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Can I pay?


Crymric

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5 minutes ago, Zahlea said:

I believe the biggest flaw with this proposal is that what you both propose the paid servers will be like is a utopia that won't happen. I don't see the devs being able to keep up with the cheaters and dupers and griefers and whatnot, which means in the end we'll be left with people that just complain even harder because they paid and the servers are still bad. Possibly, they could get better servers with reduced lag, but I'm doubtful about that, even. And I can just picture the outrage of non paying players because their servers are second rate.

In the end, I doubt that enough people will pay to sponsor the amount of support you're asking for, but I might be wrong.

I do applaud you for trying to be constructive of solving a problem. Thank you for that ?

I understand that. 

It is just sad to  see this forum with all the people turning their love for ARK into hate, so I am just trying anything possible for a solution. I think ARK is a game with very good concept& graphics. I got a feeling that the DEVs are working around the clock to make it better and I would rather it not get bad reputations or even fail because of technical issues like optimization, server hardware, or support and so on.

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12 minutes ago, Zahlea said:

I believe the biggest flaw with this proposal is that what you both propose the paid servers will be like is a utopia that won't happen. I don't see the devs being able to keep up with the cheaters and dupers and griefers and whatnot, which means in the end we'll be left with people that just complain even harder because they paid and the servers are still badPossibly, they could get better servers with reduced lag, but I'm doubtful about that, even. And I can just picture the outrage of non paying players because their servers are second rate.

In the end, I doubt that enough people will pay to sponsor the amount of support you're asking for, but I might be wrong.

I do applaud you for trying to be constructive of solving a problem. Thank you for that ?

+1 with Zahlea, I couldn't agree more.  I am no mind-reader, but if I had to GUESS as to the dev-team's rationale on where they stand vis-a-vis a subscription, my best guess would damn near verbatim be the bolded part from Zah's post.

 

3 minutes ago, nameless said:

I understand that. 

It is just sad to  see this forum with all the people turning their love for ARK into hate, so I am just trying anything possible for a solution. I think ARK is a game with very good concept& graphics. I got a feeling that the DEVs are working around the clock to make it better and I would rather it not get bad reputations or even fail because of technical issues like optimization, server hardware, or support and so on.

Yeah, the bad reviews are already out there for ARK!  Plenty of people have marked it down for lack of polish/optimizations and there are plenty of hate videos.  There are plenty of hate-threads on these forums, the steam forums, and the various places you can find people complaining on reddit (so, all of reddit :P).  It doesn't stop it from being a very popular game (not to over-qualify its popularity as to avoid a very pointless and derailing argument about how popular it in fact is/is not), and I think we will see a surge with the launch of Genesis of both old players returning, and new adopters.

I would agree about the concept of ARK, though.  It is one of the coolest games, story-wise, once you get into reading through the explorer notes and piecing together just what the hell actually happened here.  I am excited for not only Genesis, but also the future optimizations that will come.  Though I understand that the game will most likely not ever include a DX12 update, I think there is still room for bug fixes and more spit-shine...  Especially on the Switch version.

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No paid subscription. If they could have started fixing problems with the game during early access as in meshing, duping and holes in the map. All they did was add more and more content to a already broken game compounding the existing problems. 

 

Early access was a mistake in my eyes, should have been more focused on making a stable game instead of trying to get hype.

 

In the end it's also a first generation of this kind of MMO, give it a few more years and somebody will get it right.

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I am not really against it, I just don't think it will solve anything.  I am not sure why people are obsessed with giving wildcard their money when there are alot of free options out there already for unofficial servers. I see this pop up over and over, people basically want a walled garden but they want wildcard to do it for them because they can't be bothered.

I hear that the main appeal of official servers is large community and a stable neutral game environment.  I have not known it to be any of these things except the large community part and the thing is.. most of this games problems come from it not being designed for large amounts of people.

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55 minutes ago, Crymric said:

Don't please! ?

It's all about support the deva and the servers without creating a pay to win chaos. ?

It is pay to win the private sites selling money so  best way is to go micro transactions .... game is so close to being Dead! bS I lost character! From orb traveling servers... 2. Folks who can’t connect... 3. We losing dinos to anti mesh!

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I vote no to a subscription model. Already purchased the game and DLC and pay over 400$ a year for my server. That's enough for me, stability and "bugless" game is expected with the get go. Just look at all these past events, have you seen one released without glitches that broke that "quality of life"? Nah, no thank you for subscription model...

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Current officials was already supposed to be like that: better, faster, meshing and duping free, with great support. I don't believe new officials will magically get better just by throwing money at WC, if anything , it will make it worse, since the message it sends is "you can get more money without actually doing, fixing and improving anything". 

Look at ark as it is now. It needs a lot of work still. And I mean actual work. Refactoring. Rewriting huge chunks of code from scratch.

First what comes to mind is updating the engine to use latest stable UE4 build, but that would take quite some time and when decision making people look at it, they probably think "why would we even do it if they still play same game they complain about all the time?".

it might seem counter-intuitive, but only way players can affect ark development and make it better is to quit and not play the game. So no. There is no way out.

WC/snail bigshots won't wake up one day thinking "lets not just make money, but also try to make a good game for a change!".

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Would be great, if Wildcard communicate to the players: What is the real problem?

Run out of money? don't have the resources to upgrade the servers? or they have the resources but is the software and the code that don't work properly? development and programming team haven't found what is the problem for lagging and crashes? is because the buildings and structures? the graphical textures? the amount of dinos in a server? or maybe, is just that they don't want to strive for fixing the major problems and bugs?

I'm pretty sure that give them more money isn't the solution and could be worst for people stop playing ARK.

There are many examples of games that are free and they have a good performance and support, and other games that get a lot of money from players and still have serious problems and bugs and poor server performance.

ARK is a game that cost 49.99 Usd (and it was 24.99 Usd at Early Acces) , don't you think is enough money to cover the Game+Services+Support? ARK isn't free, if it was, subscription will be perfect and obvius. Thats the point.

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26 minutes ago, canojuancho said:

ARK is a game that cost 49.99 Usd (and it was 24.99 Usd at Early Acces) , don't you think is enough money to cover the Game+Services+Support? ARK isn't free, if it was, subscription will be perfect and obvius. Thats the point.

If I'm being honest?  No, I don't think it's enough.  Consider that Ark does not require online official servers for us to enjoy the software.  That retail price covers the software with which we are free to pay for our own server or spin up a local game.  But I don't think it entitles you to free online servers with any expectation of downtime limits and policy enforcement.  Ark is not like Destiny or Warcraft where an online server is required to play the game.  Players on official servers are pretty lucky any service, support, or enforcement happens when you consider gamers aren't really covering the costs after their initial purchase.  Yes I'm sure that there is padding in the cost of the DLCs to help but I think a subscription model would better encourage Wildcard to do better.  When they operate as they do now, their subscriptions would drop thus bringing in less money.  When they do well, subscriptions could increase and bring in more money.  Incentive to do better.

That being said, the subscription model for official server access would only work if Wildcard followed through with really upping their game with service and enforcement.  And hopefully they could do so in a way that provides them with more regular income that translates into better maintenance.  If they implement a pay-wall to access official servers and keep doing the same old thing, Ark would die a sudden death.  And I honestly am not sure Wildcard would be up to the task.  But I would love to be pleasantly surprised and proven wrong!

Another positive for charging a subscription for official server access is it provides another means of enforcement.  They could potentially start banning credit cards or payment accounts commonly associated with exploiters and cheaters.  There would be a cost for those that just spin up new accounts to get around bans as well.

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Subscription model cannot work with ark, because it has a single player aspect. As well, past Genesis, Ark IMO has already matured to point of reaching it's End of Life soon. Subscription, well being forced to rent a server from Nitrado to host a large group for Consoles players is enough cash spent for me and is by design a "subscription" model as I don't own the server, I just rent it... That's the model and a big cash cow for WC. However again, most patches, every event that comes out, are coming out with glitches and game breaking issues affecting it's "Quality" of life and you want to fork out another monthly fee to this? Are you Crazy?

By it's aged itself, this game should already be very stable and bug free as possible, but it's not the case. So a big no for forking out more cash. 

 

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2 hours ago, PertySlick said:

Another positive for charging a subscription for official server access is it provides another means of enforcement.  They could potentially start banning credit cards or payment accounts commonly associated with exploiters and cheaters.  There would be a cost for those that just spin up new accounts to get around bans as well.

Didn't thought about that!

1 hour ago, MooseX said:

 However again, most patches, every event that comes out, are coming out with glitches and game breaking issues affecting it's "Quality" of life and you want to fork out another monthly fee to this? Are you Crazy?

Sigh..... you are right, I guess that is probably the opinion of most players now

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Its way too late in ark's life for WC to even consider this. All the compliants about unofficial will be nil and void soon enough as I honestly give ark 12 months after genesis part 2 is out before they start closing servers. 

Everyone wants a lag free stable game but its not just the servers that cause the issues its also the game and most importantly the player base. 

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20 minutes ago, gkitti7 said:

I believe people absolutely would pay for subscription servers. I helped run a 14 map Nitrado cluster and the donations were astronomical. People pay to keep their favorite maps up and they were paying for a map that could disappear at any time. 

Then people would be crazy. I have a year subscription for a 32 slots server with Nitrado. Does not matter how much hardware you can invest in, if the coding is "shotty" and has memory leaks, then it will crash and lag no matter what... I even ask the Nitrado If I could customise my server by forking out more money if they could put a bigger cpu / ram and stuff and he told me the servers are already top notch, its the game.  And by seeing how WC releases patches, events that breaks the quality of the life of the game. That breaks more then it fixes, then I would have to agree... What WC needs is simple, better communication with his player base, keep them well informed and for goodness sake, do some real quality testing before releasing content, patches and events.

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3 minutes ago, MooseX said:

Then people would be crazy. I have a year subscription for a 32 slots server with Nitrado. Does not matter how much hardware you can invest in, if the coding is "shotty" and has memory leaks, then it will crash and lag no matter what... I even ask the Nitrado If I could customise my server by forking out more money if they could put a bigger cpu / ram and stuff and he told me the servers are already top notch, its the game.  And by seeing how WC releases patches, events that breaks the quality of the life of the game. That breaks more then it fixes, then I would have to agree... What WC needs is simple, better communication with his player base, keep them well informed and for goodness sake, do some real quality testing before releasing content, patches and events.

Actually... that's why I suggested subscription for official server, because it may be able to give DEVs ability and incentive to improve coding.

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21 minutes ago, nameless said:

Actually... that's why I suggested subscription for official server, because it may be able to give DEVs ability and incentive to improve coding.

Because my 400$+ a year ain't enough? Really? And I'm just one, there are thousands of servers, some with 100 slots, that's a heck of a chunk of change for WC and that's besides the initial purchase of the client itself for me to join my own server. If the issue was really money, then hell why not sell that genesis season pass at double the now asking price? Hell, the user base would have probably bought it as well, however then again, that would have been more salt on the wound when they delayed it twice... They are simple ways to provide quality of product, hell even a free one. Let us Arkaholics gamers, with a sign NDA, be the beta testers, open a private beta server access to us "wanabee" testers, open a private section in the forum to allow to provide feedback and have us test the hell out of product... have them fix what's been reported, rinse and repeat. There you go, end results: Quality of product without the dandruff ;) and every "cat" have there fill lol

repeat rinse GIF

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Just now, MooseX said:

Because my 400$+ a year ain't enough? Really? And I'm just one, there are thousands of servers, some with 100 slots, that's a heck of a chunk of change for WC and that's besides the initial purchase of the client itself for me to join my own server. If the issue was really money, then hell why not sell that genesis season pass at double the now asking price? Hell, the user base would have probably bought it as well, however then again, that would have been more salt on the wound when they delayed it twice... They are simple ways to provide quality of product, hell even a free one. Let us Arkaholics gamers, with a sign NDA, be the beta testers, open a private beta server access to us "wanabee" testers, open a private section in the forum to allow to provide feedback and have us test the hell out of product... have them fix what's been reported, rinse and repeat. There you go, end results: Quality of product without the dandruff ;) 

repeat rinse GIF

With the massive net work and so many players behaving in all sort of different ways, I think the official cluster itself is the stress testing server. 

And I also think that they are aware of the problems, but they don't have enough manpower to fix them.

 

As for why genesis is priced as it is:

Since the simplified profit of a sale can be calculated as : (SellPrice - CostToProduceEachProduct)*(#PotentialConsumers - f#ConsumerLostDueToHighPrice(ProductPrice)) - R&DCost, WC may have simply chose the (ProductPrice) that maximized (profit)

(that is to say (profit) increase as (ProductPrice) increase until it reaches a maximum, after that (profit) decrease as (ProductPrice) increase)

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1 minute ago, nameless said:

With the massive net work and so many players behaving in all sort of different ways, I think the official cluster itself is the stress testing server. 

And I also think that they are aware of the problems, but they don't have enough manpower to fix them.

 

As for why genesis is priced as it is:

Since the simplified profit of a sale can be calculated as : (SellPrice - CostToProduceEachProduct)*(#PotentialConsumers - f#ConsumerLostDueToHighPrice(ProductPrice)) - R&DCost, WC may have simply chose the (ProductPrice) that maximized (profit)

(that is to say (profit) increase as (ProductPrice) increase until it reaches a maximum, after that (profit) decrease as (ProductPrice) increase)

You need to insert reputation and quality of product in your equation. Quality over quantity will go a long way. If a company has a bad reputation of releasing unfinished, untested products in the wild to eagerly waiting paying customers and wish for the best, then your screwed, no matter the dollar sign you put on it...

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55 minutes ago, MooseX said:

Because my 400$+ a year ain't enough? Really? And I'm just one, there are thousands of servers, some with 100 slots, that's a heck of a chunk of change for WC and that's besides the initial purchase of the client itself for me to join my own server. If the issue was really money, then hell why not sell that genesis season pass at double the now asking price? Hell, the user base would have probably bought it as well, however then again, that would have been more salt on the wound when they delayed it twice... They are simple ways to provide quality of product, hell even a free one. Let us Arkaholics gamers, with a sign NDA, be the beta testers, open a private beta server access to us "wanabee" testers, open a private section in the forum to allow to provide feedback and have us test the hell out of product... have them fix what's been reported, rinse and repeat. There you go, end results: Quality of product without the dandruff ;) and every "cat" have there fill lol

repeat rinse GIF

That money goes to Nitrado, not WC. And yes, subscription clusters would bring revenue that could improve the servers and hire staff to monitor servers. If there are dedicated GMs on servers they would be more aware of issues affecting gameplay and balance issues. Could really provide more insightful feedback for the devs

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I guess at this point, all the opinions basically distilled down to 2 questions:

1, Will there be enough players to pay for subscription servers?

2, Will WC/DEVs use these money to improve enforcers/hardwares/softwares if they get it?

(Surprisingly not many people who oppose subscription cares about spending money itself)

 

It seems like players who think "yes" to both questions always support subscription and most player who oppose subscription think "no" for question 2.

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11 hours ago, Zahlea said:

I believe the biggest flaw with this proposal is that what you both propose the paid servers will be like is a utopia that won't happen. I don't see the devs being able to keep up with the cheaters and dupers and griefers and whatnot, which means in the end we'll be left with people that just complain even harder because they paid and the servers are still bad. Possibly, they could get better servers with reduced lag, but I'm doubtful about that, even. And I can just picture the outrage of non paying players because their servers are second rate.

In the end, I doubt that enough people will pay to sponsor the amount of support you're asking for, but I might be wrong.

I do applaud you for trying to be constructive of solving a problem. Thank you for that ?

Well with money they could get from subs they can hire more enforcers to enforce those new servers continuosly. 

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25 minutes ago, Luewen said:

Well with money they could get from subs they can hire more enforcers to enforce those new servers continuosly. 

That is what I meant, and enforcer will also need to act out of considerations for players because now players pay. If they are irresponsible and players leave, then there will be less money for them.

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