]

5 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

True, which is why I'm hoping that one of them sees this thread. If I'm very lucky someone who sees this will be able to provide a straightforward answer "Engine limitation" or "Bad ARK implementation."

There are actually quite a few of them, and that's looking on Steam without looking around the web in general. The catch is that I don't want to spend the time or money buying a bunch of games and comparing their building mechanics so... maybe someone who understands the relationship between the game engine and the game will know.

I'm sorry to say that it doesn't. Speculation isn't and answer, and while sympathy is nice it doesn't resolve the question. Even so, happy gaming to you.

 

 

The handful of games that I know of have building mechanics that are either similar or worse off than Ark's. If I had to take an educated guess, and hopefully someone who's educated on Coding/etc can confirm it, I'd say it's a combination of the Engine, lack of innovation for this particular game type, and experience. 

Building in Ark used to be a lot worse. Over these years they've tweaked a few things which set a new standard not only for them, but for other gaming companies as well. Whether by coding 'know how' or other factors, Eventually a new standard will be reached, and then a new standard, and then a new standard after that.  Eventually, free map building in games like this will evolve like many other things do. 

So my educated guess to answer your question is this: Time. 

Perhaps a dev would agree. Ima stick to this answer unless a coder pops in and says otherwise  

 

[Pipinghot]

22 hours ago, OutlawFirebird said:

At least s+ is an option for you.  Alot of us can't even use it. We're stuck with all the Stock building stuff.  

S+ is amazing, and a huge improvment, but even that doesn't fix all of the underlying problems, hence this thread.

[OutlawFirebird]

I realize that

4 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

S+ is amazing, and a huge improvment, but even that doesn't fix all of the underlying problems, hence this thread.

I understand that. But at least you got options to make it somewhat better. Some off us don't have the option to use s+ at all.  It's much worse for us who don't have it.

[Skiidzman]

Snap points piss me off.  Fix hacking first.

[mgsgta3]

The answer has arrived!
Okay, When Ark was a little bebe, just a tiny little bundle of code it was hardly more than an unreal gamebuilding tutorial. The first things added, was the foundation of the game, that was the building mechanics and other core mechanics that EVERYTHING else relies on in order for it to function somewhat properly. If direct changes were to be made to these core mechanics it would break a lot of things, or would be a massive undertaking of editing and adjusting,well, about every single  placeable item. It's be a lot more work than im making it sound like. While it should have been done better from the start you have to remember Wildcard was a small team of devs, who may NOT have been the most skilled, but certainly WERE the most ambitious. This has come back to bite them in the butt a number of times(namely with delays and release dates in general). Since then theyve grown, and hired more people, honed and learned new skills, and if they had to remake Ark starting today they likely would have the know-how to avoid basing their game off of a game developing tutorial(shootergame.exe) and would build it from the ground up, and would have the know-how to make the building systems tighter and much better functioning. 
tl;dr Look at it like a Jenga tower, the whole tower relies on the bottom two rows. Thos erows represent the core mechanics of the game, and to fix them theyd have to replace both rows with new pieces. is it possible? Yes. Is it going to happen? No, not in Ark 1.  The best bet we have for this being solved in Ark is when they implement S+ into official(which s+ skirts the whole issue entirely with great success for the most part)
Good news is though: You can be sure  Ark 2 wont have these core mechanic issues.