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Are harvesting priorities random?


MMaas

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Thanks to the Evo event harvesting is doubled. Sadly a side effect was my Giga getting blackbarred on prime meat, raw meat and hide when eating an Alpha Wyvern without a single crystal or talon.
Therefor I wondered why the special loot is not prioritized over the bulk and why it is not left behind in a bag after the kill.


I know, pick the loot by hand will solve the issue. But thanks to the ridiculus ammount of 15+ seconds rubberbandings and lag you can not control you attacks to stop when you see it's dead. Wich brings me to another question: why is the frequency as well as the length only increasing? Last year I experienced 5 seconds every now and then but it is realy bad lately.

(And please, my internet is not to blame: Gigabit glasfiber, cabled/no wifi, ping 19~35 ms.)

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2 hours ago, MMaas said:

Therefor I wondered why the special loot is not prioritized over the bulk

You would have to ask WildCard about "why", no one on the forums can answer that question, even if you submit a ticket they probably won't answer why. And really, the "why" doesn't matter in this case, the most useful thing you can do is submit this as a suggestion either in a ticket or on the suggestion forum.

You definitely have a valid complaint, but asking why isn't going to accomplish anything.

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

and why it is not left behind in a bag after the kill.

It should be. Anything and everything that you can harvest from an animal will be put into a bag if you can't harvest it. That raises the question of whether the crystals or talons have a 100% drop rate. Some loot from animals is a 100% drop rate, some is not, I don't know what the answer is for the crystals & talons that you're looking for, hopefully someone else will be able to answer that.

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

why is the frequency as well as the length only increasing? Last year I experienced 5 seconds every now and then but it is realy bad lately.

Well, again only WildCard can answer that, but my best guess is that they're beginning to cut the budget on their Official servers because sales of ARK are slowing down as we get closer and closer to ARK2. Since this game does not have a monthly fee, the number and quality servers is related to the sales figures of copies of the game. I'm betting that their budget for the Official servers has been shrinking somewhat this year. But of course take that with a grain of salt, that's speculation, again only WildCard could answer that question and you can guarantee that they're not going to.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

You would have to ask WildCard about "why", no one on the forums can answer that question, even if you submit a ticket they probably won't answer why. And really, the "why" doesn't matter in this case, the most useful thing you can do is submit this as a suggestion either in a ticket or on the suggestion forum.

You definitely have a valid complaint, but asking why isn't going to accomplish anything.

It should be. Anything and everything that you can harvest from an animal will be put into a bag if you can't harvest it. That raises the question of whether the crystals or talons have a 100% drop rate. Some loot from animals is a 100% drop rate, some is not, I don't know what the answer is for the crystals & talons that you're looking for, hopefully someone else will be able to answer that.

Well, again only WildCard can answer that, but my best guess is that they're beginning to cut the budget on their Official servers because sales of ARK are slowing down as we get closer and closer to ARK2. Since this game does not have a monthly fee, the number and quality servers is related to the sales figures of copies of the game. I'm betting that their budget for the Official servers has been shrinking somewhat this year. But of course take that with a grain of salt, that's speculation, again only WildCard could answer that question and you can guarantee that they're not going to.

 

 

I still have the illusion Wildcard is supporting the forum they are redirecting you to.

There is just one thing I can not fully agree with: As PS4/5 players, we DO pay a monthly fee. Also, according to Steamcharts ARK is one of the biggest online games wich would justify an above average quality of servers. I have a strong feeling Wildcards fails to utilize the internal storage of our systems and depend too much on server storage for models and textures.

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2 hours ago, MMaas said:

I still have the illusion Wildcard is supporting the forum they are redirecting you to.

They do support it, they just don't answer questions like "Why do you do this". There are moderators on these forums, and I'm sure that they pass along some information to the devs, but there is no one on the decision making team that answers questions about why they do things.

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

There is just one thing I can not fully agree with: As PS4/5 players, we DO pay a monthly fee.

Do you pay a monthly subscription fee to WildCard, or some other kind of monthly fee for being on the PS4/5 network?

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

Also, according to Steamcharts ARK is one of the biggest online games wich would justify an above average quality of servers. I have a strong feeling Wildcards fails to utilize the internal storage of our systems and depend too much on server storage for models and textures.

For PS4/5 that might be true, I don't know the technical details of console gaming. I can tell you that it's definitely not true on PC. This game has one of the largest installs of any game, ever. The server on PC makes the decisions and communicates them to the clients, but I assure you that the PC's that people are playing on store all of the models and textures.

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32 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

There are moderators on these forums, and I'm sure that they pass along some information to the devs

They do look at the forums. But you are correct, most of the time it's the mods that see the trends in posting and pass on the issues to WildCard.

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1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

Do you pay a monthly subscription fee to WildCard, or some other kind of monthly fee for being on the PS4/5 network?

PS users have to pay a monthly or annual fee for online gaming. I must say, I won't blame WC too much since I have the feeling that Sony is not realy known for using the best of the best for the network.

But Wildcard choose to use the platform so in my opinion they share a responsibility.

 

1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

For PS4/5 that might be true, I don't know the technical details of console gaming.

On most games I noticed a clear difference for loadtimes and texture popping when I started using an external SSD on the 4 pro, the same SSD is now used with the 5. ARK is on the internal SSD but I did not notice any difference compared to when it was on the 4's internal HD or external SSD while it still is a rather huge install.

In all fairness, this is most likely one of the most complicated online games concerning object count and models and it might be just a bit too much for the infrastructure. Frustrating at times but still worth it ;)

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2 hours ago, MMaas said:

PS users have to pay a monthly or annual fee for online gaming. I must say, I won't blame WC too much since I have the feeling that Sony is not realy known for using the best of the best for the network.

But Wildcard choose to use the platform so in my opinion they share a responsibility.

So while you're paying a monthly fee you're not paying that fee to WildCard, which means my previous point still stands. Sony is not paying WildCard money on a monthly basis, that money you pay all goes to Sony, which means that this is not a subscription based game that involved WildCard getting money from players on a monthly basis.

WC makes money when people buy a copy of the game, that is WC's revenue stream regardless of what you pay to Sony for the PS network. And when a game has a revenue model based on copies of the game sold rather than having monthly income from subscriptions they're never going to have Official servers that are as good as a game that has a monthly subscription or that makes money from microtransactions. If this game had a monthly subscription or microtransactions then it's a pretty safe bet that the servers would be better, but since the serves themselves aren't making money they're not going to be as good as games that make money from their servers. It's not exciting to realize that this is true, but the money that WC spends on the Official servers is purely an expense, the Official servers are basically a form of advertising to show their game to people, then the majority of people play the game in single-player or on Unofficial servers.

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14 hours ago, MMaas said:

I still have the illusion Wildcard is supporting the forum they are redirecting you to.

There is just one thing I can not fully agree with: As PS4/5 players, we DO pay a monthly fee. Also, according to Steamcharts ARK is one of the biggest online games wich would justify an above average quality of servers. I have a strong feeling Wildcards fails to utilize the internal storage of our systems and depend too much on server storage for models and textures.

sorta yes, sorta no....there was an attempt at includeing a new structure with gen 2, however due to the ram size of previouse console gens {yep thats me} they could not afford to add this new structure type. It was causeing the devs some issue so they decided to leave it out of gen 2.

 

Honestly I think this is more ignorance of just how badly optimized the game currently is and instead of accepting they need to go back and smooth out all the rough edges, they are just throwing whatever they can and hopes it sticks to the wall without knocking the wall over in the process. >.>

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9 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

So while you're paying a monthly fee you're not paying that fee to WildCard, which means my previous point still stands. Sony is not paying WildCard money on a monthly basis, that money you pay all goes to Sony, which means that this is not a subscription based game that involved WildCard getting money from players on a monthly basis.

WC makes money when people buy a copy of the game, that is WC's revenue stream regardless of what you pay to Sony for the PS network. And when a game has a revenue model based on copies of the game sold rather than having monthly income from subscriptions they're never going to have Official servers that are as good as a game that has a monthly subscription or that makes money from microtransactions. If this game had a monthly subscription or microtransactions then it's a pretty safe bet that the servers would be better, but since the serves themselves aren't making money they're not going to be as good as games that make money from their servers. It's not exciting to realize that this is true, but the money that WC spends on the Official servers is purely an expense, the Official servers are basically a form of advertising to show their game to people, then the majority of people play the game in single-player or on Unofficial servers.

I actually have no clue who is getting wich cut of the revenue, that is up to Sony and WC. As said earlier, in my opinion it is a shared responsibility. They choose to sell it specific on the platform so they knew it demands a returnal fee for multiplayer. They could have negotiated whatever they need to make the game work, they knew what their game needed. Sony on their side could have negotiated a certain quality standard since they are the one collecting that fee. Unless one of the parties goes on record we just don't know if they share that monthly/annual fee and remains it a shared responsibility.
Sidenote: There are a few cosmetic microtransactions in the PS store (mostly TEK skins) and 1 huge pay-to-win.

Your viewpoint (and I am afraid you are not far off) on "Official" being advertisement is interesting. The bigger names in the industry "waste" huge ammounts on advertising and they all do it to sell the game, this goes for online as well as offline games with or without mtx. In my opinion, that budget should never compromise the quality of the service offered and should never be used as excuse. Also, a lot of games offer online gameplay without a returning fee on servers that do not need to rubberband every time you open your inventory with texture's popping in behind you.
(Beside that, calling it "Official" is raising expectations ;))

Tl;dr: Personaly I would not mind paying a returning fee if in return we get a higher quality of service. On the other hand, I'm not buying Genesys or ARK2 as long as they don't support "Official" beyond the advertisement level.

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2 hours ago, MMaas said:

I actually have no clue who is getting wich cut of the revenue, that is up to Sony and WC. As said earlier, in my opinion it is a shared responsibility.

But see this is pretty much the point, without knowing who is getting which cut of the revenue you actually don't know who's responsibility it is. You have to understand the revenue model in order to understand who's responsible for the quality of delivery.

When you consider that there is no subscription for ARK on any of the other platforms then basic logic tells us that WC is not getting any of the revenue from the money you pay to access the Sony PS network. WC doesn't have any more of an obligation to PS users than to any other platform, you can't just look at your experience in a vacuum and make assumptions about where you money goes.

And don't get me wrong, we would all like to have a smooth, high quality, lag-free, rubberband-free experience when playing ARK, but the reality is that's not going to happen. And the reason it's not going to happen is that the revenue model for ARK is based on selling copies, not based on any revenue from subscriptions or microtransactions. The simple truth is that the best way to have a lag-free, rubberband-free experience in ARK is to play on an Unofficial server (either public or private); it has never happened on Official servers and it's never going to happen. You and I can dislike that all we want but that's the game we're playing, if you want a different experience then you need to play a game with a different revenue model.

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

They choose to sell it specific on the platform so they knew it demands a returnal fee for multiplayer.

For all you know WC is paying Sony for access to the PS network, just like you are. I strongly suspect that's not happening, but until you know the answer to how the revenue is generated & divided you'll never know who's responsible for what.

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

They could have negotiated whatever they need to make the game work, they knew what their game needed. Sony on their side could have negotiated a certain quality standard

Sure, there's truth to that, and if you compare the Official servers on PS network and the Official servers for PC you'll see that they're all pretty comparable. You may not like the decisions that WC is making regarding how much to spend on their servers but their decisions are pretty consistent across the board.

2 hours ago, MMaas said:

Your viewpoint (and I am afraid you are not far off) on "Official" being advertisement is interesting. The bigger names in the industry "waste" huge ammounts on advertising and they all do it to sell the game, this goes for online as well as offline games with or without mtx. In my opinion, that budget should never compromise the quality of the service offered and should never be used as excuse. Also, a lot of games offer online gameplay without a returning fee on servers that do not need to rubberband every time you open your inventory with texture's popping in behind you.
(Beside that, calling it "Official" is raising expectations ;))

I agree with your points but it doesn't change the fact that WC does business the way that WC does business. There is no consumer protection agency that enforces standards of quality for online gaming, the only real option we have as players is to vote with our dollars. If you don't like the way a company does business then don't give them money to play their games, that is the only form of power we have over game companies. If you choose to give them your money then you have to be realistic about who you are giving your money to. ARK has never had good official servers, not on any platform, that's how WC does business. We can dislike their decisions all we want but they're not going to change based on forum discussions. If WC was run by people who wanted to have top notch Official servers regardless of the cost then that's what we would have had all along, but that has never been true. We can certainly hope that they'll change their minds as long as we understand that unless they have a complete change of heart this is how they do things. If it bothers you badly enough you then you have to exercise the only power you have over them, vote with your dollars.

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16 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

They do look at the forums. But you are correct, most of the time it's the mods that see the trends in posting and pass on the issues to WildCard.

Id wish I could talk to one of them.....honestly I would be down to earth and professional on the matter......If I could just talk to someone who wanted to make a difference.

Well, thats if management would let them or if someone actually cared to bother. =/

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1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

There is no consumer protection agency that enforces standards of quality for online gaming, the only real option we have as players is to vote with our dollars.

Actualy, they have to comply to any law we have. The big issue is authorities can't enforce that laws due to the slow and oldfashioned ways they are still operating in. The fact that EA had to change their (local) policy for FIFA's revenue model (lootbox bans in several countries) a while ago was a first big win. "Reasonable expectations" and refunds are part of consumer laws.

The voting with wallet is a nasty circle we are in: We bought the game so we have expectations but are not happy with every aspect. WC is not doing any improvement if we stop buying, we stop buying if WC is not improving. The only way out of that is a mutual trust wich I not realy have at this point. That lack of trust is not just for ARK or WC specific but for the GAAS model in general.

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3 hours ago, MMaas said:

Actualy, they have to comply to any law we have.

That's true, but if there aren't any laws that explicitly apply to a particular problem then there's nothing for them to comply with in the first place.

3 hours ago, MMaas said:

The big issue is authorities can't enforce that laws due to the slow and oldfashioned ways they are still operating in.

It's not so much that they're old fashioned, it's that there's always anti-regulatory pressure from one political party (or more than one, if you live in a country with a parlaimentary system). Here in the U.S. we've seen a huge anti-regulation movement for a few decades because one political party has been successful at convincing people that regulations are automatically anti-business, and as a result our consumer protections have been weakened again and again. If anything, the constant decrease of regulatory authority and consumer protection is newfashioned, moving backwards from the thinking that guided consumer protections from the New Deal to the 1970's.

The game industry especially has this problem, because it came into existence after that pattern of removing consumers protections was already working its way through our system at all levels, compounded by the fact that even strong regulators have had a hard time understanding that gaming is a huge industry that needs regulating.

3 hours ago, MMaas said:

The fact that EA had to change their (local) policy for FIFA's revenue model (lootbox bans in several countries) a while ago was a first big win. "Reasonable expectations" and refunds are part of consumer laws.

Agreed on both points, but we still need consumer protectors to be allowed to have more leeway without needing overly specific details that they're allowed to regulate and we have to have a regulatory system that understands that the game industry needs regulating (this is the part that I agree with you is old fashioned).

3 hours ago, MMaas said:

"Reasonable expectations" and refunds are part of consumer laws.

Agreed, but you still need regulators that have enough freedom and power to create and enforce regulations. The very fact that we currently have such an anti-regulation culture which needed to have a law explicitly passed to deal with the lootbox issue is a big part of our problem.

 

In the end, the two of us mostly agree on what we think should be done, but until that actually happens you have to play the game you're playing, not the game you wish you were playing. WildCard is doing business the same way today that they've been doing business since the very beginning of Early Access, it's been many years now and there's no reason to believe they're ever going to change that unless they're forced too by an outside agency. Until or unless that happens the mutual trust that you've spoken of does not and will not exist. You can vote with your dollars or understand that this is who you're buying a game from.

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23 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

In the end, the two of us mostly agree on what we think should be done, but until that actually happens you have to play the game you're playing, not the game you wish you were playing. WildCard is doing business the same way today that they've been doing business since the very beginning of Early Access, it's been many years now and there's no reason to believe they're ever going to change that unless they're forced too by an outside agency. Until or unless that happens the mutual trust that you've spoken of does not and will not exist. You can vote with your dollars or understand that this is who you're buying a game from.

Can't agree more ;)

(By the way, when will ARK get out of early acces? I'm about to refere to WC as EA :P )

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