This is for the ARK Dev Team

[UnamusedHamaster]

This is for the ARK Dev Team

So I love your guy's game and have played it almost from the very beganing. HOWEVER, the game is severely NOT optimized. It takes me about 10 minutes to load into a server that doesn't have ANY mods and I own a server that has mods and it takes me 30 Minutes to load in 40 mods mostly because when the game on my hard drive loads a big mod my game stops responding. The same thing happens without mods. Some maps will load to the point of what I like to call the snapshot 15 disconnect. What I mean by this is some maps load a lot of data and it will load to a snapshot 15 and if I am doing anything on my PC other than let it sit and work, there is a 50/50 chance of it disconnecting me and not loading any further than snapshot 15 because the game stops responding at certain parts of the loading process. You guys have a great game but your Loading times are atrocious. Now you will probably tell me that its my hardware and I am not running the right specs. WELL I am not the only person having this issue with or without mods.

Here are my specs:
Platform: 3 Monitor working as 1 desktop when playing ark and other games and ARK is the ONLY game I have that stops responding when loading anything with or without mods
CPU: 8 core AMD
Video Card: 8GB AMD
Ram: 16GB
Hard Drive: 2 Internal Drives at 6T. One devoted to just games and the other my Windows and other programs and files. Both are not SSD
Power Supply: I had to upgrade because I upgraded my Motherboard that can support up to 32GB max of ram from a motherboard that only could do 8GB max and needed more power to run the motherboard.
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0

Now you try and tell me its a hardware issue and I will flat out call BULLpoop. I've talked to my server hosting technical support and they even tell me that the game is severely not optimized and when tech support tells you this there is a much bigger problem with you all not doing whats necessary to help all players as a whole. I have people that want to play my server and they do, but have to wait 45 minutes to an hour just to get in because they have a basic gaming laptop or desktop that meets the games min requirements. HELL I can run over 250 mods on a hosted Minecraft server and ya it may stop responding at times but 250 mods loaded and done in 10 minutes with my specs. If I can load Minecraft with FAR more mods in it than ark, which I only use about 40 in ark, and can load Minecraft in far faster than ark can then that is on you guys for not properly optimizing the game. I understand the corporate ladder. If it doesn't make money its not worth the time and effort but that is the wrong attitude to have. Taking time and money to fix ALL BUGS and do 100% optimizations EVERY TIME and update comes out, you would have a far more stable game and more people willing to buy it. NO GAMER likes to have to wait on there game to load you you literally make people wait with or without mods. Your whole Genesis thing is an EXAMPLE. I've seen the reviews on steam. BOTH all time and recent reviews are mixed. I'm not even sure I want to take the time to buy Genesis now just because of the reviews and if I think that there are tons of gamers out there that think that as well. Optimizations MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY. NO BUGS MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY. If you aren't going to do it right why even bother coming out with new content when you won't take the time to fix what you already have. THERE ARE TONS of bugs and optimizations still to be had that isn't Genesis and you sit in you corporate building and think more about your bottom line than what you need to do to make your gamer happy. GAMES ARE NOT all about money. If you don't have the player support behind you you don't have the money. To keep gamers happy u need tons more optimizations and bug fixes before you start new projects like Genesis.

I've said my peace but I am sure I am not the only one out there sick and tired of the LONG loading times, the constant game not responding, and disconnects when trying to load into a server.

[Shadowsong87]

ARK certainly isn't bug free, but I'm confident your long loading times are mostly  hardware related despite what you may think. Certainly for your client side at least, I can't speak for what hardware your hosting provider uses. 

Looking at your specs, a good SSD would improve your loading times by a huge margin. Especially if your motherboard supports an M.2 SSD where you could use something  like a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. 

As for the server, I host a number of them and an SSD also makes a huge difference there. I'd like to hope your hosting provider is already using them, but if not then that would be something else to consider. 

[UnamusedHamaster]

11 minutes ago, Shadowsong87 said:

ARK certainly isn't bug free, but I'm confident your long loading times are mostly  hardware related despite what you may think. Certainly for your client side at least, I can't speak for what hardware your hosting provider uses. 

Looking at your specs, a good SSD would improve your loading times by a huge margin. Especially if your motherboard supports an M.2 SSD where you could use something  like a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. 

As for the server, I host a number of them and an SSD also makes a huge difference there. I'd like to hope your hosting provider is already using them, but if not then that would be something else to consider. 

Not everyone can afford SSD's though. I only upgrade when I have to and it takes me MONTHS to get enough money. I live off social security benefits because I have no job and nobody around me is hiring. I don't even have enough money for a car. With that said HOW ON EARTH do u expect people who have no money just willy nilly spend money they dont have for SSD's Which are the most EXPENSIVE HD's out there. If I could afford SSD's I would but life comes first because without paying the bills I can't live were im at to be able to game and I litrally live on my own. Its not a snap the figures and buy an SSD like you make it out to be. YOU OBVIOULSY have money that you can throw around like that. I DON'T. I worry if I will have food some months because it becomes a little tight. Before you tell someone to get an SSD think about why a gamer is not using a SSD first and not try to be so flashy and bragging.

[Shadowsong87]

I'm sorry to hear of the tough times your going through, i'm quite aware of this given the current circumstances. The advice I gave is what i feel will most help your problem, that is all. I know things maybe tough but responding like that to people trying to help you won't help.

In light of what you have just said, then one further thing you could try (if you haven't done it already) is to look at setting up your current 2 HDD's in Raid 0 if they are of identical size. That should further help improve your load speeds.

[UnamusedHamaster]

4 minutes ago, Shadowsong87 said:

I'm sorry to hear of the tough times your going through, i'm quite aware of this given the current circumstances. The advice I gave is what i feel will most help your problem, that is all. I know things maybe tough but responding like that to people trying to help you won't help.

In light of what you have just said, then one further thing you could try (if you haven't done it already) is to look at setting up your current 2 HDD's in Raid 0 if they are of identical size. That should further help improve your load speeds.

I thought u needed 3 HD's for that

[UnamusedHamaster]

5 minutes ago, clhleroy said:

I thought u needed 3 HD's for that

I would have to reformat to get the best option and I have over 50 games already installed on what I call my gaming hard rive. If I do that I would want raid 5 but that would require having 3 manitory 6T hardrives according to the research to make it work and be protected.

[Shadowsong87]

3 minutes ago, clhleroy said:

I thought u needed 3 HD's for that

Nope fortunately for Raid 0 you can use 2 drives. I take it you currently have 2x 3TB drives? 

Doing this will improve your read/write speeds as it stripes the data across both disks, but it does mean that if one disk fails then you would likely loose the data on both. Same risks if one of your HDD's failed now, but good to be aware of it. 

Most motherboards support Raid 0, but if you check your manual online then it should confirm it.

[Shadowsong87]

32 minutes ago, clhleroy said:

I would have to reformat to get the best option and I have over 50 games already installed on what I call my gaming hard rive. If I do that I would want raid 5 but that would require having 3 manitory 6T hardrives according to the research to make it work and be protected.

Yep it would need a reformat. Yep raid 5 does provide a level of fault tolerance (1 disk).

In all honesty, for the stuff you can re-download you could consider that an acceptable risk and for everything important just backup to something like OneDrive. 

Edit: I can't reply anymore as the "Early Bird" role restricts the number of posts per day i can make.

[UnamusedHamaster]

so raid 0 doesnt need a reformate from what I see or will it?

[UnamusedHamaster]

the how to guid I found doesnt specify.

[UnamusedHamaster]

I would have to reformat no matter what I would do :-(. That hours of re-install

[UnamusedHamaster]

Still doesnot change the fact that the game isnt optimized

[UnamusedHamaster]

Wouldnt need to do this if it was optimized

[UnamusedHamaster]

I would also need a usb floppy drive which I dont have because I haven't needed one.

And the PLOT OF MONEY SPENDING THICKENS

AGAIN if the game was optimized, I would need to spend money I dont have to do something that could potintally make me lose data in the end.

[UnamusedHamaster]

Doesnt matter what I do, I will need to spend money I dont have

[UnamusedHamaster]

Besides this isnt just about me. THERE ARE TONS of people I know that have gamming laptops that can't do a raid system. how are they supposed to prevent disconects and have lower loading times.

[Xenithar]

I can tell you the issue is your hardware. How? I played on an i5-2500 (go on, laugh) with 16GB of DDR4 and  two 500GB disks, NOT in RAID. I ran six mods back then. Loaded in about two minutes. If I had just rebooted, maybe five minutes tops. There's no reason you should be having ten minute load times, but my guess is that you have never optimized your system, as most people never have. That means, at a minimum, defragmentation (assuming you are NOT using SSDs). The thing is, you cannot defragment files in use. Same way you cannot change your oil and filter while driving down the highway at 70mph. To actually optimize a mechanical disk and gain a good bit of performance, you need a live CD/DVD to boot from, but I digress.

You say eight core AMD, but what model? Ark can only use two cores anyway. What speed RAM? Disconnects are network-related. Hint, don't use WiFi. Sometimes network issues occur OUTSIDE your home and you cannot do anything about it. Unless you are on a LAN tot he server, disconnects may occur. That simple.

If you really want to work with what you have then learn how to properly maintain your hardware. Doing a proper offline maintenance, which requires using a live Windows 7 or 10 USB/DVD, can drastically increase your performance. Then go from there.

[SylenThunder]

13 hours ago, Xenithar said:

I can tell you the issue is your hardware. How? I played on an i5-2500 (go on, laugh) with 16GB of DDR4 and  two 500GB disks, NOT in RAID. I ran six mods back then. Loaded in about two minutes. If I had just rebooted, maybe five minutes tops. There's no reason you should be having ten minute load times, but my guess is that you have never optimized your system, as most people never have. That means, at a minimum, defragmentation (assuming you are NOT using SSDs). The thing is, you cannot defragment files in use. Same way you cannot change your oil and filter while driving down the highway at 70mph. To actually optimize a mechanical disk and gain a good bit of performance, you need a live CD/DVD to boot from, but I digress.

You say eight core AMD, but what model? Ark can only use two cores anyway. What speed RAM? Disconnects are network-related. Hint, don't use WiFi. Sometimes network issues occur OUTSIDE your home and you cannot do anything about it. Unless you are on a LAN tot he server, disconnects may occur. That simple.

If you really want to work with what you have then learn how to properly maintain your hardware. Doing a proper offline maintenance, which requires using a live Windows 7 or 10 USB/DVD, can drastically increase your performance. Then go from there.

Basically this.

I run on a i7-3930k overclocked to 4.2GHz, with 32GB of DDR3 at 1600Mhz, and a 10606GB. I have an SSD for the OS, an SSD for my Voxel games, and two SSHD's in RAID-0 for the rest.  Ark is loaded on the two SSHD's and they run somewhere in-between the speed of an SSD and a NVMe. It's a perfect balance.

 

OP has two massive platter drives. Even if they're 10k RPM that's going to slow things down a lot. You use massive drives for data storage, not for playing games from. If I load Ark onto my big platter drive that isn't optimized, it will take forever just like the OP's.

It's a hardware issue.
The rest of the OP's specs are pretty abysmal too. An "8-core AMD CPU" from an era when AMD wasn't exactly the king of CPU power that it is now. At best he's got an AMD Octa-core FX-9590, and that clocks in about 20% slower than my 3930k at stock speeds. His RAM is DDR3 with a max clock of 1866 due to limitations on the motherboard. We're talking about a PC from 2013 here.
It's not rocket science to realize your issue is a hardware issue. This has almost nothing to do with "optimization"  Developers don't code for obsolete hardware.

[Xenithar]

The type of platters matter also. I have four 1TB WD Black drives in a BTRFS RAID10 array on my system for data and normal games. They are quite fast, but these specific models only have a single platter. Drives with multiple platters (most of them) have much higher seek times. Ark lives on my M2 NVME 1TB stick though. No SSD or HDD can touch 3,500MB/s, and there are better M2 drives than mine out there.

[SylenThunder]

7 hours ago, Xenithar said:

The type of platters matter also. I have four 1TB WD Black drives in a BTRFS RAID10 array on my system for data and normal games. They are quite fast, but these specific models only have a single platter. Drives with multiple platters (most of them) have much higher seek times. Ark lives on my M2 NVME 1TB stick though. No SSD or HDD can touch 3,500MB/s, and there are better M2 drives than mine out there.

Yes, even my SSD's in RAID-0 on my H700 raid controller that sits on my server only hit about 1800MB/s. That's 4 Evo 960's in real-time random read/write speeds. Testing raw/sequential speeds will give higher results, but is not accurate.

[Xenithar]

Wow, nice setup! I cannot remember which company did it, but they put four M.2 NVME drives on a PCI-E card in RAID0. THey were attaining some insane speeds, but at that point I imagine the PCI-E bus and/or the CPU may bottleneck, unless you run a Xeon. Anyway, not trying to derail the thread. I hope the OP can get his situation sorted.

[UnamusedHamaster]

PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE

FIRST OF ALL, my 8 core CPU was made in 2017

SECOND OF ALL, I have a masters in graphic design. When the collage teaches you in class that people have figured out workarounds to solve the ever growing companies that do not optimize there games because they care about there bottom line, it sends a clear message that you guys have done workarounds to make ark work properly. It is taught in class that if corporations would spend more time doing optimizations and fixing bugs, there would be no need to have raid setups or faster hardware. The game has minimum requirements for a reason. I raised my hand in class and asked about ark. You know what professor said because I do. I remember like it was yesterday even though it happened 2 years ago because it was very well put.

"Ark is a perfect example of how a game is not properly optimized. Wildcard gives the people a minimum requirements but if you want to spend a lot of money you can upgrade your hardware to run ark smoothly. The minimum requirements on ARK is a joke because they do not give the proper stats for loading speeds or even map loading speeds with mods or even without mods. As game designers you need to understand that games are not about how much money you make or what hardware you need or even how much people want to complain that it's a hardware issue when its not. As game designers you need to understand that optimizations need to be done at the 100% and beyond level. Ark's minimal requirements do not reflect things properly. If you want a game that does well, If you have minimum requirements to your game, it should not matter about your hardware as long as you properly optimize your game. Your minimum requirements are there for a reason. They are not there to slap a sticker on the game and then care more about money than the actual game. Companies like wildcard that make great games like Ark are constantly providing more content, but not doing the proper optimizations needed to meet there minimal requirements. If the game was properly optimized for the minimal requirements of the game, there would be no need for workarounds for the most part. People have gotten used to making workarounds to make things work better. If you want to be a game designer, make sure you keep optimizations going above and beyond your minimal requirements and all bugs fixed all the time because that will set you apart from the corporations of today and the corporations of tomorrow."

Now before you bitch about it being a hardware issue, think about what my professor said and let it sink in and maybe wildcard might learn something from it as well. There should not need anything more said on the topic because hes right, you all found workarounds that shouldn't be necessary for the minimal requirements Wildcard puts on Ark. That is on you to use that workaround but as my professor said in his last sentence,

"People have gotten used to making workarounds to make things work better. If you want to be a game designer, make sure you keep optimizations going above and beyond your minimal requirements and all bugs fixed all the time because that will set you apart from the corporations of today and the corporations of tomorrow."

I rest my case and did you know it took me 3 days to find the paper I wrote that down on. I had a feeling I would need that one day to use. When collages teaches it in design classes, How can you fight a professor that knows more than you or even me for that matter. WE DON'T HAVE THE EXPERIENCE, he does otherwise he wouldn't be a professor teaching young minds.

[SylenThunder]

6 hours ago, clhleroy said:

PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE

FIRST OF ALL, my 8 core CPU was made in 2017

This part is just hilarious.

It makes no difference.  My CPU was made in 2013, and will still run circles around CPU's that were made in 2017 because of the architecture used, or because of design failures. AMD is also notorious for having issues with the UE4 engine.
AMD GPU's are equally notorious for having driver and compatibility issues. There is a good reason over 70% of the GPU's in use are Nvidia.

You give your hardware list with a complete lack of specifics, and then blame the game. Then you come up with this rant that is just as frivolous.

 

Here are some specifics for you.

i7-3930k overclocked at 4.2GHz
32GB DDR3 RAM at @1600Mhz (I could overclock this to 2000Mhz, but things get a little squirelly at that speed. Truly I only need 16GB to run the client, but I do a lot of things with my PC so I have 32.)
GTX1060 6GB SSC that's overclocked a tad past what it shipped with.
Hard Drive: OS on SSD, SSD for intense Voxel games like 7 Days to Die, and all other game data on ultra-fast 1TB SSHD's in RAID 0 that clock nearly as fast as NVMe. I have another 2TB platter drive for data storage.
PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty 750W (Not that the PSU really matters much for loading times. If you had to upgrade your PSU because of a motherboard change, it must have really sucked.)

Now it takes me about two minutes to connect to my server with just a few mods. Why don't you give your server information so I can give it a test. Hell, list your mods, and I'll host a mirror on my own dedicated server hardware and see what happens.

[UnamusedHamaster]

30 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

This part is just hilarious.

It makes no difference.  My CPU was made in 2013, and will still run circles around CPU's that were made in 2017 because of the architecture used, or because of design failures. AMD is also notorious for having issues with the UE4 engine.
AMD GPU's are equally notorious for having driver and compatibility issues. There is a good reason over 70% of the GPU's in use are Nvidia.

You give your hardware list with a complete lack of specifics, and then blame the game. Then you come up with this rant that is just as frivolous.

 

Here are some specifics for you.

i7-3930k overclocked at 4.2GHz
32GB DDR3 RAM at @1600Mhz (I could overclock this to 2000Mhz, but things get a little squirelly at that speed. Truly I only need 16GB to run the client, but I do a lot of things with my PC so I have 32.)
GTX1060 6GB SSC that's overclocked a tad past what it shipped with.
Hard Drive: OS on SSD, SSD for intense Voxel games like 7 Days to Die, and all other game data on ultra-fast 1TB SSHD's in RAID 0 that clock nearly as fast as NVMe. I have another 2TB platter drive for data storage.
PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty 750W (Not that the PSU really matters much for loading times. If you had to upgrade your PSU because of a motherboard change, it must have really sucked.)

Now it takes me about two minutes to connect to my server with just a few mods. Why don't you give your server information so I can give it a test. Hell, list your mods, and I'll host a mirror on my own dedicated server hardware and see what happens.

so u can show off no and no it wasn't a rant it was facts given to me by my old professor. If you want to call his statements a rant that is your business but you are basically saying the educational system is a rant in that case. I am done with this conversation because you want to be right and have a fight and fight I wont let you have. DEAL WITH IT. This descustion is over because my Masters Degree in graphic design supersedes your knowledge all because you want to use a workaround to get what you want. Any further comments will be ignored.

[SylenThunder]

Sorry, but I'm trying to collect actual data. Statements from your professor aren't going to carry a lot of weight. Neither are your extremely vague system specs.

If you want something like this to be taken seriously, then you'll need to submit the proper data to uphold your argument. Having a Masters degree you should already know this. It also doesn't mean you know jack about how computers or core systems actually work.

I have a background of over 30 years in designing and troubleshooting PC systems. I currently support two major companies professionally in IT, and have a hobby in game design, and supporting other systems. I have been doing this latter bit for about 25 years now. I host my own servers on dedicated Enterprise-grade hardware, and have been doing that for 12 years now.

You apparently have an issue. Your issue is most likely hardware related. Yet you completely ignore that and just want to blame the developers. You've only given the most vague description of your setup, and the given data very squarely points to a problem with your hardware.

I'm giving you verifiable facts, and have offered assistance in helping you narrow down your issue that you are trying extremely hard to ignore, and cover with smoke. This discussion is only over because you refuse to admit the possibility that your hardware configuration may be at fault.