Jump to content

ARK's story: main reason for playing or not?


CaelumNL

Recommended Posts

Let's start off with the fact that I am a PvE player only and have solely played on dedicated servers of friends. That said: I adore the story behind ARK as I love ancient lost civilisation stories very much. It was not obvious from the start that there was a story behind it and I really just got into it after playing Extinction when it came out, but the more I played the game after that, the more I got into it. I checked out YTers that told the story via the ingame notes and discussed the story. I even started my own dedicated server to go the same route as Helena once went. I think ARK's story is one of the best ever written, with great characters and intriguing events and it's awesome that the maps tell their story with lots of hints to what happened who knows how many years before we arrive on the Island. 

But I only got to play Excinction probably after around 2500 hours into the game and started this adventure through the story after 4000 hours into the game. Before that, I played ARK for the building, the survival, the epic new mods and just running around new maps with friends. ARK used to be just a big playground for me to hunt and tame new creatures and just fool around and explore a bit. The progression was only in leveling and whatever route the bigger mods layed out progression wise. 

So I am quite curious why the other Survivors play the game. Are you invested in the story? Do you even know or care that there is one? Is it your type of story? What does it do for you while playing the game? Or do you just play the game for the day to day fun? Is it more the survivalling that interests you? The battle for the name of Alpha tribe maybe?  

P.S. I want to give a shoutout to Neddy the Noodle for doing awesome work on bringing the story of ARK to life. If you like ARK's story or are interested in it, I really suggest you check out his ARK survival stories on his YT channel.Normally I am not in the habbit of suggesting YT channels, but it's just that good if you like the story of ARK. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While being fascinated by the notes at first, the fact you never have time to read them due to some annoying Raptor, Dillo or Gompy made them kind of wasted on me. Also the fact that ARK's UI never was optimized for consoles in living room setup made them very hard to read.
By now my backlog of notes is too big to just sit down and read all of them. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Kaprosuchus said:

honestly the story didn't feel very engaging to me until extinction and onward, it was practically non existent unless you read the notes

It was of course editted in quite a bit after the EA started. I must say I had the same thing. And it is quite non-existent indeed, if you don't read the notes. If you are interested, as I was after playing Extinction, I'd look up the stories on YT. It makes playing on the official maps quite more interesting if I say so myself :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/5/2022 at 7:53 AM, CaelumNL said:

Let's start off with the fact that I am a PvE player only and have solely played on dedicated servers of friends. That said: I adore the story behind ARK as I love ancient lost civilisation stories very much. It was not obvious from the start that there was a story behind it and I really just got into it after playing Extinction when it came out, but the more I played the game after that, the more I got into it. I checked out YTers that told the story via the ingame notes and discussed the story. I even started my own dedicated server to go the same route as Helena once went. I think ARK's story is one of the best ever written, with great characters and intriguing events and it's awesome that the maps tell their story with lots of hints to what happened who knows how many years before we arrive on the Island. 

But I only got to play Excinction probably after around 2500 hours into the game and started this adventure through the story after 4000 hours into the game. Before that, I played ARK for the building, the survival, the epic new mods and just running around new maps with friends. ARK used to be just a big playground for me to hunt and tame new creatures and just fool around and explore a bit. The progression was only in leveling and whatever route the bigger mods layed out progression wise. 

So I am quite curious why the other Survivors play the game. Are you invested in the story? Do you even know or care that there is one? Is it your type of story? What does it do for you while playing the game? Or do you just play the game for the day to day fun? Is it more the survivalling that interests you? The battle for the name of Alpha tribe maybe?  

P.S. I want to give a shoutout to Neddy the Noodle for doing awesome work on bringing the story of ARK to life. If you like ARK's story or are interested in it, I really suggest you check out his ARK survival stories on his YT channel.Normally I am not in the habbit of suggesting YT channels, but it's just that good if you like the story of ARK. 

Im in it honestly for the storyline too. Also I like playing it along with the guidlines that the devs put into place.....no mods, adjusted setting, ect. ect. To put it simply, to play it as they gave it to us. Sadly with all the bugs tho, thats not entirely possible. =/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, wizard03 said:

Im in it honestly for the storyline too. Also I like playing it along with the guidlines that the devs put into place.....no mods, adjusted setting, ect. ect. To put it simply, to play it as they gave it to us. Sadly with all the bugs tho, thats not entirely possible. =/

Indeed :) ARK is still quite buggy. I do play with a few small things to make life a bit more enjoyable, like S+, Castles and Keeps and a higher amount of gathering, a bit faster taming and breeding to compensate for people's life outside the game. But that still don't take away the difficulty of running the caves and doing the bosses and we got a rule that we can't take anything with us to a new map after we "ascend" to a new map, until we are ready for the bosses. For the rest I moderate a bit to counter ARK's weaknesses/bugs or when the server suddenly thinks "do it yourself" and people losing their gear because of it or something like that.

 

ATM we are in Aberration and I love the map with in the back of my head the story of who were there before me, what they have done, why the surface burns, why the earth quakes from time to time, and what is hdden in its depths.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The funnest part of the story is figuring out what is real.

Spoiler

We only get the story Helena let’s us see for the most part. Depending on what you consider cannon she is probably suffering from element exposure. To complicate it even more mobile adds amber a substance that has a synergy with element. Something Helena completely neglected to tell us. Rockwell hinted at her not being herself as well.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@CaelumNL Good question.  I was into the story for awhile then let it go.  I think I got frustrated at finding notes in awkward order.  The gaps in the story line caused me to stop reading.  I eventually want to sit down and read them all and get back to the story, but at this point is does feel daunting.  Thanks for the YT suggestion... it might be a good alternative.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, CaelumNL said:

Indeed :) ARK is still quite buggy. I do play with a few small things to make life a bit more enjoyable, like S+, Castles and Keeps and a higher amount of gathering, a bit faster taming and breeding to compensate for people's life outside the game. But that still don't take away the difficulty of running the caves and doing the bosses and we got a rule that we can't take anything with us to a new map after we "ascend" to a new map, until we are ready for the bosses. For the rest I moderate a bit to counter ARK's weaknesses/bugs or when the server suddenly thinks "do it yourself" and people losing their gear because of it or something like that.

 

ATM we are in Aberration and I love the map with in the back of my head the story of who were there before me, what they have done, why the surface burns, why the earth quakes from time to time, and what is hdden in its depths.  

aberration on single player is absolutely unplayable.....everything you seen in zany zerbra's 100 day challenge is exactly what I have been dealing with.....falling through the ground, insta game crash when retrieving the artifacts, caves not loading......of all the maps, aberration is an absolute mess.....Iv gotten some things ready for the boss fight, but Im not done yet and considering the artifacts are screwed up, Im not exactly interested in aberration much anymore. Extinction is quite nice tho.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...