Ark is beautiful on high graphics. Wish potatoe quality didnt give the advantage

[Zoopshab]

PVP turn your graphics down to a potatoe level to see enemies better as well as see clearly at night.

[Usuallyafk]

Everyone on pvp now uses an illegal hard ini file that wildcard does literally nothing about. It removes most visuals that effect pvp in anyway.

[johnm81]

Once upon a time time of day dictated how pvp was fought due to gamma alterations was unusual. Night vision was a thing   
 

Once upon a time people could hide in shrubs or hide bases. 
 

Once upon a time WC gave a DILO about non-mega players and didn’t screw them over with flying para radar or ini modded files. 
 

 

[carbonark]

I was honestly surprised when I first found out how common ini's are. I don't know of any other games where running the kind of ini's that are basically commonplace is allowed, and as accepted by the community as it is in ark.

[Zoopshab]

I think they might be going the right direction with Ark 2. Some of the problems they are having might require a technical remake from the ground up while keeping the on-paper game design. To me it looked like they prioritized creativity and content over optimization and bug fixes (which by the way, probably that was totally the right decision business wise). But yeah i would say the top two things I desire are:
1. A smoother, more optimized game. Resistance to hack included. I think graphics are a heavy part of this.
2. Addressing the feel of people wanting "server reset". They dont really want a server reset. They want to play with evenly matched people.

And for me personally, I find great aesthetic pleasure in games that leverage every part of their content. It feeling charming when every part of the game has a practical use. If paint could apply camo effects in way that mattered. If painting on a way map where easier like adding textboxes.
 

And if all the lower tier dinos and structures could find a purpose; the fantasy of tribes squaring off with raptors and trikes never materialized because stronger dinos make lesser ones obsolete. Right now im playing through trying to learn how all the dinos feel by limiting myself to a certain level of engrams (e.g. build a base and survive only with engrams and saddles up to level 10, now up to level 28) to sort of see how the designers intended the saddle progression to go. So much of the content goes to waste.

[carbonark]

9 hours ago, Zoopshab said:

2. Addressing the feel of people wanting "server reset". They dont really want a server reset. They want to play with evenly matched people

I disagree there, regular server wipes would drastically improve official pvp. Even if not complete wipes, removing all bred and cloned creatures to reset lines, deleting all Tek items (suits, weapons, etc), Meks, and Tek and Mek bp’s. While leaving Characters, wild tamed creatures (including creatures raised from stolen eggs) and bases. Something along those lines would be a significant balance improvement, and one that in my experience most pvp players would be in favor of.

 

There’s a reason why almost every other similar survival game has regular wipes, and Ark’s official servers are an excellent example as to why they do so.

[Zoopshab]

Well I mean your potition does have some supporting evidence. The most popular unofficial server I found (most players) was something called elite ark and they basically broke the game down into seasons. (You can google them to find out more and read their faq). I probably have to be careful what I say, but borrowing or drawing inspiration from what is working might be a good idea.

I mean there's also plenty of evidence that it all could go wrong. There was another online survival game that tried to do the same thing called Rend. It bascially poop the bed in early access because player abandoned it. But the concept, I thought, was a great idea; the servers would reset in "game rounds". Now it had a lot of problems but I think one of them was that the game didn't have any player 'stickness' when the servers reset. 

I mean my view on it is you have to create something like Dota; the goal is to win a thing and the fun of the round is it's own stickyness. Fundamentally in an RPG game levelling up is part of the game. That the thing about Dota you restart every round from level 1 again. Everyone wants to be max level sure but then what? Getting to max level is part of the thing.  

[carbonark]

Most major unofficial servers basicially operate with "seasons" or essentially scheduled wipes, Elite is one MTS which is hugely popular does the same. I'm somewhat familiar with Rend and as I understand it there were other issues with the game that didn't help with player retention. Rust is the best example I can think of for a survival game that's probably about as popular as Ark, and it's always had regular wipes.

As I said you don't need to completely wipe out all progress, keeping characters is find. But resetting breed lines, clearing out hordes of duped resources/items/Meks would be a massive positive step for official pvp servers, and by far most players on those servers would support it.