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Losing characters, how is this acceptable in a multiplayer game?


Azmeaiel

Is losing a main character acceptable in a large multiplayer game, ever?  

22 members have voted

  1. 1. Is losing a main character acceptable in a large multiplayer game, ever?

    • Yes
      3
    • No
      19


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Losing characters, how is this acceptable in a multiplayer game?

As title suggests a lot of us have a beef with constantly losing character we have sometimes worked on for years in this game. It usually happens on server transfer which is encouraged when we explore new content. 

Unfortunatly, if server you just transfered to crashes, and hasnt had the server save , your toon is immediatly lost for good with almost no recourse in getting it back.

you lose all the engrams, levels, imprints , missions which take a huge chunk of time  and even if restored you get a shell of a character with only a tiny portion of the perks you took months to get.

Question is, how is this even considered acceptable at all in a popular multiplayer game? imagine if other studios took such little care with the characters that represent their customer base. Why no fail-safe or cloud save for transferring characters so they can be easily restored if something goes wrong? most of us see this happening with tribemates and friends and our own toons on an almost daily basis and wont even transfer with main characters or anything we dont want to lose, it has become a massive issue but always seems to be an elephant in the room when anything comes to solving the problem.

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It sucks super bad. Im going through my second character replacement process right now and it is brutal. I had to literally wait a month to get 5 level 150 tames (not pretame). 

I play solo. I cant tell you how insulted and stupid I feel continuing to play this game. 

I

On the surface it is the most fun game I have ever played but I also have never been pooped on by glitches and bad game function like this in my 25 years of gaming. 

 

I question my own intelligence for continuing to play a game that has no respect for me or my time.

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The problem with the characters loss is that the devs keep iterating in fixing the transfer system however this doesnt guarantee the transfer system couldn't fail (and it will fail indeed cause there is almost impossible to build a 100% safe system without the right protections behind).

I think the correct approach for this would be assuming that the system can unexpectly fail, so there needs to be a resilent system behind that guarantees that in case of fail the characters are not lost. Until that we will continue to see people complaining for this reason.

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Agree.

I think any semi intelligent player realizes that a system failure is not only possible but likely. That is understood. 

Having no cloud back up of your character is lazy. Plain and simple. 

The long wait times knowing there is a decay timer is ridiculous. Some stuff should have a higher priority. 

Having to rerun every boss prior to the meeting like people just have Tek Cave, Rockwell, King Titan, and Master Controller ready to go at a moments notice is absurd. I have my implant. I have my proof. You have the ability to ascend me and should. 

My main sits on Gen because I'd be incredibly depressed if the last 3 years was just ripped from me. He'll move again once to Gen 2 after I recon the server with an alt. 

I shouldn't have to clench my butt cheeks everytime I transfer. 

We're not asking for unearned stuff, we're asking to get back to where we were. 

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A few other things to consider though, there are online mutiplayer games that have been running since the late 90s where character loss is almost unherd of, build on far more primitive systems, and the restoration of these characters, if the unherd of happens, is utmost priority as the characters represent the customer base and the investment in time and money they put into the game. without a cloud save customers are forced to constantly re-make toons or not even move toons to new content given WE KNOW ITS GOING TO DELETE THEM. It also forces the company to hire more people to deal with irate players constantly losing characters and losing thousands of hours of work, essentially wasting time of its employees, inflating cost of running things and making the company look incredibly unreliable and unprofessional in comparison to  pretty much any of its peers running similar games. ....all for the sake of running a few servers to implement cloud saves.

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5 Years of Ark and still so less cooperation with the Community. Quit or lose evryday things out of no Reason? Hear the Great White shARK theme by evry Maintance or Update.

Jumped Today first Time at sw in Aberration Official, was down by the Purple Rivers. My Hazmat broke and was in need to go up to the Outside. Grabbed a few Loot boxes and found a Different way Home. On a spot next to a lv 10 Dire Bear... Forced Close!

After the Relog my Bloodstalker with 6k hp left before FC, was Dead, same as my Light Pet.

Move around in Nuklear Area, Jump between Reapors, Spinos and Rock Drakes. Dangerous? No! Force Close is the Killer!

Thank You WC!

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On 8/2/2020 at 1:52 AM, Azmeaiel said:

Losing characters, how is this acceptable in a multiplayer game?

As title suggests a lot of us have a beef with constantly losing character we have sometimes worked on for years in this game. It usually happens on server transfer which is encouraged when we explore new content. 

Unfortunatly, if server you just transfered to crashes, and hasnt had the server save , your toon is immediatly lost for good with almost no recourse in getting it back.

you lose all the engrams, levels, imprints , missions which take a huge chunk of time  and even if restored you get a shell of a character with only a tiny portion of the perks you took months to get.

Question is, how is this even considered acceptable at all in a popular multiplayer game? imagine if other studios took such little care with the characters that represent their customer base. Why no fail-safe or cloud save for transferring characters so they can be easily restored if something goes wrong? most of us see this happening with tribemates and friends and our own toons on an almost daily basis and wont even transfer with main characters or anything we dont want to lose, it has become a massive issue but always seems to be an elephant in the room when anything comes to solving the problem.

I have had it happen twice, absolutely devastating. The biggest issue with Ark is the completely non existent communication with the lead community manager @Cedric

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I can also add few cents to this topic. Week ago i've lost char due to server crash, just as i transfered and downloaded character server crashed and it's lost. Now, after week long mailing with gm i recive link to book apointment... on september 17th. This is crazy. How will my base look like after those 5 weeks? What will happen with all cryos if generator power runs out? I had all ascensions, i even had built skiff in my base and they don't even want to give me skiff tekgram - owner of skiff is always character that crafted it, what more proof do i need? I have to wait over 5 weeks just to recive exp to lvl 105 (that can be done within few days), recover imprints (of those dinos that will survive after this time) and get 5 basic tekgrams. Seriously, it's much faster to recover everything if someone from your tribe can help you than waiting to recover character that was lost because of poor server stability (which is responsibility of wildcard).

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Im afraid enough of losing my character that I'm going to literally take my other credit card and make a new email. On my 2nd pc I'm going to load ark and invite a secondary character into the tribe incase I ever lose one. 

The fact we have to do this to make sure we don't lose anything just because wildcard doesn't fix anything should be enough to say in and of itself. 

The fact that they haven't added a function for multiple Characters is a total joke, or a function for us single players that play multi-player to add a secondary character as a backup. 

Ive been playing since pre release. 

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The fact that they haven't added a function for multiple Characters is a total joke, or a function for us single players that play multi-player to add a secondary character as a backup.  


What do u mean by function? I got a tribe with 6 alt chars in it with others that i play with and help invite each alt to my tribe.
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1 hour ago, Castlerock said:


 

 


What do u mean by function? I got a tribe with 6 alt chars in it with others that i play with and help invite each alt to my tribe.

 

Like i said.... 

Those of us who play on our  own. I'm not just gonna invite some random to my tribe to take everything. I play alone.

Im the only person in my tiny close social circle that plays this game. 

so re-iterate , they should add a function for solo players on multiplayer to be able to create other characters under your account and add them to the tribe.

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I just experienced my entire game getting randomly deleted. I figured out a work around and wanted to jump on related forums to share  my experience and research and try to help anyone going through this because it is so incredibly devastating.

Before I begin I do want to note that this is a suggestion for anyone playing on a single-player game and it could possibly work for anyone on a server, I just haven't tested that yet. 

This applies for anyone playing on xbox crossplay PC (Windows 10) - since that is the platform I am using. 

 I contacted customer support (submitted a ticket to Ark) and they got back to me in less then 24hrs which was nice. They were absolutely no help at all and had NO explanation. All they said is a rehearsed sorry statement and gave me a link to a list of cheats "commands" to basically cheat my way back. I found that incredibly unacceptable because this could totally happen again. But this happens to be the only solution to get you back to where you need to be. Here is the link if anyone needs it: https://ark.gamepedia.com/Console_Commands

You can set your level, and spawn tames at whichever level you like and individually add items to your bag plus more. It is tedious but works. 

After a few more questions I found out that the single-player option is not on a server - being on a server helps since Ark could potentially have access to your game and recover it for you. Otherwise single-player files are saved on your computer somewhere.

I did some research to figure out where my data was even sitting on my computer, which was impossible to find. I had to unhide files (learn how to do that here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028316/windows-view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-10) and then located the ark files by: Window(C:) > Users > UserFileName (Mine is hotsh) the two other folders are default and public > AppData > Local > Packages > StudioWildcard bunchofrandomnumbers > LocalState > Saved > UWPConfig > Both of these folders contain your saves! (CleanSourceConfigs and UWP). At this point that folder was completely empty since my game was deleted.  I tested out starting a new game to see if the new saved files auto populate and it worked!  So my suggestion moving forward would be to copy these two folders to an external hard drive as a backup and then replace the files whenever they get corrupt.

To conclude, basically how the cross play works is that this is all connected to a cloud somewhere on xbox that is how it allows you to play on xbox and pc. The files got deleted randomly by either my computer or xbox but I have found no answer (I contacted xbox support as well and they helped me locate the files, but couldn't explain the deleted files, I am not aware of a game update or anything so this was totally bizarre). My own suspicion is that either xbox or the computer has a built in security file dumper for any corrupt files, that way it doesn't corrupt your computer if it would lead  to that. That is the only thing that makes sense to me. I also believe using cheats creates corruption. Mainly if you are using cheats for items that are beyond your level or for resources that don't exist on your map. Make sure you are at the level and have the enegrams of the items you are trying to get or stay away from cheats all together. This is completely hypothetical but I believe to be true since my files got deleted two days after I discovered using cheats. I was playing for months before with no problems, not even a single crash. 

The only other suggestion I have is playing on Steam which from what I have read amongst all of this research is a way way better platform to play games on for many reasons (You can access files with ease and have automatic backups), however that would to rebuy the game and I did not want to do that. 

That is all I have for now. I really really hope this helps someone, I understand the pain!! Good luck!!!!!! <3<3 xoxo 

 

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It is 100% fine to lose your character. Why? As a consumer of video games you hold all the power. This character loss has gone on for years and if people wanted it fixed they could of took a stance as a community and not bought any of the expansions that came out...however you and the entire community bought every single one of them. The community as a whole have told WC with their wallets that they are willing to over look the loss of character issue in favor for the new shiny stuff in new patches. 

Big problems require drastic solutions. If 99% of the community were not gaming addicts this problem would of been fixed a few months after transfer came about.

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