How different is Ark played from what was intended?

[maxplanck58]

Just a discussion starter - lots of assumptions here:

When I look at many of the design elements, mechanics and official videos from Ark, I think I get a good idea of what the developers intended for the game to be:  the map designs with large, flat areas suggest that they wanted prime locations for bases.  Many of the videos show tribes traveling and cooperating and wars between tribes in active base assults.  Looks like a really cool game to me: surviving, cooperating, struggling over resources and fighting.

From my annecdotal experiences on PvP and PvE official servers I have seen a game that is a lot different:

The PvP experience seems to be two things: most players try to scrape by in a little crack in the map with a forge, smithy and ptero, hoping that they will not get found.  Alpha tribes erect absurd turret towers and spam architecture.  Most raids seem to happen when the victims are offline - the few online assaults that happen are noteworthy enough to inspire a youtube video.

The typical PvE experience has massive cube bases with every tame out to kill framerates, and egregious pillar spamming: sometimes to keep people from building or blocking resources, but more often to keep people from building far away from the owners base - territory marking and claiming just for the sake of it.

So if what I have experienced in Ark has some truth for many others, it is obviously fun enough for a lot of people for them to keep playing.  My question is this:

Would Ark be more fun if it was more like what I have assumed the developers intended?  And if so, is there a plausible way to guide it towards that kind of game? 

Again, I don't expect anything other than a discussion.

[xXRegalEagleXxx]

i run around all day knocking people on dinos out got three people 0n manas this week

[d1nk]

It was marketed as a sandbox game. So were all doing exactly as they intended- what we want

 

That's why ARK is so great.

[Yggdrassil]

im sure my mana with 24000/20 mutations are as intended..

[Vit0Corleone]

This is sort of a different perspective, as I'm fairly recent to the game, but before buying the game I did some research to see what it was about. What I saw was very interesting, a open game that combined survival with adventures, exploration with hunting, etc. all on beautiful design environments and with all sorts of creatures and different activities to play with as well as a clear progress line to work on.

Not being a fan of PvP, I started my "career" on Official PvE, and oh boy, it didn't took long to realize how what Wildcard sells as the concept of Ark, is so radically different from the reality, from how people actually play the game.

I very much doubt that the original design and intention by the devs predicted that the way people would nowadays be playing the game would basically consist of a glorified Farmville where most people spend their in game days farming, trading, and breeding gazilions of creatures.

Not to the fault of the players, mind you. If you're new to the game, and your goal is to progress and "finish the game" as fast as possible, there is simply no reason to actually do the activities the game provides, complete challenges and be rewarded by them, feel that you have accomplished something, when it's just easier to spend all day picking up gacha poop and bypass all that straight to "end game" by buying all the shiny OP things from other veteran players. People even sell tickets to boss fights and ascension so that players don't actually have to do them, they just get carried. It's insane

I for one will keep playing by my own self imposed rules, which include zero trading, experiencing the game fully on my own and having tons of fun with it. I realize that some activities may be out of reach for me for months ( like high level OSDs on Ext and alpha missions on Genesis ), but that's fine, it just means I have lots to experience still 😉 

 

 

[Yggdrassil]

I definitely think that game started as a 'realistic dino sandbox', play as a survivor in a land of dinosaurs, all the lore, history, explorer notes, map, its all got a realism dino sim feel. Then someone went.. this game needs jet powered cat-like dragons and or a fireball spitting lava lizard.. 

[Bobo1234]

On 12/2/2020 at 3:32 PM, Yggdrassil said:

I definitely think that game started as a 'realistic dino sandbox', play as a survivor in a land of dinosaurs, all the lore, history, explorer notes, map, its all got a realism dino sim feel. Then someone went.. this game needs jet powered cat-like dragons and or a fireball spitting lava lizard.. 

Chinese investors lol.

Also as a note, almost none of the raids on Official are offline. People have at least 1 person on 24/7.

Players always find ways to exploit and abuse things the devs overlook.

[maxplanck58]

12 hours ago, Bobo1234 said:

Also as a note, almost none of the raids on Official are offline. People have at least 1 person on 24/7.

 

You must have been playing on servers that are much different than mine.  I have about 2,500 hours and I have never once been raided online.  I have woken up dead with my entire base and tames wiped more times than I can count.  Those experiences are only annectodal, but almost every raid that I have ever heard about happening across the servers that I frequent were offline raids.  I can only recall a few times where someone would come on chat, usually a tribe of one or two, and say that a couple of gigas from a non-native tribe were wiping their base.  Again, my experiences may be quite different from yours.

[carbonark]

5 hours ago, maxplanck58 said:

You must have been playing on servers that are much different than mine.  I have about 2,500 hours and I have never once been raided online.  I have woken up dead with my entire base and tames wiped more times than I can count.  Those experiences are only annectodal, but almost every raid that I have ever heard about happening across the servers that I frequent were offline raids.  I can only recall a few times where someone would come on chat, usually a tribe of one or two, and say that a couple of gigas from a non-native tribe were wiping their base.  Again, my experiences may be quite different from yours.

When it comes to PvP this is basically the difference between playing solo or in a smaller group vs joining a large tribe. Big groups never have downtime since they have player from multiple timezones and will basically always have someone online. If you're playing alone or in a smaller group without someone always being active you will only ever get offlined.

[Bobo1234]

6 hours ago, maxplanck58 said:

You must have been playing on servers that are much different than mine.  I have about 2,500 hours and I have never once been raided online.  I have woken up dead with my entire base and tames wiped more times than I can count.  Those experiences are only annectodal, but almost every raid that I have ever heard about happening across the servers that I frequent were offline raids.  I can only recall a few times where someone would come on chat, usually a tribe of one or two, and say that a couple of gigas from a non-native tribe were wiping their base.  Again, my experiences may be quite different from yours.

I have been playing the game since 2016 with almost 6k hours. If you are a small tribe then you need people from different time zones to stack when people are on. Otherwise you are fricked.

All large tribes have at least 1 person on always (which is what I play). 

[Bobo1234]

45 minutes ago, carbonark said:

When it comes to PvP this is basically the difference between playing solo or in a smaller group vs joining a large tribe. Big groups never have downtime since they have player from multiple timezones and will basically always have someone online. If you're playing alone or in a smaller group without someone always being active you will only ever get offlined.

It isn't because people wait for you to go offline even. It is simply they find your base and you happen to be offline (because lack of people so you have dead zones). People have to be really trash to camp for you to be offline lol.

[jedikitteh]

On 12/4/2020 at 9:32 AM, maxplanck58 said:

You must have been playing on servers that are much different than mine.  I have about 2,500 hours and I have never once been raided online.  I have woken up dead with my entire base and tames wiped more times than I can count.  Those experiences are only annectodal, but almost every raid that I have ever heard about happening across the servers that I frequent were offline raids.  I can only recall a few times where someone would come on chat, usually a tribe of one or two, and say that a couple of gigas from a non-native tribe were wiping their base.  Again, my experiences may be quite different from yours.

If you keep getting offline wiped and cant adapt and overcome it, it's because you are bad at the game. I am not trying to be snarky or mean it as an insult, just trying to offer a blunt, honest assessment. There is something fundamentally wrong with your strategy that you need to rethink.

There are 2 broad ways to play Officials. Small and invisible. Or big and always online.

I played small back in 2018-2019 with 3 other people. Our base was a 3x3 vacuum cube built in a remote, deep corner of the Center ocean. We had a second base at an edge of the world waterfall for breeding dinos. Our breeding base was found and attacked twice over course of six months. The underwater base was never found and lasted over a year. It was only lost when it was insided by someone we recruited.

I don't play small anymore. But know people that do. I know someone who is a solo on Officials. And has better dino lines than most alpha tribes. He likes trading, and my tribe sometimes buy dinos from him. He lives in a network of extremely well hidden Rathole bases. And has multiple back up bases.

The other way to play ark is to play big. Get 10-20 people together from multiple timezone. Takeover a meta spot like island ice or shadow cave. And you become completely unraidable. Long as one of your own members do not inside you nothing can destroy you. 3 people can defend an ice cave vs 30 people. A whole alliance if megatribes is powerless to wipe an island ice cave. This is the reality for majority of Official tribes. They live in this broken caves that devs refuse to fix. It is extremely rare for tribes to actually get wiped on Officials. There are bases that have been in existence since 2018. When tribes do get wiped it's thru insides. Insiding has replaced pvp in this game as means of winning wars.

 

[sjskdjkfa]

59 minutes ago, jedikitteh said:

If you keep getting offline wiped and cant adapt and overcome it, it's because you are bad at the game. I am not trying to be snarky or mean it as an insult, just trying to offer a blunt, honest assessment. There is something fundamentally wrong with your strategy that you need to rethink.

There are 2 broad ways to play Officials. Small and invisible. Or big and always online.

I played small back in 2018-2019 with 3 other people. Our base was a 3x3 vacuum cube built in a remote, deep corner of the Center ocean. We had a second base at an edge of the world waterfall for breeding dinos. Our breeding base was found and attacked twice over course of six months. The underwater base was never found and lasted over a year. It was only lost when it was insided by someone we recruited.

I don't play small anymore. But know people that do. I know someone who is a solo on Officials. And has better dino lines than most alpha tribes. He likes trading, and my tribe sometimes buy dinos from him. He lives in a network of extremely well hidden Rathole bases. And has multiple back up bases.

The other way to play ark is to play big. Get 10-20 people together from multiple timezone. Takeover a meta spot like island ice or shadow cave. And you become completely unraidable. Long as one of your own members do not inside you nothing can destroy you. 3 people can defend an ice cave vs 30 people. A whole alliance if megatribes is powerless to wipe an island ice cave. This is the reality for majority of Official tribes. They live in this broken caves that devs refuse to fix. It is extremely rare for tribes to actually get wiped on Officials. There are bases that have been in existence since 2018. When tribes do get wiped it's thru insides. Insiding has replaced pvp in this game as means of winning wars.

 

If you have to "adapt your strategy" to the point where the only way is insiding and rat holes or a dinky 3x3 vacuum under the ocean, perhaps what is fundamentally wrong is that the devs couldn't implement "what was intended". Also not trying to be snarky just re homing the discussion on what op originally asked, and in my opinion, very. Ark is very different from what they probably initially thought out.