Community Crunch 148: Extinction Chronicles IV Next Week, Dev Diary, & Upcoming Server Maintenance!

[Jen]

Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! 

Extinction Chronicles IV Next Week!

On September 18th Extinction Chronicles IV will be released on all platforms. As usual survivors can expect a new tek dino, new Explorer Notes, a new cosmetic, increased level cap, and special colored dinos on all ARKs!

Developer Diaries!

This weeks diary entry is brought to you by Lead Programmer, Chris Willoughby, as he talks about the process for designing gameplay mechanics for Extinction.

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Hello Survivors! Today, I'd like to talk today about what goes into designing and building new gameplay mechanics. For brevity, I'll focus on the Scout, a creature that we've revealed as part of our upcoming Extinction expansion.

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When we approach designing gameplay mechanics we start by brainstorming interesting ideas that would make a compelling addition to our sandbox. The Scout started as a desire for the ability to fly around the battlefield with a drone. We have several members of the team who enjoy flying drones, so collectively we fell in love with the idea of remote piloting early. We also had another gameplay mechanic that we were interested in that finds its origins in another franchise - the ability to tag enemies to reveal them to your allies. This idea was also high on our list, and through further brainstorming, we found it was a natural fit for the Scout, so they came together in the brainstorming phase.

From there we seek to match those abilities up with concepts that fit well into the world we're building. This one was pretty easy. We knew that we were building a futuristic city for Extinction, and immediately we latched onto the idea of some kind of automated security force that patrols it. It took several more sessions to land on the idea of the interplay between Scouts and Enforcers, and the way that the Scout is deployed, but we're happy with where it landed.

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Next, we'll build the mechanic and iterate numerous times, using multiple weekly gameplay review sessions to nail the fine details. The Scout was deployable from a grenade and had remote viewing baked in pretty early on. Originally it's tagging mechanism was a projectile that it fired. This was very difficult to use, so we switched to more of a raygun. The tags originally lasted a very short time, so they weren't very useful. We've since upped the time that they last - making the Scout a key target for the other team to take out. In addition, we didn't originally allow the tagging of allies, but this slotted in naturally as a way to give a more complete view of the battlefield.

Finally, we turn our experienced set of player testers loose to hammer on the mechanics until they fit well. This process is underway for the Scout and for Extinction as a whole as I write this. We've got nearly all of the mechanics playable and we're iterating on the roles that they play individually and collectively within Extinction and within the larger game. As such, the abilities described above represent a snapshot of where they are as I'm writing this. These can and likely will change before launch! This is part of the reason that often times when we talk about something early on it doesn't match up with what the final product becomes. However this iteration process is necessary to deliver the best playing experience that we can.

Thanks for reading, survivors!

Upcoming Server Maintenance!

This Wednesday, September 12th at 12pm EST we will be merging the PC ARKpocalypse servers into one cluster. It is important for players on those servers to note that during this process any items or creatures uploaded into the Obelisk will be lost. Therefore it is strongly encouraged that you download anything in your cloud to ensure nothing is lost before Wednesday.

You can follow us on Twitter to keep up-to-date with this server process.

Mod Community Updates!

The ARK Modding contest is now in full swing, and we've been getting some good entries, but I still want to encourage anyone that has ever considered making mods for ARK to dive in and participate. The submission period will be open until Saturday, October 6th so polish up those mods and let's have some fun. After that, we'll move into the voting phase where we'll post all the mods in the contest publicly and let everyone try them out and vote on their favorites.

We've also received a couple tutorial bounty claims for chat commands and map optimizations and I have added a bunch of new bounties to the board ready to be claimed. You can find all of them here:

We're going to need some new tutorial requests too, and please check the list in the form to see if the request already exists, as I choose new bounties based on demand which can only be counted if everyone submits the form using one of the items from the drop-down.

Next week I'll have a new tutorial ready. I've been getting a ton of requests for a tutorial on version control, so I'm going to show everyone how to use Git with the devkit.

Happy modding!

The Great Migration #4: Inactive Legacy Server Removal

Once again it is time to remove some of our lower population legacy ARK servers on Xbox and PS4 from our Official legacy network. Over time the ARK population has migrated from legacy to non-legacy and in its wake left many servers with low populations for 0-1 players in a significant amount of cases. 

Here is a quick breakdown on how this process works:

Taking Down Low Pop Servers
With calculations based on sustained player-count as well as the popularity of game mode, we will be removing lower population legacy servers, most of which retain a 0-1 player concurrent population. These servers will be taken offline on September 24th. Any existing server that is not considered a low pop server and is not taken down at this time will still exist on the Legacy network.

Legacy servers will continue to remain on a separate cluster from the new cluster, which means you will not be able to transfer anything between Legacy servers and the new servers.

Servers Up for Deprecation
Below is a complete list of the LEGACY servers that will be deprecated come September 24th. You have from now until then to move your belongings onto a server not present on this list. Please click one of the links below. They are separated by platform.

How To Move Servers
If you are unfamiliar with the process, you are able to upload your items, creatures, and player through the Obelisk terminal, supply drops, as well as the Tek Transmitter. Survivors are advised to use Cross-ARK immediately to relocate their belongings onto a server that is not included in our take-down list above.

Server Saves of Deleted Servers
We will make the save files available as soon as we can. We will host the PC files which anyone can download and then you are welcome to re-host the save file for your own use. We'll include a link to where you can download server saves in this post when they are available. Nitrado will also be able to provide the saves for use on Nitrado servers for console, as they have done in the past.

You can see a list of our currently available depreciated official servers on this webpage: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/server-backups/

Community Livestream #8 This Thursday!

This Thursday September 13th the community team will be doing another biweekly livestream!

During these livestreams Zen Rowe, Chris, and Jen bring you ARK news, celebrate modding, and the community as a whole every other week. We mix it up between playing ARK, showing off mods, and showing off your community creations for all to see. Survivors are invited to join us in the chat (and sometimes even in-game) to play and talk with the community team.

We are accepting any type of ARK related fanart to be featured in the Showcase section of the stream and entries are always open. This can be drawings, videos, builds, ANSEL screenshots, handmade crafts, anything ARK related!

You can submit your ARKwork to our streaming email address: arkfans@studiowildcard.com

Be sure to follow us on our Twitch page so you don't miss a stream! twitch.tv/survivetheark

We'll be hosting our next Community Live Stream on Thursday, September the 13th at 1pm EST! We hope to see you there

Fanart of the Week!

We would like to give a special shout out this week to creature paint artist Sharkcat for their Jurassic World raptor paints!

ARK: Evolution Event!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 14th of September at 1 PM EST until Monday the 17th of September at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark

All the best,
Studio Wildcard

 

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[RenobandStit]

first! Just eliminate all legacy servers already.  Rip off the band-aid

Edited September 10, 2018 by RenobandStit

[DFritz]

Honestly, with the time gap they should just make all the Legacy official servers now. 

[Ironpancakemoose]

1 minute ago, DFritz said:

Honestly, with the time gap they should just make all the Legacy official servers now. 

They cant because legacy uses different hardware, however new servers should be added because its getting cluttered.

[TinyHippo]

Oh.

Now I get it. They're called enforcers because they're the security team. They enforce the law.

The name sounded odd at first, but it makes perfect sense to me now.

[JuggaloCard]

Hey look another double harvest, tame and exp weekend. I would have been happier for a double baby event. 

 

[StormedDread]

I think some new fresh servers on their own clusters would be good. Maybe with changes to the rules.

 

Have tribes limited to 10 to 15 people and 2 of each map in a cluster that you cannot transfer out of (much like the current cross ark servers) and even keep ORP, but find a way to punish combat loggers.

 

And if these servers were on a permanent 2x rather than only on weekends would be pretty cool too.

[Andy111]

Again evolution without breeding  ?

[BlackxRaptor]

like seriously ppl really asking for breeding events every week? and if they get one they keep asking for another one next week? didn‘t we had enough breeding events in the past few months? hopefully there is no more breeding event this year! way too many servers on console reached the tame cap so no more breeding events pls! ppl should stop asking for it enough is enough ...

[Andy111]

The effect between the event for breeding once a month and taming three days a week is the same for servers.

[Guest DJRone89]

Still no console love

[Austria]

Will Nitrado become new Savegame data from Lagacy Xbox at 24.9.? Because what they have from Island 165 is a year old.

 

[GP]

1 hour ago, DJRone89 said:

Still no console love

What are you actually looking for that is console specific in the Community Crunch?

[Arkonautalus]

Still no updates on Nintendo Switch release. ?

[GP]

Just now, Arkonautalus said:

Still no updates on Nintendo Switch release. ?

 

[MrsKimmy]

The forgotten child - WC - give us a little of your love and nurture Primitiv Plus - PLEASE 

[DazzSHADOWS]

Guys can we please do something on PVE Aberration about people stealing batteries form the charge stations. We cant box them in and people keep taking batteries out so its a lose lose for those of us that try to do things as a server community to make quality of life easier.

Perhaps alter the stations on PVE so that they are preloaded with non removable batteries for making element?

I love ab its my favourite map and it really spoils it having to constantly replace the batteries.

Edited September 11, 2018 by DazzSHADOWS

[Guest DJRone89]

1 hour ago, GP said:

What are you actually looking for that is console specific in the Community Crunch?

Find a way to make contests exclusive to the console community as they do with the modding community.

Maybe make a seperate thread where the devs can brainstorm ideas and ask for input from console players, then include such contests as part of the community crunch.

I have no issues with the modding community  as it’s an integral part of Ark however more could be done to make console players feel more inclusive.

Communities should be about bringing people together, not excluding players because their chosen platforms have limited capabilities.

Edited September 11, 2018 by DJRone89

[Voidstar]

does anyone have the activation parameter for the current event? (which ends tomorrow)

ty

[Brybry]

11 hours ago, RenobandStit said:

first! Just eliminate all legacy servers already.  Rip off the band-aid

PC Legacy still has a significant number of people who play. 

On peak days (sundays) it's not unusual for legacy to have 1200+ players and usually legacy is around 10% to 15% of the concurrent official pop.   

[GP]

1 hour ago, Voidstar said:

does anyone have the activation parameter for the current event? (which ends tomorrow)

ty

The current event ends next week as per the Community Crunch.

The activation to prolong the event I believe is -activeevent=extinctionchronicles although i'm not 100% sure on that. However, when Extinction Chronicles IV comes out it will replace that I believe.

[Voidstar]

6 minutes ago, GP said:

The current event ends next week as per the Community Crunch.

The activation to prolong the event I believe is -activeevent=extinctionchronicles although i'm not 100% sure on that. However, when Extinction Chronicles IV comes out it will replace that I believe.

oh there isn t one for each? maybe a number after the parameter?

[GP]

Just now, Voidstar said:

oh there isn t one for each? maybe a number after the parameter?

Don't think so.

[Violet]

10 hours ago, JuggaloCard said:

Hey look another double harvest, tame and exp weekend. I would have been happier for a double baby event. 

 

Glad there isn't. Servers are capped anyway, no need for more breeding poopstorm.

[Guest DJRone89]

Looking at the dates for the Chronicle events, am I right in thinking that the last one(?) will still be running after Extinction’s release?