A Message from the Founders

[StudioWildcard]

A Message from the Founders

Hello Survivors,

Jesse and Jeremy here! We know things have been a bit quiet on Genesis news for the past few weeks, even though there is much more to show you, we’ve been deeply immersed in the pre-release development process. That being said, we’re writing today to tell you that the final release date for Genesis Part 1 is now February 25th, 2020 simultaneously on all platforms.

This additional delay will no doubt come as a disappointment to everyone who is eagerly awaiting Genesis. We’re extremely sorry to push it back an extra month, but as we have been heads-down with the rest of the team polishing, balancing and putting the final pieces together, we really felt that the extra wait will be worth it both for the quality of the base game and the ambitious new expansion.

The live ops team is taking advantage of the scheduling change by making sure we have a really fun Valentine’s event in store for you (something we originally planned to skip because it followed so closely behind the launch of the new expansion). Plus, we’ve just deployed an initial anti-meshing patch, and next week we will be rolling out a definitive anti-meshing logic overhaul that should fundamentally address those long-standing issues. As we look forward to a successful cross-platform launch of Genesis, all of this will make ARK substantially better for everyone who plays PvP and PvE.

On behalf of the broader Wildcard team, we thank you so much for your passion, creativity, feedback, and support. We are extremely thrilled to bring ARK’s next chapter to you, and are looking forward to a hugely exciting 2020! Meanwhile, here are some tasty new screenshots from ARK: Genesis Part 1!

Jesse and Jeremy
Studio Wildcard

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Anti-Meshing Efforts

Hey everybody! I’m WC_jellyknee, the lead Live Ops Engineer on the ARK team.
 
I wanted to tell you about our efforts to prevent cheating in ARK in general, and our continuing efforts to defeat undermeshing specifically. We're excited to get this post out in order to address the issue of meshing with the community and, also, to share news on how we will be countering meshing more aggressively moving forward via technical solutions. I'm going to start off by quoting from a previous developer diary:

Quote

Undermeshing refers to the ability to get to where you aren't supposed to by moving outside of the playable space. Almost every game is susceptible to undermeshing in some form. Most speed runs rely on undermeshing, for example. It's effectively impossible to solve completely, at least automatically. The approaches taken to prevent it are usually a tradeoff between how much freedom you want the player to have, how complex your world is, and how much processing time you can afford to spend on physics. Generally, when there's an instance of meshing, it's caused by bad collision setup, improper level geometry (holes), or a problem with the algorithm used to move the character through the world. In some instances, you place kill volumes in locations that you want to guarantee that the player doesn't end up, but that isn’t a global solution.

When we lay out our levels - we construct them in the way that is interesting and optimize them for efficiency so that we can maximize quality and quantity. What that means is generally the world outside of the space you're meant to play in is empty - we spend our resources on the spaces where players are at. In addition - we reuse assets many, many times - rotating a rock different ways to make it look different before shoving it into the terrain at various depths to mask the reuse and keep it visually pleasing. Technically, the physics for these objects overlaps, and if you get past the surface of one, you'll stand on the next one down. While that sounds like it would help, it’s actually the meat of the problem. Adding more meshes doesn’t help, because once you can get past one, you can get past the next one. That said, there have been many instances where we’ve flagged the collision on an object incorrectly, or left a minute hole that we can and do address through Level Design.

You can read the rest of the developer diary here:

 
Undermeshing has been a thorn in the side of both players as well as the enforcement team, and a serious concern for the development team. To help mitigate this, we have further upgraded our anti-undermeshing system in order to help the enforcement team track down problematic map areas, as well as tracking down people who are breaking the ARK Code of Conduct.
 
This underlying system has been in place for a while now, gathering useful data, and we have been testing it to make sure that it works reliably. We wanted to make sure that it minimizes the amount of false positives - we don't want it to flag locations where players can get to during normal play

Now that this system has been proven to be effective, we've now built another layer on top of it to take advantage of this data. I don't want to give specific numbers here because it can only help bad actors try to find new exploits, but I'll explain how this system works:
 
1) If we detect a player undermeshing for a certain amount of time, it will teleport them to a valid position that they were previously at. It will then monitor that player for an amount of time.
2) If the system finds that player undermeshing again within that time, or if it's not able to teleport the player to a previous position, then the player's character will die. Any items being carried will remain at that location.
3) The system is aware of what the character is doing, and will take certain actions into account to help prevent player frustration.
 
The system, whilst in a state we’re confident will have an impact on limiting meshing, is in a state of ongoing development. We will continually make improvements and updates,  along with rolling out more definitive undermeshing-resolving changes in the next week.

 

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While we continue to introduce new content and experiences to fans of ARK we will remain focused on ensuring that everyone has a fair playing experience on the Official Network.

By default, the anti meshing system will be on for the Official Network

For Unofficials, these launch parameters can be used:
-noundermeshchecking // Will turn it off the anti meshing system entirely
-noundermeshkilling // Will turn it off the anti meshing player kills (but still allow teleporting)

 

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[Nokosa]

I hope it's worth it.

 

[Uzo]

"Are you serious? You Say you are releasing it December then you go onto say that you delay THEN you dont say anything for a whole month and THEN DELAY IT ANOTHER MONTH. You said that It was delayed a month 2 MONTHS BEFORE THE ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE HOW IS THAT NOT ENOUGH TIME. 

 

I am Demanding a refund from this dlc. Absolutely Ridiculous."

Edited January 23, 2020 by Uzo

[ajatl123]

Now when you going do something about everyone teleporting corrupt gigas to ppls base and destroy all the hard work in pve

[VikingNick]

Hopefully the servers are more stable than Extinction at release. 

[pixel85]

this message was long overdue. everyone who has been with ark for a long time already knew it was going to happen

[Allanballan]

A delay is never fun but at least we now have a date to HYPE for! And OMG those pictures are awesome❤️

[Oppugno]

While I read that Genesis is delayed again, I will slowly go to the corner of my room to cry because I will have to wait another month. I really hope it's worth all this wait.
?

[Lucas0202]

And the transfer from the legacy PVE server to official?

[Lostmymarbles]

So another Delay  for Genesis   this seems to be a pattern Wild Card  delay delay delay

take peoples money delay delay delay      the people who already paid for it should get some compensation for delays in saying it was to be in december now its end of Feburary instead    #anotherfailedDLCrelease

[TDubs997]

Just now, Lucas0202 said:

And the transfer from the legacy PVE server to official?

start over or play solo world they said goodluck man 

 

[GreenMohawk]

Happy to see a final release date. As nearly all content creators are simply waiting on this. We finally know what we should be waiting for. Hope to see it be worth the wait.

[Sativa420]

I win 10 bucks yay me! I bet my sister Genesis wouldn't be out anytime soon.

In addition to the horrible chibi experience at Christmas,(turned everyone on my servers into 

a pvp attitude) now the expansion we already paid for is delayed AGAIN.

We get thrown the *fixing stuff* that's why it's late. But these are things that should have been fixed by now.

I'm really glad there are improvements coming but it in no way changes my disappointment level. I feel that these changes are like.. basic liberties.. something that we as paying players are entitled to (A working non extremely buggy game).

Not dangling it in front of us like a prize. My sister and I bought genesis the day it was released because

we love Ark, but I'm not falling into the oh I'm so happy because things are being fixed so the delay is ok because it's not!

I can't do anything about it but I can voice my extreme disappointment. 

Edited January 23, 2020 by Sativa420

[Lucas0202]

1 minute ago, TDubs997 said:

start over or play solo world they said goodluck man 

 

hope is the last to die my friend :v 

[harrington]

My personal favourite update/fix and many others agree. Not too concerned about Genesis release, thanks for the mesh fix!

[SmokinBacon]

So is it confirmed February or are you just saying it again to get people off your back. This dlc was bought and paid for in fall of 2019. Is there going to be compensation for the delays? If not can I get a refund and push back payment but still expect you to deliver the product?

[Dondark]

Deep inside everybody knows this will happen. I hope really worth the waiting  

Edited January 23, 2020 by Dondark

[Thalana]

While I knew this was coming it's ridiculously absurd how this has happened every time since SE.

[whoareyou]

I'm really glad there is a delay honestly. Really don't need a repeat of the utter chaos when extinction was released. Extinction content is disgustingly OP and broken even today. 

Edited January 23, 2020 by whoareyou

[Reff]

Hi ... about this mesh have around 10 15 minutes i was with a desert titan tamed in my server and when i stay in my base to get some items i got dismonted and teleported from the desert titan ... i jump in it again to get some items inside it and game killed me ( im playing a official pve server ) and not was inside or trying do a mesh i think we can get more problems future...

[Cybercon]

I know you ARK Devs get a lot of backlash when you have to delay the launch of another DLC, but if that means that we get a less buggy release AND simultaneous launch on all systems, I believe that it is worth it. Did we foresee another delay coming after the silence about Genesis this month, yes. But this doesn't mean we should tear apart these devs all over social media. At the end of the day, they've made a great game that we can all play and enjoy. 

Moreover, nobody wants to see more delays in the future. Not the players, and not the devs either. But things pop up, something goes wrong, other events outside of Genesis get in the way. That happens to everybody. I just hope that we can expect more accurate release dates beforehand when going into the launch of DLCs. And when things are going awry, I hope we can get the delay notice sooner rather than later, because then at least we're not so close to the release date with so much hype just for it to be yanked back even further.

A message to the Devs, thanks for making such a great game and putting so much work into it. I'm sorry that you guys constantly have to deal with backlash from this kind of stuff, but we all love this game and the community built up around it. May we all hope for a great Genesis launch in February and more success with this stuff in the future. Thank you!

[Jasminia]

I hope they run the valentines event for a few weeks versus the one week since we are waiting on the release a month longer then expected. So many duplicate chibis during xmas. Never did get any of the special ones. Nice to get a second shot at them.

[crazyhobo]

boy miss dates much how many times since alpha like wholly cow get your things in order o way only one more dlc and the game done -.- just keep the track record

[Texmechs]

"Simultaneously on all platforms.******"

 

******(except Crossplay PC, which will have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for certification)

 

That's okay, we appreciate the new content and all your hard work, even though we get an 8 day late start on it.

[Lucas0202]

8 minutes ago, Reff said:

Hi ... about this mesh have around 10 15 minutes i was with a desert titan tamed in my server and when i stay in my base to get some items i got dismonted and teleported from the desert titan ... i jump in it again to get some items inside it and game killed me ( im playing a official pve server ) and not was inside or trying do a mesh i think we can get more problems future...

My basilisc killed me underground (Full oxygen)