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The problem with modern gamers.


Logan96

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This is a subject that will receive some backlash, but it needs to be said.

Once upon a time we use to be clueless cavemen trudging through the jungle, spear in hand facing dilos, bugs, raptors and who knows what else, but we were determined to find a homestead and start taming! After that we faced off against threats that seamed larger and larger each day until we eventually secured our ground...that’s how it was for me anyways...until the first dlc...

After scorched earth things never really felt the same. Sure there was a threat here and there, but the optimal strategy’s had already been posted and conquered. The appeal behind mmos is the social aspect, so eventually the optimal strategy is spread out to everyone and if you haven’t learned the best tactics your just a newb.

I can’t be the only one feeling this way.  It’s as though every opportunity for discovery has been squandered, because as time grows more and more gamers are looking to external sources to remain competitive. Each dlc has a shorter learning curve than the next.

It’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed and it’s not just a problem with ark but with every mmo. Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them.

I’ve enjoyed playing ark 1 competitively on PvP officials, but I think that when the second game comes out I will be retiring to single player, for the sake of discovery.

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5 hours ago, Logan96 said:

This is a subject that will receive some backlash, but it needs to be said.

Once upon a time we use to be clueless cavemen trudging through the jungle, spear in hand facing dilos, bugs, raptors and who knows what else, but we were determined to find a homestead and start taming! After that we faced off against threats that seamed larger and larger each day until we eventually secured our ground...that’s how it was for me anyways...until the first dlc...

After scorched earth things never really felt the same. Sure there was a threat here and there, but the optimal strategy’s had already been posted and conquered. The appeal behind mmos is the social aspect, so eventually the optimal strategy is spread out to everyone and if you haven’t learned the best tactics your just a newb.

I can’t be the only one feeling this way.  It’s as though every opportunity for discovery has been squandered, because as time grows more and more gamers are looking to external sources to remain competitive. Each dlc has a shorter learning curve than the next.

It’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed and it’s not just a problem with ark but with every mmo. Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them.

I’ve enjoyed playing ark 1 competitively on PvP officials, but I think that when the second game comes out I will be retiring to single player, for the sake of discovery.

I tend to play as "legit" or authentic as possible. I used to even play hardcore mode, yes I died 3 times going for real, but that was because of 1x discon, megalosaur (didnt have a clue about its swallowing attack)  and a damn thylo :). 3th time I died was the time you couldnt claim your pets back anymore, so I had a backup toon.
I solo raised armies to go for Alpha ape, alpha spider, but only beta dragon with theris. Overseer I finished Gamma on SP.

Now that the hardcore pve servers are no more. I still tend to do it all solo, first.
I solod some bosses, (Rockwell Easy, Master Controller Beta) solo first before tending to the Community to go for Alpha.

A lot of things are just not doable Solo, so you need the community. EG I havent even done 1 Titan ever. Because I want to check it out, feel the struggling to get to do something like that the legit way... 

Its your own choise, I still play Ark after maybe 6 years, havent finished poop, still having fun with this and that...
 

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15 hours ago, Logan96 said:

It’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed and it’s not just a problem with ark but with every mmo. Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them.

You obviously weren't around in the 70's and 80's when game guides were published and sold at gaming stores, because people want the ability to decide for themselves what makes their games fun to play. This has nothing to do with "modern gamers" and everything to do with the fact that different people find different aspects of games fun. People have always wanted to choose for themselves how much time they want to spend learning all of the intricate details of a game and how much time they want to spend playing it in a way that they find enjoyable. Beyond which, the wiki has been around since since the game was released in Early Access, there was never a time when the only way to learn the game was personal experience. You're imagining a past through your rose colored lenses that never existed.

It' not like this an ARK thing, or an MMO thing, or a computer game thing, or even a recent thing, this is how people have always approached gaming. There's a reason why there are thousands of books about chess dating back hundreds of years. People want to learn and be competitive without having to learn every lesson the hard way. Knowledge learned from a the wiki or youtube is just as valuable and useful as knowledge gained from losing a PvP battle when someone raids and destroys your base. And if you can use that knowledge to avoid being beaten, to avoid having your base destroyed, then the knowledge from external sources is much more valuable than learning the game by getting wrecked.

If you like discovering everything from scratch without anyone ever giving you information, that's your choice and that's how you should play, more power to you. If other people don't want to spend their game time, their play time, their entertainment time, the same way you do then that's their choice, and more power to them as well. As long as people aren't learning how to cheat or exploit it's none of your business how they learn or what they enjoy. If other people have more fun by being more efficient that's their right.

If you played "competitively on PvP officials" then I guarantee you didn't discover everything the hard way unless you just really like losing at PvP. If you're being honest you've benefited from other people's efficiency. At a bare minimum you exchanged knowledge with other tribe mates, and many of them were learning things exactly the way you're complaining about, so you were still benefiting from their artificially efficient learning curve even though you want to pretend that you weren't.

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4 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

You obviously weren't around in the 70's and 80's when game guides were published and sold at gaming stores, because people want the ability to decide for themselves what makes their games fun to play. This has nothing to do with "modern gamers" and everything to do with the fact that different people find different aspects of games fun. People have always wanted to choose for themselves how much time they want to spend learning all of the intricate details of a game and how much time they want to spend playing it in a way that they find enjoyable. Beyond which, the wiki has been around since since the game was released in Early Access, there was never a time when the only way to learn the game was personal experience. You're imagining a past through your rose colored lenses that never existed.

It' not like this an ARK thing, or an MMO thing, or a computer game thing, or even a recent thing, this is how people have always approached gaming. There's a reason why there are thousands of books about chess dating back hundreds of years. People want to learn and be competitive without having to learn every lesson the hard way. Knowledge learned from a the wiki or youtube is just as valuable and useful as knowledge gained from losing a PvP battle when someone raids and destroys your base. And if you can use that knowledge to avoid being beaten, to avoid having your base destroyed, then the knowledge from external sources is much more valuable than learning the game by getting wrecked.

If you like discovering everything from scratch without anyone ever giving you information, that's your choice and that's how you should play, more power to you. If other people don't want to spend their game time, their play time, their entertainment time, the same way you do then that's their choice, and more power to them as well. As long as people aren't learning how to cheat or exploit it's none of your business how they learn or what they enjoy. If other people have more fun by being more efficient that's their right.

If you played "competitively on PvP officials" then I guarantee you didn't discover everything the hard way unless you just really like losing at PvP. If you're being honest you've benefited from other people's efficiency. At a bare minimum you exchanged knowledge with other tribe mates, and many of them were learning things exactly the way you're complaining about, so you were still benefiting from their artificially efficient learning curve even though you want to pretend that you weren't.

I will be honest and say that yes I have done my share of looking up guides and what not in the past, but it was not at release. At release I didn’t have a clue about the game and neither did the majority of the players with me. That’s not a rose colored lens, that’s how it was.

This isn’t chess, people didn’t play chess to explore and adventure, but the same people who want that adventure are ruining it for themselves by accessing materials and guides before they even get into the game.

I said this would get backlash and I am prepared for it, but I think it’s a little arrogant to say that it’s none of my business. Can players play their own way? Yes absolutely, I’m not demanding that guides, wikis or gameplay be taken down or adjusted. I’m suggesting that players should try to think for themselves once in a while to have a better experience. You are free to disagree with me, but you are in a way trying to discredit my own opinion by deciding what I should and shouldn’t discuss. And THAT sir, is none of YOUR business...

Good Day

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21 hours ago, Logan96 said:

This is a subject that will receive some backlash, but it needs to be said.

Once upon a time we use to be clueless cavemen trudging through the jungle, spear in hand facing dilos, bugs, raptors and who knows what else, but we were determined to find a homestead and start taming! After that we faced off against threats that seamed larger and larger each day until we eventually secured our ground...that’s how it was for me anyways...until the first dlc...

After scorched earth things never really felt the same. Sure there was a threat here and there, but the optimal strategy’s had already been posted and conquered. The appeal behind mmos is the social aspect, so eventually the optimal strategy is spread out to everyone and if you haven’t learned the best tactics your just a newb.

I can’t be the only one feeling this way.  It’s as though every opportunity for discovery has been squandered, because as time grows more and more gamers are looking to external sources to remain competitive. Each dlc has a shorter learning curve than the next.

It’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed and it’s not just a problem with ark but with every mmo. Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them.

I’ve enjoyed playing ark 1 competitively on PvP officials, but I think that when the second game comes out I will be retiring to single player, for the sake of discovery.

I second this. I think that this is only an issue because of how competitive ARK multiplayer is.

When a new multiplayer survival and adventure game comes out, most of everyone starts out playing it their own way, exploring and discovering on their own.

But then one player discovers some sort of exploit or just overpowered mechanic, and then all of a sudden they become way stronger than everyone else.

Which leads the other players to use this new "meta", and then everyone is equal.

Until someone discovers a new meta, and the cycle repeats again.

It is for this reason that I prefer singleplayer, or light co-op gameplay over massively multiplayer. Cause there isn't a massive struggle to be the best, Its just you against the environment.

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3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

I will be honest and say that yes I have done my share of looking up guides and what not in the past, but it was not at release. At release I didn’t have a clue about the game and neither did the majority of the players with me. That’s not a rose colored lens, that’s how it was.

Whether you personally looked things up at release or not is immaterial, the point is that the culture around you hasn't changed. You're misdiagnosing the reasons for the changes you perceive. People were doing the same things at release that they're doing today, none of it is new. This idea that "modern gamers" are somehow different than the distant, misty past of 6 1/2 have whole years ago is silly at best.

If people didn't have a clue it's because they hadn't had enough time to learn all the clues, it was because the game was new that people didn't know things yet, it was not because they had different attitudes than today. You're misdiagnosing the reason for things changing, it's not because people, or their attitudes, or their motivations, have changed. It's because they've had more time to learn things.

Like you, I played PvP during pre-release and pretty much the only thing that (serious) PvP tribes cared about was efficiency. Ruthless, driving, crushing your opponents efficiency, which included looking for the optimal ways for doing anything and everything imaginable.

3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

This isn’t chess, people didn’t play chess to explore and adventure

True, it's not chess, but making that observation is missing the point. People have been seeking out and learning from game guides for hundreds of years, it's nothing new and it's absolutely not "modern gamers".

3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

but the same people who want that adventure are ruining it for themselves by accessing materials and guides before they even get into the game.

Now you're throwing out meaningless claims. You can't begin to claim that people are "ruining it for themselves", you're not the spokesman for everyone and certainly not for pre-modern gamers. People are people, and they have always been people. If your perception has changed the only thing that proves is that your perception has changed.

For many people, a game doesn't become fun until they've accessed "materials and guides" for the game. Lots of people (maybe not you, and maybe not me, but plenty of others) don't enjoy a game until after they understand the in's and out's of how it works. They don't want to waste their time learning through repeated failures, they want to learn how the game works and then enjoy playing it. This is especially true of a game as complicated as ARK.

Gamers are the same now as they were 6.5 years ago, and in the 90's, and in the 80's, and in the 70's, they want to be sure they understand the games they're playing, so they can each enjoy the game on their own terms.

3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

I said this would get backlash and I am prepared for it

It doesn't seem like it so far.

3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

but I think it’s a little arrogant to say that it’s none of my business.

It's even more arrogant to assume that you know better than other people do about how they want to enjoy a game. Any time you start off a post with "...but it needs to be said." that should be a big red flag warning you that you're about to be presumptuous and tell other people how they should be enjoying their fun.

Telling people that they should play differently because they don't understand that there's a better way to play the game is patronizing at best.

3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

I’m suggesting that players should try to think for themselves once in a while to have a better experience.

What you're suggesting is that you know better than other people do about how they should enjoy a game, that somehow you have greater wisdom than "modern gamers" who don't have enough insight into how they should enjoy their own entertainment.

You're making a blanket assumption that looking up reference materials and thinking for themselves are mutually exclusive, that's a false choice and a flawed argument.

3 hours ago, Logan96 said:

You are free to disagree with me, but you are in a way trying to discredit my own opinion by deciding what I should and shouldn’t discuss. And THAT sir, is none of YOUR business...

You posted an argument, a claim, an assertion, a thesis in a public forum. That makes it everyone's business who wants to reply, regardless of whether you like their replies.

I'm not attempting to tell you what you should or shouldn't discuss, that's a false accusation. Disagreeing with you is not the same thing as deciding what you should and shouldn't discuss.

I'm replying to your thesis and arguing that it's a false thesis based on flawed assumptions and arguments. You have every right to post your thesis because of course you do, it's a public forum. Likewise I have every right to argue against that thesis, that's how public discourse works. This isn't your personal soapbox, it's a pubic forum with public discussions.

 

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7 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

People were doing the same things at release that they're doing today, none of it is new. This idea that "modern gamers" are somehow different than the distant, misty past of 6 1/2 have whole years ago is silly at best.

The people that tend to official pve at least, are in a very different situation and Ark-culture. They are skipping a lot of grinding, figuring things out and gameplay that is Ark in its base form, a survival game. This is all pretty forced by the community etc. You can hardly buy a giga that has less than 1000 melee, nor a rex that has to poop more than twice while chewing Broodmother to death. People play online because of the community, and that culture is highly different than that of the community before Gen2, Extinction, Scorched Earth etc. The "culture" does chance...

8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

What you're suggesting is that you know better than other people do about how they should enjoy a game, that somehow you have greater wisdom than "modern gamers" who don't have enough insight into how they should enjoy their own entertainment.

I would suggest that too...
I think its pretty legit to claim to have a "more fun" way of playing a game, or suggest a fun way of playing a game. Ark has a very diverse environment and a lot of content. People might even overlook the survival aspect when tending to online and the community.
I dont think people buy Ark expecting a grind of 5 years to finish all the content. Since Gen2 it feels like devs are closing that up for them, its finalized... Though this has been done before also, raising rates etc...
Gaming-culture in general doesnt have the changes OP is claiming to have, Ark-culture does...

 

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16 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

The people that tend to official pve at least, are in a very different situation and Ark-culture. They are skipping a lot of grinding, figuring things out and gameplay that is Ark in its base form, a survival game. This is all pretty forced by the community etc. You can hardly buy a giga that has less than 1000 melee, nor a rex that has to poop more than twice while chewing Broodmother to death. People play online because of the community, and that culture is highly different than that of the community before Gen2, Extinction, Scorched Earth etc. The "culture" does chance...

I see what you're saying and there's some truth to it. But that truth is mostly time-based, not any true change in culture. If giga's with 1000+ melee has been available in 2015 there would have been lots of people who would have wanted them, and who would have farmed the materials to buy them. The difference between Early Access and the current state of ARK has very little to do with culture and a whole lot to do with what's available. If people in 2015 had access to the same things they have access to today, they would have used them. That's not a culture change, that's the game changing and allowing players to gain access to things they already wanted.

Some players, of course, not all. There have always been, and will always be, people who play in different ways to suit their own personal preferences. I played PvE in 2015 and back then there was already a thriving market for dino's on PvE servers. Some people bought, sold and traded, others didn't - just like today - the only true difference was what was available on the market today. I've played PvE three different times over the years and not once have I ever bought a dino, but I would never fault or criticize people who do. If people want to spend their time farming ingots, pearls, paste, or whatever the current form of currency is on their server rather than spending time taming dino's and hoping for good stats, well good for them, that's how they enjoy their game. That was just as true in 2015 as is is now. The culture hasn't changed, only the specific items being traded.

16 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

I think its pretty legit to claim to have a "more fun" way of playing a game, or suggest a fun way of playing a game.

It's legit if people are asking for suggestions. If someone says, "ARK has gotten boring, give me ideas for more fun ways to play," or "This game doesn't feel challenging enough for me, give me suggestions for how to do things differently," then it's perfectly legit to give them suggestions.

What's not legit is to presume that other people don't understand how to have fun with their own game and they should listen to someone preach at them that they're doing it wrong.

16 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

Ark has a very diverse environment and a lot of content.

That's true, and speaks directly to my point. There are many ways to play and enjoy ARK - PvE, PvP, Official, Small cluster, small tribes, Unofficial public, Unofficial private, single-player, etc., which means to suggest that people should play a certain way is pretty absurd.

Over the years I've played PvP, PvE, Primitive+, single-player, Unofficial-public and Unofficial-private. Personally, I think that Unofficial-private is by far the most fun way to play the game, but I would never presume to tell all of the people who are playing in other game modes that they're doing it wrong, nor to suggest that Unofficial-private is the right way to play the game.

Heck, even on our Unofficial-private server, where we have 6-8 people at any given moment, there are 6-8 different opinions on the best way for the server to be configured. We have a diversity of opinions on what the harvest rates should be, what the XP rates should be, whether the XP for higher levels should be custom configured, if & when we should allow ourselves to use admin commands, and so on. If 6-8 people on one single Unofficial-private server can't all agree on the best settings for sever configuration so that they can each get the most fun from the game, it should be obvious that it's ridiculous to tell people how they should be enjoying the game based only on one's own personal preferences. If 6-8 people on a single server can't agree on the best way to enjoy the game it should be painfully obvious that thousands of people are all going to have different preferences and different ways to enjoy it, and that suggesting to them that their preferences are somehow wrong is an inherently flawed argument.

Likewise, no one should presume to tell people that reading guides and watching videos is the wrong way to play the game, that they are "squandering opportunities" for enjoyment. It is the very fact that ARK is a diverse environment with a lot of content that show's how over reaching the original post was. Presuming that people don't know how to figure out which game mode and play-style is best for their own personal preferences is patronizing a lot of people.

16 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

People might even overlook the survival aspect when tending to online and the community.

On PvE, ARK is only truly a survival game until about Lvl 30, and even then it's mostly only true for fairly new players. The biggest threat in the game is, and has always been, other players. PvP is a survival game, PvE is a grow and build game, this has always been true, since day 1. That's not a criticism of ARK, mind you. There are plenty of games that people can play that will keep them much closer to the edge of dying all the time, games like "Don't Starve", which are much more brutal than ARK. If people want to play a true survival game they're out there on the market waiting for players to jump in.

If people really want to make ARK more of a survival game then they can play the entire game with cloth armor, stone tools & weapons, and thatch/wood structures, but I'm willing to bet that you'd never tell people that's what they "should" do that because they're missing out on an important part of the survival aspect.

The moment someone has a stone compound ARK-PvP ceases to be a survival game. WC markets the game as a survival game, but it's mostly not. Again, that's not a criticism. There's a reason why we have 6-8 people playing together on a private ARK server rather than a private Don't Starve server. Our group finds ARK more fun than Don't Starve - but I would never presume to tell fans of Don't Starve that they're doing it wrong by playing the wrong game, because I'm not going to make the arrogant assumption that I know better than they do about how they should be enjoying their games.

16 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

Gaming-culture in general doesnt have the changes OP is claiming to have, Ark-culture does...

We're going to have to agree to disagree, I don't see anything happening in ARK-culture that wasn't happening in 2015. People have a variety of motivations, drives and desires, not to mention a variety of ways of having fun. That's been true for the entirety of human history, gaming history, computer game history, and ARK history. Players aren't doing anything differently than they did in 2015, there are just different dino's and maps to do it with.

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On 1/8/2022 at 5:09 AM, Logan96 said:

This is a subject that will receive some backlash, but it needs to be said. Once upon a time we use to be clueless cavemen trudging through the jungle, spear in hand facing dilos, bugs, raptors and who knows what else, but we were determined to find a homestead and start taming! After that we faced off against threats that seamed larger and larger each day until we eventually secured our ground...that’s how it was for me anyways...until the first dlc...After scorched earth things never really felt the same. Sure there was a threat here and there, but the optimal strategy’s had already been posted and conquered. The appeal behind mmos is the social aspect, so eventually the optimal strategy is spread out to everyone and if you haven’t learned the best tactics your just a newb. I can’t be the only one feeling this way.  It’s as though every opportunity for discovery has been squandered, because as time grows more and more gamers are looking to external sources to remain competitive. Each dlc has a shorter learning curve than the next. It’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed and it’s not just a problem with ark but with every mmo. Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them. I’ve enjoyed playing ark 1 competitively on PvP officials, but I think that when the second game comes out I will be retiring to single player, for the sake of discovery.

I have to agree, but on the other hand the lack of any sort of guide, tutorial, or even advice is super one sided......I suppose that is to be expected of a true survival game, but there needs to be some sense of direction or at least extra information given in order for the player to know what to do next or else they get lost and their skills are never refined as they do not know what kind of skills they will need to further the game.

My mom, age 60, was the first person to start playing this game in our household, and she kept coming to me with questions and such about this, that, or how to do something that today she could do blindfolded. Admitedly I was letting her do it all herself, thinking that the game would teach her this or that. Finally when I got involved, I finally understood why she was so out of touch with this game. There is absolutely no direction dureing this game. {that and she did NOT know what PvP and PvE was lmao}

Heck, even when I was playing, I had absolutely no sense or clue of what was going on. My first trip to an obelisk was done with the utmost caution and intrepidities as if I had stepped into the middle of no mans land during ww1.....no joke either.....every bush, studdied for liveing creatures. Water crossed as if jaws himself was underneath me biding his time to end me. When I finally got to the oblesk and studied what was on my screen, I thought you could pick up these really cute looking statues of a dragon, spider, or gorilla of either jade, ice, or ruby in color. I didn't even know or think about it as a boss fight with easy medium or hard difficulties. I just thought they was decorations!

 

So yeah, on the one hand I agree with you.....Want to sorta cheat, just watch this youtuber who did it. But if you want to experiane the whole thing for yourself? Good luck trying to make heads or tails of it as you play. Can you imagine people trying to tame a sino right now without knowing it takes chitin?

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On 1/8/2022 at 3:39 PM, Logan96 said:

This is a subject that will receive some backlash, but it needs to be said.

Once upon a time we use to be clueless cavemen trudging through the jungle, spear in hand facing dilos, bugs, raptors and who knows what else, but we were determined to find a homestead and start taming! After that we faced off against threats that seamed larger and larger each day until we eventually secured our ground...that’s how it was for me anyways...until the first dlc...

After scorched earth things never really felt the same. Sure there was a threat here and there, but the optimal strategy’s had already been posted and conquered. The appeal behind mmos is the social aspect, so eventually the optimal strategy is spread out to everyone and if you haven’t learned the best tactics your just a newb.

I can’t be the only one feeling this way.  It’s as though every opportunity for discovery has been squandered, because as time grows more and more gamers are looking to external sources to remain competitive. Each dlc has a shorter learning curve than the next.

It’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed and it’s not just a problem with ark but with every mmo. Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game cinema hd around them.

I’ve enjoyed playing ark 1 competitively on PvP officials, but I think that when the second game comes out I will be retiring to single player, for the sake of discovery.

I have two problems tied for biggest:

  1. Microtransactions. Just charge me more for the game if you’re living out of cardboard boxes, but don’t nickel and dime me

  2. Games that try to dictate your schedule. “Make sure to play during the special event this weekend with limited time exclusive rewards!” I want a game, not a second job.

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I wouldn't know what most consider a modern gamer - I started with ATARI Pong, the 2600 and then the IBM 8088.  So I think of modern gamer as someone that grew up with gaming in the internet age.  Here is my beef using my definition of the modern gamer:  prior to the internet, we did all of our multiplayer with PCs or consoles connected with a network hub.  We were usually all in the same room, so my experiences were almost entirely all positive and we had a lot of fun.  There was no griefing in my experiences, because I knew that I would pay immediate real-world social consequences if I did, just like regular social interactions. 

With many interactions on the internet where people can be anonymous, internet gaming fostered sociopathic and psychopathic-like behavior.  Well worth noting: I do not think griefers are sociopaths or psychopaths at all - but in a virtual and anonymous gaming setting, some play without any regard to other's experiences and are coldly opportunistic and some admit to having their fun by deliberately ruining other's gaming experiences.  I have seen a lot of both in Ark in addition to the opposite (even in PvP) and everything in between.

With Ark in particular, here is what I noticed in my experiences from launch over several official servers in PvP and PvE:  for the first couple of years, I saw a lot more cooperation and a lot less griefing and exploiting in PvP.  It was rare for someone to be raided when offline on our server, and when it did happen, it was a shock.  The perpetrators were ganged up on and served justice in a way.  It sounds like a cheezy term, but the tribes on our official server mostly played with honor: you would either wait for your rivals to be online before assaulting their base (because that was fun for us), or tribes agreed to meet in a certain place to battle.  Other than those times, people would trade, collaborate, or even help each other out like giving rival tribes swamp-fever cures.  We had planned competitive events like joust fights, a community center with public crafting station and take-something/leave-something storage.  For us that was fun.

I would imagine that it would be rare to find a public PvP server like that now.  If it exists, I would like to know which one it is.  In my experiences, some multiplayer Ark players seemed to "evolve" where cold-opportunism, exploits, griefing and hacks became the new norm.  I understand that playing this way is fun for some.  It also might be fun for someone to just try to survive in these conditions by hiding in ratholes for as long as possible.  Both of these are a lot different from what I want out of a multiplayer Ark experience:  my description of fun in Ark is more like the first years where more people were willing to play in a way that doesn't intentionally ruin the experience for others and even considers other's fun while being competitive - almost as if we were playing in the same room.  I hear it is like this on some unofficial servers and certainly ones populated with friends.  I just haven't taken the leap into unofficial as maybe I should have years ago.

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13 hours ago, wizard03 said:

Heck, even when I was playing, I had absolutely no sense or clue of what was going on. My first trip to an obelisk was done with the utmost caution and intrepidities as if I had stepped into the middle of no mans land during ww1.....no joke either.....every bush, studdied for liveing creatures. Water crossed as if jaws himself was underneath me biding his time to end me. When I finally got to the oblesk and studied what was on my screen, I thought you could pick up these really cute looking statues of a dragon, spider, or gorilla of either jade, ice, or ruby in color. I didn't even know or think about it as a boss fight with easy medium or hard difficulties. I just thought they was decorations!

My old hardcore adventure days :)
I started playing this game on hardcore mode, first mode!!. And took it real serious. It makes it a waay different game. I hardly looked up anything. I even only tamed my first dino after 2-3 weeks afraid it would eat me in my sleep or something. Didnt know poop. kiting around on my raft, watching from my raft, calculating land dinos speed, calculating every encounter, watching every battle between dinos from my raft. Back then you could level up speed insanely fast. And my build was all speed based so I could run from every situation if needed. It was one of the absolute best (gaming)-experience ever.

2 hours ago, jiwleik said:

Games that try to dictate your schedule. “Make sure to play during the special event this weekend with limited time exclusive rewards!” I want a game, not a second job.

Outside event today, the cuddle-interval is 8 hours. During event you can scedule things. But cuddle-interval used to be 4-hours standard. Try raising the big things that way. No cryopods to cycle through cuddles and living a normal life AND raising your gigas. Ark Die-hards would get no proper sleep :/

1 hour ago, maxplanck58 said:

There was no griefing in my experiences, because I knew that I would pay immediate real-world social consequences if I did, just like regular social interactions.

Me and my friends playing together, there always was a LOT of griefing :) Getting griefed online is just such a pain because the game lets it be acceptable. Its something that you cant control and the world is full with griefing, its a fight you always lose and because of the "anonymous gaming setting" you cant "win" so you only lose...

1 hour ago, maxplanck58 said:

With Ark in particular, here is what I noticed in my experiences from launch over several official servers in PvP and PvE:  for the first couple of years, I saw a lot more cooperation and a lot less griefing and exploiting in PvP.  It was rare for someone to be raided when offline on our server, and when it did happen, it was a shock.  The perpetrators were ganged up on and served justice in a way.  It sounds like a cheezy term, but the tribes on our official server mostly played with honor: you would either wait for your rivals to be online before assaulting their base (because that was fun for us), or tribes agreed to meet in a certain place to battle.  Other than those times, people would trade, collaborate, or even help each other out like giving rival tribes swamp-fever cures.  We had planned competitive events like joust fights, a community center with public crafting station and take-something/leave-something storage.  For us that was fun.

Im not a pvp player, but I imagen its the same, in a way as PvE. Back at the fresh start of Ark, pre-release, especially. It was not a big loss to lose everything. I think in PvP, just as in PvE, people that are playing for years are gonig to want to protect what they have a LOT more, making killing things off before it gets "to big" a very logical way of thinking. I could be wrong in a lot of ways about this though. Official<->Unofficial, Unofficial could have a way more "pleasant" PvP culture.

21 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

I see what you're saying and there's some truth to it.

Let me just say in my world I made myself this promise, always try to understand that everyone is ALWAYS right, all that is sayd is true, even when its a lie. You have to then look further and understand that people also tell things that are at that moment yet "untold". People are not lying, they are telling their own truth, maybe with the wrong words, so it looks like a lie, but they are not lying when they dont know the truth, that what it feels as the truth to you. Not always, maybe never, a false statement represent the "untruth".
Eg, I think the OP posted someting like;
People should play Ark more in a way "surviving and exploring on their own".
What he "perhaps" also states with that is that: He likes to explore Ark and the first Ark maps, you had to start fresh, getting to know the dangers (DONT eat the black berry!) and tricks before going for the Big Red Mystery Obelisk, to find out you can find Artifacts etc etc. Gen2 is a LOT easier, lore wise its all logical. Maybe the OP means Ark developed as a game that is less in his favour now, and he is bummed with that. I doubt he stands alone in that. (I am with him in a way, I only played Gen 1 to get the skiff off that map really. Gen2 to just harvest. I feel no attachment to those maps whatsoever)

21 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

It's legit if people are asking for suggestions. If someone says, "ARK has gotten boring, give me ideas for more fun ways to play," or "This game doesn't feel challenging enough for me, give me suggestions for how to do things differently," then it's perfectly legit to give them suggestions.

What's not legit is to presume that other people don't understand how to have fun with their own game and they should listen to someone preach at them that they're doing it wrong.

To not cut you off with a maybe poor choise of words, I kept on reading :)
Maybe look at it this way: You meet a person who has never seen or heard about horses. Whats wrong in trying to introduce horseback-riding to him?
Even though its very unlikely his life is nothing but boring because he never rode a horse, its legit to me, to try and tell him about something interesting, even before his life would go so absurdly dull because ran out of interesting things to do and he never had the chance to learn about horseback-riding :)
I think OP just isnt the seasoned persuator so he isnt slick enough to immediatly convice you or others to do or feel the same.

21 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

There are plenty of games that people can play that will keep them much closer to the edge of dying all the time, games like "Don't Starve", which are much more brutal than ARK. If people want to play a true survival game they're out there on the market waiting for players to jump in.

If people really want to make ARK more of a survival game then they can play the entire game with cloth armor, stone tools & weapons, and thatch/wood structures, but I'm willing to bet that you'd never tell people that's what they "should" do that because they're missing out on an important part of the survival aspect.

Me playing hardcore mode, I think it was waaaay more intense than Base game Dont Starve :)
But yes, and no...
I shouldnt tell them that is what they should do, MUST do. No Id tell them that is something they should TRY. Id say to you also: want a challenge? Go play hardcore mode, start fresh, no "modern community mutated dinos" and set your goal on Overseer! 
(Persuation works better if the counterpart of the conversation is up for a challenge and an Ark fanatic!)

21 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

We're going to have to agree to disagree, I don't see anything happening in ARK-culture that wasn't happening in 2015. People have a variety of motivations, drives and desires, not to mention a variety of ways of having fun. That's been true for the entirety of human history, gaming history, computer game history, and ARK history. Players aren't doing anything differently than they did in 2015, there are just different dino's and maps to do it with.

I think we are on that point about this topic, the subject the OP posted is the same as "ours" but we have different ways of backing up, subjecting ourselfes to this topic.

 

 

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14 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

My old hardcore adventure days :)
I started playing this game on hardcore mode, first mode!!. And took it real serious. It makes it a waay different game. I hardly looked up anything. I even only tamed my first dino after 2-3 weeks afraid it would eat me in my sleep or something. Didnt know poop. kiting around on my raft, watching from my raft, calculating land dinos speed, calculating every encounter, watching every battle between dinos from my raft. Back then you could level up speed insanely fast. And my build was all speed based so I could run from every situation if needed. It was one of the absolute best (gaming)-experience ever.

Oh yeah, forgot bout the movement speed builds XD Yeah, we had dumped maybe 15-20 points in speed first couple runs......out ran couple alpha raptors, then we found one that was stuck on something dead.....I know lets tame it! 200 tranq arrows later it died XD
"What happened?!?! why did you kill it? man that thing was going to be the best tame ever. I was going to name it sizzler." lmao

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On 1/9/2022 at 2:28 AM, Pipinghot said:

Whether you personally looked things up at release or not is immaterial, the point is that the culture around you hasn't changed. You're misdiagnosing the reasons for the changes you perceive. People were doing the same things at release that they're doing today, none of it is new. This idea that "modern gamers" are somehow different than the distant, misty past of 6 1/2 have whole years ago is silly at best.

If people didn't have a clue it's because they hadn't had enough time to learn all the clues, it was because the game was new that people didn't know things yet, it was not because they had different attitudes than today. You're misdiagnosing the reason for things changing, it's not because people, or their attitudes, or their motivations, have changed. It's because they've had more time to learn things.

Like you, I played PvP during pre-release and pretty much the only thing that (serious) PvP tribes cared about was efficiency. Ruthless, driving, crushing your opponents efficiency, which included looking for the optimal ways for doing anything and everything imaginable.

True, it's not chess, but making that observation is missing the point. People have been seeking out and learning from game guides for hundreds of years, it's nothing new and it's absolutely not "modern gamers".

Now you're throwing out meaningless claims. You can't begin to claim that people are "ruining it for themselves", you're not the spokesman for everyone and certainly not for pre-modern gamers. People are people, and they have always been people. If your perception has changed the only thing that proves is that your perception has changed.

For many people, a game doesn't become fun until they've accessed "materials and guides" for the game. Lots of people (maybe not you, and maybe not me, but plenty of others) don't enjoy a game until after they understand the in's and out's of how it works. They don't want to waste their time learning through repeated failures, they want to learn how the game works and then enjoy playing it. This is especially true of a game as complicated as ARK.

Gamers are the same now as they were 6.5 years ago, and in the 90's, and in the 80's, and in the 70's, they want to be sure they understand the games they're playing, so they can each enjoy the game on their own terms.

It doesn't seem like it so far.

It's even more arrogant to assume that you know better than other people do about how they want to enjoy a game. Any time you start off a post with "...but it needs to be said." that should be a big red flag warning you that you're about to be presumptuous and tell other people how they should be enjoying their fun.

Telling people that they should play differently because they don't understand that there's a better way to play the game is patronizing at best.

What you're suggesting is that you know better than other people do about how they should enjoy a game, that somehow you have greater wisdom than "modern gamers" who don't have enough insight into how they should enjoy their own entertainment.

You're making a blanket assumption that looking up reference materials and thinking for themselves are mutually exclusive, that's a false choice and a flawed argument.

You posted an argument, a claim, an assertion, a thesis in a public forum. That makes it everyone's business who wants to reply, regardless of whether you like their replies.

I'm not attempting to tell you what you should or shouldn't discuss, that's a false accusation. Disagreeing with you is not the same thing as deciding what you should and shouldn't discuss.

I'm replying to your thesis and arguing that it's a false thesis based on flawed assumptions and arguments. You have every right to post your thesis because of course you do, it's a public forum. Likewise I have every right to argue against that thesis, that's how public discourse works. This isn't your personal soapbox, it's a pubic forum with public discussions.

 

So first of all let me apologize for the time it took to respond and also the organization of my response. Each number is basically related to each of your own points in the same order, I am replying to your post on a mobile device that has no touch screen. Now let’s break this down. In the same order of your post.

1. Culture has absolutely changed since release. Do you really believe that gamers are playing the same way that they have been playing 6 years ago. Do you think that trends are a thing In real life? If so then why is it so far fetched to believe that trends can come in go within the gaming community in similar fashion. Especially in a day and age where the community is so easily swayed by what is broadcasted in front of them. 
 
2. My point about players having no clue about the game was that they didn’t care about being efficient and the likes. I disagree that our inefficiency and newbness was born of of pure inexperience. There was more of an interest in just enjoying the games. My backing for this stands in the number of views that you will find on older guide videos and cross that with the ratio of game purchases with that time. You will see that as the years go on the game purchases will fall off but the views of guides continue to rise, which suggests that players are becoming more and more focused on efficiency any competitive gameplay.

3. I guess I should have clarified why I brought up the fact that the game is not chess. In chess you read about moves and tactics. You do not read what exact Dino’s and locations to visit to get the best result. In chess these guides are great because it’s like adding a new move to your skill set. In ark it’s like having someone tell you how to play the game. I can’t count how many times I’ve been questioned by tribe mates why I’m taking the Mega over the Rex in a meatrun. Know why? Because their little guide said the Rex was better and as such they have only played that one way.
 

4. Here we go again...what if I said “in my opinion they are ruining it for themselves” you assume that I believe I am speaking for these people...in a way yes I suppose I am. But I’m trying to provide some insight into what I believe is happening and you are interpreting  it as an attack. 

5. This is a common ground we can agree on. This is that gamer trend I am trying to point out and it is absolutely growing. I provided my evidence earlier.

6. Gamers are not the same as gamers in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Take a look at the returning popularity of older games such as dungeons and dragons and other table tops.  These games can’t exactly have guides written for them In the same way, yet they are spreading like wildfire. My theory is that gamers are migrating because they are sick of the grinding, studying and practicing it takes to master newer games and they just want to get back to having good old fun. But wait we have elite counter strike players focused on fast reflexes and others who are interested in the lore of a universe...so on and so forth. Gamers are growing more and more diverse which is a good thing. I’m focused on only the efficiency portion of it, but you will be hard pressed to provide evidence that we have not changed.

7. (starting at “it doesn’t seem like it so far”) Here is the deal, you told me that how people play is none of my business, after I had just tried to discuss how I felt about it. How else should I interpret that? You just told me that my main argument is none of my business on a forum section called general discussion. If you want to disagree with me then do so and I will be glad to discuss. I meant I was prepared for backlash in the sense of disagreement, but I won’t be told what is and isn’t my business to discuss in the general discussion tab. Unless of course the discussion is grossly off topic of ark which is what this is getting to, so I will drop point number 7 if you would prefer to ignore it.

 

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On 1/9/2022 at 8:42 PM, wizard03 said:

I have to agree, but on the other hand the lack of any sort of guide, tutorial, or even advice is super one sided......I suppose that is to be expected of a true survival game, but there needs to be some sense of direction or at least extra information given in order for the player to know what to do next or else they get lost and their skills are never refined as they do not know what kind of skills they will need to further the game.

My mom, age 60, was the first person to start playing this game in our household, and she kept coming to me with questions and such about this, that, or how to do something that today she could do blindfolded. Admitedly I was letting her do it all herself, thinking that the game would teach her this or that. Finally when I got involved, I finally understood why she was so out of touch with this game. There is absolutely no direction dureing this game. {that and she did NOT know what PvP and PvE was lmao}

Heck, even when I was playing, I had absolutely no sense or clue of what was going on. My first trip to an obelisk was done with the utmost caution and intrepidities as if I had stepped into the middle of no mans land during ww1.....no joke either.....every bush, studdied for liveing creatures. Water crossed as if jaws himself was underneath me biding his time to end me. When I finally got to the oblesk and studied what was on my screen, I thought you could pick up these really cute looking statues of a dragon, spider, or gorilla of either jade, ice, or ruby in color. I didn't even know or think about it as a boss fight with easy medium or hard difficulties. I just thought they was decorations!

 

So yeah, on the one hand I agree with you.....Want to sorta cheat, just watch this youtuber who did it. But if you want to experiane the whole thing for yourself? Good luck trying to make heads or tails of it as you play. Can you imagine people trying to tame a sino right now without knowing it takes chitin?

Honestly I think you are spot on with the idea that the game doesn’t provide enough information on its own. Players are forced to videos to learn which in turn may create a dependency on external sources 

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1 hour ago, Logan96 said:

Honestly I think you are spot on with the idea that the game doesn’t provide enough information on its own. Players are forced to videos to learn which in turn may create a dependency on external sources 

I'm a new player (200 hours). I've been playing for about 2 months, solo single player, which I know doesn't relate to much of this thread. But on this topic of not enough info, let me share some perspective.

It took me about two hours to have a hut on the beach and the basics - food, water, shelter, basic tools and weapons. I did not know how to tame dinosaurs. I did not know what to do next. A pair of raptors came up the beach and I hid in my house. I knew it was going to break so I tried to fight them off and get them away from my stuff. I died of course, but the raptors continued down the beach. The next little bit I gathered resources and automatically leveled up but didn't know what to spend my points on. I got hide armor but it didn't seem to make much difference. It was too dangerous to leave the beach so my game came to a complete stop.

I had to go on the internet to learn how to tame dinos. I learned from a youtuber that if you ride a trike, most things can't hurt you and trikes have a lot of health. I knew from the get go I wanted to play the "storyline" which meant boss fights and ascending to the next map (?). I'm still on the island so I'm not sure what happens next. I'm getting close though.

Basically my point is, without the internet and looking things up, I would have quit this game a long time ago. Nobody likes to die and lose everything wandering aimlessly. Obviously a group of clueless people would fare better than 1 person though with the ability to explore different directions at once and try different things at once. The game just isn't built to be played by single people, and I don't think there are many people coming into the game blind anymore to learn everything organically like it was from day 1. I don't think anyone could really. You really would need a group to come in blind and figure the game out, and I don't think there are many folks joining ARK as a group these days.

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2 hours ago, Logan96 said:

1. Culture has absolutely changed since release. Do you really believe that gamers are playing the same way that they have been playing 6 years ago.

 

I think an interesting thing to do is to watch the Ark trailers and compare them to the common official PvP and PvE experience.  My intuitions tell me that when a company makes a trailer with in-game footage, the goal is to likely showcase the game as they envision as the best version of itself: the way they think would be the most fun for most of the players (basic advertising).  When the trailers showcase competitive multiplayer, it shows big battles and assaults on extravagant bases.  Damn, that looks like a lot of fun to me. 

While there are some mega-tribe battles that happen when everyone is online, I believe that only represents a small fraction of PvP players: most seem to be trying to hold out as long as possible in a rathole before being wiped offline (which is just a matter of time for many, no matter how well hidden).  Granted offline wiping could just be a matter of unfortunate timing, or because it became the norm and part of the culture.

While I won't pretend to be able to read minds, I think it is interesting to consider if the norms of every-day Ark experiences are what the devs had in mind.  What do we hear the most complaints about?  In PvE, pillar spamming just for the sake of it: where tribes litter every spot they can with pillars even if it is far out of vis-range from their base.  People usually repond "well, find another server or build in a crappy location".  Ok, but that doesn't mend the high volume of bad experiences from many players.  In PvP, a player will grind, tame and raise for hours (days, weeks, months, years), only to log in and have everything wiped by a far more advanced tribe: not because the visitors from another server really needed all of that thatch and fiber, but just for kicks.  Is that likely fun for the many people who found themselves at the wrong end of 123 on their level 400 mana?  Maybe, but not likely.  I can say that for myself that it is a sour experience, and logging in to official PvP became tinged with tension (will I be alive with all of my beloved tames and hard-earned loot when I connect?). 

Again, at least in my experiences, the early Ark culture was a lot more like the trailers that showcase "the best", and it evolved (devolved) into an opportunistic, exploit filled hack-fest.  I don't know how much is Ark culture evolving and how much is general gaming / anonymous online culture.  Official PvP and PvE have moved quite far from what I believe is the vision of what the devs intended.  Sure, you say "every game has exploits and hackers" and "just play with friends".  Those are also fine responses, but not everyone can luck into a mega-tribe, nor can everyone have friends that are into Ark or can have the lifestyle to afford the time required to play the game competitively.  Then the common response is "just don't play Ark".  Ok.  Ark sales and number of players have been pretty consistent over the years, but I wonder how many players that quit because of the culture would still be playing if Ark culture was different?

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5 hours ago, Luciu5 said:

I'm a new player (200 hours). I've been playing for about 2 months, solo single player, which I know doesn't relate to much of this thread. But on this topic of not enough info, let me share some perspective.

It took me about two hours to have a hut on the beach and the basics - food, water, shelter, basic tools and weapons. I did not know how to tame dinosaurs. I did not know what to do next. A pair of raptors came up the beach and I hid in my house. I knew it was going to break so I tried to fight them off and get them away from my stuff. I died of course, but the raptors continued down the beach. The next little bit I gathered resources and automatically leveled up but didn't know what to spend my points on. I got hide armor but it didn't seem to make much difference. It was too dangerous to leave the beach so my game came to a complete stop.

I had to go on the internet to learn how to tame dinos. I learned from a youtuber that if you ride a trike, most things can't hurt you and trikes have a lot of health. I knew from the get go I wanted to play the "storyline" which meant boss fights and ascending to the next map (?). I'm still on the island so I'm not sure what happens next. I'm getting close though.

Basically my point is, without the internet and looking things up, I would have quit this game a long time ago. Nobody likes to die and lose everything wandering aimlessly. Obviously a group of clueless people would fare better than 1 person though with the ability to explore different directions at once and try different things at once. The game just isn't built to be played by single people, and I don't think there are many people coming into the game blind anymore to learn everything organically like it was from day 1. I don't think anyone could really. You really would need a group to come in blind and figure the game out, and I don't think there are many folks joining ARK as a group these days.

This is a good point. My main concerns now are how whenever a new dlc comes out there seems to be guides released showing the how to beat the boss along with the best new dinos and gear pretty much within a couple days after release and it seems like more and more players are looking to be guided through the game to maximize efficiency. I believe efficiency in a game has been a growing trend in the last few years, but I think it is accelerated in ark where the entire game is about growth.

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12 hours ago, Luciu5 said:

I'm a new player (200 hours). I've been playing for about 2 months, solo single player, which I know doesn't relate to much of this thread. But on this topic of not enough info, let me share some perspective.

It took me about two hours to have a hut on the beach and the basics - food, water, shelter, basic tools and weapons. I did not know how to tame dinosaurs. I did not know what to do next. A pair of raptors came up the beach and I hid in my house. I knew it was going to break so I tried to fight them off and get them away from my stuff. I died of course, but the raptors continued down the beach. The next little bit I gathered resources and automatically leveled up but didn't know what to spend my points on. I got hide armor but it didn't seem to make much difference. It was too dangerous to leave the beach so my game came to a complete stop.

I had to go on the internet to learn how to tame dinos. I learned from a youtuber that if you ride a trike, most things can't hurt you and trikes have a lot of health. I knew from the get go I wanted to play the "storyline" which meant boss fights and ascending to the next map (?). I'm still on the island so I'm not sure what happens next. I'm getting close though.

Basically my point is, without the internet and looking things up, I would have quit this game a long time ago. Nobody likes to die and lose everything wandering aimlessly. Obviously a group of clueless people would fare better than 1 person though with the ability to explore different directions at once and try different things at once. The game just isn't built to be played by single people, and I don't think there are many people coming into the game blind anymore to learn everything organically like it was from day 1. I don't think anyone could really. You really would need a group to come in blind and figure the game out, and I don't think there are many folks joining ARK as a group these days.

Yeah, Im guessing thats usually what happens to people in their first few hundred hours.....No true sense of direction other than "I got to survive!" I supose that part of it is supposed to be hard to navigate, that early part of "I got to survive" is truely a gem of itself, but slowly she disappears and as she does, the game starts to loose its flair. However without knowing where to go, what to do, or how to progress, you would wither on the sands without knowing what to do next. Or at least what to do "safely".
As for if the game was made for multiple people or not, yes and no. I feel as though the game would have the most benefit for multiple players, however I also feel like the game can be extremely fun in solo mode just as well. Maybe if they had added a bit of this or that, thought more about the solo players and their run through, or fixed the major game breaking bugs in solo, then maybe it would feel more welcoming. But I will agree to a certain degree. This game really caters to the online community much more than those who are solo.

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On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

So first of all let me apologize for the time it took to respond and also the organization of my response.

No apology needed, no one is under any time obligation to reply to any forum discussion. Even so, thank you for the thought and the good will that goes with it.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

I am replying to your post on a mobile device that has no touch screen. Now let’s break this down. In the same order of your post.

Yikes, you're a braver man than I. Even after this much time I still can't stand to do forums on mobile devices.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

1. Culture has absolutely changed since release. Do you really believe that gamers are playing the same way that they have been playing 6 years ago. Do you think that trends are a thing In real life? If so then why is it so far fetched to believe that trends can come in go within the gaming community in similar fashion. Especially in a day and age where the community is so easily swayed by what is broadcasted in front of them.

Yes, I do believe "gamers are playing the same way that they have been playing 6 years ago", the only real difference is the content that's available online.

6 years ago it was common, normal, standard, to refer to online guides (wiki, youtube, reddit, etc.), just as it is today (not just in ARK, but in any game more complicated than Tic-Tac-Toe). That hasn't changed, that's the way it's always been. The names of the content providers have changed, but the purpose of the content hasn't. You may not have done it as much as other people did, but that's more about your habits than about the culture of ARK.

No one is being "swayed" to watch more videos or read more guides, they are simply doing so when it fits their needs and personal desires - just like they did 6 years ago. If someone is having trouble figuring something out, or if they simply want to speed up their learning curve, they choose of their own free will to go looking for information, no one can "sway" them to watch videos or read guides. Some people do it more than others, some people do it less, just as they did in 2016.

You're having something of a "chicken and the egg" problem. You're seeing the increase of content and you think that this is pushing a change into gaming culture, but the truth is that gaming culture has always wanted this information, it just wasn't as easily available in the past. "Pre-modern gamers" have always wanted guides, tutorials and information, it was just never as available as they wanted it to be. The only thing that's truly changing is that the available supply is catching up to the demand that was always there.

The information/content is not changing the culture, the culture was already hungry for the information/content, they were just waiting for the delivery mechanisms to catch up to their desires.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

2. My point about players having no clue about the game was that they didn’t care about being efficient and the likes. I disagree that our inefficiency and newbness was born of of pure inexperience.

Maybe you didn't care about being efficient, but if you think that lots of other people weren't then you're misjudging the ARK culture in 2016. I can tell you what I saw when I played PvP in 2015-2016, on 4 different servers, and efficiency was the single over-riding goal in the PvP tribes I participated in, everything else came after. If you were playing in a casual-PvP environment then you were among the exceptions to the rule. Then, still in 2016, I switched to PvE and I saw the same desire for efficiency that existed in PvP, just for different goals. PvP players desire efficiency to win, PvE players desire efficiency so they can tame/build/(explore) as much as they want to in the time they have available. Efficiency is essential to success in PvP, but even in PvE it's still greatly desired by most players, and always has been.

You're claiming that players used to focus more on having fun and less on efficiency, and while that may be true for you as an individual that doesn't mean it was true for players in general. In some ways my experience mirrors your own, PvP early on followed by increasing frustration over time, then in my case moving to PvE, specifically so I could get away from the relentless need for efficiency - back in 2016, the same time period when you're claiming that efficiency wasn't important. After playing PvP for months on multiple servers, that need for constant, ruthless efficiency is exactly why I changed to PvE, where efficiency was still important but important in different ways, as a tool for helping enjoy the time more rather than as a tool for beating other people. And then experiencing that people on PvE servers in 2016 were just as likely to read guides and watch videos as they are on PvE today.

Of course there have always been, and continue to be, people who play PvP on what can be described on a casual basis, but not if they want to be an alpha tribe. Alpha tribes value efficiency above all else, just as they always have. Efficiency wins PvP, inefficiency loses it, nothing matters more to a serious PvP tribe more than efficiency does. And even many casual PvP tribes want to be more efficient, they just don't know how.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

There was more of an interest in just enjoying the games.

Not among people who wanted to win. Yes those people existed, just as they continue to exist today. Your blanket statements about how things used to be different are really a description of how you were different, how your perspective and your desires have changed, not how the game or the culture was different.

What you're also missing is that you're presenting a false choice. People want to enjoy the game and they want to be efficient, it's not one or the other. This is true on both PvP and PvE, although obviously efficiency is more important in PvP and enjoyment through exploration is more important in PvE.

When people are harvesting wood, stone, metal, etc. for building their base they want to know that they're doing it efficiently.

When people are setting up an egg farm they want to know that they're doing it efficiently.

When people are taming new dino's that they haven't experienced before, they want to know that they're doing it efficiently.

When people are breeding dino's for boss fights (which takes lots and lots of their time) they want to know that they're doing it efficiently. No one wants to find out after 6 months of playing the game that they've been farming stone with the wrong dino, or doing meat runs less than optimally, this game has a lot of busy work and grinding and most people want the busy work to be efficient so they can enjoy the other aspects of the game more. To be fair, there are some people who enjoy the busy work, like running around collecting eggs on their egg farm or doing meat runs that don't have any risk & don't require thinking or problem solving, because they're using that time to decompress from work/life, or just using it to take a mental break from solving real-world problems. But that group of people is in the minority, most players, even in PvE, want to make the busy work as efficient as possible so they can spend more of their game time enjoying the game. That was just as true in 2016 as it is today.

People generally (with the exceptions already acknowledged) want to do the boring, grindy stuff efficiently so that they can have more fun doing the exploring and discovery stuff. Being efficient and having fun are not mutually exclusive, the reality is that people want to do both.

*** This is probably the most important point in this discussion - you have been presenting your arguments as though efficiency and "opportunity for discovery" are somehow mutually exclusive, that they contradict each other, and that's not true. What most players want is both, efficiency and discovery/fun.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

My backing for this stands in the number of views that you will find on older guide videos and cross that with the ratio of game purchases with that time. You will see that as the years go on the game purchases will fall off but the views of guides continue to rise, which suggests that players are becoming more and more focused on efficiency any competitive gameplay.

You cant make an argument that claims to have data unless you present the data.

Unless you can provide real data on this you're just describing your feelings, there's no "backing for this" without real information. It's far too easy to get tricked by confirmation bias, in which the subconscious brain has a strong tendency to remember information that supports what you're already feeling and ignores information that may contradict what you want to believe. This is why real data is important, you can't just make a claim about cross-indexing information that could be verified unless you're willing to do the work to back it up.

So I'm not going to dispute your claim, because the fact is it's null until you can back it up. It's also not my job to prove or disprove your claim for you. If you're willing to do the work to support this claim then we can discuss it further, the burden of proof is on you.

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3. I guess I should have clarified why I brought up the fact that the game is not chess. In chess you read about moves and tactics. You do not read what exact Dino’s and locations to visit to get the best result. In chess these guides are great because it’s like adding a new move to your skill set. In ark it’s like having someone tell you how to play the game. I can’t count how many times I’ve been questioned by tribe mates why I’m taking the Mega over the Rex in a meatrun. Know why? Because their little guide said the Rex was better and as such they have only played that one way.

 

You're contradicting yourself. First you say, "You do not read what exact Dino’s and locations to visit to get the best result." but then you say, "Because their little guide said the Rex was better and as such they have only played that one way." So yeah, the fact that they read "exact Dino’s and locations to visit to get the best result." is what you're complaining about, even though you contradicted yourself by saying it's not what's happening.

Beyond that, you're still missing the point of using chess guides to illustrate the principle. My previous statement still stands, "People have been seeking out and learning from game guides for hundreds of years, it's nothing new and it's absolutely not 'modern gamers'". It's simply what (lots of) people do, with many games, and have done for a very long time. It has nothing to do with "modern gamers", there have always been plenty of people who approach games this way. Whether a chess guide is identical to an ARK guide is immaterial, what matters is that players look for guides for games to a) improve their learning curve and b) to make the game more fun for themselves. Game players like game guides, and they always have.

You would never tell a bunch of chess players that by reading chess guides, "every opportunity for discovery has been squandered", it should be obvious to you that making this argument for ARK is just as flawed as it would be if you made it for chess.

 

And don't get bogged down by the fact that I used a chess analogy, you can make this same comparison to any game or game'ish activity that involves puzzle solving and problem solving. Crossword puzzles are another good example. Now it's obvious that the demographics of people who do crossword puzzles is not the same demographics for ARK players. There's some overlap but I'm sure the middle portion of that Venn diagram would be pretty small, but the comparison is still a good illustration of how people like guides.

The whole point of a crossword puzzle is to seek out the mental challenge of being able to solve clues which leads to solving the puzzle. It's entirely a mental exercise that people to do have fun through the "opportunity for discovery" and flexing their mental muscles and yet the world abounds with guides for crossword puzzles. As long as there have been crossword puzzles there have been crossword puzzle guides. And that's because even when people are doing something for the specific purpose of solving puzzles, there are still times when they want help for a puzzle that's stumping them.

And that's because people want both, they want to be able to have fund discovering things and solving puzzles and they also want to have the ability to be efficient when it suits their personal needs. Even for a type of game that exists for no other reason that solving puzzles & solving problems, people still want to be able to choose for themselves when to do it the hard way and when they just want the solution to be efficient.

 

Again, we could make this same comparison for any game more complicated than tic-tac-toe, this isn't about chess, it isn't about crossword puzzles, it's about people, and the fundamental nature of humanity hasn't changed in the last 6 years. There's no such thing as "modern gamers" vs. 6 years ago, people are still people.

Full disclosure: if I'm being completely honest it's not just anything more complicated than tic tac toe, it also includes tic tac toe. Google "how to win tic tac toe" = 5,300,000 results. Even the simplest games have guides, because game players want to have game guides, in every game.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

4. Here we go again...what if I said “in my opinion they are ruining it for themselves” you assume that I believe I am speaking for these people...in a way yes I suppose I am. But I’m trying to provide some insight into what I believe is happening and you are interpreting  it as an attack.

No, not interpreting it as an attack, I never said nor implied that you were deliberately attacking people. What I said is that it's patronizing and that it's arrogant to imagine that you're providing some special insight. You're not attacking people, you're just mistaken in believing that it's helpful or useful.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, already knows how to do things that hard way. Everyone already knows that they have the option to play the game without consulting any guides or external information, you won't find anyone who needs to be told that.

This is the default, not just for ARK, not just for games, but for everything in life, for the entirety of human existence. Every last person on earth already knows that they have the option to do things without looking for external sources of information, because of course they do. Going out of your way to point out something that is a fundamental part of life for every person on earth isn't providing any insight of any kind, it's merely stating something that is already blatantly obvious.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

5. This is a common ground we can agree on. This is that gamer trend I am trying to point out and it is absolutely growing. I provided my evidence earlier.

Again, it's not the culture that's changing it's the availability of tools and information. It's not that "modern gamers" are different from gamers in the past, it's that the tools and resources that are available to them are more ubiquitous than they used to be. People always wanted this information to be easily and freely available. The culture hasn't changed, the information that the culture always wanted has.

The desire for more and better guides has always been there, they just weren't as easily and cheaply available as they are now. Publishing game guides in hard copy form was a thriving business for a good thirty years. The only reason that more people didn't use them was that they cost money, as opposed to things like wiki's and youtube that are free to the players. If guides in the 70's, etc., had been as cheaply and freely available as they are now then people would have used them a lot more. The culture hasn't changed, the tools have, the culture always wanted to have access to guides and information, it was just harder to get back then.

I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with people who said things like, "I loved xxxxx game but I never finished it. As much as I liked it, it was just too had and time consuming and I didn't want to spend money on a guide after I'd already spent money to buy the game." That sort of sentiment was quite common for many years. That's not a change in culture, it's a change in the resources available to the culture. "Modern gamers" are no different from gamers in the past, they just have easier access to the things people have always wanted.
 

One aspect of your thesis is that the full information is available when the expansions are published. You said, "After scorched earth things never really felt the same. Sure there was a threat here and there, but the optimal strategy’s had already been posted and conquered." and "Each dlc has a shorter learning curve than the next." There is nothing new about this, it's been happening since the very early days of computer games.

This is a good time to revisit a comment from my first reply, "You obviously weren't around in the 70's and 80's when game guides were published and sold at gaming stores, because people want the ability to decide for themselves what makes their games fun to play." Either you weren't around then, or you just don't remember it, but game guides have always been a thing.

What's more, most of the gaming guides were published at the same time as the games. There were tons of game guides that were published at the same time as the game, quite often created & published by the actual game publisher, not even a 3rd party, that were sold side-by-side with the games in the stores for the portion of players who wanted to choose how much exploration and discovery they wanted to do before just looking up the answer and moving on.

 

Game guides, wikis, and even video guides, for games pre-date ARK by many years, they have nothing to do with "modern gamers". There is nothing new about any of it and it was all happening with ARK, just like with many other games, right from the beginning.

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Take a look at the returning popularity of older games such as dungeons and dragons and other table tops.  These games can’t exactly have guides written for them In the same way, yet they are spreading like wildfire.

Your own argument is betraying you. There is a huge, and I do mean huge, amount of content for these returning games on youtube, wiki's etc. The guides can't be written "in the same way" because they're not video games, but the fact that there are many, oh-so-many guides available for them means that your own argument is proving you wrong. You can spend 5 minutes googling to see exactly how far off the mark you are with this point. Beyond that, there are also lots of video tutorials. It's worth noting that there is a lot of content for tabletop games that has nothing to do with tutorial or education, I'm just as aware as you are that tons of this content is just people playing games to be entertaining for an audience, but it's still true that even in video form there are lots of guides for the tabletop games.

"dnd 5e best feats"

"dnd 5e best spells"

"dnd 5e best builds"

"dnd 5e best adventuring gear"

... and so on. There are guides for every aspect, every aspect,  of the game.

This is a game that has been in publication since 1974, and as you have correctly pointed out it's spreading like wildfire again - and so are the guides and tutorials that you're complaining about.

Table top RPG's like D&D are significantly different from online RPG's like ARK, the single most important aspect of D&D is collaborative story telling rather than simply being as efficient and powerful as one can be and yet... as D&D has continued growing so has the volume of content that's available to players of D&D. People want to be able to enjoy the collaborative story telling, they want to find and discover things for themselves and they want to know that they're playing their character optimally. With D&D, just as with ARK, these desires are not mutually exclusive, they are in fact mutually inclusive.

It's not the culture that has changed, it's the ability of people to access this information that they wanted all along. The culture has always been there, the tools and information are just catching up to what the culture has always wanted.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

My theory is that gamers are migrating because they are sick of the grinding, studying and practicing it takes to master newer games and they just want to get back to having good old fun.

This is a separate topic. It would be interesting to discuss but it's not worth accidentally derailing the current discussion with this tangent.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

I’m focused on only the efficiency portion of it, but you will be hard pressed to provide evidence that we have not changed.

On the contrary, you haven't yet provided any evidence that your proposed culture change has taken place. Your original theses is unsubstantiated and has multiple flaws that have already been discussed. Everything you've described and complained about was plenty common right from the beginning. It may not have been how you, personally, played the game, and it may well be that your approach has changed and has caused you to perceive a change, but the things you've describes were just as common at the beginning of the game as they are now. I suggest to you that it's your awareness and perception that have changed, not the culture.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

7. (starting at “it doesn’t seem like it so far”) Here is the deal, you told me that how people play is none of my business, after I had just tried to discuss how I felt about it. How else should I interpret that?

You didn't merely 'try to discuss' it, you began by passing a summary judgement on a topic for which you were presenting flawed arguments.

Try to reread your OP as someone who has never seen it before, "but it needs to be said.", "It’s as though every opportunity for discovery has been squandered", "Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them."

You're pronouncing final judgement as though you get it and other people don't, in addition to which you're presenting your false dichotomy as though it's a definitive truth, which it's not.

 

The real answer to this discussion lies here, "that’s how it was for me anyways..." That's the core truth in this thread. The culture of ARK hasn't changed, your awareness of what people were already doing has changed.

On 1/11/2022 at 9:54 AM, Logan96 said:

You just told me that my main argument is none of my business on a forum section called general discussion. If you want to disagree with me then do so and I will be glad to discuss.

You're combining two different things, one is the right to discuss whether the culture of ARK has changed, the other is whether you have the right to tell other people how they should be playing the game. Two different things.

You have every right to propose a discussion on whether something is happening, "The culture of ARK is changing", or "Is the culture of ARK changing". Regardless of whether I agree with you, you have every right to create discussion delving into whether it's happening. For that matter you have every right to express your personal feelings about disliking the way people play since it's affecting how fun the game is for you. An example would be, "The excessive need for efficiency makes this game less fun on Official servers". There are many ways to open discussions and to express your personal feelings that don't involve telling other people what they should be doing, you have the right to any of those things.

What you don't have the right to tell people how they should be playing the game, "The Problem with Modern Gamers" nor that they're doing it wrong for their own personal enjoyment, "Gamers need to quit focusing so much on efficiency and get back to enjoying the game around them." Even if I completely agreed with you that the culture is changing, I would still tell you that how other people play is none of your business, and that you certainly don't have the right to tell people that you have magical insight in to how they would have more fun if they would just play the way you tell them to.

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Welcome to the new age, son. A worrying amount of players past or beneath specific age demographics only care about meta strats and being speedrunners and anything that doesn't play ball or shakes that meta is an issue. A prime example of this is Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. Forgive me while I go on a tangent painting a scene for you. For a long time the meta strategy in that game was (back to "is" now sadly) a "raw build", I.e. A built that focused purely on baseline damage and not accounting for specific bonuses like element or a weapon's innate affinity. You played that meta if you wanted to be a super l33t gamer. Well, the devs released a monster in the game (alatreon) that upset that meta by having a condition that DEMANDED focus on high elemental bonus and weapon affinity or it would flat out kill you after a set amount of time with an unavoidable nuke if you failed to meet an elemental dps check. No question asked; no quarter given. Meet the check or die like a dog.

As you can imagine, the raw meta guys screamed to the heavens as if their very souls were violated. Their precious builds were invalidated. Years of hyperfocus on ONE strategy rather than learning what else the game had that they could try had doomed them to fail. Was it their fault? Well according to them no, it was the devs fault for forcing them to consider things out of their brain dead meta comfort zone. To them was unfair to make players abandon their optimal brain dead approach with a set condition to not get fried like an egg. That debacle was over a year ago now and people still complain and get filtered by the fight. Most players today don't really think, they wait until some enterprising individual finds the "optimum strategy" and then ape it, and god help anything that upsets their meta.

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