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What Turns Me Off about Ark Survival Evolved


GreenRoc

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Title based off a thread created by a Boundless developer.
(my imagination is lacking a better title for my current batch of thoughts)

What turns me off most of all: Loss

I dont want to lose my tames.
I dont want to lose my items.
I dont want to lose my time.
I dont want to lose my progress.
I dont want to lose my character.
I dont want to lose my server.
I dont want to lose my structures.

I dont want to lose my virtual home. RIP Blackstorm. I tried to keep it alive, but lack of support from Wildcard on legacy servers was too much for me when I was repeadedly verbally harassed, with racial slurs, I had to move off the server for my mental health. Thank goodness there are the server saves, but that doesnt have my tribemates. I miss as much as, or even more than my tames!

I dont enjoy loss.

But I am practically losing everything by not playing official PvE, but then, I may have just refused to accept the loss of the game I once loved, that slowly left me over time. Ark isnt the same anymore. I'm still hanging on by helping my tribemates keep generators fueled and structures refreshed, as I hold onto hope for a loss-less Ark experience. I maybe struggling to breathe life into an already dying joy i got from this game, the joy has slowly evaporated before my eyes, and I maybe have been refusing to accept that loss.


I have seen this game progress since I started playing in 2015. I have over 14k hours spent mostly in Official PVE. I have seen this game "evolve" into a form I am struggling to enjoy, more and more struggles with more personally unwanted content being added. I saw a big shift in a direction I dont want when Pegomastax were added, and took a 7 month absence from the game upon the little rat's thievery joining in the fray, I was so furious. I came back because of the eye candy I love, that no other game comes close! What used to be my favorite game for three years in a row, has become so altered and morphed in ways that add more and more ways to lose my progress, in both intended and unintended ways.

Before Ark, I played World of Warcraft, and one of my favorite things to get in WoW was mounts.
Ark was a massive step in graphics for my eye candy desires, and all these mounts to collect and play with!!!
And dinos! Oh how I LOVE dinos! Ever since I was a little girl in early 1980's, I love dinos! I still have some of my Definately Dinosaurs hanging around my home. Jurassic park was like the best thing ever to me when it came out, and Ark was like the best game ever when I first laid eyes on a  twitch stream of my friend taming a stego, it looked so real I could hardly believe I was looking at a video game!

And it had building! A building system with flat panels to build my dream home, unlike the blockyness of Minecraft which seemd to lack flat panels for making walls.

 

I come here today, feeling deeply saddened at the sight of the Game Awards on my roomate's PC, just a few quick glances at an aminated piloting a stego and raptor jumps out, I had to turn away, intense anger filled my mind, more PVP promotions! More losses! I cant stand loss!

The ongoing direction Ark has been headed, farther and farther away from my hopes and dreams of the perfect game for me. My heart breaks at any lossses, real and virtual.
I cried when Mufasa died!
And I cried when the 6-legged kitty in Avatar (blue people, not the benders) died!
I've tried to quit ark before, many times, but like a bad drug I keep coming back, and I hurt myself more at another loss. I wish there was some Ark vape to tide me over until the hangover expires. Pixark only offers so much, and has significantly less-realistic graphics, but far less loss.... if only there was a loss-less Ark that I could share with my friends. Singleplayer only goes so far, and unofficials only last for so long, not long enough for me.


I know I will have thoughts and feelings that might contradict with yours, and that's ok! We're not all made the same. You have every right and fredom to feel and think about this game in the ways that you do, as much as I have to my own. We can co-exist with condradictory feelings, we just dont have to be playing the same game if we dont want to.


Do some of you just LOVE the way Ark is headed?
I havent met anyone as far as I can recall, who loves Ark more now than before.

Since this is forums for other people too, what turns you off?

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10 hours ago, GreenRoc said:

...

What turns me off most of all: Loss
...

I dont enjoy loss.

...

Then you've been playing the wrong game all along, you just didn't realize it until now. I don't say that to me mean, or even unkind, it's just a reality and if that reality makes you unhappy then you should be making choices that are better for your own enjoyment. Loss is a fundamental part of ARK, from the first moment you ever create a new character loss and the constant risk of loss are the fundamental underlying tension driving the game.

While it is possible to play ARK without loss (create and own your own ARK server where you are the owner/admin) it's not possible on any of the official servers - not PvP, not PvE, not Classic, not Legacy, not ever. It's mostly not possible even on an Unofficial server that someone else runs, if you don't run your own server then you can lose anything and everything at the whims of the server owner (like if they decide to stop playing ARK). This is the wrong kind of game if loss causes you to stop enjoying a game.

I say this in all sincerity, not trying to poke fun at you, not trying to make you feel bad, you need to be playing a different game, one that lets you keep everything even as the game progresses to new expansions and content. There are many games that offer what you want. Like really, tons & tons of them. There are games that are pure PvE, pure PvP, a mixture of both, but so many games that let you keep your stuff, your characters and your progress at all times.

And the thing is, there's loss in every game. You say you played WoW before ARK, even if you go back to WoW tomorrow you've still lost your old guild, many of your old game-mates. You'll still have your old account and characters, all of the core stuff that is "you" will still be there, but you would have to build something new to replace whatever it was that was lost when you left the game.

And it's not loss that you don't like, not really, after all you volunteered to lose things when you moved from WoW to ARK, what you actually don't like is loss that you don't control, and ARK has never been the right game for that mindset even if you didn't realize it before. If you left the game for 7 months just because of something as small and super easy to defeat as a pegomastax then honestly it's a miracle that you're still playing ARK no matter what your reasons are.

I'm not trying to tell you how to feel, your feelings are your own and obviously you have the right to feel whatever you feel. But if you've been this unhappy about ARK, and about loss in a game, then one wonders why you keep torturing yourself with a game that's never going to meet your needs.

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4 hours ago, maxplanck58 said:

What turns me off in Ark: losing my character in transfer and every base and tame that I have worked on and bred over years because support would not respond before everything decayed.

If you're playing solo, it's absolutely worth creating a second character and adding them into your tribe, then storing them on some other server just in case this happens. If you have absolutely no one else to play with you'll need to rely on someone you trust on the server to help you add your spare character in but it means that you don't completely lose access to your tribe in a situation where you lose a character.

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That was a very heartfelt post. I am sorry to hear about your Ark woes. 

I have about 5000 hours in Ark. Most are on the last NoTek Cluster. My largest frustration is the lack of support for that cluster.

My other frustrations are  the never ending parade of bugs , glitches, mesh issues, cheaters ( aim bot , Ini ) and terribly slow in game support.

I hope you find a game mode that suits your play style. Good luck. 

 

 

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If you have as many hours as you claim and have been playing since the beginning, you would know that that's an impossible mindset to have to play this game. I have friends who were like you in beta days, they didn't last past the new officials/ great migration because they -knew- they didn't want to do it again or play on an eventual dead game zone (as was warned way before legacy even was deployed) 

That being said, it sucks to lose. Anyone who has played since the start or even a few weeks all know the pain. I hate glitches but hasn't it become engraved into ARK life for you yet? I've lost a few long term characters on official, lost sections of my base on the great redwoods expansion, got wiped by gigas when the center came out, seemingly dropping from the sky. You name it. You must be strong willed to play this game. You seemd to have been fine in that regard. (I do remember you from around forums) 

 

I think you would enjoy renting your own private server, with official rates and some how convincing your friends to migrate there provided you can provide a fair admin service. Ive since moved to unofficial for years now. Its a scary leap but well worth the landing. 

 

Good luck ! :Jerbhi:

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As a design principle you want to make it so there are parts of your character's development that are permanent, and parts that are destroyable & must be rebuilt. 

I find what is discouraging is losing progress of time-invested. It's not actually so terrible to have your base raided and all your replaceable stuff stolen; stone, fiber, weapons, ammo, etc... It hurt somewhat when the blueprints are stolen; it would be better if there was a better way to preserve them, or better yet a rethinking of how the blueprints findable in loot drops work entirely. Im not married to that mechanic im not sure it's a plus. Things that I feel should be "collectable" I get really pissed off at losing. All the rockwell recipes I feel they should be collectable like the dossier. I have a mapbook I dont see why I shouldnt be able to write them down in the ledge (another pet peeve; they should just start us off with a compass now instead of the blue map arrow. The compass was actually really cool needing to navigate with it but I felt on respawn it was too hard to find metal nearby to make the compass. Should have been a default item like the mapbook your survivor starts with.

The worse thing however is the loss of Dinos. Your companions. Your friends. I feel like their should have been a special engram collar you could put on your favorites and give them 30 min repawn timers if they get killed. It's one thing to view dinos as a depletable, destroyable, re-acquirable resource and that's fine and all. But when you're spent forever to acquire just the right dino you get attached to it. Furthermore you may like to have a special attachment to some dino that is not necessarily that strong and easily killable. Did you find a jerboa you just really liked? It's like they shouldn't have an option for you to name your tames. Don't give it a name so you don't get attached.  

In the same vein if you've spent any time with the asthetics of your base; that is what sucks to lose when you get wiped. It's not the sum total of the cost of all the foundations and walls. Rather is the time, planning, care and pride in placing all those placeables in just the right spot. Loosing THAT is what discourages people. 

 

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14 hours ago, ArkRage said:

doesn't it sound exciting starting again?

I've done that a few times. I dont like it whatsoever. One of the worst parts of the whole experience is how easily my weak survivor dies without a good HP/melee pet dinosaur.

Cold, hot, food, water, all of it shrivels down so fast in the early stages. I dont like having to stuff my human's face with sustinance every 5-10 freaking minutes, which interrupts what I really want to do is collect and build.

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13 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

There are many games that offer what you want.

Any of them have dinosaurs and realiztic graphics? I have been looking and looking and looking. I've not found any game that come close to the beauty of Ark that includes dinosaurs.

I've tried Dark and light, Conan Exiles, and both are significantly less enjoyable than the content I enjoy about Ark.
I wont try The Isle (pure PvP, is there any building?) I havent tried Assassins creed, but that is in my steam library to play with when I want (Is there any building or dinosaurs?) I havent tried ArkPark, as I dont have a VR set, but afaik there also isnt any building, nor ridable dinos.
I've tried Atlas but no dinos and even in creative, the survivor will not last forever because of the vitamin issues, which is like a more complicated version of Survivor upkeep, and causing more interruptions from collecting pets, items and placing building pieces.
 

Pls offer me the titles so I know what to look for. Market is so flooded with games, I struggle to narrow down the ones with dinos, building and collecting without avatar upkeep interrupting my progress.

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7 minutes ago, GreenRoc said:

Any of them have dinosaurs and realiztic graphics? I have been looking and looking and looking. I've not found any game that come close to the beauty of Ark that includes dinosaurs.

I've tried Dark and light, Conan Exiles, and both are significantly less enjoyable than the content I enjoy about Ark.
I wont try The Isle (pure PvP, is there any building?) I havent tried Assassins creed, but that is in my steam library to play with when I want (Is there any building or dinosaurs?) I havent tried ArkPark, as I dont have a VR set, but afaik there also isnt any building, nor ridable dinos.
I've tried Atlas but no dinos and even in creative, the survivor will not last forever because of the vitamin issues, which is like a more complicated version of Survivor upkeep, and causing more interruptions from collecting pets, items and placing building pieces.
 

Pls offer me the titles so I know what to look for. Market is so flooded with games, I struggle to narrow down the ones with dinos, building and collecting without avatar upkeep interrupting my progress.

Might be at a loss there... since loss is generally a must-have part of survival.

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1 hour ago, d1nk said:

I hate glitches but hasn't it become engraved into ARK life for you yet?

No.

Glitches are unacceptable, and should not exist if the game devs were more compitent. There shoudnt be any existing glitches whatsoever in a good game.
the thought process to make genisis seems to be their horrible attmept to assume they can get away with, and make up an excuse to their lack of fixing the code. This is a horrible thing, and doesnt make glitches ok with me, at all, whatsoever.

And yes those are my hours.

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8 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

loss is generally a must-have part of survival.

I absolutely hate this part of any game who tries to use "survival" as if it justifies the torture.

There's many facets to Ark, not JUST survival.

I had an unofficial that was perfect for me.
Homestead destroyed it with memory leaks.
I had paid rent for that server for three years.
Depression set in for a few weeks from the loss of all that progress.

Before Homestead, flier nerf increased my upkeep time by 3 fold, and I didnt use classic fliers because of Overspawns, and the mod also added inability to transfer fliers between maps.

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12 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

What specific parts of Ark appeal to you?

Eye candy (things to look at that make me happy, like mountains, trees, dinosaurs pretty waterfals, terrain etc). Building houses with flat rectangular pieces, having to harvest trees, rocks, and bushes with pressing buttons to gain items to be used to make the building pieces. Running around in a world that looks real without having to leave my chair, dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs and more dinosaurs that I own and ride and make me feel like I am the dinosaur because it obeys my every button press.

And hoarding items. Oh my gosh, all the items! I am a RL hoarder and hoarding items in a virtual game helps me avoid hoarding irl.

And being able to collect items and build houses and tame pets for my friends. I love helping them out! Taming more pretty cuties, and colorful things!


Also breeding mechanics. Mating two creatures togehter for a baby that has a combination of parents stats. hoping RNG plays in my favor, oh gosh if you only saw my Ovipets hoard of pets... You may take a look but only logged in users probably can see the mass of pets I've accumulated https://ovipets.com/#!/GreenRoc

Games I play/played with similar mechanics are Ovipets, Minecraft, Magicavoxel, H1Z1 Just survive, Pixark, World of Warcraft (mounts!)but none of them have 'all' the things I want/enjoy in a game, all of which exist in Ark. 

 

Creative modes dont work for me because it lacks the collecting element.
Singleplayer doesnt work for me because it lacks the friend element.

Unofficial doesnt work for me anymore because updates broke things and havent been fixed ever since certain desired configs were broken years ago... also I dont know how to add mods to BlueFangSolution servers. I had tried, and applied the Ids, but the server didnt apply them, and I never figured out why.

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ah, so the farmville side of ark! (Which is pretty awesome.)

Are there reasons that mods/setting tweaking wouldn't solve your issue?

Enjoying this side of ark means to avoid pvp like it's the plague, and to find nice-cozy unofficial pve servers settle in.

Pegos/Icthyornis/Cnidaria(*)/Microraptors

all can be edited out of the game without the use of mods, eg. swapping their spawns with dodos/archaeopteryx/jugbugs/bulbdogs

That's one of my personal reasons for loving ark, it's one big sandbox that you can always modify to your liking.

Edit: What do you mean by broken things? What configs did you find missing? I've never tried BlueFang, so can't help on that end. Have you tried contacting help for that specifically?

After reading everything, I think I understand your issue more clearly.

For stamina drain and dino damage, perhaps instead drastically boost health & stam on all creatures/players and also damage from tamed level ups?

The nice thing about certain annoying dinos of the past are that WC has listened to feedback & reduced the power/frequency of their special abilities. Raptors no longer pounce when wild (aside from genesis and maybe abberation?), mammoths can't grab you when wild, stegos deal far less damage with impale, events like fear evolved/turkey trial are now toggleable, and max stacks are finally configurable.

There is a website for the syntax of the replace dino configs, may help you quite a bit! I also tend to keep a copy of my configs, just in case I need em. (Ark also tends to validate its own game files & reset configs)

 

Ark's had its ups and downs, but I do think it's mostly changed for the better. Perhaps give it a go again, try out the newer settings, and see if you'll enjoy it, I believe the solutions are out there.

 

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2 hours ago, Zoopshab said:

Furthermore you may like to have a special attachment to some dino that is not necessarily that strong and easily killable.

Absolutely happened.
It still hurts to think about losing Natasha, my favorite argent, died in the jaws of a megalosaurus, nasty wild that never let go of her no matter how hard I punched the sleepy beast. Stupid halloween event. I still miss her years after. Any and every argent I tried to get that looked like her, just was not the same, because they were not the same bird I rescued.

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30 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

Are there reasons that mods/setting tweaking wouldn't solve your issue?

There used to be.
But when they added raid dinos (titanosaurs) the config I used and still want to use still fails to work the way it used to, the way I want it to.
StaminaDrain =0.0 and dino damage =0.0 still arent fixed back to the state they were when the unofficial was first created in 2015.

 

30 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

avoid pvp like it's the plague

I've said that exact line many times myself. I am enjoying your replies, good questions, thank you.

 

30 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

Pegos/Icthyornis/Cnidaria(*)/Microraptors

all can be edited out of the game without the use of mods, eg. swapping their spawns with dodos/archaeopteryx/jugbugs/bulbdogs

I've had that... then genisis came along and deleted all my configs. I havent had the motivation to re-research and reapply several dozens of replacespawns, which doesnt cover everything as mosas in caves still spawn, and others which I dont know the code for. Instead I was lazy and applied dino spawna 0.0, but then I lose the aspect of searching and finding pets to tame.

If I could permanently apply "leavemealone" to all players and tames on an unofficial, I'd be in my gaming heaven!
Just that one code would solve all my problems, but it doesnt exsit as a default status for tames, I have to apply it everytime I mount, and everytime I log in, and cant be done for friends without severe trust to give them admin passwords, which I had going on back in 2015-2017 on my unofficial.

30 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

Pegos/Icthyornis/Cnidaria(*)/Microraptors

I absolutely hate all of those, and more.. thylacoleo, now the mammoth and stego, the TLC raptors, and many others where melee damge 0.0 does nothing to prevent my survivor or tames from dying or being lost to the wilds special attacks.


I still have the save file of my unofficial in case configs ever get fixed.

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36 minutes ago, TheGravyTrain said:

What do you mean by broken things? What configs did you find missing?

Melee damage 0.0 used to prevent any and all damage caused by wilds. But now, special attacks like the thyla grab, rex and bronto feet, microraptor stuns, and other things will still cause damage. I almost lost a unicorn pet when a thyla hopped off a tree and kicked my unicorn to almost death. I didnt get hit by the cat because "leavemealone" was aplied to my survivor, but not to my unicorn.

Stamina drain 0.0 (for survivors) prevents my human from losing stamina when I am using a tool or holding shift to run... before raid dinos were added, stamina drain 0.0 (for dinos) would allow me to fly on a tame or run on a tame without losing any stamina from any of it's abilities, but once raid dinos (titanosaurs) were added, my fliers and pets would lose stamina, which interrupts what I want to be doing. I dont like stamina depletion interrupting me, not in Ark, nor in any game. Stamina drain in Boundless has often caused my roomate to grunt and groan about the oortian grunting and groaning, we're both disliking stamina drainage, because of the interruptions that stamina depletion causes to our current activity.

Me and a few other players posted about this stamina drain 0.0 config being broken years ago, when the issue was brand new less than a month old. Months went by, and now years and the post fell into the void of forum updates, I cant find it in my history when I looked months ago.

 

In the Timecapsule version of Ark, the two configs for dinos (stamina drain and melee damage) are working like I want them to. also, Timecapsule appears to be lacking the special AOE attack damage that I cant eliminate in current versions, as I have walked under wild rex feet, and been spat on by a dilo, and neither did any damage to me or my pets in the Timecapsule version. Both of those events cause damage in current versions when dino melee is set to 0.0.

P.S. I know I am not posting the letter-for-letter exact config, I'm not in a mood to go look up the precice one, but I hope my memory of the configs and descriptions is enough to specify which two configs are broken for me.

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I feel almost the same way. I can agree with the loss and the starting over but that's simply part of the game. Nothing last forever on the Arks. Personally, I grew tired of the official servers and just regular old ark so I moved on to Primitive Plus. But Wildcard pays no attention to it at all. We still don't even have TLC 3 yet and any cries that the community has made has been dismissed or ignored. Now that Ark 2 has been announced I fear that we will never get an update on Primitive+ ever again

 

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16 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

one wonders why you keep torturing yourself with a game that's never going to meet your needs.

I wonder as well.
I think I am just used to it, with how I am wired (autistic) and how most of the world treats me for most of my life.

I've lived 4 decades with my pleasures earned amidst torture, so I'm used to obtaining joy among unpleasentires. If the joy is strong enough, I can put up with alota poop in order to earn the small sliver of joy anything has to offer, no matter how much unwanted poo is involved. I take the good with the bad and as long as the good outweighs the bad, I go for it.

Ark is still the most enjoyable game I have ever played since 1980's.
The bad in Ark (for me) just keeps stacking up and stacking up, and TLC3 tipped the scales for me.
I hope this explains why I still want to play.

Edit to add:
When I started playing Ark in 2015, I did detect the stuff I didnt like, and part of me was like... oh! this might help me grow thicker skin, since I WANT to enjoy the joy, but to enjoy the joy I have to fight through some really unwanted stuff that under normal (for me) circumstances, I would just run away from and never look back. Across my life ppl tell me to just put up with it. There's far worse situations in my life than Ark has ever been for me. Just answering the question of the wondering, I dont do pity parties, not my nature. I've had times people thnk I'm doing a pity paty, when what I am doing is question answering, my anxiety has pooped up thinking about how this post 'might' sound to people.

TL;DR:
I've grown to accept that joy comes with torture, ever since I was a toddler.
I only quit when the bad outweighs the good.
Facts of life, for some of us.

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Not to be rude but it seems that you like the idea of what you wish Ark was, not the game that it is.

As people have said, loss is a fundamental part of Ark. The threat of loss provides the risk that makes the reward more valuable (for most players anyway).

Reading through your posts in this thread it sounds like you have a very specific idea of what you want out of ark, but you need to realize 2 things.

1. You will never get the experience you want from official.

2. Setting up a private server to your specifications will require a fair amount of work and will require maintenance to keep things as you prefer them.

 

Between the way the Devs intend the game to be played, bugs/glitches/server issues and more there will always be loss on official servers. That is clearly not how you enjoy playing the game so honestly if you keep trying to make it work you’ll just continue to be frustrated and disappointed.

You have very specific requirements for what you want Ark to be for you, and you put in the work to get your own server previously, and all the things you seem to want are still possible. But will require research and trial and error to get them working, as well as maintenance to ensure updates don’t break them.

If you would rather not put in that amount of work, the other option is to find an unofficial server that’s as close as possible to what you’re looking for, of course accepting the risk that the server could be shut down or changed based on what the owner chooses to do.

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16 hours ago, GreenRoc said:

Any of them have dinosaurs and realiztic graphics? I have been looking and looking and looking. I've not found any game that come close to the beauty of Ark that includes dinosaurs.

Hold on a second, I didn't say you can have everything you want. What I said is that there are games with no loss, i's up to you to decide what your higher and lower priorities are. If you play any game (or at least any long term game with multiple expansions, whether it's WoW, Rift, Conan, Atlas, etc.) there are going to be things you like or dislike about the game. Every game has at some features that any of us will like or dislike.

The thing I was trying to get at is that every game has aspects that are malleable & changeable as the game moves forward (like new technology, new dinosaurs, new maps, new battlegrounds... really any form of new content), but conversely there are some aspects of each game that are effectively immutable because they are fundamental to the games very core concept.

ARK is fundamentally a game of loss, you could almost say that it's a game about loss. Everything in ARK is temporary, the game was explicitly designed so that nothing is permanent, neither in PvE nor in PvP (or at least that's true on any server that you don't own). Everything in ARK is meant to be lost at some point in time, whether it's from the decay timer for buildings and dinos in PvE or destruction in PvP by other players, nothing in ARK was meant to last.

This is what I meant when I said, "Then you've been playing the wrong game all along, you just didn't realize it until now."

If you thought that ARK would be the same as WoW or other games in which everything from your character to your equipment are permanent, what that means is that you got distracted or mislead by the pretty graphics and cool dinos and you didn't see that ARK is, at its very core, transitory art. Nothing in ARK is meant to last, everything in ARK is explicitly meant to be lost at some point, that concept is at the core of this game.

Even the inspiration that you described in your starting post points to this, "Jurassic park was like the best thing ever to me when it came out..." In Jurassic Park, as in any good story, loss is an integral part of what happens. If JP  was nothing more than a story about breeding/taming some dinosaurs it would be boring and would have been instantly forgotten, there are no good stories without loss in them. It is that danger of loss, overcoming obstacles and recovering from things that are lost which are at the very core of what ARK is all about.

Having said all that, you certainly have the right to lobby for changes, I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to take that away from you. We, as players/customers, always have the right to make suggestions and lobby for changes to the games we play, and of course game developers want to know what players want to help them figure out how to keep an audience for their games. But I am making an argument about this game, and my argument is that you have fundamentally misunderstood what ARK is all about and the core design principle that drives much of what has happened in ARK over the years.

Why did they add the pegamastax that you hate so much? Because they were getting so many complaints the game was becoming too easy, especially in PvE. I'm not going to go so far as to say that ARK was losing players because it was too easy, but I will say that the obvious majority of people who are drawn to this game stay with it because they enjoy the struggle, they like the sense of having to fight to make progress and to fight to recover from loss. If loss is the thing that you like least about this game then you're basically swimming against the stream of what drives the story and the expansions of the game. You certainly have the right to fight for them removing loss from the game but by doing so you're tilting at windmills.

I didn't come here just to say, "You're wrong", that would have been pointless and unkind. If there's a take away from my response to you it's this - You would be doing yourself a big favor if you can convince yourself to start thinking about ARK differently and to enjoy it on it's own terms as game in which loss is an important part of the story. Or if you can't do that then you need to look for a game that better meets your priorities and understand that you can't have everything, you have to decide which features of a game are the most important to you and pick the games that make you the most happy based on those priorities.

Whatever you decide to do, I hope it's a decision that increases your happiness with whatever game you decide to play.

 

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14 hours ago, GreenRoc said:

I wonder as well.
I think I am just used to it, with how I am wired (autistic) and how most of the world treats me for most of my life.

...
TL;DR:
I've grown to accept that joy comes with torture, ever since I was a toddler.
I only quit when the bad outweighs the good.
Facts of life, for some of us.

I wrote the previous post before I saw this one.

For the record, I know it's easy to tell someone "Just think about it differently", because for any person that's easier said than done. If I knew how to change the way that people think I could solve the world's problems and get elected as Supreme Emperor of Terra. (p.s. everyone please vote Pipinghot for god-emperor in 2021... just saying).

Beyond that, my knowledge of autism is only as good as any other layperson, I'm not a psychologist or neuroscientist, just a guy who's read and seen as much as the average person and as such I'm well aware of my limited ability to understand how your internal feelings and thought process work. I'm not trying to preach about how you should think, that would be arrogant even if you and I thought exactly alike.

In the end what I'm really doing is suggesting to you another way of looking at the game, suggesting that you try to think of ARK differently, as a game in which overcoming loss is a core game concept and then see if taking that different approach will allow you to better enjoy the game.

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