First and foremost, let me preface this post with a statement of fact. I love Ark, and It has some of the highest "hours played" on my steam account. However, I must say that many of the little things missing from this game can make it frustrating, or at the very least make me scratch my head and say "why isn't that a thing"? So the following are small (sometimes large) changes or additions that improve how a player interacts with the game, via the interface, or game play in general.
Each suggestion will have the reasoning behind it and a bit of detail included, not just a list, but a comprehensive overview of ideas.
~~~ User Interface
When a player first plays a game, the interface can be overwhelming, or not, depending on its level of detail or amount of information provided. Sometimes, more is better, especially in games without a tutorial. The following are suggestions that will improve quality of life for new players, and veterans alike.
Loading Screen Step Count - Add a Step Counter for everything the game is loading on the loading screen. Example -
Reasoning - Seeing each steps loading bar is pointless when you don't know just how many steps you have left before you even load into the game.
Crafting, Spoil and Burn Timers - Show a "burn timer" that indicates how long the fire/torch/etc will be active with the fuel amount present in its inventory. And when cooking or crafting, how long the current craft queue will take to complete or how long a everything cook-able in the campfire will take to cook. These two pieces of information will compliment each other so you can judge how much fuel to add. Reasoning - Do you hate not knowing how much wood you'll need to cook the amount of food you put in the campfire? Do you find yourself wasting wood, or spark powder when you wish the campfire would just shut off when it is done cooking the meat you have thrown in? On top of that, what about the fact that every server you play on may have different fuel consumption rates set so there is no way to be able to do the math yourself ahead of time so you always have the right wood to meat ratio or gas to fabrication ratio. Secondarily, these could be set up to only show up if you have an option in the option menu active. Perhaps "Detailed Burn/Timer Info".
Stack Spoil Timer - Show the stacks full spoil time in the tool-tip beside or below the current single item spoil timer.
Reasoning - Currently, if an item is already half spoiled, it's hard to determine what the "starting" spoil time was for that item. So if there is a stack, it's hard to determine how long that stack will be good for. Will it last till morning when you log back in, who knows...? With all of the different things affecting spoil times (server settings, preserving salts, fridge, etc) it's hard to guess how long a full stack will last. This solves that.
Players Online In ESC Menu - When hitting 'escape', various bits of info are shown, but one seems to be missing. Player count currently on the server. Reasoning - Are you alone? You can tell when your tribe is online, sure... but what about your enemies? Is there even anyone around to hear your chat questions? You can see player online information when logging into a server, but not while you are playing, so as far as I can tell there is no reason not to show this in game as well.
Your Temp In Relation To World Temp - Have the on screen EXTRA INFO (H) and Inventory screens show your current temp, after taking things like armor, buildings, fires, otter, etc into account. Reasoning - Figuring out just how much your armor is keeping you above the dangerous temperature is tough. So its, -10 degrees (F)... so does wearing this armor make me 40 degrees, 60? or more? Who knows. Hypo-thermal and all that info isn't displayed in understandable values either, so there is no indication in game as to what your bodies temp is after it is all calculated. Adding this would be helpful.
Tooltip Saturation - Where tool-tips show up is fairly spartan and sometimes random. Currently only one option in the options menu has a tooltip (mousing over graphics quality shows your the equivalent card used for each setting.) So it appears tooltips on this page is already something the devs can do, so adding them for every option to explain what they do, the impact of each on your computers systems, and such things of that nature would be very handy. I have literally had to look up options on the wiki/forums to find out what some of them do.
There is also a need of tooltips in the inventory screen on player Stats. Each stat could be spelled out on what they do exactly, and also show how much that stat will go up when you click the + during leveling which (when it comes to dinos) would help a lot. Every dino's level up stat bonuses are different, So many times I click + on hp to see it only go up 30, when I could have clicked stamina which on that dino will go up by a 100. Reasoning - Information is great for new players, and verteran players alike. Keeping your players from having to check online for information to basic game functions seems like a good rule of thumb. There is understanding that spelling out certain hidden things (like how to tame each dino or what food they all prefer) is fine to leave to 'be figured out' or looked up. But information like what options in the menu do, or what a stat does, seems like something so important to general every day game-play that it should be listed outright.
Separate Audio Options Menu - Currently when it comes to sounds you can change volumes. That's it. Please add a new menu for sound specific settings such as....
Add Dino Sounds Slider - Controls the level of all dino sounds separately from SFX.
Separate Ambient from being a child of SFX - Currently setting SFX to 0 will make all ambient sounds stop as well regardless of its sliders setting, making it another "master slider" when it doesn't have to be. SFX should only be player sounds, jumping/walking, weapon sounds, trees falling, etc. Ambiance (birds chirping, water sploosh) should be allowed to be loud while turning down these other action sounds. But you can't do that currently.
Add options for what device you are using to hear sound or transmit audio, rather than ONLY using windows current default settings at launch.
Move [Disable Action Wheel Click Sound], [Disable Menu Music], to this need sound options menu from the advanced menu.
Add [Disable combat music] option.
Hide Engram Right Click Option - Allow hiding of certain engrams from your crafting window. Sometimes you get to a point in the game where you wont be crafting Cloth armor anymore and you just want to reduce the sheer amount of engrams shown. Or you play modded and there are two different versions of the same item and you want to hide the non-mod version. A "show all hidden engrams button" to toggle the hidden ones so you can un-hide certain ones and then hide the rest again would be necessary as well.
Ammo Type quick Switch Radial - Holding R should bring up a radial menu with all of the possible types of ammo or attachments you can use on the used weapon, for quick switching between them.
Container Name More Visible - Renaming a container is all well and good, but it will get lost in all of the other info displayed. Either having the container name be a different color, or be listed on its own line above all of the other info you see when you look at it, would help a lot.
Raft Inventory Screen - Give rafts an F to access "inventory screen" that shows HP, and current building allotment/max values and other info that may be pertinent to the raft itself. Could also allow raft attachments to be added to the game, like better sails for better speed, or custom looking sail skins.
Remember Engram Filters - Make the engram learning screen remember your filter toggles (Island, Aberration, Etc) from the last visit. Currently they do not save.
Demolish From Inventory - Give all building parts that could be demolished after being placed a "demolish" right click option in the inventory so you dont have to place it before you can demolish it for parts. Only a right click option no hotkey, for safety.
Colored HUD Icons - Have symbols (HP, Food, Stamina) change from white, to green, to orange, to yellow, to red, based on severity of the stat. So when you are hungry you can tell a bit easier. And an option to disable the colors if people wanted.
Clear one Craft from Queue- Currently to cancel something from the middle of your crafting queue, you have to cancel them all. Clicking on a queued item in the craft queue should reduce that clicked item by 1 and if no more remain remove it from the queue..
Move UI Text For Signs - Currently when you look at a sign, the text that says "Set Sign Text, Sign HP x/x" etc completely blocks your view of the sign itself. With the Text on the sign being so tiny, you have to get up to the sign to read it, but your UI text blocks the text completely unless you kind of "look past the sign". Having the UI text be offset and out of the way when you look at the signs would be lovely.
~~~ Dinosaur Interactions
Dinosaurs, they make up the bulk of the games fun, and wonder. But controlling them is a fair bit difficult at times leaving you, or your dino (or both) dead, when you didn't need to be. The following are changes that would improve quality of life with dino interaction and control.
Aggressive Targets Only Turret Setting - Being able to tell your turrets to only attack angry herbivores or carnivore targets only, so they aren't wasting ammo and mowing down helpless nearby herbivores, would be lovely. Reasoning - When it comes to defending your base while you are near by but 'busy' or distracted, there are a few options, but mainly turrets seem to think everything is an enemy or none are. World isn't black and white... we need a middle ground option, especially since turrets can already determine what dimos are tamed and what ones aren't so they are clearly smart enough "in canon" to know not to shoot certain ones so adding the ability to only target aggressive dinos would be fine.
Whistle "Pick Me Up" - Being able to whistle to a bird/flying dino that is above you to swoop in low and have it auto 'mount' you would be great. There are countless times that I am in water or just a bit out of reach of my bird, even on follow, where I can't mount them because they are swooping wildly around me. Being able to have them pick me up would be lovely. Reasoning - If I can train my dinos to follow and attack on command, one would surmise I could train them to scoop me up just as easily.
Squelch Celebration! - Please add a new dino setting/behavior to disable dancing for level up per dino. Reasoning - Sometimes you need to level up your dino and just keep on trucking. But your dancing dino keeps you in place for three seconds, stuck to be eaten or freeze to death all because you wanted to increase their carry weight a bit more to run faster.
Stay Here Whistle/Behavior - Telling your dinosaur to stay in a general spot, should be a thing. Because you can only set your dino to passive (where he will be eaten without fighting back), neutral (where they will fly off the hand if any friendly dino nearby is hurt), or aggressive (where they will just go running amok everywhere if they see anything at all), there needs to be a function to tell them to stay put while being in those other states. If you tell your Neutral dino to stay, they can wander a bit away from where they were sitting, do their fighting, and then return to where they were as best they can (if pathing is available). Passive flee helped a bit with this, but then you just lose them as they run away forever. THe only other suggestion that could help here is a "Defend Self Only" version of the neutral setting because if they are attacked they should fight back, but if jim the dino 50 feet away is attacked, I dont need all my dinos running to help.
Add Hover/Swoop toggle to birds/flyers - Currently flyers will swoop around you constantly when they are set to follow and they can knock you off ladders or just plain get in your way. A behavior toggle between this default and another new setting "hover" would be lovely. Hover would allow the dino to follow you like normal, but when you stop moving, they would simply stop moving forward and hover in place until you get away from them again.
Dino Level Up Symbol - Currently, to see if your dinos have a level up, you have to run up to each one and look at their pop up. It would be lovely if a symbol could be seen above their head at a distance (much like the boost xp arrow does).
Allow Setting of Dino Name Color - On a per player/client level, allow players to set what the color a dinos name appears to be for them. Currently when there are countless tamed dinos in front of you, it's hard to pick out your flier, or other useful dino. Being able to set their name to be something other than green, would be a nice touch. This way you could pick them out at a glance. You could even categorize your dinos to certain colors for certain types, fliers = orange, gatherers = purple, fighters = red. At the very least, player name colors should be different than dinos when you are not showing steam ids above them.
Carried Dino Symbol - Show a buff icon in the bottom right to indicate you are carrying or being ridden by a small dino/pet. They are not visible in first person and it is easy to forget they are there until they outright starve.
~~~ Tribe Interactions
We all have friends, but if you can't interact with them easily, or find out information about them without having to ask them directly, it can make things a bit tedious. So the following are suggestion for the Tribe Manager and interactions with tribe members.
Color Text For Online/Offline In Tribe Manager - Set the words Offline and Online to be a brighter color in the tribe manager screen so you can determine easier who is online and who is not. Reasoning - Currently, there is no order to the tribe manager in how it lists online or offline players. As far as I can tell, it is in order of who joined. One would think that online players would filter to the top of the list, so you could see quickly who is online but they do not. So without actually changing that, the simplest solution is to just add color to the text.
Death Causes In Death Messages/Log - Add , "By Falling, By Starving, By Drowning, By Fire, From Poison, etc" to the death messages. Reasoning - Unless you are killed by a specific dino, which does display, I find myself asking my tribe mates "how did you die" more often than any other question in game. If you die by any other means besides a dino, you are left wondering. The log itself also doesn't list anything, so if you are looking back over tribe history, you are left to wonder even more.
Make Tribe mates names Blue.- Fairly self explanatory.
Suggestion
Blue001
27 Quality Of Life Improvements (With Mockups)
First and foremost, let me preface this post with a statement of fact. I love Ark, and It has some of the highest "hours played" on my steam account. However, I must say that many of the little things missing from this game can make it frustrating, or at the very least make me scratch my head and say "why isn't that a thing"? So the following are small (sometimes large) changes or additions that improve how a player interacts with the game, via the interface, or game play in general.
Each suggestion will have the reasoning behind it and a bit of detail included, not just a list, but a comprehensive overview of ideas.
~~~ User Interface
When a player first plays a game, the interface can be overwhelming, or not, depending on its level of detail or amount of information provided. Sometimes, more is better, especially in games without a tutorial. The following are suggestions that will improve quality of life for new players, and veterans alike.
Loading Screen Step Count - Add a Step Counter for everything the game is loading on the loading screen. Example -
Reasoning - Seeing each steps loading bar is pointless when you don't know just how many steps you have left before you even load into the game.
Crafting, Spoil and Burn Timers - Show a "burn timer" that indicates how long the fire/torch/etc will be active with the fuel amount present in its inventory. And when cooking or crafting, how long the current craft queue will take to complete or how long a everything cook-able in the campfire will take to cook. These two pieces of information will compliment each other so you can judge how much fuel to add.
Reasoning - Do you hate not knowing how much wood you'll need to cook the amount of food you put in the campfire? Do you find yourself wasting wood, or spark powder when you wish the campfire would just shut off when it is done cooking the meat you have thrown in? On top of that, what about the fact that every server you play on may have different fuel consumption rates set so there is no way to be able to do the math yourself ahead of time so you always have the right wood to meat ratio or gas to fabrication ratio. Secondarily, these could be set up to only show up if you have an option in the option menu active. Perhaps "Detailed Burn/Timer Info".
Stack Spoil Timer - Show the stacks full spoil time in the tool-tip beside or below the current single item spoil timer.
Reasoning - Currently, if an item is already half spoiled, it's hard to determine what the "starting" spoil time was for that item. So if there is a stack, it's hard to determine how long that stack will be good for. Will it last till morning when you log back in, who knows...? With all of the different things affecting spoil times (server settings, preserving salts, fridge, etc) it's hard to guess how long a full stack will last. This solves that.
Players Online In ESC Menu - When hitting 'escape', various bits of info are shown, but one seems to be missing. Player count currently on the server.
Reasoning - Are you alone? You can tell when your tribe is online, sure... but what about your enemies? Is there even anyone around to hear your chat questions? You can see player online information when logging into a server, but not while you are playing, so as far as I can tell there is no reason not to show this in game as well.
Your Temp In Relation To World Temp - Have the on screen EXTRA INFO (H) and Inventory screens show your current temp, after taking things like armor, buildings, fires, otter, etc into account.
Reasoning - Figuring out just how much your armor is keeping you above the dangerous temperature is tough. So its, -10 degrees (F)... so does wearing this armor make me 40 degrees, 60? or more? Who knows. Hypo-thermal and all that info isn't displayed in understandable values either, so there is no indication in game as to what your bodies temp is after it is all calculated. Adding this would be helpful.
Tooltip Saturation - Where tool-tips show up is fairly spartan and sometimes random. Currently only one option in the options menu has a tooltip (mousing over graphics quality shows your the equivalent card used for each setting.) So it appears tooltips on this page is already something the devs can do, so adding them for every option to explain what they do, the impact of each on your computers systems, and such things of that nature would be very handy. I have literally had to look up options on the wiki/forums to find out what some of them do.
There is also a need of tooltips in the inventory screen on player Stats. Each stat could be spelled out on what they do exactly, and also show how much that stat will go up when you click the + during leveling which (when it comes to dinos) would help a lot. Every dino's level up stat bonuses are different, So many times I click + on hp to see it only go up 30, when I could have clicked stamina which on that dino will go up by a 100.
Reasoning - Information is great for new players, and verteran players alike. Keeping your players from having to check online for information to basic game functions seems like a good rule of thumb. There is understanding that spelling out certain hidden things (like how to tame each dino or what food they all prefer) is fine to leave to 'be figured out' or looked up. But information like what options in the menu do, or what a stat does, seems like something so important to general every day game-play that it should be listed outright.
Separate Audio Options Menu - Currently when it comes to sounds you can change volumes. That's it. Please add a new menu for sound specific settings such as....
Add Dino Sounds Slider - Controls the level of all dino sounds separately from SFX.
Separate Ambient from being a child of SFX - Currently setting SFX to 0 will make all ambient sounds stop as well regardless of its sliders setting, making it another "master slider" when it doesn't have to be. SFX should only be player sounds, jumping/walking, weapon sounds, trees falling, etc. Ambiance (birds chirping, water sploosh) should be allowed to be loud while turning down these other action sounds. But you can't do that currently.
Add options for what device you are using to hear sound or transmit audio, rather than ONLY using windows current default settings at launch.
Move [Disable Action Wheel Click Sound], [Disable Menu Music], to this need sound options menu from the advanced menu.
Add [Disable combat music] option.
~~~ Dinosaur Interactions
Dinosaurs, they make up the bulk of the games fun, and wonder. But controlling them is a fair bit difficult at times leaving you, or your dino (or both) dead, when you didn't need to be. The following are changes that would improve quality of life with dino interaction and control.
Reasoning - When it comes to defending your base while you are near by but 'busy' or distracted, there are a few options, but mainly turrets seem to think everything is an enemy or none are. World isn't black and white... we need a middle ground option, especially since turrets can already determine what dimos are tamed and what ones aren't so they are clearly smart enough "in canon" to know not to shoot certain ones so adding the ability to only target aggressive dinos would be fine.
Reasoning - If I can train my dinos to follow and attack on command, one would surmise I could train them to scoop me up just as easily.
Reasoning - Sometimes you need to level up your dino and just keep on trucking. But your dancing dino keeps you in place for three seconds, stuck to be eaten or freeze to death all because you wanted to increase their carry weight a bit more to run faster.
~~~ Tribe Interactions
We all have friends, but if you can't interact with them easily, or find out information about them without having to ask them directly, it can make things a bit tedious. So the following are suggestion for the Tribe Manager and interactions with tribe members.
Color Text For Online/Offline In Tribe Manager - Set the words Offline and Online to be a brighter color in the tribe manager screen so you can determine easier who is online and who is not.
Reasoning - Currently, there is no order to the tribe manager in how it lists online or offline players. As far as I can tell, it is in order of who joined. One would think that online players would filter to the top of the list, so you could see quickly who is online but they do not. So without actually changing that, the simplest solution is to just add color to the text.
Death Causes In Death Messages/Log - Add , "By Falling, By Starving, By Drowning, By Fire, From Poison, etc" to the death messages.
Reasoning - Unless you are killed by a specific dino, which does display, I find myself asking my tribe mates "how did you die" more often than any other question in game. If you die by any other means besides a dino, you are left wondering. The log itself also doesn't list anything, so if you are looking back over tribe history, you are left to wonder even more.
Make Tribe mates names Blue. - Fairly self explanatory.
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