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Genesis: Failure or Success?


LordRaptorJesus

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Genesis: Failure or Success?

I would love to know your thoughts on whether Genesis is a complete failure or a Success! In my opinion the idea itself SOUNDS good but in reality some parts don’t land like I wanted. Yet again Wildcard succeeds in landing just short of community expectations. I waited months for a buggy mess (i’m looking at you Ferox). Maybe we just can’t count on Wildcard giving us the experience like mod developers can. I feel like we are scraping the bottom of the DLC barrel here (honestly the most creative DLC in my opinion was aberration and I just want that feeling of exploring an alien environment like that again). Of course this may just sound like a noob complaining about it being hard, which Genesis is don’t get me wrong but it feels like its just a recreation of the same environments over and over again.

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Alright, here we go:

In my opinion Genesis itself is a success (playing PvE only).

Why do I think so despite so many issues I can think of?

  • I like the biomes and the biomes difficulties: avalanches, volcano, whirlpools, green rain, sun-burn. The ideas are cool, it's something new and visually nice done.
  • The X-DInos. The colors are cool and even though when tamed there aren't many differences to normal dinos, but they can get more level-ups, which is something valuable
  • The 'quests'. Yes, they are hard, some feel impossible, but this is what keeps us busy, trying around and breeding like crazy to find a way to get them done
  • The hexagons and the shop. Especially at the beginning (we started new on Genesis) this helped a lot to get resources we'd have to look for and now that we can get the resources we spend the currency for the lootcrates
  • The new dinos. I personally really love the Bloodstalker, a great travel-mount! The Magmasaur is interesting and great for farming stuff and the idea of the Ferox that turns into a freakin monster is also cool. The insec-swarms are annoying, but they were our main-source of meat, hide and EXP when we started and I can't say much about the space-whale since we didn't get to tame one yet

Now about the issues I can think of, which would need some improvement:

  • The bugs. In my assumption the code is a mess by now, fixing one thing will result in another one to break. Wildcard is a young company I can just assume with inexperienced programmer and everyone else (the artists, sound-designers, support, administrators and whatever else there is) have to suffer from the raging community that forgot that these other parts also exist and mainly struggle with the bugs - of course the bad things are always more noticable than the good ones. The bugs I personally struggle with:
  • The official servers. I tried for a few weeks, tried different server, but all I could manage was building a base. With that high ping it was impossible to tame any dino and even in the snow-biome I tried killing a sheep for god damn 5 minutes because me and the sheep kept teleporting around. Absolute no-go for me.

Those aren't many mentioned points, but there's still a lot of stuff I can't remember right now. I am glad that despite some regrets (I assume) the game isn't pay to win and that there aren't real-money items in the game - thank you for that. Also fixing bugs doesn't exactly bring in cash for Wildcard, I assume the focus is to create new content (Genesis part 2) and to work on ARK 2, but those are still just assumptions.

TL;DR lots of bugs, but cool ideas, nice graphics, beautiful environment, probably messy code

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Failure.

- Too many bugs and still is. 
- Materials are way too easy to farm, beside polymer, that's just an annoying task.
- Majority of missions are broken and not working.
- Missions takes up a lot of space, forcing people to build closer to each other (PVE aspect)
- Using teleport with HLNA makes the map feels very small, even tho it's not really. 

The idea of the map is good, I just think it's very bad executed. 

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Quote

- Materials are way too easy to farm, beside polymer, that's just an annoying task.

Don´t know how u farm it, but we can farm it really easy. Stone is everywhere, never got so much chitin on any other map (Megachelon shells) and there are big amounts of obsidian near the lava cave 

The problem i have with the map is, that u cant build on half of it. The volcano and lunar area are too dangerous and in the ocean biome u dont have that much space to build (ocean plattforms cant be connected well...). So u can only build in bog and arctic and at least on our server you can feel it. Bases are everywhere in building zones and u cant even make a simple trap somewhere. It´s like the city on extinction.

Also u can´t get blueprints. I opened about 10-15 35k chests and did countless missions and got only worthless premade stuff (except of Genesis bps) 

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1 hour ago, eronsyla said:

Don´t know how u farm it, but we can farm it really easy. Stone is everywhere, never got so much chitin on any other map (Megachelon shells) and there are big amounts of obsidian near the lava cave 

Also u can´t get blueprints. I opened about 10-15 35k chests and did countless missions and got only worthless premade stuff (except of Genesis bps) 

Yes it super easy to get stone and chitin, no doubt.  And obsidian aswell.. Bushes on the moon is crazy for wood, stone and crystal, you can literally get 300 stacks of stone and put it on a basilisk in 5 minutes or less... I just said it's an annoying task to do. It feels boring and not rewarding ?

- You can get prints that are not only genesis, it's just really rare. 

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Maybe it is an unpopular opinion but i love the genesis DLC.

Some big pros for me:
-The x-dino's take allot of tranqs but the extra lvl's make it worth the time.
-loving the lunar biome, it is dangerous as can be but feel unique.
-The missions are sometimes hard but it gives you something to do. Some alfa missions take more preperations than the bosses so making OP breeds make sense now.
-The market is great for the start of the game. The map is not very easy so that helps at the start.
- New dino's like bloodstalker are awesome, just plain and simpel awesome.

Of course there are some cons:
- Loot crates gear is not really related to the efford. You can get some good gear but it is very rare. 
- Some alfa missions are undoable on console. The races need to be perfect without lagg and that is impossible with this game on console.

I'm glad they made this DLC, it feels fresh. Not the same game on a different map.
 

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Look at the base experience that is proposed:

(1) You emerge in the simulation and HLNA says that will "guide through the process";

(2) Proceeds to do generic half-baked quest with no story, order or purpose and " fix glitches" (reads "collect explorer notes");

(3) ???

The base idea is a lie. There is no guidance, no purpose, no RPG elements, no storytelling, no nothing. They sold the map as a "new idea", "new concept", but there is nothing new, is just Ark with unbalanced/untested/rushed quests (more like "loot crates with extra steps") and several building limitations (and is the only map with 20 f*ing world borders...).

Look at, p.ex., Saints Row IV that have literally the same base story as Genesis. The game have thousands of generic quests also (hunting, races, etc.), but at least the NPC's give you a reason/explanation for why are you doing that, and truly guide you trough the whole process (and there is progress in the storytelling in each step). Ark failed just there, in the basics. Quests are just a grind for a boss that if you don't pay close attention to the "story" (in the explorer notes) you not even know it exists.

So yeah, is beyond failure - the whole concept is a lie. People are seeing Ark elements as "good stuff" (like the dinos or other basics), or saying that the "map has good design" or whatever, but the purpose of the map is a "new experience". There is no such thing - Genesis is just Ark with a half-baked makeup, a lazy shop, and of course... countless bugs.

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On 5/10/2020 at 3:32 PM, Kwikwilyaqa said:

Look at the base experience that is proposed:

(1) You emerge in the simulation and HLNA says that will "guide through the process";

(2) Proceeds to do generic half-baked quest with no story, order or purpose and " fix glitches" (reads "collect explorer notes");

(3) ???

The base idea is a lie. There is no guidance, no purpose, no RPG elements, no storytelling, no nothing. They sold the map as a "new idea", "new concept", but there is nothing new, is just Ark with unbalanced/untested/rushed quests (more like "loot crates with extra steps") and several building limitations (and is the only map with 20 f*ing world borders...).

Look at, p.ex., Saints Row IV that have literally the same base story as Genesis. The game have thousands of generic quests also (hunting, races, etc.), but at least the NPC's give you a reason/explanation for why are you doing that, and truly guide you trough the whole process (and there is progress in the storytelling in each step). Ark failed just there, in the basics. Quests are just a grind for a boss that if you don't pay close attention to the "story" (in the explorer notes) you not even know it exists.

So yeah, is beyond failure - the whole concept is a lie. People are seeing Ark elements as "good stuff" (like the dinos or other basics), or saying that the "map has good design" or whatever, but the purpose of the map is a "new experience". There is no such thing - Genesis is just Ark with a half-baked makeup, a lazy shop, and of course... countless bugs.

 

So you would rather have a modder create the next ARK DLC? Most of them seem to do a better job than the devs themselves...

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On 5/15/2020 at 8:12 PM, LordRaptorJesus said:

 

So you would rather have a modder create the next ARK DLC? Most of them seem to do a better job than the devs themselves...

Rag and Val are the 2 best maps in the game, and I'm looking forward to crystal isles. Genesis was a disaster and months later still runs like crap.

I paid for the season pass but I'll be damned if I waste my time on Gen 2 at the end of the year when the PS5 looks truly amazing and innovative.

So great job WC you milked everyone for 35$ by only selling this DLC as a package deal. They knew exactly what they were doing.

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Like others have said, I think it's been a success for sure because it does offer a good and very different experience to the previous DLCs. 

They've been taking slow steps in introducing interesting elements since Aberration and this one has certainly been their boldest move to shake up the formula a bit. 

I think their main issue is trying to balance PvE and PvP game-play using the exact same design and mechanics on the same map, when the two experiences are totally different. In reality, they're almost two completely different games that just share basic assets.  So, basically they're having to make alot of compromises on the features they introduce that do not fully fit either mode perfectly well. 

That's how I interpret the difference in opinions on maps, where most PvP players prefer the vanilla sandbox maps like Valq/Rag while PvE players mostly prefer the DLC ones with their new features.

I do believe they should understand and embrace the idea of actually treating the two game modes as their own separate experience, each with it's own unique features implemented into the maps. In effect, you should have a PvE/story mode version of each map and a PvP version that would allow them to optimise each experience. You basically treat it like say The division's PvE/PvP modes. One is a story mode, while the other is a PvP sandbox, each with it's own type of missions/features that fits their gameplay needs

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Things that I dont like of genesis:

- The reapers were permitted due to a glich for weeks. This should had been fixed way faster.
- Taming methods were changed after launch, allowing some people to stock large quantities of bloodstalkers and ferox while others had to do much bigger effort (taming with berries vs with element, taming with blood vs taming with dino preys).
- Implementation of ocean platform is bugged. We live in a 4x platform and had to do a lot of effort to place electricity due to a "too far from platform bug". Also the creation of water breeding pens is very tricky and you have to relay on weird methods to finish a somehow acceptable building.

Mission related:
- There are mission that are intentionally not doable as they are. Yes, talking about ice fishing alpha. Once you have done you dont know if u did in the intended way or it worked just because of a bug.
- Alpha Race missions (in official PVE) are meant for people that are willing to spend dozens of hours waiting for a good + lag less attempt. Bloodstalker alpha race, Im the only player on my official that completed it. I spent like 10 hours trying non stop until I was able to complete. And I did because there was 4AM and it was me alone on the server. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Related to this I've read on twitter comments from WC Staff replying to ppl that pointed the race problems things like "you are not a Korean pro player" and more things in a joke tone. Well, when someone can do 50 secs better time in local compaired that when doing on official server because of the rubberband or the webs not grapping or not reacting when they should, the problem is not the player, its the design.
- The mission are repetitive, its always the same just with different dinos.
- The missions are saved along with the char, leading to losing all progress in case of char deletion.
- Dead bodies (except last one to die) are lost in gauntlets. This makes people not wanting to try this kind of missions.
- Basically almost all hunts are meant for groups. While this may be ok now, in some months when nobody is up to do this missions it gonna become a barrier for new players, and a vector of frustration for people that lost the char and have to repeat them.
- 95% of done missions to init alpha boss is too much. I think 75% or 80% would have been more fair. This mostly benefits to groups that sell runs.

What I liked the most:
- The teasers and the puzzles they did before launch (not the ascend lang translation ones). Very original for a game community and, at least for me, fun. I hope they do similar ones before part 2 launch.
- Creatures. magmasaur, bloodstalker and ferox. Its sad the ferox gonna become a niche creature given how expensive it is to use but I've enjoyed a lot using it in vr boss.


 

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