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Why is this game a pile of buggy garbage?


Moth1234

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Seriously? It's been out 4 years, and started development 6 years ago and there are many aspects that still play like it's in beta. Does this game not receive updates? There are countless bugs, how is this acceptable? Every time a bug happens, you guys in the community just say "That's Ark!" or "Ark being Ark!", like what is that? You guys attempting to be funny? You guys trying to justify your games problems? You guys are enabling the developers the ignore the bugs. Do you guys not care about the health of this game? Or for Ark 2? Even if they have released patches with various bug fixes, it's not enough. I only have 157 hours in this game, I'm not even one of you guys with 5k hours. And for me, it's getting ridiculous.

Everything from the jank combat and jank movement in water or when you try to run past anything you're stuck on - which is all a netcode issue - that causes rubberbanding, all the way down to building bugs like things not placing where the green preview says it will, or spyglasses (not even the awesome variant) not working, spawns not working or you spawn elsewhere from where you clicked, getting stuck in things, trying to talk to HLNA on genesis is a joke half the time she just dodges you (super lovely when trying to teleport quickly -.-), servers hitching randomly? Maybe on autosaves? Dunno! It's Ark after all right!  Or how about shooting things with a crossbow or any ranged weapon, how does it not even register WHEN I CAN SEE THE BLOODY ARROW STICKING OUT OF IT'S HEAD. Or everything clipping through everything, or structure placement constant flickering, or corpses falling through the ground (like dying on magmsaur nesting areas, body literally always falls through it and can't recover. Nice.) Shadow quality bugged for far distance, why am I seeing giant shadows way off in the distance move with my character? Half the armor sets clip through the map, ghillie is especially bad, can't see anything, newly hatched dinos fall through floors/objects sometimes?

Honestly I could go on, but I'm sure most of you are well aware of all of these, plus many more that I haven't even encountered yet. They have a trailer for Ark 2 and have money for Vin Diesel, yet their original game is in the state it's in now? Half the time this game plays like an un-optimized beta test during a network stress test. It's disgusting.

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People say things like this cause after years of screaming for the devs to fix things, many of these things have not been fixed adequately and at some point it just is what it is. I for one have accepted that this game will never be "optimized" and work perfectly whether its the old engine it was built on, or poor coding, or just devs that are inept in some way, it makes no difference as Im not going to be the one to jump in the fray and fix anything. I think the people that can enjoy this game for prolongued periods of time are the ones that can look at a glitch or bug and think "how can I work around this" instead of "devs need to fix this now!". It is a survival game after all so I just have the mindset that the bugs are more things to survive I guess.

I have friends that play on and off saying this game would be amazing if not for the bugs cause they cant wrap their heads around playing around the problems, and thats just something some people have patience for and some dont I find. Ive played a lot of alpha/beta games in my time so I am not shocked to see clipping or janky movement. Most things have a workaround tho so having more knowledge can save you sometimes, which is why I check the bugs sections of the forums regularly.

BTW the dying on a magmasaur nest thing, once you pickup the egg from the nest wait like 30 seconds and the nest will disappear so you should be able to get your body from under it at that point, preferably with a xbow + grapples.

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See I just can't justify full ticket price for a game with this many problems, and had I known it had this many problems, I wouldn't have gotten it. I figured after years of my friends asking me to get it, it would be in an acceptable state. Paying money for broken things simply is not ok, in any facet of life, not just video games. How people are ok with that, eludes me. Thanks for the workaround on the magmasaur nest bug. Such an easy dev fix. Shame.

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10 minutes ago, Navisho said:

I agree, even so, I like this garbage, I have gotten so used to its mistakes that I take them as one more challenge of the game.

This is exactly what I was saying, some people look at these things as more challenges to overcome, while others dont and only the former are the ones who will continue to play and enjoy ark.

 

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23 minutes ago, Moth1234 said:

See I just can't justify full ticket price for a game with this many problems, and had I known it had this many problems, I wouldn't have gotten it. I figured after years of my friends asking me to get it, it would be in an acceptable state. Paying money for broken things simply is not ok, in any facet of life, not just video games. How people are ok with that, eludes me. Thanks for the workaround on the magmasaur nest bug. Such an easy dev fix. Shame.

I would also say your friends did you wrong by not telling you or showing you what you were getting into. I would never tell a friend to go buy this game and not tell them the caveats to it. Also I do feel bad for people paying full price, its on like 50%-80% sales like every other month. I bought the base game + first 3 dlcs for like $45 and im not disappointed by that purchase personally.

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Pfff... all those issues you pointed out, are merely small annoyances if compared to the state of the official servers.

I guess you don't play official, which is probably a good thing.

Disconnects, server crashes, rollbacks, and long lag spikes/freezes for "server saves" every 15 minutes as well as just general lag, this is the real pain of Ark official ( on PvE at least ), especially when it results in losing all your stuff, including some times even your character.

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Well despite the many bugs it's still super fun for me. I do not know any other tame survival open world game like this and though I often feel frustrated about the bugs I really enjoy this. What I hate most is the pressure to reset the timer it makes me think what if I want to go on vacation for 3-4 wieeks?

But lately I've come to really despise those who insult the developers and like rambling against this game  all the time or very intensely.

It is like they want to love it but they can't or that they love hating it.  But blaming employees as inept with such ease and with luck of knowledge it's just narcisistic. I'm a developer myself and though not a game dev(though Iv've done some things in Unreal engine) I can tell to them:


1 . it's not remotely as easy as you think 

2. it's not the devs' decision on what they work on

3. 99% it's the company that chooses what will be done and when 

4. companies usually focus on additions instead of refactoring / fixes / updates

5. development time costs -> to allocate it between bugs/ features/ new content/ support  is not easy

6. economics and management play a huge part -> withoften the management/ marketing team stepping on the devs necks demanding unrealistic stuff regarding the time/ quality etc

7. good companies have a dedicated test team which is crucial to QoS

All these things exist to most companies to some extent. 

So kiddos can either provide constructive critisism even if it's on the lines of ->

"This game has too many bugs. Servers are not moderated. tickets take too much time to (be resolved if ever) . I was not compensated when I lost my tames to bugs. Support lacks in members. I rate it 1/10."

Which is acceptable.

Instead of cursing, rambling, being smartass, threatening to do nasty things to developers or employees etc which I've seen in the game or in forums.

Long story short I like this game yes it has quite a number of issues that should be better like extinction servers being unplayable to timeouts/lags which really frustrates me or some crashes etc but I really want it to evolve. I hope Ark 2 will be a big improvement

 

 

 

 

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"Individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort) (Arkes & Blumer, 1985). This fallacy, which is related to loss aversion and status quo bias, can also be viewed as bias resulting from an ongoing commitment."

https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/sunk-cost-fallacy/#:~:text=Individuals commit the sunk cost,Arkes %26 Blumer%2C 1985).&text=For example%2C individuals sometimes order,“get their money's worth”.

 

People invested so much time into this game during beta and then invested a bunch of time once official release always with promises of fixes plus new additions to the story it became basically infeasible to quit.

A few got away permanently. Many got away but only briefly because the game landscape, in this genre especially, is bleak. Games in general are often linear and get boring. Ark gives you more options than most. Also the classification of a survival game just doesn't measure up.

Day Z, Rust. Those play more as First Person Shooters or Battle Royales than survival. 

Ark is true survival because you can lose everything even when not on. That appeals too many.

Due to all of this and realizing the fixes will only trickle in, people use cynicism as a defense mechanism when someone complains about this Stockholm Syndrome of a game.

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8 hours ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

"Individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort) (Arkes & Blumer, 1985). This fallacy, which is related to loss aversion and status quo bias, can also be viewed as bias resulting from an ongoing commitment."

https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/sunk-cost-fallacy/#:~:text=Individuals commit the sunk cost,Arkes %26 Blumer%2C 1985).&text=For example%2C individuals sometimes order,“get their money's worth”.

 

People invested so much time into this game during beta and then invested a bunch of time once official release always with promises of fixes plus new additions to the story it became basically infeasible to quit.

A few got away permanently. Many got away but only briefly because the game landscape, in this genre especially, is bleak. Games in general are often linear and get boring. Ark gives you more options than most. Also the classification of a survival game just doesn't measure up.

Day Z, Rust. Those play more as First Person Shooters or Battle Royales than survival. 

Ark is true survival because you can lose everything even when not on. That appeals too many.

Due to all of this and realizing the fixes will only trickle in, people use cynicism as a defense mechanism when someone complains about this Stockholm Syndrome of a game.

I do not know if you are referring to me in your last sentence or to " Ark is Ark" comments It is totally acceptable to speak against the game as I mentioned.  
Depends on how you do it and how much time you spend on doing it.

But those who don't like this game can just put a comment or negative rating as I said and leave the rest or the world to spin.
 

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how about the new login lock. the game has bugs that gets you kicked from the server at almost every save the server does, and then they have added login lock to the game which makes you unable to connect for 5 minutes.  it is the total opposite of bugfixing.
switching to an alt account quick can help but in pvp you are screwed.

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They are 5 giants that hinder the game from my experience on PvP servers

Meshing
Dossing
Scripts 
Insiding
Duping

Literally every other critique, irrelevant. Honestly don't care. Meshing- even after anti-mesh got released they are still mesh methods and mesh bases. It did take away the majority of the problem though, fair play. Dossing- That major update to counter dossing, BEAUTIFUL. The best update ark has had in all 4 years period. For the most part, that issue is resolved. Scripts- Mainly a PC issue so I'm not going to dive into it alot but I have seen the likes of aimbotting script come across to console. Insiding- this is the fault of the player misjudgement but it's becoming far too frequent to enjoy the game. I'd like to see something to prevent it, maybe u can't teleport enemy players atall or maybe your tribemates/allies can't destroy your own structures. Would literally stop 99% of insiding but hey, what would I know. Duping- this game has experienced multiple outbreaks of duping and although (to my knowledge) it's fixed, all the duped content is still around from the previous duping eras

Notice how all these '5 giants' I am listing are player exploits. The most simple solution is a more aggressive enforcement team. I will endlessly say about these 5 issues until people prioritize them instead of 'my thylos stuck up a tree' that gets the same attention. This isn't bashful criticism, it's constructive. I am saying this because I genuinely want to see the game improve

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On 1/4/2021 at 12:45 PM, Moth1234 said:

See I just can't justify full ticket price for a game with this many problems, and had I known it had this many problems, I wouldn't have gotten it. I figured after years of my friends asking me to get it, it would be in an acceptable state. Paying money for broken things simply is not ok, in any facet of life, not just video games. How people are ok with that, eludes me. Thanks for the workaround on the magmasaur nest bug. Such an easy dev fix. Shame.

that's partly why i only bought the game when it was heavily discounted.  The $ per hour of fun became more worth it when it was only 15$.

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On 1/4/2021 at 2:23 PM, Moth1234 said:

Every time a bug happens, you guys in the community just say "That's Ark!" or "Ark being Ark!", like what is that? You guys attempting to be funny? You guys trying to justify your games problems? You guys are enabling the developers the ignore the bugs. Do you guys not care about the health of this game?

No, we care, but like you said, it's been 6 years. Ark is really only for masochists at this point, so if you don't like prolonged BDSM, you might as well just uninstall. 

There really isn't a whole lot we can do at this point, lots of us have already bought the game and its DLC. Unless the Dom Devs decide to rework and recode the game for some reason, the game will likely stay in this state for the rest of its life. 

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23 hours ago, Qwertymine said:

No, we care, but like you said, it's been 6 years. Ark is really only for masochists at this point, so if you don't like prolonged BDSM, you might as well just uninstall. 

There really isn't a whole lot we can do at this point, lots of us have already bought the game and its DLC. Unless the Dom Devs decide to rework and recode the game for some reason, the game will likely stay in this state for the rest of its life. 

spanking mr garrison GIF by South Park

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On 1/4/2021 at 8:23 PM, Moth1234 said:

Seriously? It's been out 4 years, and started development 6 years ago and there are many aspects that still play like it's in beta

I only have 157 hours in this game, I'm not even one of you guys with 5k hours. And for me, it's getting ridiculous.

Honestly I could go on, but I'm sure most of you are well aware of all of these, plus many more that I haven't even encountered yet. 

Yep you are right it has been out for ages, didn't you read any reviews before committing yourself to this?

At least we have an excuse, we were sucked in at the start,  before anyone knew how all this would turn out.   But despite all the threads on this and other forums, reddit and twitter, steam reviews, 6 years of anguish catalogued across the internet, you ignored all that and threw yourself into the pit.

We were young and naive,  the game was too!  You Sir/Madam/Moth (or whatever your personal preference is) you waited nearly 6 years till it had become corrupted and twisted and had already been convicted of all the crimes you accuse it of and so, so many more! And still you joined it's black hearted evil gang. 

My advice to you is save yourself, get out now while you still can! Don't look back! Never Look Back!!!

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Ark has its faults: some of them sizeable - bugs, balance issues and customer support.

But to me it seems like the devs put a lot of love into Ark.  It feels like a game that the devs would make because it is the game they always wanted to play.

I have no evidence of this - it is just a feeling. 

Some games feel like shallow cash grabs - they seem more like products than the product of passion.  

Ark is vibrant and inspired in addition to being a hot mess of a game.

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On 1/4/2021 at 1:45 PM, Moth1234 said:

See I just can't justify full ticket price for a game with this many problems, and had I known it had this many problems, I wouldn't have gotten it. I figured after years of my friends asking me to get it, it would be in an acceptable state. Paying money for broken things simply is not ok, in any facet of life, not just video games. How people are ok with that, eludes me. Thanks for the workaround on the magmasaur nest bug. Such an easy dev fix. Shame.

Fixing bugs requires software developers.  Software developers have this annoying habit of expecting paychecks so they can feed their families. Banks have this annoying habit of expecting your company to deposit funds equal to or greater than your payroll costs. Players have this annoying habit of only buying the game once.

Could they fix it?  Probably.  Is it worth it, based on the projected ROI?  Nopers.

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25 minutes ago, SMP said:

Fixing bugs requires software developers.  Software developers have this annoying habit of expecting paychecks so they can feed their families. Banks have this annoying habit of expecting your company to deposit funds equal to or greater than your payroll costs. Players have this annoying habit of only buying the game once.

Could they fix it?  Probably.  Is it worth it, based on the projected ROI?  Nopers.

This entire paragraph annoys me. First off i've bought this game on 4 profiles with every DLC also bought on the profiles. If its a financial issue they should host a donation event much like the charity event that increases rates with more money donated, specifically to target bugs. I for one would definitely donate to it if it can improve the state of the game. Even selling new cosmetics instead of giving away a million new ones on the new years event. I personally think bugs don't get resolved from the out of touch developers and customer support team that dont take much notice until there is enough outcry

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